Comments on Steppenwolf Receives $1 Million Grant

You can't be the Center Theatre Group. You have to be either the Centre Theatre Group or the Center Theater Group. It's like mixing fibres.

$1 million at a time when individual ticket sales are likely to drop off and individual giving is likely to plummet would be very nice. Yay Doris Duke...

As soon as I realized this was not a post about the rock band Steppenwolf, I skipped it entirely.

...just sayin'.

Brendan --

I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with you on SITI Company. They are a company that has one of the most rigorous work ethics I've ever experienced in the theatre (full disclosure: I train with the company and it has changed how I view the art of theatre). Sometimes their work can be dense and hard for the "general public" to enter ("Death and the Ploughman" for instance), but others ("Hotel Cassiopeia" or "Radio Macbeth") are gorgeous explorations of what theatre can be.

Yes, the Viewpoints get abused by people who want to be as cutting edge as SITI Company is without being willing to do the work that they do to achieve their art. But then look at what lazy actors have been doing to the work of Stanislavsky, Meisner or Stella Adler. It's not the tool, it's how you use it.

http://www.siti.org/grant.htm

Sounds like you've drunk the Kool-Aid, Al. "Death and the Ploughman" wasn't dense or difficult—it was a vapid application of a rehearsal technique onto an old text. I saw it on tour here in Seattle. It's what sealed the deal for me against SITI.

I'm sure you all work very hard, but a good work ethic does not make good theater.

There's a place in this world for Viewpoints, but it's much, much smaller than the space it currently occupies on the theater landscape. I'm just doing my small part to prune it back.

Steppenwolf earned the money. 'August: Osage County' justified their existence forever. What a play, what a play.