Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Chapter
10
Global
Theatre Today
© Stephanie Berger
THE THEATRE OF TODAY EXISTS onstage, not in the
pages of this or any other book. It is being performed right
now, in the multimillion-dollar theatres of the world’s
great cities as well as on simpler stages at schools, community
theatres and nightclubs, and in city parks,
streets, and even streetcars around the world.
The theatre of today is all around us, waiting to be
discovered, seen, heard, felt, and experienced. The best
way to learn about it is to go out and see it. And wherever
you are, there is almost certainly theatre.
What’s Happening?
It’s not easy to say what’s happening in the theatre
today. We cannot evaluate the current theatre as we do
the theatre of the past—with tidy labels and categories
like modernism and Romanticism. Theatre is a
business as well as an art, and the increasingly feverish
pitch of promotion, publicity, and puffery that surround
each new play make a cool perspective difficult.
Whereas poets and painters are often ignored until
years following their deaths, the opposite is more often
true of theatre artists: they may be adored in their own
time and forgotten a few years later. A permanent place
in history books and on stages around the world is the
achievement of very few; among the playwrights once
deemed equal to Shakespeare are such dimly remembered
figures as John Fletcher, Joseph Addison, and
Maxwell Anderson.
Which of our present-day writers and actors and
other theatre artists will achieve more than ephemeral
glory? Which, if any, will leave a mark on future generations?
No one can answer either question with any
certainty.
255