A Mindset is a Terrible Thing to Face
Dunkirk NY – Poor Scott. I seem to get him into a lot of trouble unknowingly. I write what I think is an innocuous post, catching my feelings of the moment; Scott expands upon it because it moves him to think and consider; and the next thing you know – theatrospherical shitstorm! I wouldn’t blame him if the first thing he does when he sees me at the SETC Conference is beat the crap out of me for getting him into so much verbal trouble.
So, to some extent, I feel a bit compelled to come to his rescue and pull out from his post something I think is important to both of us, and why we collaborate in terms of trying to change the face of theatre education. Here is what I’d like to focus on from his most recent apologia:
My desire to increase geographical diversity has never been about rejecting the small theatres struggling to carve out a niche in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. Many of those theatre are very much a part of their community — I think of a theatre like, say The Classical Theatre of Harlem in this regard. My beef, to borrow Don’s terminology, is the message that theatre people can only have a “serious” career if they are in Nylachi; that theatre in Nylachi is the only theatre worth considering; that there is a geographical hierarchy with Broadway at the top (which has been recognized as a dumb idea for decades now); that “quality” and “excellence” has a geographical component. This is nothing short of an ideology, one that is oft repeated by those who have bully pulpits for the art form such as Michael Kaiser and Rocco Landesman, and that gets passed down to high schoolers across the nation through TV broadcasts of the Tony Awards and TV shows like “Taking the Stage” and “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” and “Fame” that are little more than extended advertisements for the Broadway and commodity-arts ideology. Continue Reading »
