Rant coming up...

So, I went to see Shun-Kin by Complicite last week at the Barbican, and it has thrown up all sorts of interesting questions in my head. Not so much from the piece itself (although I found it beautiful, despite the eye-ache of switching my gaze from the action on stage to the subtitle screens on either side – now I know why the cheap seats are in the front row) but the various reactions to it.

I’m going to try and explain without sounding like I’ve prematurely aged into a cranky, elitist old coot, the sort you see on Grumpy Old Men/Woman who seem to have a permanent grudge against everything. BUT…as I was sitting in the audience I couldn’t help but sense a nagging feeling that I have absolutely nothing in common with most of my generation. The story centred on the intense and complex relationship between a violent, spoilt blind woman names Shun-kin and her servant/lover Sasuke, who she regularly abuses. The piece represents Shun-kin as a child through puppetry, and the moment when the puppet is exchanged for a living actress is so subtle and so delicately performed that you don’t realise it is happening until long after (indeed, I had an argument with my companion afterwards about when the actual exchange took place). It’s really something. The vocal talents of the woman who portrays Shun-kin as she ages are amazing. Some bits seemed superfluous; the scenes with the narrator and those with the writer sometimes seemed a bit underdeveloped. But the main story of Shun-kin and Sasuke was always engaging, even though I couldn’t relate to it or feel it’s relevance to my own experience in the same way that I did with A Disappearing Number…although who says that it should have to offer that? Lyn Gardner said she didn’t know what the piece was for…but does it have to be for anything? Does theatre need to have an easily defined social/philosophical/political/whatever purpose? Can’t it exist purely to tell a story, to open up a world previously inaccessible? To create or show something beautiful (or horrific)? Or to do a million other things? To just exist? I;m sure the piece has its own purpose…but does Lyn Gardner need to ‘get it’ for it to be a good piece? Again, I don’t know. I just always get the feeling that if an artist wants to send a really specific message to his/her audience, with no equivocation or chance of confusion, maybe a piece of art is not the best method in which to do it. Just write an essay instead. I don’t think art should preach – just present. Let the audience decide for themselves. That's not to say that I don't think a theatrical piece should have a political, social etc.etc. force behind it, driving it forward and towards a certain existence...in fact I think it would be impossible to create a piece that did not have these concerns lurking somewhere in the background. I just get wary when I hear creative-types egotistically talk about the message they're giving to the 'people'. I get the feeling I'm not explaining myself well.
And now let me contradict myself horribly. There were scenes in the piece depicting the sado-masochistic nature of Shun-kin and Sasuke’s relationship. Let me tell you what I learnt during one such scene:

Child + man + puppet + sex + violence = hilarity (apparently)

Yeah I didn’t think so too, but apparently some people (specifically the teenage school groups I heard giggling endlessly behind me) could only respond to a very difficult scene (child has sex for the first time with her servant, an older man, and beats him savagely throughout) represented with grace and elegance, with childish giggles. It made me very, very sad. They didn’t have to like it – I am firmly of the position that once an artist presents a piece to an audience they effectively give up any control they had over it – it is for the audience to dissect and interpret as they will. Death of the author and all that. But the way they acted was, in my opinion, was so profoundly disrespectful (and dare I say it, racist? Each time the Japanese-ness of the piece was emphasised through the speech of the characters the giggles seemed to come)…I’m at a loss for words. I read a review of the piece in the Telegraph that accused it of being Orientalist, of succumbing to racial stereotypes of the East (despite the fact that the story and essay that the piece were based on were both written by a Japanese man and are both explicitly concerned with the difficult relationship between East and West) but for me, the Orientalism lay in the giggles, and the ‘this comes from a geographical/social/cultural/psychological place I can’t comprehend, so I’ll cut myself off and laugh’ attitude that came through in each one. And now I really sound like an old git.