artistic statement

I want a theatre (a manifesto) by Liv Garcia

after Zoe Leonard

I want a theatre for freaks. I want a theatre where the weirdest people I know (the queers and weirdos and masochists and pastor’s kids) can gather and make art only for themselves. I want to be unapologetically and unconditionally myself at the theatre. I want a theatre where people can talk about objective by playing a song, scream to describe given circumstances, and make a costume out of the sweat-stained clothes from their laundry hamper. I want to be the person in the room who says that’s okay, that’s more than okay, that’s incredible. I want a theatre that feeds people in their minds, bodies, and souls. I want a theatre for God. I want a theatre where I can worship God through the people around me.

I want brutal theatre. I want queer theatre. I want theatre that cherry picks all the best parts of Artaud and Abdoh, that takes the campiness of Brecht and discards the misogyny and cultural appropriation, that creates assemblage the same way that The Wooster Group did without trying to excuse blackface. I want a theatre that’s talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.

I want a theatre that gets it. Is that too much to ask? I think that’s what a manifesto is, in the end. A call out into the universe, hoping that someone is out there who gets it. “It” is ephemeral and undefined, like all good things. I can hint at it through things I’ve seen, moments where I’ve begun to lean forward in my chair because the thing unfolding in front of me was radiant. I can talk around and through it. I can call it truth, transcendence, a perfect form, genius, or auteurship. At the end of the day though, “it” is undefinable. You either get it, or you don’t.

To get it, you need to understand two things: care and the sublime.

Care

The theatre must be a place of care. This is not to say that the theatre is not also a place of violence, brutality, anger, hatred, grief, and rage. Binary thinking teaches us that these things cannot interact, but they are completely intertwined. To care for another person in their righteous anger or all-consuming grief is a radical action. The theatrical impulse comes from a human need to understand other people. Theatre is born from care, so care must be central to theatre.

Care is work. Like love, care is a verb. Theatremakers must engage in care work, which is historically undervalued and unseen by dominating forces (read: the people who control the theatrical means of production). To them, care is nothing. From Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice: “Love gets laughed at. What a weak, nonpolitical, femme thing. Love isn’t a muscle or an action verb or a survival strategy. Bullshit, I say.” Bullshit! We (the aforementioned freaks I’m making theatre for) use care, love, desire, and empathy as the building blocks to make our radiant theatre.

Care shows up when actors aren’t asked to warm up on their own time, when the stage manager makes sure that everyone has been fed, when the front-of-house staff takes the time to learn about why trigger warnings matter. Directors are responsible for care work too. Leading a check-in is care work, as is creating blocking that works with people’s mobility instead of forcing them beyond their limits. Directors show care by listening, adapting, and not assuming that their way is the best way. Care forms the basis of good acting because care work requires elasticity, empathy, and play. Care is a seed and if it’s properly tended, a beautiful theatre can blossom.

You cannot make brutal theatre without care. If you pride yourself on making “hard” theatre, on being a take-no-bullshit director, on scaring the audience, you’re just abusing people. I want brutal theatre, but I don’t want to brutalize people to make it. In fact, I don’t think that you can make the kind of brutal theatre that sticks in people’s minds and hearts without deeply caring for the people with whom you make it. Ensemble, communal commitment to each other and to our work, makes brutal theatre possible.

The Sublime

Here are some sublime things: birth, the song Wide Open Spaces by the Chicks, the Eno River, waking up with the sun, lesbian sex, coming home at 5 am, complete darkness, Mrs. Meyer’s basil dish soap, white tank tops, Catholic mass, and bubblegum. Why are they sublime? Because their magic defies explanation. Even if there were words to describe the sublime, it’s not universal. Nor is it individual. The key to capturing the sublime is finding moments of communal understanding and elevating them.

The sublime lives in specificity. It manifests itself in those creative processes where people bring their weirdest details and memories to the forefront. Vague ideas are not sublime; think about the different between someone saying, “this play is set in the 1960s” and someone saying, “this play is set on October 14th, 1963.” Specificity grounds people and allows them to develop a communal fascination with the world of the play. That fascination means that they can bring in detail, create texture, and be curious. Sublime specificity is what creates the physical world of the play. Everything onstage must contribute to the overall collage.

The sublime lives in queerness. (We were always going to end up here!) Queerness is a mindset, an ethic, a way of looking at the world. It moves beyond sexuality. It informs everything. Queer theatre is not set up in opposition to “tradition.” It welcomes tradition, then twists and warps it into something greater. All great theatre is queer because queer people make great theatre. That is, we make maximalist, exclusive, and unapologetic theatre. Queerness is sublime because it is better felt that explained.

The sublime lives in language and the moments where language fails. I love words, love diving deep into them to find the underbelly of meaning. Artfully handled language is sublime, and actors who use language rather than letting it walk over them are the most sublime of actors. The theatre needs language, but it cannot deify speaking above everything else. Sublime communication happens when different forms (a word, hand movement, lighting cue, and audience gasp) work together to become one language. At the same time, moments where language fails create texture. Failure is sublime because the moment of failure is unexplainable. Everyone feels a failure.

The sublime lives in ritual. Ritual is a specific set of actions that a select group performs for the purpose of reaching some higher power/state of being/understanding. Theatre is a ritual, but the ritual has become muddled over time. No one knows what their role is any more, whether they are priest or parishioner. Theatremakers must create new rituals, ones where they know what they’re doing. Notice the plural, “rituals.” There is no single formula to remove emotional blocks and make the audience better participants in society (sorry Aristotle, sorry Brecht). Every piece of theatre deserves a new ritual. Questioning old systems is sublime. Experiment with form and content. Don’t be afraid to be right.

Here are some more sublime things: everything, when you look at it from the right angle.

tl;dr: I want a brutal, specific, queer ritual of theatre where everyone is cared for. I want “it,” an unquantifiable feeling of deep connection and radiance. I am a person who believes in God so, for me, God is a part of this unknowable thing. God is a freak too, by the way.

I am a big believer in wanting things. I think that cynicism is boring, so when I say, “I want a theatre,” please know that I mean it sincerely. I want a theatre because I have hope. Hope is not naivete. It’s not unflinching optimism. Hope is hard. Abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba teaches that “hope is a discipline,” an everyday practice that requires commitment. Wanting, hoping, is so deeply human it’s almost embarrassing. The vulnerability of hope fuels me to create the theatre of my dreams.

One dream in particular stands out: I want a theatre of creation, together.