Our Town rehearsal last night: tucked away in my dark, tiny soundboard nook impatiently waiting my 5 total sound cues (which all occur within a span of approximately 7 minutes.) We're on break; I check facebook. I chat with a classmate whom I love and respect. We do a little catchup (since there's not much time for socializing during the class day) and he asks me about the shows I'm in. I answer. I ask him if he's ready for his audition at a local professional theater (which he'd mentioned he was going to a few weeks ago.) He says, "Nah. I think I'm going on vacation with my dad instead. Besides, (insert professional theater here) sucks. Until I see something that changes my mind, I maintain my opinion about Dallas theater." (Subtext: Dallas theater sucks.)
Now, there is a lot of bad theater in town. But there's also a lot of good theater. I've done 22 shows here in the past two years. The Dallas theater community is wonderful, supportive, and an excellent place to learn professionalism/basic aspects of theater. In fact, I find a lot of Dallas theater to be really exceptional. For instance, last week I performed My Fair Lady at Lyric Stage with a 38 piece orchestra (larger than the original Broadway orchestra) playing the original orchestrations. It seems Uptown Players is constantly premiering some play or musical and one-upping themselves in terms of quality. There are oodles of smaller theater groups (Broken Gears, Amphibian, Nouveau 47, Echo (and all the groups at the Bath House) putting out great new work. --this theater student had never been to any of these spaces. There is a mentality at school that the only real theaters are the Theater Center and Kitchen Dog Theater. Oh, and Undermain. These theaters also do great work, but they aren't the only theaters in Dallas.
I'm constantly struggling with the balance between creating "art" and commercialism. Theater here singularly advocates "art." This excludes most Dallas theater and generally all musicals. Strangely, though musicals are a more commercially viable subset of theater, I find musical theater to be more artistically successful than most plays I've seen. I have seen a very minimal number of plays that moved me in any way. Whereas oftentimes musical theater gets flack for being egotistical/perform-y, I find it's straight theatre that often gets too big for its britches in terms of lofty didactic attempts at life-altering work. I think my problem is that most of the time, I just want to be entertained. Incidentally, most of America just wants to be entertained. Subsequently, I think I may have an easier time making a career out of being someone who does musical theater than my peers who are only interested in "art"/straight theatre.
That said, I understand that I am in a program where we study plays. Only. I came here for a reason. Acting is my weakest suit, and I knew I could gain a larger quantity of knowledge of technical theatre/design than I could in any musical theatre program. As someone who aspires to direct, this is imperative. Do I anticipate directing many plays? No. I want to direct musicals. But there aren't any undergrad musical theatre directing programs. Plus, our new head of the department is a bloody genius and brilliant director, so I turn worshippy disciple of the almighty Stan every Tuesday and Thursday in Directing class.
All this goes to say that I think we'd all be happier if we got along, supported each other, and allowed some room for less lofty/more entertaining "art." In the lyrics of the band War, "Why can't we be friends?"
1 comment:
I completley agree with what you have said. Your perspective is of someone who has worked in theatre, and studied, one that most of us have not had yet. I think the one thing that will truly change all of us, for the better, is when the "safety net" is taken away. It will be sudden and frightening but once that happens we will realize that yes, we strive for art, but we still have to support ourselves, and when the public is buying for entertainment that we ourselves don't deem as worthy of the title of art (which in itself is rediculous), we have to entertain. And when your making the public smile and sway in their seats, or sigh and cry into their handkerchiefs how can you not be happy with yourself.
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