Theatre should not be a boring event that rich, educated people go to to prove that they are socially aware. It should not be a thing you do when you go to New York, or when you want to impress your wife. Theatre should not require study before you go and see it, nor a knowledge of Elizabethean English to enjoy. And please, let it be fun, even if its a tragedy.
I recently went to a show, (which shall remain unnamed.) The reviews were good, lauding it as sincere and funny, and full of humanity, moreso than previous productions of the same play. Alas, what the paper saw as brilliant and sincere, I saw as dry and boring and overwrought. I fell asleep. So did my friends mom.
Theatre, spelled with a capital T, needs some changes. If an audience is no longer coming to Shakespeare, the theater will do a musical. But what if they changed the way they did Shakespeare? (I love musicals, by the way).
Theatre is not precious, which is one of the great things about it. It is raw, people in front of people. It is ever-changing. It is not a film, presented in full form for an audience that will like it or not, it is a living thing, capable of a conversation, taking cues from the other, changing, evolving during the conversation.
It is that danger, the danger of a living, breathing, alive thing conversing with a living, breathing audience that truly seperates theater from other forms of art.
Theatre should be like a courtship, where the young man and woman are feeling each other out, listening for clues, stumbling, impressing, flirting, laughing together. But too often it is like a suitor from the past, ignoring the woman before him, content to read his prepared statement as to why this young lady should love him. If that doesn't work with love, what makes us think it will work with theater?
Theatre's great difference from other art forms is that it is alive. If we are not willing to fully embrace what that means, all of it, then theatre will continue to struggle.
