Wednesday, August 26, 2009

ARTISTIC TRANSPARENCY



If you've seen us perform Ulysses' Crewmen and were confused or upset in any way, we hope you spoke with us afterward. If you didn't feel comfortable or weren't able to speak with us, we owe you an apology.

We hope to create an intense and powerful experience for our audiences, but we do not intend to shock, upset or bewilder them. We withdraw from the quasi-mystical sublime in art. We know some artists are really into this kind of thing; fetishizing the ineffable, the emotionally deep, the ambiguously ironic, or the 'true expression of their artistic soul'. We're not. We do find such approaches occasionally intriguing, but too often they result in work that is either trite and sentimental or manipulative and self-indulgent. We try instead to be clear, approachable and honest. This doesn't always work. Sometimes the stress, exhaustion and excitement of performing (not to mention limits of time and space) make it hard for us to always be as open and available as we'd like at our performances.

Any work of art more involved than a shallow representation can be thought of as a sort of puzzle. We would like our play's puzzle to be challenging, but workable. We want Ulysses' Crewmen to ask compelling questions, and suggest interesting potential answers, without force feeding or coddling the audience.

If this didn't work for some in the audience we consider it mostly our fault. A good play should contain and communicate its intentions fully within itself. We're offering a poor substitute in cases where such communication has failed. If you have questions, please contact us via email and we will gladly answer your questions and send you a thorough statement of our intentions (which we don't want to publish here, cuz it's kind of long and might spoil the play for those who haven't seen it). Send requests to this email: insurgent.ben@gmail.com.

This statement of intentions does not cancel or abolish any other interpretation of the play. Art's meaning comes from audience reaction as much as from artist's intention. We are only sharing our thoughts to avoid confusion, dismiss mystification, answer questions, make suggestions and add to the crowd of valid but divergent responses we’re hoping the play creates.

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