Abercrombie Talks Theatre

In this chapter, let’s talk about theatre’s future, shall we? This is an exercise in the absurd, since I have no idea at all what theatre will look like in the future, and it’s folly to believe anything I say will actually occur. It’s really just an intellectual exercise and has the stench of an after-dinner party parlor game for academics. Notwithstanding, I’m going to do it anyway, because for me it’s a time-killer, something to pass the dreary winter days. It’s also therapy, because I do think about these matters from time to time, and I’d like my ideas to live somewhere else than in my head. It relieves some intellectual tension going on up there. I’m also going to delve a little more into some of my concerns about Scott Walters’ concepts in his new book Building A Sustainable Theatre . This is the book that prompted me to begin this series in the first place. I was intending to write a series like this anyway, but reading Scott’s book gave this series more of a focal point once we

At first, I thought this next post in the series was going to be about the future of theatre as I see it. But it occurred to me that writing about the future is somewhat pointless if one does not have as a reference point the present state of theatre. So with that, here is a short but sweet post about the present theatrical situation as I see it. As a prelude, let me say that I will be writing in broad generalizations and considering apparent trends. Some of what I will mention will be extrapolated conclusions from the 2022 SPPA. Other observations will come from news stories I have read. Little of it will come from direct experience, as my personal experience comes from my work in my local theatre community, which surprisingly continues to survive and even thrive (the last awards ceremony this past June sold out a 600-seat theatre). Real data is truly scarce in the theatre world, and so I will make do with what my limited resources allow me to perceive. To begin with, I think there is

If you're one of those persons eager to bootstrap a theatre company, let me just say this - I admire you, and wish you luck. Seriously. The push is on in theatre journalism to report some good news, and there have been a few articles in the major national newspapers from New York, DC, and Chicago touting some good news.  American Theatre  magazine is also doing its part to paint a rosier picture of the theatrical landscape as we head into 2024. So maybe your plans to start a theatre with some of your friends and colleagues may not be such a bad idea, after all. But please be warned: the odds of starting and sustaining a viable theatre are just as long and just as against you as the odds are of becoming a sustainable working actor. In this post, I want to examine more closely the relationship between a theatre and its audience by digging just a tad deeper into the demographic information contained in the NEA's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). A deep look at thi

 Of all the pieces of data that exist relative to attendance at performing arts events, none is more comprehensive than the National Endowment for the Arts' Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). Begun in 1982, the SPPA has undergone some changes over the years, and has added categories as new types of arts (mainly digital) were created. Their core "benchmark" categories, however, have remain largely unchanged, and theatre is one of those core benchmarks. What I'd like to do here is give a rough overview of the information contained in the SPPA; I hope a deeper dive will follow once all the supporting data is released. It's my belief that the data available in this report, which is usually released about every five years, is the most ignored data set among theatre practitioners and theorists today. The NEA just released its summary findings this past October detailing the years from 2017-2022, and as usual, the news is sobering.One look at this table m

Recently, I went down a rabbit hole of theatrical news and information. I did so because the news of theatres closing and shrinking across the country was front and center this past summer, and I wanted to see if I could find out more about the causes. Down somewhere at the very depths of this particular rabbit hole, I found a Substack written by a former collaborator and theatre blogger from back in the 2000s. His name is Scott Walters, and his substack has the same name as his former blog -  Theatre Ideas . I was also at that time writing my own blog, and we started corresponding. We found we had similar interests and background, as we were both academics who had come to believe that the academic model for theatre departments was, to put it bluntly, based on a collection of myths and outright lies. We decided to collaborate on a presentation for the 2014 (I believe)  Southeast Theatre Conference . Our presentation was based on facts and statistics we had collected demonstrating the s