Found this nugget on the Wall Street Journal site. Thanks to Matt Wells at the needtheatre blog for the link. Raises an interesting question: Where are all the Conservative plays? Which raises an even MORE interesting query: Is theatre and conservativism anti-thetical?

In the article, Terry Teachout (great name!) puts it this way:

…I can’t think of a single well-known American or British playwright whose political views are even slightly to the right of center. Nor do I think it likely that such a person would flourish were he or she suddenly to emerge from out of nowhere: Theater is a social art form, and the culture of American and British theater is 99% left-liberal, if not more so.

Wow. Is this true? And why? Is theatre intrinsically “liberal” or “left-leaning”? Or is it the audience for theatre that is intrinsically “liberal” or “left-leaning” and therefore has no appetite for anything “conservative” or “right-leaning”?

Teachout doesn’t think this trend is necessarily a good thing:

Mr. Hytner (AD of London’s National Theatre), in other words, wants to produce issue-driven conservative plays that are just like today’s liberal plays, only in reverse, whereas the problem with today’s political theater is that its practitioners see their plays not as works of art but as means to an end. In such tedious exercises in left-wing agitprop as Sam Shepard’s “The God of Hell,” Caryl Churchill’s “Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?” and Tim Robbins’s “Embedded,” we are presented with a black-and-white universe of victims and villains, a place where every deck is stacked and never is heard a surprising word. Why would anybody with half a brain in his head — even a fire-breathing McCainiac, if such a creature exists — want to suffer through their right-wing equivalent?

I suppose I find this topic fascinating, not because I’m necessarily a “conservative” playwright, but because I find myself innundated with so much blatantly liberal and left-leaning dogma in the theatre that it almost makes me want to write a radically conservative play just as a response! I suppose it’s the contrarian in me. It’s similar to my reaction to the obvious liberal bias in most of the media today. I find myself searching for papers and blogs and radio stations that have ANY other point of view than this endless flow of dogma. But of course, that eventually gets to be too much as well and I find myself bouncing back and forth in my search for balance. And to be fair (not to be confused with the “Fairness Doctrine” – Good Lord what a horrible idea!), there appears to be a conscious paradigm shift to a more balanced information flow in the larger media sources. Or maybe it’s just me that’s having a paradigm shift. Or maye it’s just the oatmeal I had this morning that’s causing a shift…

But more than this, I find the topic fascinating because I see a plethora of “conservative” stories out there that would make for excellent theatre. One could argue that the play “Doubt” is a conservative story, I suppose. Or maybe not. You be the judge.

That of course is the true crux of the matter: plays should strive to be neither “conservative” nor “liberal”, they should strive to tell GOOD STORES. Period. And good stories almost always embody both sides of the politcial spectrum. Like humans. They exist in a perpetual state of tension and conflict. Like life.

To bring it down to a more personal level, I have play that I wrote several years ago entitled “Only Say the Word”. My play has had many, many readings, and just earlier this year had a very successful workshop production. It has caught the eye of several directors and actors and has been hand-delivered to such notable theatres as the Laguna Playhouse, the Guthrie, the Taper, South Coast Rep and a variety of smaller companies in NYC. All of them had many kind things to say about the play, and they have led to long-lasting relationships, but none of these theatres ever pulled the trigger. And I wonder why.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that these decisions have so many facets involved that it would make your head explode to try and comprehend them all; timing, scheduling, budget constraints, cast size, similar play already on the docket, suscriber influence, minority favoritism (Had a writing professor at Loyola Marymount tell me that unless I was an African-American female Lesbian my chances of getting a production in regional theatre were nil to zero – funny how the tables have turned and being an Anglo White Male doesn’t carry as much influence as it used to – at least not in theatre. Hell, I even had the AD of an Off-Broadway house – a man who was my teacher and absolutely LOVED my work – tell me, “We’re just doing ethnic one-person shows right now. It’s the only thing you can get funding for anymore.” I kid you not.). So I don’t take it personally.

But what does interest me is whether or not my play is considered a “conservative” play and therefore is barred out of hand by the theatre community at large just for that reason alone. The play is ABOUT a conservative family, but in my opinion, it falls on neither side of the political spectrum. My desire was to depict a REAL conservative family in crisis in the context of today’s world. Pure and simple. Coming from a conservative home I wanted to honor my family. But to do so I needed to hold them up as they were, warts and all. I think I succeeded. My favorite reaction from an audience member after one staged reading was, “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” Victory!

And yet the play has yet to be produced. I suppose I could market it a little more aggressively, but it’ll have its day, I’m not too worried about that.

But I achieved my goal with the play – at least my writing goal – to extract all evidence of the playwright from the page and tell a compelling sotry. The characters live on their own merits, their own wants and desires, without comment and pressure from me. A truly satisfying experience. Seeing it come to life on stage, fully realized, obviously, would be the utlimate satisfaction. But I’m patient. And there are lots of other stories to tell in the meantime.

Teachout brings it all home with this final observation in his article:

I don’t doubt that the American theater would be a more amusing place if it harbored a few uncloseted conservatives. But when the curtain goes up, I don’t care whether the author of the show I’m about to see is a Republican, a Democrat, an anarchist or a drunkard, so long as he’s taken the advice of Anton Chekhov: “Anyone who says the artist’s field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing. . . . It is the duty of the court to formulate the questions correctly, but it is up to each member of the jury to answer them according to his own preference.” That’s what great playwrights do: They put a piece of the world on stage, then step out of the way and leave the rest to you.

Word.