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For decades in America, Broadway was the theater. When the strumpet muse spread her skirts some time after the turn of the century and settled down in Manhattan's West 40s around Times Square, she attracted both the top musical talent and the premier dramatists. Berlin and Rodgers and Kern and Porter spun out romantic dreams and ironies in 4/4 time. There was room too for a gaggle of deft farceurs like George S. Kaufman, who populated Manhattan penthouse sets with pretty people and funny lines, and for O'Neill, Miller, Williams and Albee to illuminate the dark side of the national soulscape. But scan this week's Broadway listings and you will find only four new dramas (including Peter Shaffer's superb Amadeus), two thrillers, and one magnificent spectacle that defies categorization (Nicholas Nickleby). There is not a single comedy. Good talk—the locking of minds between playwright and playgoer—has almost vanished.
But something else has happened. Now, all America is the theater. In Los Angeles and Louisville, Washington and New Haven—and in Manhattan, beyond the theater district, down on the Bowery and up on 73rd Street—the young and the restless have started shouting: "Hey, let's put the show on right here!" Energetic companies are serving as incubators for tomorrow's Broadway playwrights and leading actors. Hal Prince is emphatic and enthusiastic: "Off-Broadway and the regional theaters—especially the regionals —have become our lifeline. That's where the serious nonmusical theater finds its authors and its audience."
The companies offer new homes to old masters: the most recent plays by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams were first staged off-Broadway. Neil Simon wanted to stage his recent farce Fools at the Mark Taper Forum, "but that is supposed to be for young playwrights. Not me, I'm too established. That's ridiculous. It's the play that's important, not the playwright." Veteran actors like Edward Flanders and Nancy Marchand are treated to the sense of being young and adventurous again. Says Mar chand, who last year commuted between Lou Grant on television and the handsomely revived Morning's at Seven on Broadway: "There are good theaters all over the country. You can feel it; something is growing."
The artistic directors of these companies—Gordon Davidson of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, Marshall W. Mason of the Circle Repertory Company in Greenwich Village, Lynne Meadow of the Manhattan Theater Club, the indefatigable Joe Papp—have become modernist avatars of the old-fashioned impresario. They have nurtured writers and actors who leaped to prominence without spending much, if any, time on Broadway. Steve Tesich had written only a few off-Broadway plays when he won an Academy Award for his screenplay Breaking Away. Meryl Streep made her name with Public Theater productions; Christopher Reeve and William Hurt honed their craft at the Circle Rep. All have returned "home" between big-budget movie schedules.