You’ve been speaking your minds about the Mike Daisey article, because I think it touches a nerve with folks doing theater and seeing theater. It should. I’m sure that’s what Mike intended when he wrote it. I must mention that I was e-mailed the article by several friends and colleagues prior to writing about it. Such is the hoopla the piece is making in the theater community.

I’ve already posted some of the responses that I’ve received. But I also want to mouth off a bit about the piece myself, because all that Mike says in it doesn’t sit entirely well with me.

If you haven’t read Mike’s article, do so now by going following the link to THE EMPTY SPACES (Or, How Theater Failed America).  It’s a great read.  Mike is a very good writer, and he writes from a place of great knowledge and insight.

But now I need to go on a bit about the bug-a-boo I have with Mike’s contention that Theater failed America.  In his article, I sense an underlying sentiment from him that somehow the American theater artist is inherently entitled to a middle-class existence.  Entitlement is something I've never considered when it comes to having a career in the theater.  If you ask any artist making theater in America today whether they made the choice to be an actor, actress, designer, director or craftsperson because of a need for comfort and steady work, my guess is that you would receive an overwhelming “no”.

Theater is a tough business. It always has been. Prior to the establishment of the regional theaters in this country, theater was Broadway and tours across the States. Regional theater actually created more jobs, and made it possible for actors and other theater artists to put roots down in communities across the country.  This was a good thing.  But it didn’t necessarily mean that all those artists were entitled to a livelihood derived entirely from creating art. It did mean, however, that lots of communities got fireman, waitresses, office workers, and day laborers who were free thinkers and imposed their creativity on their “day jobs.”

I agree that institutions (the regional theaters of the world) are trapped. It’s a daunting problem. I’ve worked for theater institutions and I’ve worked for the garage-type theaters Mike Daisey speaks of as a gold mine for thrilling work. The universal truth in both of those types of producing situations is this: Sometimes the work is life-changing, sometimes it ain’t. Theater might be a commodity at the institutional level, but it works really well when one element comes in to mess up the commodity:  the individual artist.

The same is true on the other end of the scale with smaller mom-and-pop theater movements. Individuals make magic happen. Individuals who are crazed enough to believe that theater is worth doing despite any obstacles they must overcome.

A life in the arts comes with great highs and great lows. But that’s what we all signed on for when we chose it, right? I knew that my life was going to be tough when I really knew that I was going to fully sign on as a dedicated member of the theatrical community.  But I also knew that I would be in the company of a hearty band of tenacious dreamers who would help me, through good humor and generosity, to shoulder the burden of working 47 different types of jobs and constantly worrying about my inability to ever really retire and live in a sunny condo in Florida.

 I would love to think of myself as a theater artist through and through who derives his entire income from performing and directing, but I know that will probably never be the case.  That doesn’t mean, I’m saying, “Boo hoo, this is too hard. I’m giving up on the theater.”  I’ll just paste together a life with odd jobs and things outside the realm of theater that can support the work I do as an artist.  And frankly, being involved in what others call “the real world”, always helps me understand my role as an artist even better and makes me a better human, which I think really is the whole point of this artsy schmartsy business.

In his article, Mike Daisey talks about a friend of his who is giving up after trying to be an actress in Seattle.  I don’t think that lady is weak, I just don’t think she’s a true artist.  True artists are a combination of two things:  talent and tenacity.  The talent is the easy thing.  The showing up day after day for guaranteed rejection, humiliation and unfair treatment that is just part of the job description of being an artist is the real work.  Mike Daisey’s friend, it seems to me, was not made of the stuff for the real work that goes on throughout an artist’s life.  You can still be talented and have a hobby.  It seems to me that is the case of his actress friend.  She's a great hobbyist who, for very sane, rational reasons, chose to move away from something that was crushing her soul.

Let's face it, we theater artists are all a little mad to keep putting ourselves in front of doors that more often than not get slammed in our face.

I also think it’s vitally important for the theater artist of today to know what they want and to understand the world in which they function. I see a lot of theater and I believe that we are blessed in our own town with groups very large and very small that all have moments of brilliance. I recently went to see a theater event that spotlighted original work from what could be called a subversive movement. One piece in particular was brilliant…really, nothing short of brilliant. The artist that wrote the piece and performed it chatted with me after the show, and we gabbed about his short play, my reaction to it, and his energetic and exciting young company of artists.  When this talented guy -- who was performing in a dirty theater space full of unbridaled kinetic energy -- started talking to me about the best way to go about raising money though grants and letter writing so he and his troupe could do better stuff and pay their artists more, I felt a pit grow in my stomach.  Here was someone who was exploring some thrilling new ways of doing theater, being sucked into the vortex of “I need more money to do better things.”

He doesn’t. Most theater doesn’t.  But don’t damn the institutions because they raise money to do bigger things. It's comparing apples to oranges.

Theater isn’t an “everyone gets the same size piece of cake” kind of enterprise. Some people succeed. Some people don’t.  And what it means to succeed is something unique for everyone involved in the process of doing theater.  For some folks that means having money in an IRA and taking a family vacation during the time between gigs.  For some, that means creating mind-blowing theater nightly for an audience of 26 rapturous fans and not letting your boss see that you’re using the company copy machine to make flyers for your upcoming show.  We need controversy to produce theater.  We need institutions to spur itchy artists to create their own movements (in our town alone we can thank Milwaukee Rep for being the catalyst for artists to create groups like Milwaukee Chamber Theater, Next Act Theater, Renaissance Theaterworks, and so many, many more worthy troupes). We need upstart movements, because that’s where new ideas are meant to flourish. 

We need both of those types of experiences for the American theater artist, or the Theater will become the worst type of commodity on the market: a piece of stale, lifeless pabulum that reeks of a sameness of experience.  But what we need most of all is for the American theater artist to stop whining and to just keep showing up to work.  The seats may be empty, but there is no hope of them filling up if there's nothing good to see onstage.