Saturn and the Arts: A Challenge

The Clyde Fitch Report: Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of having lunch in Bakersville’s popular diner Helen’s with a dynamic young director who sought me out to talk about some of the things I have written here and elsewhere. He was intelligent, articulate, and clearly well-read, and as we talked, he spoke passionately about his desire to do plays that would speak to small communities. Ironically, he was on a short vacation before heading off to do a freelance gig in another state, where he had been hired to do a contemporary play telling the oft-told story of an upper-middle-class NYC family. He wondered aloud about what relevance that play had for the people who lived in the place where he was going, and he regretted the fact that he would not be there long enough to actually attempt to engage the community in a discussion of the issues raised in the play. He was just a hired gun brought in to get the play on its feet and then move on, and he had taken the gig because he was in the early part of his career and needed to take any paying opportunity that came along.