Andy Horwitz's "The Theater(s)We Need Now" (Redux)
A Celebration
Yesterday, I went off on one section of Andy Horwitz’s Culturebot essay, “The Theater(s) We Need Now.” It was the section about the economics of the arts, and the need for subsidy. As I said yesterday, I think the problem lies elsewhere, and I stand by that today. But what I want to do now is slide that section off to the side and celebrate the rest of Horwitz’s marvelous, inspiring essay.
There is a part of me that just wants to provide a link labeled “what he said” and leave it at that. He even used the Buckminster Fuller quotation that I used to have as the epigraph for my longrunning Theatre Ideas blog: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” In fact, if you go to his author page (https://www.andyhorwitz.com/wp/), that’s the only thing on the “About” page. Hear! Hear!
His vision for a theater’s function and purpose is spot on. Yes! to it being a place of community (and yes! to calling out theaters who use that language to score grant money without actually doing the thing). Joe Patti on the Butts in Seats blog found that part of Horwitz’s essay powerful as well.
I was thrilled to see Horwitz’s opinion that theaters ought to consider a much more distributed organizational structure than that with a single Artistic Director making all the decisions. In a book that I will be publishing in the near future (current working title: The Empowered Theater Artist), I look back to the structure of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men with all decisions being made collectively by the eight to twelve shareholders who owned a share in the company and each of whose pocketbooks were directly affected by each decision they made. Horwitz suggests other models, including an advisory board with representatives of all segments of the community, all of which have strengths and weaknesses. The important thing is to start thinking of new models.
And I felt very deeply his description of the shape of the hole in his heart where theater used to be, which he has filled in with participation in his synagogue. I almost went to seminary a few years ago for a similar reason. We share a common belief that history shows that theater has always had deep spiritual and religious roots, and that there is still a hunger in our secular society for transcendant experiences, emotional, spiritual, humanistic moments that make us feel that we could be a part of something larger than ourselves. When we treat theater like a commodity is when it becomes vapid and dull.
Like Horwitz, I am a snob, but in the same way he is: “What makes me a snob [he says] is that I have expectations that the work, whatever it is, be well-considered and intentional. I’m actually fine with work that “fails” for the right reasons. I’m not fine with self-indulgent, self-centered, or condescending; self-serving work that is dramaturgically lax and sloppily delivered, intentionally focused on the lowest common denominator.” I’m 65 years old as I write this (actually, I’m 65 years old even when I’m not writing this), and my night vision is not what it once was, and so if you’re dragging me out of the house it better be for something more than a ride on the theatrical Tilt-a-Whirl. If I’m in the theater I want, again using Horwitz’s words, to “get that experience of being outside of prosaic, quotidian time, of nurturing my inner imaginative space, of quieting my mind, of communion, if you will.”
Horwitz provides links to several other essays he’s written that I plan to catch up on, and I hope you will consider doing so too. Right after you finish “The Theater(s) We Need Now.”
Mainly, though, I didn’t want to overshadow Horwitz’s excellent vision with my rant about the single (important, yes) item about which he and I disagree. You could do a lot worse than using his essay as a guide in starting a new theater company.