UPDATE FROM DECEMBER

In December "¿Qué Pasa?" I talked a bit about the current theatre-space crunch in Boston.  Theatre critic Bill Marx, who used to write for the Boston Globe and now works for WBUR (Boston University), had an interesting response to that piece, here excerpted.  (I agree in great measure with his analysis.)

Building Quality in New Theatres? By Bill Marx

A recent article in "The Boston Globe" argues that the city's lack of performance spaces is holding our stage companies back from stepping into the golden age. The scarcity of stage venues is a serious problem, the writer concludes, because "for the first time in decades, Greater Boston is poised to take its place among American theater's second cities, such as Chicago and Seattle." Boston theaters can use all the encouragement they can get, but it should be kept on this side of wish-fulfillment. The story of  Boston Theater isn't that hordes of first-rate productions, like orphans in a storm, are looking for a home. A more realistic narrative would include how Boston media and the theater community habitually prefer image over reality, in this case embracing the illusion that more theatrical real estate means more artistic quality....

Even if Boston companies maintain the new performance spaces, the city won't catch up with Chicago and Seattle, for a number of reasons.  The great sucking sound to the south is New York City, which draws away the area's best actors, directors and playwrights as soon as they yearn for bigger employment pastures....More significant is that there are too few companies here with artistic agendas passionate enough to inspire or challenge, that grapple with novel ideas or risky content. What I see is the rise, over the past decade, of a modestly accomplished theater scene propelled by a cautious professionalism, a common sense that translates into predictable seasons -- the revival of the top-twenty list of classics and off-Broadway successes -- with fewer egregious lows and exhilarating highs than before. The dirty little secret of Boston theater is that its talent pool and resources are spread pretty thin -- it could be reasonably argued that Boston has too many theater companies, not too few....

Unlike Chicago and Seattle, Boston has not made its mark with companies known for bringing valuable new works onto the national scene....Boston will compete with Chicago and Seattle when it recognizes and maintains theater artists of aesthetic originality and distinction who fill stages with new works that matter.

© 2000 Michael Bettencourt ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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