THE THEATER MIRROR, Boston's LIVE Theater Guide
| MARQUEE | USHER | SEATS | INTERMISSION | CURTAIN |
From: ghorton@tiac.net (ghorton)
Subject: from the files
This is a letter I wrote to the editor of the Globe, circa
1991.
Not much has changed.
TO THE GLOBE:
The Globe theatre critic has published a year-end summing
up with a clear and painful message-- not much was worth seeing
in Boston this past year. Only 3 of the 10-best list were local,
and of those only the Huntington's TARTUFFE even had a Boston-
based director. The terms the critic uses -- "beguiling" "rouser"
"yelp" "spin" "wicked pleasure" "slapstruck...vaudeville" imply
that these shows were valuable mainly because they induced laugh-
ter or excitement or nostalgia. In earlier reviews Mr. Kelly has
recommended productions because they are "slick". What does it
mean that these descriptions, which the reviewer employs for
praise, would be in most serious contexts terms of opprobrium?
Kelly declines to theorize. He can find no "definable thread",
no "political stance". He cannot tell us what unifies these
"bests" --- because he refuses to ask of art the questions basic
to art. What is goodness? truth? beauty? How are they connected?
What nourishes the human spirit? How can we -- especially the
"we" that is most widely inclusive, that integrates ages and
sexes and backgrounds -- learn to live together, in the commun-
ion of empathy that the arts of live performance give us a momen-
tary assurance is possible?
Surely it is no coincidence that all the productions judged
"best" were put on by main-line venues with comfortable seats,
and cost upwards of $20.00 a ticket. For the past two decades
the assumption behind the Globe's theatre coverage has been that
only the commercially viable is worthy of notice and evaluation.
This principle so obviously flies in the face of everything that
is known about how art is made, and about how the community
assimilates and grows from artistic exploration, that occasional-
ly the paper itself calls it into question. With "Why is Boston
theater so pallid?" (Oct.20) and an earlier article musing on the
demise of the Boston Baked Theatre, John Koch began a long-over-
due soul search. Of course, there are many factors contributing
to the sorry state of local theatre, most of them shared by the
country as a whole: recession, "privatization", an audience
lulled to passivity by television -- but a crucial one, and one
that could change for the better overnight, is the editorial
policy of the Globe.
Twentieth Century Fund's study, THE CRITIC, POWER, AND THE
PERFORMING ARTS (J. Booth, Columbia U. Press. 1991) attributes
the lively and influential Chicago theatre scene directly to the
efforts of the local critics, especially Richard Christiansen and
Glenna Syse, who "have worked to nurture, to enlarge, to make it
known, taken their role beyond, 'This play is worth seeing.'
They are friends of many. They go out of their way to make them-
selves available,...will come to readings of plays, meet for
breakfast, really keep abreast of developments." (40) They see
their role as greater in scope than that of being a guide to the
jaded consumer's diversions. Advocates and educators, they try
to persuade people to give their attention, their talent and re-
sources, to that which enriches the community.
I would like to bring the enclosed article, printed in the
August Village Voice, to your attention. The position of the
Globe in Boston is even more dominant, culturally, than that of
the Times in New York City. The Herald reaches T.V. watchers and
sports fans, and the Phoenix is read by college students, and by
many of the performers who make up the casts and crews of the
local off-off-Broadway scene. But so far as the educated public
is concerned, the people who read books and go to classical
concerts and museums, and who might be expected to make up the
audience for serious theatre, what the Globe covers is all the
news there is. And how is this power used? On matter such as the
bankruptcy of the Nickerson, the Globe's major theatre story of
the year. I think I counted eleven separate articles. Why? To
what purpose? Such a venture's failure has some commercial sig-
nificance, of course, but it is much the same as the closing of a
shoe store. People in that area now have to go further afield to
buy the product, and the workers employed there are out of jobs.
Either this closing should have been noted on the Business page,
or the Globe should explain how it impoverishes the community
artistically. Of what exciting new play or innovative director's
vision have we been deprived? Perhaps we have lost forever the
opportunity to see one of the area's excellent actors in one of
the great classic roles. Perhaps. There are actors in Boston
whom I have seen give performances as fine as anything in NYC or
London: but those performances took place in makeshift spaces,
and were often dimmed by poor direction or incompetent supporting
players. Which of our "residents", the ones Mr. Kelly calls on
us to praise, would dare to mount a production for Jim Bodge, or
Richard McElvain or Frances West or Melinda Lopez? No theatre
artist here has had the exemplary career of a Karl Dan Sorensen
or a Laura Young, and there is no voice to urge our jobbing-in
so-called "regionals" to do their duty and make it possible to
have home-grown artists rather than migrant workers.
Not all cities are as barren as Boston. From Washington,
Source Theatre sent out a flyer on the city's fourth annual New
Play Festival -- featuring performances by amateur, Equity, and
experimental troupes of fifty scripts by D.C. area writers.
Providence is not just the site of the fine revivals Mr. Kelly
put on his "best" list. Newgate theatre announced a premiere
season that includes, in addition to Jacques Brel and Mrozek's
TANGO, three full productions and five staged readings of new
work developed through the programs of the Rhode Island Play-
wrights' Theatre, a group that is similar in organization and
purpose to Playwrights' Platform here, but one that enjoys the
support and encouragement of Trinity Rep and of the local univer-
sities. When I went to Providence two years ago for R.I.P's
staged reading of my play CHOICES, I discovered Gerri Lebrandi in
the cast. Performing with Trinity Rep, she was at last able to
lend her talents to the development of new scripts, an interest
that she was never really able to indulge when acting in Boston.
It may be that by now, Boston is not merely a provincial town
looking to New York for culture, but theatrically a suburb of
Providence! Why are there no such exciting, ambitious programs
here? In the twenty years that I have been living and writing in
this area, I have seen a dozen attempts to establish them. All
have withered under the contempt fostered by the press, and
particularly by the region's leading newspaper.
It's not simply that Show Biz is taking up space that ought to
be devoted to more serious matters, but that people reading the
Globe are encouraged to believe that Show Biz is Art. As the
number and importance of commercial productions of contemporary
work grows less, so does the Globe's coverage. In the past year,
how many column inches have been devoted to theater? Of those,
how many were reports of scheduled national tours, box office
take, advance sales, cancellations, puff pieces and interviews
with familiar faces whose salaries and sex lives are assumed to
be of interest? NAMES and FACES. Other sources -- PEOPLE, ENTER-
TAINMENT TONIGHT--convey this sort of information more efficient-
ly to its target audience. Even reports on the Broadway theatre
are redundant: my impression is that most of the Boston area
people who regularly attend shows also read the New York Times.
Dyer's year-end summary is a cornucopia of musical riches,
praising a wide range of performers, composers, conductors, and
producers; traditional and avant-garde, lavish and shoestring,
world renowned and obscure. He measures accomplishment on a scale
that takes into account what needs are being addressed, and with
what means: "Nothing this season was more impressive in terms of
intelligent use of limited resources to produce strong artistic
statement than Lowell House Opera's production of Leonard Bern-
stein's A QUIET PLACE". In an aside, he chides the Early Music
fans for narrowness of interest: "..choreographer Kay Lawrence
prepared a ravishing program of Mozart dance music, and no one
came", and chides the community at large: "Now let us find some
rational reason why Caldwell didn't work at home this season, why
the Boston Opera theater stopped producing, and why the Opera Lab
is on a year's sabbatical while the mediocre keeps marching on."
In past weeks, Dyer has gone into an urban elementary school to
report on Handel and Haydn's presentation for the children, and
to a student performance of a difficult "failure", the KNOT
GARDEN. In search of fresh talent he has found it worth his
while to visit lecture halls and church basements, cabarets and
street corners. He has carried out his mission by reporting not
just how well these performances were done, but how important it
is that they be done, and that we build institutions that main-
tain our cultural heritage and pass it on enriched by the talents
of our generation. Dyer tells us plainly that our souls, and our
posterity, are at stake. What he says about music surely applies
to drama, too: it "is not an escape from life, but a call to
leading life in a fuller, deeper, more committed way; (it) makes
moral demands." About Dyer it can be said, as he so beautifully
says about Emmanuel Music's conductor Craig Smith, "He is good in
himself, and the cause of good in others, and the effects of his
work resonate far away from his actual activities." What Boston
theater needs, what the Globe should seek out and provide, is
another Richard Dyer. Give theater such a critic for a decade,
and see Boston bloom-- the Athens of America!
What would this paragon do? Demand texts with content and
relevance. Question the civic standing of the ART, a publically-
supported company that announces that the season's resident
artists will consist of nine white men, two women and one Black.
Attend the hole-in-the-wall mountings of the work of emerging
talents, and point out that the disparity in resources between
the two-to-five character cheap set contemporary scripts and the
lavish large-cast productions of classics by our leading non-
profit sends a cruel message: forgo ambition, because the most
ambitious repertory company in the country has none to spare for
living writers.
In Koch's "pallid" article he names some Americans whose
plays have been seen on regional stages and asks why they have
not appeared here. Well, one reason may be that Kevin Kelly has
pronounced Mac Wellman "stupid" -- although anyone who has read
Wellman's essays or heard him speak knows that his work is guided
by an almost frightening intelligence of a distinctly theoretical
bent. There may be something wrong with a play by Wellman, but it
won't be a fault that IQ or education could cure. Elizabeth
Eglof? Paula Vogel? The now defunct --and unmourned by the
Globe-- Women In Theatre Festival brought Eglof's THE SWAN and
Vogel's BABY MAKES SEVEN and DESDEMONA to Boston, in well-
rehearsed and acted staged readings. Eglof's WOLFMAN was also
presented here, by New Voices. If these writers are promising, as
Mr. Koch believes, why then couldn't the Globe have used those
occasions to explain to the public why our companies should
produce them? When the Huntington put on Matt Witten's Clauder
prize winner THE DEAL, it did so in a tiny black box rather than
on the main stage, and the theater's administration had so little
confidence in the press' ability to see merit in the work of a
local unknown that critics were barred. Witten learned from that
experience -- like most of our ambitious young people, he has
moved to greener pastures. Isn't it, at last, time to ask how our
native ground could be made less barren?
Obviously, this is not the commentary of a disinterested
observer. I am a writer, and the goal of my life has been to
create one script that is worthy of entering the body of dramatic
literature. But I am also a citizen of this city, and of this
democracy, and I believe that theater has a unique contribution
to make to the spiritual education of a free people. Shouldn't it
be the goal of the Boston Globe to make that contribution
possible? G.L.Horton -- Newton, MA, USA Read more about critics, and join the discussion.
It is probably true that there are only a few people who
care deeply about the arts, and are willing to devote the time to
absorb a thoughtful article or review with a local focus. But
those few include the community's decision-makers who influence
what is produced and supported, and the many artists who have
work and rehearsal schedules that limit their ability to get out
and see what their peers are doing. They depend on the press to
keep them informed. At the moment, these people are being led to
believe that nothing worth mentioning is happening.
Theatre is not quite dead in the Boston area. When there are
no more grants, and dwindling box office has limited productions
to damp basements with folding chairs filled by relatives and
unemployed actors, there will still be interesting and innovative
and occasionally even excellent work done. Theatre artists are
holy fools, and will persist in practicing their ancient calling
whether or not they receive attention and encouragement. But for
the sake of this depressed community, the Globe ought to take
notice, discover whatever is being done that is worthwhile, and
bring the news to the people. This may sound silly, grandiose,
utopian: but the case has been made and the example set, and on
the same pages where the drama is served so poorly. To see how
it ought to be done, look at any review or feature by the Globe's
own music critic Richard Dyer.
ghorton@tiac.net
www.tiac.net/users/ghorton
THE THEATER MIRROR, Boston's LIVE Theater Guide
| MARQUEE | USHER | SEATS | INTERMISSION | CURTAIN |