As the 2023-24 season here at City Opera House comes to a close (only a few more shows!) and as I build the season to come, I’m thinking more and more about the unique way of communicating that is the medium of live arts. We may take our new love to hear a live singer, gather our friends to laugh at a comedian, or seek out new ideas from a lecture. In each case, we somehow seek to breathe the same air as the performer and the rest of the audience, and pay tribute to the earliest methods of “making common.”
The word communicate comes from Latin “communicare” — to make common, or share, and at its very heart is an active drive to impart, participate, transmit. We all do it — communicate — a LOT lately, it seems. But what is the quality of all of this communication?
From the moment Eve glanced warily over at Adam and said “so, who are you supposed to be?” right up to this very moment (as your eye scans these letters, references an orthographic map hidden in your gray matter and understands) communication has been an integral part of human interaction. The methods have changed, but the need has not. We all harbor a human need to hear and be heard, to see and be seen. We don’t even think about it. We communicate our position in space (MARCO!), voice our needs, our intentions, our questions, our dreams.
I suppose it was vocal first, or rhythm … then verbal, graphic and then literary. Gesture gave way to glyph, and guttural utterance to word. From there it was a sprint through chisels, papyrus, hides, hunting drums, and warring horns, ballads, arias, movable type, wax tubes, dits and dahs, grooved discs, microphones and magnetic tape, lenses and fresnels, binary code, pixels, emoji. Despite the progress we’ve made, and the explosion of media, it’s back to voice and rhythm, word and gesture that we return for communicating our culture in the form of live arts.
Marshall McLuhan — Canadian educator and media theorist — rather famously said “The medium is the message,” and from that we are to understand that perhaps the form of a message determines the ways in which that message will be perceived — and could even alter the message itself.
When City Opera House was new, in the height of the Gilded Age, live performances were still dominant among media of the time. Things were already accelerating. The telegraph, already half a century old, allowed messages to be transmitted over long distances via electrical signals. This innovation revolutionized long-distance communication, shrinking the world and connecting people in ways never before possible. The telegraph laid the groundwork for future advancements in communication technology and set the stage for further innovation in the years to come. Despite this giant innovative leap, live lecturers, circuses, plays, operas, musical reviews, and more remained the form that criss-crossed our young country forming a energy net of “Making Common,” communicating the values and stories of culture to even the remotest outposts.
Beautiful buildings like City Opera House were the nodes in this net. Erected like hand-crafted cell towers in every place that could afford them signaling to the country at large that this community was open to receiving and transmitting ideas. They called out to culture bearers, but also to the public, offering a space to gather and make common.
The turn of the millennium saw the rise of mobile communication with the widespread adoption of cell phones. Mobile devices transformed communication into a constant presence in our lives, allowing us to stay connected wherever we go … or worse yet, don’t go.
The widespread adoption of social media in the 21st century could be seen as the birth of the least social media ever invented. Heralding never-before-seen interconnectedness, immediacy, and unprecedented levels of user-generated content, but delivering isolation, mental fatigue, illness and some say mass delusion. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram enable people to share their thoughts, experiences, and photos with friends, family, and strangers alike, blurring the lines between public and private communication.
What then of the culture bearers? And how does this new media affect the message? How do we differentiate and apply meaning to palm-delivered messages as diverse as an operetta or an omelet breakfast pic? We return to the physical space. The nodes in the net are blinking back to life, and palaces of culture are finding their feet and place in communities. Communication of what really matters happens when the lights dim, the audience settles in, and the performers take the stage. Lights up, and listen to what we believe, impart, transmit, participate. With your support, the stage will glow with art, life and new ideas for generations to come.
The 2024-25 season — “Gilded” — at City Opera House goes on sale to eclub members May 1. See you at the theater.