How the denizens of Times Square have changed.

This past Saturday morning, I willingly went into Times Square. Why did I go? Because I had decided I wanted to see One Man, Two Guvnors again before it closes at the end of this week, and to avail myself of the discount seats at the TKTS booth. Why do I use the word “willingly”? Because, to be honest, I do my best to avoid Times Square if at all possible.

This certainly hasn’t always been the case. As a child on our family’s annual day trip into New York, seeing Times Square was a part of the ritual, as much for my parents as it was for myself and my siblings. That trip involved theatre only once; we were mostly sightseers, gazing in windows of stores in which we would never shop.

As a teen, traveling via train to Grand Central Station, entering Times Square was a sign that my goal, the theatres that lay on its far side, were very close. I am old enough to remember a billboard that puffed smoke to simulate a steaming hot cup of coffee; I am old enough to have seen Blade Runner in its initial release and marveled at the impossible vision of a future in which video images several stories high covered the exterior of buildings. But as someone who never understood the allure of standing in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop in New Year’s Eve, for whom colored signs took a backseat to the colored marquees on the side streets, Times Square was an eternal guidepost, never a true destination. As an adult, who in my 40s worked one block south of Times Square and had to traverse it at all hours of the day and night, Times Square became an unpleasant, tourist-clogged obstacle for which I had increasingly less patience.

However, the TKTS booth, at the northern end of the area, has always been a gateway for me, as it was this weekend. Going back almost to its debut, the booth has been an essential part of my theatergoing and, this past Saturday, after acquiring tickets with exceptional speed, I decided to play tourist for a bit, trying to take in Times Square as I might have once upon a time.

The video screens everywhere still do amaze me, since, as a Blade Runner aficionado, I continue to feel that Times Square is the future come to life, ahead of schedule. That some of these screens have become interactive, which was initially enthralling, has lost its allure for me, especially since they mean pushing through or going around the gaggles of sightseers, standing still, who seem endlessly fascinated to be able to wave at themselves on a giant screen. Yet I imagine that seeing these screens for the first time, or as the parent of a child taking in this experience, they remain a marvel.

A vestige of the past, at the Times Square Visitors Center

I wandered into the Times Square Visitors Center, which has been in place for years, but seemingly uncertain of its purpose, except as an acceptable public restroom. Though it now serves as a souvenir shop and ticket vending location, it also features some theatrical displays (costumes “in the style” of ones worn in famous shows), and small dioramas and video screens with Broadway history. Since New York has no theatre museum, even these small displays appeal, less for myself to whom they are nothing new, but for those who may wander in and get a bit of insight into how theatre gets on stage. The Visitors Center more successfully turned me tourist with the opportunity to gaze, from only a few feet’s distance, at one of the Swarovski crystal-laden “balls” that descend annually to welcome the new year; TV has never conveyed its size or intricacy fully; it reminded me of a long-ago visit to see the Tournament of Roses floats from a similar distance. I particularly loved the Visitors Center tribute to the scuzzy Times Square I remembered, where walking from 7^th to 8^th Avenues on 42^nd Street was to be avoided at all costs. Its method: three peep show booths showing video loops of that bygone era, with a giant neon “Peep Show” glowing above them. I applaud whoever conceived of this reminder, insuring that amidst the retails outlets, the true past of Times Square was not completely whitewashed away.

Back into the light, I crossed back to the environs of the TKTS booth, curious about the blue-shirted, self-proclaimed “Your Broadway Genius”-es who hovered just off the curb of Duffy Square, in contrast to the red shirted TDF employees who helped those figuring out the intricacies of the booth. I sensed a color war.

I approached one of the geniuses to see what insight he was dispensing, with his iPad in hand. Learning that he too was selling theatre tickets, I noticed the telltale Square attachment on his iPad and asked whether he could actually sell theatre tickets right there, and was told he could; certainly wandering ticket outlets from any location is the wave of the future for those untethered to a computer. What Broadway shows did he have on offer? As it turned out, the answer was none. The Broadway Geniuses offered only three shows – Voca People, Rent and Avenue Q, Off-Broadway attractions all. The same shows were available only feet away at the booth, so it would appear that the Geniuses were attempting to siphon off business that might otherwise go through the long-established, not-for-profit official venue. As I am not a tourist, I was not fooled, but I do wonder how many people are taken in by these misleading, opportunistic off-brand vendors, who I later saw accosting people merely sightseeing, not unlike the ever-present touts asking, “Do you like comedy?,” in an effort to lure in new patrons for a nearby comedy show. While I admired the technology, their aggressive pitch and inaccurate branding put me off.

The blue-shirted geniuses are hardly the only commercial opportunists wandering Times Square. In less than an hour I saw the following characters ambling along, taking money in order to be photographed with and by visitors: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Elmo (red), Elmo (blue?), SpongeBob SquarePants, Toy Story’s Woody, The Naked Indian, a stumpy Elvis impersonator, Hello Kitty, Alvin the Chipmunk, a Smurf (I can’t tell them apart), the Statue of Liberty, and an elderly man in a psychedelic bikini. I know these figures to be entirely unauthorized and I frankly worry about who is inside them, freely embracing unsuspecting tourists for a price; I also worry about turf wars, since it wasn’t uncommon to see several Elmos of varying hues in a single block. To those who say Times Square now feels like a theme park, these plush figures add to the perception, ever if they are an infestation, rather than an enhancement.  Curiously, I did not see the now legendary, more “authentic” Naked Cowboy; perhaps he was on vacation.

Three-ball juggling has replaced three-card monte in today’s Times Square.

There were yet more characters traversing Times Square in endless loops, with a different and more official purposes: young men and women “flyering” for Broadway shows. Dressed in costumes appropriate to the productions they represent, I saw a cheerleading duo from Bring It On, a red-stockinged, exuberant faux Fosse dancer for Chicago, several very polite rock dudes for Rock of Ages, umbrella skirted jugglers for Zarkana and a sole lackadaisical pirate for Peter and the Starcatcher. The cheerleaders in particular were happily posing, and jumping, for pictures with tourists; I admired the energy that they and the Chicago chorine brought to their task and wondered whether Times Square might be even more engaging if the plushies were banished and motivated representatives from Broadway shows both present and past peopled the territory, as Broadway branding and show marketing. I must confess, I would love to see faux Marthas and fake Georges drunkenly accosting tourists to hand them flyers for the upcoming Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? revival, but that’s my own improbably fantasy.

Another loop up back to the TKTS booth revealed a claque of uncostumed flyer distributors, taking a rest, it seemed, but graciously offering to help visitors regardless of what they were apparently paid to promote. A young man holding a fan of flyers for Newsical was counseling a woman on the best show for a six-year-old while the other flyer guys were making up song titles for an imagined Brokeback Mountain musical. They were a scruffy but gentle lot, with a noticeably collegial spirit among them all; no doubt they saw each other often.

Just off Times Square, in Shubert Alley, a youthful marketing team was hawking the attractions of a Cadillac and offering a free Playbill t-shirt for anyone who filled out an information form (think of them as the Glengarry leads). On that day, placed between two theatres without tenants (the Shubert and the Booth), they seemed a bit overeager and undervisited; I was effusively urged to fill out a form and take a t-shirt even though I assured them I had no need of a car. Clearly they were trying to meet goals that their location didn’t appear to support.

As showtime approached, a small brass band set up at the corner of 45^th Street, launching into “When The Saints Go Marching In.” Moments later, a couple walked past me, the woman singing and bopping her head along to the tune, clearly talking on a party spirit that was at odds with my usual grumbling about a crowded Times Square.

By the end of my visit, I saw that hustlers had not been vanquished from Times Square, they had merely been transformed from three-card monte experts to ratty-looking comic figures, but I also saw genuine entertainment and the potential for so much more. While I may not rush to walk through, let alone spend time in, Times Square again so soon, I saw opportunity for true brand-building for theatre and for New York amidst the haphazard assemblage of diversions.

The Theatre Development Fund’s TKTS booth in Times Square.

But nothing impressed me so much as the very first thing I had seen that morning. As I waited in a very short line to acquire theatre tickets at TKTS, I began talking with one of the line attendants, a chatty man, maybe my age, named Daryl, who spoke enthusiastically of shows and asked me about ones I had seen. We were interrupted when a family of three – father, mother and son of perhaps 10 years of age – left the sales window and the son, who appeared to have been born with Down Syndrome, walked up to Daryl, threw his arms as far around him as possible, and squeezed him with a hug, which Daryl reciprocated. Then, the mother approached and kissed Daryl on the cheek, and finally the father shook Daryl’s hand, before the wandered off.

I do not know what interaction I had missed, I saw only the genuine and moving results. Can that happen for each and every person who passes through Times Square? Of course not. But as the businesses, the theatres and the city seek to attract ever more visitors, perhaps they need to learn more about what Daryl offered, sans costumes, sans flyers, sans displays, sans script. Because I feel quite certain that for that family, and for me, Daryl was the star attraction of Times Square that day.

A map that includes most of the Broadway theaters, but it isn’t quite large enough and not completely up to date.

Having previously taken a quantitative look at new Broadway musicals and musical revivals, it was inevitable that I would look at play production on Broadway as well. So as not to bury my lede, let me begin with the list of playwrights who have had five or more productions on Broadway in the last 20 years, new or revival.

William Shakespeare (13)

Arthur Miller (12)

Tennessee Williams (11)

Eugene O’Neill (9)

Noel Coward, David Mamet, Neil Simon, Tom Stoppard (8)

August Wilson (7)

Anton Chekhov, David Hare, Terrence McNally, George Bernard Shaw (6)

Brian Friel, Richard Greenberg, Donald Margulies, Martin McDonagh (5)

What is immediately noticeable among these 17 playwrights? They’re all male. There is but a single playwright of color. Eight are not American. Six were dead during the 20 years examined. If anyone is looking for hard and fast data about the lack of diversity among the playwrights getting work on Broadway, this would be Exhibit A.

Now let’s get detailed. As indicated, I studied the past 20 years on Broadway, from the 1992-93 season through the just completed 2011-12 season; my study of musicals had covered 37 seasons, going back to the year that Chicago and A Chorus Line debuted. The 20 year mark for plays begins with the season that saw Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches premiere, arguably a work as significant a landmark in playwriting as A Chorus Line was to musicals.

The 20 year mark also encompasses significant shifts in production by not-for-profits on Broadway: Roundabout started out at the Criterion Center and by last year had three Broadway venues (American Airlines, Stephen Sondheim, Studio 54); Manhattan Theatre Club rehabilitated the Biltmore and began using it as their mainstage (later renaming it the Samuel G. Friedman); and Tony Randall’s National Actors Theatre grew and withered, as the more firmly established Circle in the Square evolved from producing company to commercial venue. Throughout, Lincoln Center Theatre produced in the Vivian Beaumont, considered a Broadway theatre virtually since it opened in the 60s, and continued its practice of renting commercial houses when a big hit monopolized the Beaumont. Commercial productions continued throughout this time in more than 30 other theatres, as did some productions by other not-for-profit producers without a regular home or policy of producing on Broadway.

So what is the scorecard of play production, both commercial and not for profit on Broadway over these last 20 years? 397 productions by 228 playwrights, with more than a quarter of the plays produced written by the 17 men listed above.

What of women? There were 43 women whose work appeared on Broadway in these two decades, but none saw more than three plays produced. The two women with three plays were Yasmina Reza and Elaine May (the latter’s count includes a one-act); four women each had two plays on the boards (Edna Ferber, Pam Gems, Theresa Rebeck and Wendy Wasserstein). Collectively, they make up slightly under 1/5 of the playwrights produced.

Because I have often been party to debates about whether or not not-for-profit companies should be considered part of Broadway, I ran the numbers without the productions of the five companies singled out above (RTC, MTC, LCT, NAT and CITS). Had they not been producing, and had no one taken their place, Broadway would have seen only 253 plays produced in those 20 years, nearly 1/3 less than the actual number, a significant reduction in activity.

And what of the balance between new plays and revivals? The 20 year breakdown of all productions showed 179 new plays and 218 revivals, but with the five not-for-profits are removed, it’s 140 new plays and 113 revivals. That shift is quite notable: the not-for-profit theatres on Broadway have only been responsible for 39 new works on Broadway over 20 years, but they’re the source of 105 revivals. That’s not so shocking, when you consider that NAT and CITS were focused on classics and that Roundabout’s original mission was solely classical work as well. But it certainly shows that without the not-for-profits, fewer vintage shows, whether from the recent or distant past, would have worn the banner of Broadway.

Now let’s go back to the list of playwrights with five or more plays on Broadway in the past 20 years, taking out the not-for-profit work. The results are:

David Mamet, Arthur Miller, William Shakespeare (8)

Neil Simon (7)

August Wilson (6)

Noel Coward, Martin McDonagh, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams (5)

We drop from 17 playwrights making the cut to only 9, but its interesting to note that playwrights like Miller, O’Neill, Shakespeare, Williams and Wilson remain well represented, even in my theoretical scenario. As for women, the number produced drops to 31, roughly a quarter of the full count.

So what does this tell us, besides being fodder for trivia quizzes and feeding the current affinity for facts via list? It shows us that commercial producers are not all trendy money grubbers without interest in our theatrical past, since a number of classic works were produced under their aegis. That said, without the not-for-profits, the number of revivals overall would have been cut in half, showing how essential they are in maintaining Broadway’s heritage. For new work, the not-for-profits of Broadway play a smaller role to be sure, but its worth noting that a number of major playwrights wouldn’t have had any plays on Broadway in the past two decades without the not for profits, including Philip Barry, Caryl Churchill, William Inge, Warren Leight, Craig Lucas, Moliere, Sarah Ruhl, George Bernard Shaw, Regina Taylor and Wendy Wasserstein. In a startling irony, Sophocles and Euripides both were produced only commercially.

By its methodology, this glimpse at the past two decades inevitably shortchanges the influence of the not-for-profit theatre. It does not consider how many of the plays were commissioned by, developed by and first produced in not-for-profit companies in New York, nationally, or abroad, but many of the new plays in this period have those roots (and unlike musicals, plays are more typically produced without commercial enhancement in not-for-profits, with producers coming in later once a show has begun to achieve recognition). Because I didn’t have reliable resources to parse the partnership and capitalization of each Broadway production, shows from theatres like The Atlantic, New York Theatre Workshop and The Public, or even MTC pre-Biltmore, haven’t been categorized under not-for-profit, though they rightly might be; I believe based on anecdotal observance that (with sufficient time resources and manpower) we would see not-for-profits directly responsible for originating even more new plays.

It would be easy to argue that this study is at best intriguing but limited. After all, on a financial level, plays account for a marginal percentage of Broadway revenues, with musicals yielding the lion’s share of the grosses. One can also argue that Broadway, particularly when it comes to plays, is hardly representative of the full quantity and variety of new work being done in America, an opinion I hold myself.

But so long as Broadway remains a beacon for tourists, for theatre buffs and for the mainstream media, so long as it holds a fabled spot in the national and international imagination, plays on Broadway remain important, even if they are marginalized or unrepresentative. With all of the challenges that face producers, commercial or not-for-profit, who wish to mount plays, the public perception of American drama is still weighted towards Broadway, even if its mix of new plays and classics is but the tip of the iceberg, financially and creatively.  We can debate whether Broadway is deserving of its still-iconic status, but so long as it exists, understanding exactly where plays fit in the equation can only serve to help them hold their ground, in the best interest of shows which don’t sing or dance, and the writers who are so committed to them.

*   *   *

Notes on methodology, beyond what’s explained in the text:

1. Although I have not provided the spreadsheets I constructed in order to work out my statistics, which list every play and playwright produced in the past 20 years, I feel it is incumbent upon me to name the female writers who have been produced on Broadway, with the hope that in the next 20 years, this list will make up a much greater percentage of writers produced: Jane Bowles, Carol Burnett, Caryl Churchill, Lydia R. Diamond, Joan Didion, Helen Edmundson, Margaret Edson, Eve Ensler, Nora Ephron, Edna Ferber, Pam Gems, Alexandra Gersten, Ruth Goetz, Frances Goodrich, Katori Hall, Carrie Hamilton, Lorraine Hansberry, Lillian Hellman, Marie Jones, Sarah Jones, Lisa Kron, Bryony Lavory, Michele Lowe, Clare Booth Luce, Emily Mann, Elaine May, Heather McDonald, Joanna Murray-Smith, Marsha Norman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lucy Prebble, Theresa Rebeck, Yasmina Reza, Joan Rivers, Sarah Ruhl, Diane Shaffer, Claudia Shear, Anna Deavere Smith, Regina Taylor, Trish Vradenburg, Jane Wagner, Wendy Wasserstein, and Mary Zimmerman.

2. In the case of shows with multiple parts (Angels In America, The Norman Conquests, The Coast of Utopia), I have classified each as a single work.

3. Translations, adaptations, new versions – these are a particular challenge, since the contribution of the translator or adapter requires a value judgment on each and every effort. Consequently, I have chosen consistency, not artistry; for this study, only the original author received credit. Consequently, while David Ives is credited as the author of Venus in Fur, which is adapted from a book, only Mark Twain gets credit for Is He Dead?, even though I happen to know David’s contributions were significant on making the latter play stageworthy. Christopher Hampton is not recognized for his translations of Yasmina Reza’s plays, however elegant they may be, and I have ceded The Blue Room to Schnitzler, since it is firmly rooted in La Ronde. And so on.

4. Special events and one-person shows were judged according to whether, in my subjective opinion, they could reasonably and sensibly be performed by someone other than the author/performer. As a result, Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays is not included in my figures, while Chazz Palmintieri’s A Bronx Tale makes the cut.

5. The number of plays produced annually on Broadway consistently outnumbers the  musicals, despite, as already noted, musicals accounting for the lion’s share of Broadway revenues. I suspect, but haven’t the resources to confirm, that the number of overall performances of plays is also vastly less than the number of musical performances in a given year; numerous limited runs of 14 to 16 weeks for plays, even if there are more of them, are surely overwhelmed by the ongoing juggernauts of The Book of Mormon, Wicked, and others.

6. A handful of plays were written by writing teams: Kaufman and Ferber, Lawrence and Lee, etc. Each playwright was recognized in their own right. The same was true for the rare omnibus productions by separate authors, such as Relatively Speaking from Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen.

7. I would have liked to break out the racial diversity of Broadway playwrights over the past two decades, but I had no reliable source for determining the heritage of every author, or how they may self-identify, therefore I felt it best not to guess.

8. It should go without saying that there are a number of playwrights who also work on musicals; if there is any barrier between the forms, it is highly permeable. My studies have by their nature been bifurcated between plays and musicals, but there is more fluidity than these articles might suggest.

9. When classifying plays as new or revival, in cases where they play had not been previously produced on Broadway but had prior life from years or decades earlier, I opted for the Tony Awards’ guidelines of new work being that which has not entered the standard repertory. So Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen, produced with great success Off-Broadway and regionally over much of the period studied, was considered a revival.

10. I have drawn my data from the well-organized Playbill Vault, which expedited my research immeasurably. My thanks to those who assembled it.

Sherman, the boy adopted by the dog Mr. Peabody, and my failed avatar.

It began, I believe, Friday afternoon, on a whim. Although I tend to the pedantic in my blogging, I can be taken by whimsy. Any of my Twitter followers can tell you how enamored I am of hashtag games.

The inciting event, such as it was, was spurred by the fact that I’ve been on Twitter for some three and half years now, and the same photo has been my identifier, my avatar, throughout that time. I thought I’d change things up a little, and so I swapped in a cartoon character. If, as I wrote in a tweet, a prestigious playwright like David Lindsay Abaire could have Barney Rubble as an avatar, I could have fun too. And that’s where I went wrong.

My first mistake was to choose a cartoon character who is not terribly well remembered by many, a minor supporting character on a now-cult TV show that debuted before I was born. That said, the rationale behind my selection would be immediately clear to those who know the show and indeed, messages of charmed approval were the first comments.

But the tone shifted. “When did you make the change,” came one inquiry, impartial, but not at all supportive. My follower count began to slide, albeit slightly. “That doesn’t look like you,” commented another. So after firing off some 100 tweets last night during the Olympic closing ceremony under my new persona, I awoke this morning and asked my followers their opinion. There were a handful who recognized the character, and made the connection (although my college roommate, a fellow trivia buff, didn’t get it). A few people said that without the old photo, they didn’t register that tweets were mine, because they were used to the old avatar. My comments wouldn’t be noticed when quickly scanning a feed.

So as quickly as I became I cartoon, I reverted to myself. There were a few farewells, but a rather passionate response from Robert Falls, artistic director of The Goodman Theatre, convinced me that reversion was the right thing to do. “Thank GOD you’re back!,” tweeted Bob. “Can’t explain why other image was disturbing – just didn’t match your Twitter voice. Seriously.”

And so my whimsical avatar, who was, incidentally, Sherman, the boy adopted by the dog Mr. Peabody on Jay Ward’s Rocky and His Friends (often referred to as The Bullwinkle Show) is banished from my tweets. Privately, I remain in possession of assorted Sherman memorabilia, as friends invariably enjoy giving me hats and plush dolls emblazoned with his image. I have that to amuse me.

Of course what had happened here was that, over the course of several years, I had established a brand on Twitter, and I had arbitrarily violated the expectations of that brand. The cartoon character didn’t represent the online persona I’d cultivated over time. Had I started with it, it may not have been an issue (although a cartoon is hardly the best persona for the range of theatrical content I curate daily). Since I don’t actually know most of my followers, nor they me, it was as if I’d had plastic surgery, badly, in order to enter witness protection.

So my inadvertent experiment this weekend turned in clear (albeit anecdotal) results in record time. Once you establish your personal brand in social media, stick with it. If you’re just playing around with friends, knock yourself out – use a funny avatar. But if you want to be heard, if you want to be recognized, pick an image and stick with it. If you’re an arts organization, don’t change your avatar show by show: stick with your company logo. If you want to be taken seriously, or use social media professionally, be yourself. And to thine own self be true, as some old guy once said, even in this brave new world of social media interaction.

In my case, I don’t think there’s been lasting damage, but if I’d gone on, there might have been. And unlike Mr. Peabody and Sherman, I don’t have a WABAC machine that would have allowed me to set things straight. And if you don’t get that last reference, look it up.

Though I’ve made my career in theatre, I love film just as much, albeit for different reasons. And while the death of theatre has been predicted seemingly since it began (“He sleeps with his mother and tears out his eyes? Who would pay to see that?!”), I am actually more worried about the future direction of movies.

Commercial movie exhibition dates back about 120 years. Film was, in many ways, a technologically-driven adaptation of theatre, since previously performances could not be recorded and shared. It took time for film to develop its own language and take advantage of its technical opportunities; many early movies look not unlike stage plays, and suffer for it today. But certainly over the past century, film has become its own vehicle of expression, distinct from theatre, its rise roughly concurrent with that of radio and recorded music, with television entering the picture near the mid-point of the last century and video games expanding new forms of immersive narrative in the 1980s. As Seth Godin noted in an address at the 2012 Theatre Communications Group conference, people used to go to the theatre because they didn’t have other choices; that all changed, rapidly, in the 1900s.

While outsiders predict the demise of theatre, the movie industry has at times warned of its own incipient doom: the advent of TV and the invention of home video recording are but two significant examples that the film industry feared and survived. It has twice battled such incursions with 3D, briefly in the 50s and more pervasively now, and has tried to build ever bigger blockbusters to keep luring in the rubes since Jaws and Star Wars rewrote the exhibition rules in the 1970s.

Perhaps the most significant technological innovation is one that is already more than 20 years old: computer-generated imagery (CGI). Though it looks prehistoric as displayed in the forgettable The Last Starfighter (one of the very first films to make use of CGI), dinosaurs marked its breakthrough, with Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Though the technology has evolved and improved year after year, Jurassic (and some key effects in Terminator 2) marked the point at which, through CGI, massive hit movies started on a dangerous path (with films about the dangers of technology gone awry, no less).

Once, a film of a railroad train was enough to enthrall moviegoers, but very quickly the magical films of an artist like George Melies expanded the possibilities of the form. Yes, stories were at the core of films, but effects were often vivid and vital, whether it was Gish on an ice floe or Kong climbing the Empire State. Those effects were state of the art in their times, but I suspect that audiences understood that these were false images, man-made rather than natural. I also think that people grew to enjoy to improvements in effects, as we flash-forward from the time lapse photography of The Wolf Man’s transformation to the skin-splitting intricacy of David Naughton becoming an American Werewolf (in London). But now, everything is possible.

We read accounts of actors playing scenes to dangling tennis balls, so their eye line will be correct when a beast is later CGI’d in, acting against empty green backgrounds that will be filled later by digitally rendered settings, or acting in form-fitting motion capture suits so that they themselves can be altered. They are united only onscreen, with perpetual but incremental advances. In point of fact, many of our biggest films are computer animated (though filmmakers would decry that specific nomenclature). How much time did we spend with actual humans in Avatar?  To me (and I risk my life by saying so) some of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings landscapes look to me like Thomas Kinkade paintings. If it’s not real, let it be elegantly fake; I’ll take Peter Ellenshaw’s matte paintings of the London skyline in Mary Poppins over any element of The 300 any day, while Alien and Aliens feature creatures vastly more frightening than there digitally rendered brethren in later chapters.

The irony is that once everything is possible, the novelty and the attraction departs. Because many studio execs and filmmakers believe that improved technology is an end unto itself, 3D has come roaring back to distract us (and pick our pockets) and god help us there’s talk of 4D, a foolish “improvement” found in  museum exhibits and theme parks, which primarily consists of wind machines and moving chairs. That this is happening even as forecasting gurus predict that we will become ever more reliant on mobile media, and that more films will be seen on portable, tiny screens, is even more ironic.

Mainstream film, enslaved to the imagined audience desire for bigger and louder, moves ever farther from meaningful and even coherent stories as it exhibits ever flashier wares. Smaller films and independent cinema remain, but I daresay that hit Broadway shows surpass them for in-theatre audiences.  But they may rise again, and the studios may come to recognize the fundamental importance of story again, since now that magic is commonplace, the magicians can’t thrill us.

As for effects, I believe theatre, always rooted in story, will recognized for its human-scaled, man-made efforts there as well. For an almost absurd example, look at the stage and screen Spider-Man versions: the reboot struck some as rehash, while audiences continue to flock to the stage version, even with wires and pulleys in full view. More to the point, the handmade quality of Joey in War Horse or the prehistoric man in Complicite’s Mnemonic, the physical skills of Cirque du Soleil and Les 7 Doigts de la Main, the “horrific” Elephant Man as seen in Bernard Pomerance’s play, the physical and uninterrupted presence of actors in the same room with their audience – they remain magic. And if the people who make movies come to their senses, they’ll worry less about effects and focus on the basics: a good story, well-told.

P.S. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: until science perfects the holodeck, as seen in several of the Star Trek series, theatre will be just fine.

As some of you may know, I’ve been writing a monthly column for The Stage in London since the beginning of the year; regretfully, it is only available in the print edition so not easily shared stateside or online. For my July column, I had planned to write about the TCG conference held in Boston in late June. Unfortunately, my focus didn’t suit The Stage‘s requirements, despite two efforts that differed in style but were perhaps too alike in content. So, a bit belatedly, I share with you all two versions of my reflections on TCG 2012, which also serves as an insight into an amateur journalist struggling to meet an editor’s requests, and not succeeding. However, there’s no hard feelings, and I’ll be back in the pages of The Stage later this month.

*   *   *

Version #1: MODELING MOVEMENTS AND CHANGE IN THE AMERICAN THEATRE

Attending the 2012 Theatre Communications Group multi-day conference in Boston felt somewhat like being thrust into an epic mashup of Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, going from hotel ballroom, to meeting room, to lunch session and then doing it all again, perhaps five cycles altogether. But while the roughly 1,000 attendees, made up of leadership and staff from large and small companies across the U.S., did gather for full conference plenary sessions, the rest of their time was divided among self-chosen breakout sessions and segments where one is segmented by affinity group (be it job title, budget size or particular creative focus). Consequently, every attendee had their own unique experience.

Not being a seasoned conference-goer, and having not attended TCG’s conferences for more than a decade, I was struck by the sheer scale; I remember the days of 400 attendees on a bucolic college campus. There was a barrage of information, opinion and inspiration coming non-stop, all focused on the making of theatre, and far too much from which to choose. For example, there were 53 breakout sessions, of which one could attend only 3.

The conference theme was “Model the Movement,” referring to the resident theatre movement which is roughly 50 years old (TCG itself is exactly 50 years old). Various models arose in discussions, but the breadth of the event rendered it difficult to pursue one theme singlemindedly. The takeaway from such a varied buffet is not sharply defined, although the persistent theme of change permeated the event. As an attendee, what I recall most were key thoughts, each of which might form a worthy topic for its own conference.

• Opening speaker Howard Shalwitz of Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company questioned the new trend in talking about theatre as storytelling. “I’m not saying that stories aren’t a critical part of what we do in the theatre, but to say they’re the whole thing is a bit like a symphony orchestra saying they play melodies or an art museum saying they show pictures.”  Shalwitz also worried that in an effort to develop an efficient system of producing theatre seasons “that places the entire burden of innovation at the feet of our playwrights.”

• Marketing guru Seth Godin, observed that “100 years ago, everyone went to the theatre because there was nothing else to do”; spoke to the attendees’ hearts with “You are in the arts because we want you to fail and do it often until you do something that blows our heads off”; and most vividly suggested, “Don’t strive to be heard when you’re there. Work to be missed when you’re not.”

• Diane Paulus, artistic director Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre and director of Broadway’s Hair and Porgy and Bess, expressed her belief that, “It is a generous act of the audience to come to the theatre and give several hours of their life to you,” while desirous of moving past established patterns because, once, “Theatre was ritual, theatre was pageant, theatre was all different kinds of things. Let’s not limit what we think theatre is.”

• Kwame Kwei-Armah of Centerstage in Baltimore, speaking of play selection, surprised many by saying, “I don’t have to love it. I have to love that my community will really love it and get something out of it. I’m not here to serve myself.”

• Clayton Lord, marketing director of Theatre Bay Area and editor of the intrinsic impact study Counting New Beans called for unity with, “We have to instill loyalty to art, not ‘my art’.”

• Ralph Peña, Artistic Director of New York’s Ma-Yi Theatre, counseled, “Within every organization we have to get leaders to acknowledge their own biases, because if you don’t see anything wrong, you’re not going to change.” He also asked pertinently, regarding diversity, “What art is not ethnic-specific?”

• Adam Thurman, marketing director of the Court Theatre in Chicago, spoke to the ever-present conference theme of change with, “Discomfort causes everyone to focus and everyone to hear each other…the ability to live in that discomfort creates the progress that this industry is looking for.”

• On the same panel as Thurman, Suzanne Wilkins of The Partnership Inc. of Boston, spoke of organizations’ need to “tolerate complexity and paradox – the capacity to connect across difference” in efforts to diversify both internally and within their audiences.

Two final observations, distinct from the inspirations that abounded:

• While most resident theatres produce musicals, that theatrical form was barely mentioned in any session I attended and seemed to not be on anyone’s minds. As evidence, a breakout on a student arts education program, which included on its panel Broadway stalwarts Rebecca Luker and Marc Kudisch (who both sang), drew only 25 attendees. In other circumstances, this would have been packed, but obviously this crowd had other interests.

• The conference gave ample time to controversial monologist Mike Daisey, whose piece about Apple became a major news story when it was revealed he’d fabricated elements. Daisey presented a two-hour work-in-progress performance of his newest piece (about his life and travels post-scandal) and included him on a plenary panel about “Theatre’s Role in Activism,” where he was confronted from the audience by one marketing director who remains deeply angry at being made complicit in Daisey’s lies. “You didn’t do it,” he said to her in a packed hall, “I did it. You may be stuck with having to react to it. But it’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s not a communal failing.” In the wake of director Julie Taymor’s appearance at the 2011 TCG conference after she’d been removed from Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Daisey’s appearance suggests that the TCG conference may not just provide inspiration. It may be the place to go for artistic absolution as well.

*   *   *

Version #2: DAVID BOWIE AND THE AMERICAN THEATRE

While “Model the Movement” was the stated name for the Theatre Communication Group’s 2012 national conference, it may as well have been “Changes: Turn and Face the Strain” from David Bowie’s early hit song. “Change” was certainly the word on everyone’s lips throughout the course of this gathering of the leadership and staff of many of America’s not-for-profit theatres. Perhaps it is the theme of every professional conference these days, but as I’ve only attended theatre conferences, and few recent ones, the theme of alteration was startlingly prominent.

Held in late June in Boston, the conference itself was an enormous change from what I’d experienced in the past. I hadn’t attended a TCG conference in more than ten years, and my most vivid memories go back more than two decades, when the event was held on a small-town New England college campus and perhaps 400 attendees explored the issues of the day. The 2012 conference brought together some 1,000 participants from theatres large and small in a hotel conference facility and one vast ballroom. While I encountered a number of leaders in the field who I had met over the course of my career, I was struck by how many people I didn’t know at all, a result of some combination of my most recent jobs, the significant expansion of the conference, and the inevitable influx of new talent, both artistic and administrative.

The vastness of the attendance, while to my eyes strikingly inclusive, was apparently not perceived that way by all. During the conference, and in the weeks that followed, various topics of contention arose. In tweets and on blogs, there were charges of elitism, as the cost of the conference had proved prohibitive for some smaller companies; of censorship, as volunteers chafed against being told that they were observers, not participants, and should not ask questions in public forums; and of an artistic-institutional divide, as some took issue with the declaration by Michael Maso of Boston’s Huntington Theatre, upon receiving an award, of his belief in institutional theatre. “Does that make us overstuffed bureaucracies?” asked Maso. “Bullshit!”

But those assorted debates seemed to take on larger life post-conference. In the moment, the event was an almost head-spinning array of non-confrontational challenges to orthodoxy, made essential by shifts in the field as well as the larger society. The opening keynote by Howard Shalwitz, artistic director of Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre, was a saga of self-exploration, of a producer who worried that his theatre had become so skilled in its producing model that it had become an assembly line, leaving too little room for innovation. “It’s not just the stories we tell,” Shalwitz decided, “but why and how we tell them that determines our success.”

The pervasiveness of change was perhaps best demonstrated when, during a period of elective breakout sessions, I split my time between panels on “Hacking the Not-For-Profit Model with For-Profit Methodologies” and “Artistic Decision Making: Weighing the Balance in a Complicated World.” Despite the former panel consisting of for-profit veterans who had just made the shift into not-for-profit at New York’s Public Theater, and the latter comprised of not-for-profit artists including Kwame Kwei-Armah, just completing his first season at Baltimore’s Centerstage, my move from one panel to the other seemed merely a change of location and personnel. I had left a room where new leaders at The Public spoke of the change they hoped to instill, only to enter a room where the necessity of change for survival was under discussion. Was this happening in every break out, I wondered. Were seemingly specific themes being subsumed by an overarching theme of change? I would have had to jog about quickly to attempt to find out: during three time slots with breakout sessions, there were 53 panels from which to choose.

Since transformation is change, the presence of monologist Mike Daisey reiterated the unofficial conference theme. Having experienced a highly public fall from grace after it was revealed that he had invented portions of his piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, the conference offered the semi-fallen Daisey both an artistic platform (he previewed a work-in-progress) and an intellectual one (as a panelist discussing “Theatre’s Role in Activism”). In the wake of director Julie Taymor’s appearance at the 2011 TCG conference after she’d been removed from Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Daisey’s quasi-rehabilitative appearance suggested that the TCG conference may now be the place to go for artistic absolution.

Although I found the conference exhausting, there was something reassuring simply in being part of a vast gathering of professionals who all, ostensibly, are genuinely dedicated to the well-being of theatre outside of the Broadway realm. Given the variety of theatre companies around the country, with different artistic goals and economic means, perhaps it is inevitable that it could not be all things to all people, and if it did not yield a singular model for the regional theatre movement, it certainly reinforced the necessity and inevitability of evolution.