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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 16, 2017

Putting regional theater on TV

May 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I make a modest proposal that could transform American theater. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

What do Lucas Hnath, Lynn Nottage, J.T. Rogers and Paula Vogel have in common? If you recognize them as the authors of “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” “Sweat,” “Oslo” and “Indecent,” which received this year’s best-play Tony Award nominations, it’s a safe bet that you’re a serious theater buff. If, on the other hand, none of their names are familiar to you…well, I’m not surprised. Fifty years ago, the best-play nominees were Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance,” Frank Marcus’ “The Killing of Sister George,” Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” and Peter Shaffer’s “Black Comedy.” The average educated American would not only have heard of all four plays, but would likely have recognized the names of their authors. Today, by contrast, most people don’t know much about Broadway plays, much less the men and women who write them.

Why not? Because American theater no longer has what I call a “fame mechanism.” A half-century ago, Broadway was regularly covered by weekly newsmagazines like Time, Life and Newsweek, and it also figured prominently on such network TV series as “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tonight Show” and “What’s My Line?” I saw Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” my first Broadway play, on CBS—in prime time!

Theater’s “fame mechanism” broke down, however, as the old-time legacy media started to lose their dominant place in American culture. At the same time, live theater became geographically decentralized: “A Doll’s House, Part 2” was first performed by California’s South Coast Repertory, “Sweat” by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, “Oslo” by Lincoln Center Theater at its off-Broadway house and “Indecent” by the Yale Repertory Theatre. That these plays were subsequently produced on Broadway ensures that they’ll have an afterlife. But what does it say about the state of American theater that dozens of other plays of comparable quality receive regional premieres every season without ever reaching Broadway? Is there another way to spread the word about such plays, as well as the outstanding companies that stage them?…

What if six top-tier regional theaters, backed by a foundation or two, were to join forces and start a national consortium that taped well-produced versions of live performances of a half-dozen plays—three new shows, three revivals—each season, then made them universally available for free? They could then be shown on local public-TV stations, or disseminated via more up-to-date methods like movie-theater simulcasts or Netflix-style streaming video….

In addition to publicizing its six member companies, my hypothetical Regional Theater Broadcast Consortium would be good for American theater as a whole. A telecast of a play, after all, is not merely a piece of entertainment, but an advertisement for live theater in general. It introduces everyone who watches it to another entertainment option—getting off your couch and into the nearest theate….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Lee J. Cobb stars in a TV version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, directed by Alex Segal and originally telecast by CBS on May 8, 1966:

Lookback: on owning more records than you have time to play

May 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2007:

As of today I have 3,202 songs on my iPod, which is about all it will hold. From time to time I knock off a few old songs to make room for new ones, but for the most part I find that three thousand songs is enough, by which I mean that whenever I fire up my iPod, I never have any trouble finding something I want to hear.

My office, on the other hand, contains seven custom-built wooden CD shelves holding three thousand discs. In the past year or two, I’ve let days go by at a time without listening to any of them, and I’m sure there are at least a hundred (if not more) to which I’ve never listened, just as there is a not-inconsiderable number of books on my shelves that I’ve never read.

The sad truth is that I now spend more time reading and listening for professional reasons than I do for pleasure….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: August Wilson on self-confidence

May 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“You have to have a belief in yourself that’s larger than anybody’s disbelief, and find something to say.”

August Wilson, quoted in Conversations with August Wilson (ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig)

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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