Sometimes the best advice has already been given. Case in point are the following quotes from An Introduction to the Theater by Frank M Whiting (1954). They suggest needed reforms, guidelines, and common sense attitudes in theater that are as important today as they were when they were written.
"Too often today's chaotic system of auditions tends not toward the survival of the fittest but toward the survival of the most stubbornly determined, the most unscrupulous, the most aggressive. Great artists are frequently sensitive and shy individuals, poorly adapted to the crass techniques of a highly competitive society. Many have been discovered only by accident or through family connections. Left to themselves they would never have survived the humiliation and cutthroat competition of the present system."
"One very interesting plan ...envisions the organization of an All-American Touring Company, a professional company composed of approximately 15 of the most talented actors to graduate during a given year. After careful screening on the basis of talent, scholarship, character, personality, and type, those selected would become members of a professional touring company. One or two veteran actors would be added to the troupe to play character roles not easily within the range of young actors, and to enrich the educational process with their years of experience. Such a company, billed, for example, as Òthe All-Americans of 1961,Ó would be almost certain to provide strong box-office appeal." (Musea would add this - also any theater group 3 years and older could compete too)
"It makes no more sense to limit all professional theatre to Broadway than it would to limit all professional baseball, symphony orchestras or art museums to Broadway."
"What is needed at the professional level is not the stage-struck actor who wants to act and act and act if only someone else will provide the theatre, the audience, the director, the technical necessities, and the salary; what is needed is the young director - producer - the imaginative, pioneering artist - executive who can organize and build an exciting theatre from the materials at hand; someone with a touch of ... Moliere,or Stanislavski..."
"America's Puritan tradition has kept theatre from becoming fundamental to the life of many communities, and the competition of radio, motion pictures, and television has been too much for the legitimate theatre of poor to mediocre quality. But this need not be... If university theatres will produce plays with the professional skill characteristic of university football, they need no more fear being hopelessly overshadowed by Broadway than Notre Dame need worry about being overshadowed by the New York Giants."
"...The general attitude toward theatre, especially among high-school executives, is that anyone can teach dramatics. Consequently, anyone does, and with such wretched results that all values are lost."
"We should remind ourselves that if every professional theatre in America were filled to capacity the total audience would be only 72,000 - less than that at a single football game in some stadiums!"
From the Fountainhead to the Future,
by Alexandra York.
Another Art Revolution began in '92. Alexandra York began publishing her ideas about art reforms. Here are a few excerpts from her collected essays:
"... by the early mid-twentieth century, individualism -following the European paradigm of angst - began to turn into rampant subjectivity; individual liberty (bereft of responsibility) turned into license; moral principles turned into pragmatism; tolerance turned into permissiveness; and (most) art turned into an excuse for emotional purging, political activism and the enshrinement of wanton violence and human degradation."
"But let us not despair! If nothing else, the destruction has been so devastating that a new path may now be cleared to redirect our culture toward re-examined and redefined values."
"For those who are concerned, serious art - especially idea art - has an irresistible capacity to break through every psychological barrier, pseudo- intellectual facade, or dull witted apathy. It can reveal the lie hidden in false art and it can provide the contrast to bad art."
Books are good - Read!