...that we are having a cultural crisis in our country right now.
When I speak of a cultural crisis today, I'm only going to talk about theatre and newspapers.
These two industries in the same sentence when talking about culture might seem like odd bedfellows. And I never considered mixing them too much myself. Never mix, never worry I say.
But yesterday I posted an update on my Facebook status that read "Jonathan can't believe all the news feeds he's getting of other theater companies around the country that may close."
Soon, I started to get a flurry of comments from my Facebook comments about theatre and newspapers struggles to stay alive from industry insiders. The power of Facebook amazes me. (You wouldn't believe the comments I got when I posted an update that mentioned Woodman's grocery stores.)
I've had a hard time writing about what I really feel is happening in theatre right now in our community, but something about this intermingling of the newspaper death discussion makes me want to start to more publicly ruminate.
Here's the thing: theatre and newspapers haven't kept up with innovation. The hard reality of the situations that newspapers and theatre find themselves in right now is that while they've concentrated on content for years and years, they've been loathe to address the big problem palguing their industries: how to change how to connect tonew communities and convince the world that their content is supremely cool and necessary to a well informed life.
I'm gonna be pretty hard line about this, but so much of the drama and angst of theatres and newspapers closing could have been avoided if we in the theatre and journalism community had adopted better practices to market the idea, and only the idea, that theatre and real, substantive news is good for us all.
I don't think it's too late, but we need to stop bemoaning the losses in each industry and realize that a whole new set of circumstances in terms of the way people connect to ideas and information needs to dictate who we produce theatre and news. It may be a bitter pill to swallow but it's time to change everything we're doing.
I'm pretty disgusted to see a theatrical landscape that is not welcoming to big dreamers who want to do those 20 person masterpieces of drama. I'm also chagrined to see content in newspapers on-line and in print dry up and dumb down. We're the ones who are supposed to be setting the higher standards. When we admit that begging for money (theatre) and subsidizing everything we do with advertising revenue (newspapers) is simply have a yoke around our necks that prohibits creativity and innovation, we'll start to be able to confront this huge, huge problem head on.
I encourage you to take a look around the web for others preaching this type of tough love. I was directed to a good post at Theatre is Territory on how we've been a bunch of mamby pambies about promoting theatre to the masses. There's a feeling that things need to change. Can we do it? Hell yeah. But it's time to be not afraid, and for us all to grow another set of balls.
9 smart alecky remarks:
This is well put. Long before the crisis point was even on the horizon, I grew frustrated with the people surrounding me in the theatre community who steadfastly refused to check in with the audience -- with the paying public's new needs, new fears, new technologies, new ways of interacting with each other and with art. Most of those ostriches are now hosed -- their refusal to adapt resulted in their extinction. What hurts most is to see some of the companies and artists who DID adapt (or at least begin to adapt) take big hits as well...but I'm confident with STEELY RESOLVE that the entities toying with modernity will triumph when the worst has crested, and the artists who crow, "Oh, God, I'll NEVER understand Facebook!" will be gumming anecdotes of The Olden Times to occupy their long empty nights.
More important than facebook, more important that selling "the idea of theatre", is creating actual theatre that is responsive, relevant, and accessible to the public.
Theatre isn't going to be hot shit again until theatre producers get out of their fancy buildings, their procenium arches, their elaborate dressing rooms, their long dead playwrights, and all the rest of these outdated traditions and finery which are mostly designed to PREVENT "common people" from entering the theatre world.
If you've got a theatre to shut down, then you're already one step behind.
newspapers... that's a whole different problem.
Rex...am I actually agreeing monumentally with you. What the hell is happening to me? And Jane The Phoole, you prove again that you're the smartest jester in Milwaukee.
Wow. I'm not disagreeing, but I'm certainly not agreeing. We're having a conversation ALONE in our living rooms (or wherever our computers happen to be at the moment). That in and of itself is a problem with the "idea of theatre" which has been for an audience and a group of actors to come TOGETHER in the same place, at the same time and share a communal experience. Whether the playwright is dead or not isn't really the issue - there are plenty of great dead ones and plenty of terrible live ones. The idea is communal and shared - which NONE OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES PROMOTE. Sorry - but unless we create theatre online so everyone can do it or view it whenever or wherever it is most convenient for them, there will always be a disonnect.
The new technologies' failure to promote communal shared experiences shouldn't be looked at as a negative effect that the new technologies have on us, but as a great opportunity for theatre, which is uniquely situated to provide the communal shared experiences that these new technologies fail to provide.
Which, means we need to bring theatre to areas where people are already having shared communal experiences, ie NOT the procenium arch and NOT at a $30 ticket price. Unfortunately, we all happen live in a town where the "shared communal experience" market is already cornered, by smokey crowded bars.
Why is no one in this town doing theatre in smoky, crowded bars anymore? (Don't tell me... it's the smoke, and the crowds.) But seriously, it used to happen here!
Paint the Town. January 4th at Stonefly.
This is our homecoming show, after a week of performing in community centers, book stores, abandoned buildings and various other non-traditional spaces in cities where booze is not so much of a pre-requisite for getting people together.
Rex.
So i guess your company doing a show at the The Alchemist Theatre does not count when you talk about theatre producers getting out of their fancy buildings, their procenium arches, their elaborate dressing rooms. In case you didn't know The Alchemist Theatre is a pretty traditional theatre space. I've been to that theatre many a times.
if you are fighting to keep theatre out of traditional theatre spaces you can't go and do a show at The Alchemist Theatre cause thats pretty much kills the idea you are trying to spread. if you want to spread you thoughts about theatre and how is should be done you need to stick to "the book stores, abandoned buildings and various other NON-traditional spaces" something with out a stage.. and theatre seats.
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