AT25: An Eye on the Future
Eric Ting, associate artistic director, Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Conn.
Twenty-five years is a long time.
Twenty-five years ago, I would have never thought of myself as an artist—I'm not even sure that I do now. I've known too many absolute geniuses to count myself among them, and I'm constantly humbled by the opportunity to work with them. I feel like I learn something new every day, and not only in the company of my mentors and my peers, but from our audiences as well—it's always some lesson about how to be more responsible in my work (or more rigorous), or how to be more respectful of the vast array of experiences through which we navigate.
This is what theatre does to me—it immerses me in a currency of humanity that leaves me breathless.
So when you ask me where I see the American theatre going in the next 25 years, I see it doing more or less what it does now. Sure, the form may change—there will be new media and new generations of artists, there will be preservationists and radicals. But the dynamic of audience and artist is constant, no matter what. The difference (and this belief sings in me) will be in how the audience will value theatre in the years to come. No, it's not about teaching audiences about the importance of theatre (that's a Quixotic effort at best)—no amount of literature, or study, or discourse, can amount to the alchemical event of a live performance. We know that. Get them into the theatre. Or take the theatre to them.
There is a certain faith that I keep in the (sublimely) mutable nature of theatre. But theatre can also be brittle, and it is in that tension between the then and the yet-to-be that I think we find ourselves today. The crucible is still ahead of us—that seems clear. But I believe that people, caught up in today's alienating culture, are hungry now for what theatre has to offer. They just don't necessarily realize it.
There is a way that theatre becomes a model for living: Seek the vital and visceral experience, imagine that anything is possible, break into song and dance at sudden and unexpected moments. Life. Improvised.