A fair question, all things considered. Let’s see what a top writer at one of the most prestigious and respected of U.S. theater organizations has to say on the subject, yeah?
by Rob Weinert-Kendt
Television was supposed to kill films and print journalism and radio, right? Just as the movies once purportedly threatened to make theatre and the novel obsolete, or photography to obviate the art of painting, or recorded music to replace the concert…well, you see where I’m going with this. All of these media have changed irrevocably, some beyond recognition, and there has unquestionably been a lot of attrition—what economists rather coldly call “churn” (a moment of silence, please, for vaudeville, drive-in movies, LPs, well-stocked newsstands and bookstores).
But while I’ve read my share of Walter Benjamin and Neil Postman, I’m not inclined to declinism—at least no more than I am to utopianism—in regards to culture. To those who would deplore fragmentation and narrowcasting and niche-ification, I would reply with questions about hegemony, homogeneity, and monopoly: Were American arts and entertainment really better off with just three networks, Hollywood’s cartelized studio system, and a national theatre dominated by Broadway and tours? In the area I know the most about, I’d argue that the regional/resident theatre movement that sprang up in the 1960s and thereafter, for all its problems and shortcomings, offers a far richer and more variegated American theatre culture and literature than we would have had without it.