Can Theatre Still Change The World?

When I first started to fall in love with theatre back in high school, aside from the fun of dressing up and getting on stage and disappearing into a character for a while, I was struck by the power of a live performance to affect change.I had always loved street theatre; the immediacy of it, and the simplicity. Most importantly, though, street theatre had the ability to be entertaining and to comment on current events. Street theatre could be a form of social protest. But I also enjoyed how playwrights from Euripides to Shakespeare to Brecht managed to entertain while offering stinging and timely social commentary.When Donald Trump was elected President last November, my first thought was that the theatre community would have a field day. How many productions would there be, I wondered, making comment on the policies of this new President and on the electorate that put him in office? And then I realized there would probably be no such productions for quite some time, at least on the commercial stage.Commercial theatre used to have the ability to make timely political statements. Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible" debuted in 1953 during the height of McCarthyism. Tony Kushner’s “Angels In America” debuted in 1993 when an AIDS diagnosis was still all too frequently a death sentence. But we seem to have lost that ability to use commercial theatre for timely social commentary.Theatre has become big business; like any big business, product development is time consuming. A new play takes years to develop for a commercial production, musicals even longer. When I first started working in the theatre industry a common rule of thumb was that it took up to 3 years to develop a new musical; these days, I would put that number at 5 years. So in all probability we won’t see commercial theatre productions making comments on today’s events until after the 2020 election.Yes, independent theatre can still develop product more quickly. But independent theatre is struggling for survival, and more and more performance venues disappear each year.It seems that theatre has ceded the role of political commentary to late night television and Saturday Night Live. From Jon Stewart to Steven Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee and the gift from the Almighty named Kate McKinnon, comedians have assumed the mantle of social commentary that used to be held by playwrights like Gore Vidal, Sam Sheppard and (again) Arthur Miller. It deserves notice that the last timely political work to appear on Broadway - You’re Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush - was written by comedian Will Ferrell and performed immediately after the inauguration of Barack Obama.I still love theatre; in fact, being able to bring my daughter to Broadway shows has renewed my love of the art. But I do regret how, in the process of becoming big business, commercial theatre has lost much of its ability to affect change.