August 17, 2025Open Access

What Is to Be Done?

Puntos clave

The current state of american theater reflects a contradiction within its artistic goals, and appears as a high-priced commodity.
Over 2,500 years, western theater has evolved, leading to the peculiarities of today's nonprofit theater landscape.
This analysis employs a historical perspective to shed light on the trajectory of american theater and its complexities.
Imagining a future audience, the essay critiques the current organizational structure of theater and its implications.

Resumen

This essay offers a view of the American theater, especially the American nonprofit theater, in historical perspective, real and imagined. The essay understands the current state of the American theater as a phase in a 2,500-year history of the Western theater, and sees its present form as a high-priced commodity to be anomalous and contradictory to the goals inherent within the art form. The essay imagines afuture world where the current organization of our theater seems strange and inexplicable, and tries to elucidate, for the sake of that imagined audience, how we’ve ended up here.

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Cite This Study

Oskar Eustis (Wed,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68a36dec0a429f7973331922 https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1162/daed.a.6

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