If only our field thought this far ahead. Theatre folk tend to be so intensely present oriented, they almost never think of the broader picture, of the future for anyone but themselves.
I loved Michael Chekhov’s essay about The Theatre of the Future, for this unusual big picture thinking – for its attention on what we make and its impact on what comes next.
The way I’ve seen most theatre folks operate, these children in this story would not say their writers did them wrong, they would more likely rail against the next crop of children and never think through how the system set them up to drop them down again. We theatre folk tend to think all our bad luck is personal, that each failure is ours alone – and almost never look at the systems in place that ensure that personal failure.
There’s a frankness to this line. One which indicates that the life of an actor was not at all glamorous – just a choice for someone whose means are not better. It’s not too glamorous now either. The actual day to day of the theatrical person is relentlessly mundane but it has a shine on it when you start and it clings to you a bit when communicating with the outside world.
The Hamlet Project 