by ChristopherNY

Created on: May 18, 2007   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

I'm going to assume that 'socially motivated' theater means, for lack of a better term, 'political' theater.

Let's further define 'political theater' as a drama that emphasizes a political issue in an attempt to change peoples mind's about that issue. If changing peoples' minds about a specific issue (e.g., AIDS), is the starting or primarily goal of a creating 'art,' then I think it's reasonable to define that 'art' as 'political.'

Finally, let's define any play that does NOT have this as a starting or primarily goal as simply 'poetic' theater.

I've always been suspicious of 'political theater,' or theater that's 'socially motivated' for the simple reason that while I believed that 'Stories' always have 'Truths,' . . .

. . . 'Truths' do not necessarily have 'Stories.'

This isn't to say that certain 'Truths' cannot find their way from art into social life and politics, but the danger is producing propaganda rather than art if one's starting goal is political.

Not that propaganda is necessarily bad - I have my biases and world viewpoint, and I'll respond to propaganda as positively as the next person, but it's just really preaching to the crowd who already agrees with you and further alienating those who don't.

I don't know how great art finds Truth (or perhaps Truth somehow naturally finds its way into great art), but I think of great 'poetic' plays, like "Fences" by August Wilson, or "Master Harold and the Boys" by Athol Fugard. These plays will touch anyone, everyone - and anyone and everyone, except for the naturally incorrigible, will be affected by these stories. While these stories, I'm sure, have affected and influenced social change, I don't believe that was their starting goal - they rest on some clear, intuitively eternal, "Truth" . . . and all else followed.

I can't "prove" any of this. I'm really arguing for creating art from a starting place of 'innocence' and 'openness' because my intuitions tells me that eternal Truth comes (somehow) out of that to create Art . . .

. . . but Art will not come out of Truth, no matter how "true" it is.

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