Still an ink-stained hack

I apologize for not posting this yesterday - I was "kickin' it old school" and working offline. The following was written over a cup of coffee, surrounded by madness, just like in the old days before I could afford a laptop:

I've finished an article recently at Helium.com about "Discouraging Trends in today's Theatre." (click here for the link)

I encourage you to read the article, but if you've been in this business for any length of time at all you can probably come up with your own laundry list of complaints about the state of the theatre business as easily as I did.

There's so much we don't have to be proud of. Like George Bush's America, theatre is a waning superpower, but without the mixed-race messiah. I ended my article asking why we, as a community, were simplly lamenting the situation, instead of actually doing something about it.

So why aren't we? Why are we letting things get so far away rom us that Time Magazine claims that "You" are now the person of the year? Surely we have something of value still to contribute to society at large, and by contribute I mean more than a never-ending string of cheap sex farces.

I don't think it's a case of needing to simply dig a little deeper. It's a case of getting outside our collective boxes, and not asking how we can make theatre better, but how we can make the world better through that thing we call theatre, whatever it may be.

There are no sacred cows left to slaughter. Maybe we can't even call it theatre anymore, or "art" or whatever it is you choose to call it.

Thoughts, anyone?