AT25: An Eye on the Future
Celisa Kalke, artistic associate/dramaturg, Alliance Theatre, Atlanta
In the next 25 years, theatres must push and expand what is possible on the stage. Parallel to the art, theatres also need to push and expand what their communities demand of themselves. Great work in Atlanta, for example, highlights the city's diversity and rapid growth. When we really hop, we build on Atlanta's unique legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in creative and unexpected ways. Perhaps because of this legacy, we (including our academic theatre artists) work most creatively when pulling together to share talent, contacts, energy and ideas.
At the Alliance Theatre, we annually promote growth and change in Atlanta by producing the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. Every year we bring a wide-ranging group of recent graduate MFA playwrights to Atlanta. Then a wide swath of the theatre community comes together for a week of readings around the opening night of the winning play's production. Each playwright immediately impacts our institution and our theatrical community. They push us to explore new actors, tackle new and often difficult subjects, challenge our producing aesthetics and our audience's artistic expectations. I jealously guard their idealism and talent, hoping to create the highest expectations in the Kendeda playwrights for new-play production and institutional dramaturgy. The goal of the program is to have local and national impact, and to be leading the conversations about new work both locally and nationally.
In the coming 25 years, I hope to see an eruption of this kind of structured, community-building risk-taking. It's time for America's regions to celebrate their own cultural diversity, not merely as "colorful" or "regional," but as the cornerstone of the romance of American culture—and it's time for America's theatres to lead this celebration. We have to dream nationally (with ambition, creativity and excellence) but produce locally (inviting audiences to help nurture new work and innovative artists). Then American theatre can dramatize a changing America, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, region by region, in the 21st century.