“Don’t settle.”
You hear that a lot these days in reference to jobs, partners, life.
What about theatre?
What would not settling look like, when it comes to theatre?
BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS reminds us that out there in theatre land across the sea, where there are both world class shows and audiences, big theatre as vibrant and important as it is possible to be is not only happening – it’s routine.
All you have to do is eyeball the Guardian reviews page for a glimpse into the absurd abundance of London. Actually, better you don’t look.
Sure, London is a world epicenter for epic theatre. But still.
Once someone runs a 4 minute mile somewhere in the world, that then becomes the standard – for anyone else ANYWHERE in the world.
You don’t say, “Yeah, we’re slower. We’ll just shoot for a 5 minute mile over here. That’s all we can do.”
NT Live is both good and bad. It’s good in that it brings us the stage of the National Theatre, something we’d all like to see up close and personal a little more frequently.
But it’s also pretty bad in that it forces us to acknowledge what we’ve been settling for. Yikes. Once you’ve had NT Live, it makes it a bit hard to go back to [show name here].
Another interesting thing about NT Live – the mythical Portland audience materializes out of the ether. There they are in droves. They will turn out and pack the place for NT Live. But by and large, they won’t come out for a lot of the bush league inanity that passes for theatre in Portland. Can you blame them? They know quality. When there’s quality, they’ll be there. When there’s not – they’ll go to NT Live and save up for a trip to London.
That’s an opportunity for Portland theatres that want to do more than serve as truck stops for the same generic fare that you can find anywhere in America. That’s an opportunity to create something uniquely Portland, something that you can only see here, that people will come from all over the world to see.
Think big. Watch BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS and ask, what could our equivalent of that be?
And don’t settle.
If you missed BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS, we’ll let you off the hook because it shows again on April 4.
