The Future of Theater
(2000), Among other plays and screenplays; his production with Lithgow will open this spring. “Only a tiny fraction of actors have the luxury” of choosing stage over lucrative work on screens, Lithgow notes, adding, “In a way, it seems unfortunate that people feel you have to have a movie star in the cast of a Broadway show. On the other hand, it might help theater by strengthening its reputation as the ‘high bar,’ the best thing you can do.”If so, the stars’ boost may be timely. Theater, an institution at the heart of world cultures for millennia, now confronts unprecedented challenges in a rapidly evolving society. Electronic and digital technologies have spawned an array of media, from 3-D movies to crowd-sourced video like YouTube to smartphones, that compete with the stage (and with other traditional media like books, and each other) for the audience’s finite attention. A youthful generation raised amid a digital culture may prove harder to lure to a live theatrical performance; in the 2009-10 season, the average Broadway theatergoer was 48 years old.