The Trouble With Definitions: Music-theater

Guy Yedwab Experimental Music-Theater 2/2/08 The Trouble With Definitions: ‘Music-Theater’ As Eric Salzman says at the beginning of his essay “Some Notes On The Origins Of New Music-Theater,” “every age seems to have had to reinvent” the term musictheater. This is not unique to the term ‘music-theater;’ Words like ‘art,’ ‘music,’ and “theater” have had their meanings debated and refined over and over again. In fact, the idea of a ‘set’ definition for words is a neo-classical ideal, which was first realized by Dr. Ben Jonson’s dictionary. During the days of the Greeks, each philosopher would carve out his own definition for words and ideas that reflected his views of the world, and the debates between philosophers about the meanings of words would very distinctly parallel their debates about the meanings behind them. The dictionary, in the Victorian Era, became a way of controlling not only the words, but the thoughts behind them— excluding “bad” words and embracing “good” words. So when the artistic community debates the definition of the term ‘music-theater,’ what they’re attempting to do is discover boundaries; the emphasis is not what musictheater is but what music-theater isn’t. Take, for instance, the discussion between Cage, Chechner, and Kirby; Cage discusses his aversion to making definitions because Kirby, in searching for a definition of happenings, “was brought to excluding the Motor Vehicle Sundown Event of George Brecht from the category of happenings simply because it didn’t involve intention.” The current trend in artists is to deliberately seek out those boundaries, and deliberately kick them down. Take, for instance, “The Fountain” by

Marcel Duchamp. A urinal turned on its side, Duchamp originally submitted it to an art competition that refused to turn away any works of art in order to lampoon their lack of boundaries. But despite his intention to put something inartistic in an art competition, we now see “The Fountain” as a watershed moment in the history of art. John Cage, as well, is noted for rebelling against the notions of what art can be. In the aforementioned discussion, John Cage answers a question about defining theatre by saying, “I try to make definitions that won’t exclude. I would simply say that theatre is something which engages both the eye and the ear. The two public sense are seeing and hearing; the senses of taste, touch, and odor are more proper to intimate, non-public, situations. The reason I want to make my definition of theatre that simple is so one could view everyday life as theatre.” Unfortunately, his definition falls slightly short of his stated goal of making everyday life theatre—as he says a moment alter, “When you’re lying down and listening you’re having an intimate, interiorly-realized theatre which I would—if I were going to exclude anything—exclude from my definition of theatre as a public occasion.” This echoes what Jerzy Grotowski said of theatre; in Towards The Poor Theatre he wrote “Theatre can exist without make-up, without autonomic costume and scenography, without a separate performance area (stage), without lighting and sound effects, etc. It cannot exist without the actor-spectator relationship of perpetual, direct, ‘live’ communion.” Here we have an expansive definition of theater, which only requires more than one person. This seems like a reasonably broad definition of ‘theater,’ but unfortunately it wasn’t broad enough for experimental theatermaker Richard Foreman, who wrote in his book Unbalancing Acts that: “Art, conceived as a revelatory process, can indeed spin its web in the void. Who knows who is really watching? When a huge audience seems to be watching, it may be only a mass collection of habitual responses

planted in the seats of the theatre. When nobody seems to be watching, it may be only a mass collection of habitual responses planted in the seats of the theater. When nobody seems to be watching, perhaps an invisible god has his eyes on the performance. This may well be a different kind of theater than any that has ever existed. So be it.” Of course, Richard Foreman is a difficult theatermaker to categorize, because as he says elsewhere, “You might think that since I’ve chosen to work in the theater, I might as well accept it for what it’s always been, and speak to that common public consciousness that assembles as an audience. In that case, then, let’s say I’m not making theater; I’m doing something else. I’m making objects in space and time, populated by real people speaking lines, and they do it in front of other people—and it’s not theater.” Central to these ideas about theater are the aims of the theatermaker. Foreman sees theater as a process of arranging objects and ideas; Grotowski sees it as a communion between artist and audience; John Cage sees it as an enrichment of everyday life. The more conventional the definition of music-theater, the more of their work becomes excluded from our conception of art. For myself, it is more important to see the complexities of these artists’ works than to exclude them in favor of a structured definition arrived at beforehand. So if I were to define my own ‘music-theater,’ I would only say that the artist intend to use musicality and theatricality in the artistic piece, and that (as John Cage put it), “If there are intentions, then there should be every effort made to realize those intentions.” One final note, however: the lack of a formal definition with boundaries and exclusions does not mean that I believe that all theater must be considered sacred and cannot be criticized; calling something a piece of art, no matter the

genre, does not protect it from its criticism. Unfortunately, that criticism has always been, and will always be, a matter of subjectivity and debate.