Every Super Bowl Sunday I have the same thought. As I watch people on TV all over the country getting truly excited about a football game, I wonder what it would be like if these people felt the same about theatre. What if old ladies at the Ahmanson wore big rubber mascot hats and t-shirts with their favorite theatre company logo on it. What if men parked their trucks outside the Geffen drinking beer and grilling burgers on the tailgates before curtain? What if people painted the faces of their children with the names of their favorite stage actors? Then, we’d know, without debate, that theatre is making a difference.
It’s great that a football game can uplift the souls of hundreds of millions of Americans. Even if you hate sports, you have to admit that there is a unifying public benefit from the Super Bowl beyond the Doritos and pizza profits. I don’t claim to understand it. In fact I think it’s ridiculous how passionate people feel about sports. I feel like I’m from Mars sometimes, because I see the rest of the country jumping up and down over the Lakers, or Yankees, or Bruins, and I just don’t care. It’s a game. I’m a freak. I know it. Because millions of normals out there would die for their favorite sports teams. There is simply nothing more important to most, than their favorite teams.
Of course there are many differences between sports and arts. But that raw passion which leads men to go shirtless in the freezing cold with slogans painted on their bulging stomachs…that level of excitement is what theatre needs to inspire. When we figure out how to do that and then brand theatre as that kind of experience, then we’ll have won the game. Meanwhile, my theatre will be serving Velveeta at intermission.
Jay McAdams
Executive Director
24th Street Theatre
Jay,
With all due respect, I couldn’t disagree with you more re: your last paragraph. The Greeks had the Olympics AND the Festival of Dionysus: each distinct unto itself; each an expression of community and national pride, supported by the ruling class because they felt both were important to the culture of the country. Other cultures throughout history have easily distinguished between sports, entertainment, and artistic expression. That the lines are blurred in our culture goes without saying. We’ve plenty of theatre in this country that is “event” and “entertainment” based competing for the largest audience possible. That doesn’t mean all theatre has to be. I think there is room in our field for a variety of expressions, some more supported than others. And I don’t think each has to be successful like the Super Bowl or the Roman Coliseum or Elizabethan bear-baiting, or Phantom of the Opera. They are not the only criteria for success. I personally think it’s dangerous to buy into the mindset that more is better. At the Fountain Theatre, we’re proud of our choices. We’ll never have 114 million people (on one day, shirtless or otherwise) seeing what we create, but then we never expected to.
Maybe we should make a short commercial showing fans of theater behaving just like sports fans and get every actor in america to donate $1 to the superbowl commercial fund and actually promote theater on the largest stage in America. If every actor donated $1, we could probably buy 4 spots. Fun idea… let’s get on it.
He there Simon,
Well said. I agree with you. I wasn’t actually saying that bigger is better. I was merely using sports to demonstrate real appetite. As you know from your work with the NEA, our national NEA budget is about the same as it was in the 80′s. That’s because the masses simply don’t value theatre. Period. But we all know of many cities that have ponied up more govt money than our entire national arts budget just to get a sports stadium built in their town. Why? Because people go absolutely nuts for sports.
There is a tiny sliver of arts lovers in this country and new reports show that overall theatre attendance is down. But, as I said in an earlier post, if you’re a theatre with a full house, then you’re happy and what you’re doing works. But if you’re in the majority, then you’re a theatre worried about drawing audiences and you’re looking to change. What you guys do at the Fountain works. You do great theatre (I’m a longtime fan of the Fountain) and you have built an audience base that is large enough to keep you doing it. It wouldn’t be enough to sustain you in a large venue, or if you had three times the staff and budget, but as you said, you never expected to be anything other than what you are. You’re in the category of a theatre that shouldn’t be looking for new models. But if your goal was to grow into a mid-size theatre company, or to build an endowment so as to guarantee your theatre would go on indefinitely, or to build your theatre’s infrastructure with more living wage jobs and benefits for your staff and crew… with any of these as major goals, just doing excellent theatre is probably not going to get you there.
Your point though, is well taken, Simon. There is room for both sports and theatre. I just wish more than that sliver cared about the latter.
Jay
Jay – we’re in agreement; in this particular age at this particular time in our particular culture, Theatre is not the primary cultural expression, nor the most popular, as is true for many other forms of artistic expression; but, we’re still here and it’s what we do, and we should remain true to ourselves whatever the pressure of the zeitgeist; from one Luddite to another!