Archives for June 26, 2006

No sooner did I come back to New York on Friday than I plunged into a brief but intense stint of playgoing: I saw Pig Farm on Friday night, Susan and God on Saturday afternoon, and Macbeth in Central Park on Saturday night. The last was a near-run thing, for it was raining until an hour before curtain time, and it looked like it was going to start raining again all the way through the performance.

I awoke at five-thirty on Sunday morning, packed my bags, made my way to LaGuardia Airport (about which more here), and flew from there to St. Louis, where I caught a shuttle bus to Smalltown, U.S.A. At two o’clock I was eating chicken-salad sandwiches with my mother and flipping through her high-school yearbook, published in 1946. Five hours later we sat down with my brother to watch the first installment of Broken Trail, and now I’m headed for bed.

This is the first time I’ve been home since Christmas. My mother was pleased to see that I’d lost forty pounds and acquired a rosy hue in my cheeks. (Apparently I was looking a trifle wan for several weeks prior to my visit to the hospital.) I shared the bus from St. Louis to Smalltown with a seventy-seven-year-old woman who asked me where I was from. I told her I’d grown up in southeast Missouri but was now living in New York City, to which she replied, “How nice! Do you go to school there?” I hooted loudly, thanked her kindly, and tried to imagine how weak and scared I must have looked the last time I was in Smalltown.

I’ll be spending Monday morning writing my drama column for Friday’s Wall Street Journal, after which I plan to buy a new belt, eat a very modest amount of barbecue, and take it easy. Not to worry: you’ll be hearing from me at regular intervals between now and my return to New York on Thursday. Right now, though, I’m more than ready to turn in.

Till soon.

In my latest “Sightings” column, published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I discuss a question that’s been on my mind for some time now: why are America’s best regional theater companies not as well known as our museums, symphony orchestras, and opera companies?

Time for a pop quiz: name three important fine-arts institutions that are not located in (A) New York City or (B) the place where you live.

I recently asked this question of 20 art-conscious friends all across the U.S. Between them, they listed 42 different institutions, seven of which received more than one vote. Most frequently cited was the Art Institute of Chicago, with four votes.

Only five of them mentioned a theater company.

I took this informal poll in the same week that Seattle’s Intiman Theatre won the Tony Award for excellence in regional theater. It’s been presented annually since 1976 to such distinguished ensembles as Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, all of which I covered enthusiastically for the Journal in the past year. Not one of them was mentioned. The only person to vote for the Intiman was a former resident of Seattle….

Each year it grows more difficult to persuade the arts editors of major newspapers and magazines–even those that pay fairly close attention to theater in New York–to send their drama critics to other cities, save for an occasional trip to London. As for TV, forget about it. I can’t remember the last time PBS aired an out-of-town production. Regional theater, it seems, just isn’t glamorous enough to make the journalistic cut.

Yet most of the best live drama in America is to be found in what Variety still insists on calling “the stix.” The vast majority of large and medium-sized American cities can boast of at least one high-quality repertory company, and many have more than that. On any given night you can see about as many plays in Chicago or Washington, D.C., as you can in New York, and Minneapolis-St. Paul isn’t far behind….

The Journal has posted a free link to this column, so to read the whole thing–of which there is much more–go here.

“‘Do you do any work besides teaching?’ said Sarah, in a social manner.

“‘People always regard teaching as a side line. Well, I am writing a book of essays.’

“‘Oh, not a real book?’ said Tamasin.

“‘No, not one with a beginning and an end.’

“‘That would be more difficult.’

“‘Yes, it would.’

“‘Does a book of essays take very long?’

“‘Not the book itself, but I have come to putting in the charm. I put in so much, that I had to take some out; and that seemed a waste, and I put it back.'”

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Manservant and Maidservant