Being Clever

Theatre, by definition, is about coming together as a community to share a story that explores a question - this could be anything from the global crisis, to the fact we supress a majority gender, to the fact we all feel a bit sad to what ever.... The idea being that we go for a night out, have a good time, digest some ideas, swallow them and intergrate them into our viewpoints. If it fails to do that it's failing it's job. Period. I'm not saying we should be as brazen as the Greeks were about it but I'm saying if it's too submerged in cleverness it doesn't serve it's purpose. If art doesn't serve it's purpose then it may as well not exist. There's a place for "clever" stuff but Caryl Churchill manages to be clever and still explore HUGE issues - clever doesn't, neccessarily, mean unintelligable it just means... Complex. Why can't we make Clever Accessible work? Like.... Escaped Alone? Or ENRON? Or The Low Road? Or Life of Gallieo? Being intelligent, clever, groundbreaking doesn't mean being inaccessible it means thorough investigation of question in an interesting way. I got nothing from some plays I've seen at all (I don't want to slag off plays on here) - but everything from The Low Road - both big plays in the same space, one working harder for the audience than the other.