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A few weeks ago, I solicited thoughts from playwrights far and wide about the effect an Obama administration might have on American theater. I got hordes of impassioned responses from playwrights across the country; this is the second installment of prophecies (click here for the first).
It’s interesting to compare these artists’ comments with this release [PDF] from Obama’s 2008 campaign on his arts policy. It remains to be seen what percentage of this is campaign promise and how much will actually condense into reality.
From Jason Grote, a New York-based playwright:
“How the next four years will play out is anyone’s guess — we’re living in the direst economic times since the Great Depression, and despite the great sea change we’re witnessing, corporate neoliberalism and the grotesque priorities of our age haven’t exactly disappeared; we’ll probably continue to see cuts in vital services as the public purse continues to be handed over to bloated corporations, whether through the military, privatization initiatives, stadium boondoggles, or whatever. This is a lousy climate for any number of things, and the arts never falls toward the top of the list.
However, there are a number of hopeful signs here, most notable among them that Barack Obama seems to realize the value of the arts and humanities in a civilized nation. This places him firmly in a different tradition from any President in the last 40 years. One of the great ironies of the last 15 years is that arts funding actually increased under George W. Bush, most likely due to Laura Bush’s patronage (and to the fact that Bill Clinton had little to gain in defending them against the Republican culture war).
It’s going to be a while until most of our institutional theaters feel like they can start taking chances again — I’ve always felt that their risk-aversion has been largely a function of scarcity and fear, which still remain with us — but the election of Obama is at least a signal that there might be a new way of conceiving of things. It is my hope that we can begin to move away from the concept of theater as a commodity, and to acknowledge that art (among many other things) has a value far beyond that which can be expressed monetarily (incidentally, I’ve recently been influenced by reading The Gift by Lewis Hyde, a Kenyon faculty member). If something as devalued in our culture as community organizing can win a Presidential election, then there’s hope for theater yet.
From Rachel Chavkin, freelance director and Artistic Director of the TEAM (Theater of the Emerging American Moment):
“Some thoughts based on what I’m already seeing in my students:
Without positive or negative judgment on any of these:
A return to the 60’s. Performance art- -bathing in feces or food products–will return in a new generation that doesn’t have a hard core enemy to be working against.
International exchange will become the rule, not the exception across America. Through the internet and cultural exchange, more Americans will get funding to go and work abroad, and hopefully more money to bring artists here.
Liberal ideology will complexify, will increasingly bring in the right.
Ticket prices will drop.
Site-specific theatre and “happenings” will rise again.
Federal money for the arts will drop or stay the same but corporate obligation to the arts will revive and increase, though it may look different than the sponsorship provided now.
Artists will get health care.
Artists will get health care.
Artists will get health care.”
And from Ashlin Halfknight, playwright and Executive Producer of New York-based theater company Electric Pear:
“I think – against my political leanings (which are, incidentally, way left… I’m a Canadian, for crying out loud)- I would hope to see theater embrace and stage whatever anti-Democrat sentiment is out there as much as it has sought out, supported and pushed an anti-Republican one. I’m frankly bored with the latter. Really bored. The former, if articulated in an intelligent and artful manner, might be really challenging and interesting to a collection of theater-going liberals who have been swept up into a frenzy over the coming transfer of power… myself included.
If the country doesn’t go bankrupt, I hope that there will be more funding for the arts… but, dare I say it, not too much. I don’t like the idea that the government determines who (or what projects) get money, and therefore what we see on stage. I hear US artists complaining all the time about the lack of funds from Washington, but in a lot of cases (and countries) this system creates a grant-driven creative process where ideas are aborted because they’d never get past the committees, usually for lack of some clear, safe, social message; and this type of system allows donors and the wealthy to assume that the government will take care of the artists in the world… so they’re not as open to supporting promising projects and people. So yes, hopefully, the big O will send more money our way… but not too much.
If the country does go bankrupt: Umm…
In all, I just want the sense of hope and renewal that has been blossoming in the country as a whole to extend to the world of theater. Hopefully people take risks and tell stories and explore to an even greater degree… and that Britney finally gets to do Hedda on Broadway.”
Well according to People Magazine, Britney is back (and her abs look awesome!), so Ashlin might get his wish…
More next week, and again, we’d love your comments regarding the other branches of the literary arts.