There is nothing worse in the Art World than Realism and Naturalism. What good is an original painting that — “looks just like the photograph!” — when the duty of the Artist is to transform reality and bend understanding in new, and perhaps, unwanted and unheralded directions? No talent is needed for mimicry or absolute imitation.
The realistic, static, recording of events is the purpose and realm of the newspaper and the photograph.
Every other art form must forsake the impulse to create the familiar and what is already know to the eye and the pattern of the mind.
We fail as dramatists if we only take real life and replace it in the empty space because realism does not require the suspension of disbelief and naturalism encourages the ordinary and the familiar.
Our job is to test the limits of expectation and blaze the way for the
curious and the outrageous.
We must always insist against
replication and demand creative authenticity that adheres to human
limits while still having many godly fathers.
Yet the reality of today is the history of tomorrow. Balzac wrote novels that depicted life with “photo realism” and we are grateful for knowing how France was then. Or am I reading you wrong?
Well… I am arguing against Naturalism and Realism in the theatre… why replicate reality when people their dramatic events to take them away from the drudgery of their ordinary existence? Why paint a bowl of fruit that looks like a photograph of a bowl of fruit? Why stage a “photo realistic” play that is reflective and not reflexive? Where is the imagination? Where is the irrevocable change? Where is the drama?
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