Volume 41, Number 1 & 2 · January 13, 1994
The Way They Live Now
By Ian Buruma
Naked
a film directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh, produced by Simon Channing-Williams
Fine Line Features
OTHER WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAYFilms
It's a Great Big Shame!
a play by Mike Leigh
Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London, 1993
Life is Sweet
directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh
Republic, $19.98
High Hopes
directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh
Academy, $14.98
Four Days in July
directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh
Water Bearer, $79.98
Meantime
directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh
not available on video
Abigail's Party
directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh
Water Bearer, $79.98
Nuts in May
directed by Mike Leigh, screenplay by Mike Leigh
Water Bearer, $79.98
Plays
Bleak Moments
directed by Mike Leigh
not available on video
'Abigail's Party' and 'Goose-Pimples'
Penguin, 158 pp., £6.99 (paper)
'Smelling a Rat' & 'Ecstasy'
Nick Hern Books, 185 pp., £6.99 (paper)
Too Much of a Good Thing
(broadcast by the BBC in 1992)
There was a time, about twenty-five years ago, when spontaneity was the rage. This was encouraged in daily life, as well as in the theater. Indeed, the cult of spontaneity demanded that the barriers between the two should be removed: theater was life, life was theater. 'Happenings' turned the world into a stage. Inhibitions were an enemy, to be kicked over in public. Audiences had to 'participate.' And the participants in theater workshops were provoked into revealing their 'true' selves in so-called encounter sessions. People would howl and cry and laugh hysterically, while others would sit around, watching this mental stripping with embarrassed fascination. Orchestrating these spectacles was the leader, or director, or whatever he (almost always a he) was called, who looked at what he had wrought with the smug demeanor of a guru.
Review, 4483 words
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