On being liked

We’re producing Burn This this September, and I’ve been spending more time with the play than I have in years.

The first time I saw it, I was nineteen.

My friend Mike Littig and I sat in the second row at the Union Square Theatre watching Ed Norton play Pale. We were close enough that it felt like we were sitting on the stage rather than in the audience. I don’t remember much about what I was doing that week. I don’t remember what I was doing before or after the show.

I remember a line.

Pale is talking about what excites him. He says he isn’t interested in what most people seem to be. He says people want to get excited about Häagen-Dazs ice cream. They want everyone to be nice. They want all that shit. What excites him are hurricanes, seventy-mile-an-hour winds, and natural disasters.

The audience laughed.

Twenty-four years later, they still do.

For a long time, I assumed the laugh came from the fact that Pale is outrageous. He’s reckless, inappropriate, and volatile. He says the things most people have learned not to say.

Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if the laugh comes from somewhere else.

Not because people agree with him.

Because they recognize the thing he’s pushing against.

The older I get, the more I notice how reluctant artists have become to exercise taste publicly.

Not privately.

Privately, everybody has opinions.

After a show, over drinks, in text messages, in rehearsal rooms after everyone else has gone home, people are often remarkably honest. They’ll tell you exactly why a play didn’t work. They’ll tell you when a script feels unfinished or a production feels confused. They’ll tell you when an actor is being praised for work that isn’t actually very good.

Then the public conversation begins.

Suddenly, everything is wonderful.

Everything is important.

Everything deserves celebration.

Part of this is kindness. Some of it is probably overdue. The arts have never suffered from a shortage of ego or cruelty.

But I don’t think kindness explains it all.

I think opportunity does.

The theater community is small. So is publishing. So is film. The same names keep appearing. Today’s director is tomorrow’s artistic director. Today’s playwright may be next year’s employer. The person whose work you criticize today may be deciding whether to hire you six months from now.

Under those conditions, honesty becomes expensive.

So people become careful.

Careful eventually becomes diplomatic.

Diplomatic eventually becomes silent.

And somewhere in that progression, taste begins to disappear.

Not because people stop having standards.

Because they stop expressing them.

The problem is that art depends on somebody being willing to make distinctions.

A play cannot be great unless some plays are mediocre.

A performance cannot be extraordinary unless other performances are ordinary.

To say something is excellent requires the possibility that something else isn’t.

Without those distinctions, everything drifts toward the same language of approval. Every production is brave. Every script is important. Every performance is moving. The words remain positive, but they gradually lose their meaning.

The irony is that criticism has never been the enemy of art.

Indifference is.

A person who argues with a play has at least taken it seriously. A person who disagrees with a novel has still engaged with it. The artist may not enjoy hearing the criticism, but the work has generated a response.

Nothing is more damaging than polite enthusiasm offered out of obligation.

Maybe that’s why Pale’s speech has stayed with me for nearly a quarter of a century.

I don’t think he’s talking about destruction.

I think he’s talking about force.

He’s talking about the feeling that something real is happening.

A storm changes the landscape.

A strong opinion changes a conversation.

A great work of art changes the way you see the world.

Art doesn’t thrive without risk.

A requirement for improving your work is friction.

What Pale is saying is not a celebration of chaos, but a suspicion that a culture built entirely around being liked eventually forgets how to tell the truth.