AT25: An Eye on the Future
Sarah Benson, artistic director, Soho Rep, New York City
When taking on a project to direct, I am always attracted to plays that I don't know how to do. Plays that I don't know how to tackle upon first encounter—whether I'm stymied by their content or their form—turn out to be more surprising and unpredictable (of course) in the long run. Right now as a community I feel we are at a similar juncture. We face a climate we don't know how to deal with. We are full of fear and uncertainty. And yet we are also emboldened with a new sense of spontaneity and faith in what we can do. We are working from a place of ignorance, so we are actually functioning together to make something.
So, I think the future will see us reconnect with the strange intimacy and potent feeling at the heart of the theatre. That has nothing to do with big budgets or fat adverts, but rather with embracing the weirdness and power of our strange, ephemeral art form.
What will emerge is a more culturally connected and art-driven model that stems from the work, rather than simply sustaining self-perpetuating institutions. The most exciting work will be exuberant, uncompromising and handmade. It will be intimate, whether made for tiny or vast spaces, and yet large in scope. And it will utilize the strange theatrical principle of alchemy, by taking rough materials and using them as they are—to turn out something remarkable.
In terms of specific wishes for the next quarter-century, as a space-travel nerd, I hope that by 2034 there is a space program for theatre and the arts. With the advent of space tourism, extended exploratory time in space is only around the corner. Being able to see the curvature of the earth from high above, and take that back, is one of my obsessions. There is such potential in space travel for a more interconnected way of seeing our environment, that I sincerely hope the arts, alongside science, can be a pioneering part of that.
My other dreams for the American theatre are, I hope, more straightforward: more multi-year general operating support, a more engaged and diversified critical landscape, a stronger sense of theatre as a public and democratic art form, an engagement with the right to fail as an important part of creative process, more work created with artistic autonomy rather than the need to fit into a "slot," a more locally integrated community, an international theatre realm full of cross-pollination, cheaper tickets—and, finally, more theatres with a bar!