Thursday, March 3, 2011

How We Make Our Case IX: Class

Joshua Conkel's post about class in theater gets a round-up treatment at the Guardian.

Is the problem gatekeepers, though?
The next great playwrights aren't necessarily in Yale's MFA program right now. Sure, they might be. But you know what else? They're just as likely to be self-producing a play at The Brick. Or at Dixon Place. Or not even in New York at all.
The class problem, in my mind, has more to do with the economics of playwrighting and theater.

I'm going to level with you: you're not going to find a lot of working class people at The Brick either. Or at Dixon Place. I have a theater company, and I can only do it because I have a white-collar job right now and I come from a white collar family. I live as though I was working class because I sink so much of my money into the deep, dark hole that is theater, but I am by no means working class. The people who I know who are working class are not self-producing. I don't even know if they have enough time to submit their plays, they're working so hard.

Still, everything that Joshua writes stands.