I had a fascinating chat with the Artistic Director of a struggling regional theatre yesterday and among many interesting tidbits that were exchanged, he said something that kind of blew my mind. He said the problem ailing most American regional theatres today is that they all share a similar aesthetic. In other words you can't really distinguish between the seasons of The Guthrie, Long Wharf and South Coast Rep, for example. I had never heard it put quite this way. At first I balked but then I thought he actually had an interesting point. I filtered his comment through my own playwright-focused lens to mean: they’re all basically pulling shows from the same pool of writers. I imagine if you sat down and made a list of all the writers who’ve been produced at the major regionals over the past 15 years. I doubt it would exceed 200. Do you? Now that may seem like a high number but it’s not really when you consider that doollee.com boasts more than 20,0000 playwrights in its online database. Even if you allow that 80% of them may be “talent-free,” (an expression coined by my pal Jerry Kaplan), that would mean that there are at least 4,000 who regularly churn out scripts worthy of production. And yet we all know the number of well-funded productions in well-established regionals in this country doesn’t even approach that number. Well, there's really not the audience for that much theatre but that's a subject for another post altogether... But I digress. What struck me about this gentleman’s comment (and I’m not naming him because I expect he was talking off the cuff and off the record) was that this was not true 25 years ago when the likes of Robert Brustein, Ellen Stewart and Garland Wright (to name just three off the top of my head) were leading theatre companies.
Vision.
Bold
irrational
VISION.
The kind of vision that led Sarah Cauldwell to bankrupt the Opera Company of Boston. Now, one could argue that bankruptcy is never good. And I’m not suggesting all these companies need is a few dozen cloned Peter Sellars’ to run them into the ground with extravagant indulgences of artistic fancy. But Sarah Cauldwell had fans. When she failed, she failed big. But, man, when she succeeded, it was glorious!
Are there artistic directors who do this now?
Today, as Gary Garrison recently pointed out, even tiny theatres can't manage the rent. Today, subscription offices in most regionals are obsessed with one thing: consumer choice. Subscribers are being transformed into consumers. I myself purchased a flex pass at one of New York’s “regionals” succumbing to the obvious allure. Why wouldn’t I want to offer up 250 bucks in exchange for 6 vouchers, which I can use for any show I like, i.e. after my friends and family have told me either “run, run, run and see this show” or “stay away.” But calling me a subscriber is ridiculous. I’m a consumer. I’m picking and choosing what I buy. And by doing so, I may be slowly killing one theatre.
I only subscribe to one brand, actually. His name is Woody Allen. Woody Allen makes a lot of films. He’s almost as prolific as your average regional theatre. I buy a ticket to every film he makes, regardless of reviews or pre-review buzz. Sometimes he fails. But when he succeeds, man is he genius. So I have chosen to take the risk. Because over time Woody Allen has proven himself to be worth the risk. Frankly, even a failed Woody Allen film is more interesting to me than a so-called successful film-by-committee.
I’m looking forward to entering into similar relationships with the Artistic Directors of some of our regional theatres. But unfortunately at present time, they’re so busy navigating the waters of institutional longevity, they have little time or energy to dream.
More than 20 years ago when I was myself an Artistic Director of a small struggling opera company in Boston, I had a friendship with another Artistic Director. We were similar in that we both had bold and sometimes audacious productions. The press often didn’t know what to make of us. I’m still on the mailing list of his theatre company and it saddens me a little bit to notice how slowly over the years his bold visions for the stage have morphed into bold visions for fundraising gimmicks. Year after year, this company’s newsletter boasts of this program to serve this community, or that program to fix this social ill. And you can almost read between the lines of the Artistic Director’s report each month and see “grant, grant, corporate pet issue, individual donor pet project, grant, grant…”
I’m afraid we’ve lost our way. And the reason is simple. Without government funding of the Arts, artistic institutions naturally have to turn their creative energy to bringing in more dollars from more untapped resources and slowly over time they become shadows of their former selves. I don’t know what we can do at the local level, other than to encourage risk taking and to applaud the show we don’t immediately understand, the show that maybe doesn’t excite us right away but perhaps paves the way for the next one to be that amazing gem we'll never forget.
