The Economics of Theater

Andy Horwitz

In Mac Wellman’s Village Voice article this week, he gives a great overview of an emerging playwright’s community. Those of us who see theater regularly downtown have seen much of the work being created and can attest to the fact that there is an enormous amount of vitality and ingenuity. And no-one can dispute Mr. Wellman’s positive artistic advocacy and his pivotal role in nurturing this emerging community.

At one point in the article, however, Mr. Wellman says:

This type of theater community doesn’t seem likely to morph into a Performance Group, Open Theater, or Wooster Group. The real estate situation—and the weird financial paradox of a super-rich New York with a young theater movement whose poverty seems to be its sole inheritance—have made such fixed structures virtually impossible.

And while I’m in whole-hearted agreement with his statements about the real estate situation and its impact on creating “fixed structures”, I question the use of the term “poverty” in reference to this young theater movement. We are talking about artists who are coming from Brown, Yale, NYU, UCSD, and Brooklyn College, among many other institutions of higher learning. Many of these artists have, or are working towards, M.F.A.s. This is not exactly a roll call of poverty and disenfranchisement.

So while the likely earning potential of an M.F.A. is certainly not comparable to that of an M.B.A., people coming from prestigious universities will inevitably have been exposed to people with M.B.As and the world of access and privilege that has long been the wellspring of funding for non-profit organizations.

I’m conflicted about this. I have written at length, in different forums, about what I call “The Theater of Privilege” and the impact of that privilege on the art we create. I, too, come from a comfortable home, I went to a good school and even in the most bohemian, punk rock, “off-the-grid” phases of my life I never really risked poverty and disenfranchisement.

In the face of the very real economic warfare going on in this country and the persistent cultural biases in the arts, is it accurate to use the term “poverty” when referring to artists coming out of the university system?

What do you think?

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Andy Horwitz

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4 responses to “The Economics of Theater”

  1. isaac butler

    There is a difference between privilege and economic status, although economic status is certainly a part of privilege. Most of those artists mentioned in the Wellman piece certainly are struggling to make a living and make art and raise money all at the same time. I think that’s a pretty good indicator that their arts organizations (and, in some cases, they themselves) fall into the “poverty” group. Simply put, there’s no money to make art anymore let alone make a living making art.

    This doesn’t mean, however, that he artists Wellman is talking about are privileged. Most are quite privileged, for all the reasons mentioned in the posting (MFA’s, elite schools, etc.). I’m just saying economic privlege and regular ole umbrella privlege ain’t the same thing.

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  2. George Hunka

    I don’t think there’s any question that professional theater artists today are academically “privileged,” and that the nature of those academies necessarily make it so. Other than UCLA or USC, I can’t think of too many public MFA-granting universities that aren’t private and consequently expensive, especially those with good academic and professional reputations (NYU and Carnegie-Mellon, for example).

    Two points: First, the professionalization and specialization that has affected all of American academe has affected the profession of the theater practitioner as well. While this has provided the American theater with a huge pool of trained talent, it’s also shut out those practitioners who may not have those academic credentials. Graduate schools are not merely training grounds; they’re also informal communities, networking opportunities, not to mention indocrination centers for the ideological and aesthetic shibboleths of the current reigning academic stars. (Honestly, I don’t mean this in a negative way; any community tries to instill common values. It’s in the nature of community itself. But it can be stultifying to those who are outside of the community or to those who may disagree with the common values of that community.) You learn to walk the walk, talk the talk. There is privilege to this.

    Second: If theater practitioners are going to continue to search out spectacular effects, require large casts, then this poverty will continue. No individual nor community can afford to live beyond its means; the same goes for an aesthetic form. If this is a limitation, so be it: we learn to do more with less, as we’ve always done, instead of relying upon and continuing to expect broad support in the form of government and foundation grants. There’s no question that the lack of government support for the arts in this country is one of our greatest shames (and we seem to have quite a lot of them lately). But we can’t expect economic support to be unlimited.

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  3. ‘if’ …

    priviledge

    “Two points: First, the professionalization and specialization that has affected all of American academe has affected the profession of the theater practitioner as well.

    Reply
  4. Sparky

    How many NYU theater artists leveraged impossible loans to gain access? Well, me, and a handful of other “working class” artists going to school there that I know of. Still, I have made my peace with being a Manhattanite, and consider my college loans my own car payments/mortage. Oh, never mind that I can’t afford even that having taken up the life of a journalist for a non-corporate local outlet.

    There is much truth to the idea that the very possibility of even trying to make it in NYC requires financial backing. Many a trust fund daughter wastes her youth trying to make it as an actress in a place where young actresses are as common as air.

    My closest collaborators are former white trash intelligensia like myself, and we all have skeletons of relatives who didn’t make it (who are either totally abject or actually dead) lining our path to making beauty for the casual viewer.

    Risk is in play, if not us, for our friends and family left in “darkest” America.

    It shouldn’t be so. Me and my colleagues should be sending government checks back to our loved ones, and government progams should offer them alternatives to substance abuse to address their problems, problems largely caused by those who truly have their hands on the levers of privilege.

    Bush must go. Lives depend on it, and not just in Iraq.

    Reply
  5. peter

    I stumbled on this thread because I just got a big grant and I’m trying to unravel yet again the mysteries of theater ecomonics. I didn’t read the Wellman article but I agree with what you quoted of him. Younger people may not be aware how fixed companies, from the Wooster Group to the Graham Company to the Ridiculous Theatrical Comnpany, defined great theater in the 60’s, 70’s and to some extent the 80’s.

    It comes down to this: you want a company, your company, to realize your vision and tour the world. BUT.. you can’t have a company any more. They aren’t supported. The ecosystem that held them up has collapsed, starting with the price of space. So you have to do a SHOW. You have to run for as long as you can then close, pack up your costumes and go home. This involves you with “show” people who have lots of rules and regs. They want regional companies all over the country to “develop” productions of your SHOW. They want workshops. Well that’s what companies were. They were on-going workshops except they stayed with the founder/s. Now there are 500 people molding and changing your work. Is there a loss of quality here?

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