manifesto

I don’t have the answers on how to fix the American theatre.

Maybe it doesn’t need to be fixed.

But I do have some thoughts.

1. A theatre should be a comfortable place to experience uncomfortable plays.

“Safe” is not a word that goes with telling the truth or making powerful art.

TV now has more guts than most theatre. What happened?

I don’t want to feel safe when I see a play. I want to be shot out of a cannon. I want to see something that keeps me off balance. I want to experience someone’s truth even if it’s not mine and even if I don’t agree with it. I don’t need my liberal beliefs validated. I want to see stories and characters that are beyond easy definition and ho-hum politics.

2. Attributing something a character does or says in a play as something the writer believes (or doesn’t) is an attempt by anti-art thugs to infect society with a self-censoring thought-virus.

Any writer is free to write anything. What matters is did the writer pull off what she intended? If so, great. If not, the problem solved itself. The last thing writers need is non-writers and censorship advocates pontificating about who should write what.

3. The more seats a theatre has, the less they can do to support new work and produce undiscovered writers.

4. Local theatre’s should work to grow local writers into national writers. This is how local theatre’s become nationally recognized.

Filling your season with plays from off-broadway will not put a theatre on the map in a meaningful way. Chicago develops writers and sends them into the world, which then brings light to their theatre scene.

Without new plays and new voices, the audience will wither into nothing.