Thursday, February 15, 2001

Three Things

1. Tonight we have our first rehearsal for Camille, which'll go up in April. Just for the hell of it, I went back and re-read Ludlam's manifesto for the Ridiculous Theatre. I was particularly struck by item number seven:

The theatre is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of the imagination, not the other way around. The theatre is an event not an object. Theatre workers need not blush and conceal their desperate struggle to pay the landlords their rents. Theatre without the stink of art.

I'm not sure I completely agree. I mean, yeah, I can appreciate fine art, art for art's sake. But I can also appreciate art that's designed solely to wow the audience, to entertain, to make moolah, moolah, moolah. And I have a particularly low tolerance for artists who deny/are ignorant of the commercial possibilities inherent to their own art.

Bottom line: professional artists are just that--professionals, no less than doctors, lawyers, or Tiger Woods. There are good doctors and bad doctors; there are good artists and bad artists. Art is worth paying for, and it's up to the artist to figure out how to get people to cough up dough. If that means futzing with their work--which is not the same as self-censorship, it just means being more precise--so be it.

Paint, dance, sing, whatever. But for goddess' sake, don't suffer because of it.

2. The house that Jonno and I bought nearly a year ago is entering the final stages of renovation. Or rather, the final stages of phase 1 of the renovations. Phases 2, 3, 4, and 5 to follow....

3. I said yesterday that I wasn't really concerned about the origins of Valentine's Day, but Sister Taffy's essay is so compelling...well, see for yourself. (Thanks for the link, George!)

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