The Third Wheel

Inaugural blog

Hello. And welcome to the first of frequent postings on this weblog. My name is Scott Reynolds, Artistic Director of the three-year-old theater outfit known as Handcart Ensemble. As you may have gathered from a look at our site, our company is about two things where theater is concerned:

1. Imaginative staging
2. Rich use of the written/spoken word

Beside the obvious factor of live performance, we believe these two elements are what make theater distinct as an art form, and that without them it risks being made irrelevant by film and TV. That’s not to say that watching Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci carp about their jobs in a bedroom is boring, but a small, flat screen will serve this instance of dramatic mundanity almost as well as a stage.

And I emphasize “almost.” Two great actors like Falco and Tucci will surely be more thrilling in live performance than on the tube. But not enough to make theater — and the $35-200 paid for an uncomfortable seat — seem indispensable.

Whatever purpose stringent realism on the stage ever served has been abundantly met by other media. All media is illusion, but the theater is more obviously not reality than movies and television. No matter how many shirts are ironed or onions chopped the other side of a proscenium, the inherently artificial environment of a theater can never adequately duplicate day-to-day reality. Attempts to that end usually have a strained feeling to them and invite comparisons to celluloid and video, which capture coffee grounds and suburban living rooms far more effectively than a raked stage ever could.

The theater’s unique power is to evoke — to call upon and stimulate the imagination rather than supplant it. This requires a lot from the people who do theater. It requires finely crafted language that seduces the ear. It requires acting that serves and amplifies a play’s narrative rather than revels in its own, interior “truth.” It requires design and staging that judiciously select from the immediate world and which hint at a larger reality rather than attempt a Xerox. The leap made in transforming an empty space into another realm and prism for universal truths is itself affirmation of a reality that transcends the everyday. Therein lies the value of of this most communal of art forms.

We in Handcart Ensemble would prefer to promote this ideal for the theater through an uninterrupted stream of our own productions, but we haven’t quite reached that (fiscal) phase. In the meantime, a lot of people are doing great and adventurous work out there, and we can use this weblog to spotlight them. I’ll be blogging as often as I can in response to what I see happening in the New York theater scene. Other company members will weigh in as well from time to time. And we encourage you to share your own thoughts. Be sure to tell me if you don’t want your responses posted. Talk to you soon.

Posted by Scott Reynolds at September 4, 2002 03:08 PM

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