A really great example of "ugly" comics is the work of Jeffrey Brown. Brown's drawings are shaky, scratchy, ill-proportioned ... a less-cautious judge might say they're "bad" drawings. Indeed, they have a bit of a quality of being like something you might find scribbled in a 14-year-old's school notebook when he's thinking about the girl who broke his heart. (Click here for a pop-up example.) In fact, Brown's writing has exactly that kind of innocent and unpretentious honesty. And the point here is that those "ugly" drawings, in which Brown is obviously not hiding behind a talent for slick art, force you to get much, much closer to Brown's characters (who, it seems are very, very real). In short, the drawings are as raw as the emotions, so their "ugliness" and roughness in fact adds to the the effectives of Brown's work.

So, my experience with Brown's work (I love it.) and reading Wolk's book have left me wondering about the possibilities of Ugly Theatre.

Certainly, many, many people (myself included) are making theatre that is not conventionally agreeable. For my group, a certain amount of the ugliness comes from Brechtian intentions, and another percentage comes from our financially necessary lo-fi aesthetic. Given unlimited resources, some of the ugliness would disappear. However, I do believe that the ugliness is helpful to our cause in many instances. When we do a show that advocate escaping mainstream culture to create your own art, it's certainly helpful that our show has an an obvious DIY backbone.

So my questions ... In what cases could purposefully ugly theatre enhance the over-all effect? What content could successfully be married to an ugly form? And I'm not just talking about using black acting blocks instead of furniture. I'm also wondering about "bad" acting. Is this what Brecht was trying to get from his actors, that self-awareness he required? Is there something else? What about clumsy writing? Could leaving the seams showing actually be a good thing? In what cases?

I agree with Isaac that the jagged edgs of Chuck Mee's work are among the pleasures of his work. I know from experience that those edges can also repulse people looking for simply "agreeable" theatre. The edges mean you have to look deeper to "get it".

Now I have to bring up (as Isaac does at the end of his post) James Kochalka and his book The Horrible Truth About Comics, (re-printed in The Cute Manifesto) in which he writes something like

Technical mastery of one's medium does not an artist make. Craft is really just a matter of personal pride and respect for one's medium. It's not a matter of "learning how to draw" in the sense that most people think of it. It's a matter of allowing yourself to boil in the intensity of your experiences, compressing, condensing, and clarifying them.

Your art will be "great" if you can successfully focus your experiences to reveal some new understanding of the world that has previously eluded us. And the more clearly focused, vivid, and original this revelation is, the higher the quality of the work of art, the more universe it reveals.

So ignore your lack of technical ability. Resolve to put the skills you do have to work now and pick up more along the way. The only quality you truly need is the ability to open yourself with honesty and pluck out the truth.

Which is not to say that either J. Brown or J. Kochalka are bad artists, because they're both brilliant. Their art has nearly-perfect unity, in that their goals an their themes are reflected in the way they draw. Brown's raw, painful emotions, and Kochalka's child-like fascination with the world are present in every line they draw from their pens. Clearly, Kochalka lives-up to his own proclamations. He values the purity of his expression over the perfection of drafting and it helps the reader to have a vivid understanding of his world-view.

I'd kill to have our production elements so perfectly matched with the ideas in our plays. But, that could cost a lot of money. Or, it requires an expert I haven't found in our locale yet. (Can you say "conceptually-able scenic designer" anyone?)

So, I'll ask again ... In what cases could purposefully ugly theatre enhance the over-all effect? What content could successfully be married to an ugly form?