The Enthusiasm Gap

Someone asked me which plays I'm looking for next season at my theater.

I ran off a few titles I'm considering--some of which are notable, acclaimed, and, in one case, arguably iconic--and I could see that they weren't all that enthusiastic.

"Hey," they said, "What about Glengarry Glen Ross?"

"What about it?"

"Have you ever thought about doing that?"

"Um, not really."

"That's a great play."

I said that, in my opinion, a few of the plays I'd already mentioned were great plays as well.

"Yeah, but Glengarry Glen Ross," they said, as if stating the obvious, "That's a great play."

I've run into this before, and it always rankles me, but it's been awhile since I could put some words in front of my thoughts.

It's not about this one particular play, but about the kinds of plays that get people excited.

So, I've been using the past few weeks to take note of what kind of shows make people go "Oooh" and "Ahhh" and which just get a polite head nod.

This is in no way a proper study, but it backs up much of what I've experienced over the past eight years of running a theater, and the past twenty-seven years of being involved in theater.

The end result probably isn't going to shock anybody, but it wouldn't be a thinkpiece if I didn't state something obvious and then try to come up with some insight into it, so here it goes:

People get more excited when men are involved.

Hear me out--

I'm not necessarily talking about male playwrights exclusively.

People seem to reserve a certain special kind of enthusiasm for male actors, male directors, and men in general.  While it's not uncommon for women to inspire fandom, you've never seen true devotion until you've spent twenty minutes listening to a straight guy talk about Al Pacino.

Why do you think we're currently having a national conversation about The Irishman?  I'm not saying it's not worth talking about, but have you noticed the sort of special fervor around it?

It's because--at its core--it's a straight guy's wet dream.

DeNiro.

Pacino.

Scorsese.

Pesci coming out of retirement.

I enjoy all those actors as well, but for a good number of people, they are revered over other actors who aren't as--

What the word do I want to use here?

I don't want to say masculine, but...

Testosterone-y?

Can we use that word?

It's difficult to talk about things in terms of masculine and feminine, because we are moving towards a place where (thankfully) gender is being recognized as something that's fluid, but it seems like if you proudly lean into a kind of traditionally masculine perspective in your storytelling, you're going to court a level of interest that it's hard for other work to attain.

Back to Pacino--

A few years ago, he was on Broadway in a godawful David Mamet play called China Doll.  The play got terrible reviews and so did Pacino.  It was sort of universally agreed upon that he couldn't remember the lines, and so it wasn't that he was giving a bad performance, as much as he wasn't giving any kind of performance at all.

In spite of all that, the show as a huge financial success.

People wanted to see Pacino.

I had a friend at the time who spent an insane amount of money to go see the show, even admitting to me that, "I know it's not going to be good, but come on, it's Pacino."

He wanted to see Pacino the way religious zealots want to see the holy lands.

Pacino starred in The Godfather, the mecca for testosterone-driven enthusiasm.  People worship that film the same way they worship its small-screen successor--The Sopranos.

Mob movies are sacred.

They're also usually male-dominated.

Again, this isn't to say that these works aren't stellar.

It's just that you don't see the same kind of fan service for a movie like Cabaret, even though it went toe-to-toe with The Godfather at the Oscars and came away with a handful of its own awards, including Best Director.

Oh sure, Cabaret is exalted by a lot of people, but over time, this narrative has set in that The Godfather is the greatest film of all time--or at least top three.

Well...based on what?

Now, if you want to make the argument that all of this is subjective, I'm right there with you.

But enthusiasm is something that has real-life consequences.

It's probably true that audiences are more likely to buy a ticket to Glengarry Glen Ross than John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, even though I would happily argue that Guare's play is better--or that it deserves just as much enthusiasm.

But it's a play that comes across as more vulnerable than bombastic.  More subtle than explosive.

Is that why nobody gasps when you include it in a season?

Angels in America would probably be the exception to that, but I'd also be willing to argue that Kushner's masterpiece still has a very masculine energy around it.

I'm also not saying that people only like work they identify with, but for a long time, audiences went where the gatekeepers of the culture told them to go, and those gatekeepers were big fans of John Wayne and Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty and Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese and Alan Alda and a lot of other artists who were put on another level from everybody else for seemingly no reason other than that somehow their particular brand of talent was different from their contemporaries who might not be white, hetero, or male.

Is there a reason more people know who Scorsese and Coppola and Spielberg and Tarantino are than someone like Nora Ephron?

Why didn't Carrie Fisher have a career like Harrison Ford did?  I mean, Carrie Fisher had a pretty damn good career, but at no point was she ever Harrison Ford.

How come Angelica Houston is sort of a niche favorite at this point instead of being considered what she is--which is someone who often out-shined her male counterparts?

Can someone tell me why, for years, school reading lists would have you think that the only books worth reading were The Catcher in the Rye, something by Shakespeare, and To Kill a Mockingbird--which, coincidentally, is my favorite book, but which also is continually thought of as being a book about Atticus and not Scout.  Even the most recent Broadway adaptation--done by Aaron Sorkin--refocuses the story that way.

And I've found that while it's not that difficult to get women to see something if their male partners want to see it, men put their foot down when it comes to seeing something they perceive as being "for women."

Is all that changing?

Maybe.

Hopefully

A lot of this is based on anecdotal experience, but I've heard it from many other colleagues as well.

That Little Women sold well, but audiences were pumped to see Buried Child.

That, Sure, romantic comedies are cute, but you can't compare them to something like Raging Bull?

That Valley of the Dolls was bestselling trash--and even trashier because it sold well--but The Da Vince Code actually had some literary merit to it.

Hell, talk to someone about Patti Smith and then talk to them about Bruce Springsteen and see who makes their eyes light up brighter?

I know you're reverting back to--He's diminishing the male contributions--and I promise, I'm not, but I really, really want people to start examining their enthusiasm more.

I want them to ask why they value certain aspects of art over other aspects.

Why when violence is presented a certain way in a movie, we find it impressive, but when sex is executed just as well, it's uncomfortable.

Why certain genres are considered "easier" than other genres just because of who enjoys them.

Why we accept that some things are better than others.

Where we get our criteria for all this.

Who gave it to us.

I'd like us to start examining that.

When Bridesmaids first came out, I heard people referring to it as a Guilty Pleasure.

Why?

Why should anyone feel guilty for liking a movie that well done?

Because it's not trying to be Goodfellas?

Goodfellas isn't trying to be Citizen Kane but nobody seems to have a problem with that.

Cultural properties about war are lauded.
Cultural properties about love are dismissed.

Who is making these rules?

Culture reflects society, but more often than not, it also helps perpetuate the kind of society the people behind the culture would like to live in, and that's why it's important to dig deeper when we talk about this stuff.

It's as simple as asking someone why they like what they like, and not feeling attacked when we get asked the same question.

Within those answers live our biases, our prejudices, and our identities.

And those questions are so hard to answer, but we really need to keep searching for those answers.

Every year, I get to pick a series of plays that make up a season, and without fail, those plays end up being a window into where I'm at and what I'm thinking about, as well as where the people I work with are at and what's on their minds.

The art we lift up is an indicator of what we value.

That's why we need to look up every so often and wonder if some of that stuff is worth the weight.