Last week, I heard something that exploded an assumption.
(It was an interview with Seth Godin on Jen Waldman and Peter Shepherd’s podcast “The Long and the Short of It.”)
It was about the theatre industry.
Seth Godin said, “(The theatre) pretends to be an industry, often to its detriment. It is much less an industry than just about any other. And yet, the people in it keep trying to make it one, which is the first mistake.”
Hearing someone outside the theatre observe this made my brain lightly detonate, and my soul relax.
Of course it’s not an industry.
We’re all clutching the assumption that it is and somehow expecting repeatable functions and predictable outcomes.
He explained more: “The theater is so idiosyncratic, so commercially unviable, so beset by creative destruction that it’s not an industry…Star Wars is an industry. You can keep making new Star Wars shows and make a profit for a long time. Right? But a three week run of an off-Broadway play about a Buddhist retreat? That’s not an industry. That’s the theatre, for God’s sake.”
I thought about phenomena like Phantom, Wicked, and Hamilton.
But Godin’s right. Phantom didn’t guarantee the success of Love Never Dies. Wicked’s success didn’t launch a series of successful Gregory Maguire novel adaptations. And I just read a headline that Lin Manuel Miranda won’t be writing any more historical musicals.
(There is a whole discussion to be had about the Disney-verse, though.)
What gets confusing is this: the theatre has so many iterations. And many resemble predictable industry models. Therefore, these formulae get shellacked onto shows that producers decide ? have commercial promise.
But then there are all the other manifestations of our art form: non-profit houses with variable funding levels, scrappy storefront black boxes, union waiver companies, outdoor pageant situations, the story goes on and on and on and on and ooooooonnnn.
Here’s the headline, though: when you stop trying to figure out the theatre as an industry, you can relax.
Folks have been looking to commercial theatre expecting it to take a lead in cultural conscience when most of the people responsible for getting shows on a stage are stimulant-driven cortisol addicts with exhausted adrenals for whom Vegas odds are too conservative.
And then there’s the stage actor’s union who opens wider the doors for membership and calls it a move for equity when any actor can tell you what a desperate need for cash feels like.
These are the folks we’re waiting on. These are supposed to be the change makers.
Commercial theatre is going to make choices that can make money. It’s commercial.
Unions? I’m grateful for the union, and it’s given me a lot of reasons for side-eye in the last few years.
But what I want you to hear are two other major points Mr. Godin made.
One is this:
“If you want to make it in the theatre, you should learn to write. Because if you can write, you can cast yourself. And all good things start to happen once you figure out how to not only act it, but decide what gets said… that doesn’t mean you’re going to be Neil Simon or Lin Manuel, but you can figure it out. Even if you never get your thing produced, it changes your perspective.”
As someone who’s never gotten my thing produced, I have to agree. Writing makes you see theatre making anew, and it turns you, the storyteller, into a story collaborator.
So, what if you knew that the theatre isn’t really an industry?
What if you knew no one was coming to show you the franchise handbook where the shows get made and the folks always get cast?
I’d say that means you can get to work.
You can get going on sharing what you have to share, singing what you have to sing, writing what you have to write.
Because the last point Godin made about the theatre was what I resonated most deeply with:
“It’s very hard for you to change what happens on stage because that’s what they picked you to do, read the lines as written. But backstage, there’s an enormous number of things you can do. And they call it a company, but they should call it a cohort, a cadre, a tribe, a group of people.
“Who’s leading them? Who’s deciding what it’s like around here, backstage?…Even if what we do on stage is the same every night, what happens backstage is about mutual growth. You have more freedom to do that in the theatre than just about any job you can imagine.”
The relationships I’ve made backstage — that’s the gold of a life in the theatre.
The room I’m sitting in right now is thanks to knowing Lydia Rajunas on the Phantom tour 21 years ago.
Who knew when we were vibrato-ing upstage toward a rolling elephant that she’s save my nervous, home-seeking ass when I was 43 and looking for a decent spot for my family to live near Boston?
There’s no people like show people. We know this.
Join me in understanding the theatre isn’t an industry. It’s the theatre.
And let’s make more of it. There have to be many ways to gather folks in a spot and share stories and beautiful music, and why can’t you be someone who introduces one of them?
No one’s coming with the franchise manual. It’s you.
Because there is only one you, and folks need to hear the story only you can sing.
Love much,
Dan
PS Here’s the podcast episode from The Long and the Short of It if you’d like to listen.
PPS And here’s a lil snippet from rehearsal with Scott last week — the end of “Love Can’t Happen” from Grand Hotel.