Why This Blog Exists

An old theatrical comrade and I recently got in contact with each other again after about six years or so. I ran across him while going down a rabbit hole of theatrical crashings and burnings during the summer of 2023. His name is Scott Walters, and he writes a substack called Theatre/Ideas, which is a continuation of sorts of his Theatre Ideas blog that he wrote in the Aughts. He has also recently published a book entitled Building A Sustainable Theatre: How to Remove Gatekeepers and Take Control of your Artistic Career. I read the book, and had some misgivings about it, but didn't really think too much about contacting him for a dialogue. I'm a theatre burnout, you see, and I really want as little to do as possible with theatre anymore.

Scott, however, for some reason thought to look me up, and wrote a nice email about what he's been up to in the interim. In the meantime, and quite independently, I was writing some posts on my personal blog on the current theatre scene. Scott and I shared a few emails back and forth, and he wrote in his substack about some of my concerns about his book. He quoted me anonymously, however, due to my desire to keep as low a profile as I can on the internet, giving me the pen name "Abercrombie."

Scott would like to quote me some more, but I still wish to try to remain anonymous. I just have little appetite to enter into any kind of conversation or discourse about theatre these days. My day is done, my career is over, my opportunity to make an impact has passed by. I think that's all to the good. My writing is merely an exercise designed to clear out the cobwebs in my mind, to flush them out and let them go where they will. So, rather than point people to my personal website, I have chosen to create this more anonymous site and carry on the conversation from here. Scott's a great guy, a passionate theatre artist and historian, and our prior association was both fun and fruitful. In following this path, perhaps I can help Scott carry his ideas further and farther than I am willing to go at this point in time. We will see what comes of it all.

One final note - I will not take comments. I've no interest in dialogue with anyone but Scott. You can comment on Scott's sites if you wish.

-Abercrombie