Death & The Theater

I was listening to a recent episode of the Tim Ferris podcast and the guest, happiness scholar Arthur C. Brooks, was discussing death meditations. And the little lightbulb in my brain turned on with the thought, "We need to talk more about death in theaters."

I know, I know, that seems like an illogical statement because it feels like we're always talking about the death of theater. This whole summer has been filled with articles and op-eds from across the country about how large regional theaters are dying in major cities.

But that's not the kind of death Brooks was talking about, and in reality, it isn't death these articles are complaining about, either: they are trying to stay alive in a “E’s just resting” fashion, to find some kind of life-support for the theaters, to keep them going, receive new money from new audiences or donors, new shows, new gimmicks to draw more or different people in the door. Anything to keep from dying.

We don't talk about death in theaters (or nonprofits) enough. I mean Death: closing up shop. Giving up the ghost. Letting our assets transfer into another registered 501c3 for their use. Putting to rest the mission. Using all our mighty resources of time and energy on a new project to serve our community. "'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!" kind of dead.

Brooks said on the podcast, "The death fear isn’t physical death, and this is a problem. For some people, it’s irrelevance. For some people, it’s being forgotten. For a lot of your listeners, it’s failure, just straight on failure because they’re strivers, they’re achievers. Everybody has a death fear. And what is it? It’s an ego threat. It’s a threat to who you see as yourself." The death meditation, which is found in many pre-Christian religions, usually consists of pondering both the lack of physical existence and, to Brooks’ point, the ramifications of our death to those we are no longer present with and for. Meditating on The End allows the seeker to be more fully alive. 

I'm reminded of this scene in the brilliant movie "You've Got Mail"* when Birdie asks Kathleen what she's decided to do about the shop. Kathleen says "Close. We're going to close." And Birdie, this second mother, this wise old woman, replies, "Closing the store is the brave thing to do.... You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life." 

Theaters (and nonprofits in general) need to do more of this: imagining a different life, practicing the death meditation in order to realize the truth about their work. We do theater to share stories and connect with our fellow humans. We do not do theater to hold onto four walls or ensure payroll is met. 

As an artistorian, someone who studies the history of local arts ecosystems, I see the remnants of groups that have shuffled off the mortal coil. Hell, I've watched things I helped sustain or build run their course and close. Did I grieve when the theaters I worked for closed? Absolutely. Should we grieve when a LORT theater closes? If it meant something to you, definitely.  

Even healthy thriving theaters should practice a death mediation every once in a while. Let the board meditate once a year on what closing the doors for good would feel like. Let the Artistic Director acknowledge no longer needing to read plays or sit through auditions. If there is still work to be done, how do you determine when that's no longer true? Does the board have a will-like document for what happens after all the shows end? Is there a plan to let people express their grief and their love at the closing? 

In the midst of the current round of LORT hand-wringing, Annalisa Dias published this on Rescripted: [excerpt]

What if instead of dramaturgies of collapse, 

we looked to the earth and learned from natural processes of decomposition? 

Decomposition is gruesome 

     Pieces of an organism get pulled apart.

Decomposition is intimate. 

     Decomposers digest the dead.

Decomposition creates new worlds. 

     Nutrients recycle and release back into the ecological system. 

A dramaturgy of decomposition

Is a tender invitation beyond loss

Toward re-membering our interconnected futures.

Terence McFarland, coach and one of my personal mentors, recently posted on Facebook about a conversation he had with a friend, in part saying “If we aren’t cultivating the soil health of the field in our wake, how are our processes not also extractive? Bringing in the indigenous way of thinking about seven generations down the line. How do we nurture a verdant future? And I mean “verdant” in the broadest possible sense. And most importantly, asking students and early career artists to really reconcile with a deeply understood sense of their purpose, or said differently, can they answer the question “to what end?” about their work?” Death is final only when viewed from the perspective of the singular entity. How can we be fully alive–individually or pursuing an artistic mission–if we do not acknowledge the possibilities that arise from our demise? How can we answer “to what end?” without talking about the End? 

Death in a theater–permanent closure–is seen as failure. But there is no such thing as failure. To paraphrase many: we win or we learn. We are relevant for a brief time period in our communities: not even the “hallowed” halls of commercial Broadway are relevant to everyone everywhere. And being forgotten, well, that is what happens more often than not, but that's why we're doing theater in the first place, right? Why we still perform Greek stories and Shakespearean comedies and Oscar Wilde and Lauren Gunderson. Because we want to remember and to feel what it means to be human. 

*Yes, it’s a remake of a movie that’s an adaptation of a play and was also a stage musical and…. I know. Great stories don’t know death.