A plague of small-cast plays

Why all the small-cast plays?
Blame it on the Barrymores

JIM RUTTER

I recently attended 1812’s production of Itamar Moses’s The Four of Us, whose cast, despite its misleading title, consisted unsurprisingly of only two actors. I say “unsurprisingly" because of the 80 or so local shows I’ve covered this year, more than 40 contained five or fewer cast members, and half of those featured three actors or less. Did I miss the Theatre Alliance’s announcement that designated 2006-07 as the “season of small plays?” Or do this season’s offerings indicate some larger aesthetic phenomenon?

Small cast plays represent the continuation of an earlier national trend that began in earnest in the second half of the 20th Century. The mostly unsubsidized American theaters hesitate to risk their slender budgets on unknown playwrights. But new writers could increase the chances of seeing their plays produced by writing plays with small casts, thereby cutting down on the production’s overhead. Of the last eight Pulitzer Prizes awarded for drama, six scripts required five actors or less, and Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife is a one-person show.

A problem of simple economics

Philadelphia theater companies of course are not exempt from this trend. But they also suffer uniquely from an unintended consequence of the rules governing the Barrymore Awards, the local equivalent of Broadway’s Tonys that have been sponsored since 1995 by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. Any Theatre Alliance member company that wants to participate must pay its actors. Even this small minimum stipend of $75 per week can quickly add up over four weeks of rehearsal and three weeks of production, not to mention greater fees if a company hires Artists Equity actors, who under union rules must earn more than the Barrymore required minimum (often several times the Barrymore minimum). And the five Theatre Alliance members of the League of Regional Theatres (Wilma, Arden, Prince, People’s Light and Philadelphia Theatre Company) must pay equity actors a minimum of $536 per week.

While these small companies deserve praise for staging the sort of high-quality productions that could compete for a Barrymore, they face a dilemma in doing so: The more actors in any given show, the greater the cost of the production, and consequently the greater the strain on the company’s limited available funds. Unfortunately, too many theater companies this year solved this problem by actively seeking only those plays with small casts. Since no production can do without a stage manager, director, lighting, costumes and set designs—all of which a company must pay for, under Barrymore rules— these companies reduced their bottom line by eliminating the one element they can do without: actors.

Too many theater companies?

Another uniquely Philadelphia problem is the recent growth in the sheer number of theater companies while the audience and funding pool remains relatively static. In the past five years alone, at least eight new companies have offered their productions for consideration in the Barrymore Awards process, with another half-dozen newcomers struggling even to qualify. In some respects, Philadelphia theater troupes today may be like fast-growing corporations that find themselves over-extended with debt. If this is the case, then it explains why even Philadelphia’s larger-budget theaters staged many shows with casts of three or fewer this season; in an atmosphere of over-expansion, you have that many more theaters (and actors) vying for the same funds and audiences. From a purely economic standpoint, Philadelphia may have too many theater companies right now for the region’s own artistic good.

The virtue of a small-cast play lies in its ability to concentrate intensely and explore their subject matter in just a few characters. Something You Did, at People’s Light, powerfully focused the themes of punishment and redemption solely upon the unintending criminals and those directly affected by crimes committed long ago in the service of praiseworthy ideals. Red Light Winter, at Theatre Exile, centered on the erotic fixations of a prevaricating prostitute and her neurotic one-time client. But it’s a rare playwright like Athol Fugard (who gave us three gems this past season: The Island, Master Harold...and the Boys, and My Children, My Africa!) who can do more with a small cast than simply focus upon the personalities or personal relationships of the very few characters presented. I would hate to see the mainstay of the theater reduced to the subject matter of, say, Lantern Theater’s Q.E.D.—an examination of, as physicists would put it, the very smallest things.

Searching for George Bernard Shaw

More important, what’s the point of creating an ostensibly communal and shared experience in front of hundreds if all a theater company intends to present is an examination of society’s most atomized relationships? A theater community that can’t support or simply won’t often perform large actor productions can’t produce the majority of the significant works in the historical canon.

Anyone who wants to see Shaw (for example) must either head to the low-overhead suburban community theaters in the suburbs (like the Players Club of Swarthmore, The Stagecrafters or the King of Prussia Players) or fight with students for tickets at the universities. That, or wait through long stretches until a local professional company meets the goals of its five-year fund-raising plan.

A newly arrived outsider might conclude from the local drama menu that most Philadelphia theater companies have overdosed on new plays and/or are incapable of performing the classics. Colossal undertakings like Caroline or Galileo have become the rare exceptions.

Given the choice, if I simply wanted to watch the interaction between two people played out dramatically, I’d rather go sit in a bar and wait for a couple to get drunk and fight. At least there, I’d only pay for my drinks.



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