“Look at all these people. They’re all looking at me. And laughing. So you’re all in on it…”
So says the Miser, in the play “L’Avare,” as he looks out at the audience, accusing them of collusion in the theft of his money. The French playwright Molière, writing in 1668, anticipates experimental theater by 300 years. His title character breaks out of the play, not only fingering the audience in the plot against him, but also implying that they’re actors onstage. A real coup de théâtre. The Miser scolds the audience for laughing at him. Which makes audiences laugh. At him.
Audiences at the Inverness production of “The Miser” this past summer seemed happy to play their part. After two and a half years of lockdown and social distancing, it was time for us to gather, sit outside, laugh and participate once more in a live show. It took place outside, in St. Columba’s rustic amphitheater, a religious setting but appropriate, perhaps, given the derivation of the word “religion,” from the Latin religare, to bind together again.
People seemed grateful, even relieved, to bind. The show had little glitz, no marquee names and, other than audiences facing actors onstage, no special effects. A Kickstarter campaign, local donations and relatively modest box office receipts (children were free) funded the event’s homespun feeling. It was literally homespun in the case of the costumes, which were designed and furiously sewn right up until opening—giving new meaning to “cutting-edge”—by the show’s producer, Sharron Drake, and her crew, using material from a pile left outside the Western.
We often hear the argument: “Every dollar spent on the arts brings in X dollars to the local economy.” True, every economy needs its boiler stoked. But that’s not the only reason for making art, and it’s not usually the goal of live theater. Regardless of their possible economic benefits, the arts fulfill a need in a healthy society. The German social critic Ernst Fischer even wrote a book about it: “The Necessity of Art.” “The arts,” according to a recent Arts Council England report, are “a tonic…with an important role to play in the mental health of the nation… Engaging in creativity and culture is linked to positive wellbeing, feeling connected and motivation in people across a wide range of ages…”
So there we were, putting on this rough theater for connection, not glory. No critics came. People I’ve bumped into in downtown Point Reyes refer to it simply as “the play.” (As in: “We loved ‘the play’” or “You were good in ‘the play.’”) As a communal celebration of the place and the people, it offered itself as a tonic indeed. Rather than “community theater,” we prefer to call it “community-specific theater.” Some compare it to the slow-food movement: hand-crafted and locally sourced and produced.
Irish playwright Brain Friel, sometimes called the Irish Chekov, talks about localism, distinguishing between what he calls “provincial theatre,” which seeks the kudos of the metropolis (New York, for Americans), and “parochial theatre,” which resists a national profile and instead seeks to serve a particular, often distant location. In our case, that’s unincorporated West Marin. Friel’s company, Field Day Theatre, based in Derry in the west of Ireland, encourages homegrown playwrights and puts on shows that reflect stories from communities far from the Belfast metropolis. Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater, Dell’Arte’s Mad River Festival in Arcata and Welfare State’s homemade lantern processions and community plays in Ulverston, England, celebrate and rely on participation by locals. Scottish theater company 7:84 ended shows with the audience dancing to a live céilí band, like a Cajun fais-do-do, where the kids are put to bed under the benches lining the hall while the adults dance on into the night.
Theater needs audiences to survive. Funding small community-specific theater companies, which put together shows that adults and children can see and even participate in, might be a better way to build future audiences than bequests to grandiose performing arts palaces. Encouraging smaller theaters can build social capital the way a communal meal does, or those home sing-along music sessions that happened before radio and television, or the colliery brass bands that once enlivened communities in the mining villages and towns of England and Wales.
There is no company as such for “the play.” Our show was sanctioned by the Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors under the members’ project code to allow professional members on board without inflexible contracts, strictures or limitations on their ability to ply their craft. It is in the union’s interest to foster these building efforts to expand audiences and give members the opportunity to share their expertise with amateurs, future playgoers and those hungry for the tonic of theater. The company is assembled ad hoc from locally based professionals and amateurs. Hopefully “the play” will happen again next summer at St. Columba’s. As long as you’re there, we will be.
The next iteration will be this December’s repeat of the pre-Covid costumed reading of a dramatized “A Christmas Carol,” a fundraiser for KWMR, at Toby’s Feed Barn. There will be singing, seasonal food and drink, and sighs of relief. Come for a little more tonic and laughter. To reconnect and support live entertainment.
Inverness Park actor Geoff Hoyle will appear in “The Christmas Carol,” which will show at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 10 and Sunday, Dec. 11 at Toby’s. Doors open at 4 p.m.