What's Wrong With Theater? | The American Prospect:
A first step is making the money that is given to theaters and other arts work toward the aim of allowing financially strapped theaters -- especially those who boast spiffy new spaces -- to put actors, directors, and other professional theater workers first.
Government at all levels could attach strings to grants to compel the largest recipients of its arts largesse to help smaller companies by sharing space and logistical support. Pushing public universities to open up their stage -- often fallow during breaks between semesters -- to smaller companies might also pay dividends. And government could help all arts organizations to pool resources so that one of the largest costs of hiring and maintaining an ensemble of actors -- health insurance -- becomes affordable for artists at all stages of their career.
Daisey suggests that magnificent new stages -- funded by taxpayers and capital campaigns -- have not solved the American theatre’s problems. "Theatre is not a building," he observes. "It’s the people." Shifting the resources that government does make available to theaters and other arts organizations to emphasize an investment in those people is the best first step toward moving them from failures to success.
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