Keynote: Paul Woodruff: The Art of Watching

Welcome to our third keynote of the conference, where we'll be learning all about The Art of Watching, who is introduced by James Loehlin. I've been especially looking forward to this keynote, as I've had a chance to meet Dr. Woodruff when driving him here from Washington DC a few days ago.

Woodruff is the fellow whom translated the copy of the Sophocles and Euripides plays, wrote the award winning Ithaca in Black and White, and numerous other philosophical and scholarly texts.

Dr. Woodruff imagines he is here because the title of his book, The Necessity of Theatre, is attractive to theatre people. "If you're not practicing the art of watching and being watched, you're not living a fully human life." Modern technology can threaten the art of the theatrical practitioner, and while we in the theatre business have survived the threat of film for a century now, new technologies are more interactive, and Woodruff goes on to explain that Sophocles, Broadway, and Shakespeare are all essentially unnecessary, thousands of people go without them every day, but no one goes without theatre.

Theatre, he argues, happens in football stadiums, politics, and whenever children try to convince their parents to do something. Yes, theatre is even practiced on the Blackfriars. Woodruff understands theatre "as two arts that are joined at the hip." The art of being watched, "of making human action worth watching for a measured time in a measured place." That measured is important: "you wouldn't watch if you didn't know there was an end to it." Woodruff asserts that what is done in Blackfriars has more in common with what happens in Fenway Park (here applause from a Red Sox fan) than what happens in a movie theatre. In both the stadium and the theatre, "something real happens."

While there is mimesis in every aspect of human life, "theatre is not mimetic." Theatre offers a present reality that is not dependent on an essential fiction. There are further two things that mimesis is not: mimesis is neither make believe nor is it fiction. Woodruff offers the classical example of medicine: medicine is mimetic because we heal naturally, and the art of medicine attempts to mimic the healing that naturally occurs. Theatre is real, and when it is good it creates real emotions.

Offering the example of 1H4, Hal is history, Poins is fiction, and Falstaff is Miles Gloriosis blown up to human proportions. Mimesis occurs when genuine emotion occurs and is shared among the community observing them. "One of the reasons that football is the dominant entertainment of our time is that it is built around communities." Woodruff also offers the practice of lynching as likewise mimetic: it builds community and imitates (though does not achieve) the practice of justice.

Actors or performers are unable to create theatre by themselves. The art of watching is an essential companion to the art of performing. The "Kill Claudio" line in Much Ado is offered. The line usually gets a laugh, but at last night's performance it did not (now I wish I had gone). Woodruff posits because that audience (comprised of many attendees) is a better audience in that they have a deeper understanding of what is required for Beatrice to say the line and for Benedick to hear it. Shakespeare is attentive to this affect because he offers us examples of "good" watching and "bad" watching.

Offering the immediate;y assertive example of Pyramus and Thisbe in Midsummer. Theseus offers that imagination is necessary to the watching of the play, but then the audience does not help the mechanicals because they refuse to engage their imagination with the show.

Woodruff counters the suggestion that Claudius is the ideal audience watching The ousetrap in Hamlet (posited by some of his colleagues because he internalizes the art so much). You don't want the audience leaping out of their seat, calling for lights, and leaving to pray. "You want your audience to watch, not like Claudius, and to watch with empathy." Woodruff cites Brecht's failure to create a theatre free of empathy here, but also that Brecht is onto something: "it is possible for the emotions to wash away" all critical thought and prevent the audience from watching the play in the way we desire. "There is a very important cognitive element in good watching, and therefore a very important cognitive element to empathy that is, I think, essential to good watching."

Woodruff feels that 3.4 of King Lear is one of the most extrordinary moments in Shakespeare's canon. "Lear sees that Tom is naked and destitute, and applies his own case to it." He pays attention to Tom, and thus is different from Claudius, and sees what is actually in front of him. As Dr. Woodruff performs this line, he casts off his tie and jacket, and confesses that he thought of asking an actor to play the part, "but then I wouldn't get to do that." Here Lear sees that the royalty that he has clothed himself in is meaningless, and this allows him to say "I am a very foolish old man" to Cordelia.

Watching someone else can lead to a deeper understanding of oneself, "and a wisdom of our own humanity. Not a philosophers wisdom; something far better: a playwright's wisdom." "A philosopher can't help with a toothache, after all," but Woodruff suggests that a play might. At least for the measured time in which the audience watches.

Yet another solid keynote session at the Blackfriars conference. I think I'm learning at least as much this week as I have thus far this semester. I need to drive Dr. Woodruff to the airport this afternoon, so one of my classmates will be picking up for me this afternoon. Thanks for sticking with me this morning, and I'll see you all back here tomorrow!