Why Theater Matters (Or Doesn't)

Here Is Where the Fire Started

Earlier last week, the Prof throws out this thought - "Don't quibble about definitions when the woods are burning. Acknowledge there is a Big Problem, that Daisey has hit on some of it, and start trying to think of how to improve the situation."

Most in the theater communities across the Great Land of the Freak and Home of the Brakes would likely agree that there is, indeed, a Big Problem - that the woods are, in fact, burning (or the boat is sinking or the quicksand is sucking us all under - take your pick).

In the wake of my man Barack Obama (and in as much defiance of George W. Bush and the Roll Back the New Deal Movement and Dominate the World's Oil Supply Movement of our outgoing regime), there has been a groundswell of activist talk being flung out into the cybersphere in the hopes that we will all somehow band together and try to think of how to improve the situation.

Mike Daisey thinks the problem lies in the regional theater model (and given his career track, that seems to be in context); George Hunka thinks we've all become basically stupid and accepting of a dumbed down, less enlightened type of theater; The Prof himself thinks the problem is in the inequity of artist standard of living.

The back and forth of positioning opinions and half-baked solutions to the Big Problem is exhausting. That said, it is also necessary. Ultimately, I find myself drawn toward Nick's comment to a recent post:

In a sundry array of alternative models, many more artists are producing theatre in America than those producing under the TCG regional theatre model. Most bloggers in the theatrosphere are involved in producing such alternative theatre. This is an action in and of itself. And collectively it is most important continual challenge to the system.

And while I agree with his perspective, I still find myself wondering where the fire started and is it worth putting out?

One area that it seems we in the theatrospheriums seem to want to avoid talking about is that for most people in the United States, theater is either an esoteric anachronistic past-time for Other People, a once-a-year amusement park ride, or a thing their kids do in school. The handful of us that feel theater is an important cultural contributor is smaller than the number of people who attend Comic Book Conventions across the nation. In essence, for most Americans, theater does not matter in any way whatsoever.

All the talk of creating a new model to get actors in tribes and thus get paid or shifting the priorities of regional administrators to focus more on the actors than the buildings or how to fucking market your show or build an effective Board is literally whistling at the apocalypse. The source of the fire is a systematic apathy for the art form and we aren't discussing that at all.

So...does theater actually matter? Mike Daisey comments that a major difference between a gambler and an artist is that a gambler contributes nothing to society at large and that art does. Really? What exactly does art contribute if most people (and by "most" I mean Almost Fucking Everyone in America) don't give two shits about it?

Poet and teacher Jay Parini takes a stab at this question concerning Why Poetry Matters:

In the 19th century, poets like Scott, Byron, and Longfellow had huge audiences around the world. Their works were best sellers, and they were cultural heroes as well. But readers had few choices in those days. One imagines, perhaps falsely, that people actually liked poetry. It provided them with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings. They enjoyed folk ballads, too. In a sense, music and poetry joined hands.

In the 20th century, something went amiss. Poetry became "difficult." That is, poets began to reflect the complexities of modern culture, its fierce disjunctions. The poems of Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens asked a lot of the reader, including a range of cultural references to topics that even in the early 1900s had become little known. To read Pound and Eliot with ease, for instance, one needed some knowledge of Greek and Latin poetry. That kind of learning had been fairly common among educated readers in the past, when the classics were the bedrock of any upper-middle-class education. The same could not be said for most readers in the 20th century — or today, when education has become more democratized and the study of the classics has been relegated to a small number of enthusiasts. The poems of the canonical poets of high modernism require heavy footnotes.

From my limited vantage point, I'd say that the turning point in the 20th century for live theater was when people no longer had to go out of their homes to see stories told. Live theater had it's Golden Age in the 1930's and 1940's and had been declining in attendance ever since. It ain't so much a fire as a slow leak of interest.

Contributing to the leak is the insistence that theater is IMPORTANT and CULTURAL but without any quantitative examples of how or why it is important or culturally significant and as theater's reach has slowly been amputated, it has become less and less important or culturally significant.

So, not to diminish the burning importance of revising the regional theater model, the tribal/ensemble model updated from the sixties, or the Off Loop Freedom Charter as things to bandy back and forth, how about we figure why the hell anyone that isn't already in the theater should give a fuck?

We go back to Myra, the Hair Cuttery lady of a couple of weeks ago. As I wrote then, I'm not terribly interested in convincing Myra to come see my show in spite of the fact that in my egotistical artist brain I KNOW she would love it. This isn't because I think she is stupid or uncultured or that, hell, I don't need her patronage. It is simply that, in order to sell her on my show, I have to sell her on live theater and, baby, I ain't got the time - because I'm working on my freakin' show!

Ethan rightly points out:

The economic explanation for why most theater artists do starve is that a theater professional is not as heavily demanded as a lawyer, and there is an an abundance of theater people over what is demanded. This creates a surplus of theater workers, which means more unemployment. Demand, however, is elastic, and it can increase. If steps can be taken to shift a demand curve to the right, then there will be more theatrical professionals making more money. The demand could increase by creating more lively, cheaper theater. Lively and cheap theater requires artists who can take risks without worrying about starving because their medical bills are so high.

And, in keeping with my current outlook, those artists Ethan refers to are those who create outside of the current model of business.

Perhaps it isn't important to put out the fire. I'm a proponent of the "burn it all down and rebuild it from the ground up." On the other hand, I'm more often drawn to Nick's thesis that the very act of producing theater outside the norm - alternative to the models we all know are fucked - is revolutionary in itself - a revolution of one show at a time. And given that my personal yardstick of success (unlike the Prof or Mike Daisey apparently) has absolutely fuckall to do with money or monetary value, I suppose that's revolution enough.

After all, when I look around Chicago (in general) I'm seeing all sorts of extraordinarily good theater being created and performed, so perhaps, outside of the Big (money) Problem, there is no fire at all.

I could not live without poetry, which has helped me to live my existence more concretely, more deeply. It has shaped my thinking. It has enlivened my spirit. It has offered me ways to endure my life (I'm rephrasing Dr. Johnson here), even to enjoy it. -- Jay Parini

Ditto for theater.