ten red hen

This blog won't consist completely, or even mostly, of performance reviews. It's a space to consider the pressing questions dogging live theater/performance in 21st Century America.

Theater suffers--as many arts do--from the problem of artists fighting over fewer and fewer crumbs: increasingly limited jobs, limited private funding, limited grants, limited physical resources, limited space, limited awards, limited prestige and publication inches, limited mind share from a limited number of audience members. The limits under consideration can be both quantitative and qualitative. The current theatrical apparatus is the opposite of a growth industry.

I'm not interested in fighting over the five crumbs currently in circulation. I want to bake new bread. Like the Little Red Hen. Unfortunately, the story of the Little Red Hen has been co-opted by capitalist consumer society as a conservative parable about the redistribution of wealth. Hence, the call for multiple Red Hen, finding kernels of wheat, planting them, hoeing, watering, harvesting, grinding flour and baking new bread together in this millennium.