At their best, institutions provide a welcoming, well-resourced envelope in which artists can create their work and audiences can be engaged. But if artists are always expected to live gig to gig with little voice in the system, what does that say about what we value as a field, asks Carey Perloff.
The word “essential” was one of the first to enter the lexicon of COVID-19. With great speed, we identified those whose labor was deemed “essential” to the economy and to our well-being: healthcare workers, garbage collectors, grocery store clerks, bus drivers, meat packers, agricultural workers, and so on. Of course, the irony is that those deemed “essential” in America are those most likely to be low-wage (and disproportionally Black and brown) workers without health insurance, job security or safety protocols at their place of work. This discrepancy is equally glaring in the arts. In this time of crisis, what is it that we consider “essential” — and how do we respond to that analysis? If we are to transcend this moment, we must honestly question our value to the culture and our values as a culture.
Let’s start with the first question: What is the value of live theater to American culture? In a recent arts-related PBS News Hour segment, Judy Woodruff (trying to be an arts advocate!) somberly stated that “now, as always, the arts are a source of entertainment and comfort.” At that point, I stopped listening. If we want to make the case that we are essential, “entertainment” and “comfort” aren’t going to cut it. Is that what Euripides said to the Council of Athens when he argued for a larger Chorus in Trojan Women? Did he say, “I need to put this story on stage for the entertainment and comfort of the Athenian people?” Trojan Women shook up the Athenians’ thinking about their role in the disastrous Peloponnesian War, including the inhuman immigration policies that gave a lie to the myth of Greek democracy. And why was this the purview of theater, not of journalism? Because theater, by its nature, transforms the daily news cycle into something “other” by accessing every tool at its disposal, including metaphor and allegory (in Euripides’ case, by placing current issues in the mythical landscape of the Trojan war)... Keep reading on Clyde Fitch Report