AT25: An Eye on the Future
Michael John Garcés, artistic director, Cornerstone Theater Company, Los Angeles
Theatremakers have spent a lot of time and energy over the past 25 to 50 (maybe 100) years being anxious about becoming, or being, obsolete. But, given the ever-increasing rate of technological change, it is other media—the electronic kind—that is verging on becoming anachronistic. Movies and TV will be quaint nostalgia in less than a quarter-century, as will laptops, iPods, PlayStation and other gadgets. Other mediums, maybe unimaginable to most of us, will take their place.
The world is spinning faster, and most technology is obsolete by the time it reaches the market. But the human species evolves at a drastically slower pace. People will still be people. They'll be messy, needy, loving, angry and noble, and they'll still be doing the same terrible things to each other, which make for good plays. We'll still want to see the drama play out in real time, still want to think and talk about life. Which means that the basic human needs met by theatre—by communion, ceremony and story—are not going away. And that's good for business.
Theatre companies will evolve to suit changing economic times and social needs. Certainly, those running our larger theatres will be forced to think critically about why they make theatre, and whom they imagine they make it for, in order to remain at all relevant, or even viable. Most that don't will become part of theatre history; a few will probably hold on as museums.
It is the immediacy and the "liveness" that will keep theatre a vital part of people's lives. The strength of plays lies in what happens in the room, the space, the place, between performer and audience. I think that plays and performance that communicate a sense of being a citizen of the world—of being part of concentric circles of community, of art-making as a democratic platform for voice and story—will increasingly become the predominant and healthiest strain of theatre. How artists respond to the neighborhoods and communities in which they are working—viscerally examining, celebrating and critiquing them—will be at the center of the form. As always, technology will change. Those changes will make us question our basic understanding of our world and ourselves, and we'll want to be together when we do it. So we will.