Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1991 - 21

Reinventing
the
American
Stage
ROBERT BRUSTEIN

he thearre, usually at odds
with teality, seems ro be
imitating nature in one
imporranr regard: its cycles
of death and rebirrh.
Something seems ro be dying, and, as
with all seasonal changes, something new
is srruggling ro be born.
The death of the thearre has been celebrated so many times now that nobody
bothers ro menrion it any more. Instead,
the prinr and broadcast media are behaving as though grass is alteady growing on
the gtave.
In the past, the state of the thearre's
health would be argued in intellectual
magazines, populat newspapers, and
rrade journals, in living rooms and bars,
even in the songs of Simon and
Garfunkle. Today, the question is rreated
with a vacuous and rathet boted silence.
The Arts and Leisure section of the New
Yotk Times-who temembers when it
was once called the Thearre section?can barely squeeze out an arricle about
the stage once every twO or three weeks,
infrequenrly on its fronr page.
or does discussion often focus on
the American theatre. Instead, we find
Frank Rich or David Richards celebrating the riches ro be found in London,
and when Mel Gussow does up a followup review of some item of the Broadway
season, that is usually an English imporr,

roo. The Times has three full-time
teviewers, and another two or three parrtime conrriburors, but considering how
seldom they appear in the daily cultural
pages-once or twice a week at most-it
would be more economical ro pay them a
hourly wage.
Newsweek has drastically reduced the
space of its regular theatre critic, Jack
Kroll, so that he rarely appears in prinr
unless covering some monumental
evenr-like Peter Brooks's Mahabharata
or the London thearre season. Time magazine is more generous ro its reviewer,
William Henry III.
But most ew York newspapers are
featuring reviews that read like telex
copy, not much differenr in kind from
the encapsulated asides of the coiffured
pundits of TV. The ViLLage Voice still
makes an efforr ro cover most 1 ew York
theatre events (so does Variety from
another perspective), and its writers constitute the largest reviewing staff on any
currenr newspaper. But even that lively
enretprise is now being buried under ads
and personals, a considerably eviscerated
efforr by conrrast with an era when half
the paper was devoted ro the stage.
As for the serious magazines, neither
Harpers nor Atlantic has carried a thearre
arricle in years-an exception was David
Denby's Theaterophobia, a savage arrack
on the stage. I'm still writing in the New

Republic, but my once weekly column
now appears monthly, by editorial
decree. John Simon continues ro rage
weekly at helpless moving objects in New
York Magazine, but that's less a species of
criticism than blood sporr, fit for the
annals of bullbaiting.
There was a time when every serious
magazine reserved considerable space in
order ro examine what was happening in
theatre-when Mary McCarrhy and
Susan Sonrag were reviewing fot Partisan
Review, when Elizabeth Hardwick was
covering theatre for The New York
Review, when the New Leader featured
Alberr Bermel, The Nation had Harold
Clurman (later Alan Schneider and
Richard Gilman), and Wilfrid Sheed and
Richard Gilman were writing for
Commonweal. Even the Hudson Review
had regular reviewers, John Simon
among them, where he had the opporruniry ro be more reflective than reflexive.
And Commentary--in the years before
the edirors began [Q see Reds in every
dressing room-was noted for its sociological overviews of the American stage.
Indeed, virrually every American inrellectual felt a compulsion ro express an opinion on the state of Broadway thearre.
Well, what happened? The chief thing
was the decline of Broadway. We were
having such a great time hurling stones at
a seemingly invincible commercial target
TD&T

1991

SPRING

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1991