The past few days I have been obsessed with the question: WHAT WILL THE THEATRE BE LIKE TEN YEARS IN THE FUTURE?
I have fielded pithy comments on Facebook ("lasers..." or "holograms"). I got some wonderful analysis of what the theatre is doing"wrong" now, but few solid, thought-out predictions on where theatre is going.
One of the more challanging things about the question is where to even start. All kinds of things can be different a decade from now: how artists interact with audiences (both on stage and off), what kind of work theatre artists will be doing (i.e. the content), how the presentation of the work will be different (form), or how the theatre themselves will operate (smaller? Bigger, like conglomerates? decentrailized?)...
A search through the theatre blogosphere turns up mostly the future in relation to bits and pieces of theatre, not the artform as a whole (or even as an industry). There are opinions on the furute of black theatre, the future of LGBT theatre, the future of Native American theatre, and so on.
The closest I've come across to date has been a piece on HowlRound from 4 years ago by Meiyin Wang literally called "The Theatre of the Future." Though she is a bit vague, some of her thoughts make a lot of sense to me and mirror my own...
There will be no titles of playwrights, directors, actors, designers, managers, producers. There will be theater makers. That will be all that is allowed on a name card. “Theater maker.” People you meet will include a writer/designer. A director/electrician. A sculptor/actor. A film editor/musician. A cook/dramaturg. A plumber/poet.
I think about the work of Richard Maxwell, Young Jean Lee, and Guillermo Calderon in Chile, who are at first glance writers/ directors. To me they are instead theater makers—creating total experiences of theater that cannot be recreated anywhere else, in any other setting.
But then she then turns around immediately to follow up with...
The notion of authorship, sole authorship, will change rapidly. Theater will be made in duos—like Big Dance Theater’s Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, in trios—like Alec Duffy, Rick Burkhart, and Dave Malloy in Three Pianos, in ensembles and collectives, like the Rude Mechs, Universes and SITI Company—where you will be not be able to see the edges of creation, generation, and execution. Theater will be performed and generated by machines.
The things is, both can be correct. And the question of who makes the theatre is not even the most interesting part of the overall question.
So much food for thought...
