Tough Times For Theatre? Right. So It’s Not A Time To Be Timid

Honestly, though, I’m less worried about money than self-censorship. I’m worried about the stories that won’t be told because reporters are afraid of being doxed. I’m concerned that our attachment to material wealth is heavier than our attachment to freedom, and that we’ve conflated the two. I am worried about the whistleblowers who won’t come forward because they’re afraid no one will believe them. My skin crawls at the thought of the lines or scenes in scripts that will be removed or rewritten because of the thought, “Will the audience be able to handle that?”

I’m kept up at night by the numerous stories I hear of artists from marginalized groups whose work is being shelved or sidelined at theatres as these institutions shore up their financials for an assumed loss rather than investing in a better sales and marketing strategy. My heart breaks for the books students won’t read because educators and librarians have been bullied into not teaching them. I’m concerned that we will do the fascists’ work for them by dimming our own light.

We must resist the darkness. I know so many of us are already doing that work every day. I see it when I travel to different cities and visit TCG member theatres and non-member theatres alike. I saw it on my visit to Memphis when I met artists from Hattiloo Theatre’s African cultural exchange program, where artists from Ghana and South Africa work in the U.S. and American artists work on the continent. I witnessed it on a recent visit to New York to see Bad Kreyòl at Signature Theatre, on a visit to Minneapolis to see The Ally at Mixed Blood Theatre, and in the wide range of fare offered at the International Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, last summer. There’s nothing like experimenting with genre and form to remind us of our “why.”

As artists and arts administrators, we must commit ourselves to a collective fearlessness. I mean, what are we really afraid of? That a deadly pandemic will shut us down? That state legislators will withhold funding because of programming choices? That protesters will stand outside and heckle performers? That people will choose to direct their philanthropic dollars elsewhere? The worst has already happened too many times for artists to cower.

I know from my years of working in theatres that every artistic director has their list of “plays I would do if I didn’t think my subscribers would leave me.” These are the plays that the literary manager has been nagging the artistic director about putting forth to the season planning committee for years, but they continue to collect dust. I need us to take a second and third look at those plays. Get them off your wish list and onto the stage. The future needs a risky theatre, not a risk-averse one.

In the winter 2025 issue of American Theatre, we spend some time talking to and about the future leaders of this art form. We interview theatre educators and theatre students across the country about teaching and learning. We speak to high school teachers about how they’re preparing students for BFA programs and beyond. We host a roundtable with college professors about the rewards of seeing students achieve their dreams.

In that issue, you’ll also be able to read the full text of Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day, a hauntingly timely comedy about parents at a progressive primary school who find themselves at odds over a vaccine requirement. In a rare convergence of timing for AT’s playscript, Eureka Day will be running on Broadway, at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel Friedman Theatre through Feb. 16, while our magazine is on newsstands. As those who’ve read or seen it could tell you: It’s certainly a play that doesn’t shy away from saying something.

My greatest hope for theatre in America and around the world is that it rises above the fear of censorship to speak its many truths. As Alice Walker said years ago, “The way people give up their power is assuming they don’t have any.” In Between Riverside and Crazy, Stephen Adly Guirgis has a character say, “Always you are free.” Revolution cannot be sustained alone, but if every theatre in the U.S. is gutsy, then the American theatre is gutsy.

Now is the time to risk it all. For it is the calling of artists to educate the public on how to be really free.

Kelundra Smith is TCG’s publications director, guiding strategy for TCG Books, ARTSEARCH, and American Theatre magazine.