The following is choppy, not my best writing, and about 101 thoughts crammed mish-mashedly into a small space.  But then, if you’ve ever talked to me, you’ll know that’s how my cookie crumbles.

A whole bunch of people are blogging about the value of theatre this morning.  I was going to...I was.

But then I took in some of Barack Obama’s speech, and I read more of it, and you know what?  Who gives a shit about the value of theatre? 

I love theatre.  I loooove it.  But why do I have to justify it?  Does a pro basketball player get on the court everyday and think to himself, "What is the value of this sport I love so much?  How are we, as basketball players, supposed to compete with that of football or baseball?"  We could talk about the age old view of the value of Sports in general, but what about basketball specifically?  That player doesn’t care.  He just loves it, and he’s good at it, and he feels at home doing it, and God bless him someone gave him the opportunity to do it for a living.  In that same vein any argument I put forth about the Value of Theatre is going to turn into a discussion about the value of Art in general, and we all know how it goes.  It’s an outlet for creativity, it’s a space for criticism and weighing the values of cultures past and present, it can be educational, it can be erotic, it can be titilating, it’s engaging, it’s a place for humans to interact on a higher level.  It can be so base it’s lower than a sitcom.  It’s whatever the people are that are doing it at the time. 

The reason I bring up Obama’s speech is because there is a man who is doing what he is supposed to do.  In my lifetime, I don’t remember a speech that has been so powerful, so honest, and paraphrased in the words of Jon Stewart, spoken to us like we are adults.

Maybe that’s the value of theatre.  It’s a space where we can explore things as adults, and prepare children to explore those things as well.  It’s not an immediate gratification, it’s an earned one.

I believe very strongly in a deliberative Democracy.  I also believe that a strong artistic community is essential to foster that kind of deliberating.  I’ve always felt that theatre can be used as a tool to achieve that.  Is that theatre’s purpose?  No.  Not entirely, at least, because I’ll admit I still dig watching Sunday in the Park with George on PBS video.  I mean, film can be used to educate the public on different issues and important public figures, while at the same time makes us shit ourselves over a new Indiana Jones movie.   But America is not known for having a vibrant artistic community, or rather valuing an artistic community.  Art is the first thing to go when budget cuts come around.  And the budget cuts have been coming around for quite awhile now, haven’t they?  And it doesn’t feel like we’re as free to deliberate as we used to be.  I’ve been in callbacks lately where the charged political material I was reading felt dangerous and that, friends, is undeniably fucked up. 

But I must place some value on it because I do it.  It’s a part of my life.  So the question is what is the value of theatre for me?  It’s a place for ideas.  But because of the audience, it is not a vacuum for ideas.  It’s a place to experience noises you’d never hear anywhere else and complete silence and stillness you’d never see anywhere else.  Where the consumer can choose where his eyes decide to rest, but where I can guide them.  It’s a place for questions, it’s a place for anger, and forgive my optimism, it’s a place to foster change.  And not just political change.  Any sort of change.  A chance to walk in someone else’s shoes.  A place to be allowed to loathe the villain and pine for the hero.   

Maybe theatre is the caviar of the Art world.  Too elitest?  Alright, the pork brain sandwich of the Art world.  An acquired taste that some people vehemently dislike, others barely even know exists (and it does, so help me, go to Kissner’s in Defiance, OH), and a few love so much they don’t eat anything else (also true, visit the second to last table at the aforementioned restaurant and talk to the grey-bearded man.) 

I love it.  I do it.  I’m not out to make it compete with other Art forms. 

I think the real question is, how do we entice people who would not normally partake in theatre, to give it a whirl?  People have to value things for themselves.  We can’t make them care about it.  What we can do is make it honest and worthwhile.  If it’s cheap (and I mean metaphorically, not economically) and easy, then it’s disposable.  It’s up to us as artists and companies to make the show, the performance, the design valuable and justifiable.