Home. Back to News. Issue 1. Issue 2. Issue 3.

INSTALLMENT

selected highlights

Issue 4 . . . March 2002

Editor's Commentary: RECENT THOUGHTS ON THE THEATRE IN OUR COMMUNITIES

By Co-editor Brad McEntire

I recently returned from New York. I was there just for a weekend and got a chance to talk shop with some of my colleagues there. They are, basically, doing the same thing I'm doing here in Texas. Creating and presenting theatre to a brave, loyal, and gradually expanding community of patrons. Amidst much talk and drink the subject of "Is the theatre dying?" came up. It always does. How come no one ever asks this about any other art form? Why is it that films are never "dying" or literature or music? The whole notion that an entire art form (especially the root art form: the original one) can just die out is, frankly, absurd. But it got me to thinking, all the same. Is the theatre in our lives, in our communities really fading? Are our connections to one another through social and cultural institutions really on the wane or is this just the pendulum swinging once more?

Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor whose book Bowling Alone (Simon and Schuster) points to studies that show, in a civic community, a high degree of social connection encourages more productive workers, discourages depression and illness, and makes government more efficient. Communities with a variety of civic and social groups (like theatre companies) as well as a network of informal social connections also tend to have lower rates of crime, teenage pregnancy, and child abuse. These correlations between social activity and a healthy community are not illogical. Friends, family and those we share interests and communal activities with are the ones who cheer us up when we feel down, bring us chicken soup when we are sick, and help us with job leads when we are unemployed. The stronger your social network, the easier it is to manage when times are difficult.

Unfortunately, for many Americans in today's fast-paced society this network is weaker than it was for their parents. Bowling Alone reports decades of social surveys showing that Americans today spend about 35% less time visiting and engaging in social and/or cultural activities with friends than they did 30 years ago. U.S. families have dinner together only two-thirds as often as they did in the 1960s. Group membership, voter participation, team sports, attendance to performance arts, picnics- in fact, practically anything that involves togetherness in groups- appears to have suffered a steep decline. Putnam cites several trends. One is seeking entertainment on television, which he terms "lethal to social connection."

In relation to this, I offer the following observation as well: how many people can sit in front of a computer screen? As our root medias switch (storytelling to books, books to radio, radio to television, television to the internet, and so forth) our sense of social interaction, our sense of community, alters and ultimately seems to be in decline. The theatre offers a place still, a reliable "throwback" to a more communal time. A time when people actually gathered together to share an experience. Theatre is a key to our social connections since that is, in essence, all it is. People gathering to watch, listen, and experience other people telling stories and relating the light and the dark of what it is to be a human being.

I hope you will join us at Audacity in celebration of our communal selves. Laugh, cry, get angry or frustrated, or enlightened, or excited, or joyous at one of our productions. If you don't attend an Audacity Production, at least attend another theatre nearby. Be part of the cultural and true social life in your community.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE COURSE AND OUTCOME...

Audacity Productions is pleased to announce its upcoming mounting of AN APOLOGY FOR THE COURSE AND OUTCOME OF CERTAIN EVENTS DELIVERED BY DOCTOR JOHN FAUSTUS ON THIS HIS FINAL EVENING by Mickle Maher at the Bath House Cultural Center located at 521 East Lawther Drive on White Rock Lake, Dallas.

AN APOLOGY… is a brilliant, lean, darkly comic, retelling of the Faust legend. Irritated, whining, drunk, complaining, and repentant of nothing but his failure to keep a proper diary, Doctor Faustus spends the final hour on Earth apologizing to a random room of people for leaving the writing of his life to "long-winded hacks" and explaining how Mephistopheles prevented him from recording his own story for posterity. Produced by Maher's own Chicago-based Theatre Oobleck, the play was a sold-out hit at the 2001 New York International Fringe Festival. Audacity is proud to give AN APOLOGY… its regional premiere!

The two-person cast includes Brad McEntire as Dr. Faustus and Jeff Hernandez playing the part of Mephistopheles. The production will be staged in the same tradition of Chicago's Theatre Oobleck , which uses no director. Instead, a series of discussions, workshops, and feedback from "outside eyes" will be employed. This will be a new experiment for Audacity… emphasizing the instincts of the actors and their relationships with the live audience over technical design and traditional creative hierarchy.

The first two Friday and Saturday night shows will feature curtain-raiser performances by the Mild Dementia Continuous-Play Variety Hour and the second two Friday and Saturday nights will include a curtain-raiser performance of Rover DramaWerks' WHOLE SHEBANG. The schedule of performances for AN APOLOGY… is as follows: March 14-16 & 21-23, 2002 at 7:30 PM Tickets for the production will be $12 General/ $10 for Students, Seniors, Actors Place, and S.T.A.G.E. members. Thursdays are pay-what-you-can! Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling Audacity Productions at 214.731.8650.

The Dementia Continues . . .

After their unique and successful tour of metroplex Starbucks CoffeeTM shops last December, The Mild Dementia Continuous-Play Variety Hour is at it once again, presenting a brand new collection of disturbingly hysterical sketches, monologues, and abstractions. Quirky, socially-maladjusted, haunting, breakneck, and just plain bizarre. The current ensemble features Vikas Adam, Brendan Ahern, Brad McEntire, Rhiannon McMillen, Brent Rotunno, and Jennifer Wetter. Join this guerilla outfit of fledgling veterans for their full production at the Addison Water Tower Theatre's Out of the Loop Festival March 9 and 16, or catch shorter shows the following weeks. Either way, don't miss this one-of-a-kind performance group, which takes the concept of "sketch comedy" to a distant, twisted place.