Wither the American Play?

This will be a long post for me, but the article really does seem worth reading. I'm on a mailing list that winnows theatre news and sends it out daily. This came today:

December 12, 2004
The Broadway Play Is Getting the Hook. So What?
By JESSE McKINLEY

AS the fall Broadway season comes to an end this week - with the opening
of a 229-year-old comedy, "The Rivals," on Thursday - it is a good time to
consider all the new, culturally significant American drama produced there
this year.

Anyone? Don't hold back. Just shout out a title. Any title will do.

If nothing jumped to mind, you shouldn't think you're a philistine. The
original American Broadway play has long been consigned to second-class
status in an industry dominated by musicals, but this fall it reached a
low-water mark. Other than one-person shows, only one new American play -
comedy or drama - made it to the stage, August Wilson's "Gem of the
Ocean," which opened Monday. And the producers and Mr. Wilson, the
nation's premier African-American playwright, had to beg, plead and call
in a favor ($1 million worth) from a wealthy producer in San Francisco.

The trials of Mr. Wilson caused more than a little wringing of hands along
the Great White Way. But it caused barely a ripple of worry elsewhere. And
why should it? New Broadway plays - burdened by high costs and expanding
competition from other forms of entertainment - barely register on the
national cultural radar. So exactly what is being lost is unclear.

The vast majority of Americans have never seen a play on Broadway.
"Proof," a father-daughter drama that ran for more than two years before
closing in early 2003, had a total audience of about 650,000. Last week,
"The O.C.," a teen drama on the Fox network, was seen by 10 times that
total.

But more than numbers, which naturally favor TV and film, what's striking
is the recent inability of the Broadway drama to stir the passions of
anyone except the most dedicated theatergoers. TV, films, books and music
all create waves of discussion about the way we live or run our
government, as well as whether Carrie Bradshaw should stick with Mr. Big
or drop the bum.

Mention "The Passion of the Christ," or Eminem or "The Apprentice" or
Richard Clarke, the former White House adviser, at a cocktail party and
you'll have a conversation on anti-Semitism, earthy lyrics, office
politics and terrorism. Mention "Match" or "Sixteen Wounded" or "Prymate"
and you'll likely be met with a silence to make Beckett proud. (Hint: They
were all new American plays produced on Broadway last season.)

" 'The Sopranos' does for people now what 'Death of a Salesman' did for
people in 1948," said Laurence Maslon, co-author of the PBS documentary
and book "Broadway: The American Musical." Pressed to name a play that
really got people talking, he reached back a decade to "Angels in
America," Tony Kushner's two-part epic, which dramatized the AIDS crisis
and stirred commentary from the "Today" show to Vanity Fair.

But "Angels" is probably better known now that HBO turned it into an
Emmy-winner this year. Indeed, the "Angels" experience might illustrate
how theatrical ideas only bubble into the culture at large via film or TV,
two industries that have been snapping up the best young American
playwrights for many decades. John Guare's play "Six Degrees of
Separation," from 1990, might jog a few memories if only because of its
clever title and conceit (and that addictive "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"
game, which became popular on the Internet).

When Americans pay attention to Broadway, it is usually a celebrity
one-man show (like Billy Crystal's current "700 Sundays") or a musical.
"Rent," the singular sensation of 1996, landed on the cover of Time, and
the 2001 hit "The Producers" even cracked "60 Minutes."

An argument could be made that Broadway plays have a subtler effect, an
influence that far outlasts their time on stage. Would Tony Soprano's
midlife crisis exist, for example, if Willy Loman hadn't suffered one
himself a half-century earlier? Would Larry David's Jewish guilt be as
funny if Neil Simon hadn't cornered the market for such comedy in the
1960's? Does "Queer as Folk" owe Tennessee Williams royalties?

Playwrights can also have a more immediate effect: no fewer than five East
Coast playwrights are writers on "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." No one
knows the impact of today's plays on a mesmerized youngster who might be
the next great screenwriter.

Still, when a play does tap into a hot issue these days, it tends not to
happen on Broadway. In the last year, Off Broadway plays have dealt with
the treatment of war prisoners ("Guantánamo: 'Honor Bound to Defend
Freedom' ") and the war on terror ("The God of Hell," Sam Shepard's latest
play). But on a good night, these plays might reach an audience of 400, at
best. Neither will make it to Broadway, though another Off Broadway
production, "Doubt, a Parable," about the pedophilia scandal in the
Catholic Church, will transfer uptown this spring.

All of which must tickle the British, who have a thirst for putting on
big, meaningful plays on their top stages, including "Stuff Happens,"
David Hare's dissection of the war in Iraq, and "Democracy," Michael
Frayn's study of politics, human and governmental, which has been
transferred to Broadway. Not surprisingly, each year more of the plays
that do make a splash on Broadway are the ones that come from London.

On this side of the Atlantic, it has been left not only to Off Broadway to
pick up the intellectual slack but to the regional theaters, which are
exposing audiences to probing, smart work like "Spinning Into Butter,"
Rebecca Gilman's 1999 drama about racism, which started in Chicago.
Another important source is the Humana Festival of New American Plays in
Louisville. "They've really been establishing themselves in their own
communities without relying on a connection to New York," said Robert
Brustein, founding director of the American Repertory Theater in
Cambridge, Mass.

That said, for many playwrights and stage actors, Broadway remains the
ultimate goal, even if having your name in lights on 42nd Street doesn't
mean that you'll be talked about around a water cooler in Akron.

"I suppose TV and a movie can get there, but when a play is working, that
communion is different," said Warren Leight, a Broadway playwright ("Side
Man") and a "Law and Order" producer. "An audience moved by a play is
moved in a different way. It lingers longer."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company