The ecology of a theatre community is always fragile and unique. Theatre artists are uniquely dependent on institutions to allow their work to flourish – painters may require dealers to sell their work, poets and novelists publishers to print and distribute theirs, but playwrights require theaters in order to make their work in the first place. Without a venue, a place to come together with actors and directors and designers and audiences, a playwright can’t even fully practice their craft much less grow to maturity as an artist. This places a special burden on producers and leaders of theaters: not only to make their company succeed, but to create a venue where artists can create and the new can come into existence. Without such producers, no theatrical culture can hope to flourish.- Oskar Eustis
in the Foreward to FUNNY, STRANGE, PROVOCATIVE
seven plays from Clubbed Thumb
And then, when you don't have institutional support, you do what the people from Clubbed Thumb did. You start making your own institution, one play, one production at a time.
3 comments:
Which is why musicians understand.
You can sit and play at home for hours but only a real rehearsal venue can give you a taste of the actual live performance. The second your voice is amplified a whole new set of techniques come into play.
I remember sitting on stage at The Bitter End in NYC a couple of years ago. My first peformance in almost 20 years...and with no true rehearsal.
It took me a couple of songs before it came to me 'Oh yeah...this is different...I remember this..."
But, as long as we have fellow musicians to play with and someone who knows how to turn the mics on we're good to go. Theater involves so many more people. It's great that groups like Clubbed Thumb exist. And you've certainly inspired me to want to support groups like them in the city.
I saw that performance. You were great. Or at least, I didn't see any dust.
Oh there was dust, my friend, there was dust.
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