Going Dark (Thank You, Dark)

Dear Reader — Did you read the last two of my posts? Were you bored? I was when I read them a couple days ago. What made it worse is that I was bored while writing them, and I knew in advance that this was true: the very first words of the initial post was “I suspect these posts will be a bit dry compared to my previous posts…”

I have been doing theater for 50 years now, teaching theater for 30, writing almost non-stop about it for 19. That’s a long time. But what I’ve come to realize is that, well, I’ve squeezed all the juice out of that particular orange that I can.

I had a garrulous colleague who, at his retirement, cracked me up when he admitted, “I have no unspoken thoughts.” And it is time for me to say the same about my thoughts concerning theater writing. Between my original blog Theatre Ideas, my various books, and this Substack, I’ve pretty much said all I have to say. Oh, sure, there are a couple ideas still rattling around in the cupboard like unlit firecrackers, and I can’t promise that someday I might not put a match to their wick just to find out whether they bang or fizzle. But I think it’s time to write about different things.

I have no idea right now what those things might be, and I can’t wait to see what bubbles up. If I start another Substack/Medium/blog, I will let you all know. But let me be clear: I’m not sad, or mad, or disappointed about the state of the theater (or at least, no more disappointed than I’ve ever been). And I’ve had a great time sharing anything that popped into my head. In many ways, Building a Sustainable Theater was my attempt to allow theater artists to experience the freedom I’ve enjoyed for almost 20 years.

It’s been great to have the technology available to communicate without having to ask permission from gatekeepers, to write as often as I wanted about whatever I wanted. According to the stats page on my old blog, it has had over 900,000 visits during its lifetime and, to my astonishment, is still generating almost 5,000 visits a month even though I haven’t written anything new since November of 2022! So I’ll leave it and this Substack available for people to stumble on in the future. And I hope you’ll recommend my books to people who might appreciate them, especially Building a Sustainable Theater and DIY Theater MFA. I’ve actually sold some copies of those of late!

Thank you all for reading.

Going dark…