“Judi Davidson said that she thought the Center Theater Group had become a bit too bland over the years. “It’s great that they want to be adventurous again,” she said. “I applaud that. We have so many subjects to talk about. So much is going on. As much as I want to see Hugh Jackman in ‘The Music Man’ — and I really do — I don’t think that’s what they should be doing.”
“Oh fuck you, Chris Jones AND fuck you Terrence McNally. Boo hoo for all of the white gays who apparently don’t get enough attention in this industry? I’m sorry, I’m not respecting you enough? The gays that cast white folks in roles for people of color? cool. (American Theater Magazine comments section)
How it’s going…
How it’s gone….
The American Theater lists are based on a survey of theaters that are members of Theater Communications Group; in the 2019-20 season, respondents reported planning to stage 2,229 full-run shows; this season , even with the first-time addition of audio and streaming shows, as well as productions on Broadway, the count is only 1,298.
There’s an extraordinary amount of stuff to unpack, as I’ve watched much of theater…which I’ve loved my whole life and made a career in… burn itself down after getting bailout after bailout from federal and state governments and benefactors…the biggest bailout being from the goodwill and hope of just plain people who were rooting for the phoenix to rise from the ashes of the pandemic.
So they could enjoy a night in the theater.
Again.
I’m gonna do my best to try and make some sense of the insanity that has ensued and share it with you…but the truth is I pretty much write for myself.
You are not going to read anything like this anywhere… certainly not in the mainstream press or theater rags.
Oddly, I really do think I’m the only one who’s written with a sober view of the last 3 and a half years of theater during the pandemic.
I started writing blogs.. and they’ve turned out to be markers in time..pieces of a puzzle that have put themselves together, as I’m certain that they would, to form a clear picture of not only why major American theatrical institutions are dying and closing permanently, but why new works are tanking for the most part.
Feel free to click on any of them. I’m proud of every one and it took some balls to write them at the time.
It’s not that audiences aren’t returning.. they are.
They’re right here. We’re here. I’m here. The good old musicals are breaking box office records on Broadway.
Tay Tay is drawing crowds of 100,000 people a night in stadiums this summer.
Aside: I had a ticket to see her, and I got so freaked out at the thought of being in a crowd that big that I didn’t go.
Sports events are packing them in too.
People are not afraid to catch COVID, they’re not afraid to go out, and they’re not even afraid to spend stupid money.
So why is American theater shitting the bed after every possible leg up it could get?
I will now speak for myself. I don’t wanna speak for an amorphous group… like the WE SEE YOU WHITE AMERICAN THEATER peeps who don’t have a leader, don’t know who exactly they want to take hostage and probably at this point want you to forget who signed the manifesto.
Speaking for myself, I will not take part in, or support the grievance. The feigned outrage. The animosity.
The theatrical ecosystem of grievance that has swallowed art whole.
The irony is that maybe some of the shows are ok or even great, but I just don’t wanna walk in the door and spend the big bucks.
I’m gonna bet some of you feel pretty much the same way.
A five..six..seven..eight.
I first saw the manifesto “We See You White American Theater” while so many bodies were piling up from Covid and after the civil unrest from the Floyd murder.
I was struck at the anger of it, not the understandable anger at social injustice ..but how that anger transferred to the theater community, as I knew some of the people who signed it.. and I knew they were already famous or worked more than I did.
There’s a lot of us and a 92% unemployment rate in the union.
So I was like what the fuck do you have to be angry about? At one time or another we’ve all been treated like shit in commercial theater… and several people who signed it had it way better than me, a garden variety white dude.
The part that just blew my mind was the targeting of gay white men and white women… and I was like, who the fuck wrote this?!
Nobody. The screed was addressed to no one in reality and no one took responsibility for writing it.
Then the demands crossed the interwebs.
I found the demands at times laughable, always mean, and pretty ridiculous in the context of professional theater. Some immoral, some illegal, some that had merit.
Angry stuff baked into race. I’ve always found the term BIPOC to be disingenuous .. conveniently used as a sort of boogeyman cudgel to denote solidarity when in fact comprised of many different groups who have less in common than more.
Sorta like queer.
Anyway, this anonymous angry thing had drawn a line in the sand.
And pretty much scared the shit out of everyone in theater who was white. Whitish. Paler perhaps.
But there it was. And here it is to this day. In my wildest dreams I never thought something so nasty(for starters) would be adopted by theater companies.
The angry blob has become legit..and it’s created an almost Biblical stranglehold on theater companies that I would wager have no idea what they’re supposed to do with the demands borne of fury.
The lead critics of both the New York Times and LA Times have quoted the screed as some Mormon-like golden plates of how to fix something that wasn’t broken… theater was at it’s peak attendance-wise and financially in 2019… and way more diverse than it ever was in terms of union work. Could it be more diverse? Sure… but I remember when I moved to New York in 1983 there were a lot of shows that featured predominantly African American actors .. and dancers of every stripe. I wasn’t either of those, and couldn’t get arrested as actor then but I found all of the shows inspiring. Naturally cyclical.
But, it was as if Ethel Merman instead of Joseph Smith sent the golden screed from God to forge a new path to the promised land.
It’s just that nobody knows where that is.
Every theater company contained in this blog that is struggling or gone under has publicly advocated to adopt the demands either directly or indirectly or blown up their boards.
And that’s what you’re not gonna read in the New York Times.
The obsession with race and identity has created the ecosystem of grievance that has surrounded theater and created a barrier not only to audiences but to creatives as well.
Only a __________ (insert marginalized group) can write, perform in, direct..you name it, any new or existing show.
It’s not lost on me that the show that closed the Mark Taper Forum was “Transparent”… a show whose creator stated:
“Now, with a “Transparent” stage musical being created in Los Angeles, its creator, Joey Soloway, vowed in an interview: “No trans person should be played by a cis person. Zero tolerance.”
Zero tolerance.
The stuff I’ve read both in the press and online about the closure of the Mark Taper Forum has gone like this:
When Center Theatre Group on Thursday announced that it was indefinitely pausing shows at the Mark Taper Forum — the creative beating heart of one of the country’s largest regional companies — a sense of deep sadness and acute anxiety resonated with theater leaders across the country.
If you are shocked and stunned you haven’t been paying attention to the hostage demands swirling around the programming of that theater.
I just have to laugh at some unnamed “theater leader” making demands about programming to a theater that doesn’t exist anymore:
One theater leader said Center Theatre Group will not regain its status within the industry until it makes good on the promise to stage FastHorse’s play. Pressman said that is the absolute goal.
That’s like demanding Angela Lansbury sing “The Worst Pies in London”
She’s dead. She’s can’t sing right now.
The crux of the Stockholm Syndrome in commercial theater could be summed up with the tone deaf words of a playwright whose last outing on Broadway drew 22% attendance during the busiest week of the season:
Playwright Jeremy O. Harris, whose groundbreaking “Slave Play” reopened the Taper after nearly two years of pandemic closures, expressed sympathy for CTG’s leaders and noted that the theater industry was in trouble long before COVID-19. He singled out the subscriber model — in which theaters rely on a core base of fans to subsidize shows before they are staged — as a system of support that failed years ago. Harris also said that in other cities, large theater companies’ obsession with funding expensive building projects was problematic and caused artistry to play second fiddle to the bottom line, making companies increasingly dependent on the whims of wealthy, often out-of-touch board members.
This is my fave…
“The worst thing that could happen is for people to look at some of the really exciting social movements inside of the theater in the last three years and point to those as the issue, when actually the issue is deeper — it’s from 20 to 30 years of bad programming,” Harris said. “There hasn’t been enough innovation or inquiry around how to inspire a new generation of people to go to these spaces, and to find community inside of a theater in their town.”
Watch out. He’s threatening to open his own theater company.
The ecosystem of grievance, and Harris himself is what killed the Mark Taper Forum.
It’s been like The Purge: Theater!
It’s time to just say that out loud, because I do think smart people who buy tickets read this stuff in the press and roll their eyes and keep their credit cards in their wallets.
The theater industry now for the most part is not smart. It’s not strategic. It’s not empathetic. It’s not realistic. It’s not self aware, but self indulgent. Self obsessed. Preoccupied. Didactic. Pretentious. Afraid. An industry that would rather talk instead of creating from the soul. Noisy.
It is emotional however… the biggest one being anger.
How’s it going?
Maybe it’s time to ask more people that question.
I’m not suggesting that there aren’t a lot of factors that are at play.. the biggest being mismanagement and lack of funding.
But, it is ignoring the obvious, and the theater professionals on the unemployment line(and the many more to come) to not ask yourself..
Totally agree with this. For the first time in almost half a decade I am not a subscriber to The Public Theater because their programming is, well, uninteresting to me. I see more theater than most people I know (well, more than anybody I know TBH), but so much of it is lackluster (white girl in danger), boring (a Beautiful Noise), or “cutting-edge” for the sake of being cutting-edge rather than being, um, entertaining (Slave Play). Some Like it Hot got the noms and the awards but I just thought it was okay; not bad, not great, just okay.
But please, keep jacking up prices, producers because that’s always awesome.
Honestly, the most entertaining theater I’ve seen in the last year has been courtesy of the London stage: The 47th, Operation Mincemeat, and, yes, The Great British Bakeoff Musical!
Oh well, at least I’m saving money…
Great essay, Bob. Wonder why Adrian Lester signed this.He just finished playing one of the Lehman Brothers! I thought that he was British. Anyway, I will see him in anything.
I also wonder if the vision of the writers is to have the audience be mostly BIPOC. Maybe that’s an attainable goal. But don’t expect a lot of limousine liberals to pay for those tickets.
Yiddish Theater pretty well died when people stopped knowing Yiddish. There is still some bit of it left. Time goes on. And whatever will be will be.
Thank you…it’s the tactical maneuver and tone that’s different than Yiddish theater falling by the wayside I think. Times change indeed. But this is a game of obliteration, not addition. And it’s taking a major toll on American theater.
Robert DuSold 
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