Saturday, October 01, 2011
Where's Our National Theatre? Don't look to NYC
The Playgoer: I imagine David Cote's expression of National Theatre-envy got a friendly reception on the UK's Guardian website. And I totally am with him on the sentiment--namely that the thing to envy most is not just the ethereal ideal of a "national" or "civic" theatre, but just the sheer magnitude of production that Nicholas Hytner's RNT puts out and its staggering (and I mean this in the best sense) competency. (For an example of institutional, um, non-competency see here.) In other words: is there any permanent theatre company in the US that stages so many productions at so consistently a high level and is lead by someone like Hytner who is as dynamic a director as he is administrator?
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4 comments:
The author of this post has a good point, American theater is no longer confined to New York City. Yes, NYC is still the theatrical heart of this country (a fact caused by and continued by the prominence of Broadway), but a large amount of American theater happens outside the city limits. It is important for the continuation of theater that the industry begins to move away from this New York-centric view and begins looking at the country as a whole (not just NYC and not NYC).
As a second point, I am not certain that a National Theatre is important. In such a large country, it is important that we diversify and send theater out as far and wide as we can. The impact of government subsidized arts programs is one that has caused much debate in this country. Who is to determine what is sufficiently important to fund.
This is interesting. Certainly, having a 'national' theatre would have it's pros and cons. I'm sure everybody working in theatre would love a bigger budget and to own the space they work in, which opens up possibilities. And it would be nice to have a large focus theatre, I think, and it would also draw attention to the theatre world, because other than "Broadway", the average person doesn't know any large theatre companies or famous theaters in the US.
But, I am assuming this national theatre, having government funding, would also be government influenced. That seems to go against a lot of what theatre and the arts mean to us.
The Playgoer makes an interesting point, one that I've thought about before. He goes pretty immediately to the two theatres in New York that I think could potentially bear the title (Lincoln Center or the Public), but they each have their own shortcomings and differences: LCT is just one part of the entire Lincoln Center campus, which, one could argue, is the leading performing arts complex in America, but whether LCT could stand along and represent us nationally is debatable. The Public has the right philosophy for it (their dedication to free shakespeare in the park is a big part of this) but over the years they've become as expensive and rich-folks-serving as the other subscriber-based off-broadway venues. There isn't one theatre here that represents the national trends, and that can be seen as a good or bad thing, since theatre is going so many places IN so many states and cities.
I just don't know why the US would need a national theater. While some theater trends certainly sweep nationally, we have very strong regional differences that make for interesting and distinct stylistic differences in different areas. Why not embrace that? Would announcing a national theater start an expectation of more uniform movements and styles nationally? I don't see a reason why this would be important. There are many theaters around the nation with big names and reputations. There's absolutely no need to reduce American theater to one particular theater when it's already something much grander.
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