Static vs. Dynamic Art

Recently, I was involved in a discussion in which I was asked whether or not I thought that the consistent production of old works was harmful to the evolution of theatre. In other words, do Shakespeare companies, community theatres and nonprofits focusing on older "audience appeal" plays, etc. take away from the medium by making it doubly hard for new playwrights to break in?

My first impulse was to brush off the question, but then this person (a fellow playwright, I might add!) asked if I didn't think that theatres should more or less quit "reinterpreting" the old warhorses altogether. After all, would we like to see Degas or Michelangelo continually "reinterpreted," and keep paying to see it?

To me, this brings up a very distinct, real dichotomy in the arts. There are two different avenues of art: static and dynamic. Static art is something that just simply "is." It can never be changed, nor can it be "reinterpreted" by different artists (in this sense, I mean recreated. Of course, any piece of art is - and should be! - subject to any number of interpretations by any number of patrons, artists, critics, and the like. We should all see a painting or a symphony differently.) The static arts include sculpting, painting, and the like, as well as film. A film can be remade, but not without becoming a seperate product.

The medium of static arts is one that creates a product readily visible by all in one format. Dynamic arts, on the other hand, require interpretations to be understood. While a play or a symphony can stand on their own in printed format, to truly realize the experience requires musicians and actors, respectively. The same is true of dance, as well as various other dynamic arts.

The focus of our discussion here will be theatre versus film. To build a film library, one can go to a video store and purchase several films. But to build an archive of theatre (not plays, but theatre), one must go to see plays performed on the stage. It is not a concrete thing, theatre. There is no end "product" that people take home. There are emotions, memories, and themes that are constant in the performers of each individual production, but every performance (and every production) will have been completely different.

I think that this is an important topic, because all too often we hear that theatre is dead, or that classical music is dead. For theatre to truly die would require not only a death of all new plays, but death of the thousands of years worth of dramatic repertoire performed today. It doesn't diminish from the art to continue producing old works, because it is the art.

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