Around a year ago, Createquity got discovered, if you will, by a certain Isaac Butler of the Parabasis blog. Isaac is a writer and director active in the theater field, and since Parabasis is one of the central pillars in the “theatrosphere,” as its participants call it, he ended up sending me a lot of traffic. From that point forward, I’ve started to have more and more members of that crew engaging with me in discussions about arts policy and so forth, a development that I’ve really enjoyed, and so in that sense it’s not that remarkable that I’ve been invited to participate in a group reaction to Outrageous Fortune, the study on the problems of new play development that’s been making the rounds out from Theatre Development Fund. But there is one thing about all this that’s kinda weird, and that is that I am not really a theater person at all. In fact, I pretty much knew flat out nothing about theater until maybe two years ago, when I started making a concerted effort to experience other art forms besides music (where I’d spent most of my energies between the ages of 17 and 27). So as I was reading the first chapter of the book and formulating a general response, I kept coming back to that outsider’s perspective: as I read all of this kvetching about the problems endemic to the producer-playwright relationship (or whatever vestigial remnants of it remain today), how is this analogous or not to the problems faced in classical music and jazz, with which I’m much more familiar?
First things first. Outrageous Fortune is, at its core, a book about new plays. It is billed as a study, but my initial sense (and I should clarify that I am still making my way through the book) is that it is closer to a work of journalism than of science. Sure, there are a couple of surveys involved, but the number of respondents is not overwhelming; most of the information presented is gleaned from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with hand-selected participants. So it’s a qualitative investigation into the life of the working playwright and the life of the new play, examined from the perspectives both of those who write the plays and those who are responsible for bringing them to the stage.
Outrageous Fortune paints a none-too-bright picture of the environment for new plays in America. Of principal concern are the economic challenges faced by playwrights and the lack of opportunity for making one’s living through playwriting; the gap in support for mid-career playwrights; the inauthentic professional relationship between playwrights and artistic directors; and the creeping institutionalization of theater that hamstrings true artistic leadership. There’s a lot of nostalgia for bygone eras and erstwhile heroes, from Eugene O’Neill to Joe Papp, the likes of which (it’s implied) we’ll never see again. Broadway and the commercial theater has ceded responsibility for new play development altogether, we’re told; playwrights complain that unconvention in form is brutally punished at the box office, if it ever gets programmed at all; how are writers supposed to develop, the question is posed, if they don’t see their works produced?
It all sounds pretty bad, particularly on economic grounds, and my instinct is to turn a sympathetic ear, but then I put my composer’s hat on and find myself re-evaluating. Wait a minute, I’m thinking, you’re complaining that theater is hostile to new plays when, according to Terry Teachout, the top 9 and 10 of the 11 most-produced plays of the past decade were written after 1993? You’re complaining that artists aren’t nourished when even at regional theaters, a play can expect to be seen most every night for several weeks?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the land of orchestras. A wondrous nation where you’ll find almost every concert (especially at the regional level) dominated by dead white guys, most of whom did their writing before 1893. A vast field in which there is exactly one full-size orchestra dedicated exclusively to music by living composers (the American Composers Orchestra), doing so on a shoestring budget. An environment in which a composer can perhaps hope for several hours of rehearsal time with a new work, so that it can be performed a total of three times, or twice, or once. Ever. In which union regulations often prevent said composer from distributing or even hearing the recording of that one performance for future reference. In which less than one-seventh of those who consider themselves professional composers actually make a living from their work. And for all you diversity kids, get a load of these stats for composers: 80% male and 85% white! (Actually, those numbers are for all composers reached by that particular survey – I’m sure they’re even worse for those who specialize in orchestral music.)
I don’t mean to start an interdisciplinary pissing contest about which artists have it worst off. My point, rather, is this: whatever else is said this week about the problems facing contemporary theater, let’s not forget that many of these issues are common to the arts as a whole, not just the stage. The glut of amazing work that never gets read because there’s no one to evaluate it? Talk to a composer. The rat race and ever-expanding degree requirements to make it in a field that will never pay you money? It’s the conductor’s lament all over again. And as you’re working out your frustration over the system, keep in mind that there may be aspects of how the theater works that actually do work well, and that may even serve as models for other disciplines. For example, I think it’s great that the nonprofit theaters serve (or at least used to serve) as a “farm team” of sorts for the major leagues, aka Broadway. I don’t see it as a problem at all that B’way rarely takes on risky new work; after all, they’re businesses, what do you expect? All I think is, wouldn’t it be awesome if Hollywood plucked its composers from the ranks of the concert music crowd more than once in a blue moon? And what’s so bad about having a play done in multiple locations across the country, reaching different audiences each time? Isn’t that kind of good for live theater, in that it opens up the possibility for a common, shared experience/conversation around specific works among people in different geographic areas — the way such possibilities currently exist for movies and television and books and recorded music and other mass media? Doesn’t that raise awareness of theater as a whole?
Related posts:
12 Comments
This is a little self serving, but i think the whole arts sector basically just needs to learn to jam econo.
what does that mean, Kevin? I mean, i get the Minutemen reference, but what do you mean by it?
I’m still working out these ideas but: before punk, there was basically only bands playing major markets with high-overhead productions in big theaters & arenas, and then there were local bands playing covers in bars. “Jamming econo” meant figuring out ways to tour sustainably with low overhead, creating new systems of exhibition and distribution targeting underserved communities in places generally dismissed as uncultured (think of Black Flag playing Walla Walla Washington, or Beat Happening playing Anacortes, Aberdeen, and Ellensburg and skipping Seattle). Maybe you work a day job like the Minutemen always did. Use of the available means, fore-fronting the politics of those choices.
The microcinema movement has applied the same ethos to film–I’m thinking of people like Bill Daniel, Vanessa Renwick taking their amazing film projects to small alternative spaces, galleries, and punk venues. Use of the available means: embrace the aesthetic boundaries created by technical and financial limitations, the same way musicians embraced cassette culture and the sonic characteristics of 4-track-recording. People like Wynne Greenwood and Khaela Maricich have done similar things with performance art, touring as if they were punk bands.
The biggest challenge, then and now, is that most systems are set up to narrow our attention onto big institutions and Culture Industry products. So here’s another lesson of punk: we need to sharpen our rhetoric; Americans need encouragement to decentralize their cultural tastebuds. We can fantasize about what would happen if a quarter of the people who went to see Avatar a second time instead went to a new play by a local playwright.
The good news is creating a more sustainable infrastructure for the scrappy alternative spaces is way inexpensive. Small investments can really pay off.
What’s this look like for theater? Well: painted cardboard sets look awesome. Or more stuff like this? http://therapidian.org/you-know-girl
Predictably, I totally reject your “feeder” idea of the regional theatre (or any damn theatre at all) for Broadway, much less for Hollywood. A hierarchical approach to the live arts that sees the entire country as the minor league for a single metropolis is basically colonialist, in the sense that a ruling power comes into a colonial zone. exploits is natural resources and leaves nothing behind but a cultural landscape that has been strip-mined into oblivion. Places deserve to have their own artists telling their own stories in their hown style. We don’t need homogenized mall culture. And this is as true of the music scene as the theatre scene. To sanguinely accept such a massified, homegenized approach to culture is really disappointing.
Sorry to disappoint, but I couldn’t disagree more. At the most basic level, I don’t understand in the slightest why having some new plays be performed frequently across the country by different playhouses (and who said they need to be New Yorkers’ plays? I think it would be awesome if, say, a Minnesota or North Carolina-based playwright got picked up in this way) is in any way inconsistent with the notion that “Places deserve to have their own artists telling their own stories in their own style.” Last I checked, many places have more than one theater company, and those theaters do several plays a year. It doesn’t have to be all one thing or the other.
And what’s so bad about mass culture anyway? I think mass culture is only bad if the culture part sucks. Are you telling me you have never, in your life, watched any TV, enjoyed any movies, and that there’s not a single major-label musical artist whose recordings have had an important place in your life? Do you think you would have ever been able to experience their work if they had stuck to playing the local bar or making home videos wherever they grew up?
Of course I have watched and enjoyed TV. movies, pop music and the rest. There is nothing wrong with it, except when it is the only thing around, when local color is removed in favor of mass appeal, and when young people (I am a college prof, remember) are taught that becoming an artist in NYC or LA is the only worthwhile creative path. And had I not had an opportunity to experience TV, movies, and mass music, I might have actually listened to local storytellers and musicians tell me things about my own experience, instead of ranking them as far below the urbanized, massified claptrap that passes for most popular culture.
I guess I just don’t get why only people who share your geographic location can tell you things about your own experience. I think there are many more potential vectors of commonality and catalysts for stimulating exchange than that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on local live arts, but I do not share your rejection of mass culture.
I’m not hating on mass culture, except as it dominates the aesthetic sensibilities and personal goals of art and artists. But in answer to your question, existence is place-specific. The rhythms, colors, metaphors, and images of North Carolina are very, very different from that of New York City — and I say that as someone who has lived in both places. The types of experiences that one has in NC is very different from those of NYC. Oh, sure, there are many points of connection — people fall in love, have children, are born and die in both places. But the actual day-to-day sounds and sights of life are very different. Tell a story about farming to an inner city kid and he won’t know what the hell you’re talking about, in the same way that most farm kinds don’t really understand rap music (despite listening to it). If you accept the need for diversity in the arts, then you have to accept the diversity that is connected to place as part of that.
I dunno, Scott, I think I’d call “a ruling power [that] comes into a colonial zone. exploits is natural resources and leaves nothing behind but a cultural landscape that has been strip-mined into oblivion” hating. But that’s cool…we all got our opinions! ;-)
I can love coffee and hate the exploitative system that grows it! ;-)
Can’t it be both/and? Art is there to tell our story and art is there for us to listen and learn from others’ stories. I for one, having been raised in a suburb of a large city, never understood why anyone would ever choose farming as a profession. It took seeing a lovely intimate show about a farm town to suddenly “get it.” Now, I’m not saying I’d ever give up my urban lifestyle to raise cows, but I certainly see why others not only choose it, but give up so much in order to have that life (hmmm…similar to, say, artists?)
Sure it can — in fact it should! The problem is not either/or, but polarity management, and right now the system is out of whack, totally skewed in favor of the national.