Friday, June 5, 2009

What the hell's wrong with theatre?

Seriously: maybe it just needs more sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. Whole heaping gobs more. Of all three. At the same time.

Parabasis asks the question....

2 comments:

E. Hunter Spreen said...

I was thinking the very same thing driving home this afternoon. Stereo cranked up. Car hugging the curves. And for some strange reason Nazareth, Hair of the Dog. Yeah. We need summah that on the stage.

Steve Patterson said...

Years ago, at the waning of the Sixties, Sam Shepard lamented that most contemporary theatre couldn't hold a candle to the power and excitement of the Stones or the Who. Sadly, he's still right, and about the same bands, even if their members are eligible for Social Security and half of the original Who is dead.

But, you know, if you try, the audience is out there. Back in 2001, I produced one of my plays as a late-night; it had ever kind of bad behavior you can imagine, the warning notice was almost 50 words long, but it also operated on this wild, anarchic humor and a delight in bending the audience's mind. Consequence: sold out the whole goddamned run, and the play's performed magnificently at the box office every time it's been staged. But it apparently scares folks as well, and they send it back despite the money it's made because they know what kind of snarling phone calls they're going to receive and threats to cancel their subscriptions.

We need more Bill Graham's running our theatres, who'll take a call from an offended patron, and go, "Yeah, well the people who bought out the rest of the run are digging it, so fuck off, asshole!" *SLAM*

Well. One can dream.