Manifesto

What follows is some thoughts I have about theatre.  I have called it a "manifesto" because it sounds a lot better than "ramblings" but these are thoughts that I have and I try to live by them every time I walk into rehearsal.  I will be updating it from time to time as new thoughts hit me.  Please leave a comment and let me know your own thoughts.  The only way we can make living vibrant theatre is through discussion and dialogue. Thanks

Manifesto for Theatre for the Advancement of Theatre Professionals

 

Theatre is dying. This is nothing new. To anyone who has been in theatre for longer than a few years, this is not even an alarming statement. Theatre has been dying since an audience member in ancient Greece saw the first deus ex machina, turned to the person next to them, declared that the spectacle of theatre had gotten out of hand, stood up in their seat and told everyone in the amphitheatre that it was all a fad and would be gone within a generation. But, however long theatre has been dying, whenever we think it is taking its last gasp, thankfully someone, something, or some movement comes along and breathes life back into it, however briefly; the students in high schools all over the country fall in love with the latest big show or star, they become obsessed with musical theatre, some of them choose to major in it in college, some may graduate and continue to perform, direct or design after graduation, and a select few may truly be bitten by the theatre bug and decide to go into theatre education with an eye towards transmitting and transferring their own love of theatre on to the generation that comes after them. The questions that we, as theatre artists must ask ourselves is, “Why do people think that theatre is dying?”, “What is killing theatre?”, and “What can we do?”

Theatre is being killed by a blanket dismissal of almost any theatre that is not Broadway.  There are several different ways that this is being done.  The first way is through a limited understanding of theatre by the general population. At family reunions and graduation parties all over the country, every time someone discovers that someone is a theatre major, they ask the same question, "You want to sing on Broadway?" Theatre majors everywhere have gotten used to this question, so they normally just laugh it off and explain that they are a Sound Engineer and have no desire to be onstage unless they are checking a level or changing a battery.  There is not another career path or job that comes to mind where this kind of assumption is made when someone tells you what line of study they have chosen. You do not ask every person who goes into med school if they want to be a brain surgeon, so why would you treat theatre as if there is some sort of hierarchy in jobs that makes one career choice more valid than another and makes any choice other than Broadway seem like settling for less than the best.  Not all theatre is Broadway.  Theatre, like any other area, is divided into hundreds of different jobs, electricians, designers, publicity, stage management, directors, actors, etc., each of which would cause the ruin of a production or a company if they were to be taken out of the equation.  By thinking that everyone who goes into theatre wants to be the most well-known and visible person involved with a production, you diminish and belittle them if they want to be a stage manager of if they want to be prop designer.

Another way we dismiss all theatre that is not Broadway is by treating everything else like a second rate endeavor.  Sadly, the people who are most guilty of this offense are not attempting to or are even aware that they are hurting themselves and their production.  They belittle and undermine the production when they use the most deadly and dangerous words in the English language. The deadliest and most dangerous words in the English language are "it's only" and the worst place to use these words is in the theatre. "It's only" community Theatre. "It's only" a kid's show. "It's only" a workshop. With these words we give ourselves permission to do less and allow ourselves to expect less. We should always expect the best from and for ourselves because when we give and produce work under the banner of "it's only" we proclaim that our craft does not always require the best of what we have to offer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our work is the reproduction of life for the education, enlightenment, and entertainment of others and there is no higher calling.  The audience sitting in front of you does not care that they aren’t watching a professional production.  They don’t care that the budget of the show is hundreds of times less than they would see in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles.  They only care about the story that is being told.  They can immerse themselves just as easily(sometimes more easily) when they know the actors onstage and are seated in an audience of friends in a 200 seat theatre in their hometown rather than watching a star onstage with strangers in a 1500 seat theatre in New York.  

Budgets are crunching and costs are rising everywhere, yes. Does that mean we do less? No. We use our imaginations more and try harder.  Theatre in many places, especially Broadway, has become about spectacle. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Broadway shows have huge budgets and are able to spend millions of dollars to make the Titanic sink or Peter Pan fly.  Does that mean these things should be off limits for community theatres with a budget of a couple thousand dollars or less for each show? Of course not. Creativity and imagination can make all the difference in the world.  If theatre is about spectacle and if we as an audience expect that every company and every production must provide us with Broadway-style effects, then we dismiss the beauty and the imagination that implore us to believe that the houses of the star-crossed lovers are separated by an insurmountable wall that consists of no more that a man holding a metal pole.  And if we teach these things to the young people who come to our theatres to use their imagination to show the audience the pyramids of Egypt with a couple hundred dollars, imagine what they will be able to accomplish when they are given a much larger budget.  

Big-budget shows on Broadway are making headlines because directors and designers are thinking outside the box and making huge things happen.  Some succeed. Some fail. But with every failure comes a list of solutions and ways to do things differently next time.  In community theatres, we are constantly trying to do nothing but succeed and survive.  Our eyes are constantly on making sure we will have enough money to be open next season. So we pull out the old war horse shows that we know people will come to see and will keep the coffers full enough to keep the lights on next year. But what are we doing to ourselves when we do this? We are training a new group of upcoming theatre professionals who are learning to play it safe and there is nothing about playing it safe that will keep a dying art form alive. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich famously said, “Well behaved women seldom make history.”  Theatre professionals can commandeer this phrase. “Theatre professionals who play it safe seldom do good theatre.”  If we think of theatre as a living, breathing human being, do we want to see that person in a hospital bed with tubes and monitors hooked up all over with the people charged with his care doing only what it takes to keep him alive, gasping for breath with tears in his eyes? Or do we want to see a person who is running, jumping, dancing, performing magic tricks and singing in front of us so full of life that we have no choice but to join in the dance?

As Theatre professionals we should look at ourselves and ask, “Am I taking risks to expand or am I just playing it safe to survive?”  Most of us would unfortunately admit to the latter.  But we can change. Taking risks is not as risky as it sounds. It does not mean setting “Steel Magnolias” in a landfill or trying a children’s theatre production of “Glengary Glen Ross.” It can be as simple as taking an American classic that you know will put butts in seats and trying a minimalist design. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe” could start off with a good laugh if Martha walks on to a stage filled with black boxes and plain furniture and delivers the immortal line “What a dump.”

We do a great disservice to our young theatre professionals when we don’t take chances.  We raise a generation of people who are afraid of thinking outside the box and who very often decide that theatre is either boring because they think there is nothing to it but productions of “Dearly Departed,” “The Foreigner” and “Annie.” Or worse, they think that theatre is nothing but fun because they are in rehearsals with directors and designers who have a “make it work” mentality and have been told “it’s only” community theatre.  They are taught that shortcuts are ok, so when they get into any environment where work is a way of life and professionalism is expected, they often quit because it is a lot more than they are used to or don’t succeed because their usual level of work they are used to is insufficient for the needs of a college or professional theatre.  

We can turn this around.  We just have to work at it.  We have to challenge ourselves and push ourselves to be constantly better.  We can’t sit back and get comfortable, because theatre should be anything but comfortable.  Theatre should be constantly moving forward and pushing our audiences and ourselves.  We are the sharks of the art world.  When we stop moving, we die.  And cannot allow ourselves to be slowed by the sounds of “It’s only” and the limitations of small budgets.  Because in the end, we are limited only by our imaginations.