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Pass the Collection Plate, Please.

Various sizes of buildings, with some sort of seating arranged in rows, facing a slightly raised platform. may have curtains around the platform. people --primarily men-- take the platform to orate to the audience seated before them. A plea for donations is made at some point, either before or after the show, which may have music and will definitely have directives masked as stories on how to be a human in this day-and-age. children will be seen, maybe, but definitely not heard. the men in charge will believe they have been given a special gift for leading this particular group of people. and the people, for whatever reason, will also believe this. and this group of people will believe that their building and person and each other are completely different and somehow better than all the other exact same groups around their town/city/county/state/nation.

If theater wants to be treated as church and church as theater, then both are getting exactly what they have been setting up for the past two generations: a rapid decline of participants who see what happens within those four walls as any way relevant to life today.

Add to the process similarities, a list of problems both share: 

  • Bifurcation into ever smaller groupings, typically based on some personal slight masked as "theological/artistic disagreement"
  • Massive organizations promising entertainment both here and in the afterlife in exchange for a hefty price tag of earthly money
  • Tiny groups of people who worship and create for the love of it, not for any financial remuneration, continuing thanks to a patron of some kind
  • well-trod stories used over and over, with little new work shared
  • harassment and abuse by people in power, which is ignored, neglected, or dismissed, until knowledge dissolves the institution
  • political leanings barely disguised
  • lip service given to community needs

St. Matthew holding a book, in a gilt frame.

But our present day problem of neither organization enjoying the numbers of people or assets is no one's fault but their own. You cannot purport to be "For the community" and then only benefit those inside your group. You cannot claim to care for those around you and not actually take care of them, or even care for those inside your group. People will see the hypocrisy and leave.

The business models are primarily the same: pay a modest staff a modest wage and everyone else works for free. Income is primarily through donations, augmented by a "fee for service/product/rental." The major expense tends to be a mortgage or rent payment in order to keep a roof over everyone's head (which leads me down a very different path as to why more churches don't share their spaces with theaters and vice versa), plus keeping the lights on and air conditioning humming.

I'm not saying either theater or organized religion is going the way of the Dodo. They both have been around, well, as long as human civilizations have. We will always have stories to share and massive philosophical questions to answer. These are often enjoyed within gatherings for three or more people.

I know from personal experience what it means to feel either of these organizations no longer speaks to my own life. I walked away from the church I was raised in when I went to college and realized the "sinners" that had been preached at me my entire upbringing were actually good, decent, kind, caring people. When I left my beloved Deep Dish Theater in order to run Common Ground, it was because I felt so strongly about local stories, new work, and the beginning of the artistic life cycle. Finding groups of people who support one's spiritual journey and story-telling practice are important. What turns disciples/audiences away is power hoarding, fear mongering, and turning a blind eye to a community's needs.

Legal loopholes have allowed some churches to become massive, some might say unfortunately. How much of the money in those coffers could be shared with actual community-centered organizations, art-related or not? The same is not true of nonprofit regional theaters. The legal loopholes there actually make it more difficult for nonprofits to truly diversify their income streams. Ticket sales, education fees, and straight donations are about the best they can do. And even most regional theaters hesitate to raise their ticket prices to match what a Broadway tour commands as it comes through town, even if the costs are proportionately the same and the value is actually greater (e.g.: supporting local professional artists, etc.). 

Add to that the 40 year decimation of public school arts education: not only have the existing audiences been dying off (both through age and Covid), but there was never a new audience to replace them anyway. Gen Z doesn't understand performing arts the way Boomers did: they weren't raised with it as part of their education (except in isolated and/or privileged cases). The same goes for churches: as most people stay with the church denomination they were raised in, as Gen X turned away from organized religion, therefore Millennials and Gen Z have continued that trend.

Cutting new works programs to save money, reducing the number of plays to cut payroll, laying off lower level staff in order to balance budgets: as everyone who has ever worked a fiscal education program knows, you can't save your way to financial health. You have to earn more.

More tickets. More donations. More investment, both fiscally/physically and emotionally.

Churches exist to separate. Theaters should be the opposite.

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