In theatre, the classics, (…) are the ones that feel like they resonate in the pre-social part of us. And yet can manifest themselves in each interpretation in the way that we interact socially in that particular era.
(writer-director Simon Stone in the programme for “Phaedra” by the National theatre)
The
interview with Simon Stone about the production of “Phaedra” I have just seen induced
me to take on one of its central questions:
What is a classic?
Not that I haven’t answered it implicitly already, as every avid reader or theatre-goer or -maker has done – like Simon Stone – with the particular focus they have on life, on what they do and on what is their part in the text-production process. (The exactness and focus of his answer says a lot about the significance of what he is doing.)
As I have mentioned often enough, READER – or, in this case, THE AUDIENCE – is a necessary position in this process, not just where the “end product” is concerned (= the text coming alive on the stage) but also the primary process of conceiving and writing the text for a show. For a start, it informs the SELECTION of pre-existent text to be adapted or used as subject matter. “Phaedra” by Simon Stone is a stellar example because the “classic” bit, in this case, is mostly covered by selecting a title. In fact, the structural similarities with the original story are scanty. It is a completely independent contemporary play – though the idea for the story and the characters certainly sprang from the Greek myth and, without this reference text, the play would never have been written. Nonetheless, Simon Stone might have given it a different title, and most people might not even have picked up the resemblance! On the other hand: had he done so, the National Theatre would not have produced the play, or – if it had been produced in some way – much, much fewer people would have seen it …
So – probably not just but in the first place – a CLASSIC is a means of getting people into the theatre and motivating them to, for example, update their thinking and feeling on immigration and the state of British middle-class family/society (post-Brexit, post-covid!!!) in a theatre way, that is: extremely SOCIALLY. (Reading books or even watching films and TV series, it is possible for me to look on the whole thing intellectually, from a purely aesthetic point of view, or just to enjoy the entertainment or the suspense. Dealing with theatre, I have to be motivated to interact socially, get involved in some way, for the text to work for me at all. I think that this special degree of commitment has always made theatre especially special for me.)
This leads to the question: Why is this so? Why makes the label “classic” people want to see the show? In this respect I am a good example because, not really knowing what I wanted - apart from seeing Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels in a “classic” drama – I didn’t know what to choose for my first evening in London and – with very little motivation behind it – made a “safe” choice selecting another classic. Immediately afterwards I rued it because I had missed the chance of seeing a contemporary play for once. It turned out to be a good choice, though - not least because I inadvertently had chosen a contemporary play! - It is a big question to ask, and I might never answer it – certainly not in this post.
The ”social” bit that I enjoyed so much in “Phaedra” and missed – at least in the beginning – in “Medea” HAS to be contemporary. The classic has to be “updated” to attract an audience at all. But the enjoyment it provides is probably about its being more COMPLEX than that. There has to be the “pre-social” bit as well – which, in “Phaedra”, was brought to the play by CALLING it “Phaedra”, thereby activating the “pre-social” part of our experience by reminding us of the story we already are familiar with.
I observed the workings of the classical “vortex” closely watching “Medea” because I became aware of the moment I began to enjoy the play, not just aesthetically – as being “built” into this beautiful theatre - but “theatrically”. When I REALLY started to like the show. I think it would be quite possible – and much more “contemporary”! - to show Medea as a “clinical” case who kills her children because she cannot deal with the situation and “cracks”. This is how I think we commonly judge these cases of mothers killing their children – because it just CANNOT be rational to do something like this! Instead, I became thrilled when I picked up the kind of argument Jason is making for acting as he does. He has convinced himself that it is the best STRATEGY and has nothing to do with enjoying a younger woman in his bed and having more children but is motivated politically/economically and benefits his first family as well. Nobody will suffer, Medea and her children will be safe. - Medea finds that there is no way of arguing with this. And not just that: this argument takes away her RIGHT to be angry because she is in the right and Jason has WRONGED her. Being in this position gave her a certain kind of CONTROL over the situation. Even though she couldn’t do anything to make Jason change his mind, she still had some control over the INTERPRETATION of what is going on. Only when this is taken away as well – and there I loved Sophie Okonedo for the exactness of her interpretation! – she rises from her dejected state to RETAKE CONTROL in the seemingly most irrational way, but in fact the only way she can still find to cross Jason’s plan, even though it is self-destructive. This is, I think, where it suddenly gets very political (“post-Brexit”!) and very timeless AT THE SAME TIME. Where “the classic” comes into its own.
Two very different ways of dealing with a “classic”, very interesting to compare. Even if I hadn’t had the programme and Simon Stone, the question would probably have sprung up. My intuitive answer to it, though, told me that “What is a classic?” is not yet quite the right question. There is no definition or criteria “set in stone” that we can use to identify a classic text. What the question probably means is why some texts BECAME “classic” in our general estimation whereas others didn’t. There even are classic texts that fall out of the canon (and into oblivion) because they have outlived their usefulness, whereas others are added or re-discovered. My intuition therefore is that texts become “classics” BECAUSE WE NEED THEM.
This
need, in my experience, is connected more to the “pre-social” or “timeless” bit
than to the “social”/political/contemporary” content which has to be there to
make the experience more believable/connectable/enjoyable … whatsoever. But, as
to its specific content, it is also ephemeral and exchangeable. The more recent
this content, the better for the play to become a success on the stage because
we feel spontaneously implicated, but without the pre-social part the
experience remains kind of shallow. At least this is my own impression about
contemporary plays: that I either find
them rather non-comital and boring or manage to discover something “timeless”
in them, thereby getting them into the "timelessness vortex".
The more often I repeat it, the better I like the notion of the “pre-social” instead of the “timeless”, and, I think, looking into these concepts is the interesting issue, not the one about the “classic” that I had answered anyway. In fact, I find myself right in the middle of looking into them …
