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AMERICAN THEATRE: You’ve seen (and maybe argued about) our Top 10 Most-Produced Plays list. Now let the debate begin over the most-produced names in the country; goodness knows we’ve wanted to shout these names from the rooftop in the past few weeks.
This is a fascinating list, both in terms of how they collected the information for it and the content of the list itself. To begin, their data collection seems to be pretty widespread and has enough determining factors to keep the data concise and relevant. The content of the list and the many different facets in which it can be analyzed is also fascinating. The article already mentions that they have been keeping track of changes such as gender and minority balance over the years. Trends such as these haven’t changed much in previous years, but are on the rise now as the theatrical and regular world grows more accepting and liberal. Something else in this article that surprised me was how many productions of Shakespeare were done in this past year in this specific data set. I know Shakespeare is a classic and the rights to most of his works are very accessible, but I didn’t expect the concentration to be so high.
I think that there is some good news, bad news, and interesting discoveries that I made that comes from this list. First, I found it interesting that I had never heard of the top produced playwright, Ayad Akhtar, but when I did some research on the him, I noticed that I had heard of some of his projects that he has created. The first one I noticed was Disgraced (his most well known play) is being produced at the Pittsburgh Public and I had also seen his documentary "Too Big to Fail". Building off of this, I think it is great news that the top produced playwright is a Pakistani American, but there is a negative side to this in that only 3 playwrights are non-white. There is a large gap for non-white and female playwrights to fill, considering one of the non-white playwrights, August Wilson, although fantastic, is no longer alive. This means that only 2 of the top twenty are non-white, alive people.
I'm not entirely sure what to think here. On the one hand, I echo Ben when I say that it is exciting to see Ayad Akhtar as the most produced playwright in the US, both because I had not heard of him, and because the numbers for non-white playwrights are always laughably low. Beyond that, the very existence of this list makes me quake with indecision. While I know Shakespeare will be a staple of the theatre forever and always, why do these theaters all gravitate towards doing the same plays over and over again? I know that these numbers are small compared to the span of the survey, but I fear that our over reverence of the "iconic" and "classic" playwrights may blind us to those who may have something new to say. Artaud may have been a little over zealous when he called people to "destroy the masterpieces," but his core philosophy makes sense. Being too deferential to the works established as being great stifles us. We should continue to push ourselves and encourage others to make new work beyond our established cultural canon. I hope to see more fresh and new names produced in the years to come.
3 comments:
This is a fascinating list, both in terms of how they collected the information for it and the content of the list itself. To begin, their data collection seems to be pretty widespread and has enough determining factors to keep the data concise and relevant. The content of the list and the many different facets in which it can be analyzed is also fascinating. The article already mentions that they have been keeping track of changes such as gender and minority balance over the years. Trends such as these haven’t changed much in previous years, but are on the rise now as the theatrical and regular world grows more accepting and liberal. Something else in this article that surprised me was how many productions of Shakespeare were done in this past year in this specific data set. I know Shakespeare is a classic and the rights to most of his works are very accessible, but I didn’t expect the concentration to be so high.
I think that there is some good news, bad news, and interesting discoveries that I made that comes from this list. First, I found it interesting that I had never heard of the top produced playwright, Ayad Akhtar, but when I did some research on the him, I noticed that I had heard of some of his projects that he has created. The first one I noticed was Disgraced (his most well known play) is being produced at the Pittsburgh Public and I had also seen his documentary "Too Big to Fail". Building off of this, I think it is great news that the top produced playwright is a Pakistani American, but there is a negative side to this in that only 3 playwrights are non-white. There is a large gap for non-white and female playwrights to fill, considering one of the non-white playwrights, August Wilson, although fantastic, is no longer alive. This means that only 2 of the top twenty are non-white, alive people.
I'm not entirely sure what to think here. On the one hand, I echo Ben when I say that it is exciting to see Ayad Akhtar as the most produced playwright in the US, both because I had not heard of him, and because the numbers for non-white playwrights are always laughably low. Beyond that, the very existence of this list makes me quake with indecision. While I know Shakespeare will be a staple of the theatre forever and always, why do these theaters all gravitate towards doing the same plays over and over again? I know that these numbers are small compared to the span of the survey, but I fear that our over reverence of the "iconic" and "classic" playwrights may blind us to those who may have something new to say. Artaud may have been a little over zealous when he called people to "destroy the masterpieces," but his core philosophy makes sense. Being too deferential to the works established as being great stifles us. We should continue to push ourselves and encourage others to make new work beyond our established cultural canon. I hope to see more fresh and new names produced in the years to come.
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