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When I was in 5th grade, a few of us ‘gifted’ kids read the Ambrose Bierce story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and talked about it. I remember thinking it was a lot like my favorite show: The Twilight Zone (only later I learned the Twilight Zone actually did an episode of that very story). We were then told we’d be going to see it as a stage play next week. We rode in a school bus an hour from our tiny little town to the big city of Indianapolis. It was the first play this farm boy had ever seen.

I’m pretty sure we went to the beautiful Indiana Repertory Theatre. It was a fairly simple production for only a few dozen kids/small school groups in the audience. I remember looking at the stage and seeing nothing really there. I wondered if they were going to bring out all the props and scenery. I had a lot of anticipation as I waited for things to begin – but not knowing what would happen. I think I expected something like TV in which everything is depicted realistically, so my curiosity was already piqued.

The play started out exactly as the story did with a man being led to a bridge. The bridge and rail line was represented by a projected trestle and rail shadows. When the moment of his death came, the lights went out for a second at which point there were sounds of a rope breaking and a tremendous splash. Blue lights came back up and the actor was in the water being shot at with the sounds of gunfire. They represented him in the water by being halfway in a big blue sheet blown by air that he bobbed and ‘swam’ through.

This effect blew my mind as a kid. I had never seen such imagination – and from adults. I had no idea such things existed and how a simple story we read in a book could be made alive in this way. The rest of the play was well done, but these stage effects really astounded me. It started me down a path of going to plays and local theater whenever I could.

In recent years, it seems I’ve had trouble finding plays I’d actually like to see. It’s not that my favorites aren’t being done – it’s just…they’re not the plays I know.

For example, when I went to London a few years back I really wanted to see one of the famous plays at Shakespeare’s Globe theater. I have definitely seen a few wonderful shows there, but I was surprised to see 2 of the 3 shows were strange re-imaginings that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with their original material beyond the name. One was modernized to current times with completely different themes. The other seemed to have replaced key characters with ones that represented modern social controversies. In the end, believe I saw a more period accurate version of Richard III which was highly enjoyable because it showed me how those plays I read in High School would probably have looked and sounded on stage when Shakespeare’s company performed them. Even if the play itself wasn’t really my favorite.

I have had some good luck though. One of the best was a really excellent production of The Woman in Black in Chicago. A few great versions of And Then There Were None at local theaters. But it seems like I have better luck with smaller productions. Primarily because they stay true to the original stories. Which, after all, is why they are great.

This is not a new thing. So what is going on? Scores Unstitched is a professional opera singer turned YouTuber. She describes how things have changed, the frustration that even the actors have, and how the audience is not the target anymore. It sure seems like an interesting state of affairs when the audience is no longer even the reason for your art to exist. One has to wonder what motivates the actors or singers if the actual stories and plays they love aren’t even being done.

Our culture used to have much more readable messages and symbols. Not because they were overtly hidden – but because we can no longer speak the language. One of the effects of a classical education (something that was done up until about the 1950’s) was the development of verbal, written, musical, and pictorial languages that were based on thousands of years of human development and thought.

Most modern people have completely lost the original understanding of our cultural cornerstones. The Declaration of Independence’s phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness’ really means something very different than what most people know (happiness = eudaimonia, a central concept in ancient Greek philosophy, often translated as “human flourishing,” “well-being,” or “living well,” but represents the highest human good, a state of deep fulfillment achieved by living virtuously, developing one’s potential, and fulfilling one’s purpose, distinct from fleeting pleasure (hedonia) and rooted in meaning, authenticity, and growth). Classic stories like Dante’s Inferno had so much staying power because they spoke with the language of classical definitions.

Today, we’ve traded thousands of years of cultural wisdom for internet memes and viral trends that usually only last a few days. How much have we lost? Watching videos like this can give you an idea.

I find it interesting we can no longer ‘read’ a clear message from art (like this video shows us), but instead traded that for ‘critiquing’ art. Each person can now give a piece of art its meaning and value based on their individual interpretation. An interpretation often only based on nothing more than personal opinions, ignorance of context or language, and even outright bigotry.

Instead of ‘critiquing’ a painting using only modern limited social trends and sensibilities that are limited to only the beliefs of the viewer/critiquer, maybe we should once again learn to read them and learn about a lived experience of others without trying to make it something it was never meant to be.

Han Hsu Tung has created wooden sculptures that look like they fell out of a pixelated screen.

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