the gatekeepers and those in charge of production and programming are, for the most part, completely isolated from the general audiences they need to fill houses. For too long, these nonprofit producers have been bending over backwards to create theatre that caters to an imaginary audience that doesn't exist (or doesn't exist in the size needed for financial stability).
I’m not sure a “general audience” still exists for the contemporary non-profit theater if it ever did. There’s certainly no middle economically anymore in this country.
I agree the Blue States’ theater-response to the Culture War can be not a lot of fun. War isn’t a lot of fun.
Perhaps we will see theater in the next ten years that attempts to build some kind of common ground between the Red and the Blue that isn’t a normalization of racism and authoritarianism. |
