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Post-capitalist Theatre: A Thought Experiment
A response to Paul Mason. Originally published by Exeunt Magazine.
Date : 05/05/2016
Author Information
Uploaded by : Marek
Uploaded on : 05/05/2016
Subject : Acting
In his article for The Guardian on 17th July, Paul Mason
outlined how a future society might look. Based on his upcoming book
Post-Capitalism, he argued that, in a new information-centric world, ideas and
data will overtake things and their monetary value as the preeminent human
currency. Today as Mason points out, the thing that is corroding capitalism,
barely rationalised by mainstream economics, is information . Capitalism has no
real meaningful way of quantifying and commodifying ideas and data, in the way
that it quantified and commodified things and work, and thus Information
Technology currently exists as a sleeper cell of irrational un-commodifiable
post-capitalist value, within the capitalist system.So far, so utopian. But in fact the IT revolution will have,
and already is having, a deleterious effect on the production of art. Yes, work
requires skills, experience and effort but so does art, and unlike work, art
cannot be made by machines, no matter how intelligent they are. What is more,
technology and the internet are already destroying creative output enough to
cause reasonable concern about the exigencies of an IT-centric future, as
music, books, art, and film can all now be captured, copied and redistributed
by advancing and rapacious social technologies to the point where what is being
produced is rendered valueless. As they are reproduced ad infinitum, images,
songs, books will be more ubiquitous than ever, and if ubiquity destroys their
financial value now then what is to say that it won t also destroy their
conceptual value? A beautiful thing like a Francis Bacon painting surely has
little value when a simulacrum of it can be instantaneously summoned online, or
reproduced to the highest spec by an incredibly sophisticated machine?And yet the original Francis Bacon will always hold
special value, whether it is conceptual or monetary. Its thing-value will be as
irrational in an Information Technology age as its ideas-value is today. It
will always have, as mysterious and powerful as it might be, what I will term
for my purposes here the authority of the progenitor , and for me
(re)capturing the authority of the progenitor is the key to art s future
survival and theatre is uniquely suited to this task. It is for this reason that
I disagree with Mason when he conveniently for my purposes here muses on
the future status of the artist, and identifies the playwright as a potentially
endangered species. Perhaps there will not even be any playwrights: perhaps the very
nature of the media we use to tell stories will change just as it changed in
Elizabethan London when the first public theatres were built Paul MasonI think rather that theatre could take on a pre-eminence
that it has not enjoyed since the renaissance. In a socio-cultural matrix that
doesn t value things for their monetary worth and does value the authority of
the progenitor above all other factors in cultural -commodification, what could
be more valuable than an art form that has, built into its very mode of being,
the idea that it should be created anew every time it is experienced and
consumed? In Information Technology terms especially, theatre has an
extraordinary resilience. It resists, in all meaningful ways what could be
termed the tyranny of the simulacrum . The internet can reproduce sound, and
light, and words and pictures. It cannot however reproduce space and it cannot
reproduce time, and thus it fundamentally cannot reproduce the experience of
watching a play.Theatre is the only art form that derives its entire life
force from the act of being (and I mean this in the most literal sense)
conspicuously consumed. In an economy like ours, that it based almost entirely
on the late-capitalist need for literal and conspicuous consumption, that is no
great shakes. Why consume a play when you can consume this new type of yogurt,
or this new range of cheap clothes? But, in the post-capitalist age where
consumption will have become almost covert, and almost always isolated, and
almost always cerebral and interiorised, the conspicuous, exteriorised, greedy
energy of the theatre will be valued more than ever. This is art that says to
the consumer, You matter. You matter because we don t exist unless we are
consumed . What is more today we consume things because we fear that we don t
matter, but tomorrow we will consume ideas because to do so will be the only
thing that does matter.That then is the case for theatre as an essential utility in
a post-capitalist society, but in order to be a commodity (by which I mean a
post-money cultural commodity) it is going to have to work a little harder, and
focus on making good ideas . Theatre could be described as an idea explaining
machine and this is a society, don t forget, where there will be a constant
drive for better and more complicated ideas. There needs to be incredibly
effective ways of getting complicated information to the point where it is
consumable and digestible. Theatre can help do that. In an age of machines,
theatre will provide an organic relatability: Real people saying real words,
acting out real actions. Even if those actions are in turn simply a simulacrum
of another event, at least they are tangible. They are physically tangible and
thus they become, to an organic human soul, more intellectually tangible. Plus,
theatre utilises all the main ways in which humans learn. It is visual, aural,
and kinaesthetic. It is both real and metaphorical. It is both emotionally
removed and deeply empathic. It has something to say to everyone, and in a
post-capitalist world it will have everything to say.But why wait until the revolution comes? Why wait for
capitalism to be overthrown to start making post-capitalism-proof theatre? As
luck would have it post-capitalist theatre is not only post-capitalism-proof,
it is also capitalism-proof. It is the perfect antidote to both the Free Market
loving commercial theatre and the precarious and fearful subsidised theatre.
It s not very nuanced but I would say that broadly the type of work that the
commercial theatre makes is necessarily reactionary, financially exclusive and
wealth creating, and that subsidised theatre has the luxury of being
intellectually elitist and culturally proselytising. Put like that neither
sound very appealing, and that is because in the context of post-capitalist
theatre, they re not. They both play a part in propping up a capitalist system
that is tired and under duress.Commercial theatre doesn t create lavish spectacles because
it can, it creates them because it needs to. Its modus operandi is to make
profit, and in order to do that it must seem to be producing a highly
cost-effective outlay for its consumers. They want more bang for their buck,
and the more bang they get the more buck they re willing to give, and the more
buck they re willing to give the more bang they re wanting to get, and so the
whole ludicrous matrix spirals inexorably upwards.But is subsidised theatre (by which I mean also leftist
theatre) really any better in this context? The major political and cultural
figures of the left have been oppositional figures and thus they are nothing
more than the punctuation marks in a narrative that has otherwise been
decidedly, dynamically, intoxicatingly neo-liberal. Progressive, subsidised
theatre is no exception. It might be better theatre, and more worthwhile
theatre than its commercial counterpart, but, in the main, determination for
its existence still resides with its neo-liberal paymasters. This is theatre at
the mercy of the commissars. And so, because of this, subsidised theatre, like
many leftist projects, is essentially a defensive beast- its lifeforce sapped
by the burden of opposition and its financial/cultural need to justify itself.To discuss post-capitalist theatre in capitalist terms, you
end up with something that finally sounds like a successful formula for a
viable alternative. This, after all, is work that seeks to maximise its
creative and conceptual capital, without giving a flying fig about its
potential to accrue commercial monetary capital. It doesn t worry about
competing in a bang for buck death spiral and so it doesn t want or need
things to make it worthwhile. This is theatre with no outlay, and no overheads.
Thus not only is it not commercial, it has no necessity for subsidy and doesn t
long for the Arts Council s financially constituted seal of approval.Now, this work almost certainly already exists today in
practice, only without subscribing to the underlying theory. Because it
operates using low-overheads, the work that we want to look at is currently
identified, in the parlance of the capitalist system, as being fringe
theatre . Mainstream theatre, because it thrives in the capitalist system, is
structurally obstructed from consideration. Instead it is necessary to look at
the fringe scene, the emerging scene and the student scene, where low-overhead
work, and work with a high yield of experimental and dynamic ideas, can be
found in abundance. Even having taken a straw poll of my own recent university
experience, an embarrassment of riches comes to mind. In the last few years
alone Warwick University has churned out Fat Git, FellSwoop, Walrus, Barrel
Organ, and, the now positively venerable, Curious Directive.The work that these companies make is often brilliant. In
criticising it here I mean only to criticise it within the terms of the thought
experiment in play. I say this because, in spite its brilliance, this work is
often disbarred, as of yet, from being identified as post-capitalist theatre.
This is for two reasons: Firstly, this is theatre that has often found itself,
by virtue of its success, sucked into the production and consumption matrix. I
think here of Curious Directive s last show Pioneer. Although enjoyable and
full of thoughtful notions, the show was, in post-capitalist terms, overladen
with stuff.Secondly, this is progressive work that remains
oppositional. Barrel Organ s first show Nothing had this issue. It was
pleasingly post-capitalist in that it was stripped to the bone in terms of what
it required, and in the workings of the company we find a methodology that
could easily be identified as one of Mason s new sharing economies :[Sharing economies] exist because they trade, however haltingly and
inefficiently, in the currency of post capitalism: free time, networked
activity and free stuff. Paul MasonMoreover Nothing s ideas-value was through the roof in terms
of its form, and in the changing and dynamic nature of the truly conditional
performances generated. My issue instead is with its content. Nothing was quite
rightly lauded by critics. In part this was for all the elements identified
above, but it was also celebrated for its oppositional stance and because it
represented a desire amongst up and coming theatre-makers to use theatre as a
means of progressive social change. The unfortunate paradox is that, by being
oppositional, the show automatically placed itself within the twentieth-century
leftist matrix, and thus within an economic model and cultural landscape that
doesn t value theatre (in the way a post-capitalist culture would), and that
has a vested interest in the left remaining oppositional.My argument is that, rather than opposing an economic model
they have lost the battle for and using a medium that has currently limited
sway, the theatrical left should seize the initiative and seek to control the
discourse of the incoming system. Assuming that the post-capitalist world will
be an inherently leftist one, progressive theatre will have no need to be
oppositional. It will be for things, rather than against them. The argument
here is polemical, but not defeatist, rather it advocates for a kind of
asymmetric warfare where leftist theatre diverts from regurgitating the
obvious evils of late-capitalism, and instead starts making joyful, communal
work that seeks to explore the extraordinary exigencies of the Information
technology revolution. It must also steal a march on a post-capitalist right
that does not yet exist, and strive to help make the narrative of the coming
age a fundamentally progressive one. It does this, as I say, by being positive,
dynamic, and focused on the sort of inspiring ideas and concepts that make the
blood fizz. It should be theatre for theatre s sake, and theatre that revels in
what the medium can do. It should focus on education and outreach, and on
tackling big philosophical ideas. It should have a positive attitude and it
should exist for its own ends. This is theatre as a broad church that welcomes
all comers, and helps to make sense of the mind-landscape that is already
becoming predominant in the way humans experience their world. No Profit. No
Burden. No veneer of necessity.
This resource was uploaded by: Marek