Tony Kushner: ALW/Mackintosh the death of theatre?
Matthew Murray
the other day, and found that one of the featured selections was Tony
Kushner in Conversation, a collection of interviews culled from various
sources and edited by Rboert Vorlicky. There are several excerpts from
one of the interviews reprinted in the catalog (on page four), and
one exchange in particular really struck me. I wanted to share it with
everyone else and see what others' opinions were.
Here it is:
...
[Mark Glubke]: What would be an ideal evening of theatre to you?
[Tony Kushner]: Hmmm, that's hard. I can tell you what I don't like. I
avoid anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I avoid anything that is a stage
version of a Disney cartoon. I did not avoid The Lion King and I regret
bitterly not doing so. I find most of what is happening on Broadway
ghastly. There are things about some musicals that I enjoy, some things
about Side Show I thought were wonderful. But, as far as I am concerned,
the big Cameron Mackintosh/Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals are pornography.
I hate them with a passion. They are the death of theater. On the other
hand, I think Sondheim is a genius. The question is: who will follow
Sondheim? Unfortunately, Sondheim is the last person writing in a great
tradition, not the first person writing in a new tradition.
...
What does everyone else think about this? The thing that really
struck me was when he referred to Cameron Mackintosh/Andrew Lloyd Webber
musicals as "the death of theater." Can an entire art form actually die
because of one composer's music and one producer's productions? I guess I
have a hard time believing this, since spectacle (one thing I am assuming,
perhaps mistakenly, he finds offensive in those musicals) has been an
element of plays from the very beginning of our understanding of them.
(Artistotle did, after all, list spectacle in the Poetics.) Therefore, I
find it really difficult to believe that Broadway and theatre are in
jeopardy because of a few large-scale musical productions currently on
Broadway.
While so many people "in the know" today--including actors who
have been doing their thing for a long time, since before the current
"state" of Broadway--say that theatre is dying, is it really? Are the big
megamusicals to blame? I'd really be interested in knowing what other
people think about this.
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Gilgelad
megamusicals are as much the effect as the cause. As costs rise, audiences
expect more, ergo spectacle. How many people can afford $100 to see THE ICEMAN
COMETH. Really. But what Kushner is really railing against isn't the
"spectacle" part of the Webber Mackintosh series. It's the fact that all they
really offer is spectacle. If they were well written, beautifully composed,
spectacles, I doubt he'd be so against them. The Disney machine is following
the Mackintosh lead. Vacuous spectacle, brilliantly designed and executed, but
nothing to nourish the spirit. It was almost 40 years ago when one of
Manhattan's wags reviewed Camelot saying, "I ame out humming the sets." The
art of Lion King is in the production, not in the material.
But this is not a new problem on Broadway. go back to the 20's and Thirties,
even in the 50's - spectacle has its place. The real problem is costs
squeezing out the smaller works, and a lack of producers with vision and/or
taste. The corporate mentality is killing the Broadway theatre.
But there's ten times the theatre in the US today, compared even to the 60's
and 70's. LA produces over 600 shows a year. Chicago has a healthy amount of
local production. Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston. It's
all over now. The "road" as it used to be is no longer the necessity it was.
Theatre's not dying. Broadway is. Even a report reported on in the NY Times
warned that Broadway would within a decade be nothing mroe than a few
spcetacle-musicals in huge houses. Mores the pity. But theatre will live on.
Alan Lovett
news:19990415023831...@ng06.aol.com...
> What's dying is the Broadway of the era we all read about but can't find.
> But theatre will live on.
Our governments (I'm in Australia) are trying hard to bring back the glory
days (for them) of a separated two-fold society of rich and poor, and
theatre reflects this in the acceptance by commercial producers of the idea
that vapid, spectacular and expensive is the way to go for an audience that
is largely middle-class and unimaginative. Thank God that Fringe theatre and
the range offered by alternative theatre still bridge the gap. What's more,
intelligently, excitingly and well.
Alan.
--
http://homepages.go.com/homepages/t/r/s/traddles/zoom.htm
Bedrock Productions
I don't seriously think that TK was saying that the big musicals will kill
off theatre all over the world. I suspect he meant that, to him, they're
dead theatre. Which they are.
Alex
Matthew Winn
<mmu...@cc.wwu.edu> wrote:
> [Tony Kushner]: Hmmm, that's hard. I can tell you what I don't like. I
> avoid anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I avoid anything that is a stage
> version of a Disney cartoon. I did not avoid The Lion King and I regret
> bitterly not doing so. I find most of what is happening on Broadway
> ghastly. ...
>
> What does everyone else think about this? The thing that really
> struck me was when he referred to Cameron Mackintosh/Andrew Lloyd Webber
> musicals as "the death of theater." Can an entire art form actually die
> because of one composer's music and one producer's productions?
Mega-musicals are just a tiny part of theatre. Outside major cities
most theatres are just too small to take shows like that, so it's
reasonable to say that the type of shows ALW writes and CM produces
have almost no influence on the style of theatre as a whole. There
must be at least 100 theatres in London alone, of which only a few
percent host mega-musicals; I guess New York is similar. Over an
entire country the percentage is vanishingly small. Hardly the death
of theatre.
That's not to say that the theatre doesn't have problems. A recent
survey of young people in Britain revealed that they prefer TV and
cinema to theatre because "theatre can't match the realism of TV
soaps". (!) The kids over here view theatre as something which is too
high-brow to be entertaining. They're just not interested. Once you
drag them kicking and screaming to something spectacular like the
typical CM production and they discover that theatre can be fun then
they're hooked, but if there are no easily approachable productions
out there then it just won't happen. If theatre is to thrive then it
has to shake off it's public image of something exclusive, and the CM
spectaculars do a fine job of that.
About five million people pass through the mega-musicals in London
each year. If just one person at each performance in each of those
theatres is turned on to theatre enough to branch out into more
interesting and challenging shows, that creates an extra audience of
more than five thousand people. That's quite a boost to the smaller
theatres where most new and experimental work is born, and for that I
think it's worth giving up a handful of theatres to dancing cats,
rollerskating trains and revolving French peasants.
Matthew
Jeffrey Orlinski
Mackintosh/Webber have done to theatre. Aristotle does state that specatcle
is a way to arrouse pity and fear in an audience, but he also says that that
it is an inferior way to go about it. Spectacle is an integral part of
theatre, but it should not be used to drive the action (flying helicopters,
anyone?). Kushner calling the megamusical "the death of theatre" is pretty
on the mark, because audiences DO flock to this kind of theatre...they want
their $80 worth and seeing huge stage machinery makes them believe they have
gotten it. However these musicals are too often devoid of passion or depth.
Theatre is not TV...there is a finite amount of theatre that this country
can sustain, for a variety of reasons. So when Broadway becomes saturated
by the theatrical equivelent of Melrose Place, commerical theatre is left
dead. The fact that Frank Wildhorn has three musicals running on Bdwy
simaltaneously is a testement to this fact. The only true dramas on Bdwy
survive now only through shear star power (Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne,
etc...) So, Tony is right, Broadway will never be a place for
theatre...just moneymaking.
Jeffrey
> What does everyone else think about this? The thing that really
> struck me was when he referred to Cameron Mackintosh/Andrew Lloyd Webber
> musicals as "the death of theater." Can an entire art form actually die
DgSWEET
either by special effects, spectacle or stars.
Every now and then something manages to slip through anyway. SIDE MAN is this
season's exception, f'rinstance.
And I don't dismiss a big show as crap out of hand -- RAGTIME is big and it's
smart and well-written and heartfelt.
But off-Broadway is now doing what Broadway did -- presenting actors of what
had previously been Broadway calibre in projects. Last summer, to see Alan
Arkin and Elaine May on stage in an off-Broadway house! More and more,
off-Broadway is where actors are going between lucrative film stuff to do real
acting in real plays. Now, I'm lucky -- I get to see virtually everything
automatically, so this is swell by me. I don't mind sitting only a few feet
away from some of the best actors of our time.
But God help the actor (or writer) who tries to make a living only out of the
theatre.
Richard Hellesen
>
> But off-Broadway is now doing what Broadway did -- presenting actors of what
> had previously been Broadway calibre in projects. Last summer, to see Alan
> Arkin and Elaine May on stage in an off-Broadway house! More and more,
> off-Broadway is where actors are going between lucrative film stuff to do real
> acting in real plays.
Which, as (among others) Terrence McNally pointed out several years ago in his
address to theatre producers, is proof of the problem. Not the fact that
there's quality work to be seen OB (that's great), but that those theatres
were once the places where fledgling writers went to begin their careers,
up-and-coming actors & directors theirs, etc. When actors and writers who
SHOULD be on Broadway dominate OB, new talent gets pushed farther out, and the
ripple effect goes on.
An only slightly rhetorical question: could the next Jose Quintero and the
next Geraldine Page do SUMMER AND SMOKE Off-Broadway today? If not, where?
And would it result in their becoming the next Jose Quintero & the next
Geraldine Page? Do I overstate the problem? Just wondering.
RH
Richard Hellesen
>
> There's some strength and diversity in the way regional theatre takes so many
> different forms in a country as geographically spread out as ours -- but it
> also means that re: the NY critics, much of it is trees falling in the forest
> unheard.
>
> Let's talk about playwrights, too. Why does a play like Margaret Edson's WIT
> get the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 when it was written in 1991? Somebody correct
> me if I'm wrong, but why should it take those 8 nomadic years, going from
> workshop at A.S.K. (L.A.) to first production (South Coast Rep, Orange County),
> to the Long Wharf (CT) with a stop in the Berkshires (MA) before it even GETS
> to an off-off-Broadway production that then gets a commercial transfer???
>
> Something is wrong with this picture.
Not to tread on the "WIT" thread...but the problem is producers. Not all,
certainly, but many.
An LA Times article on "WIT"'s SCR connection (found at
http://www.latimes.com/CNS_DAYS/990413/t000033250.html )
points out that it won the LA Drama Critics Circle award in 1995--and SCR
spent three years trying to get other theatres to pick it up, to no avail. It
seems easy to look at the Pulitzer the way Lucy looks at Christmas in "A
Charlie Brown Christmas" ("It's run by a big Eastern syndicate, you
know...)--since it's administered by Columbia U., and three of the jurors this
year were Ben Brantley (NY Times), Betty Corwin (NY Public Library for the
Performing Arts) and Linda Winer (Newsday). (The other two were Robert
Hurwitt from the SF Examiner, and Hedy Weiss from the Chicago Sun-Times.)
Easy to blame them for East Coast bias, or at least an unwillingness to go
search for important plays.
But they can't give prizes to plays that producers won't gamble on. And if
producers won't gamble on something that's ALREADY succeeded, how on earth
will they gamble on something truly new? That's what's wrong with the
picture. Might if been nice if "Wit" had been in the running 3 years ago,
when no Pulitzer for Drama was even given. But who chose to produce it then? Nobody.
(P.S.: without reviving that debate about the merits of the play, I have to
thank the LA Times and SCR for the only tiny bit of credit I'll ever get in
connection with something famous, since I was a script reader for SCR in the
early '90s, and "WIT" was in my stack from the slush pile one night. Don't
know if it was before or after ASK had it, but it was new to us. It's a
script reader's dream to finish 3 stinkos, pick up the fourth one, and then
sit there for an hour with your gut wrenching over the subject matter and your
mouth sort of hanging open at the craft in the writing. Playwrights: you want
to write the play that makes the reader go down to the theatre the next day
and say "THIS one, you have to read. Now." Couldn't be happier how things
turned out...)
So hang in there, Linda! (Congrats on all your April work, by the way.) The
play you write today could win the Pulitzer! (In 2025...)
RH
Herone
next Geraldine Page do SUMMER AND SMOKE Off-Broadway today? If not, where? And
would it result in their becoming the next Jose Quintero & the next Geraldine
Page? Do I overstate the problem? Just wondering.>
I don't think you're overstating at all, Richard. The mid-range stuff that
once was done off-Broadway isn't really happening much off-off, or it's lost in
the sea of amateur-like productions. The NY critics don't really see the
mid-range stuff that's happening at the LORT's or smaller intriguing spaces in
the regions (where some excellent work does happen) unless a commercial
producer brings it to their back yard.
There's some strength and diversity in the way regional theatre takes so many
different forms in a country as geographically spread out as ours -- but it
also means that re: the NY critics, much of it is trees falling in the forest
unheard.
Let's talk about playwrights, too. Why does a play like Margaret Edson's WIT
get the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 when it was written in 1991? Somebody correct
me if I'm wrong, but why should it take those 8 nomadic years, going from
workshop at A.S.K. (L.A.) to first production (South Coast Rep, Orange County),
to the Long Wharf (CT) with a stop in the Berkshires (MA) before it even GETS
to an off-off-Broadway production that then gets a commercial transfer???
Something is wrong with this picture.
Linda Eisenstein
http://www.en.com/users/herone her...@en.com
DgSWEET
>next Geraldine Page do SUMMER AND SMOKE Off-Broadway today? If not, where?
>And would it result in their becoming the next Jose Quintero & the next
>Geraldine Page?
Well, they might do it in Chicago and come to new York, life the Steppenwolf
gang did with TRUE WEST and BALM IN GILEAD. new York ain't the whole world,
thank god.
DgSWEET
Actually, I'm kinda glad that the NY critics don't cover more regional stuff.
It means that the regional stuff gets a chance to develop and grow and find
local audiences before being squashed a-borning by the NY TIMES.
We seem to alternate between damning the critics and complaining about being
ignored by them!
Herone
>thank the LA Times and SCR for the only tiny bit of credit I'll ever get in
>connection with something famous, since I was a script reader for SCR in the
>early '90s, and "WIT" was in my stack from the slush pile one night.
What a small world this is, Richard! LOL -- yes, isn't it great to find
something you really love in the giant overflowing stack? I felt vindicated in
the same way when the American Theatre Critics Assn gave the national award one
year to Reggie Cheong-Leon's THE NANJING RACE, which came to us at Cleveland
Public Theatre where we gave it a workshop before it got its big production at
the McCarter. Thanks for the LA Times article reference re: WIT too.
Linda Eisenstein
her...@en.com www.en.com/users/herone
ham...@interport.net
workers here in NYC. The spectacle and hype become the prime motive for
the evening, which removes the human element and in that way can be seen
as the death of theater. The reaction against theater that is about
helcopters, staircases, chandeliers, etc. is natural for the living,
breathing types working in theater.
Its interesting to hear it from Kushner, one of the few mainstream
playwrights to use spectacle effectively and in a way that doesn't negate
the human performers and characters onstage.
In article <Pine.SOL.4.05.990414...@titan.cc.wwu.edu>,
Matthew Murray <mmu...@cc.wwu.edu> wrote:
> I got the most recent mailing from the Stage and Screen book club
> the other day, and found that one of the featured selections was Tony
> Kushner in Conversation, a collection of interviews culled from various
> sources and edited by Rboert Vorlicky. There are several excerpts from
> one of the interviews reprinted in the catalog (on page four), and
> one exchange in particular really struck me. I wanted to share it with
> everyone else and see what others' opinions were.
> Here it is:
>
> ...
> [Mark Glubke]: What would be an ideal evening of theatre to you?
>
> [Tony Kushner]: Hmmm, that's hard. I can tell you what I don't like. I
> avoid anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I avoid anything that is a stage
> version of a Disney cartoon. I did not avoid The Lion King and I regret
> bitterly not doing so. I find most of what is happening on Broadway
> ghastly. There are things about some musicals that I enjoy, some things
> about Side Show I thought were wonderful. But, as far as I am concerned,
> the big Cameron Mackintosh/Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals are pornography.
> I hate them with a passion. They are the death of theater. On the other
> hand, I think Sondheim is a genius. The question is: who will follow
> Sondheim? Unfortunately, Sondheim is the last person writing in a great
> tradition, not the first person writing in a new tradition.
> ...
>
ham...@interport.net
wrote:
>
> An only slightly rhetorical question: could the next Jose Quintero and the
> next Geraldine Page do SUMMER AND SMOKE Off-Broadway today? If not, where?
> And would it result in their becoming the next Jose Quintero & the next
> Geraldine Page? Do I overstate the problem? Just wondering.
>
> RH
They would be off-off-Bway of course. Off-Broadway is no longer the land
of cheap, sometimes non-union, experimentation that is was back then. It
has taken over the function Broadway used to have for non-musical plays.
There is a problem in that theater has become so corporate that unless an
off-off-Bway company puts a few thousand into a publicist, they will never
be reviewed. And if not reviewed, only friends and a few theater junkie
fools like me will ever see them. I have seen some evening off-off-Bway
that demonstrated the brilliance you speak of. But they never found their
audience. In many cases the artist involved have gone on to bigger things,
but in some cases they just withered on the vine.