From Moment to Moment

And by "tomorrow," I clearly meant "Wednesday."

A couple of months ago I got into a bar argument over Dale Wasserman's theatrical and cinematic adaptations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. (Yes, I actually *do* get into bar arguments like that.) Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of my favorite novels in the world, but its adaptations are, in my view, miserable failures, making the novel into a simple martyr tale without the added, necessary distortion of Chief Bromden's schizophrenic narration, which not only generates incredible imagery and perspective but also calls the values in the narrative into question, skillfully and necessarily so. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an incredibly misogynistic novel, in that it identifies as despotic all forms of female power not consisting solely of sex, believes somehow that despotic power is indeed at the helm of the world for all those who deviate even slightly from the beaten path of masculinity, and shows that it is that masculinity itself that can save us. And yes, it's also my favorite book. I addressed the topic of misogynism with an individual who's planning to direct Wasserman's play come spring, and he asked, "Well, what if at one point that's just your experience of women, though? I know I've had times in my life where that was my experience." Putting aside for a moment the absurdity of that statement, since we were both drunk enough at the time that I didn't notice it, my counter-argument was that theater has to be more than the truth of the moment. He asked me why, and I spent the rest of the night desperate for an answer, then, naturally, haven't seen the guy since. Still the question has remained.

So why does theater, or art in general, need to be more than the truth of the moment?

William Wordsworth described poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquility"; Gwendolyn Brooks defined it as "life distilled." I would expand these definitions to apply to all art of a non-improvisatory nature. My training's not in improv, so I can't speak to the amount of distillation that does or does not occur in performing it, except to say that a good improvisation is rarely either solo or completely extempore: it, too, requires training, requires chemistry among performers—a rapport often developed over time—and knowledge and experience in relating to audiences. That is to say, what you know in the moment is by no means the extent of one's knowledge. Does the extent of your knowledge have to go into your art? No, but the extent of your knowledge of the art you are doing has to go into your art. It's tautological, but it's also true. As creatures of memory, art in particular being something that builds upon and by its nature integrates memory, theater all the more so, our knowledge includes what goes back beyond where we are now, and good art takes some kind of stretch into what will be.

I'm not sure if the distinction between "good art" and "art" is necessary here. As far as I'm concerned, everyone doing art owes it to themselves to make it good art. The problem in many cases is that their definition of good art doesn't fit with mine, something I'm still struggling and will continue struggling to reconcile. Obviously, you can do art that is simply the truth of your moment—Jonathan Larson, for example, did that, and it's different from and not as bad as something that's straight-out dishonest. Unexamined and dishonest are different and distinguishable things. And many people get away with unexamined, because so much of their audience won't examine the art or themselves. I'm talking about being pretty stringent here. But I think it's form/content; it's knowing that the examination really is part of the art, that that's on some level why you're doing it.

Fundamentally, if art *didn't* need to be more than the truth of the moment, why would we rehearse? Or edit, or rewrite, or sketch? What differentiates art from the simple sharing of emotion or relation of a narrative is craft. Craft takes time, takes tranquility and distillation. And if you're going to take time to work on it, the truth(s) you're seeking to interact with through that work must be hardy enough to survive through that time.

Works of art often become dated, and I'm wary of making a statement like "the best works of art are universal" or "the best works of art can outlast the constraints of time." I'm not sure it's true. It is true that I can see a work of art and like it very much and then encounter it later in life, as with Patrick Marber's unfortunate play and even more unfortunate screenplay Closer, and be consumed with contempt not only for the piece as I encounter it now, but for the fact that I ever liked it. Which is not really a productive line of thought; it matters where a piece arrives in your life as an audience member too. If I had read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the first time as an adult feminist, rather than as an eighth-grader desparate for independence, I might not have felt the same, and the truth was I didn't have anywhere near the problems I now have with Rent when I first saw it—though companions in my high school musical theater class did. The best works of art are not universal; however, the best works of art have considered their own universe, have in some ways created and defined their own universe. Creation being the truth of the moment, definition being the contextualization. When a work of art becomes dated, it's because it didn't feel the need to define its universe, assuming we all—its audience—knew it. In its use of the schizophrenic narrator, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I feel, defined its universe, allowed the journey of the piece to be, in part, Chief Bromden's journey out of his own labyrinthine head. Lose that, and you've got a very cliched journey and have to consider, in a different way, why that journey matters in this context.