Why Omar Willey’s “Why Theater Matters” Matters

Let’s get the over-arching irony out of the way first thing: my friendship with Omar Willey blossomed on line, through Face Book and his responses to my blogging here at Just Wrought; and had that been the extent of our relationship, then certainly a cynical dismissal of my recommending his recent essay “Why Theater Matters” would be eminently fair.  After all, he argues herein for a theatre triumphant over the distance and disaffection with which our “on-line lives” infect us.  Fortunately, our friendship has also blossomed in “real life” and real-life’s cooler cousin, theatre.  Omar comes to my shows.  Omar comes to everyone’s shows.  If you are a Seattle theatre artist and you don’t know Omar, I can assure you that your ignorance is not reciprocated.  Omar knows you.   Omar knows your work.  What’s more, Omar Willey and his colleague José Amador (whom I also have the honor of calling friend) have begun to review your work, over at the Seattlest. 

In his essay, posted a few days ago, Omar offers an implicit explanation for his coming out of retirement (he  reviewed theatre for KCMU-FM back in the 1990’s) and again lowering his lance at our windmills.

Simulacra. Pseudonymity. The theater … erases them. Theater restores the primacy of the human body. It restores presence. It restores the potential, the fear and the promise of the present, and gives an immediate response in the present tense.

... Theater remains a communal experience of people, persons seeing themselves with, through and in other persons in a unique, irreproducible moment. A self, communing with other selves. Being here. Now. And never to be the same person, the same place, the same way again....  Bridging the gap between friends and strangers, the sense of a marvelous, wondrous love and beauty that restores joy to life, shared together. How easily we forget it when we do not seek it.

This reminds me so much of a favorite quote of mine from Carl Jung that I would not be at all surprised if Omar knows it intimately.  But just in case you don’t, here ‘tis:

...You go to the theatre: glance meets glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship....

Mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation--often of an ecstatic nature--possible. The regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a heightened sense of life... .The inevitable psychosocial regression within the group is partially counteracted by ritual, that is to say through a cult ceremony which makes the solemn performance of sacred events the centre of group activity and prevents the crowd from relapsing into unconscious instinctuality... The ritual makes it possible for him to have a comparatively individual experience even within the group and so remain more or less conscious.

—Concerning Rebirth, circa, 1940

 As I understand it, Omar and José threw their hats in the Seattlest ring because they saw a dearth of earnest, careful theatre criticism, not just here in Seattle but across the country.  Of course others have noticed this drought as well, myself included.  My problem has been caring.  After over two decades of professional work as a playwright and actor, watching the importance of reviews plummet from marginal to minimal to finally negligible, I openly admit I have trouble seeing how criticism could help Seattle become a World Class theatre town.  In a recent semi-private exchange on Face Book, Omar called my hand: "... I do wonder, Paul, if you don't think criticism is key to helping us get somewhere, then what do you think will? Or do we simply understand criticism differently? Plays written about other plays or inspired by thematic ideas from other plays--these, too, are criticism, no?"

Let me respond now, weeks later:

Omar, in the context of your comprehensively inclusive understanding of what criticism can be, and what it can do, yes, indeed, I believe it can help us get somewhere.  Of course, such an approach—steeped in the art form’s history but somewhat foreign to Seattle’s cultural ethos— will require leadership.  It appears you and José are stepping forward to be those happy few to rally the critical flank of Seattle’s charge forward toward World Class.  So even though I have already said it privately, please allow me to state again publically here, loudly and proudly...

Omar, José?

Welcome to the fray.

Comments

[Jose' Amador]

Kind words praising a critic? HERESY HERESY! WITCH! WARLOCK!

[Paul Mullin]

Hey, Jose', don't rub it in. I'm embarrassed enough about it as it is.

[Randy Haines]

Paul,

I've been trying to get in touch with you by e-mail, in the event that you have not gotten them please check you junk mail and get in touch with me.

Thank you,

Randy