When I attended the University of Maryland on an acting scholarship, I was required to meet at the end of every semester with the faculty advisory board to discuss my progress as a student of the theater arts. At one such meeting, in the middle of my sophomore year, the head of the department expressed his concerns that I was “not a team player”. At the end of that academic year, I left college, for good as it turns out, though I didn’t know that at the time.
I have been a practicing Buddhist for over thirty years. The three jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. “Dharma” is just a fancy sounding Sanskrit word for “the teaching” or “doctrine”. “sangha” is Sanskrit for “community” or “monastic order”; what Christians might translate as “the congregation” or “the church.” I feel pretty good about my relationship with the first two jewels, but I am the first to admit that I am bad at sangha.
I have an inherent distrust of institutions, and I am especially bad at trusting large theatre institutions. The larger they are, the less I trust them. From my perspective as a playwright, large regional theaters operate to maximize their own survival as institutions over the quality of the work they produce. I used to relish comparing the Seattle Rep to the Queen Mary ocean liner, now permanently attached to its mooring in Long Beach, trotting out the old adage, “Ships are safe at harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” I used to think I could do something to help change this sad status quo, but after doing my damnedest to move the needle for at least ten years, I gave up. This impasse can certainly be listed among my reasons for retiring from theatre, but I’d be lying if I claimed it was the only one.
I always assumed that Seattle’s Big Houses would survive, regardless, because that’s what they were designed to do. I assumed they would always be there for people who wanted to watch safe theater, and, because I wasn’t one of those people, I didn’t have to care. Now, after nearly two years of lockdowns and dark stages, I am not so sure.
With eight years to think things over, I will straight up own my institutional distrust as a character flaw, particularly egregious for a playwright, for whom every achievement is necessarily the result of a team effort. I will also openly admit that A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) has been a pretty good friend to me as a theatre artist over the years. In 1997 ACT commissioned me as one of four playwrights to participate in a new play development workshop, and my play Louis Slotin Sonata received its first ever staged reading in ACT’s Bullitt Cabaret space. I have acted and written for many iterations of 14/48 at ACT, and for many years I was a teaching artist associated with the theater’s FirstACT program, which brings playwrights into Seattle high schools to teach young people the craft.
ACT has two mainstages, and several other smaller performance spaces, and has been very generous in opening these venues up to outside performing arts organizations, like New Century Theatre, The Seagull Project and 14/48, just to name a very few.
Until The 5th Avenue Theatre comes back online in January, ACT is the only live theatre actively producing in the downtown corridor. Think about that. Then think about the relationship of live theatre to the health of a city. What would Seattle look like without a flagship complex of performance venues like A Contemporary Theatre?
Would it look like Seattle’s downtown core does right now? Half-empty, garbage-strewn, whole blocks lined with tents and active drug markets obstructing the entryways to the small businesses.
Do we really want live in a city devoid of live theatre?
I’m not interested in that.
I want ACT to survive, so I am shifting gears, breaking my fast, and heading back to the theatre on Sunday, December 12 to join the crowd coming downtown to see A Christmas Carol.
Maybe I’ll see ya down there.
