FEBRUARY 11, 1994 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11
SPEAK OUT
Play House crisis: Some thoughts and dreams
by Barry Daniels
"When we say deadly, we never mean dead: we mean something depressingly active, but for this very reason capable of change. The first step towards this change is facing the simple unattractive fact that most of what is called theatre anywhere in the world is a travesty of a word once full of sense. War or peace, the colossal bandwagon of culture trundles on, carrying each artist's traces to the evermounting garbage heap. Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks, but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are too busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity, surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud, and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?"
This conclusion to a chapter called "The Deadly Theatre" in Peter Brook's 1968 book, The Empty Space, aptly sums up my own thoughts about the artistic situation at the Cleveland Play House over the past three seasons. The Play House has become a creaky machine that cheats its audience into thinking the mediocre work it presents is art and diminishes the possibility of creating a large, culturally sophisticated audience in Cleveland. Brook compares the deadly theater to a whore, and notes that "whores take the money, and then go short on the pleasure." The Cleveland Play House has become our most public whore, smiling at all, loving none, and gobbling up our public and corporate funds.
Happily the crisis provoked by dwindling subscriptions and box office income would indicate I have been correct that Cleveland's audience may well be a lot smarter than the people responsible for the crass marketing and programming at the Play House seem to believe. I like to think the people who have stopped going to the Play House are the people filling our best community theaters where they are currently getting much more than their money's worth of the joy and delight good theater can provide.
The firing of Artistic Director Josephine Abady was crudely handled by the Play House board, but their reported reasons betray a cultural ignorance that is truly astonishing. Abady has failed precisely because she has abandoned the artistic vision that made her production of The March on Russia by David Storey so very fine. The board clearly wants even lighter and more "commercial" drama than what Abady has been producing. When theater is reduced to
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this level, it no longer becomes necessary. That's a very dangerous position for a regional theater to be in.
Plain Dealer critic Marianne Evett has responded to the board decision with a defense of Abady that is totally unjustified. The truth is that Abady's most noted successes, the commercial revival of Born Yesterday and the discovery of a prime-time movie script, David's Mother, do not generate much respect for the Play House at the national level.
Some of the best regional theaters in our country-the Guthrie in Minneapolis, the Hartford Stage, The McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, and the American Repertory Theatre in Boston-are located in areas whose populations are not that different from Cleveland. Their artistic directorsGarland Wright, Mark Lamos, Emily Mann and Robert Brustein-have put together seasons that explore the varied possibilities of the theatrical repertoire. Classic and modern work in productions by directors with international reputations have created vital cultural centers that the community needs and supports. For the Play House to achieve this kind of success it will need an artistic director with a strong and original vision, who cares about a sense of community. This person will need a board that is willing to take risks and is capable of trust. The Play House board's decision to appointment an interim artistic director who,
in my opinion, is neither a talented director nor a distinguished literary manager strikes me as particularly disastrous. I would suggest the board close the Play House for a season and consider some of the questions raised in Peter Brook's book. They might also start reading the Theatre Communications Group publication, American Theatre, which is the best overview of the interesting work going on in our regional theaters. They might start attending performances at Karamu, Dobama, the Working Theatre and the Cleveland Public Theatre to learn how theater can succeed in our community.
The kind of Play House I'd be proud to have in my city, and which I believe could succeed, is described eloquently by Robert Brustein in his 1987 book, Who Needs Theatre? "It is a theatre allied to a collective ideal, associated with training, organic in nature, continuous in operation, permanent
in status. It is a theatre that connects itself to the soul, mind, emotions of the audience, to the public and private life of the polity. It is a theatre that has as its goal not profits and deals but artistic fulfillment, not the advancement of careers but of talent, to be the springboard not for opportunism but of spiritual growth. It is a theatre of danger, dreams, surprise, adventure, a theatre of the unexpected and the unknown."
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