By: Declan Hertel
Entertainment Editor
Back in the seventies, disco was king: meaning it was grandiose, self-important, and by the late seventies had metastasized into an elitist ball of sonic suckitude that engulfed popular music.
But then punk happened. Punk was raw, messy, and caused a massive shift in the world of music, taking everything that disco represented and smashed it beneath a hundred moshing feet. It brought meaning and humanity back to music.
I bring this up because there is a problem with a different artistic medium that is near and dear to my heart: theatre. Here it is, folks: the modern theatre is disco.
Disco was the predominant popular music of its time. Sure, there was interesting, non-sucktastic stuff happening beneath it, but it was beneath it. So to with theatre. The contemporary face of theatre is dominated by the blockbuster musical and revivals of blockbuster musicals; “Wicked”, “The King and I”, and their ilk.
Not that there is anything wrong with those, they fill the same niche as “The Avengers” does for movies: it’s a big, bombastic, fun spectacle. I saw the Broadway touring company of “Wicked” in 2012, it was dope, and anyone who left that theatre thinking that it wasn’t was wrong. But these shows are, unfortunately, indicative to the same unsettling trend that the Marvel Cinematic Universe exemplifies in cinema: style over substance.
The other big issue with the modern theatre is that it is perceived in the mainstream as being inaccessible, as an art form for the old and powerful. Audiences are dominated by the old, the white, and the rich; in other words, the people who have the least impetus to change the world.
The old aren’t going be here for long, the white have it good, and the rich have it better. It’s out of reach to the average American, or at least it looks like it. The average middle class American needs to use the money they would spend on tickets to pay rent; this reality combined with the fact that the “cheap” end of professional theatre tickets is generally over $20 only pushes theater further away from the lower end.
I can hear you thinking: “Why should I care?”
You should care because, friends, theatre used to be dangerous. As Western’s own Dr. Michael Phillips says in his Theatre History class, people have been killed because they were theatre artists. Theatre strikes fear into tyrants and has been known to lead, sometimes directly, to their demise. Why? Because theatre is human.
Theatre, at its best, is the pulse of a culture. It is an inherently visceral art form. In theatre, you are in the same room as these people. You are directly witnessing their struggles, their passions, their loves and hates and triumphs and failures, with nothing more between you than an implicit divide between actors and audience. There’s nowhere to hide from the truth.
No other art form has such ability to create empathy. This unique property is wasted on huge, feel-good musicals. Sure it’s saddening to see the injustices perpetrated on a green-skinned witch, but it’s downright devastating when a play shows you the injustices suffered by your fellow humans every day. Theatre does more than tell you what’s going on, it slaps you in the face and dares you to do something about it. It shows you exactly what’s wrong with the world you live in, and makes you care.
There needs to be a punk rock revolution in the theatre. Too long has it languished in the clutches of the elite, too long has it been an inaccessible art form, unavailable to the common man. Theatre has always been a voice for change throughout the world, a voice for those who have no other voice, but not in the America of today.
Important works are being written and premiered regularly, but the “high-class” perception of theatre has relegated their viewership to those who have no stake or vested interest in what they stand for, and those who do have an interest are put off by the saturation of blockbusters homogenizing down the form.
In these troubled times, we need all the help we can get. What I ask of you is this: seek out shows that tackle today’s issues, and support them. Support small, underground theatres. Go and experience the unbelievable power that theatre holds, and let it fuel you to change the world you live in, in whatever way you can.
