The Year in Drama (Vol. 91) | The Year in Dramaby Julius Novick
The Year in Drama by Julius Novick
Because a play is not completely fulfilled until it is produced, and because theatrical production is a complicated, expensive, time-consuming, and above all a public process, drama is of all forms of literature the most dependent upon political, economic, and social factors. In 1995 these were not favorable.
The theater is the house that the drama lives in, and—to change the metaphor—the theater is a handicraft industry in a technological age. With only a few exceptions—mainly huge musicals, most of them British—professional theater in America cannot pay for itself. And the times are not friendly to anything that cannot pay for itself—especially anything with claims to be "art" or "culture," and thus subject to attack from right and left (but mostly right, these days) for being "elitist." The National Endowment for the Arts is being phased out. State and local arts subsidies are being cut back....
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