How Going Local Can Revitalize American Theater by Marshall Botvinick

HowlRound: Twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Athens, theater shaped the body politic. It was a sacred space where commoners and leaders sat side by side and watched their most pressing national questions dramatized and choreographed. In America, however, neither our leaders nor our citizens flock to the theater, and our playwrights, unlike Sophocles (or Vaclav Havel for that matter), do not serve as national leaders. So what has changed in twenty-five hundred years? Why has theater been relegated to the periphery of the national dialogue in America, and more importantly, what can we, American theater artists, do to rediscover our sense of purpose?