"Premieritis?"

by David Dower

Back from the TCG Conference, and a whirlwind round of discussions about the state of the infrastructure for new plays in the American theater.

I promised the group that sat through the two presentations on my field survey and on Theater Development Fund's survey that I'd get better about regular rollouts here of the "appreciative inquiry" that is the continuation of my Mellon-supported travels in the nationwide infrastructure for new work.  Part of what arose from that fifteen-city tour for me was a concern about whether or not we were telling "old stories".  I've written some about that earlier.  But here's one of them:

We speak of a nationwide affliction called "premieritis", a condition which prevents theaters from producing second and third productions of works that have already given up their world premiere to someone else.  The data on the topic in the TDF study is curious-- it seems to show that many, many more theaters claim to have produced world premieres than playwrights say have had premieres.  It raises a question about whether there's a common usage of the term 'world premiere' being applied across the field, or whether organizations are misreporting, or perhaps there are plays receiving their world premieres that somehow haven't charted with the playwrights in the survey pool.

But I'm more concerned with whether or not we are actually suffering the sort of epidemic of premieritis that we seem to assume we are. Part of my concern about telling old stories is that they can be very hard to stamp out once they get going.  Remember that old e-mail about Nina Totenberg saying on NPR that Congress is going to cut the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?  It was an e-mail that started back in the late 90's, I think and it was reporting on a newstory of the day in which it was launched.  But it was picked up and forwarded millions of times over several years (Has it finally died, btw?  Have I inadvertently revived it here?!?)

And, in failing to stamp them out, reporters and funders who don't do their own research simply pick up and repeat the tales as today's news, reinforcing the sense of a dysfunctional or unhealthy field.  How many more articles can we actually read about "development hell", for example?  And if we're presenting ourselves to the press and the funders as dysfunctional and unhealthy, can we blame them when they act as if we are?

Just a quick, unscientific glance around the field reveals a bushel of plays that have had more than one production this year-- and these are just plays that I know about without resorting to Google. Arena started the season with Resurrection, which we structured as a three-city co-premiere.  Three stops for the same production. We followed with the second production of Next to Normal, which then found its third in the Tony nominated run at the Booth.  We're now producing Looped, in its third production (it premiered at Pasadena Playhouse a year ago). And the recently completed run of 33 Variations on Broadway was the third production, following it's launch at Arena and a second production at La Jolla Playhouse. And yes, I know that three of these four found commercial supporters along the way. That's just what happened, not how it happened.

OK, so that's starting to sound like a commercial. Must look wider.  What was the path for Ruined to the Pulitzer?  The Good Negro opened in Dallas before facing the NY critics at The Public. You, Nero is in its second production at Berkeley Rep, having first opened at South Coast Rep. American Hwangap first met critics at Magic Theatre in San Francisco before opening in NY in the co-production between Ma-Yi and The Play Company. Quality of Life began at The Geffen and then found a second home at ACT in SF.  (And yes, a third home at Arena to lead off next season.) The Brother/Sister Plays are getting an unprecedented investment from the major regional theaters, with McCarter, The Public, and Steppenwolf all producing this new American trilogy in their seasons. This Beautiful City has had productions at Humana, Studio Theater, CTG, and The Public; Rooms has had productions at Metro Stages, Geva, and now off-Broadway; Ameriville has several stops ahead this year; and so on.

Yes, this is a list (quite possibly) of exceptions-- most plays didn't get productions at all, and most that did did not get a second, I'm sure. Hopefully you will no doubt want to call me out on examples I've missed, though, too-- and please do! But are these 'exceptions that prove the rule'?  Or do they call to question whether we are actually moving forward from the bad old behaviors associated with the affliction we call "premieritis"?  My gut says its the latter. Do I believe we're out of the woods and now there are no bad side affects from the affliction-- that no theater anywhere is suffering the delusions of premiere grandeur that come with the illness? No.  But I do think that there are leaders (writers and producers) behaving differently and enough examples to create a string of comments here that we can stop telling this particular story in so general a way as "American theaters suffer from permieritis" and start talking about the stories of multiple productions and the successes of going second, third, fourth, etc and, leading by example, finally stomp out the term just as Nina Totenberg's call-to-arms was finally eradicated from our inboxes.