a poor player

Dunkirk NY – I came to the realization after writing last evening’s post that I had read the 2008 NEA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts all wrong. At first I thought it was a report that demonstrated that theatre was failing the American public. The one item I forgot to factor into my equation in looking at the report was that, by and large, most people working professionally in today’s urban-oriented and urban-centric theatre don’t really care about the American public at large. Why is that? Because they’ve come to realize that the American public doesn’t care about the theatre or theatre artists. So, naturally, theatre artists made the only choice they could under these circumstances – they now only care about themselves, their careers, and people like themselves. Since the NEA study clearly demonstrates that only well-off, upper-middle-class, white, older people (like myself) are coming to the theatre, this should be taken as a great sign that the theatre is reaching precisely the demographic it wants to reach, and that the effort has paid off.

The mistake too many people are making in reading the NEA report is assuming that people outside of the five largest urban areas actually care about theatre or would like to have theatre in their cities or communities. Well, they don’t. And we, as theatre artists, have rightfully decided that, since the data demonstrates their lack of interest in the theatre, we should no longer bother creating any theatre for them. If they don’t care to come to see the theatre we create about ourselves (in other words, if they don’t care about us), why should we create anything for them or care about them? Simply by taking the section of the American public that doesn’t go to the theatre out of the equation, since we are not serving them anyway, the data then clearly shows our level of success. All we really have to do is solve the thorny issue of continuing to finance our own success, hopefully by getting a larger slice of the American public’s tax money. All of us do, after all, pay taxes – we deserve it!

Where is the evidence for this? Well, you could start right here if you’ve a mind to and read the entire comment thread concerning the quality or lack thereof of Sarah Ruhl’s plays. The commenters all fit the NEA demographic, and they are having a great time and a lot of fun discussing the quality of Ms. Ruhl’s work. Now, regardless of how you feel about the quality of Ms. Ruhl’s plays, the question you have to ask yourself in light of the NEA study is: what audience is Ms. Ruhl writing for? It appears to me that, given her plays get produced a lot by theatres that cater to the NEA’s demographic, she is writing for the audience that goes to those theatres, and that audience is composed precisely of the people in the NEA study who most frequently go to the theatre; i.e. the commenters. Her success in the professional theatre depends, in fact, on writing for that demographic. The NEA study, rather than showing us what failures we are, has given us all the best information we could have: to be successful in today’s theatre, write plays that appeal to the play-going demographic! What could be a more simple formula for success?

Want more evidence? Once again, Isaac Butler and friends provides us with all the evidence you’ll need. Analyze these lists a little, and you’ll see that by and large, with some exceptions thrown in (and what study doesn’t always have a few exceptions?), they fit right into the NEA’s profiled demographic – with the very clear exception that there are not enough female playwrights on the list. The demographic should tell us we need many more female playwrights for the larger percentage of female theatregoers (a good thing people are getting on that issue!). There you have it – success in the theatre today comes from writing for its demographic.

Thank goodness that our educational institutions have seen the report for what it truly is, and continue to educate their students to feed this demographic. If you’re in a BFA or MFA program of any stripe – acting, musical theatre, playwriting, or design – you’re getting just the training and education you need to fit right into this demographic. You’re most interested in what’s happening in and around New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles; you’re getting the message that “going pro” is the one true career option you have; you’re getting all the headshot/résumé/audition training you’ll need. In fact, you’re probably already a junior member of this demographic yourself: white, female, getting a college education, with parents who are fairly well-off financially. It helps if you’re in an educational institution that not only trains you solely for this demographic but also has connections into the profession in some manner; but if not, rest assured you’re still getting an education that will make you feel right at home with today’s theatrical demographic. Sorry about the debt you’ll have until you’re 55 or so.

And don’t forget, since the theatre is as subject to the principles of social entropy as a liberal arts education or civil rights are, it’s only natural that today’s theatre reflects a different reality than the spirit and vision reflected by the work of the Group Theatre, the Federal Theatre Project, or the work of such boring playwrights (by today’s standards) as O’Neill, Odets, Miller, Hellman, Wilson or Williams. Thank goodness that today we seldom see plays written with the types of characters they wrote. Those kinds of plays and characters might appeal to a general American public, and that would skew the demographics something awful.

Hopefully by pointing all this out I have given the theatre world a holiday gift it can truly appreciate – the assuaging of their guilt. Once you fully understand the reality that people who don’t go to the theatre really, truly don’t want to go to the theatre, you can then stop feeling guilty about declining attendance, lack of diversity, class inequities and the like. After all, don’t you really want to produce theatre for those who want to be there, and can afford to be there? Isn’t that what counts? Isn’t that where the road to your professional success truly lies? You don’t really want the American public in your theatres, do you? Why, that might mean getting theatre out into America, and having more artists live out in America, and meet everyday Americans of all sorts of backgrounds and income levels and ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions – and what an inconvenience that would be! I mean, you just can’t get a good bagel and a smear out there!  -twl