Is it too late for Shakespeare? I don’t mean the powerful texts themselves, the probing psychological depths, and brilliant literary analysis of what it is to be human—you know, the stuff that William Shakespeare, hard-working playwright, bequeathed to everyone who loves the English language.
No. What I’m asking is, is it too late for young, Selfie Generation audiences to actually sit through a performance of a Shakespeare play? Have they the attention span? Are they capable of submitting themselves to un-ironic moments of joy, sorrow, terror? Do they even know what the words (or scenarios) mean?
Since I’m asking, I’ll answer: not “no they don’t,” but “hell no they don’t!”
Given what I’ve seen lately in a certain redwood glen very very close to where I’m seated right now, not even the most tip-top production, laden with an all-Equity all-star line-up of actors with resounding vocal abilities and sure-footed direction could survive the general, all’round idiocy of this, or perhaps, any audience outside a major (MAJOR) metropolitan region.
I have alas, way too much personal teaching experience of how few people in the 20something age group can read. This is not the Age of Literacy, this is the Age of Imagery. Digital imagery. Borrowed imagery. But there’s a trade-off for growing up in a visually glutted world. If you grew up with computers, CGI, and the smart phone, chances are you also grew up with a stunted imagination.
At the risk of sounding like a baby boomer, I suggest that if you grew up reading books, you, the reader, supplied the images for fictional people, places, and things out of your own imagination. You were not handed the correct (generic)Â visual image of what a character should look like. You conjured up your own, much as Shakespeare’s Macbeth conjures up the image of Banquo’s ghost from his fevered and guilt-wracked imagination. (Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings has a lot to answer for!)
But back to live theater for a minute. Audiences who can only laugh at moments of dramatic tension, are audiences incapable of surrendering to their own emotions. I’ll go further. I’m not even convinced that most Selfie Gens are capable of reaching those emotions. They have been postmodernized out of feeling anything deeply. Instead, ironic giggling is their best shot, i.e. default response.
And if the tragic, the horrifying, the ghastly is not presented to their eyes in CGI, 3D, and gazillion-pixel HD, they simply can’t concentrate on it, they just don’t get it, much less accept the tragedy, horror, ghastliness of it.
Hooting when two actors kiss onstage, howling when a moment of witchcraft is being depicted, laughing maniacally at the sight of a man on the verge of mental collapse—these are only a few examples of a cultural environment in which ISIS recruiters will continue to do a brisk business.
I maintain my right to be “so yesterday” as to actually re-read the play before I sit down expecting to feast on Shakespeare. I fear that most play-goers under the age of oh say 40, wouldn’t even be able to understand the English they were reading. Much easier to Google a summary on Wikipedia, no?
[PS: If you haven’t yet seen “The Liar,” produced and running through the end of the month by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, then read my review, and then run out and score tickets!!]
Continue to tell it like you see it, Christina! Even if it’s shrugged off by those damn kids with their damn gadgets!!
This was one of many topics we skirted around and tiptoed by when you visited the Penny University but also addressed at some depth and at the cost of being an geezer-fogey, I have to agree with the thrust of your observations and criticisms.
Not that you would be swayed by catching flak, but I prefer to throw praise your way.
keep on !!!!!!
Excellent observation and reporting! I have some, hopefully not all, of these same observations and thoughts every dang day.
I do not ‘blame’ the ‘kids’ they are the victims of corporate greed – they do have responsibility for their quiescence though and i hope they will learn that electronics are much less rewarding than actual relationships with humans, and discourse with humans, and the joy of relaxation and imagination. Electronics are tools. You don’t need a hammer every day, but you do need a sunset.
Thank you for your ongoing ability to keep the focus on the best of life!
Beautifully expressed Christina. A similar experience at a film some years ago prompted the purchase of a monstrously large television. It’s nowhere near the experience of a theater but at least we watch in silence.
Elizabethan audiences were nowhere near as reverently and unironically silent as your idealized audience. While it is altogether fitting that we heap praise on our greatest English poet and playwright, it is worth remembering that he engaged his audiences at a level and complexity of language to which they were accustomed in the context of theatrical conventions with which they were familiar.
Language is alive for the young, even if they choose not to worship at a theatrical altar in a language they can barely understand. And yes, au courant word and emotional wizardry like Youth Speaks! poetry slams reach rapt audiences more readily in major metropolitan areas than out here in the sticks.
Our wounded pride in having trained and educated ourselves in how to intellectually pleasure ourselves (when others haven’t) is perhaps not so much misplaced as it is parochial.
Jozseph – yes, I know that Shakespeare’s audiences were a lusty lot, but as you so astutely point out, they knew the territory. Our younger audiences don’t.
Last I looked there was still plenty of emotional wizardry in Macbeth to go around. It just falls on deaf ears in many cases.
Shakespeare is hardly a theatrical shrine.
C
Please do not blame corporate greed as one commenter did. That’s too easy and PC. Blame schools, parents, lousy entertainment in big screen theatres and TV. The education system has fallen apart. Then also look at ourselves–those boomers who in the 80s and 90s started talking through movies–even art movies–in movie theatres and had to be shushed. In my post 60s (that’s age) I am trying to submit to all these ridiculous changes in our culture (parents on their cell phones ignoring their kids while they play) and still remember that climate change is the biggest threat to our survival.
I DO blame schools, parents, and mediated, digitized “entertainment.” By the time I get students in the university, the damage has been done. It’s way to late to teach them independent thinking, reading, or writing (don’t get me started).
Given that several generations now lack all critical skills, any sense of individual identity, and are unable to track the implications of their alleged politics — any dictator you’d care to mention could just walk in and eradicate what’s left of a country I grew up loving.