The beautiful recyclability of theater
Editorial
Every now and then I find myself in a debate about cover songs. I’ve discovered that a lot of serious music fans really dislike covers. One common argument goes along the lines of “there are so many amazing songs out there that I’ve never heard, why would I spend my time listening to a rehashing of something I already know?” Personally, I think Aretha Franklin’s cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” obliterates that theory singlehandedly, but I can see where they’re coming from. Their point becomes especially clear whenever I hear some crooner launch into yet another nondescript slog through Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Fortunately, that’s not how it works with theater. To the extent that a single, best-ever performance of a play could exist, it would be witnessed only by the select crowd in attendance and impossible to verify for anyone who wasn’t there. Whether or not the officially released “album version” of a song is the best rendition ever, it’s the official record. It’s what people have embedded in their brains and what they queue up on Spotify when they need a fix of their favorite tune. Theater lovers don’t have that luxury, and that’s a good thing.
Theater stands alone as an art form where remakes and adaptations are not only accepted, but hoped for. There are exceptions, to be sure, but for a large portion of playwrights, the dream is to craft a play that will be produced in multiple venues for years to come. It’s why audiences still turn out in droves for events like Winona’s annual
