Five Things Simon Stephens Learned from the Germans

I was tipped off to Simon Stephens' keynote speech, and it is interesting, though mostly concerns how UK theatre relates to the rest of European theatre.

To boil it down, he finds:

1) Theatre is a physical medium.
2) Theatre is multi-authored.
3) Theatre is art.
4) Language is noise.
5) The English are polite and arrogant.

Of all his points, I was most interested in what he says about #4:

"Theatre critics in the UK are obsessed with words. Their interpretation of a play seems to concern itself almost wholly with a consideration of the things that characters say to one another. They ignore physical imagery, they ignore structure, they ignore genre or style of either language or physicality. They write reviews which could as easily be reviews of a written text as a piece of physical performance."

I find it a little interesting that critics would focus on dialogue and ignore structure, since that is basically just as textual.  Certainly I don't think the Chicago critics follow this pattern in the sense they usually comment a bit on the set, costumes and such.  On the other hand, they do pretty much expect all work to follow neo-Aristotlean rules as Tony was discussing the other day.  The irony is that, at least according to Stephens, the playwright would have far more control over staging and sets and costumes in the UK than they would here, where only a handful retain such control over their work. 

For me, the dialogue (and structure and brief stage directions) are the core of the play.  And they are what can reasonably said to be under the playwright's control, whereas the rest is out of her or his hands in the U.S. context (and the playwright can't take credit or blame for what is a significant aspect of the show after all). 

In my case, I am particularly interested in plot and structure and, to a somewhat lesser extent, dialogue.  I am far more in the authors' camp than the actors' or directors' camp.  While I can enjoy particularly nice sets and movement, I can't recall a single time when this salvaged a play that I thought was poorly written or inane (well, maybe Hamletmachine which has almost no script to speak of).  The reverse has happened, though rarely.  I do recall the discussion of The Hypocrites' staging of No Exit and thinking that they had gotten so much about the play wrong that I wouldn't even give it a chance -- I knew I would hate the production.

I do agree with Simon when he says that theatre is multi-authored and also agree with his call to learn from other approaches and not to assume that English theatre is the best in the world and cannot learn from people toiling away far from the promised land (i.e. the West End).