From the Ledge

There’s been a lot of interesting and provocative back and forth in the Chicago theater blogosphere this week about dramatic content, a topic which sometimes seems to be lost in the shuffle with everyone’s (well, drama critics, bloggers, playwrights, artistic staff, and other sundry kibitzers) preoccupation with other “hot topics” such as regional theaters’ business models, etc.  I think it’s a valid conversation, but I will leave the critical debate to theater practitioners and critics such as Tony Adams and From the Ledge friend Kris Vire (who both make very good points).  Since I’m not a practitioner, but rather a mere audience member, I want to share my thoughts strictly from a theater goer’s perspective. I think the importance of content, the fact that theater should be really, really good, in order to bring in a paying audience, is so much more important now, more than ever, given the economic times we’re in.  In conversation with some of my friends, all regular theatergoers and supporters of arts and culture, it is becoming more and more apparent that people are being very judicious in the allocation of their arts consumption dollar.  A play a week, or every two weeks, is something that is a tough sell for many people right now; spur-of-the-moment weekend jaunts to the theater because something came up on Hot Tix or Goldstar.com isn’t as common as it used to be, maybe a year ago.   I’ve been to the Goodman, the Court, and the Steppenwolf during the past couple of weeks and the houses are still packed, but remember, subscriptions were bought and paid for back in the late spring/early summer.  (As an aside, I also think the bigger houses will weather this storm better than the smaller ones, since single ticketbuyers, given the fact that they are taking a hard look at where they are spending their arts dollar on, will be falling back on who has the reputation, who has been reliable, who has been around long enough.)  Another friend of From the Ledge, PRekk, asks:  “Should bad theatre be run out of town at high noon?”  My response is a resounding, unequivocal yes.  I really feel that theater critics and bloggers, alike, have the responsibility to honestly, directly, transparently, and, constructively, inform their readers about which plays deserve their money and which don’t.  Heinous crimes against the cosmos such as Turn of the Century and Eurydice need to be called out and tagged as unworthy, so folks can go to a Caroline, or Change or a Men of Tortuga or a Steppenwolf for Young Adults’ The Glass Menagerie, instead.  In this time of economic crisis, it’s so much more important to continue to support art, culture, and theater and let them thrive and prosper – part of that process is to pull up the weeds.  In the past, we may have let sloppy, half-baked, unfinished plays-theatrical hot tranny messes-slip through and have a good run…but right now, we can’t afford to, literally.  The pocketbook crunch is making audiences more discerning, more questioning as to which plays can ultimately touch them, introduce them to new worlds and experiences, paint for them human conditions which they can relate to, which hopefully will make theatrical practictioners-playwrights, directors, artistic directors- take a harder, more critical, less indulgent look at the art that they’re creating.