Playful vs. Plain

When I began composing operas, I encountered contrasting attitudes towards the theater and people who work in the theater. Fascinated, I read several books about the history of attitudes toward theater and rhetoric. Some studies discuss two fundamentally different perspectives on the nature of world, which in turn foster contrasting views about how to best present ourselves and our work to the world.

These contrasting approaches to life have endured for centuries. Some people desire certainty and permanence, and they tend to seek unchanging values—ideals they can hold as certainties. They tend to believe the values they cherish are based on external universal truths and essences. Valuing permanence, they often see themselves as having a single unchanging identity (a ‘central self’), to which they strive to remain true. In communicating with others they tend to value sincerity, brevity, and plain-speaking.

Other people are more fascinated by various changing aspects of the world, and they may seek variable ways to meet the challenges offered by changing situations. They may see themselves as playing various roles in life (child, parent, sibling, friend, artist, lover, and so on) and often enjoy playing these roles with a measure of noticeable style. In communicating with others they tend to appreciate a measure of playfulness, artfulness, and eloquence.

An awareness that you play contrasting roles, perhaps being a parent to one person and a child to another, can add a humorous perspective to a situation. T.S. Eliot wrote that “The really fine rhetoric of Shakespeare occurs in situations where a character in the play sees himself in a dramatic light....in many of those situations in actual life which we enjoy consciously and keenly, we are at times aware of ourselves in this way...when any one is conscious of himself as acting, something like a sense of humour is present.”

Scholar Richard Lanham calls one group homo seriosus and the other homo rhetoricus. (‘Rhetorical,’ ‘playful,’ and ‘theatrical’ are all terms Lanham associates with the second type of person.) ‘Serious people’ distrust the ability of ‘theatrical people’ to change character as they shift from one role to another. One serious person called them ‘loud liars.’ On the other hand ‘playful people’ sometimes feel that people who consider themselves steadfastly ‘serious’ have cast themselves in that single role and gotten stuck in it. ‘Serious people’ regard such thinking as an example of the inability of the ‘loud liars’ to see the ‘true’ serious nature of the world.

Individual artists and writers stand on different sides of this debate. Some celebrate the artifice of what they do (see the Picasso and Dylan Thomas quotes below). Other artists and many philosophers see their work as representing the true nature of their “self” or the world (as they see it). Yet “serious” artists who argue against artifice often use artistic language playfully (see William Carlos Williams’s pun on “noble"/"no bull” below). And artists who produce comic works often take their craft seriously.

“Rhetorical” artists often delight in displaying their technical mastery. “Serious” artists sometimes seem embarrassed by their technical mastery, and, rather than overtly display their skills, they may apply their skills in ways that serve to conceal technique. But an artistically satisfying “plain” style is difficult to achieve, and close study of a passage of “artful simplicity” may reveal the artistry used to achieve it. Art requires artistry — otherwise it is not art.

I personally love playing with the materials of both words and music, and (echoing Dylan Thomas’s thoughts below) I need to enjoy myself sometimes. Below, I had fun juxtaposing some quotes and a few examples of work from people who profess opposing viewpoints.