Pitfalls

The Intermission Escape Artist
Or, How One Lifelong Theater Devotee Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Form.

Theater has openly flirted with suckiness since Thespis sassed back from the chorus line. The possibility of disaster is inherent in the form: Every great theatrical event requires harmonious excellence from an array of people, from playwright and director to the various designers; with actors and technicians, the requisite proficiency must also be simultaneous, and produced anew night after night after night. But the risk amps the reward: Yes, nothing sucks like bad theater, but nothing thrills like good theater, and the threat of the former only compounds the joy of the latter.

But beyond the suck potential brought by the high-wire aspect of the form, live theater faces other deadly risks�threats far more insidious than a dumbstruck actor, or a director whose vision consists of transposing The Two Gentlemen of Verona to the antebellum American South. The worst of these threats can abort even the possibility of real theater in utero, and the name of this most heinous threat is romance�specifically, the romanticization of the theatrical form.

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