I DREAM of a POPULAR THEATRE

I dream of a Popular Theatre. Probably better not to capitalize that, really. Okay, I dream of a popular theatre. What do I mean by that, precisely?

Well, my Mac has a dictionary, and it contains this definition of "popular":

intended for or suited to the taste, understanding, or means of the general public rather than specialists or intellectuals

I started with that long excerpt from Marcus's book because when I first read it, it occurred to me how great it must be to make art that's actually a serious part of that conversation. We try, don't get me wrong, to be part of that conversation on a local level. You better believe we spend a lot of nights in darkened theatres round this part discussing where our country is going and what part we can all play in that. Still, it doesn't seem that theatre is, on the whole, a big part of that for most of the people in the far-flung corners of this country.

Can we have a popular theatre? Have we ever?

I like to imagine that Death of the Salesman and The Crucible had a real impact in their time. I like to believe that the plays of Tennessee Williams were required reading/viewing in their time. I like to believe that Our Town was once a part of everyone's life. Looking through lists of "great" plays though, I can't help but think that most of my friends haven't heard of 99% of them, even the most well-known. From the perspective of right now, it's hard to believe these plays were significant enough even in their best moments to have a direct effect of how Americans thought of the times in which they lived. (Of course, this might be an entirely different argument if we were talking only about Americans who live(d) in NYC.)

Movies, though? Well, you see my point. Film is a popular entertainment. (And yeah, it's an entirely different scale for all those reasons we already know, but I can dream can't I?)

What's It Gonna Take?

What would it take though, to create a popular theatre, one that could be seen as a viable alternative to movies, bars, bands, and the whole thing that most regular people do on a Saturday night? Recently family member encouraged me to schedule more shows on Thursdays, Sundays, even Wednesdays. "People have things they wanna do on Friday and Saturdays." Ouch.

Maybe we should think of "theater" more as the building than the art. Maybe it's one place that you go to have drinks, see a show, hear some music, mingle with friends, get some coffee, hang out and read. I know they've been having some success with that theory in Minneapolis, getting the building back somewhere closer to the center of community life, developing a social circle around activities in the building other that just the art. I'd love to see some statistics as to how that's affecting the community's involvement in the art.

Isn't it in When Harry Met Sally in which Carrie Fisher quotes the writer, her future boyfriend, saying "Restaurants are to the 80s what theatre was to the 60s." Is that true? Was the theatre that much a part of social lives in the 60s? Then again, it's a New York movie, so maybe it's an exception, huh?

We're trying though, aren't we? This is why shows are shorter, this is we try to make our theatre more like the movies, more like rock shows, and give it trendy titles like I Google Myself.

And how do production values play into this? Certainly "rough theatre", in its less polished state will have a harder time making it into the mainstream. Whether it's because of natural, reasonable discomfort, or a simple lack of education about what theatre is and how it works, a true popular theatre might not have room right away for some of our more brilliant experiments and extrapolations.

And trending toward more self-referential (and reverential) shows, while highly-entertaining for all of us, isn't winning us any new fans.

Can we imagine what a popular theatre would look like? The way it's described above, it almost sounds like the oft-reviled Shadowbox Cabaret. Really? Well, let's face it, they are popular. I wonder how they'd do if they presented some art that had higher ambitions in between the Santa Babes and the horrible cover songs.

Is it that theatre is too slow? Even movies seem able to get topical art to the "flyover" states faster than the theatre. Local productions are one thing, but a single major work takes years to filter down from New York to tours to regional houses and so on and so forth. By the time Tony Kushner's next play makes it to Columbus, Ohio, it'll be 3 years too late and he'll be on to the next.

What are the blogs/newspapers/magazines/TV shows that people discuss at the water cooler these days? Why?

The question is not "How can we be more like them?" it's "What can we learn?"

Of course, this is given that being popular and being a part of the communal conversation of our nation is important to us. Maybe it's better to keep the budget tiny and give those 200 loyalists what they're looking for.

But I want a theatre that people talk about.

It is a slippery-slope. It starts here, talking about how to matter, and next thing you're Little Miss Sunshine, indie-enough to seem interesting, but ultimately full of marshmallow fluff.

Going to "a play" just sounds old-fashioned. Multi-Media Event - that sounds modern and cool. I often refer to our shows a post-modern extravaganza's. But a turf by any other name, right?

It's just so frustrating though. I know tons of cool, smart people who read books like Fast Food Nation, who like PT Anderson movies, who listen to Spoon and The Decemberists, and it seems to be that those folks would really enjoy the theatre if they gave it a chance to work its magic on them. So, how can we get them to show-up? Why don't they get it? Why doesn't theatre even begin to permeate their cultural consciousness?

On a closing note, I asked an acquaintance "What would it take to get you to go to the theatre this Saturday night?" - her answer - "Free tickets to a movie." Huh.