Walter Kerr (Cont.)

We have inherited not the drama of action, of character, of kinetic intimacy with the human condition, but the drama of ideas.

For purposes of illustration, I guess we can safely reduce these to three: the problem play, the thesis play and the propaganda play. Pg 51

You can always clarify a thesis by over-simplifying what is human. But the moment you begin to give humanity its due you are bound to destroy the patness of your proposition. Pg 56

What is intrinsically wrong with the thesis play is that it puts the drawing board before the drama. It begins at the wrong end of the creative scale. It begins with a firm, fast premise, achieved in the intellectual solitude of the study, and thereafter proceeds to make all life dance to a quite debatable tune. Pg 66

Though the terms "theme" and "thesis" are now used interchangeably, there is an enormous difference between them. In the one, the playwright - uncommitted to any a-priori view - is forced to go out and observe; he must look to life for his materials. He may know, in general, that he wishes to write about jealousy; but he must first see what jealousy looks like.
In the other, the dramatic mansion is prefabricated. The playwright comes equipped with an agreeable syllogism, complete in all its parts. He clothes his major premise, and his minor premise, in a semblance of human flesh; but they are only premises after all, pointing to a planned conclusion. What we callt he drama of ideas is just that: a drama in which the people are digits, adding up to the correct ideological sum. Pg 67

So far as I know no genuine masterpiece has ever been rejected by the common audience before which it was first performed. (I'm skipping some politically rigged opening-night demonstrations here; in spite of extraordinary pressures, good plays have always been quickly recognized.)
Pg 71

What history suggests to us is that the audience can rise to any heights of which the playwright is capable, that it can go anywhere he can take it. The working phrase here, thought is "take it." Pg 72

It is never enough to say "I have written honestly, by my own lights." It is necessary to say "I have written accurately, by everyone's lights." Pg 73

The audience does not reject an unpleasant truth because it seems unpleasant, but because it seems untrue. Pg 74

The larger the event, the more likely are we to lose hold of it in life; and the more necessary does it become for the theatre to seize and to shape it for us. If the greatest plays of the past are plays in which characters tear out their own or one another's eyes, in which characters kill or are killed, in which sons turn violently upon their mothers or husbands upon their wives, it is not because audiences once asked for cheap stimuli but because audiences did ask to havie their experience, their clear knowledge of life, enlarged. Pg 93

The dramatist is, if he but knew it, a fortunate man. The audience tells him very clearly what it expects of him. If he pays some sort of attention to his audience, he is likely to become quite popular.

In the contemporary theatre we are extremely honest about trivia, and extremely indifferent to any activity more pronounced than the rustling of a leaf, a dress, or a newspaper over coffee. Indeed we are hostile to the idea of activity. Pg 94 [A theatre that limits the possibilities to four actors on one set is hostile to activity - Tracy Letts' Killer Joe (more than four actors but the one set), the Angels in America propoganda plays, and a smattering of early Sam Shepard plays, among a very few others, being anemic exceptions.]

The bustling, complicated, and sometimes absurd plotting of the past does not seem ever to have inhibited character. It would almost seem that there is some correlation between the range of a play's activity and the size of its characterization. Pg 120

It does require the genius of a Sophocles to make so staggering an array of improbable situations at all tenable. But what part have the situations played in drawing out the genius of Sophocles? Pg 122

The screen makes its principal images by picturing them. The stage makes its principal images by speaking them. Each has an alternate method - the stage may have visual appeal, the screen a measure of literacy; but the alternate method is a subordinate method and the health of either medium will depend on its keeping its proportions in order. Pg 211

Kenneth Tynan...points out that even Moliere, nurtured on prose, turned to verse for his best work.

...We cannot escape the fact that Moliere, turning to verse, did then write his best plays. The fact is that every major serious play - and the lion's share of the comedies - that we cling to out of the past are verse plays. Three hundred years of prose have done well enough by the novel, beautifully by history and biography; they have left the theatre grunting like an underprivileged child.
Verse is simply more pliable than prose, and for a form as swift and compact as the theatre extreme pliability is wanted. Pg 212

We often think of verse as a rather roundabout way of saying something. It isn't. It is the fastest way of saying something provided that the thing to be said is difficult to say, provided that it is not a plain and literal statement of fact. Pg 214

I am further convinced that our commercial failure - our unpopularity - is directly due to our constricted aesthetic, to the very arbitrariness which which we have held to it, insisted on it. The audience has not deserted us because we were too good for it, but because we were not good enough. Pg 235 ["In the 2002-03 season, only one commercially produced play, "Life x 3," broke even, its producers say; last season, only two even came close - "Golda's Balcony," which will close a lengthy run at the Helen Hayes Theater next month, and "I Am My Own Wife," which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play and according to its producers still didn't earn its money back. productions - inexpensive, one-person shows where costs were kept to a minimum - will have to rely on national tours before their investors see any profit. - NYT December 7, 2004]

That's it. A few thoughts:

The theatre's masterpieces were created in competitive, for-profit environments.

Our commercial theatre can't even break even. No non-profit theatre survives on ticket sales alone. A begging-based industry has no choice but to suck up to the hand that feeds it. The only theatre audience out there getting exactly what it wants are the wealthy few who keep the theatre afloat, and what they want are good seats, public thanks and a guarantee that their money is buying them the best the theatre has to offer. That means a rave NYT review or a dead playwright. I love dead playwrights; I love living playwrights more. The NYT critics can't be taken seriously when they have never reviewed America's most successful playwright, Tyler Perry. NY theatre, a theatre of revivals, musical reviews and film on stage, is not vital, profitable or, for the most part, good. What passes for criticism these days is even worse. Walter Kerr was a great critic. Frank Rich was a critic, but only just. Ben Brantley and the current stable at the NYT are reviewers, consumer guides, and even then of little value. Yet, all the motivation a regional theatre patron needs to put pen to check is a good NYT review or the promise of one. (The NYT is also blatently Oxfordian, the Intelligent Design of liturature.)

New York's commercial theatre is becoming a marketing vehicle for the film industry.

A large number of NY commercial producers are hobbyist who started out with more money than they can lose on a lifetime of betting on theatre.

Film, TV, music, online gaming and other forms of entertainment are not responsible for the theatre's sad state of affairs; their success is not the cause of the theatre's failures. Businesses win market share by delivering what consumers determine is the most desirable product. It does not necessarily follow that consumers choose the best product. Products win market share for a multitude of reasons, among them cost - PCs are cheaper than Macs, and easy access - a free mp3 download is cheaper and easier to get than a CD. For the most part the theatre isn't even in the game. The majority of theatres take as a given that popularity and profit are beyond scope.

The one notable exception is Cirque du Soleil, shows designed to run forever in purpose-built, multi-million dollar facilities that seat thousands.

What does a popular, profitable theatre look like? How does it work?

The business model is over 400 years old.