Open Source Theatricals: A World Class Theatre Town?:
Mike Daisey's article in The Stranger, The Empty Spaces, motivates. He sums up the argument against the status quo reasonably well but overlooks the fundamental cause. Theatre history teaches us that there's a relationship between competition and quality. A theatre on subsidized life support is incapable of innovating and competing against other forms of entertainment. So long as benefactors find value in a comatose art form, our theatre will live on unchanged.
The basic conventions of our theatre haven't changed since Ibsen's Pillars of Society opened in 1877. Social drama remains the dominant genre. Thesis driven chamber pieces requiring four actors and a couch are our stock in trade. Neither have produced a masterpiece on par with the greatest plays of the past, nor have they resulted in a popular, profitable and vital theatre. That curtain fell on a vital theatre when non-profit tax exemptions became law. Still, season after season, we keep raising the curtain hoping a miracle is waiting in the wings. And when it's the same old plays by the same old dead playwrights, we get a new head shot, dust off the monologues and get in line. Exceptions happen, some are excellent, but none have altered the course of our theatre.
The thing I find most depressing about all of this is our lack of imagination. We can imagine a 48-hour play festival and make it a reality, we can imagine the plays of Shakespeare and Shepard and Moliere and Mamet into existence, yet we can't imagine a theatre more popular, vital and relevant than basic cable.
6:38 PM
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