On Theater

Making theater means making value. Making something people not only want to see, but want to pay for. Independent theater in New York really, ultimately, comes down to the practical question: how do you convince theatergoers that they should pay a fraction of the cost of a major Broadway or Off-Broadway ticket for your Off-Off-Broadway play? As romantic as theater can feel, there is nothing romantic about this proposition; this challenge.

The fact is, most contemporary theatergoers would not go to see The Seagull or The Master Builder if they did not already know it was a classic; there are many theatergoers, I imagine, who would not go see Angels in America if not for Spiderman playing a lead. There is no such thing as taste or culture; there are just habits formed by corporate marketing campaigns. And this is what a small play (like ours) is up against: the habit of indifference to new work.

I’ve learned that it’s not enough to write or direct or act in an excellent new play: you have to find some way for that play to be seen, in the sense of recognized.

When someone pays a lot of money for a ticket, they expect the play to be good; when they pay a little bit of money to see a friend’s play, they most likely (if privately) expect it to be bad. These expectations are the goggles, the lens, through which new work is seen.

There is no rational reason to try to make independent theater, in other words, because there is an optical bias against the artistic merit of the work.