What's Wrong With Theater?

[Joanne98]

Monologist Mike Daisey raises hell about how corporate attitudes broke the American stage -- and why a simple application of government stimulus alone can't fix it.

Richard Byrne | January 16, 2009

In the offices of arts and theater administrators, acclaimed monologist Mike Daisey is not a popular man these days. His latest performance piece, How Theatre Failed America, is a sharp poke in the eye to the current theater establishment -- questioning its priorities and critiquing the insidious influence of naked corporatization on U.S. theater.
Speaking at a simple desk under the lights, Daisey wipes away buckets of sweat as he argues that the regional stages in most American cities have become "machines that make theatre." The need to recoup huge capital outlays for impressive -- even gaudy -- new buildings compel artistic directors to flee from innovative works into the cozy embrace of "risk averse" and "bullet proof" programming.

Worst of all, says Daisey, the frenzied scramble to lure younger theater-goers with cut-rate tickets to replace an audience that is "drying up and dying out" has left stage companies haunted by a blunt and foreboding thought: "What if we gave all the tickets away and no one came?"

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=whats_wrong_with_theater

[sduke97]

1. kicked

[monmouth]

2. If it wasn't for theatre I'd have very little reason to visit New York. Many

times I've flown up for a play from Florida and the plane is full with people with the same thought.

[leftyclimber]

3. Agreed completely. Theatre needs to get its focus back on the actors and the acting

and quit obsessing over who has the biggest stars, most expensive buildings, greatest special effects, and most expensive lighting budgets (Miss Saigon was the point where this really went over the edge IMO, although we had been leading up to it for some time by that point). It's impossible to take an artistic risk when you're pouring millions of dollars into a production. I'm not suggesting lowering the quality of production values; I'm suggesting that the price tag of such should stop being the arbitrator of what makes a show worth producing, promoting, or seeing.

There was this German thing in the 19th century called an Eidefusikon (sp). It was basically a box that displayed incredible (for the time) theatrical effects. No actors. In some cases some of the productions that go up now might as well be an Eidefusikon, because people aren't coming to see great acting, great directing, or a great script in action -- they're coming to see the latest expensive technical gewgaw that someone has invented. It's not economically sustainable, nor does it serve the theatre well in the long term, as the whole thing becomes a glitz and flash competition rather than about making good plays with good playwrights and good actors and good directors and good production crews and so on.

Some of the smaller theatre companies are among the most innovative and vibrant, from an artistic standpoint, but they have a hell of a time getting butts in seats because there's no glitz, flash, or big names. Unfortunately, as is pointed out in this article, it will take not only a change in the attitudes of the theatre world itself, but a cultural change in the US, where there is a cultural obsession with the newest, biggest, brightest, shiniest thing and getting a piece of it. Theatre bought in and now we are paying for it with dark houses.