Theater Art as a Postmodern Art Movement

 

    I would like to share our community theater experience. In my own opinion, I can relate and consider that endeavor as postmodern art. My main aim of our community theater company is to teach, inform, and involve the young people in our area in the art of drama and performance art. We conduct workshops, seminars, and free stageplay for the residents in our community for them to appreciate art and the theater arts as well. The workshops are being conducted during the summer because this is the time when our participants are mostly free from their academic obligations – we also welcome out-of-school youth to save them from the harm of the challenging communal norms of Manila.

      In teaching them, we are using a combination of talks and practicums, and since the pedagogical nature of the entire undertaking is a workshop, we are training them most of the time in the dramatic arts using staple pieces and some materials that I’ve written specifically for the training. I’m the production manager and playwright for some of the plays and most of the time, I am also engaged and involved in the training and teaching activities of our organization. There, I was able to share and showcase my art to the participants and the team as well, like an instructor/teacher of a sort if you will.

      I can say that what we are doing can be considered a postmodern pedagogical art because of its qualities that make it distinct from the classical approach in art and pedagogical practices. The undertakings of the theater workshops and the training can be anchored in the qualities and distinctions stated by Taylor in the journal. The focus of the theater performances or the theater art is to challenge and to provoke the thinking, emotions, and the insight of the viewer as well as the inner conflicts of the artist – in this case, the playwright. The plays are not contained in a structure such as auditoriums or theater complex, but on the streets rather. The shows are being exposed to the public conveniently by the use of makeshift stages made of some recycled wood plank.

      These qualities made our community theater company’s endeavors a part of the postmodern art movement because the ultimate goal of the plays is to provoke and challenge the viewer’s point of view regarding the issues lingering our society, religion, family, and existence as a human being. The caravan – as to how we call the remote, spontaneous plays, is a transformative vehicle of the arts as I take it from the statement of Taylor because of its involvement in the transformative process for both the artist and the spectators alike since the very beginning of the conceptualization of the story by the playwright to the actual show of the production. It educates the people and made them appreciate the beauty of the arts as a whole.

      Postmodern art for me has changed the landscape of the art scene forever. It transformed the ways we look and perceive things. It teaches us about the possibilities beyond the four corners of the concrete museums and galleries. Postmodern art movements animated the static remembrance of the pieces exhibited in the museums and galleries and translated it to a more accessible way of appreciating art. I would also like to think that it can also be considered as the transformative vehicle for the schools of thought in a pedagogical sense, we, as active members of the academe benefited so much from the vastness postmodern art had offered us especially in the way we study art problems and art theories.