“Is there a need for a theatre dedicated to work by women? And if there is a need–as many theatre artists believe–what must such a theatre do in order to prosper? If the American theatre has absorbed the larger culture’s deeply rooted, stereotypical attitudes toward women, how will barriers to the advancement of women as playwrights, directors and producers come down?”
Tag: 01.08
Should The NEA Get Out Of The Business Of Choosing Art?
“The NEA has withered in a matter of decades from a self-styled instrument of world peace to a cautious dispenser of largesse whose one inflexible principle is that no grant must ever redound to the administration’s embarrassment. Whether it can regain its early ambition–or whether it should try to–is an open question. But nobody contemplating a reform of this institution should begin without a clear and unsentimental understanding of America’s peculiarly fitful relationship to the arts, particularly the visual arts.”
How TV Failed Us
“One might have thought that the television industry, with its history of rapid adaptation to technological change, would have become a center of innovation for the next radical transformation in communication. It did not. Nor did the ability to transmit pictures, voices, and stories from around the world to living rooms in the U.S. heartland produce a nation that is more sophisticated about global affairs. Instead, the United States is arguably more isolated and less educated about the world than it was a half-century ago. In a time of such broad technological change, how can this possibly be the case?”