Problem plays
Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well has been ‘treated like the ugly stepchild of the Bard’s canon,’ according to dramaturg Jeffrey Ullom, who says the term ‘problem play‘ is often employed ‘when directors and dramaturges find a play too complicated or challenging for their own individual talents.’
Modern life is often a problem play of sorts. Evidence of this includes the information glutosphere, the complicated health care debate or the nebulous personal career path. You might expect Shakespeare’s problem plays to be runaway smash hits, channeling the zeitgeist head on.
The problem with problems, though, is that they’re so very problematic. Problems beget problems. Complexity can overwhelm.
A good play, or comparable art production, may indeed be a way to purge the art goer’s inner doubts about his/her preparedness to slay the beast. Or, citizenry of the denial class may just as soon float off into lesser dramas, where heros and heroines try to convince us decisions are cool and easy for the pure of heart.
I’m not pure of heart. Are you? Kudos to you who truthfully say you are. The rest of us turn to art, making it or seeking it, just to hold our heads above the fray of problem plays, ubiquitous and draining.
Kick the can
Friend of this site mccn sent me a photo of Ernest Hemmingway kicking a can, part of a thriving Artist in Action photo series. A companion photo to your left comes from a Wikimania 08 conference, a type of gathering that involves a lot of not shutting up. As for making something, there is always a good possibility of being inspired by a bunch of sojourners to go home and dig in with the muse.
Ironically, if I spend much of this morning organizing my thoughts around the issue the two photos raise, I’ll be kicking my can of worms, video editing and production, down the Saturday avenue of procrastination (in good company, apparently).
So I leave you with a thought fragment, along with everything the photos conjure in your inner-sphere --
When we become artist-politicians, looking outward to the next vote from onlookers (or our own critical mass), we’re more likely to punt and shrug our way to the periphery of the making core.
Wiser guys than I know this well.
I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road - to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.
Barack Obama, September 9, 2009 address to Congress
Artist in Action. Oxymoron or precription?
Wide Open
![Carnival (song fragment)]](/sites/default/files/ImageVideo/09-09-05WideOpen.jpg "Click to view Wide Open (song fragment)")
Most of the available footage for Wide Open is from a stationary camera. When I zoom in to vary the perspective, I like the graininess of the close ups. So I decide to go for the black and white, jittery look of old footage. Think CBGBs in the 70's.
Shards
![Carnival (song fragment)]](/sites/default/files/ImageVideo/09-09-03Carnival.jpg "Click to view Carnival (song fragment)")
Behind the scenes at Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History are cavernous rooms of shelves and cabinets packed with our past, meticulously catalogued and preserved for our future. The public sees only the tip.
Transcendence in art and life
![Flare (song fragment)]](/sites/default/files/ImageBlog/09-09-02transcendence.jpg "Click to view Flare (song fragment)")
Robert Wright says there’s hope for the world. In The Evolution of God, he documents progress through time: how we conceive of divinity, and how our views of God influence our actions.