Every spring, the buses at Port Authority arrive from all over the country with young men and women who have just graduated from programs in colleges and universities with degrees in Drama. Some who could afford it, arrive at the airports. Some drive. But they come.
They come seeking work in the theater. More accurately, they seek acting careers.
Yet no one talks about the horrible injustice of it, or of the blight foisted upon the professional theater over the past 40 or so years. For there are no jobs, no work, and especially, little or no theater. But it's New York, and the expectations are and continue to be that this is where one goes to ply one's craft in the theatrical arts. It is nonsense, and has been nonsense for many many years. Is it discussed in Drama programs around the country? Is anyone warned of the impossibility of a career? Of the need for a alternative income generating skill?
But they ARE taught that they, like their teachers, can always teach. Yes, teach and turn out more actors who can't find work but will teach others to act and not find work, and on it goes, on and on and on. And no one says a word.
The origin of this myth is easy to understand. In 1920, to pick a year during Broadway's "Golden Era," a staggering number of plays opened on Broadway. We cannot conceive of such a number today. 40? 79?110? No, 158 plays opened on Broadway in 1920. One-hundred-fifty-eight. Can you imagine how many actors this employed? Now, not all of these plays had very long runs, but that is irrelevant because a new play was ready to take a failed one's place. And so, actors and actresses merely had to be present at an agent's office to eventually land work. And the work was steady, reliable. It was a profession.
For many, there was the additional theater known as vaudeville. While a more difficult life involving constant travel and hotels, and trains, etc. . . the work was steady. And there were the so-called, "Road Companies," of Broadway shows.
There was lots of work. At one time producers actually complained of a lack of "chorus girls"!
But, by 1950, the number of new shows opening on Broadway had fallen to 78. In 1970 it was 46. What would cause such a preciptitous fall? Numerous phenomenon, including the advent of radio and most of all, film--first silent then talkies. Theaters around the country could obtain a higher profit from showing films then from maintaining a theatrical staff. Theaters that had served live plays and musicals were converted to films. It's no mystery.
By 1990 there were 32 "plays" to open in Broadway houses. I put plays in quotation marks because many of these shows would not qualify as Broadway shows in previous era's, such as the one-man shows of Jackie Mason, Micheal Feinstein, and Harrick Connick, Jr.
And so, the hundreds or thousands of young people, ironically more than ever, studying acting right at this moment, are completely unprepared for the reality of the profession, which, in any sense of the word, would no longer qualify as such.
But who will say this? Where is the outrage?
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