Marathon Theater as Anti-Monument: The Curious Case of Gatz

Abstract

The most critically acclaimed production of New York’s 2010 theater season was Gatz, a seven-hour-long adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby by the experimental company Elevator Repair Service. Gatz was an anomaly in the wave of marathon-length theater events that has occurred in Europe and America in recent decades. Most theatrical marathons are monumental, made in the venerable romantic spirit of sweeping magisterial statement that dates back to Goethe’s Faust and includes contemporary works such as Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach. Gatz, in contrast, was deliberately anti-monumental, pointedly questioning the values of epic grandeur and heroic stature that magisterial theatrical marathons propound. Moreover, the work was antimonumental as that concept is understood in the art world: referring to reactions against monumentalism in public spaces that question representations of power and elite points of view. As the first adaptation of The Great Gatsby to include ordinary theatergoers as its subject and adopt interpretive openness as its grounding tenet, Gatz implicitly critiqued the iconic status of its celebrated source novel.