Eduardo Ă lvarez
Production:
FROM THE THEATER TO THE INTERNET for Eduardo Álvarez
All rights reserved. Total or partial reproduction without prior permission. Desing: Beatriz Lassis Rodríguez Translator: Guillermo Gómez C. First edition: april 2014 Printing: Printing Experience/ Víctor Hugo Amaro Printed in Dominican Republic
Content Tews
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Motivation
9
The theater / roots
11
Skakespeare
15
Liturgy and art
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Direction and interpretation
25
The Facebook phenomenon
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TEWS The William Shakespeare Study Theater [TEWS] is a non-lucrative organization that procures to promote theater and acting, with the objective to enrich the local cinematographic production. For it, it would unfold a series of activities of promotion; diffusion and training, based on the essays of the best dramatists of all times. Emphasizing the activities to be programmed in the short term, as conferences, workshops and social gatherings with outstanding authors, directors and Dominican actors. This includes videoconferences and live chats with famous producers of the region.
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Motivation
I
n the Telecommunications Cultural Center (TCC) of Indotel, I found the motives to write the present essay. It is related to the theater and modern and massive media, including
the Internet and what it offers. The tunnel of time shows us the electronic media, from its beginnings until now. It’s experimental, graphical and simple. Therefore, of easy understanding. One transports itself to the past at which the inventiveness had a major artistic component, not a technological one. Science and technology still depend on poetry as an inspiring source, not necessarily as it’s driving source. The space reserved to the lyrics is every day reduced in this and other fields, but it continues to be decisive. From there the invaluable use of this Center, as a driving force of ideas and new projects. History always shows us the future. The commonly used expression “We’re already in the future” finds a
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favorite and patented manifestation in this museum, establishing comparisons between the theater and the previously cited means of expression. We try to interpret, take advantage and enrich the extraordinary contribution of Indotel to culture, art and the development of the telecommunications in the country. The William Shakespeare Study Theater [TEWS in Spanish] is a new entity in which, of accessory way, the theater, cinema and telecommunications lovers will find a small place with all its variables. Meanwhile, let’s check the ideas expressed in the five chapters of this essay, from the theater to the Internet / Shakespeare is, so to speak, our letter of presentation.
Eduardo Ă lvarez President of TEWS
Eduardo Ă lvarez
The theater / roots “Life is a play that does not allow tests. For that reason, sing, laugh, dance, cry and live intensely every moment of your life before the curtain lowers and the play finishes without applause�. Charles Chaplin
T
he theater carried, with the dance, all the load of the audio-visual expression before the appearance of the cinema at the end of century XIX. Through the magic of the
celluloid, the Lumiere brothers interrupted the millenarian predominance of the tables, from old Greece to post medieval Europe. A time preceded with the splendor of the Imperial Rome. It is not exaggerated to admit that the theater played, then, all the rolls and commitments that are pronounced today in the cinema, the radio, the television, the written press, the telecommunications and the Internet with their offers of social networks telephony.
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Charles Chaplin
Eduardo Álvarez
The irruption of the cinematograph, as a communicational resource, takes place three centuries after the written press. It can be said that, simultaneously with the prolonged process that gave origin to the radio. It is not accidental that the course of these years had plagued of inventiveness, emphasizing the initiative of patenting the first telephone, Alexander Graham Bell
June 11, 1876, in the United States. Alexander Graham Bell carried out the inscription of this revolutionary equipment created by Antonio Meucci. It doesn’t take long for the television to appear and domesticate the audio-visual image at the end of the Twenties of the past century. The use of the computers as mass media, from the Sixties, closes the circle. Its massification is possible, decades after, due to the exponential development of the Internet with its virtual search engines, virtual mails, free
Atónio Meucci
audio, video and data services, including the social networks.
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Google, Twitter and Facebook made possible, next to other significant actors, the visionary idea of Marshall McLuhan on the consecrated ¨global village¨. The Canadian scholar came to this conclusion, taken by the amazing advance of the television and the radio in the middle of the XX century. Convinced of the force that mass media exerted and would continue to exert on humanity. This was maximized by the proposal of Bill Gates, to make accessible the networks to each habitant of the planet.
Marshall Mcluhan
Probably the predicament of McLuhan was mistaken in certain details, and one of them was not to notice that the social networks and the search engines would recreate the might and the monopolistic concentrated predominance that was before in the theater for more than two thousand years. Greece saw its beginnings in the western world. The main Greek dramatists were: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in the tragedy, whereas
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Redes sociales
Eduardo Álvarez
in the comedy emphasized Aristophanes and Menandro. This explains the political predominance that during centuries exerted, first Greece, and then Rome on the western world. This work would be unfinished if we ignored the enormous influence of the theater in pre-industrial Europe, mainly in England, headquarters of the Globe, home and major Aristófanes
inspiring source of Shakespeare, universal canon in where tables and Literature found its highest expression, from Aeschylus and Aristophanes. Considering that the theater and the cinema have a strong literary base. For that reason the quality of the script or argument of the work depends on the poetic genius of the dramatist. It’s when put in a scene what makes the difference, of course. But this and other aspects are forced subjects of the two or subsequent chapters.
Esquilo
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Shakespeare
D
iscipline, grace and genius serve the beaux arts. And the theater reunites them with all its possibilities. Music, painting, sculpture, literature and acting had unique
exponents between centuries XV and XVI in London, Madrid and Paris. Shakespeare, Cervantes and Moliere, among others. The English poet – the swan of Avon, as he was occasionally called, interpreted completely his time, breaking parameters, in
Willian Shakespeare
spite of adverse predictions. They wanted, at that time, to strictly maintain a circle of London dramatists, some sponsored by Oxford, and not few others that seek refuge in a sort of luck of intellectual ghetto that was contiguous with mediocrity. But the prophecy of one of its great contemporaries, Ben Jonson, is the one that prevails. “Shakespeare does not belong to a single time but to eternity”. Peter Ackroyd, famous British biographer, presents From the theater to the Internet
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Cervantes
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Shakespeare as if he was among us. Discussing in bars and third-rate cafes. The same one that dresses and wears shoes taking the theater in his hands like an ample body to which nothing human is strange to him. Moliere
The best thing of the Ackroyd’s study is that we found the comparative elements between the artists of that time with today’s artists, breaking the distance. The cinema has given it continuity, conserving the theater its main source of successful arguments, and sets of great producers. Literature has served with care these two forms of expression, contributing to raise them with intelligent brush-strokes. There is no astonishment without novelty.
Ben Jonson
The same bard who found refuge in the crown of queen Isabel is the one that becomes invisible during some time to deny its favors. Shortly after, as if nothing had passed, he 16
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finds shelter in Jacobo I, successor of Isabel. The inconsistency and ingenuity shake hands. The creator of Hamlet, Rosalinda and Sir John Falstaff is barely committing himself with art. Like the best actors and directors of the present cinema, Shakespeare put ahead the subjects to develop. He could conciliate the artistic proposals with the numerical ones. In fact, he was a very lucky and successful businessman.
Peter Ackroyd
He took into account several factors that seem irreconcilable with art, like power, commerce and popular and folkloric preferences. It mixed the Populist language, perhaps vulgar, with the elitist one. In him, became lyrical and graceful expressions that the court and the worldly town enjoyed and applauded at the same and his own way. To reserve space to create, like an angel, the most beautiful poems – Venus and Adonis, the violation of Lucrecia and The fenix, tórtolo and I will not continue-, did not prevent From the theater to the Internet
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Reina Isabel de Inglaterra
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this provincial dramatist to write per order. As it did not diminish his spirit nor it reduced the quality of his artistic production the fact of having conceived some of his works, per requests of higher powers. It is worth emphasizing, however, the imperturbable human and artistic condition of the writer. Hamlet
As you like, one of his most celebrated productions, obeyed – a wish from Isabel, but nobody dares to question its quality in any aspect. It emphasizes the grace of Rosalinda. Otelo is a result from the influence of the Spanish theater on a nearly rural society, like London was in century XVI. Therefore it is not speculation to say that Shakespeare felt great admiration for Cervantes
Rosalinda
and other Iberian colleagues, from whom he might have taken some ideas. To be an excellent compiler was one of the attributes of the Poet. A generous justification is 18
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attributed to Mark Twain on the matter: “The poets rob ideas, the mediocre ones borrow them�. From Chaplin to Marlon Brando the North American cinema has been reuniting a range of great actors, scriptwriters and directors, brilliantly versatile, as was Shakespeare, who played all those rolls, including the one of producer and businessman.
Mark Twain
The answer deserves a next delivery to the discussion raised in this paragraph, bold and deliberately provoking.
Marlo Brando
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Eduardo Álvarez
Liturgy and art
S
acred ritual, the theater was in its beginnings a fundamental part of the religious liturgy. The prologue from the words of the master of ceremony, with a grandiloquence
reserved to the glorification of Gods. Not a word without inventiveness, nor a line without marrow, nor a letter that’s unused. Pure synopsis. This explains the immutable ecclesiastical power. Shakespeare understood it perfectly. The same way, he would have assimilated, in these times, the superiority of the political, economic and, even, mediatic
Shakespeare’s Globe
power. He would have put the seventh art in his pocket, as he did with the tables. It is interesting, when not surprising, to compare the contemporary cinema – Hollywood to the vanguard-, with the London Globe theater and of other rooms that reached their apogee in pre-industrial England. Creators of myths, ideas, refrains and sticky phrases that people repeated without thinking. The same unconscious force that drove people to
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Hollywood
Eduardo Álvarez
hum in the London streets ¨A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”, is the one that, in present times, drive us to repeat the phrase from mafia’s Vito Corleone, the Godfather: “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”. Or this: “E T go home”, remember that dumb phrase that Spielberg put between mouth and nose to us with its fine sense of opportune El Padrino
art? They do not lack, then and now, parodies, sometimes malicious like this one: A man, a man! My kingdom for a man! Playful and precious both, resort to the wealth of the songs and to the spell of contagious music. Festival and street circus simultaneously. The constant continues to be the same, now and then: characters and movement. Inventiveness in the speech and grace in the action. Everything else is shade in accordance with momentary requirements. The relations of power determine, also, the fixation of
E.T
memorable phrases. In Cariolano, the Swan of Avon exploits poetry as a language of
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power. The saga of the Godfather, of Ford Coppola, is an example of it. The men of the French Revolution took Cariolano as their head book. For Marx, who was a rabid follower of Shakespeare, this work was a first order reference. Fellini and the English bard would have interchanged rolls, if they would have lived at the same time. The scriptwriter and director of the dolce vita took its boldness beyond
Ford Coppola
what’s allowed. Surrealism? Experienced critics, like Armando Almánzar, would probably find other comparisons, maybe more adapted. Lost love works became an opera while Shakespeare was still alive. Outlandish, lustful, ornamented, abundant in inventiveness, always to the limit of its possibilities, this work shows us an audacious and bold dramatist as an author of the Elizabethan theater could be. Thirty six productions with two or three errors are appreciable average, today, From the theater to the Internet
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Marx
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yesterday and always. The Poet had already taken the freedom to fantasize in Dream of one night of summer. Like the Shakesperian theater, the cinema, the television and the Internet have snatched Fellini
the State the exclusive role of public education. For that reason it is vital to maintain these means, as alignment instruments. The anxieties to get money fast and recognition, under protection of legal incentives, contribute to reduce and pervert local productions. The treatment or turn that has taken this series of articles jeopardizes the publication of other deliveries.
Armando Almanzar
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From the theater to the Internet
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Direction and interpretation
G
lory seems to be destined for the geniuses. Their ability in the fine and skillful handling of the subjects, as simple, common and contradictory as they appear to
be stands out. Harshly criticized, The Merchant of Venice is an anti-semitic work. There is the possibility that the jewish Shylock is a comical villain, observes Harold Bloom. Bloom has dedicated his life to the study and teaching of Shakespeare´s plays. The ethnic and ideological interpretations comprise the production, and the cinema holds the greater
Shylock
share of responsibility in these times. It can be said that it is a faithful legacy of the theater. The Merchant of Venice is a tragicomedy with inclinations that the witty ingenuity liberates from the pamphlet and the insignificant fact. It is an argument that lends itself for the production of comedies and tragedies. Other works which, by then, handled the subject,
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Harold Bloom
Eduardo Ă lvarez
have remained in the reserved circle of the studious. El Judio de Malta and Barrabas, which went along that line, lacks the popularity and prestige that the production of the poet has enjoyed. The intellectual productions not always not connect with the audience, nor have they assured a place in history. Usually they remain in the same circles which Christopher Marlowe
welcome them. The world has changed very little in this sense. El Judio de Malta is one of first great English plays, written by Christopher Marlowe. It has as its background the fight for the domain in the Eastern Mediterranean between Spain and the Ottoman Empire. Both united in the anti-semitic feeling of their time. Shakespeare has been accused of having plagiarized Marlowe, but time – obstinate like the truth- has reduced credibility to this allegation, which has been left simply as a malicious
El judĂo de Malta
and temporary speculation. The cinema has been the receiver and issuer of recurring
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subjects, by being part of the contemporary history or simply by being attractive to the public from the commercial point of view. Which does not reduce its merits. That the productions are, later, insignificant or purely business lacking of ingenuity and grace, that is another subject. The responsibility of the scriptwriters, directors and actors. There are not even bad
Gonzalo Maza
subjects, plagued of common locations as they may be. There are, purely and simply good or bad productions. The ordinary life, even boring, as that of a simple housewife, as that of a Chilean called Gloria, may become interesting in the hands of talented producers, like the recent victors of the Berlin Festival, Gonzalo Maza and Sebastian LĂelo. La Historia Oficial, an Oscar winning Argentine movie, among other prizes, is a complex Sebastian Lelio
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Eduardo Álvarez
drama which lends itself to all type of criticism, because of the political confusion tied to the plot. But the spectacular handling of Luis Puenzo places it highly above the interested and passionate observations. Luis Puenzo
The Cuban Fresa y Chocolate, of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, is an exquisite one and worthy representation of all the grace and ingenuity which the art can contribute to the art´s benefit, expressed in a pure friendship sentiment between two men with different sexual preferences, in spite of the lack of understanding and intolerance of the society towards homosexuality. In Cuba, the subject has political implications which the film denounces with an elevated expositive quality. The performances of Jorge Perugurria and Vladimir Cruz confirm the
Tomás Gutiérrez
need and importance of having excellent interpreters on stage. Each director of theater
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or cinema finds his consecration, more in the orchestration than in the piece that he interprets. A conclusive work gives us the opportunity to round up those details, in order to specify, above everything, that the money of the producers by itself does not guarantee a good cinema or movie, just as it has never made possible a memorable theater, if it had not been for the talent of the producers. Not everyone who wants to, can paint.
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Jorge Perugurria
Eduardo Ă lvarez
The Facebook phenomenon
W
e had to reach this point. The previous deliveries were concentrated, necessarily, in the theater and the cinema or movies. They were, until the implementation
of the social networks, the most sociable and participative means of expression. Not necessarily friendly. The television, the radio and the press are not intimate at all, but they are framed in an individual or familiar plane which prevents them from competing with those in the participative and permanently active plane.
Facebook is the vicinity which escaped to us with its forced citadine individuality, the global village, the church, the return to class, the political placard, the reencountered vicinity, the church, the party.It is you and I, one beside the other, in spite of the distance, no matter the language or religion which we speak and we profess. It is faith. You can find manifestations both artistic and sloppy. Of good and bad taste, without From the theater to the Internet
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Eduardo Ă lvarez
it taking away merit or value to the message or to the insurmountable social promise represented in it, the greater congregation of individuals recorded in history, including religions, political parties, unions, in short, every aggregation around a purpose. Both in Facebook and in Twitter the intention is social. The segments which derive from this Mark Zuckerberg
intention answer to the same known guild or social categories. But this is another thing. What we do need to emphasize in this novel one and overwhelming form of social communication is the lack of an effective direction, in order to optimize and administer the results. The company operating this portal resorts the censorship or monitoring, probably precarious due to the number of users. However, it is impossible that it can impart
Chis Hughes
guidelines in those same reasons. To which the open, inclusive and interactive character
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of this global scene, without borders is added. Facebook already approaches the billions of users in seventy languages. The possibilities of surpassing the needs, therefore the interests, which in this case are caught in the traditional conglomerates whose sale promises are based on faith, the hope of a better life and security. Churches and political parties had distributed this quota, with
Dustin Moskovitz
promises which seem to have been left behind before the aggressive incursions of the social networks. Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, its founders, did not have the minimum idea of the social explosion they were nesting. The purchase of the chatting portal Whatsapp constitutes a different bet, one that has generated more Eduardo Saverin
than one conjecture on the enormous power of Facebook. From the theater to the Internet
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Eduardo Álvarez
The sum that contained in the operation, $19 billion dollars, is a breeding ground to give rise to the most varied and incredible speculations. Bill Gates and Microsoft wrote the first lines of this chapter of history. It all began with the Bill Gates
popularization of the use of computers, thanks to Microsoft and its Windows platform, which removed the computers of the big companies´ offices and the state´s high security organisms. It put them in each house, the laps of the users, and finally, in their hands, by means of the tablets and cell phones. It is necessary to acknowledge the contribution of Apple in the mobile forms. Deprived of a pertinent recommendation, it only limits us to an observation of a moral
Apple
character – that which is possible for us to formalize for the moment -, for which we transcribe a wise phrase of the British poet W.H. Auden, very much with regard to the 34
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changes which the good emergent ideas register, as well as if such a thing: “We are born being grave and honest, and our first step consists in learning to be frivolous and insincere. The second step demands to learn to treat seriously to others. These two steps imply a sacrifice, but it is indispensable to take them�. In not understanding this proposal has constituted the failure of many companies and
W. H. Audem
political and religious groups. The social networks, with all its proposals and overwhelming amplitude, are not exempt of this commitment. As neither are the other forms of expression addressed in these five articles. That is, those of voice and data, like Skype, Whatsapp and others, with intimate options which give them a personal and particular touch. But the basic bet seems to be oriented towards the rescue of the primary common use of the means, until at the mercy of From the theater to the Internet
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Skype
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publicity. That the social communication with its transmission means is free as the wind is an aspiration on the verge of being reached. The thing is that the social networks, with Facebook in the lead, have crystallized the old Shakespearian thesis about the universe like a great theater. “The world is but a stage, Whatssap
and all men and women are mere actors”, observed the Poet. Connected the 24 hours in the networks, each one of us we have become interpreters – dynamic, versatile and active, of an infinite drama. “Time is the best author: it always finds the perfect ending”.
Charles Chaplin
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From the theater to the Internet