Archives for September 14, 2006

I often have occasion to write or speak about the new media and their effects on our culture, and I find myself repeating the same basic concepts over and over, sometimes fluently and sometimes fumblingly. For this reason, it occurred to me today to distill them into a soundbite:

The common culture is dead, and the middle class is busier than ever before. Consumers under forty–and, increasingly, under fifty–want what they want when they want it.

If you’re not already doing this, or figuring out how to do it, you’re asking for trouble.

I think that covers everything, don’t you?

If you read my Wall Street Journal drama column, you know that in addition to Broadway and major off-Broadway openings, I review theatrical performances throughout the United States. I’m the only drama critic in America who does so on a regular basis, and it’s made me a passionate believer in the significance of regional theater. As I wrote in my “Sightings” column back in June:

When a museum in Los Angeles or Philadelphia puts on a major exhibition, nobody in the world of art assumes it to be second-rate merely because it doesn’t travel to the Metropolitan Museum. The same thing ought to be true of a theatrical production. That’s why the time has come for American playgoers–and, no less important, arts editors–to start treating regional theater not as a minor-league branch of Broadway but as an artistically significant entity in and of itself. Take it from a critic who now spends much of his time living out of a suitcase: If you don’t know what’s hot in “the stix,” you don’t know the first thing about theater in 21st-century America.

How do I decide which out-of-town companies to visit and what shows to see–and how might you go about persuading me to see your company?

When I first started attending theatrical performances outside New York, it was on an ad hoc basis not too far removed from throwing darts at a map. I started with Chicago because it’s where Our Girl lives, followed by Washington, D.C., to which I routinely travel three times each year to attend meetings of the National Council for the Arts. Every time I saw a show I liked, I looked up the director’s bio, made a note of the other companies with which he’d worked, checked out their Web sites, and put them on my list. I did the same thing with actors who impressed me.

Once the Journal decided to cover regional theater in earnest, I became more systematic in my information-gathering process. I started with the members of the League of Resident Theatres, the thirty-one winners to date of the Tony Award for regional theater, and the various companies and summer festivals participating in the NEA’s Shakespeare in American Communities project. I combined these overlapping rosters into a single list, then visited and bookmarked the Web sites of all the companies on it, later adding dozens of others that I discovered by combing through the online database of the American Theater Web.

How did I winnow the resulting list to a manageable size? Here are the standards I used:

– No amateurs, please. I only review professional companies. I’m also more likely to review Equity productions, but that’s not a hard-and-fast rule, especially if I’m already coming to your city to see another show.

In addition, I don’t review dinner theater, and it’s unusual (but not unprecedented) for me to visit children’s theaters or companies that produce only musicals.

– Web sites matter–a lot. More often than not, your site will be my introduction to your company. You don’t have to cram it full of cutesy-pie bells and whistles, but the smarter the design, the greater the chance that I’ll give it a second glance.

Two words to the wise:

(1) Sound bites = death.

(2) If you can’t spell, hire a proofreader.

For more tips on what I look for in a theatrical Web site, go here.

– You must produce a minimum of three shows each season… This doesn’t apply to summer festivals, but it’s comparatively rare for me to cover a festival that doesn’t produce at least three shows a year.

– …and most of them have to be serious. I promise not to put you on my drop-dead list for milking the occasional cash cow, but if you specialize in such regional-theater staples as Tuesdays With Morrie, the collected works of Larry Shue, and anything with the word “magnolias” in the title, I won’t go out of my way to come calling on you, either.

I’m looking for an imaginative, wide-ranging mix of revivals of major plays–including comedies–and newer works by living playwrights and songwriters whom I admire. Some names on the latter list: Alan Ayckbourn, Nilo Cruz, Horton Foote, Amy Freed, Brian Friel, Adam Guettel, A.R. Gurney, David Ives, Michael John LaChiusa, Warren Leight, Kenneth Lonergan, Lisa Loomer, David Mamet, Martin McDonagh, Itamar Moses, Lynn Nottage, Austin Pendleton, Harold Pinter, Oren Safdie, John Patrick Shanley, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Stoppard.

I also have a select list of older plays I’d like to see that haven’t been revived in New York lately (or ever). If you’re doing The Beauty Part, The Cocktail Party, The Entertainer, Hotel Paradiso, Man and Superman, Present Laughter, Rhinoceros, Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Visit, What the Butler Saw, or anything by Jean Anouilh or Terence Rattigan, drop me a line.

– Been there, done that. As a rule, I don’t cover new or newish plays I’ve previously reviewed in New York, especially if I panned them. The chances of my coming to town specifically to see your production of Bad Dates or Rabbit Hole are well below zero–though I might drop by if I’m going to be in the area for some other reason.

– April is the cruellest month. Many Broadway shows open between the middle of March and the middle of May, in time to qualify for that year’s Tony nominations. During that period, I have neither time nor space to review out-of-town openings, no matter how enticing they may sound. On the other hand, I’m usually looking for interesting shows to review in late December, January, the first half of February, the second half of May, June, and September.

– I group my shots. It isn’t cost-effective for me to fly halfway across the country to review a single show. Whenever possible, I like to take in three different productions during a four- or five-day trip. (Bear in mind, though, that they don’t all have to be in the same city. In October, for instance, I’ll be seeing two shows in Seattle and one in Portland, Oregon.) If you’re the publicist of the Podunk Repertory Company and you want me to review your revival of The Glass Menagerie, your best bet is to point out that TheaterPodunk just happens to be doing Our Town that very same weekend. Otherwise, I’ll probably go to San Francisco instead.

Remember, too, that I write about all the arts, and on occasion I can be lured to your show by the additional prospect of seeing an important non-theatrical cultural event during my stay.

– Send me no paper. I prefer to receive press releases via e-mail, and I don’t want to receive routine Joe-Blow-is-now-our-assistant-stage-manager announcements via any means whatsoever.

– It pays to advertise–if you do it right. I’m flying to Chicago next week to see two shows. One of them is being put on by a company of which I’d never heard prior to January, when I picked up a copy of its well-written, stylish-looking flier in the lobby of Chicago’s Court Theatre, one of my favorite regional companies. I went to their Web site, liked what I saw, and decided to pay them a visit. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.

As of today, I’m watching the Web sites of 146 theater companies in the continental United States. So far I’ve visited thirty-three of them. Keep these simple rules in mind and you, too, could move from column A to column B.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week. (Note the rare absence of asterisks!)

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– Seven Guitars (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Oct. 7)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

“We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.”

Harold Macmillan, speech, Aug. 16, 1950