Clash: A Call for New Vision in American Theatre

In a recent interview, Bob Dylan said that an artist should always be at a point of becoming. What we ultimately become isn't mapped out for us. How we become that thing is of the utmost importance, though. As artists (and, consequently, as the host-bodies for the half-crazed minds that eventually become us,) we are constantly on the edge of what Dylan has called us out to do. We must, if we're ever to earn the right to call ourselves as such, keep allowing ourselves to grow, to become whatever it is that we're supposed to become. We must be hungry. We must need.

Forty years ago, the country was at a becoming stage the likes of which it had not seen in a hundred years. Now, it seems, we're constantly looking for the spark to set us into the next great stage of social evolution. The last century's central problem was that of the color line. We've fixed that problem in great part: It's no longer odd to see people of different ethnicities sitting in the same restaurants, eating the same foods, sharing jokes or making love. It's no longer unfathomable to see a Latino, an African-American, and a Caucasian sit at the same bar and scream at the same television screen when they see an over-eager fan stick his hand into the field on a foul ball and ruin a playoff run for their favorite baseball team. But we're not yet sure what our next step should be. We don't know how we're to begin the rebirthing process this time.

We no longer need a "Boys in the Band" to liberate gays in the theatre; they've done that for themselves to great acclaim. We don't need another "Raisin in the Sun", or even another "Zoot Suit". We no longer need another Meisner or Chekhov or Hagen, though we will most certainly continue to learn from their examples. Now we need to use what we were given.

Forty years ago there were closely defined parameters, finely drawn battle lines. There were countless numbers of clear and present problems that we all wanted to fix. There were constant reminders of how we needed to become something new in order to fix them.

We now need to acknowledge that those movements shaped us collectively, as selves, as artists, and as a country. But we're never to be so blind as to assume that those movements have afforded us the right to be complacent. We have a whole new series of challenges before us now, and we have a whole new series of things that we can collectively and individually become in order to face them.

One of those problems is the fallacy that we've evolved into a kind of ethnically diverse Utopia. We have not. Chicago alone is proof that a deeply-seeded race consciousness still thrives in this city and in this country. (Everyone knows who Arthur Miller was but few outside of our industry could even tell you how to spell Fornes.)

Forty years ago, Malcolm X foretold of a mighty clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. He believed that the clash would come, but not on the basis of the color of skin. This clash is probably the problem we have to fix. And we have to do it together. We have to become those things that we don't know, and since we've already figured out that other cultures exist within the country, we have to reflect that on our stages. We have to become something new.