About DV8's To be straight with you...

A week ago I went to see DV8's ''To be straight with you'' and after that I was thinking a lot... they describe their work as ''a poetic but unflinching exploration of tolerance, intolerance, religion and sexuality ...''. And indeed that was their work about. I was fascinated from the start. The multi-ethnic cast was really interested, the dancers were all great and their movements were so polished, the set and the projections (although based in a 90's graphic aesthetics) astonished me, the music was loud and the play was flowing and I got to be informed about the sufferings of the homosexual community around the world in an entertaining way... for the first thirty minutes. What changed after that? I got over the enthusiasm and I started thinking. Because the thing is that, if I wanted to see well trained dancers doing difficult staff,I could go to the circus. If I wanted to see a magnificent high-tech set design, I could go to Disneyland. If I wanted to feel the bit of loud music, I could go to a club and if I wanted to be informed about homosexuality, I could (and should) read and research about this. By these I don't imply that this was not a nice way to achieve all these at once but... at some point it made me feel that this was not theatre. It felt like those people wanted to say and share some information and they found a pleasing way to present them to an audience and that way they came up with, affected the structure of it. I was thinking at some points that they had a story and they were thinking " ok, how can we present this one now?" and something like this leads to the loss of meaning and point. What if someone does have an important matter to deal with and a great budget to help him make it happen, if in the end the result is a "well dressed" informative show? Is this the meaning of creating plays?

I do think that whenever we have all the means to do something we can easily loose control of what we want to communicate and  even if our subject is of great importance, if we just make a show about it's not important any more. (but the audience simply loves it...)