In this piece Woody discusses why people are so drawn to shows filled with negative emotion
Hello. So, I’ve been talking to various of the creative types with whom I kick about, and a question has come up a few times. No doubt those of you more knowledgeable in the ways of the performing arts will find the question facile and blase. I suspect I also know the answer to my question, but the act of writing a thing out, trying to explain it, has always aided the clarity of my thought. The net result of this is that you lucky people get to read the results of me getting my mental house in order. The question that’s been bugging me is “Why do people go to shows?” or, perhaps more accurately, “Why do people go to not-happy shows?”
There must be a reason. There’s an awful lot of not-happy theatre going on out there, and they must be getting audiences. What compels a rational and averagely pleasant person to pay money for privilege of sitting in a darkened room and watching, say, a Venetian general become so consumed by jealousy that they murder their partner? We here at By Jove have been working on a play for a small festival, the climax of which is a woman ripping her son’s head off. We fully expect that we will get an audience, and that they will enjoy the show. When you think about it, does that strike you as weird? It’s not as if in our real lives we seek out death, betrayal, suffering, and related unpleasantness. Why do we seek it out in the art we choose to consume?
Firstly is what I’m going to call the intellectual reason. The deep, serious, strokey-beard, philosophical types with their black turtle-necks have good points. I shall deal with them first because the emotional reason will give a more satisfying conclusion to the post. Simply put: life does contain an awful lot of not-happy moments. People do feel rage and loneliness and grief. If one is going to hold one’s artistic mirror up to the world, these aspects of life cannot be ignored if one is going to make a true comment on the world. Not-happy shows give us a chance to look at a snapshot of a life other than our own wherein we can see what mistakes the characters made and hopefully avoid similar mistakes in our own lives. A piece of theatre (or literature if you prefer not to have to leave the house) can do this better than observing other people’s mistakes in real life. This is because the piece is artificial and can filter out the distortion of real life. We often don’t have the time or the ability to find out someone’s exact motivation and circumstances when they take a (self-)damaging action in real life. This is not a problem in theatre because you just saw all of that in act one. Any ambiguities or uncertainties are a deliberate creation and not simply a result of life being unhelpful when we try to observe it.
The other point theatre’s artificially constructed nature allows is the possibility of a conclusion which doesn’t get in the way of a moral lesson. Real life doesn’t always have a good sense of didactic narrative. Too often the story goes along the lines of “They did a bad thing. Everyone knows it was bad. Now they’ve bought a yacht, some champagne, and a pretty person with a nice bum which they can ogle. The end.” In theatre you can create, if you choose, some poetic justice and make a socio-ethical point: “He did a bad thing. Everyone knows it was bad. Now everyone he cares for is dead and he himself is doomed to an unheroic demise. The end.” Constructed reality can be made so much neater, and if things ARE deliberately left with loose ends, at least the questions and relevant facts are arranged for the audience’s consideration.
I am more concerned, though, with the emotional attraction of not-happy theatre. Live performance has such an immediate, emotional impact, an audience’s feelings must have something to do with why they like not-happy shows. Is it simple sadism? Are we going to fringe theatres, paying eight quid for a gin and tonic, and settling down in a simulacrum of Hollywood’s idea of a Roman amphitheatre? I certainly hope not; that would put theatre on the same level as I’m A Celebrity, Please Take My Dignity In Exchange For Five More Minutes In The Spotlight. Ugh, can you imagine?!
I love the internet
Fortunately (for my slightly snobbish self-regard, if nothing else) I don’t think this is the case. I think the answer can be found in Aristotle and Alan Bennett. A reassuring sentence if ever there was one, wot? In Aristotelian theory one would watch these awful events being simulated before one in order to evoke feelings of fear and pity. Over the course of the drama these induced feelings would build to such a level that would have to flow out, taking one’s own and genuine negative emotions with them. He called this cleansing process katharsis, a Greek word meaning catharsis. In Bennett’s The History Boys the eccentric, poetry-loving teacher Hector has this to say on one of the benefits of poetry:
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
Which is just lovely. Also true, which does help.
So when we put on a not-happy play we can rest safe in the knowledge that our audiences are not blood-mad psychopaths reveling in the suffering of fictitious people. The truth is both much sadder and much more comforting. They are people carrying a weight of negative emotion and in need of a hug.
One hopes you’re well,
yrs,
ADWoodward
