I make theatre and I like to sail. My theatrical vocation and my nautical hobby permit me to observe that America’s distorted version of theatre exactly parallels its distorted vision of lighthouses. The distortion is more visible as concerns lighthouses because it leaves artifacts; the flea market in Wallingford, Connecticut (from which I’ve just returned) contains a generous sampling.
Anyone who’s sailed coastal waters at night or in bad weather owes his life (or, at the very least, the safety of his vessel) to lighthouses. They are utilitarian structures, made to withstand heavy weather. Many are old because they were built to last, usually at great expense and under difficult conditions. The Coast Guard classifies them as “aids to navigation,” a category that now includes buoys, stationary channel markers and a variety of gongs and beacons. Lighthouses, which date back to ancient times, were the first aids to navigation and still play a vital role in guiding crafts of all sizes (though not so uniquely vital in these days of GPS and radar as in day of the pharos of Rhodes).
As one who’s been alone on a boat and lost, peering into the darkness to spot one of their characteristic flashes, I can affirm that I cherish every lighthouse I see, but cherishing and sentimentalizing are not the same thing. Indeed, they are opposites: sentimentality is the ossification of love.
In gift shops, thrift stores and the pages of glossy magazines we find lighthouses galore. Whether in porcelain or plastic, plaster or plywood, these representations rarely capture the life-preserving seriousness of the structures they celebrate. They are prettified and trivialized, fitted out with cute little shutters and improbable flowerbeds. (Of necessity, lighthouses are exposed to salt and spray. Many are built on bare rock, an unlikely support for geraniums.) The relative proportions of model lighthouses are rarely those of actual buildings. The light itself is often gigantic, creating far more windage than the tower could safely sustain. The keeper’s cottage is fantastically larger and more comfortable than in real life. In print illustrations we invariably, we see an admiring claque of seagulls and perhaps the keeper’s little dog as well. The sun is usually shining – conditions that make the light itself unnecessary.
We’ve done a parallel disservice to the theatre: we’ve allowed an ancient institution of high purpose to devolve to something merely decorative, an appurtenance of leisured life, not a preserver of life itself. Theatre no longer guides, it distracts. Theatre no longer orients, it diverts. Theatre no longer flashes out danger, it celebrates good feeling. We’ve lost any visceral sense of what theatre is for. Like the lighthouses of popular imagination it’s perceived as quaint. It’s become a tourist attraction.
At the summit discussion Peter Marks organized this spring at Arena Stage, five Artistic Directors bemoaned the lack of diversity in playwrights and directors, the lack of young people in the audience, the high cost of production, and the high cost of tickets. Their confab produced a flurry of derisive tweets blaming the bemoaners themselves for all these shortcomings.
I found myself unable to take sides on these questions because my mind couldn’t let go of a statistic somebody mentioned in passing: according to the NEA, the audience for theatre has declined by a third in ten years.While we debate how to make theatre cheaper and more inclusive, a good part of our audience is dying off or learning to live without us.
Artaud believed that theatre was a question of life or death. If he were apprised of our situation, I think he’d tell us to stop prettifying the keeper’s cottage and make sure the beacon stays lit. Theatre’s mission, he might say, is not to guarantee fairness or ease of access for its practitioners but to preserve imperiled souls in the world at large. A necessary theatre must necessarily shine forth; pierce the darkness – and save lives. When it ceases to do so – and the world finds out – a long irrelevance awaits in pretty pastel tones.
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– Robert Schneider teaches drama and theatre criticism at Northern Illinois University.
He is a dramaturg, reviewer, playwright, and occasional actor. He has contributed articles, interviews and opinion pieces to Theater Magazine, Plays International, American Theatre, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times. His translation of the Rabinal Achi was published by the University of Colorado Press in 2007.
A lot has been said in the comments, many make good points
The model of how we build theatre is simply no longer working. Season Tickets holders are dwindling we need to come up with another way of holding onto our spaces and making them vital to the community they reside in. Ticket price is out of control and has put what should be an art form everyone can come to out of the reach of many.
Corps like Disney have homogenized theatre to a point that we only hear about the musicals. and work that appeals to the lowest possible denominator, Hallmark on stage. Why do we let this happen? In New York, what was once the hub of American theatre, is now a gentrified city where artists cannot afford to live. Without the Off and Off-Off broadway theaters no really exciting new materiel will come out of New York.
American theatre is in many ways is years behind its counterpart in the rest of the Western world, funding and education have played their parts in this but we are far to wrapped up “my” work and are not really looking at the work. Most of the work that I find moving and relevant comes from foreign companies, Knee High, Complicite, DV8 they are building work that resonates we should be able to do the same.
Building small works that can travel or deal with the audience in a different way is key to keeping theatre alive. What i hear mostly is makers who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I understand the frustration the old systems and companies are still getting the bulk of the funding so it is twice as hard to build, but it is still possible. They are desperate to find a way to keep the roof over their heads partnerships need to be formed, where news and unconventional ways of working get a leg up from the the theatres that are trying to build and expand their dwindling audience base.
Good solid work needs time to build, that’s just the truth of it. You want something as strong as Angels in America understand how long it took to get the work where it is now. New plays need work and development they are not amazing right out of the first reading. this requires people who believe in the potential of that work.
These are just the thoughts that are constantly running through my head as a middle aged artistic director of a small independent theatre company who is finishing his education abroad because the challenge I find here is stronger than the institutions in the US. Academics are needed and we need to know our history, but Theatre is a living art form. I cannot listen to people still quoting a man who wrote in his own excrement. It no longer means anything in the 21st century, frankly Im not sure it meant much at the time it was written. I have found that most, not all, but most academics have no idea how to build actual work. We need you ,we need real critics who know theatre and theatre history and can communicate to a modern audience what they are about to see or what they should go see. But you need to be able to speak in a way people will listen to you and not just shut you off, and write you off as a talking head. These summits about theatre lack the very people who should be there, the ones out in the trenches making and building.
You say that “only one thing may reasonably be called the purpose of theatre.” I disagree. In ancient Greece (and later, in the Middle Ages) performances were held to glorify God and bring honor to the city. If Greek playwrights were sometimes fined for misleading the polis, we can reasonably assume that the polis expected them normally to act as a beacon. In Shakespeare’s day (if we’re to believe Hamlet) the theatre held a mirror up to nature in which it showed virtue her feature, scorn her own image “and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” In our own postwar period, people looked to the theatre for moral insight and uplift. By your own admission, theatre doesn’t do that any more, or does it so rarely that it seems an aberration when it happens. That’s exactly the point I made in my article.
I don’t see that we have any quarrel.
“A light in the top”? Still hammering the lighthouse metaphor, are you?
All the things you mentioned are totally incidental political bullshit and have nothing to do with the only thing that can reasonably be called the “purpose” of theatre, or any art, which is the excellence of the artistry, itself. Just go to any “big-name” play of the last 20-30 years, and what you inevitably get is a lot of PC leftist screeds (and I AM a leftist), tin-eared dialogue, clunky attempts at poetics, and literary elements (metaphor, symbolism, etc.) so obvious and ham-fisted as to insult the intelligence of most intelligent, art-literate folks in attendance. Just as in other MFA’d spheres of the arts and humanities, most works are workshopped to death, which almost always has the effect of diluting quality artistry, rather than expanding it. Add in the fact that most of these plays are significantly more expensive than a plenum of other possibilities that, quite frankly, are almost certainly more fulfilling (one can access almost the entire Criterion Collection for about $10/month by signing up for Hulu Plus, for example), and it’s no wonder that theatre is on the decline, as who can afford $15-20 for a ticket to a show that will almost certainly be of an inferior quality to what is readily and inexpensively available?
Maybe you don’t see plays being censored because many are censored (or “developed”) long before they reach the professional stage.
Voices in Conflict, a play using oral history testimony from Iraq vets, was censored at Wilton High School in Connecticut in 2007, and subsequently went on to play at the Public Theater and the Culture Project. I saw an amazing production of it by the youth theater at Central Square Theater, Cambridge, Ma, directed by Vincent Siders in 2008.
I mean, not to cherry pick, but just off the top of my head, the outrage over Mike Daisey in 2012 certainly provoked a response.
This is a fascinating thread and mirrors my recent thought process as I contemplate the closing of my small Manhattan theater next summer, due to the very reasons John Glass mentions – and the soaring price of real estate in New York. I think we have to find a way to keep the alive-ness of live theater, while making it available online. I don’t know how yet. I agree that hand-wringing and longing for the good old days is not the answer. There’s a lot of flurry around digital storytelling. Though I consider theater to be far more than simple storytelling, it does involve a story, and we may be able to work with digital media without losing all the value of the live experience. My intention is to move out west, rent a studio, and create a company that rotates in and out from NYC and elsewhere, and that collaborates on new works for an invited audience. I want a space with room for 15 audience members, where paying the rent is kept possible by keeping costs down and capitalizing on the intimacy of the space, and finding a way to put the results online.
Concerning the “When were you last in a house that greeted a curtain call with rival choruses of cheers and boos?” question: I saw a production of Cabaret in a small, conservative, farm-town. The curtain call had the cast heil-ing…. Their instruction was to “hiel” until the entire house had exited…. It was incredible.
The cigar industry is going through a little schism where the youth are trying to be more inclusive. It started with the introduction of flavored acids in the early 90’s. (Which, any “cigar person” will tell you acids are the shaft end of cigars….) But 20 years later they’re actually doing interesting/relevant/important things with the craft. If the theatre industry has to do a similar thing, I’m for it. But the key word here is “popular”, meaning we get more butts in seats.
That’s the point we’re missing. Does the public see the theater as an aesthetic given? Is it geared towards me, the blue-collared average Joe? Or is it something more engaging? Something that concerns me *specifically* as a valued member of society? It’s our job to shift the craft towards that more engaging side of the spectrum, and it’s incredible to see how we manage that.
I like to think my ivory tower has a light in the top.
There’s no harm in people being entertained at the theatre, the more, the merrier!
But when did an American play last provoke a riot — or even a demonstration? Was it Corpus Cristi? Or My Name is Rachel Corrie? When was an American play last censored? Or denounced by someone in public office? No, theatre has become too marginal and activity to be either hated or feared.
When were you last in a house that greeted a curtain call with rival choruses of cheers and boos? Or even an isolated boo? In America, ovations are the rule — very often standing. As a rule we’re well pleased with what we see, but isn’t that because our expectations weren’t high to begin with? An audience that only comes to the theatre only expecting an evening’s entertainment will rarely get more than that.
It’s not cynical to think that theatre is capable of greater things.
Patrick,
It sounds like you’ve got a good thing going. That a show that “kills” gets put on in a funeral home is deliciously appropriate. Carry on bravely!
Bob
Not clear on what this writer thinks are the remedies for the decline in theater attendance numbers. But I easily lose patience with academics who throw Artaud at you, then retire to their ivory towers…or their sailboats…
I was at the Summit sessions this writer refers to. At each session every person in the room was in favor of a growing, healthy, long-lasting theater scene in DC and beyond.
To my mind, if a theatrical experience hits you in the heart, hits you in the brain, and hits you in the eye, it’s an experience worth taking the time for — and worth suggesting to others that they too take time for. “Preserving imperiled souls in the world at large” isn’t 100% mandatory.
Hi Bob,
I haven’t read/seen David Edgar’s Pentecost, I will look that one up. That’s a very tricky mission, setting out to save the nation. As a writer, the thought of setting out to do that terrifies me. I’m glad we do have people like Mr. Kushner and Mr. Edgar that are capable of hitting so many incredible concepts in one sitting, and I strive for that.
I’d be curious to hear what strikes you so much about these plays, just to continue the conversation where no one is saying things like, “You’re wrong! How dare you have a strong opinion!” The irony. I’ve included my LinkedIn profile here with my name, feel free to get in touch and hopefully speak more soon.
I love this type of discussion.
My best,
Ben
While you can make a case for lack of diversity, the quality of writing, ticket prices, programming, etc, etc., I view the many competing forms of entertainment and technology as the chief culprits for theater’s decline. There is so much out there and only so much time to see it. Until theater becomes more attractive than music, sports, dining, movies (whose attendance is also falling), television, and just hanging out with your friends, it will remain what it has been for a number of years: a niche activity in a tightening market. Throw in the hassle factor – traffic, parking, logistics – a night at home with HD and Wi-Fi is often more attractive than a night out. For an increasing number of people, the virtual experience (on demand, in 3D, with surround sound) is preferable, if not superior, to the live event.
I’m sorry, but this is simply a poorly-written, out-of-touch, melodramatic article whose faults are as illustrative of the WHY of the decline of theatre’s import as anything else. Theatre, like all art, is “quite useless”, to quote a writer with far more in the way of intellectual bona fides than Artaud. Art, the practice of which separates us from other animals, is a product of the physiological quality that separates us from other animals: complex intelligence. It did not exist in a recognizable form for billions of years, precisely because it is unnecessary for survival – a rote thing, in any sphere. Practicing art is a luxury, a sign that a species has advanced enough that it has both the intelligence (individual and collective), the free time, and the material resources that allow it to begin manipulating the world for the sake of pleasure and, perhaps, enlightenment.
Theatre isn’t declining because it’s “no longer necessary”, for it was NEVER necessary, in the way lighthouses are still necessary to minimize maritime deaths. Theatre is declining because it’s too expensive for young people to attend and develop an interest, and because even if they can afford it, they’re treated to a contemporary theatrical landscape that is but a pale shadow of its glory days. Contemporary practitioners often bemoan the fact that people only seem to want to see old plays by long-dead writers, but this is only a fair complaint if they are producing work that is on a par, in terms of quality, with that of the masters (Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Chekhov, O’Neill, Williams, etc.), which they manifestly are not; or at least, they are not doing so on a platform that is at all well-publicized.
Bring quality to the fore, and the viewers will return. As it stands, the theatre is peopled by practitioners that preach to their own choirs (also generally small, given how fractured the landscape is), and articles like this are basically a recipe for the kind of PC, preachy crap that pushes most would-be appreciators away, thereby making theatre even less important and undermining the author’s very goal.
All true and we can all congratulate ourselves on believing theater is important. The author of this lament is free to commit an act of theater at any place, at any time. Such an act will be just as legitimate as any act performed by the large institutions he deems dead. Yes Mr Artaud was an interesting man, thank you. And so were Mr Stanislavsky , Mr Aristotle, Ms Hansberry, young Treplev, and centuries of others who have asked for the same thing from the theater since we sat around campfires telling the tales of the hunt and critiquing the shaman’s choreography. No, my life has not been changed by seeing many pretty pieces of fluffy entertainment, but I am confident many lives have been changed by just such experiences.
We all do what we need to do with what we got. Theater ain’t going to die, and God knows we’ve tried everything we can think of to kill it.
The author might begin his own revitalization of the form by shaping this lighthouse essay into a dramatic monologue. Then perhaps we can learn why in the name of all the saints he would be sailing alone at night searching for a lighthouse.. Virginia, meet Eugene.
Ben,
If your theatrical seascape is more vital than mine, I’m happy for you. The theatre can still save individual lives, no question. Since Angels in America (or David Edgar’s Pentecost) I have trouble thinking of a play that set out to save the nation.
Bob
I did my one-man show for 100+ people in Faribault, MN last Friday and I’d guess most of the audience rarely attends “the theater.” Maybe one or two would know the names you cite. Maybe. Two weekends earlier I played a funeral home in Protovin, IA. The room was the largest in town with air conditioning, so that’s where they booked the gig. My show is subversive, and it kills. I get asked back, plus I take it to Europe.
Ten years ago I chucked a 20-year career in theater management and I don’t miss the windy conferences and hand-wringing one bit. I LOVE taking my show to a patchwork of odd places that I consider a bit in spirit with the gigs Spaulding Gray, Begosian, et al played before “the theater” paid attention. That is, I play many venues that don’t show up on a list of real venues. But the people who come are real. Most aren’t hipsters, but they are moved.
Sinatra didn’t frequent the Cavern Club, and John Lennon didn’t hang at CBGB. The LORT audience is dying, to be replaced by something else. It’s not such a bad thing.
Hi Mark,
I wrote a reply earlier with a handful of shows, but I’m not seeing it. Are you able to?
Strange.
-Ben
[editor’s note: Just found Ben’s reply in spam and posted it.]
Theatre isn’t dying. Business models are.
Hi Mark,
Absolutely. A lot of my favorites tend to be set in an immersive environment, but there are plenty that just need a classic proscenium. And not only in NYC, I could recommend some wonderful productions I’ve ever seen in the past or know about going on in the major cities across the US.
My recent favorites:
-The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer
-Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Molloy (based on War and Peace)
-Here Lies Love by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim
-Peter And The Starcatcher by Rick Elice (based on the book by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson)
-Nearly everything produced by Ars Nova in NYC.
Also, check out plays by Annie Baker, especially Circle Mirror Transformation and The Flick.
I’m a big Chekhov fan, but those are a given.
Let me know if you have a more specific preference, and I could help find plays more suited to your tastes.
My best,
Ben
off the top of my head, a list of plays that engage in a vital way with culture, humanity, and life and death. Theatre is in a great place right now. There will always be boulevard theatre — the Roundabout and MTC come to mind — but we need that too sometimes. In any case, I think you’re wrong.
MR BURNS
STUNNING
MARIE ANTOINETTE
FAR AWAY
MIDDLETOWN
THE REALISTIC JONESES
RUINED
THE FLICK
THE CHRISTIANS
AN OCTAROON
DISGRACED
Um. First of all, the essence of good writing is severely lacking. You can’t drone on about the metaphor of your essay, getting caught up in waxing about the imagistic and liturgic nature of lighthouses, to only pound through your statement halfway down. I’m sorry you feel theatre no longer makes you question the art of sustenance, life, or, even bemuses you,… but what are you seeing? Where have you been? And who keeps Peter Marks as their reserve go-to on all things theatre? Read RoseLee Goldberg. Read Polly Carl. Read something other than a critic… read a curator! I’m sorry, but to me this sounds like the sigh of an artist stuck in academia, writing at 2am on a toilet roll about their utter lack of interest in the state of affairs as they see them.
All the inflated talk about “the theater” makes me laugh. Oskar Eustis (of The Public) can talk like that. The rest of us have to fight for our lives in this non-business every single day. We don’t have the luxury of being intellectuals. We do theater, like poetry, like painting, like writing, because we have to, not because of some academic ideals, but because it’s who we are. People ask me why theater? You can’t make a living from theater, and they’re right. Theater doesn’t give you a living, it gives you a life. The economics and the demographics say we have a wealthy, older, and educated audience. These are the people who keep theater alive, and everyone, including major institutions like The Kennedy Center, The Shakespeare and Arena Stage, is chasing after them. Younger people can’t afford the tickets, the sales of which rarely covers the cost of a modest regional production. As for all the other DC theaters, large (Sig, Woolly, Studio, Theater J) and small (No Rules, Constellation, The Hub, etc.) there is simply too much theater chasing too little audience. Great for the audience, great for the actors, not so great for the board members and artistic directors who never have quite enough to keep their ventures going. I frequently remind myself that this is the life we have chosen, and every challenge was fully disclosed to us at the start of our individual journeys. Those who persist in this devilish, difficult art form have this in common: they’re broke, and they’re in love with the process. We do it to do it. And that is all.
Hi Ben,
Could you share your list of current works that have changed your life and view on the world stage?
Best,
Mark Schneider
Thank you for teaching the next generation! You are the reason we’ll have an audience for years to come.
Hi Robert,
You mention Artaud, a man who spent years in a sanatorium, and practiced & theorized about theatre from the Nazi-bombed-out French living rooms. His theatre truly was life and death, because it reflected everything else in his life. As an old saying goes, somebody born in a burning building thinks the world is on fire.
I love that you bring this up, but I fear that your statements are the result of a lack of challenging theatre in your own world *through no fault of your own*. Only certain plays will reach any given market because of publishers / more-well-known theatrical seasons / so forth. We have wonderful new pieces that keep me on my toes here and now, and I would be happy to discuss current works that have changed my life (and my view on the world stage) that wouldn’t be found in the published ‘New Plays of 2014’ that may find its way to any given desk.
My best,
Ben Bartolone
Wow. On this muggy Labor Day and day off from my job as a high school theatre teacher, Mr. Schneider has given me – and all of us who care about or toil in the vineyards of the theatre in some fashion – much to ponder and chew on. Piercing the darkness and saving lives – heady stuff. But worth the effort.