Are we giving new plays the opportunities they need?

I’d like to talk about something that may not be possible. We may have boxed ourself into a corner and then painted ourselves into a box with the way theater is done noways. But I’ve increasingly come to think that American theater has gotten so good at just scraping by that they are totally flummoxed when they succeed at something. And they have so thoroughly planned for just getting by that they are stuck with that plan. And this may be perfectly good for the institutions themselves, which, after all, just need to keep on putting plays to justify their existence. But I think it’s very bad for new plays, which often need time to attract an audience and develop a reputation. New plays have greatly diminished runs nowadays, thanks to the way contemporary theater, especially nonprofit theater, is structured. The season is usually mapped out well in advance, and the calendar is relatively inflexible. A popular play might be extended a week or two, but any more than that and it starts eating into rehearsal time for the next production. Compare this with for-profit theater, which has typically backed a single horse and then rode it until it collapsed. There’s great risk in this, of course -- one expects that the Spider Man musical, if it doesn’t breach its current dam of discontent, will be remembered as one of Broadway’s more spectacular flops, and the thing cost somewhere in the vicinity of $40 million. But, then, the with this structure, a producer has a financial incentive for giving a play a fair shake. With nonprofits, there isn’t the same sort of “this has to make it or we’ll go broke” urgency, and so a play that does poorly can just close its doors after three weeks and it’s on to the next one. Never mind that many of what we now consider classic 20th century theater would never have made it if the curtains fell after three weeks. Most of the audience walked out on “Waiting for Godot” on its U.S. debut at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Albee’s “The Zoo Story” was rejected by American producers and he produced it himself in Germany. Joe Orton’s “Loot" outraged patrons and critics; it was seen as a flop. Some of these plays benefited from later productions, but this isn’t often the case in American theater nowadays. As Todd London and Ben Pesner’s book “Outrageous Fortune” points out, nonprofit American theater are mostly interested in new plays if they can debut them. Once a play is premiered, it may never be performed again. But plays also benefited from catching the zeitgeist, and theaters used to be prepared to take advantage of this. Nowadays, if a play enjoys an extended run in the Twin Cities, it will tend to be an audience-pleasing sort that is pitched at the suburbs and placed in venues that are intended for long runs -- and this is not a criticism of plays such as “Triple Espresso” or “Nunsense,” which are perfectly enjoyable pieces. But more challenging plays with potentially smaller audiences can also enjoy long runs. Landford Wilson’s “The Madness of Lady Bright,” which had the audacity to dramatize a drag queen’s emotional breakdown in 1964, ran for 200 performances at Cafe Cino. Why? Because it caught with audiences, and cafe owner Joe Cino decided just to let it run until the audience lagged. It’s going to be very hard for a new play to attract an audience when it has a lifespan about as long as a mayfly, but, even when it does, and third week ticket sales are through the roof, how many theater companies are in a position to do anything about it? And what is the benefit -- sure, they could scrounge up some money, find an available venue, and continue to run it, but even if the show continues to sell out, ticket sales only cover 40 percent of a non-profit theater’s costs. For every week the play continues to run, the company would be in the position of having to cover 60 percent of the nut on their own. We’ve found ourselves in a strange situation where having a hit play might actually cost a theater money. And while this might not necessarily be a problem for the specific institutions of theater, who can, after all, continue to make due by rolling out season after season of play after play, having long-running new plays are vital to the development of a robust playwrighting community. The Playwrights’ Center here in Minneapolis has about a thousand members. Conservatively, let us imagine that half of those members write one play per year. How many of those are produced locally? And how many enjoy productions of longer than a month? How many Minnesota-scripted plays have enjoyed more than 200 runs? I can name a few: “Triple Espresso,” “How to Talk Minnesotan: The Musical,” and perhaps “Church Basement Ladies.” Without minimizing the accomplishments of these plays, this does represent the Twin Cities theater community in a limited way. I don’t have a solution to this. I am not prepared to tell institutions that they must change a successful business model -- or, at least, one with which they can remain vaguely afloat -- in favor of an untested business model that might cost them money. Who would benefit? I would, as I am a playwright, and I think American theater would benefit, but playwrights always think American theater would benefit if people like them did better. I do know that I, and other playwrights, don’t benefit from the current system, which seems designed like the Carousel in the movie “Logan’s Run,” in which people are set adrift in a machine that fires laser beams at them, and told they might survive it and prosper, but none ever do. I don’t know that any of us playwrights have anything to contribute to American culture that is of any lasting value. I also know that, with the current system, we won’t find out if we do.