The American Theater Needs You
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 2:00 PM
I know at least half our readership isn’t Conservative.
But so many of our readers are also writers—judging by the number of blogs they link to—our on-line community seems as likely a place as any for finding a hidden playwright. And you’re needed!
André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater for 16 years, said he reads about five plays a week, and from thousands over the years he could not think of a single one that would fall on the right end of the spectrum. “I’m trying to think if I ever read a play that I would call conservative,” he said, pausing a few moments. “I don’t think I’ve come across one.”
And at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which embarked last year on an ambitious, decade-long project to commission 37 plays that depict moments of change in American history, the project’s director has been so unsuccessful in finding a play without a liberal slant that she even considered looking for a young writer at a conservative college to whom she could be a mentor over the next eight years.
If you have a good play, loosely about American history and “moments of change,” the Oregon Shakespeare Festival needs you. See here for details.
And in the meanwhile, let’s remind ourselves that sometimes the reason “the arts” seem to embody only one way of looking at things is because people with different ideas give up on promoting them. Anyone who wishes to influence the culture may. But we have to show up, pay dues in the respective industries, and produce quality work like anyone else.
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