Your well thought out reply ignores what I take to be Newton UK's point: the popular American play is dead. Over the past ten years I can think of only three American plays that have achieved a major level of success and established themselves in the popular imagination the way TV shows such as Mad Men and The Crown are established. The shows would be "August, Osage County." "Sonya, Vanya,etc" and "Other Desert Cities." Perhaps "Doubt," but I think that was more than a decade ago. The point being that there was a time when a new Williams or Miller play, or "Toys in the Attic," or a new Simon play, or "Burn This" opened and had an impact and was produced elsewhere and was sometimes made into a film and it became part of the culture. No matter what you think of the plays of Sarah Ruhl or Robert O'Hara or Annie Baker, this is not happening with them. They are delivered to a small audience like precious pieces of art, consumed as such, and then they largely disappear.
When I read theatre executives such as Andre Bishop say we are living in a golden age of playwriting, I am often amazed. Where are the MASS audience for these plays? It eventually takes a mass audience to make something endure. The popular American play, as many have noted, has migrated to cable television. |
