Playbill: Jeff Daniels has done many things over his long career. He’s led TV shows (The Newsroom), acted on Broadway (To Kill a Mockingbird), written plays (Escanaba in da Moonlight), and recorded music (he’s released five folk albums). But lately, Daniels has added another credit to his long, illustrious resume: artistic director. In 2022, he stepped in as artistic director of Purple Rose Theatre Company, which he founded in 1991 in his hometown of Chelsea, Michigan.
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I love hearing about people who compartmentalize their life. Because why stick to one thing? I found it really admirable when I learned that Jeff Daniels doesn’t get paid for his hard work as artistic director for Purple Rose. He stepped up during the pandemic so that the theatre company wouldn’t die out. Before reading this article, I never really thought of the lack of audience in theaters. I personally am not familiar with the local theatre scene. The most familiar to me is Broadway and I think that Broadway has made a huge and successful comeback after the pandemic. Now realizing the reality of local theaters’ struggles, it has made me more aware and sympathetic of why theatre truly exists. No matter the struggle, we’re here to tell stories and entertain people.
With theatres still struggling to come back from the COVID-19 pandemic and streaming services making watching entertainment pieces more accessible, it’s hard for theatre to seem convenient or even open to different audiences. Daniels points out that in order to find these different audiences we need to start writing about them. I found it particularly interesting that the hunting comedy Daniels wrote caused the hunting community in Michigan to go and see it, almost as if they came right from the trail. I enjoy learning about these smaller regional theatres that are aimed at serving the community around them and giving artists in the community an outlet to tell stories and share their creative interests. I hope that this story will spark similar conversations among other regional theatres around the country so that we are telling the stories to bring in the audiences who have never been to the theatre before rather than the audiences who are here to see their third version of a certain show. I think by growing our audience interest, theatre as an art form will continue to thrive.
“Daniels believes that comedy can be a way to relay important messages, but in a way that’s easier to swallow. And at the same time, theatre should be offering a respite from the outside world”. I really appreciate this quote because I think especially after COVID, people are looking for something to just laugh and use to escape from reality. I think that it is important for emotionally charged pieces to also exist but having comedy in those pieces might make those pieces more commercially viable and at the end of the day, theatres have to consider the money in, money out aspect of it. I really feel for the local theatre’s struggle to keep things afloat. I worked at a regional theatre for a little bit and everyone was extremely passionate about the work they did, but no one was paid and that kind of just speaks to the lengths that we will go to keep theatre alive especially in such a dire time.
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