Kudos to Dennis Baker
Great letter to American Theatre, Dennis! My contribution below:
While Teresa Eyring's editorial "How Theatre Save America, Part 1" highlights the wonderful artists of the Network of Ensemble Theatres, and pays particular attention to the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, whose long-time member Elizabeth Down I had the pleasure of sharing a post-show panel discussion with following Mike Diasey's June 15th performance of How Theatre Failed America, the fact is that American Theatre Magazine devotes all too little of its space to such regional ensembles. A tally of your recent issues reveals a fixation on theatres in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and even when you do feature a theatre not from those areas the article is usually written by a writer from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Perhaps the real title of Daisey's piece ought to be How American Theatre Failed American Theatre. Your magazine needs to walk your talk, Ms, Eyring. You and your magazine could be leading a long-delayed renaissance in the regional theatre through a rediscovery of the original impulse as expressed by Margo Jones and Zelda Fichlander, among other; instead, you are trying to sandbag it. Everything is NOT all right.
Scott E. Walters
Asheville, NC
Theatre Ideas blog (http://theatreideas.blogspot.com)
While Teresa Eyring's editorial "How Theatre Save America, Part 1" highlights the wonderful artists of the Network of Ensemble Theatres, and pays particular attention to the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, whose long-time member Elizabeth Down I had the pleasure of sharing a post-show panel discussion with following Mike Diasey's June 15th performance of How Theatre Failed America, the fact is that American Theatre Magazine devotes all too little of its space to such regional ensembles. A tally of your recent issues reveals a fixation on theatres in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and even when you do feature a theatre not from those areas the article is usually written by a writer from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Perhaps the real title of Daisey's piece ought to be How American Theatre Failed American Theatre. Your magazine needs to walk your talk, Ms, Eyring. You and your magazine could be leading a long-delayed renaissance in the regional theatre through a rediscovery of the original impulse as expressed by Margo Jones and Zelda Fichlander, among other; instead, you are trying to sandbag it. Everything is NOT all right.
Scott E. Walters
Asheville, NC
Theatre Ideas blog (http://theatreideas.blogspot.com)
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Comments
Also theatre journalists tend to move to cities where they can practice and get paid for doing so. Most likely candidate cities would be the ones you name. And assumption would be that Jim O’Quinn makes his judgments on quality and appropriateness of articles submitted to American Theatre according his editorial vision, rather than the address of the writer.
There are people who know and write about theatre around this country, whether for newspapers or as academics. While an editor may make selection from articles that are pitched to him, the decision to do theme issues and to assign topics is under his purview -- an editor is not quite as passive as you'd like to make out.
I am puzzled why you would defend the mainstream on this. There is something wrong, and someone must speak up about it. One way to do so is to hold the mainstream press' feet to the fire, especially when the media is a nonprofit whose mission should be to represent the entire field of American Theatre. Otherwise, just call the magazine "Nylachi Theatre" and be done with it.
“From The Executive Director” is an established one-page comment at the front of every issue American Theatre magazine, so nothing special with this “editorial”, as you call it. I believe Ben Cameron wrote this TCG comment every issue during his tenure. Usually he spoke generally to the “state of the nation” of not-for-profit theatre. This “TCG page” is probably the only page not under the editorial control of Jim O’Quinn.
Scott says “Hold the mainstream press' feet to the fire, especially when the media is a nonprofit whose mission should be to represent the entire field of American Theatre.”
But I read TCG’s mission as attempting to represent its constituency of theatre, not the entire field of American theatre.
http://www.tcg.org/about/ar/2005/about_us.cfm
Are you suggesting that TCG's “media” should represent a broader and more diverse community than the “436 not-for-profit theatres in 47 states and the District of Columbia” than they already do?
The monologue is first and foremost an artistic product that exploits the failing system it critiques. More than likely the piece will go into rep performance with Mike’s other monologues into tour of regional theatres around the country. Or as Mike characterizes his work within the system: the carrion bird. So he has created one more vulture to feed on the dying and dead remains of regional theatre. I think many theatre artists are doing something similar in managing their art and careers. This as much as the work of any administrator helps keep the system in place.