Artists Want A Theater Home: Thoughts From Outrageous Fortune

January 16, 2010 by Dennis Baker 

I am going to start throwing my hat into the theatrosphere conversation about Outrageous Fortune. An organized group has been formed and you can read more here:

So many people long for a home. I don’t feel like one specific theatre is my home. People are your home, because they move around. That’s how it works now. I know very few people who go, “This theatre will do pretty much everything I write.” It used to be that way. I have a fantasy of having a theatre home. If I had the right theatre home I wouldn’t go anywhere else. Are we loyal to theatres? I would love the opportunity to be loyal to a theatre. I would take it very seriously. In TV and film they are loyal. That’s why people get first-look deals – Playwright, pg.41

While in theory I would agree with this comment, there is one line that caught my attention The anonymous playwright says, “If I had the right theatre home I wouldn’t go anywhere else.” I wonder what this right theater would be for the playwright? One that has sufficient clout within the regional theater community? One that has enough money for his/her plays? On that is regional, but maybe not too rural? Looking at the list of artists in the back of the book, they are plenty of theaters that would love to have anyone of them as their resident playwright, but these are smaller, independent theaters that do not have a budget to pay anyone full-time, or high recognition within the regional theater community.

But then again, per this study, it doesn’t seem like any theater is really paying much of anything for playwrights, and as Chris Ashworth points out NEWS FLASH: ARTISTS GET PAID SHIT. Maybe the idea of making a money as an artist needs to be put aside for awhile and instead of looking for the “right” or “perfect” job as a playwright, actor, or director we look for those local theater communities that are where we are living right now, where we are working right now, and ask those theaters if they have room in their home for one more artist.

Tomorrow, Sunday, January 17th, is the second day of American Voices New Play Institute‘s discussion focusing on Black Playwrights. You can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #newplay. The RSS feed can be found using Twitter search.

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Comments

5 Responses to “Artists Want A Theater Home: Thoughts From Outrageous Fortune”

  1. Lindsay Price on January 17th, 2010 10:29 am

    I’m not sure there is any right ‘home’ for a playwright. Wouldn’t that suggest that the playwright is then writing the same kind of play over and over? Wouldn’t it be better to fit each play individually? And isn’t having a home the same as not wanting to do the work to find that fit? Who knows.

    What I find in all of this brouhaha, is I wish playwrights would believe that the traditional method of production is not the be all and the end all. That the definition of success is changeable. It take a crap load of work that isn’t writing, but success is not out of our grasp…

  2. Scott Walters on January 17th, 2010 1:21 pm

    Lindsay — Was that true of Shakespeare? Of Moliere? Did they write the same play over and over? This idea that one has to move over and over to remain creative is an American pathology nor borne out by theatre history.

  3. Lindsay Price on January 17th, 2010 3:10 pm

    Fair enough. But are they suitable examples for this day and age? Are there more modern British examples, I wonder. Hmm. And there’s a difference between a playwright having a home to create, and a playwright having a home to be produced. My understanding is that the example in the post is specifically talking about production, which is where my comment comes from.

  4. Scott Walters on January 17th, 2010 3:49 pm

    Lindsay — Sure: the Royal Court in London, and The Theatre du Soleil in Paris. And I am talking about a home to be produced. This migrant worker life we seem to have decided is necessary for all theatre artists is, in fact, a historical anomaly that we are treating like a universal rule. Fact: pop music groups stay together. Fact: symphony orchestras have a stable core of musicians. But somehow, we’ve decided that one-and-done productions and artists who travel like the Flying Dutchman is The Only Way It Can Be Done. And for some reason, we think that today is so much different than the past that we can’t learn from what’s been done. I say that simply isn’t true, and we ignore the past at our peril.

  5. Emily on June 1st, 2010 3:14 am

    Lindsay — Sure: the Royal Court in London, and The Theatre du Soleil in Paris. And I am talking about a home to be produced. This migrant worker life we seem to have decided is necessary for all theatre artists is, in fact, a historical anomaly that we are treating like a universal rule. Fact: pop music groups stay together. Fact: symphony orchestras have a stable core of musicians. But somehow, we’ve decided that one-and-done productions and artists who travel like the Flying Dutchman is The Only Way It Can Be Done. And for some reason, we think that today is so much different than the past that we can’t learn from what’s been done. I say that simply isn’t true, and we ignore the past at our peril.

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