It's not such a simple dichotomy.  Many forms of art (not all, and not all
the time, of course) are about communicating with an audience.  And you may
want a larger audience to communicate with than a few hardy souls.

The desire to communicate is strong in lots of writers . . . so, I would
guess, in directors.  I've gotten the most "fan mail" for an article I put
up on Witchvox a few months ago -- and I left off a lot of the "theory,"
religious & feminist, that I could have included if I wanted to write a
scholarly piece.  But in this case I wanted to speak my thoughts to lots of
people, so I matched style to audience.  And got about 50 letters of people
for whom I'd "touched a cord" etc.

I could have treated the topic much more dryly & scholarly-ly (?!) but that
isn't the trade-off I was after.  And it wouldn't have meant so much to so
many readers.

Now, a *deceitful* piece is another story . . .

. . . and there have certainly been deceitful treatments of plenty of
historical subjects!!

Jenn