commas and ampersands

It's the responsibility of any artist to champion the creation of art that he or she disagrees with, doesn't understand, or is offended by.

This is a theory that I've been mulling over for a while--about a year now, I guess--and I think that I can fairly confidently boil it down to that statement.

( Let's explore that statement, complete with footnotes. )

Colin and I don't fight all that much. At all, really. We argue occasionally and disagree about some things, but neither of us are fighters. We don't name-call, throw accusations, or have big tempers, and we're really good at talking it out, being respectful, and not walking away from an argument before it's resolved.

But even when it comes to arguing and disagreeing, it's pretty rare that it's about the big, important things. We're pretty much on the same page when it comes to major life decisions, finances, ideas about marriage and family, faith, and all those big-picture things, but every once in a while, we get into the most ridiculous arguments about the most random things. We're both stubborn enough that we'll stick to a position and not budge, but it's definitely fun to make the other one try. And really, those kinds of "arguments" are the best kind. A lot of the time, they actually end up being kind of fun, and if nothing else, it's good practice in debating and being persuasive.

Last month, we were driving down to High River for Thanksgiving dinner, and Anne of Green Gables came up in conversation as we drove by a "lake of shining waters." Colin made a comment about not having seen the movies or read the books in quite a while; I commented that I hadn't read the books in a while, but while I think that Megan Follows is the one and only Anne, I'm not a big fan of the movies, particularly The Continuing Story. That movie bothers me on so many levels, mainly because the books are set 30 years earlier, and the film plays with the timeline in a way that's unacceptable to me. World War 1 was the war that affected Anne's children. Rilla of Ingleside is the book set during that time period, and the main character is Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter. The orphaned baby was taken in by Rilla, and it was Anne's sons who fought, not Gilbert.

Anyway, I made all these points about the books, and the thesis of my argument was the fact that it's impossible for a viewer of a movie (based on a book) to fully appreciate the movie without having read the book.

And then the argument started. :)

For the next hour, Colin stood by his point that the viewer can have a complete, full entertainment experience by only watching the movie. I stood by my statement that a reader can have a full experience of the author's original intent by reading the book but not watching the movie, but not vice versa.

The funny thing is, I don't think we entirely disagreed with each other. I think that a movie-watcher can have a complete entertainment experience with the movie alone; I just don't think that it's possible to experience the fullest world of the story the way the author intended. Watching the Anne movies may be an entertainment experience in and of itself, but it's not the story experience that L.M. Montgomery intended. In this case, it's not even the same story, but even if it was, I still say that the story and experience is incomplete.

I used the example of the Harry Potter books, too. Aaron refuses to read the books, and I stand by my claim that he's robbing himself of J.K. Rowling's full story. The movies are an adaptation of a written story, and without reading the story, the visual story is incomplete. She may have put her stamp of approval on the screenplays, but by the very nature of an adaptation, there are things that had to be cut and sacrificed; therefore, the representation of the world she created is not complete, no matter how accurate the pieces may be.

Colin held to the position that it's possible to fully enjoy a movie based on the book without having read the book. He stood by the fact that he separates the book and the movie; for instance, in the case of Anne of Green Gables, he's fully aware that the movie is not the story of the book, but he looks at them as two separate pieces of entertainment that are only partially related to each other.

Because film and literature are two distinctly different art forms, they can't be judged the same way. A story told on film and the same story told on paper are two different artistic experiences--the story on film fleshes out the visual narrative in a way that the story on paper is unable to. In that way, he argued, it could even be said that the film completes the story of the book in a way that makes the reading of the book an incomplete rendering of the artist's original vision.

He also used the Harry Potter example to differentiate between casual and obsessed fans. He claims that someone could be an obsessed fan of the movies without ever having read the books; I claim that someone who is truly a fan of the Harry Potter world would never claim to be so without having read the books. A person (like Aaron) can be a fan of the movies, independent of the books, but I would argue that he can't claim to be a fan of HarryPotterTheGlobalPhenomenon while steadfastly refusing to partake in the original manifestation of the characters and plotlines.

Colin said that's discriminatory towards people who don't enjoy reading; I say so be it. Being a "fan" in the most obsessed sense of the word (and I'm not talking about being a casual fan/appreciator of the work) includes being familiar with all its facets. I enjoyed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but I'm fully aware that my knowledge of the source material is spotty at best, and because of that, I couldn't consider myself a "true" fan, no matter how much I enjoyed the movies.


Now, a few caveats: I'm not saying that books are necessarily a superior form of entertainment to movies. Movies, both originals and adaptations, are an art form in and of themselves. I would never say that film is a lesser art form than literature or theatre. Each one is a different storytelling medium, and I'm not making a judgment of value on their relative worth.

I'm also not saying that an adaptation can't be entertaining without having read the book. There are many, many movies that I've watched without having read the books, and I can appreciate the filmmaking and acting and story, but I'm also fully aware that I'm not getting the full experience. I can enjoy it for what it is, but I know that "what it is" is less than 100% of the author's intention.



And just to top it off? My proudest moment in that whole argument was the fact that Colin got so frustrated that he actually growled at me. Ha! In the middle of a sentence, he actually growled in his throat, and it cracked me up so much that I had to pause the discussion and laugh really hard before I could resume.


So, friends, what do you think? What is the relationship between a book and its film adaptation? Is it possible to enjoy one without a working knowledge of the other?

So... thesis. Let's discuss, shall we?

Because this is CalArts and we tend not to do things the "normal" way, there's no prescribed format for my thesis. I'm not writing a traditional research-based thesis with a dissertation defense and all that stuff... I get to choose my project's format and do what works for me.

Some disciplines have more prescribed theses: MFA3 directors, for instance, do a thesis project, which is one of the shows in the season. MFA3 playwrights also have a show fully produced in the season. MFA3 and BFA4 actors do their grad showcase in New York and L.A. as a showcase for agents and managers. Producers, though, get to do whatever we want. Kind of.

I could direct a show, if I wanted. I could put together a project and try submitting grant proposals to get money for it to happen. I could write a traditional thesis. I could develop a website to draw together a community of a certain subset of the theatre world.

In terms of a project-based thesis, the main thing that I'd want to do would be to try to run a pilot program of my theatre company. I'd want to try and get the money and the people, put together a one-year project, and then evaluate it at the end. That would, ideally, be a terrific thesis project for me. Unfortunately, it's also somewhat time- and cost-prohibitive. Grant applications generally have to be happening at least 18 months in advance, and since my estimated project budget (including salaries, since I couldn't ask people to volunteer that much time) is close to $40,000, I can't really go forward with it in this format without having time to pursue some sources of financing.

So, I started to explore some other options. I didn't see a lot of value in directing a show for the Coffeehouse (our student-driven performance space). I know that I can direct, I've had training as a director, and it's not my major, so while it would be fun and I could present a show that deals with subject matter that interests me, it doesn't have a lot of long-term benefit. Same with writing a play, which was another option presented to me. It would be a personal challenge, for sure, but I don't see it benefiting my career in the long run.

Instead, I started examining the various aspects of what I want my theatre company to be. While I'm interested in youth-oriented, mentorship-driven theatre, I feel like there's a lot of information out there about that kind of stuff already. There has been a lot written about educational theatre, and the idea of using mentorship as a teaching tool is nothing new. I'm interested in that, but I feel like delving into it would be really reinventing the wheel, to some extent.

That leaves faith-based theatre as the last, most interesting, least examined piece of the puzzle. People are doing it, and there are organizations (like CITA -- Christians In Theatre Arts) that are based around it, but I don't know as much about it. I want to know who the key players are. What companies are delving into faith-based work? What non-faith-based companies are exploring works that deal with faith, and why? What are other faiths besides Christianity doing in the field of theatre? What's out there educationally? Who is recognizing and supporting this work? How does faith-based theatre differ from theatre within the church? What does the next generation of faith-based theatre artists look like?

That's a lot of questions, and it's a very broad field, but I'm planning to spend the next year interviewing as many people as possible to find out what's out there. I envision the interview process being very much a game of six degrees of separation, asking people who they work with and who their influences are, and going on to those people, and so on. Even before that, putting together a preliminary list by doing online research, linking directors, actors, and designers through the different companies that they're working with.

I think it's going to primarily focus on Christian faith-based theatre, although I want to get a sense of what's going on in other faith communities. I can see that being a slightly more peripheral part of my research, though. I want to know how the communities are interacting with each other and influencing each other, but I can't focus on everything in great depth, so I'm going to focus on Christian-based organizations and artists, for the most part.

When it comes to presenting the work, I want to write it as a book. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'll pursue publication, but I want the format and style to be a reader-friendly, informative, challenging manuscript that could be published as a book on the arts, rather than an academic thesis. Part of what I want to do is to compile as comprehensive a list as possible of the faith-based theatre companies and artists that are operating in Canada and the U.S. today, and the other part will be... well, we'll see. It'll be some sort of exploration of faith-based theatre, its origins, its relationship with both the church and the artistic community, and... who knows what else. Or whether all of those things will be in there. Like I said, I know that's very broad and it doesn't really have a distinct "thesis" in the traditional sense, but I want to go with the interviews first, and then extrapolate the discussion and conclusions from there.

In terms of a timeline, I'm looking at immersing myself in this for the next year. I'm still planning to finish up at CalArts a semester early, which means that I'll be finishing up in December 2009. Right now, I'm doing some of the preliminary research and trying to get myself set up in some of the more practical ways, so that I can start digging in as of January. Hopefully I can get as many of the interviews and conversations as possible within 8 months, and then spend the fall semester next year writing. Maybe I'll use NaNo 2009 as my big push to get it all finished. :)

So that's where I'm going with it. It'll define itself more clearly as time goes on, I'm sure, but it's gotta start somewhere, right?

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a budget meeting to go to.

Well, it's November 1, and I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I don't know that I can commit to it, although I think that next year, I may end up using the momentum of NaNo to get my thesis finished. I am, however, going to unofficially do NaBloPoMo. I'm not going to sign up on the website or anything, but I'm hoping to write an entry every day. An entry of some substance, that is. Something more than a daily update or a meme. I have some links that I've been meaning to share, and I might take this month to go through my blogroll and link to some of the really good blogs that I follow, and a few other things. At the end of the month, I'll see how many words I've blogged. I'm sure it won't be 50,000, but it'll be something relatively substantial, I'm sure.

I'm kind of in love with Improv Everywhere. It's a New York-based performance art group that takes large-scale pranks out into the public, and the whole "improv" concept is rooted in the way the audience responds to the performers' actions. It's kind of like a cross between Punk'd, candid camera, and performance art, and the result is really cool.

The projects themselves are fairly simple concepts, but the execution is somewhat elaborate. They often involve hundreds of people (generally volunteers who follow Improv Everywhere's website) and very detailed timing; some involve fewer people with more rehearsal time; but all of them leave the possibility open for interaction with the public, which is where it becomes performance art, in a way. I'm not a huge performance art fan--I'd rather see theatre, for the most part--but Improv Everywhere does it in a way that's less pretentious and esoteric than certain other forms of performance art. It's like meta-performance art. It knows what it is, and it does it to create moments of community, both for the "agents" who meet while doing the events and for the public who are caught in the middle of the happenings.

For instance, there's the piece where over 200 people froze in Grand Central Station at exactly the same time for the same amount of time (which was one of the first Improv Everywhere pieces I saw, and is still a definite favorite). There was the human mirror, where sets of identical twins boarded the subway, sat across from each other, and mirrored each other's actions. There was the slow-mo Home Depot, where several hundred shoppers all moved through the store in slow motion at the same time. There was the shirtless Abercrombie and Fitch project, the food court musical (which is one of my favorites), and some of them were even arrested during No Pants 2k6 (and, really, no pants 2000 through 2008). And, just because they can, they brought NBC and the Goodyear Blimp to a Little League game.

They've been around since 2001, so I know I'm a little late to the game, just discovering them in the past year or so, but it's art worth sharing.