ABSTRACT
Recently, as a theatrical culture, we have grown quite comfortable with a certain set of answers. This, it seems, has been at the expense of many of the great questions that provoked past generations to keep searching. These days the only questions that remain vital for us are ones of utility. We have book after book on the “how” or “when” of theater, rather than on the “why” or “what.” We think that if we know how to deploy an action or that Hamlet was written in 1599, this will somehow be enough. Gone are the questions like: what is theater, how does it work, why did we create it and why, in this advanced technological age, do we still need it? These are the questions we, as theater practitioners, may ask when we are young; but, often the demands of just “making” theater override these larger philosophical concerns and we find ourselves very quickly turning our full attention toward something a little more manageable, like a better understanding of craft. The wonderful thing about craft is that it is tangible and, when properly tended to, it can yield immediate, discernible results. And so, our theatrical “product” may indeed be better wrought, but at the expense of a certain depth and majesty. The “gift” of our contemporary theater is exquisitely wrapped, but often empty.
