From the Executive Director
A High-Impact Year
By Teresa Eyring
Another year is racing to the finish line, and what a ride it has been! Here at TCG, we launched our 50th anniversary with record-breaking attendance at the National Conference in Los Angeles. The theatre community embraced an exploration of the question 'What if...?," imagining radical ideas for theatremaking in the next 50 years, uncensored by constraints like time and money. TCG's new campaign "I Am Theatre" debuted, showcasing pivotal moments in the lives of 50 theatre people from all backgrounds. In response, individuals around the globe have submitted their own videos to the "I Am Theatre" YouTube channel.
With 50 years under our belts, this year underscored the immense power of multiple generations sharing their knowledge and passion for the work, and they were brought together often–as TCG uniquely does–in conferences, town halls and assemblies such as our intergenerational leaders of color.
This year, the theatre field in general fared a bit better on the economic front, but we lost some important organizations–and we saw how these losses rippled out to affect the larger community, as artistic opportunities declined and some projects were halted midstream.
Meanwhile, many national and global issues loomed. Our nation experienced spotty progress on jobs, health care and education. Our gridlocked Congress took the nation to new extremes of wheel-spinning on important domestic matters, provoking questions about leadership both on the Hill and in the West Wing. Change often received its biggest boosts not through legislative action, but through protests that went viral on Twitter and Facebook. The Twitter hashtag gained new street cred in 2011, as evidenced by both #tahrirsquare and #occupywallstreet.
The year also demonstrated a continuing evolution in how theatre perceives and acts upon its unique role in an increasingly fast-moving, complicated world. In the April issue of American Theatre, I quoted a colleague's observation that arts organizations shouldn't be seen as needy charities but as "problem-solving social assets." One clear example is in the artists and organizations concerned with the well-being of military personnel returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are more than 2.3 million veterans of these wars. And more of these men and women are returning home from the "theatre" of war with health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Theater of War project, featured in the July/August issue of AT, has helped veterans nationwide. Performances of Sophocles' Ajax have been followed by deep discussions that allow veterans to process their experiences. After a performance at Guantanamo, an older veteran told the producers, "What you're doing here is just as honorable, just as much a service to your country, as anything anyone in this audience has done.... You're giving them a chance to talk about something they may never have talked about before. You're offering them the chance to heal." KJ Sanchez's ReEntry, a powerful documentary-theatre piece based on interviews with Marines returning from service, is being performed on bases and in veterans' hospitals, and also in several TCG theatres. Another interaction between theatre and the military came with Tricycle Theatre of the U.K.'s The Great Game: Afghanistan. After touring Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Guthrie Theater and the Public Theater, The Great Game was performed for Pentagon personnel at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., giving them insight into the West's historical involvement in Afghanistan.
I value those artists and organizations who directly and passionately address social issues through their work. I also value theatre whose extraordinariness is in the artistry itself, whether or not it has an explicit social goal. These aren't mutually exclusive, by any stretch. In an interview in our October issue, playwright Bruce Norris was skeptical about theatre's social efficacy. "There is no political value in having sensitive feelings about the world," he said. "I don't think it generates political action. You go, you watch, you say, ‘That's sad,' and then you go for a steak." But one of the most powerful theatre experiences I had this year was at a performance of his Pulitzer Prize–winning play Clybourne Park at Denver's Curious Theatre Company. The audience that night didn't go right out for that steak. In fact, there were post-show conversations each night, where multigenerational, multiracial audiences engaged in powerful discussions about race, gentrification and how time abstracts itself onstage. It reminded me that a great play is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. And the challenge for all of us is to take ourselves and our audiences beneath the surface to find a resonance that inspires reflection or action, or both.
In 1954, Arthur Miller, after being refused a U.S. passport, said: "I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies." He also said that his plays were "a credit to this nation" and would endure longer than the McCarran Act. He was right.
Theatre can do things that nothing else can. And I hope that after the toasts and the resolutions of 2012 are behind us, and as we move on to another year–another Presidential election year–that we will continue to turn up the volume for theatre, both for its artistic impact and for its potential to have profound social impact–perhaps even to make change.