Real reality program
JournalNews Column
I find it astounding that in the current state of television technology, with so many channels to choose from and the opportunity to receive programs “on demand,” that I still find so many occasions to say, “There’s nothing on TV.”
I’m particularly quick to turn off the so-called “reality” programs, those shows that seem to want to make us forget about our own troubled, pathetic lives by showing us the troubled, pathetic lives of others.
After I mentioned “Joe Millionaire” in last week’s column, I had more than one person agree with me that it’s one of the worse concepts ever, representing everything that’s wrong with popular American culture. Then after conceding the point, they’d say, “I watched it just out of curiosity.”
Well, maybe. But like they say, “If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
No, I prefer my reality programming to really be real.
Even in the middle of my 14th season reviewing theater, even when I’m thinking that I’d rather be somewhere else because I don’t feel well or because I have so many other things to do, I can feel my pulse quicken when the house lights go down.
I get lost in the theater in a way that television can’t even approximate. Several years ago, for instance, I went to the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati intern production of a Sam Shepard play in a dance studio off of Short Vine in Cincinnati. It was the middle of June, at least 90 degrees outside and hotter inside, but the play took place in a bleak Wyoming winter. There was no set, just a door and a few wooden chairs, and when the characters spoke of a howling blizzard outside, it was over the sound of a fan struggling to create a breeze in the hot-box of studio.
Maybe it’s my own power of concentration, or maybe it was that the young actors were performing with the thought of their careers being on the line. Whatever. I believed, and I forgot about the heat, the sound of the traffic outside the studio, and was transported to rugged Wyoming, battling the severe elements, immersed in the lives of those characters, and six years later, the experience is vivid in my mind.
A year or two later I saw “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” a classic American drama by Eugene O’Neill in a production by the Rising Phoenix Theatre Company in Middletown. Hamilton actor Dan Britt played the lead, James Tyrone, and because I couldn’t come to one of the scheduled performances, they allowed me into the final dress rehearsal, so I was the only spectator.
The play runs over four hours in three acts, living up to the title, and it’s draining for both the actors and the audience. But that worked to my advantage, because during the third act, with James Tyrone drinking and spilling his guts to his family, everything else went away and I was there with them, tired (but not drunk), watching this drama being played out not by characters in a play, but by people living the parts.
Even in the best of circumstances, television can’t touch those experiences. You can turn off the phone, turn off the lights, send the kids and the dog to the skating rink or neighbor’s house and still never achieve that state of transcendence, never become a part of the experience, will always be aware that you’re glaring at a two-dimensional glow.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one kind of reality programming, but you’ll never find it in your local cable listings.
I find it astounding that in the current state of television technology, with so many channels to choose from and the opportunity to receive programs “on demand,” that I still find so many occasions to say, “There’s nothing on TV.”
I’m particularly quick to turn off the so-called “reality” programs, those shows that seem to want to make us forget about our own troubled, pathetic lives by showing us the troubled, pathetic lives of others.
After I mentioned “Joe Millionaire” in last week’s column, I had more than one person agree with me that it’s one of the worse concepts ever, representing everything that’s wrong with popular American culture. Then after conceding the point, they’d say, “I watched it just out of curiosity.”
Well, maybe. But like they say, “If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
No, I prefer my reality programming to really be real.
Even in the middle of my 14th season reviewing theater, even when I’m thinking that I’d rather be somewhere else because I don’t feel well or because I have so many other things to do, I can feel my pulse quicken when the house lights go down.
I get lost in the theater in a way that television can’t even approximate. Several years ago, for instance, I went to the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati intern production of a Sam Shepard play in a dance studio off of Short Vine in Cincinnati. It was the middle of June, at least 90 degrees outside and hotter inside, but the play took place in a bleak Wyoming winter. There was no set, just a door and a few wooden chairs, and when the characters spoke of a howling blizzard outside, it was over the sound of a fan struggling to create a breeze in the hot-box of studio.
Maybe it’s my own power of concentration, or maybe it was that the young actors were performing with the thought of their careers being on the line. Whatever. I believed, and I forgot about the heat, the sound of the traffic outside the studio, and was transported to rugged Wyoming, battling the severe elements, immersed in the lives of those characters, and six years later, the experience is vivid in my mind.
A year or two later I saw “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” a classic American drama by Eugene O’Neill in a production by the Rising Phoenix Theatre Company in Middletown. Hamilton actor Dan Britt played the lead, James Tyrone, and because I couldn’t come to one of the scheduled performances, they allowed me into the final dress rehearsal, so I was the only spectator.
The play runs over four hours in three acts, living up to the title, and it’s draining for both the actors and the audience. But that worked to my advantage, because during the third act, with James Tyrone drinking and spilling his guts to his family, everything else went away and I was there with them, tired (but not drunk), watching this drama being played out not by characters in a play, but by people living the parts.
Even in the best of circumstances, television can’t touch those experiences. You can turn off the phone, turn off the lights, send the kids and the dog to the skating rink or neighbor’s house and still never achieve that state of transcendence, never become a part of the experience, will always be aware that you’re glaring at a two-dimensional glow.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one kind of reality programming, but you’ll never find it in your local cable listings.
