IS A THEATRE DIRECTOR AN ARTIST OR A CRAFTSPERSON?
Artists make art to
express what they are feeling or thinking and they can do so in many ways
including creating theatre. A Craftsman creates work that is normally
recognised and paid for. The
difference between an artist and a craftsman lies is the motivation behind
their work; an artist has an internal desire to create work but a craftsman has
no such desire, and yet both are still made. Whether or not there is a desire
to express something or not in the theatre, you must first be able to imagine
something before it can exist and therefore I would argue that a director of
theatre must always begin as an artist and become a craftsman, where the artist
creates expression and the craftsman constructs this expression.
An artist creates art because
they cannot express themselves clearer in any other way – words limit their ability to communicate fully: “I regard the theatre as
the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being
can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being – Oscar
Wilde” (Levinson, 2008). An artist can express themselves
outwardly through whatever means they find most effective.
The actor-tribune creates his art not for art’s sake;
it is not even by means of ‘art’ that he desires to work. The actor-tribune
sets himself the task of developing scenic situations not to impress the
spectator with the beauty of their theatricality, but like a surgeon whose task
it is to uncover what lies within. (Braun, 1996)
Art can be pretty much whatever
anybody says is art, and an artist is similarly anybody who says he is one. This
leaves any definition of "artist" and "art" so vague as to
be meaningless. A person may have a brilliant imagination and hundreds of
stories to tell but it does not mean they can tell those stories clearly.
Theatre according to Grotowski cannot exist without an audience and an actor
which also means it cannot exist without communication between two people. When
we engage in any art form we are engaging with a person’s vision, one that has
come from within their mind. And it is not an easy task to articulate the complexity
of our own minds, therefore if an artist is not skilled their art can arguably be said to be void as it cannot be understood by other people. However of course there
are some contemporary arts which have no meaning or imagination behind them
whatsoever but can inflict emotion and understanding in an audience. For
example, Exit Through The Gift Shop is
a documentary film by the graffiti artist Banksy, and is about a man called Thierrey
who is encouraged by Banksy to make his own graffiti art work. Thierrey copies
other
.jpg)
artists and passes them off as his own in a highly successful gallery
opening within a matter of month:
“Most
artists take years to develop their style, Thierry seemed to miss out on all
those bits” (2010). Banksy was introduced to Thierrey as a talented film maker
however he turned out to be a horder of tapes and with no editing or film skill
at all: “Uhmmm... You know... it was at that point that I realized that maybe
Thierry wasn't actually a film maker, and he was maybe just someone with mental
problems who happened to have a camera” (2010). Banksy no longer encourages
everyone to make art themselves. Despite the lack of natural
imagination or
talent behind Thierry’s work, his gallery was still a look into the man’s mind,
deranged or not, and from watching the film I still felt like I understood him
more than I could have done in person. But this does not make him a craftsman
and this is because the result of my understanding came from the film made by Paranoid
Pictures and not from his art works. A director needs skill in order to express
his art otherwise it can end up the meaningless and ridiculous rambling of a
mad man like Thierrey.
A plumber would not dare call
himself a plumber unless he were qualified in the opinion of others to do
plumbing, and had experience and credentials to prove it. The same is true of an automobile mechanic, elementary
school teacher or newspaper reporter. You can't just call yourself a college
professor or medical doctor and expect to be one. You need
to have something to back it up. The term "artist," unlike
"electrician," or "dog trainer," neither conveys
qualification, nor is it specific enough to shed much light on what a person
may actually do. (Goines, 2003)
Meyerhold wanted to get rid of naturalism and as a result he created a
very stylistic theatre – “Theatre should reveal little and leave lots to the audience’s
imagination. A work of art can influence only through the imagination.
Therefore it must constantly stir the imagination (Schopenhauer)”. To stir the
imagination is "the essential condition of aesthetic activity as well as the basic
law of the fine arts” (1996, Braun). Braun says naturalist theatre does not
trust its audiences to imagine or understand and as a result you get an
analysis of dialogue: “It is in the productions of Ibsen that one sees the
method of the naturalistic director revealed most clearly. The production is
broken up into a series of scenes and each separate part of action is analysed
in detail, even the most trifling scenes. Then all the carefully analysed parts
are stuck back together again” (Braun 1996) and by doing so they fail to see
the play as a whole. His biomechanics was a craft, scientific even: “Meyerhold’s
advanced biomechanics as the theatrical equivalent of industrial
time-and-motion study and compared it to the experiments in the scientific
organization of labour” (Braun, 1996) but at the same time he was called
“‘Peoples Artist of the Republic’ to mark the twentieth anniversary of his
debut as a director” (Braun, 1996). He constantly experimented but what he was
doing in that room was creative and that made him an artist:
We need to change not only the forms of our art but
our methods too. An actor working for the new class needs to examine all the
canons of the past. The very craft of the actor must be completely recognized.
(Braun, 1996)
A craftsman is able
to make something imaginary physically real to the best that it can be
imagined. And this is important if any kind of communication is to happen
between an actor and an audience:
One shouldn’t, as is too often done nowadays,
simply shunt craft aside and think expression is all, neither should one overly
celebrate craft without acknowledging that craft alone doesn’t necessarily lead
to something of merit. One can say awful things with very artfully and
wonderful things crudely, but one can’t pretend that either craft or art on its
own will lead to some specific result they each have their place and balance or
imbalance in generating a response. Controlling that response, or knowing how
to put craft to the work of art is what the most skilled artists do. (Greig 2011)
But the craftsman can create
something and not think about it at all – he uses his physical being and not
his mental capacity and therefore what he creates is an imitation of someone
else’s artistry: “So the “craftsman” (I’d prefer “technician”) knows how to
achieve a certain effect, but does not understand how to achieve these effects
in a way which work together for the whole (like Robert’s beloved gestalt).
This does not mean that one shouldn’t worry about these technical skills though”. However Henry Moore argues that craftsmanship is
entirely artistic because of the impulse behind it, no matter how many far removed: “A sculptor is a person
who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by
sounds”. Michelangelo said that art comes from the head first and that the creation made is therefore a result of the head/mind: “A man
paints with his brains and not with his hands – Emile Zola”. But for those Craftsmen who are
also artists, it is different; an artist who creates his own work with skill is
truly an expressionist, however in most theatre directing cases a director must
make use of more than his own skill to tell a story because he cannot possess
all the skills himself: “In this view, there is no separation between the
“artist” and the “craftsman” because they are all craftsman in a sense – some
are simply better than others, some masters, others laymen” (Mubi, Amos 2011). Quentin
Tarantino for example is a film director who likes the way he writes but does
not consider himself a writer. But is it possible to be both a craftsman and
artist at the same time when one is regarded as a dreamer and the other a
pursuer? Perhaps, but I imagine very few are able to exercise their imaginations
with brilliant skill: “There are
two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. The other becomes a craftsman”.
The main difference between a craftsman and an artist is that an artist
requires the impulses of the heart and has a motive intent in connecting with
humans and expressing rather than just a means to make a living: “A man who works with
his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a
craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an
artist –Louis Nizer”. A director must first become an artist in order
to have something to create and then he must become a craftsman so that he can
make his vision a reality. And in order for his vision to really become a
reality he must be skilled and talented in the art of not just imagination but
communication also: “When
a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not
look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a
master craftsman – Jean de la Bruyere”
.JPG) |
| J.M Barrie - Peter Pan |
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
