Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1975 - 8

some time, and it is disturbing that no further ideas
are in the works. NASA finds itself able to make only
one space shot every ten years; Cape Kennedy is
weed-covered and rusted. The moral indignation over
the juxtaposition of ghetto and moonshot was heeded
or engineered and space exploration is
bankrupt. The ghettos of our cities aren't noticeably
changed; we have just added another one, full of our
best scientists, in Florida.
The creation of this new class of underprivileged
the researcher in all fields has alarming
implications. We simply can't afford not to know
where we're going. It is a frightful, and dangerous,
waste of energy to be without a developing line. The
exploration gap is both a psychic and a practical
necessity; a conceptual discovery is the manifestation
of a national, or global dream, a change of our lives,
always for the better - always - even though the
application of the concept may be misguided. We
need evolutionary time - for the essential structure
of search, testing, thought, implication, application.
We are overwhelmed by our sociological awareness. We are pressured to remedial, and immediate
action by money, on two levels. First, the direct
grant. Garret-art and garret-science are not possible
any more, and our system of democratic funding is
nervous. The artist and the scientist are both subject
to exhaustive "socio-economic evaluation" the
system's phrase, not mine - whenever they need
funds. Obviously, "I want to paint this chapel
ceiling," or "I think I can make a flying machine"
wouldn't get much sympathy. There is money
avai lable for repairing damage for decreasing
pollution or increasing food production or, of course,
for the energy crisis. Just as there is money for
touring educational, cultural hits. You have to prove,
simply, that the chapel of which you want to paint
the ceiling has a large seating capacity, which will be
increased by your work, and that the congregation is
fifty percent underprivileged, undereducated or an
ethnic minority.
Besides that, there are subtler pressure from
society. The rewards for applying yourself to immediate problems or urgencies are great. You can be
rich, you can be famous, you can have a Nobel Prize,
if you make your contribution quickly and visibly.
Although it is noticeable that all these rewards are
becoming increasingly unstable, and less desirable.
Fundamentally, this is all because our environment has become information and our economy is
now one of ideas. And neither is functioning
properly.
Generally speaking, two truths are being ignored,
and they have been basic to the evolution of

civilization. The first one is, that the terms success,
failure and socio-economic value are irrelevant to
either science or art. There is only, in both cases,
search. It is not only short-sighted, it is immoral, to
ask a researcher to forecast his results or to hand him
criteria of success or failure. The researcher must
have the freedom to pursue his line of inquiry,
wherever it may lead. I do not know how many major
discoveries have been accidental, but I suspect a
great many. (Certainly, all of Tom O'Horgan's.)
The second truth is, that arts or science patronage
is, traditionally, an investment. of a speculative
nature for the patron. He has never, till now, dealt in
hand-outs or a fancy form of welfare. He has funded
the artist or scientist because of the work that person
will produce. He did not, until patronage became
democratic, expect the product immediately or exhaustively. Traditionally, he supported the artist; he
did not pay for an item. Only recently have we, the
patronized, been made to feel that way - that we
live on a complicated and demanding form of charity.
Now - having, I hope, convinced you how urgent
it is to re-focus on the question and not on the
answer, I am going to think about the answers.
I have no idea how to proceed to persuade anyone
that the scientist should be working not only on
smog, oil, crops and some sort of comparatively rapid
transit to the airport, but also on reversing time, on
anti-gravity, on going faster than light. I can only
hope that, if we bring back the exploration gap to the
theatre, we may sufficiently influence the collective
imagination and ignite the necessary dreams to help
create general awareness - as we have done before.
Let us set our own house in order first.
We have in the theatre, it seems, a stable
structure within which our explorers can work. We
are, as never before, show business - more than
Broadway ever was; we house, under the same roof,
more often than not, the hit, the try-out, the tour, the
children's show, all with their interlocking production
teams, subscription teams, budgets and audiences.
We have a defined sphere of influence, which we
did not formerly have: we are considered necessary
and desirable, if not of the first sociological importance, by political and business interests and we are
the prime movers for other communication media,
chiefly television, which is currently selling all its
products by means of material we invented yesterday's play is tomorrow's TV series - its drama
can be traced clearly back to theatrical sources.
So what we have is a kind of establishment, not so
much a corporation as a cooperative, with a structure
and with a form of power. And this structure must
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THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

SUM MER. 1975

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