![\"Notes](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/NotesFromArdenHead.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: <\/i>Stage Raw takes no responsibility for the dubious veracity of large portions of this article\/short-story.<\/i><\/p>\n
As mentioned before in this column, the National Endowment for the Arts reported on the disturbing, declining attendance in the arts \u2013 both the visual and performing kind \u2013 though there\u2019s no decline in arts participation<\/i>. In \u201cThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised\u201d (see this week\u2019s Features), John Steppling posits a number of reasons that our theater, at least, has become irrelevant, adrift from its lack of a serious purpose. The NEA\u2019s findings would seem to support some of Steppling\u2019s arguments \u2013 that if theater dared even to approach its mandate of yore, to challenge prevailing values with expressions of dissent \u2013 the young (who traditionally fire up the cauldrons of dissent) might show some interest in something other than Selfies and other forms of art created by themselves and their friends on their Android phones.<\/p>\n
And this is why Stage Raw<\/i>, your living arts journalism laboratory, has been busy trying to go beyond the same-old-same-old of arts journalism by setting up a series of international audience-artist-participatory programs, since the line between artists and audiences is growing increasingly blurry.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the theory: use our 21st<\/sup> century technologies (Twitter, Skye, live-streaming, bla bla bla) in order to get people from all over the globe to participate<\/i> in Stage Raw<\/i>-sponsored initiatives that will, in the long-run, encourage the participants \u2013 audiences and artists — to unplug their devices for an hour or two in order to sit or stand in a space, breathe the air of that space, and partake of what somebody else<\/i> has created, and to do so with something resembling what used to be called an attention span. As Steppling would say if he were asked, \u201cYou can\u2019t have a revolution if nobody\u2019s paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n Stage Raw <\/i>set out to discuss this idea with Anthony Byrnes, commentator for KCRW FM, who, from LA last week<\/a>, complained that Stage Raw <\/i>wasn\u2019t doing anything new, ironically on the very week Stage Raw <\/i>was in Europe holding meetings in order to launch, in the coming weeks, some of the aforementioned initiatives \u2013 discussed in greater detail in last week\u2019s Notes From Arden<\/i>, which Anthony hadn\u2019t yet gotten around to.<\/p>\n So Stage Raw<\/i> took its trusty MacBook Pro laptop into the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Paris\u2019 Chateau Rouge district. This is an ancient and beautiful church, with marble columns and cavernous vaulted ceilings, sculpted saints peering down. To our amazement, a chorus of nuns was singing some kind of chant in Latin, and the voices billowed up and around the columns and stained glass. And it occurred to Stage Raw<\/i> in this moment that, yes, a performance is very much defined by the space it exists in. Stage Raw <\/i>sat on a bench in the back, opened the MacBook Pro laptop and attempted to Skype Anthony, as we\u2019d arranged. Anthony didn\u2019t pick up, so @StageRaw tweeted back to Los Angeles the sheer majesty and sacredness of what was happening. Unfortunately, the Internet connection was weak, and the glow from the computer upset a guard who asked Stage Raw <\/i>to turn the thing off.<\/p>\n By this time, back in L.A., Board Member @MichaelSeel had leapt to Stage Raw<\/i>\u2019s defense, tweeting that the new site would be part of a revolution in arts journalism. \u201cI\u2019ll be sure to duck,\u201d Anthony tweeted back, by which time Stage Raw<\/i> was at the Louvre Museum, in the hall of the Italian masters. Mobbed. Arts attendance declining? Not in France.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There she hung, Mona Lisa<\/i>, small frame, big reputation, enigmatic smile, the whole thing, but Stage Raw<\/i> couldn\u2019t get close because of the rows and rows of people \u2013 layers really \u2013 separating Lisa<\/i> from the eyes of this beholder with the incessant flashing of iPhone cameras, as though they could actually capture The Real Thing.<\/p>\n Whatever happened to postcards?<\/p>\n So Stage Raw<\/i> found a bench, next to a lonely Botticelli, and pried opened the MacBook Pro once again, jumped onto somebody\u2019s wobbly Internet connection. Anthony still didn\u2019t pick up on Skype. Stage Raw<\/i> then read on Twitter that Anthony and Michael were still going at it.<\/p>\n \u201cShow me,\u201d @TheaterThoughts (Anthony) tweeted. @StageRaw tweeted back, \u201cAnthony, I can\u2019t talk now, I\u2019m at the Louvre. Give us time. We\u2019re just having meetings now. This will all unfold in the coming weeks and months,\u201d along with other related notes.<\/p>\n Because of Twitter limitations, it took three tweets to say that much. And that was without adding the hashtag #LAThtr. By which time, a security guard came over and asked Stage Raw<\/em> to please close the computer. \u00a0We think he said please. Maybe not.<\/p>\n Later that afternoon, Stage Raw<\/i> found itself in the upper sanctuary of the Palace of Sainte-Chapelle \u2013 a 13th<\/sup> century church with fabled stained glass depictions of the Bible\u2019s books. This was created some three centuries before the Gutenberg printing press triggered a revolution, bringing scrolls down to size and encouraging a culture of literacy.\u00a0 Two thoughts crossed Stage Raw<\/i>\u2019s mind: that in the 1200s, people absorbed stories that they all discussed around their medieval water coolers entirely through pictures enshrined in stained glass within church walls. This was the predecessor of the comic book, the cinema and, in many ways, the kind of international theater festival that features projected slides and puppets that don\u2019t really need to say much to make their point.<\/p>\n The other thought was that all this beauty, these looming cavernous ceilings, were on the upper<\/i> sanctuary, where only the privileged were admitted. The other 99% were consigned to the lower<\/i> sanctuary with a ceiling about the same height as your standard one-bedroom apartment, and where there were almost no stained-glass stories to behold. So the idea of the arts being both elitist and subsidized has a long and tortured history.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/MonaLisa-e1396406549489-168x300.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Sainte](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/SainteChapelle-e1396407367608-168x300.jpg\")
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