Theatre Ideas Newsletter
Dec 6 thru 12 2024
Well, lookee here — it’s Thursday again. Let’s see what I had to say last week—it’s always a surprise (for me, at least).
I wrote two lengthy posts this week:
“No, I’m not talking about the freebies we give to family and friends who come to our show. I’m talking about the way book proposals use the term: “comparables,” books that are similar to what you’re writing, books that yours could be compared to.
Theater has been comping the wrong competition for over a century.”
“By comping mass media and centralizing the “industry,” the “biz”...in New York, the theater has fallen prey to exactly the same one-size-fits-all approach [as the Internation Style of architecture and laundry detergent]. Instead of visiting a theater being a unique experience seasoned with local flavor and served with pride of place–the theatrical equivalent of barbecue in Kansas City, gumbo in New Orleans, or kringle in Racine WI–theater is like going to a chain restaurant: once you’re inside the doors, you could be anywhere.”
SHORT TAKES
Arts administration Emeritus Professor Michael Rushton was pushing my buttons a lot this week—in fact, I wrote an entire response to another of his posts that I ended up trashing because ain’t nobody got time for that. In his Substack article “On the ingratitude of artists receiving a guaranteed income from a benefactor,” Rushton seems to be dissing Bloomsbury painters Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry for not following John Maynard Keynes’s aesthetic opinions even though he was providing them with money. Folks, this is why I say in Building a Sustainable Theater that theaters should avoid the nonprofit model. Inevitably, the members of the board of directors will decide that you should be following their ideas instead of your own. As Prince said in another context, “If you don’t own your masters, your masters own you.” Strive to create a theater that is self-sufficient that doesn’t rely on the kindness of strangers. (Wednesday, December 11, 2024)
In the book The Power of Positive Deviance, authors Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin make a distinction between “adaptive problems” and “technological problems.” The write:
“Adaptive problems are embedded in social complexity, require behavior change, and are rife with unintended consequences. By way of contrast, technical problems (such as the polio virus) can be solved with a technical solution (the Salk vaccine) without having to disturb the underlying social structure, cultural norms, or behavior.”
I’d argue that theater now has a major adaptive problem that won’t get solved until we stop pretending that it’s a technological one. It occurs to me that I may be guilty of this mistake myself. Building a Sustainable Theater may be a technological solution to a much deeper adaptive problem.
In The Spirit Level, authors Richard Wilson and Kate Pickett write:
“we have lost sight of any collective belief that society could be different. Instead of a better society, the only thing almost everyone strives for is to better their own position – as individuals – within the existing society.”
As my anarchist hero, the late, great David Graeber, wrote in his forthcoming book The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” The Fiery-Headed Wizard of Oz is really just a scared little man pulling levers—pull back the curtain. Imagine something different.
“The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated."
Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt of the Masses
Ortega can be snootily elitist for my working class background, but my highly-educated foreground sometimes says “Damn right,” especially these days.
That’s it for this week. Don’t be afraid to comment.