Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The Reluctant Mr. Jason Grote: A Long Overdue Response on New Play Development:

...but generally speaking, the unraveling of arts funding and the regional theater system - combined with the ascendancy of the MFA program (which I half-think is a scam) and the explosion of new talent (which does in fact exist, whether because of MFA programs or in spite of them) has turned American theater generally into a sort of Hollywood without money and with a few weird leftover bureaucratic imperatives. It reminds me of Nora Ephron's quote that every movie should begin with a title card stating that everyone in Hollywood did everything they could to stop it from being made. That status quo makes little sense for a profit-driven but uncertain industry like Hollywood, and none at all for theater.

2:58 PM