Title Envy

I'm going to talk about something that I probably shouldn't talk about.

Then again, none of this is really a secret, it's just that, when playing a game with people, it's usually not a good idea to let them know what tricks you have up your sleeve.

I should let you know right now that I'm talking about theater, the arts, etc.

Now, I don't think theater is purely a game.  I also think it can be a collaborative community of souls and a soul-sucking career--and probably a little of all three.

The title of this post is "Title Envy" and I'm going to talk about titles, because there's a trend--actually, a routine--in regional theater these days, and it goes like this:

You find out what's hot in New York.
You start with Broadway, and then after you move onto off-Broadway.
You pick and attain the rights for as many Broadway hits as you can.
You don't get the rights for Broadway flops, but if a show got mixed reviews, it's still fair game, because hey, it was on Broadway.
You look at Tony and Pulitzer winners.  Anything that's won any kind of an award.
You only go with off-Broadway shows that have gotten lots of buzz.
You take as many New York hits as you can and you put together a season.
You supplement the season (because obviously you can't have an entire season with recent hits, even too much chocolate is a bad thing) with classics, but hopefully not overdone classics.  Hopefully modern classics that maybe people have forgotten about.
You pay attention when somebody in New York revives something and has a hit with it, because that means you can do it as well.

This is how regional theater seasons are chosen in most places.  There are many reasons why this way of doing things is unfortunate, here are just a few:

1.  We've come to expect that if a perfectly good script flops in New York, the script can never work anywhere else.  We're just supposed to let it die.
2.  We base what works in New York on the opinions of New York critics.  So basically, we let critics from another city determine what will work in our city based on whether or not they thought it worked in theirs.
3.  On the flip side, we assume that something that worked in New York will definitely work wherever it is we are.  If it doesn't, it must be our fault.  Those New York actors must have done it better.

There's lots of artistic arguments you can have about all the points I just mentioned, but there's a business argument for why this is all ridiculous that's something we all should be talking about:

What happens when we run out of plays?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm aware that there are millions of plays out there, but there aren't millions of new Tony-award winning plays.  There aren't millions of Broadway hits that have come out in the past--oh, let's be generous and say--ten years.  There aren't even a thousand.  There aren't even a hundred off-Broadway hits from last year.

So if we're all angling for this small pool of work, what happens when the pool dries up?

Then what do we do?

Believe me, I'm looking forward to this happening.

I assume when it does, we'll be forced to start producing new work or really obscure work.  I assume we'll have to take a fresh look at work that's considered overdone.  We might have to go back to basics and really work on technique and story-telling.

In other words, we'll have to be creative.

That should be easy, right?