Rendering 8

The article published on the website www.telegraph.co.uk on 7 March 2013, is headlined “Bruce Norris: 'I think weare doomed’. The article is written by Jasper Rees. He describes Bruce’s opinion about the situation with the theatre.

The author makes special emphasize on the fact that uncompromising American playwright Bruce Norris has the super-rich in his sights as his latest work prepares to open at London’s Royal Court. They’re changing the guard at the Royal Court Theatre. For his final act after six years in charge, Dominic Cooke has returned to the American playwright whose work he introduced to these shores upon becoming artistic director. A new play by Bruce Norris can mean only one thing. Theatre-goers should start quaking in their Louboutins as he prepares to give them another bloody nose.

The author also quotes the words of Dominic: Don’t, however, expect an Enron-style broadside against recent events on Wall Street and in the City. “You can’t write an interesting play about what happened in the past five years, because it’s so mundane. Ultimately, you have to write about human beings rather than about how computers work. I guess I’m writing about why people think the way they do, feel the way they do, about money and status. And why it is important that you want your child to grow up and not just succeed, but exceed others. That kind of structural need to ensure the status of future generations is almost a species problem and one that really can’t be addressed until we evolve.”

Not that Norris has any faith in mankind’s ability to evolve. His theory is that we’ve never really left the cave – “Of course not. We’ve decorated the cave” – and that the amoral law of the free market “is the law that we obeyed when we had hair all over the majority of our bodies and hunted and gathered”. And in plays that sucker audiences as laughs make way for gasps, Norris has taken it upon himself to point this out.

The author notices that even the pleasure of lecturing a captive audience for two hours has its drawbacks. And I absolutely agree with his opinion.