A reflection on David Glass's workshop: socratic method as an approach to theatre-making.

A recent David Glass workshop that I attended inspired me a lot. “In theatre we played with problems, but we don’t solve problems” he said. “ To solve problems, we leave that to social workers and politicians.”

David Glass’s words challenge my understanding of theatre. I understand theatre as a “cultural product”. By calling it a “product”, I presume that it is a result, a solution, a full-stop, or an end to all the creatives’ artistic choices. After a careful calculation of scenography and direction, they present an “answer” to the audience and give us what we want to see. I call this an “answer"approach to theatre. This “answer” approach gives audience a clear narrative, some-eye catching visual effects, some la-di-da so audience can get an answer to everything. This satisfies the basic human psychology that one would like to seek for an answer, a definition.

This works well in a commercial context, as it is not dealing with any social-politics issues in real life; but not necessarily in applied theatre or political theatre, in which practitioners deal with problems here and now.

So how should one play with problems in theatre? If we can’t provide an answer to a problem, maybe we should ask questions. A lot of questions.

This makes me think of Socratic method. A learning method presented to us in an ancient philosophical drama, Plato’s "Gorgias". In which, Socrates asks a series of questions till he finds flaws or inconsistencies in an argument. Such method aims to achieve “Aporia”, a state of chaos, just so we can find an alternative answer which is appropriate to the context.

Since thetare practitioners cannot really provide answers according to David Glass, socratic method then can be an approach in theatre-making; asking lots of questions just to challenge the spectators. Only when the audience reaches a state of Aporia, they can then reconstruct their point of views to the issues addressed.

This repositions theatre as an agency, rather than a product. By which, it gives audience a huge responsibilities in re-thinking and tackling the problems in reality.

A project in 2016, "On Harmony as Such and on the Harmony of Men” initiated by a Hong Kong-based composer, Kam Shing-Hei can be an example of such Socratic approach to theatre. In this project, he explored the notion of “tradition” and methods to make something “traditional” contemporary.

In the project, he aims to modernise Cantonese Opera, yet he struggled to find an answer to the questions raised during his creative process. So instead of giving the audience an answer, he presents a documentary to the audience in the performance. By doing so, he dramatises those questions and forces the audience to think of the questions that he faced. Knowing that he alone cannot solve this seemingly unsolvable questions, he evokes his audience to join the discussion.

By showing the audience a performative documentary and imposing questions upon them, I think this is what David Glass means by “playing with problems”.

Now ask away and leave your unsolvable problems to someone else.