Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
March 29, 2010
Our Most Backward Art Form
“This is a little bit controversial, but I would say it’s our most backward art form. I don’t know what happened to theater. It’s so expensive now—tickets are $50 to $100, so most of the audience members are over 50 and middle class and white. Because there’s so little money in it and it’s just gotten less and less popular every year, the really talented writers are going to Hollywood. Theater just can’t keep them, so the quality of writing is lower. There’s been this response where a lot of the plays out in the mainstream are just pretentious TV shows, bad TV shows. If you go to the theater, people will laugh at jokes they would never laugh at if they saw them on TV. It’s really embarrassing. When European presenters come to New York, they don’t go to see anything that’s on Broadway or Off Broadway. It’s like going to Disney World: the art-world equivalent of Norman Rockwell. Actually, pretentious Norman Rockwell, because every once in a while something flashy happens and then it’s like, Ooh!”
—Young Jean Lee, Playwright of The Shipment
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