by 99 Seats
I've been thinking a lot about the future. On a lot of different axes. And I've been thinking about theatre. One of the reasons I've been largely radio-silent lately is that I was very busy. I got pretty lucky and had a nice run of readings, workshop presentations, commissions and whatnot to keep me on my toes. It also kept me out of theatres, mostly, at rehearsals or facing looming writing deadlines. So, to be honest, most of my theatre experience of late has been second-hand: reading invites on Facebook, hearing reports from folks who've seen shows, etc. I'm not proud of it. In fact, in many ways, I feel rather embarrassed by it. This is my chosen field, after all, and most of these shows involve friends and colleagues. I should show up to them, if only to insure that they'll show up to see my work. Plus...this is a tough business and we should all be there for each other. So, to everyone, I apologize.
That's part of why I haven't been writing about theatre much here lately. The other part is...what would I write about? Seriously. What's going on that requires comment, discussion, dissection? There was the Guthrie contretemps, but that seems to have resolved itself nicely. The NY theatre season announcements have actually been fairly delightful, intriguing and interesting. My bugaboo of diversity seems to be satisfied for the large part, really. We're in award season and I've been quite pleased to see some good friends and colleagues win awards and accolades. The Tonys, as indicated by Isaac's post here and the New York magazine articles he links to here and here, seem to have caused some consternation about musical theatre...but the unspoken word there seems to be "Broadway." As far as I can see, musical theatre is doing pretty well: some very exciting playwrights are creating musicals, a lot of the major Off-Broadway houses have new musicals in their next seasons, people are still making them. Honestly, the same goes for new plays. It seems like, for the time being, we've hit some sort of equillibrium: there are new plays by exciting new writers planned, the indie scene here in the city feels really coalesced and connected in many ways, and lots of communities are coming together and connecting. Again, this is just a cursory glance, as I pull my head out of my own, um, trench, and look out over the field. I'm sure I'm missing things, or ignoring things, or failing in various ways that will rapidly be brought to my attention.
So the question that comes to me is: what if this is it? A lot of us invest a lot of time in being semi-professionally upset about things. We want change! We want it now! What if, though, there won't be any significant changes? What if the new movement in theatre is here, it's now established and this is it? We've landed at Steady State: Broadway is a place for mass entertainments at a price set for tourists, Off-Broadway and the regionals will continue to cater to an aging, upper-middle class audience with the occasional feint in the direction of diversity, the indie scene will remain largely segregated by class, race, gender and sexuality with occasional cross-pollination, and theatre will, in general, continue to hover in this place, this narrow, wobbly space between being a luxury good for cultural elites and something that connects to a wider audience. What if that's what we can expect for the duration? It does seem fairly resistant to change. Oh, we have our little flare-ups, dust-ups, scandals, donnybrooks, but pretty quickly, order is restored. The natural order of things re-asserts itself and the whole system spins on.
So. What if this is it? What do we do then?
Whatever the language, we - the indie theaters - are just sitting here and taking it, while another big not-for-profit turned broadway house opens a fancy nightclub.
We're so busy being pissed off at the financial world's 1%, we miss how the 1% of big theaters grow a wider and wider financial gap from the 99% of NYC's other theaters.
The big theaters get 99% of the foundation funding, they get 99% of the govt funding, they get the tax breaks, and they get their elected leaders line item funding. So they open fancy nightclubs that working actors will never be able to afford. And the majority of the City's theaters get less and less funding that in days past was meant for them.
And we have nothing to talk about, and fewer blogs that once talked about it. Is this what it means to get what we deserve?
Posted by: RLewis | June 01, 2012 at 01:02 PM
If this is it, we're finished. But I remind myself about what Buckminster Fuller said: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." I haven't written much lately either, because I've come to the conclusion that Fuller is right. That's why I'm not going to the TCG meeting -- those people don't want to change anything significant, they just want to figure out better ways to keep doing what they're doing. So like a rate leaving a sinking ship, I am hopping off onto a new raft.
Posted by: Scott Walters | June 03, 2012 at 08:23 PM
Part of my question is: how are we defining "finished" here? And a follow-up: who's "we?" The large institutions, which have few real incentives to change anything about the way they do things and a lot of disincentives not to do a blessed thing, they're not going away. A number of mid-sized and small institutions haven't weathered economic environment and have shuttered, but there seem to be other, newer institutions rising to prominence to fill those gaps (in some cases). The "indie" theatres are doing innovative stuff, but it's mostly small-bore, localized and, apparently, irreproducible. Out here in the blogosphere, we talk about new models and some of us create them, but, again, the effects tend to be localized.
I guess the larger point I'm wrestling with is...what if actual change is not coming, not any time soon at all? What if the ship, though listing and certainly captained by people you and I disagree with, isn't going down, but it isn't going to change course at all? How do we interact with a theatre community like that?
Posted by: 99 | June 04, 2012 at 09:49 AM
I think the bigger institutions ARE going to change -- by change, I mean collapse.
My personal answer to your last question: I don't. I have given up on the theatre community, a fact which has freed me to imagine alternatives of a very different kind. It's a stoic approach -- focus on what you have the ability to change.
Posted by: Scott Walters | June 04, 2012 at 10:16 PM
That's not a bad approach. In the end, the actual point, of course, is the audience. They're the ones you want to reach and be in conversation with.
Posted by: 99 | June 05, 2012 at 08:38 AM
If the audience is the point, then what if they're happy? If we build it and no one comes, what's the point? I'm not saying we shouldn't try (or YOU shouldn't - I freely admit to being entrenched in the establishment) but I think all of us, big and small, need to let go of the "More people should see theatre because WE say it's good for you" attitude. If they (whichever "they" we're talking about in the moment) don't want to come, why are we forcing them? We need to make things people want to see, and they'll see them. There are lots and lots of people out there, so there are lots of things they might want to see. Let's make them.
Posted by: Adam807 | June 24, 2012 at 02:20 PM