A play-as-thesis is by nature reductive, an attempt to bring order to the unruliness of existence. But bringing order is the business of the state, not the artist.It's an attractive argument, but I want to ask a series of 'what if's. What if some order can be detected beneath the chaos of life, connections sighted or felt? A road has to be built before the randomness of traffic becomes an experience. What if there's something in trying to dramatise the hypothesis of the connection between things?
Perhaps this goes back to the experiential versus speculative debate that Sarah Kane described to Alex Sierz, author of in In-Yer-Face Theatre:
Sarah Kane distinguished between two kinds of theatre, which you could illustrate through body language. There is speculative theatre, where you can lean back, and think, Mmm, that's an interesting idea, let's talk about that later. Then there is the kind of theatre where you are crouched forward, following, and almost unable to breath, something that's happening in front of you. She called it experiential...The above quotation comes from an interview with Aleks Sierz, in which she analyzes the political implications of an emphasis on the experiential, where the potential exists for nihilistic individualism to be displayed, which ultimately is as inauthentic as the kind of thesis theatre that it seeks to distance itself from.
So I guess I have a few more questions - what if a writer does, in his or her vision, divine permanent truths about humanity? Must they turn to the techniques of the thesis play or must they leave them at the theatre's door and head instead for institutional politics, or dramatise their confusions and misunderstandings instead?
Good on Anthony Neilson for putting his case; I hope it provokes some thorough debate.
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