You gotta break some eggs

Theatres in the U.S. are failing at a high rate these days. A group in San Francisco met lately and discussed the recent near-closures of The Magic Theatre and Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

Chloe Veltman is a member of the Salon chewing these questions over and asks on her blog

Do these close-to-the-point-of-no-return theatre companies and newspapers matter? What if some of them vanish? Is there a difference between a vital organization and the vitality of the general scene? Or are we in need of some loss, the cultural equivalent of a controlled burn?

Thorny issue. Some theatres make what are considered by their peers and communities to be questionable artistic decisions. If they make a regular habit of it, they start to falter. A good recession comes along, and down they go.

At issue is the question of failure. All theatres need to be able to produce material that stinks. Avant garde houses and houses producing new work are going to produce more flops than everyone else. Harold Clurman was big fan of flops, and criticized Broadway years ago for not allowing the room for productions to fail. Clurman was also suspicious of audiences (including audiences of peers) coming to the theatre to judge, rather than to experience.

However these struggling theatres might perform within their local ecology, we sometimes must protect the basic right of theatres to fail, and yet keep their doors open. If every egg in a carton were as precious and expensive as producing a new play, no one would ever risk an omelet. The solution isn't to be miserly with your eggs, or let the chicken starve - the solution is to get as many chickens as you can and drop eggs all over the place in the hopes that you might enjoy the occasional souffle.