(Untitled)

[topaz]

"Because it is an art form, formal theater also gives order. To make art is to select, to plan, to control, to determine an outcome."
- the Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater

discuss.

Comments

[pazu13]

But what does that mean? If I decide to make a roast beef sandwhich, and I know that I am going to throw on a little swiss and two leaves of lettuce, and I control that outcome and I produce that sandwhich, am I an artist? What kind of outcome must I produce in order to create art?

[topaz]

i don't think it was intended to work backwards as well - to make art is to do xyz; not to do xyz is to make art. but is art necessarily planned and controlled that tightly? if i make something really cool or pretty but it wasn't what i intended, is it less art than if it came out just like i meant it to?

[idoru]

Just because you have control doesn't mean variables won't pan out in unexpected [but possibly good] ways.

[topaz]

why not? isn't that what control is, making the variables do what you want them to do?

[kumokasumi]

This makes a lot of sense in the context of, say, Shakespeare, where there are lots of questions of interpretation flying around and different contexts for different lines can give entirely different spins on the play.

... which is an answer for one form of the question. Are they talking about the entire dramatic process, or the production of a "textual" work of drama?

[angeldesignpro]

I have that book open infront of me right now :P

:D

[topaz]

you're kidding me, that's awesome :D

[angeldesignpro]

Yup, it's for Theater 242 - history of world theater from 1800-present. We've read Hernani, A Doll's House, and Miss Julie so far.

Same book is used for the two other theater courses, so it and I are going to become real good friends it would seem XD

[topaz]

we're going to read A Doll's House too (i'm taking Theatre History: Dramatic Theory and Criticism)

[xhuxus]

the narrower any definition of art is, the less accurate it seems to be. i've been refining working "definitions" of art for a while now, and here's what i've got so far:

art is anything that wishes to be recognized, consciously or unconsciously, as art.

(ps, the belief of a single person is the most powerful thing in the world, because the simple act of truly believing something changes the entire universe, from the individual perspective of the believer)

[qiaohua]

an inanimate object or a performance itself cannot wish anything at all. do you mean perhaps

art is anything that its creator wished to be ...etc...

?

or merely that *someone* wants to recognize it as art?

[xhuxus]

i half-disagree with your first statement. i mean "wish" in a metaphorical sense, the same way one definition of post-modern art is "art that is aware of itself as art." a non-living object or event is not "aware" in the traditional sense, but it may give the underlying impression that it is. also, when people say "that [work of art] really speaks to me." they don't mean that the art is actually talking to them (well, most of the time), it's communicating something metaphorically (often, though not always, that "something" is the mesaage of the artist, but one can recieve that message or others without knowing anything about the artist, or even wondering anything about the artist).

i do feel that the key component is merely that someone wants to recognize it as art, but i like to put the ball in the court of the work itself. art, as has been noted above, takes on a "life of its own," and while that doesn't make it a breathing, thinking entity, the concept radiating from something that someone percieves as art is significant.

[pluckyducky]

Crazy. I'm reading that book also. Well I will be as soon as I buy it or temporarly borrow it. Theatre 109 here is Origins to the Rennaissance. It's the first of three history classes. *sigh*

Oh, by the way. I declared. My life has been sold to the theatre department of Drew U. Awesome.

side note, get in touch with me sometime soon. Hope you're enjoying NC :)