This summer I am acting.  I have a small part in a regional theater production.  Rehearsals began yesterday and I want to write a bit about the experience, but I am going to do so in a circumspect manner, to respect the privacy of others in the company.  I will not name names or even mention the theater company at this point (some of you will know it already…).  But I will say that I am playing the part of Professor Willard in the Thornton Wilder classic, Our Town. 

I should stress at the outset that this is a professional production with top flight Broadway actors.  My inclusion in the cast, in a very modest part, is due to a desire on the part of the theater company to maintain close links to the local community.  For me, it is a marvelous opportunity to watch serious actors do their work.

Yesterday the entire cast assembled and we read through the play for the first time together.  What struck me was how much the actors could convey in this first collective reading.  We have had scripts for only a couple of weeks, and some of these folks are coming off Broadway performances in the past month or so, but already a great deal of progress has been made in character development.  The actors can do so much with just a subtle look, a slight inflection, an extended pause.  Sitting around a large table, without much in the way of movement or gesture, consulting their scripts, they can bring the story alive.  They know the motivations and feelings of the characters they are inhabiting and they reveal those in the most detailed and imaginative ways.  It is truly an honor and pleasure to be in their company.

Given the usual interests of this blog, it got me to thinking about what a Confucian or a Taoist might think about the craft of acting.  On first thought, I think neither would be very approving.  Perhaps a Confucian would find some value in theater if the message of the play reinforced the usual virtues of Duty, Ritual and Humanity.  Our Town certainly does that, and I think a Confucian would like this play very much.  But as to the profession of acting more generally, a Confucian would have some qualms.  If acting provided a means for a person to fulfill his or her familial and social duties, then a Confucian would be all for it.  And that might be true for many actors and many roles.  But is that what we usually think the primary purpose of acting is all about?  It is meant to reveal something fundamental about the human condition.  And some of what is thus revealed would no doubt run contrary to Confucian morality.  If a character epitomized selfishness, for example, and if the narrative rewarded such behavior, a Confucian would not be pleased.  Thus, we might say that a Confucian would approve of an actor's work depending upon the role and the story.  A more didactic kind of theater, one that presented the "right" message, could be in keeping with Confucianism – and that is how some contemporary Confucians in China seem to understand certain sorts of acting (Indeed, the linked article is quite good as a general commentary on "Confucian culture" in China today).

A Taoist, too, might not be very impressed with the profession of acting.  It is, in a way, fundamentally artificial.  The actor, for a time, becomes a person that he or she is not.  It is a momentary transformation to affect an audience emotionally and intellectually.  None of these aspects are consistent with Taoism. The whole purpose of theater would seem to be unnecessary: why produce artificial effects when Way can be apprehended directly and openly without artifice?  To an actor a Taoist might ask: why take on a role that is not really what you are, which might take you away from the inevitable unfolding of your own unique character?  The actor might reply that, in fact, it is precisely in the taking on various roles that one can come to see his or her own natural character more clearly, but, I suspect, a Taoist would not be convinced.

And this leads to a historical conjecture: drama was not as central an element of cultural expression in China as it was in other parts of the world because neither Confucianism or Taoism provided a strong philosophical basis for it.  This is a big claim, I realize, and I welcome historians out there to correct this if it is wrong…..

In any event, whatever the Confucian or Taoist positions, I have always been drawn to theater.  it is a powerful artistic medium; it does show us sides or ourselves we might otherwise not encounter.  Its apparent artificiality serves a kind of authenticity – we become more aware of our reality when confronted with theatrical fiction, whether tragedy or comedy.  And from my own Taoist sensibilities, I think it allows us to see and appreciate Way in new ways…

Oh, and by the way (…an interesting phrase from a Taoist perspective: "by the way"…), Taoists would also smile at certain points of Our Town…but more on that, the Confucian and Taoist aspects of the play, in another post….