a poor player

Dunkirk NY – I seem to have an issue lately with quality. Nothing pleases me. Between watching my rehearsals for La Bohème, the movie The Watchmen I just finished watching, and my department’s production of Charlotte’s Web I saw this afternoon, it seems I can find nothing to really like. The last two things I have watched which I can really say I liked and had high levels of excellence were Synecdoche, NY and Born Yesterday at the Shaw Festival. Synecdoche, NY had incredible vision and writing, and Born Yesterday had incredible technique. Apart from those two things, I really haven’t much in the way of quality. Except perhaps the brand of baseball being played by the Yankees and Angels lately.

I am concerned about this tendency within me to find the weaknesses in everything I see. Why, I wonder, do I come away feeling so dissatisfied with the kinds of events I am viewing or even directing? Others around me seem to feel that the mere fact of something’s existence is enough to make it a success. People, it seems, cannot clearly see mediocrity even when it’s right in front of their face, or if they can, they certainly don’t want to talk about it. The human desire for success at any cost seems to obscure the truth.

I’ve wanted to write about this for quite some time, because if there is one thing which troubles me and, I think, keeps me from fully embracing a retreat from the concept of the “professional artist” is my fear that, given the propensity of 21st century society to raise the mediocre to the level of excellence, there will soon be no excellence at all.

Finding excellence in any area of human endeavor today is very hard. Try finding a good hamburger. Try finding a pair of shoes which will last more than one year. Try finding a decent pocketwatch. It can be done, sure, but it takes some searching and looking. And usually when you find excellence, behind it is some person who has devoted his or her life to creating that level of excellence. Often excellence costs more. But over time it’s worth the extra cost, because the value you receive by the product or service lasting a long time means the cost is eventually recovered.

It has become a source of frustration to me because, no matter how often or how hard I try to teach my students that excellence is what they should pursue and should expect of themselves and others, they are far too often satisfied with mediocrity, treating it as excellence. What becomes truly unbearable is that they themselves actually create internal hierarchies as they divide themselves into BA students and BFA students, with the belief that somehow BFA students are of higher quality than BA students. Of course, most of the BFA students themselves are mediocre in many ways; they are, after all, just 18-22-year-old kids. But even in this small pond I work in, I am still haunted by the question: What if they are right?

The trouble, of course, may not lie with them. It may be that I am the one undergoing a change. Their experience is an emotional one, the thrill of having theatrically done something or achieved something for the first time in their lives: the first play they directed; their first big chance on the big stage; their first major design. Perhaps I am having a harder and harder time realizing the importance of that moment for them, and have less patience with the over-enthusiasm that comes with it. Perhaps I’ve seen it so many times now that it has lost its novelty and excitement for me. I am sure that’s part of the equation.

But I also believe that, because they get exposed to so little that has true quality to it, they believe that what is mediocre is actually excellence. They have no other standards by which to evaluate or compare. They watch bad TV, see bad movies, perform in mediocre high school plays, listen to bad music, and too often in their lives have been praised for having achieved mediocrity. The “B”, a grade which used to stand for “above average,” now is considered unacceptable, and a “C” is actually failure. They want an “A” for a “B’s” worth of work. They want their mediocrity rewarded as if it were excellence.

The question of quality is one that I think is tiptoed around when we speak about participatory arts. When we work to open the arts to all (an idea I fully support), in this current cultural mindset we run the risk of reducing the quality of art. When everyone can get a hamburger from McDonald’s, they begin to think that McDonald’s makes a pretty good hamburger. We know that dedication, full-time commitment, experience, and an intense passion for excellence can create high quality, and that is what we have traditionally meant by “professional artist.” Trying to ascertain what is the best process and best practices we can put into place to increase participatory arts while at the same time maintaining high quality will be the trickiest part of the entire enterprise. -twl