Mediocrity Poisons Broadway and the Critics Rave … Except This One

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The following thoughts, critiques, rants, tangents, reflections, etc. are in a desperate response to the state of New York Theatre today.  I prelude these pages with the disclaimer that everything is in my humble, but educated and intuition driven opinion.  I am young and lack experience.  I know I may look back on these pages decades from now and scoff at my conceit; my opinions on theatre will change.  After all, theatre is ever morphing.  It is the gift that keeps giving as the definition of “what theatre is to you” takes on more and more layers of meaning as one learns more, experiences more, sees more.

Because of this awareness, everything I say is laced with humility; it’s the wiggle room we should all leave to realize later we were wrong.  This, I believe is a sign of an intelligent individual who aims for truth which is grander in the scheme of things than self fortifying thinking, a mindset that often comes off as defensive.  I realize that it is nobler to allow in vulnerability, to let go of defensive behavior as a sacrifice for the honest to god truth.  That’s what theatre should seek anyway, and because truthful theatre is my God, I incorporate this into my own every day living, and thus incorporate it into my criticisms of New York theatre.

So, there, I’ve covered humility.  The second adjective I chose above was “intuition driven.”  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in theatre, it is to follow your instincts.  Follow your instincts and you will be freed.   The best moments in theatre I’ve seen or experienced were not of the intellect, but were of the heart, the soul, the gut.  This translates from the actor onstage to the critic in the audience in that it doesn’t take a theatre scholar to identify a good play.  We know what is good simply by the way it affects us.  However, it is our environment paired with the need to please society (to make them think we’re smart … it’s comical we even think they care!) that subconsciously encourages audience members to re adjust their honest opinions of what lies before them onstage.

Our theatre environment is that of a bacterial colony, festering with mediocrity.  I hate mediocrity.  Our society fosters this mediocrity because they distrust their instincts, abandon them completely, and convince themselves that this theatre is spectacular in order to disappear into the accepted mold.  Our theatre is mediocre, and our audiences are mediocre.  It is not their fault; it is that of psychology’s.  They are told that this is good theatre and in their heart of hearts, they may not like it, but they feel the need to warp their opinions in order to appear cultured.   But on some level, they know this is only mediocre.  Maybe it’s difficult for some to identify because they have nothing with which to compare, but we must demand more.  We must, must, MUST demand more from our theatre of today. If our mediocre audiences were exposed to a truly spectacular play, they wouldn’t know what hit them.

Last night I saw a play with some friends.  If I’m a priest of theatre, it’d be safe to describe them as lay theatre people.   When the play was over, they claimed they loved the show.  However, throughout its duration, my friend to my right glanced at her Blackberry more than four times and my friend to the left allowed me to interrupt her theatre experience by having her search for a pen in her bag.  They don’t yet know what it’s like to be engrossed in a theatrical experience.  I was like this once.  When I was thirteen, a traveling Shakespeare company put on MacBeth and Romeo and Juliet in our public school’s auditorium.  I was a drama kid and therefore, my expectations for myself were to love and appreciate the play.  Apparently I decided that this was going to be the case no matter what.  I told everyone the show was great.  My appreciation for such a high art helped define me as a “drama kid.”  I continued with my day, fulfilling my role in our school’s small scale society as theatre geek.  I liked the plays.  The truth?  I hated them, but I wouldn’t admit that, even to myself.  I couldn’t follow the story, I didn’t believe the actors, but because I didn’t have my own education, I thought that I thought these shows were good because I was told they were.  Looking back now, after eleven more years on the stage and attaining a BFA in theatre arts, I realize the plays were poorly executed.  As a thirteen year old, my gut told me this.  But society made me change my view.

Theatres and theatre audiences of today are defeated; they have taken the lazy way out.  Maybe it’s for fear that this is all we have for theatre and we must take it for what it is.  I invite them to empower themselves and open their eyes to the fact that one need not be a theatre connoisseur to diagnose theatre as good and bad.  I for one refuse to settle.  I refuse to allow the quality of our theatre to match the quality of most things in our society.  This is the generation of mediocrity, and we must roll out of our beds and rebel.  You must work harder.  I must work harder.  We must raise our standards and demand more.  Then we must live up to them, ourselves.  My standards are high.  I’ve never met them.  It’s scary to do this: to set a bar so high.  We fear that we are merely setting ourselves up for failure, but we must do this.  You must “shoot for the moon; for even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

These two concepts, humility and intuition, are from where my opinions stem.  I invite into my stance the humility that I may be wrong.  I’ve decided to value truth more than myself and my pride, and when judging a performance or a moment, I use my gut as my guide.  The reason I have taken the time to explain these are twofold:

1. To know from where the following thoughts are coming, and, more importantly …

2. These two principles as a platform for a critic should also be at work as a platform for an actor, director, or writer.

When a theatre artist allows humility and intuition into his or her work, then and only then, will truly wonderful theatre develop.  So, audience members and fellow critics, demand more.  You are paying so much for Broadway and Off-Brodway tickets.  Even the little plays that litter the theatre of New York are taking up your valuable time, so set a fire under the butts of your theatre artist filled community.  Allow this fire to spread into your own territory and together, we can live up to higher standards.  Our reward?  Richer, deeper, meaningful, moving theatre: adjectives that should precede the noun, theatre, as a rule, not an exception.