WALKING THE TIGHTROPE; SELF, WRITING AND AUDIENCE (extract) © Nina Rapi

What follows are thoughts, observations and insights primarily, but not exclusively, based on my personal experience as a working playwright. I shall therefore focus mainly on playwriting, with occasional references to other genres.
The questions I shall look at are:

1. Can personal catharsis through writing create significant art?
2. How do audiences influence the creative process?
3. What factors determine production/publication?

Starting with my first question, I realised that there are a number of other questions implicit in it that also have to be looked at, such as:
What is art and who defines it?
What is significant art? Significant to whom?

Both questions point to the need for definitions. I like definitions. They represent a home-base and as such they can evoke all the conflicting reactions we have to this thing called ‘home’. Definitions can anchor you or disturb you. They can guide you or give you something to fight against. They can shape your identity or seriously challenge it. They can impose uniformity on you or mark your difference. They can determine whether you are ‘in’ or ‘out’. And like ‘home’ they can’t be avoided but have to be dealt with.

So, what is art? Of course the moment you try to define ‘art’ you become aware of how slippery definitions can actually be; how rather than fix meanings they open up the space for multiple meanings; how rather than give definitive answers they open up more questions. If we take the classic definition of ‘art’ for example – that which creates ‘beauty’, reveals the ‘truth’, is guided by certain principles and aims to elevate the soul – we can see that a number of questions are instantly raised. Whose idea of beauty? Whose truth? And whose soul are we talking about? The assumption here is that there is only one truth, one beauty, and one soul – a universal one. This belief can be comforting but also claustrophobic. It can feel inclusive but in fact, as feminism and post-modernism have convincingly argued, it has been historically exclusive. The assumed universal subject of literature has been revealed to be very specific indeed, namely, white, male and bourgeois. This doesn’t mean that the concept of ‘universal’ art is wrong but that the angle of vision needs to be widened.

Personally, I have recently come out as a classicist. There are certain Aristotelian principles of playwriting that I have found very useful. They helped me clarify structure and meaning and offered me a sense of continuity and belonging to a timeless community of writers. At the same time, having experienced life mostly as an outsider on a number of levels, I have benefited enormously from a post-modern sensibility and aesthetics. Post-modernism insists that there are many kinds of art, many truths and many interpretations. A democratic, genuinely inclusive and inspiring perception of reality and art. Yet, a little too relativist, a little too much of ‘anything goes’ about it for me to be fully satisfying. So, in my life as in my practice as a playwright and a teacher, I have found it useful to combine the classic with the post-modern – quite a struggle but an interesting one nonetheless.

So what would my personal definition of significant art sound like and how would that link with writing as personal catharsis? It would sound like this:

Significant art, I believe, should create meaning, offer new insights and leave a lasting impression. It should offer a sense of unity – even if that unity consists of fragments. It should be aware of its context and the possible interpretations it can evoke. It should create ‘beauty’, even if that beauty consists of what is perceived as ‘ugly’ by the dominant sensibility. What I mean by beauty is that it should be permeated by an aesthetic coherence, an inner logic that is however communicable to others.

In other words, those aiming to create significant art should be clearly aware of the difference between everyday and fictional/dramatic reality and the different principles that govern each. And that is the key. That is the point where personal catharsis through writing can create significant art; the point where life meets aesthetics – where the authenticity of personal experience meets the ‘constructedness’ of art; the point where content and form are of equal value. I’d like here to mention two examples of personal catharsis through writing that have achieved this balance between content and form. They are 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill. Both writers are literally bearing their souls on stage. Kane, doing so with mathematical precision, O’Neill with a certain self-indulgence but no less power. Out of that, they have created two very different plays. One is poetic and experimental, the other naturalistic. But what is the cost to the writer of this kind of exposure? And what does it take to have your work produced? Would Kane’s work have been produced and appreciated to the degree that it has had she not committed suicide so young? And was O’Neill’s play not torn to pieces when it was first produced, only to be claimed as a masterpiece later? (continues)

This article was published in LAPIDUS quarterly, Spring 2003