Donkey Show

As with everything I say or do, I usually put out a caveat that I am completely unqualified. Commenting on tonight's performance of the Donkey Show at the Oberon Theater is no exception. Did I know it was an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, yes. Did I know much about the original, no. Full disclosure: most of what I do know is just what I pieced together from a few episodes of Gargoyles where Puck appears.

I am sure there is a rich experience in understanding the connection between old and new, revamped and classic. I cannot offer an opinion on that front. Some people may think that would disqualify having an opinion on the show at all. I sympathize with that position, but after the performance, I am more willing to share my potentially less enlightened view point, despite being more sympathetic to would be detractors.

First, I can generalize about a few things. Shakespeare is hard for the consumer. Tonight's show was almost painfully easy for us. With reducing the script to just a handful of intense interactions, making it completely obvious what was happening, it really decreased the mental requirement for the viewing.

Besides the provided incentive to dance and drink (the second makes sense. You can make a lot more if you're selling throughout and not just at intermission). I would have felt completely comfortable using my phone for texting or calling. Even tweeting, ordering a book on Amazon, reading F my life or looking at pictures of cats would not have felt odd. Nor would I have faulted anyone else for doing this kind of thing. In a conventional theater performance, I would be the first one to give anyone the evil eye for distracting me or heaven forbid the performers.

But here, the show itself seemed to almost not care. I am not saying that it did not take effort or attention to present, but rather it just had a very incidental feel to it. They said what they had to say, and commanded attention through gestures, lighting and sound. There was no artifice in place to support their authority. The big dudes on security would prevent a complete coup, but overall, I got the impression that the performers just happened to be better organized and doing more interesting things than the other audience members.

As an aside, it would be an interesting to take this further. I'm sure someone in the last century has experimented with anarchical theater, but seeing/being in a show one or two notches more toward the king of the mountain style performance would be really amazing. Improv Everywhere has had a few skits along these lines, but I'm very interested in seeing if it becomes more standard and common.

Anyways, back to the not caring thing. It reminds me a lot of some aspects of the current internet experience. More and more services are emphasizing the ability to say something, with no guarantee that anyone will listen or care. The donkey show puts people in a big room, tells them to dance, drink, and continue with their mobile lives and carry on with their physically present friends as they wish. As aside number two, some audience members carried on with their friends quite a bit...

Ahem... So this performance was approachable, demanded little, and accepted a wild audience. I was left with a good many questions. Is this a good thing? Is this inevitable? Did the author make a call on either, or just raise the questions? Is the empty feeling of wondering if I deserve to comment the intended effect, or am I being too self-critical? Is the important thing the adaptation of the story, or is the story as (intentionally?) incidental as I am imagining? Is the audience as we knew it dead? Can we ever sit quietly through a show again? Can we read a book? Can we listen to a 3 minute song without skipping to the hook, and then to the next song? Does everything viewed as "content" command less attention than it once did? What are the benefits of this shift towards apparent egotism and consumerism? Can we protect the arts? Would we want to if we could?

In short, I don't know whether to feel complemented, insulted, ignorant or special. I don't know if the creator cares. Maybe it was all for the lulz. Anyways, as with most good experiences, it raised more questions than answers. Knowing the creator intimately and having the original memorized would only address a few of these. I think that validates my opinion.

Because of and despite not even having the attention to read the full wikipedia synopsis of the play, I sympathize with the hell in a hand basket position strongly. I realize that I'm part of the problem, if that is actually what we've got going on.

The final question it raised for me was one I had been considering for a while. At the risk of seeming even more consumptive than may already be apparent, I was wondering if there are new markets in unconventional types of theater.

From a software perspective, removing dependencies often leads to greater portability and more customizable interfaces and experiences. Generating a UML for theater might be a good start in looking for dependencies that are locking performance in a particular box.

Removing the audience's attention as a dependency allows for shows like the one I saw tonight. Remove the need for money paid by an audience, and you get the grocery store musical. Swap the money paid back in but this time by a fiance to be, and you get a proposal musical.

I had been speaking to a pro theater friend of mine about her opinions on removing some of these dependencies. To a large extent, she said that "software is a different world from the arts, at least for the time being." I don't think that she is wrong. In both cases, there are systems in place that define in radically different ways, what it means to be professional, altruistic, successful, wise, and profitable. There is no strong "open source" movement in theater, nor is it desirable for playwrights and composers to see their works torn apart and reconstituted.

Still, after tonight, I am more convinced than before that this difference is preserved as a not so comfortable tradition, and not because it is representing the current state of possibilities.

The rails creator, DHH said going too big is a mistake that a lot of people make when creating new companies. Every minor league that I know of in artistic sense of "making it" still sets the bar very high in being modeled after the majors. Get published, get noticed. Get cast, get noticed. In essence, you have giant dependencies (performing at a theater, selling a play) to resolve before you can execute (perform, see performed) or upgrade your software (performances, scripts).

I don't know why it has to be this way. Attention is easy. You ironically get more of it when you're not demanding it as in a traditional performance. I will be shocked if there isn't a large market for these types of small markets in 30 years.

At bad, this is a case of my liberal arts sensibility just saying software + music = something else cool? At worst, I reflect a terrible trend of inattention, technophilia, and shallowness that defines my peer group and younger.

At best, I had the chance to experience a type of performance that I haven't before, and more will become possible year after year until I die. And I will stop being a codger about kids today and their damn cell phones.

Thanks Donkey Show.