Lincoln Center Buys British
From my vantage point, I can’t argue with Terry Teachout’s piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. He’s dead on.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315004575073593965772912.html
The fact that Ohio State University and the Wexner Foundation sunk seven-figures of US money into hosting the Royal Shakespeare Company in New York City for a six-week residency in 2011, and that “40 percent of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s fundraising now comes from the United States” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/theater/11armory.html?emc=eta1) is very disturbing to someone who has been struggling to keep afloat a Theatre company and has watched corporate and foundation giving to American arts organizations decline over the past several years (not to mention Federal cuts to the NEA).
I don’t blame the British artists for this. I blame American philanthropists who donate huge sums of their money to British Theatre companies in effect excluding American companies from significant potential opportunities for “evolution and growth.” The situation is not helped by those American presenting companies who fill their schedules with imported English theatre, instead of providing our local artists with the chance to prove themselves to a broader audience, and thereby define, broaden and deepen our own theatre vocabulary, style, and, ultimately, history.
As long as we continue to support foreign arts orgs to the exclusion of the many fine Theatre companies in the US, none of the American companies will ever be able to advance themselves to the level to which the RSC has risen.
To paraphrase Adrian Noble, former Artistic Director of the RSC, in a recent address to the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America, ‘Americans are just as capable of producing good Shakespeare as the English. We’ve just been doing it more.’
