Reading announcement after announcement about new commitments for TV series for the fall, I have manufactured a vision of Oprah Winfrey running around the theatre district with a magic wand, anointing stage talent saying, “You get a series! You get a series! Everybody gets a series!”

I exaggerate, to say the least, and my imagination has run rampant. Certainly we see theatre folk getting TV work all the time. But in recent days, we’ve learned that Laura Benanti will be on NBC’s The Playboy Club. Cherry Jones and B.D. Wong will play therapists on a new program. Kristin Chenoweth is on her way back to ABC. Jennifer Ehle and Jenna Stern appear to be headed for our home screens, if I interpret their veiled Twitter chat correctly. Kate Burton has a recurring role on not one, but two new series (plus her intermittent appearances on The Good Wife, which is already chock-a-block with legit vets like Alan Cumming and Anika Noni Rose). I read that there may be a new sitcom in the offing for Nathan Lane. And in a class by itself is Smash, a mid-season series that is all about the creation of a Broadway musical, written by playwright Theresa Rebeck and featuring, among many others, Brian d’Arcy James and Megan Hilty.

I have had a complex series of reactions to all of the news.

My first response was to be thrilled for all of these people, because I know that TV work can bring financial security far beyond that afforded by theatre. Among the names I mentioned above are people whose work I’ve admired from afar, people who I’ve met and grown fond of in recent years, and one good friend who I’ve known for more than half my life.

My second reaction, although immediately recognized as ridiculous, was, “Jeez, who is going to be left to be on stage in New York next season?” I point out the foolishness of this reaction because of course the city is filled with so many talented actors, that there’s really no reason to fear for the integrity and variety of performers we’ll continue to see. I also have no doubt that the folks getting TV work will return to the stage again and again. They are not lost forever.

But with this seeming exodus, this flurry of decamping for the electronic medium, I hope that all of these theatre veterans will use their newly found or increased clout in the service of an excellent cause. And so I offer this form letter, which I hope to share with many of them in person.

Dear [name of wonderful stage actor with a new series]:

I am delighted to learn about your new TV series. I have already set my DVR and despite my constant theatergoing schedule and ongoing devotion to every iteration of Law & Order, I promise to watch every single episode of your show.

I’m writing because as you commence your new TV project, whether it’s shooting in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver or Chicago, you’re also going to be trooped in front of a whole new cadre of entertainment reporters, namely the TV writers and reporters for print, broadcast and internet. I should remind you that these are not the dedicated folks who have followed your every move, like Playbill.com or The New York Times theatre desk. These are people who spend most of their time watching DVDs of new series, continuing series and, for research, even series from the past. You’re going to be quizzed by them over the phone, in person and at big junkets run by your network, or the networks working together.

These people, by and large, share one common trait: theatre for them is an afterthought. They probably haven’t seen your brilliant performance in [great play or musical]. They only know you from prior TV or film work. When they research you, they will use the IMDB, not the IBDB, IOBDB or tonyawards.com, so your acclaimed stage work will be little known to them, if it is known at all.

So I ask you, as you submit to fierce rounds of promotional interviews, don’t let your theatre work be a footnote in their reportage. Take control of the interview and make damn certain that they understand how important the theatre was to you growing up, how essential the stage was to the development of your craft, how special and unique it is to perform in front of a live audience eight nights a week, and how you’ll use every break and hiatus to return to the stage, be it Broadway, Off-Broadway or regional theatre.

You are about to be given a platform that goes far beyond the rather insular world of the theatre and the people who love it. After all, even if you were in a smash hit Broadway show for a year, perhaps 600,000 people could see your work. On TV, no matter what your ratings may be (and I know they’ll be stellar), millions of people will see your very first episode, let alone a whole season. What you say will carry a lot more weight than it did before.

So beyond talking about what theatre has done for you, commandeer the microphones, the digital recorders, the note pads in your midst to also declare how essential the arts are for the quality of life in America. Absolutely stump for sustaining or restoring arts education in our schools, but also talk about their importance for people at every age. It won’t be as if you’re politicking for your own employment – after all, you’re on TV. Instead, you’ll be using the bully pulpit that has come to you as a result of your talent and your opportunities to make the case for why the arts matter, for why theatre is a perfectly acceptable reason to record your very own series for later viewing and get out of the house and into a live audience.

Only you can insure that theatre is not a passing mention in your story, or the story of entertainment in America. When you’re not learning lines, shooting or retaining some shred of a personal life while on the treadmill of a TV shooting schedule, please speak up for those of us who remain at work on stage and behind the scenes.

I really am so excited to know I’m going to see you every week (even though I won’t be able to go behind my TV after each episode and tell you how great you were). And I’m so glad that you’ll be in a position to fly the flag of theatre far beyond any single stage.

With affection and appreciation,
Howard

P.S. Please don’t change your e-mail when you get “big.” Otherwise I’ll only be able to reach you through your publicist or agent, and you can’t imagine what a pain that can be.

Having written only last week about the elements that I believe will sustain theatre over the long haul, I was intrigued to open yesterday’s New York Times and find that film critic Manohla Darghis was lamenting the loss of communal attendance at movies. The coming-together of audience is an intrinsic part of theatre, now and forever, but is no longer an essential part of seeing movies precisely because movies can be replicated and shown on an ever-expanding variety of platforms, which increasingly insure that you can watch whatever you want whenever you want, without leaving the comfort of your sofa.

I happen to remain dedicated to seeing movies in movie theatres, however challenging and dispiriting that can be in so many venues. Well, I hear you say, you’re conditioned to going to theatres to see theatre, so you like the same experience for movies.

Actually, no.

Except when I’m seeing a comedy, when I do enjoy being a part of group merriment, I am not seeking a communal experience at the movies. In fact, I’m delighted when I manage to catch an under-attended showing: I can throw my coat on an extra seat, chomp on Raisinets to my heart’s content and my arteries’ dismay, and be blissfully unbothered by someone behind me kicking my seat every time they cross or uncross their legs. It doesn’t even matter when I’m at the movies with someone else, since I am always so intent on a film that I will accept no conversation around me or including me for the duration of the film.

I know that regardless of others surrounding me or a vast sea of empty seats, the movie will be unchanged, since the audience acts upon a projected image no differently than it does upon the printed page. That is to say, not at all. What surprised me about Darghis’ paean to the lost movie audience (and she seemed so bereft I feel I should invite her to the theatre so she can experience a live audience once again) was that it failed to hit upon the single element that makes movies in a theatre such a distinctive experience that cannot achieve equivalence at home, their unique selling proposition, if you will. That element is scale.

Movies are a visual medium and the best of them were and are conceived, shot and meant to be shown on a large canvas, figuratively and literally. I’m not talking about 60”-diagonal-plasma-wow-those-insects-look-cool large, I mean stand-in-line-at-New-York’s-Ziegfeld-for-hours-to-see-Star–Wars large. Theatre can offer any story with grand imagination and scope, but only the movies can magnify the players, so that a twitch of an eyebrow can be seen in the very last row of any theatre, so that an embrace is viewed from a distance so close it’s almost as if you’re in it, so that human fury can seem the size of battling redwoods.

Let me seemingly digress for a moment. My college roommate Steve, who used to travel on a lot on business, saw a number of movies on airplanes over the years, and came to develop what we call The Inverse Proportion Theory of movie quality. The theorem, which is pretty infallible, is this: A great movie is great on a movie theatre screen, and a bad movie on the same screen is quite bad. But if you change the scale, watching those movies instead, say, on your home TV, or even further reduced on an airplane or your iPod, a funny thing happens. The good movie loses its impact, while the bad movie suddenly becomes, though not good, passable. Think about it: Lawrence of Arabia on a three-inch screen has sequences that would be interminable or impenetrable writ small, and the same goes for 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Happy Madison on the same screen isn’t quite as grating or overbearing as any Adam Sandler film can be at greater than life size. I developed a corollary movie rating system, which folds in the cost-value equation: See in a theatre; in-theatre at the bargain matinee; second-run theatre (where those still exist); rental (now obsolete); cable or Netflix; cable or Netflix if you’re sick; better to sleep.

I wrote last week that theatre’s key point of distinction from the other narrative dramatic forms is that it is performed live; in the case of movies, the distinguishing feature is that they can be so big. Audience presence is not in a defining attribute of film, and the diminution of its in-theatre audience is shared with so many formerly public activities as to be endemic to society; the prevalence of “Bowling Alone” came about even before we could bowl with a Wii, as the personal schedule took precedence over the desire to congregate and share most experiences. But since there is no live theatre when you have an empty venue, the stage has been forced to adopt a contrarian, Luddite and life-saving stance against the prevailing sentiment.

Had it not been for Ms. Darghis’ essay, it had been my intent to avoid any manner of follow-up to last week’s blog, which incited a variety of interesting comment, both pro and con (among them from Chris Wilkinson; Rob Weinert-Kendt; and 99 Seats). And my point here is not to rehash my prior message, but to brashly offer my prescription for the motion picture industry and particularly their exhibitors, even as the studios themselves seem so resigned to the loss of theatre revenue that they keep shortening the window between theatrical release and home viewing availability.

For god’s sake, embrace size and scale. I don’t mean that you should make big, loud movies; I mean that if the movies are conceived and executed in a way that demands they been seen on screens no home theatre can approximate, then people will go to see them in the theatres, where visionary films have triumphed even with the advent of radio, TV and home video, if only you’ll let them. They’re more than commodities to be exploited on multiple platforms, they’re creative enterprises in a commercial setting, and the movie theatre is filmdom’s Broadway, with the added benefit of existing in markets large and small. Home video, regardless of BluRay, SurroundSound, and streaming on demand, is still the bus and truck version of the real thing.

I love the movies in a different way than I love theatre, but dare I say it, I love them each in their own way equally. When I see a play that has rapid-fire, short scenes with a literal and linear construction, I wonder why it wasn’t a movie; when I see a great film like The Hurt Locker I know it could have never been realized as well on stage.

But just as I feared that theatre was shrinking even more and forcing its creative artists to write to fit a more constrained model, I am flabbergasted that movies may be doing the same, accepting that the paradigm has changed, instead of fighting to sustain its most distinctive features. Don’t let movies get smaller, folks. There’s no need. We’ve already got that. It’s called television.

And if someone wants to sit by me at the movie theatre, I’ll move my coat.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

“He’s gone over the edge,” I hear you whispering. “Surely he understands that True Grit is a movie, not a piece of theatre. He only writes about theatre. And doesn’t he know that alternate, subsequent movies are remakes, not revivals?”

Rest assured, I am quite aware of the facts. I can absolutely distinguish between a film and play, just as I can distinguish between the book True Grit by Charles Portis, the 1969 film of True Grit, based on the novel, with a screenplay by Marguerite Roberts and directed by Henry Hathaway; and the 2010 film of True Grit, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. In the past two weeks, I have read the novel, watched the 1969 film on DVD and seen the 2010 film twice in the theatre. I have done so because I am utterly fascinated by the various versions, and believe they illustrate an issue that is essential to appreciating the multiple perspectives that can be brought to bear on oft-revived plays, even if in this case the medium is the movies.

When we see a theatrical revival, we are, in most cases, watching the same text interpreted afresh by a new set of artists – director, designers, actors and so on. I say “in most cases” because of late we have seen revivals that tinker with text: the last Broadway incarnation of Lawrence and Lee’s Inherit the Wind reportedly had the fat trimmed away, a vestige of an era when plays were regularly more discursive, and Shakespeare plays have often lost scenes that the director feels no longer play properly to modern audiences, or simply make the evening too long (the completeHamlet, anyone?). But even with minor textual tampering, the spine of the play remains.

The various productions then work from the text to showcase the director’s vision of an often classic work. Simon McBurney staged a nighttime storm that is normally only spoken of in retrospect in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons; Daniel Sullivan added a wordless scene of Shylock’s baptism to the recent Merchant of Venice; David Cromer briefly, startlingly abandoned the long-maintained spartan setting of Our Town. In some cases no scenes need be appended; shifts in period, pacing, casting and so on can reveal a piece of dramatic literature as new, and in many of those cases, knowledge of the earlier version helps the innovation to stand out in greater relief.

Now back to True Grit.

I had seen the 1969 film, which won as Oscar for John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, the marshal who “likes to pull a cork,”, sometime in the 1970s. I no doubt saw it on TV, interrupted by commercials, in those pre-Netflix, pre-DVD, pre-VCR, pre-cable days of my youth. I also read the novel about that time as well. I am certain that I haven’t seen the film or read the book in at least 30 years.

So when I began watching the Coen brothers’ new version, which was promoted as being truer to the book than the Hathaway film, I was struck by constant feelings of déjà vu. The general shape of scenes, even dialogue, was startlingly familiar and, as I watched I had this sense of reliving a story I knew pretty well, even at 30 years remove. This sent me back to the first movie and, as I watched with my wife, who had not joined me for the new version nor ever seen “the original,” I began reciting dialogue along with the 1969 cast. Dadgummit, dagnabbit (I’m in the retro western spirit, I’m afraid), the two films were as alike as I suspected in their plotline and their dialogue, and a review of the novel only reinforced the many congruities of the ur-text and its adaptations.

And yet.

The new True Grit is, to my mind, in every way the superior film. The pace, the tone, the acting, the cinematography, the score – all hew much closer to the spirit of the Portis book and the dark and thrilling coming of age tale he laid out in 1968 (the Wayne film unnecessarily adds a few conventional scenes, notably at the very beginning and end). Many a film student can explain why this is a result of the fundamental changes in the Western that took place around the time the first True Gritwas released (the opening of Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, the inability of young filmmaker’s to see tales of the west with unabashed hero worship as we were mired in the Vietnam War) and they would be quite correct.

What the Coens have done is to take the same story, a majority of the same scenes and even whole swaths of dialogue, as did Roberts in 1969 (Cogburn’s first appearance in the book, in a courtroom scene, is actually presented as a transcript, looking exactly like a play or film script) and view them through the eyes of 2010, while the Hathaway film was a bit retrograde even when released, belonging more to the 50s than its own era. In theatrical terms, the 2010 True Grit is a revival of the Portis novel, just as the 1969 film was the original production, each a product of the sensibilities of those who made them.

Unlike theatre, where we cannot go back and see the original or other productions that may have been produced in ensuing years, film affords us the opportunity to watch an original and its revival, and given their fidelity to the particulars of the book, we can analyze each piece of creativity in its own light. Having written a few weeks ago about understanding the distinction between play and production, the three True Grits offer perhaps the simplest self-administered master class I can of, and each deserve attention from theatergoers – even those who eschew westerns and even movies – for precisely that reason. Frankly, the new True Grit is no remake, nor despite this blog’s title, truly a revival; it is a reinterpretation of a core script, the Portis novel (which carries many encomiums on it’s movie tie-in paperback praising the humor of the story, which is in evidence, but hardly prominent, in both versions).

If that’s not enough, then I can also recommend all three for the thrill of hearing a marauding Rooster Cogburn call out, as he rides into what may be oblivion, “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch,” in the voice of John Wayne, in the voice of Jeff Bridges, and in the voice of your own imagination.

A final word on revivals, theatre and film.

The vast majority of theatrical production is lost to the ages, since theatre exists only as it is performed live; even in the 100 years or so that film has been available to record live performance, what is preserved of theatre is immediately transformed, and a piece of theatre filmed in performance cannot possibly convey the experience of seeing it live. Indeed, despite the efforts of many, recorded theatre can seem grotesque, because the actors are playing for an audience of many, rather than an audience of one, namely the camera. Film is in exactly the opposite situation, with only the earliest or least-cared for films lost to us (though preservationists may argue this point); while early films have disappeared, faded or burned, proportionally the fruits of filmmakers work lives on for each succeeding generation.

In many cases, the films of earlier eras surprise us when we see them, seeming dated, slow, overacted. I suspect, ruefully, that if we were able to magically watch the original productions of O’Neill’s great plays, or Shakespeare’s even, they might prove intellectually engaging from our 21st century viewpoint, but they would probably strike us much like old films often do. We may long for the ability to travel back in time, but that might well prove a disappointing trip. Films are relatively permanent, reflecting the period in which they were made. Theatre will always be of the present, reinvented each and every time a cast opens their scripts on the first day of rehearsal.

P.S. If you are at all intrigued by the various iterations of True Grit, I also commend to you an excellent, compelling essay by Stanley Fish, which appeared online only viaThe New York Times, in which he compares issues of heroism, virtue and faith as explored in each version. The follow-up comments are also worth scanning, and prove that all art is subject to multiple interpretations, even a single piece on its own.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

Before I am beset by rampaging hordes of “gleeks” incensed by the title of this entry, let me state for the record that I am in fact a fan of the television series Glee. I have seen every episode to date, save one (due to an unfortunate DVR mishap). While I don’t place it in my TV pantheon along with The Sopranos (1st season only),Hill Street Blues (yes, I’m old), the first ten years or so of The Simpsons, and the glorious Slings and Arrows (if you’ve never seen it, you must), I enjoy and applaud Glee for its championing of artistic expression, of the importance of pursuing what you love even when others would belittle you for that love. Frankly, even if the series were little more than musical numbers interspersed with the inspiring and heart-breaking scenes between Chris Colfer and Mike O’Malley, I would enthusiastically endorse it.

But as with members of our family, we can care for them and still have issues with them. So it is with me and Glee.

Glee disappoints me because I feel that it stints in one area. I am willing to admit that perhaps I am setting the bar too high, or asking something which is beyond the range that the show’s creators wish to tackle, and I am a strong advocate for judging the work of creative artists based on their parameters, not my own. I should also share with you that when I once ventured to discuss this issue with the arts editors at a major U.S. daily newspaper, I received the verbal equivalent of a “slushie attack,” the form of ridicule so thoughtfully re-popularized by Glee‘s writers and producers.

So now that I’ve built it up, let me simply state my problem: when do these kids actually rehearse?

Think about it. We see the students in the show choir rehearsal room on every episode, where they discuss song choice – but then they either break right into that song, fully arranged (with musicians who magically and disappear as necessary) and note perfect (except when dramatic effect requires something less than perfection and they turn off the auto-tuner), or they are whisked into a flight of fantasy in which they are costumed, made-up, choreographed, coiffed, lit, and edited within an inch of their life in settings that even Sue Sylvester’s cheering budget couldn’t afford. The vague bows in the direction of rehearsal always seem to take place in someone’s bedroom, involving both lip-syncing and lip-locking in most every instance, or if they’re actually on a stage, the rehearsal usually ends suddenly due to someone’s personal crisis.

Obviously you could look at this in many ways. The show is, like all scripted television (and in fact most “reality” television), a gloss on life and why should we expect fidelity to accuracy? Or perhaps Glee is something more than that, a descendent of Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, in which every musical moment is a fantasy counterpoint to the harsh realities of life? Maybe the entire show is an obscure metaphor, and in its final episode we will discover everything took place in the mind of an autistic child?

All that aside, Glee is squandering what could be its most valuable and longest lasting asset. Let’s face it, in less than a season and half Glee has become America’s leading public advocate for arts education in our schools. It weekly champions the glory and beauty of musical performance, and packages it in a manner which is drawing audiences presumably beyond just the high school students it portrays. It is wise enough to show teachers who get carried away by sublimating their own ambitions through the achievements of their students, but doesn’t have the courage to show that performance is actually hard work, not an endless series of divine musical inspirations that have singers knocking everything out of the park at the very first mention.

The football team and cheerleaders practice, and are coached. But when did Mr. Schuester last say, “Let’s take it again from the bridge,” or “Someone was flat in there. Was it you, Rachel?” As a former high school chorus member (though the show choir concept was alien to me when the series began, and thank god I never encountered it, as I can sing but not even “move” well), I recall being drilled over and over in material we were to perform, working from something quaintly known as “sheet music,” which you can now download illegally from the internet (but that’s another blog entirely, already written by Jason Robert Brown).

Accepting the fictional construct behind the show, I can liken Glee most closely to sports movies, like The Rookie and even Major League, in which an underdog or group of misfits fight their way from the very bottom to the very top. But part of what makes those films so emotionally stirring is that we see how hard the athletes have to work to achieve their goal and as we watch them do so, we become part of their struggle to defeat the odds and triumph when no one had any belief that they could ever do so. Would Rocky have been half so effective had we not seen Stallone punching sides of beef, drinking raw eggs and running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum?

Young people (and their parents, who can effect arts funding) would surely benefit from the occasional scene of rehearsal struggles, which show the rigor of true performance, show that kids need the arts and the arts need support, that we don’t just open our throats and sound like Barbra, but have to work at it. And even for those tens of thousands who will never achieve the perfection put forth by Glee and the recording stars who both the characters and their viewers idolize, isn’t it important that we see the efforts to achieve if indeed show choir is a competitive event, and that even those who don’t make the cut, or don’t pursue it professionally, will make the audiences – and understanding parents – of tomorrow? One does not magically become great, let alone a star, without work and sacrifice.

Glee has ratings and buzz, which in the world of television, means that Glee has power. But as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben taught us, with great power, comes great responsibility. Do you hear me Ryan Murphy? You’ve done a lot, but there’s more to be done. The great work begins.

1. Who is the guy with the beard at the piano, and why is his presence never really acknowledged? Is he Matt Groening? Is he invisible?
2. Who is running the drama club at this school, and aren’t they awfully upset, especially over a Rocky Horror production that was to come to full fruition in only two weeks, without any consultation?
3. Is Heather Morris playing a barely disguised version of herself, or is she actually giving, through underplaying, the most brilliant performance on television today?
4. Is Show Choir a class or an extracurricular activity, and does anyone at this school ever learn “The Hallelujah Chorus”?
5. Is Kristin Chenoweth playing “the Dennis Hopper role” on Glee (from Hoosiers, people, not Speed)?

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

I keep reading articles about how people are getting excellent response to customer service complaints by starting websites, posting public Facebook messages and kvetching on Twitter. The reports say that major companies are monitoring the internet and proactively addressing issues with customers based on what they see online, lest public opinion take off in the wrong direction.

Consequently, when I saw two affronts to, well, everyone who works in or loves theatre, I decided to test this theory. Since I couldn’t start a website to save my life, and reserve Facebook solely for friends I’ve known since college or earlier, I turned to my social media tool of choice, Twitter.

The first affront, which I became aware of via pro-theatre agitator Leonard Jacobs (@clydefitch), came from the USA Network (@USA_Network). I happen to be a great fan of USA programming, in particular their In Plain Sight with Mary McCormack and Frederick Weller, both actors with solid stage credits. So when Leonard’s brief tweet, leading to his blog, pointed out that USA’s new “Character Blog” had launched in 10 categories, but without theatre as a topic, I was incensed. After all, theatre has had characters (and character) since long before TV was invented. Did USA Network really feel that theatrical characters weren’t worthy of their attention?

So I sent out a spate of tweets chastising USA for their shortsightedness, to accompany Leonard’s own drumbeat, and what do you know? By late afternoon that day, USA Network was tweeting directly back to us, saying they had enormous respect for theatre and saying that they planned to add theatre to their repertory of blogs soon, asking us to give them time. I didn’t know exactly what they needed time for, since there are countless passionate, well-informed theatre bloggers who would jump at the opportunity for the promotional platform of a cable-network blog. But I decided I had rattled their cage enough, and took them at their word.

The second affront was more recent. Ovation TV, an arts dedicated channel, also launched a quartet of blogs under the banner CulturePop (@CulturePOPcom), and incredibly theatre wasn’t among them — nor was dance, opera, music or independent film, all aspects of Ovation’s programming. Instead, they offered a Bravo-like selection of Style, Art & Design, Food and “deals.” Consequently, I began tweeting my dismay. I had already seen the Arts & Entertainment Network devolve into A&E and don’t even get me started on where Bravo began and where they stand today. I’m even concerned when I see doo-wop acts on PBS during pledge drives.

I will hand it to Ovation – their response to my tweets was almost immediate, and while they actually seemed a bit peeved when I suggested they were relegating theatre to second-class status, a few back and forth messages established that they plan to add theatre to their blog mix. I have to give credit to whoever does their tweeting for their rapid response and genuine human voice.

So, you may well ask, what has been the result of all of this “lobbying by tweet” to date? Zilch.

More than two months after USA Network promised they’d be adding theatre, their blog selections are unchanged. My recent tweets have gone unanswered. It’s been several weeks for Ovation TV, and while as I write I can get 20% off at something called Poketo, America’s only arts dedicated network is running a website and blog series that barely touches upon the arts.

I am not naive. I understand that, to most TV networks, theatre is a niche, though frankly there are an awful lot of people filling theatres around the country every night. It appears that television, by and large, wants theatre, and indeed the arts overall, to remain a niche. Save for our friends at CBS, who continue to provide broadcast platforms for the Tonys and the Kennedy Center Honors, the evidence of commitment to the performing and fine arts on the television spectrum, which has multiplied far beyond Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels,” is minimal. Television rarely uses its vast reach and influence to inform Americans of the remarkable artistic work that cannot be seen via co-ax cable or satellite.

While I am quite certain that the prior paragraph particularly incenses Ovation TV, which does in fact offer a broad array of arts programming, their sudden investment in CulturePop online suggests that they may yet go the way of prior arts networks. If indeed they want an audience of arts lovers tuning in to them, they have to stand up strong and in a loud voice (known as marketing and public relations) stand with the arts community and promote not just their own television programming, but the artistic work available in theatres, concert halls and museums.

As for USA Network, their mission is not arts-oriented, but when they create character oriented blogs and leave out the very art form which first invented dramatic characters, they insult everyone who loves theatre. And that’s a shame.

These particular examples are perhaps petty, but they can be solved with minimal expense and some HTML code. Maybe if the leaders in the entertainment community truly stood behind the arts at every possible turn, we’d make the headway that’s necessary with our city, state and federal governments to insure that the arts are seen and supported for what they should be: an essential part of education and daily life, not some vestigial form catering only to the elites.

So make yourself heard. Blog, Facebook, Tweet to USA Network and Ovation TV and tell them not to take you – and all of us – for granted. It’s a step. After all, there’s plenty of pop available, but never enough culture.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.