First Principles — Redux!

My New Year’s Resolution this year (I very prudently only made one) was to respond to a comment made here many months ago by Tom X. Chao, which was, if I remember rightly, “What the hell’s up with this blog?” After a big launch announcement, I’d gone on to commit the cardinal sin of all Web logs – neglect. A log being a log, its writer should post as often as he can, daily if possible. Post, post, post. I’d managed to craft a couple of long, thoughtful essays, and some announcements about upcoming shows, and then…nothing. But as Lear said, “Nothing will come of nothing.” In imitation of my more diligent friends, I therefore resolve to post.

Luckily, I’ve concocted a theme that should keep me going for awhile. Martin Denton and myself are developing a television version of our regular audio podcast Indie Theatre Now! This development seems to me a fortuitous occasion to ruminate on the subject of Indie Theatre itself – what sets it apart, its positive and negative aspects, its historical origins, and, chiefly, what it means to me. I regard this as an opportunity to educate an audience I hope will widen.

First, some props. “Indie Theatre” is a term coined by that King of Coinage, playwright Kirk Wood Bromley of Inverse Theatre. Credit for this astute re-branding should always be attached to him by us navel-gazers when we presume to dissect its meaning. I wasn’t personally present at the occasion on which he proffered the new term, so I didn’t hear his own thinking about the definition. I can only offer what I think it may refer to, and what it means to me, and then offer space here for those combative souls who wish to augment or rebut the record.

I admire the handle for several reasons: its economy, its efficiency, its clarification, its resonances. It addresses several semantic and political problems simultaneously. It is at once a re-drawing of the map, a factual correction, and a generational rallying cry. But what does it mean? The old lexicon gave us a handful of outmoded professional categories: 1) the Broadway or “commercial” theatre, a uniquely American marriage of art and commerce with origins at the start of the last century and headquartered in Times Square, though with touring tentacles throughout the country; 2) Off-Broadway, a movement begun in the mid-twentieth century as an alternative to the pure commercialism then dominating the American theatre. While there had been numerous “art theatres” prior to Off-Broadway’s advent, nothing like a broad institutionalization happened until around the 1950s. From Off-Broadway stemmed the Regional Theatre movement, as well. All shared a not-for-profit model, and tended to present seasons consisting of modern classics and serious works by mostly established contemporary playwrights; and finally, 3) Off-Off Broadway, the highly radical, experimental movement that sprang up in the 1960s, which also followed a not-for-profit model, but in general was far less concerned than Off-Broadway with placating the expectations of middle class ticket buyers, and was (and is) often presented in store fronts, cafes and lofts.

The latter category, from its very inception, has always presented something of a problem. To the vast majority of Americans who have nothing to do with the theatre, and even to many working within the theatre’s other branches, the name has always been something of a punchline. Anyone who works in theatre will tell you: announcing that you work in Off-Off-Broadway theatre feels a lot like telling people you’ve chosen to pursue an amateur hobby rather than get a real job like everyone else. “The theatre” is bad enough. “Off-Off-Broadway” strikes outsiders as a bit like admitting, “You’re a doctor? You’re a lawyer? Great! I’ve chosen to play my cello far, far from Carnegie Hall.” Protestations that one has chosen to commit oneself to art, rather than whore oneself out to do crap, sound a mite disingenuous when you define yourself in relation to the crap. The fact that the crap is more famous and more popular can’t help but make matters worse.

But that’s only the founding problem. Decades pass: seventies, eighties, nineties, oughts. A couple of generations have since grown up within the art form, with very different aesthetic and political sensibilities from the original Off-Off Broadway generation. By the nineties, these were based not only in New York, but in major cities around the country, growing up in opposition to their local regional theatres, which by now had become major establishment institutions. What should the new generation be called? Off-Off-Off Broadway? That simply wouldn’t do.

Occasionally the term “alternative theatre” was and is used, in imitation (I assume) of “alt-rock”. One of the many possible meanings of the now-defunct RAT movement (which I will touch on in a subsequent post) was “Regional Alternative Theatre.” But this still smells suspect, whether you’re talking about rock or theatre. It reduces an artistic sensibility to a market niche, and it implies that it is secondary, tertiary, or worse, to a more valid mainstream one. That won’t do, either.

And so, Kirk coined “Indie Theatre”. The term, short for “independent”, is used in the music and film industries, and suits the needs of the moment to a tee. Among other things, the term is a double liberation – not just from the tyrannous expectations of the commercial theatre, but, perhaps more tellingly, from the equally stifling expectations of the not-for-profit arts establishment. Some indie theatre is more defined by its aversion to the former, some by its aversion to the latter, some, by both.

Where I, and some of my favorite colleague and cohorts fall in that spectrum, will be the subject of my next post in this series.

Meantime, watch this space for reviews of Cornbury (Theatre Askew) and Theatre is Dead (Stolen Chair) in the next few days…