The Baby and the Bathwater
Dunkirk NY – I feel constrained this morning to clarify the difference between institutional decay and people working within institutions. One of the dangers of aiming any sort of criticism at a particular institution that it can appear that you are simultaneously criticizing the people working within the institution for being a part of that process. “Guilt by association” is a real danger whenever it comes to discussions concerning the the relative merit of any organization or the quality of its contribution to the culture.
As an example, one can point to the current national debate concerning health care. You will find very few people who believe that the current mode of health care delivery in this country is not broken. But you will find many people within the health care system who disagree as to how to fix it. You will find that some people are engaged in the debate so as to protect their vested interests in the current system, and you will find some people are engaged in the debate so as to produce deep systemic reform. Caught somewhere in the middle are the health care providers – doctors, technicians, and, I’m willing to bet, particularly nurses – who struggle on a day-to-day basis to provide quality health care to their patients. Most of them are probably people who sought careers in health care because they genuinely wanted to be able to help people and save lives.
So let me make something clear: while I do believe that the current institutional form of theatre in this country is a model I do not believe in, and one that I do not believe promotes the best that theatre can offer to American culture, I also do not believe that the majority of people working within this system are not working to deliver and promote the best theatre they can. The “baby in the bathwater” metaphor I’ve used to title this post is, to me, as clear a metaphor as they come. Hard-working theatre people represent the baby; the bathwater is a combination of the current state of Broadway and regional theatre, and, in my opinion, the dominance of careerism within that system. Throw out the bathwater; save the baby. Continue Reading »
