An Amazing Read

Someday, I hope to be as eloquent as this man, Mike Daisey.

A wild and wooly Saturday Night

Friends,

I've been thinking. Is there hope for a renewed exciting theatre of vitality? Is theatre going to die out?

I can't answer the first question, but I think I can take a stab at answering the second. It's a statement you hear all the time. Well, at least I seem to hear it often. "Theatre is dead." I'm pretty sure I said something akin to it just the other day. Well, let's take a quick moment and clarify the dead part of that phrase. There is a book, written by a man named Peter Brook, "The Empty Space". In it, Brook explores and explains some forms of theatre he has seen throughout the world. One in particular struck me, and it's the Dead Theatre. This is the empty Theatre, the shallow fluff dancing about Broadway and redolent in most major regional American Theatres. I think that most people, when saying that theatre is dying they imply theatre will face the same fate as radio when television came about, not that all theatre will resemble Brook's frightening vision.
So, will theatre die? Can theatre die? Theatre originated in every culture, more or less organically. All over the world, theatre sprang up. It seems to be an intrinsic part of human society. That shared moment, the shared four dimensional tale unfolding in front of us. There's an energy that theatre expresses which is lacking in all other forms of art. I mean, this line of discussion would require a rough tangent into defining theatre and art and dance and performance, but let's take a moment and wonder about the difference between a film and a play. Similar in some senses, but most assuredly not the same.

Theater won't die, and it will always surprise. It will delight and antagonize and frustrate and make me really angry. But that's because I love it, and I want it to be so much better than it is.
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My Lengthy Departure From the Blogosphere

Good day fellow citizens.

The quick answer is, I'm sorry I was gone so long. I've been debating heady issues in my fevered brain here. But I have no answers. I have a rant. A belief. A call to arms? To pens maybe.

I come to you today with a heavy heart. I have begun to question what I am doing in this particular art form. I'm going to say this here, now:

Contemporary American Theatre is in a state of torpid decay, yet boldly striding forward as its flesh sloughs off its bones.

As Peter Brook would say, it is dead theatre. I think, and I'm not alone in saying this, that the current atmosphere of American Theatre is not dead, not dying- it's in a state past dead. There's a way to describe this, if you'll allow me a small migration into pop culture references. The theatre has moved beyond death, risen from the grave, and actively hunts and eats any other living theatre. We're witnessing, in no uncertain terms, the birth and unhappy life of the "Zombie Theatre."

I'd love to coin that term. Am I the first to say it? Maybe. I haven't looked. But I feel it fits. I feel the contemporary theatre scene is disgusting and feted. A corpse bloated on feeding on itself. We see big theatres propagating the same few shows, over and over again. There's no active innovation. Nepotism is the Watchword of the day.

Big theatres look for innovative shows elsewhere, then swoop down and eat them, the resultant excrement being termed New Theatre.

We, the young playwrights, have no hope in the bloated face of the heavily established playwright. Husbands and wives of Artistic Directors or Trustees are on the production cue. You pay your dues in the board room or the bedroom to attain the lofty post of Captain of the artistic ship.

We fools still try and parade around the stage. We fools think our small houses and free plays and showcases will somehow do something. We think BIG will show up. That Broadway, Seattle Rep, Trinity Rep, Lincoln, Kennedy, that we'll be invited to join the country club. We fools with our theatre companies promising to invigorate or excite or innovate or push. Oh how we push that envelope. How we move that border and envigorate Theatre in New York. Seattle. Chicago. Los Angeles. Miami. Anytown, anywhere. Look at us. We fools. Really. Look. Did you go see the fools? Did it change you? What did you see?

Debt.
Desperation.
Dedication to a cause and a movement.
Direction? No where.

We're not asked to join this party. American Theatre isn't meant for us. I don't have enough money to be artistic. To be creative. To be misunderstood. I don't have enough friends to be produced, or to invigorate.

I have this pen. I have this stack of plays. I have nothing this Zombie wants, except my physical body. To sacrifice my body on their twisted altar, burning my flesh and spilling my blood to put their shows on. So a third rate hack can have one more feather in his production hat.

As I write this, I question my continued involvement in this sad charade of Art. I'm not even sure it qualifies as entertainment. Drivel. Pure drivel.

The looming question is, "what do we do?"

Do we go out and support the floundering theatre companies? Do we turn to Performance Art and nail ourselves on crosses plunged into Southern California beaches? Do we run to other countries, hoping their nationalized theatre for the masses will open their arms and let us suckle at their federal teat? Do we ask our own Congressmen and women and, dare I say it, President, to care about Performing Arts? Can we hope for Obama to add Arts spending to his ever centering platform? Do we bury our heads in the sand? Do we run away? Do we change it from the inside?

I have no answers on this gloomy night. I have no words of wisdom. I have a cloud of doubt and fear, with what looks like a long dark and lonely road ahead.
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Test Failed

I tried to email a photo, but it appears blogger doesn't quite support that function yet. Oh well.
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