The Fabulous Invalid and Robust Alternatives

It's been well over a week since I last posted; those pesky classes have been keeping me busy, believe it or not (we just finished the first week back in classes at Queen's University). Anyway, by way of making amends, here're a few observations I discussed at some length in my first class of the new year.

Naturally, the theatre changed a great deal over the last century, and it can be interesting to look at some of the specific ways in which this change has occurred and to consider the reasons for and implications of the changes. Consider the example of Broadway, "the fabulous invalid":

In the 1927-28 season, there were 264 new productions that opened on Broadway.
In 1930-31, only four years later, it was down to 187 new productions.
By 1940-41, it was down to 60 new productions.
In 1967-68, it had not dropped much further, for there were 58 new productions.
But by 1989-90, there were only 35 new productions.

Now, this may look like a straightforward if disheartening tale of decline. But we need to look further past those simple numbers and think about the explanations. We can interpret some of those numbers fairly plausibly by saying, for example, that in 1927 the “Talkies” had come along and in 1929 the Great Depression, and that these had taken a bite out of the audiences. In the 1930’s when the Great Depression was in full swing, radio had become the central medium. Yet, by that token, it seems odd that after television took off in the 1950s, Broadway should still be doing so well near the end of the 1960s. To be sure, one might answer that this was also a time of great prosperity, and increasing leisure time and tourism, but still, the subsequent decline through the 1970s then becomes a little confusing at first glance.

But one Broadway show is not exactly the same as another, and it's interesting to see what happens to the breakdown of the genres of Broadway entertainment. Those 58 new shows of 1967-68 comprised 14 musicals and 44 non-musicals. But those 35 new shows of 1989-90 comprised 12 musicals (of which 6 were revivals) and 21 non-musicals (plus 2 “special attractions” which fit into neither category). So while the number of musicals was relatively undiminished at that point, the non-musical shows were still in decline. But a glance at the theatre listings of last week's Sunday Times (7 January 2007) showed that there were 35 shows currently playing on Broadway (four of the thirty-nine theatres were dark while they were in turn-over). Of these, 27 were musicals (a full 23 of which were either revivals or at least two seasons old), and only 8 were non-musicals (4 of which were revivals). Now that is a very significant change in the character of Broadway.

Now, one of the related stories to this transformation of Broadway lies in the demographic shift which has occurred in the audiences---whether this is cause or effect is, I am sure, impossible to say for sure. It was reported in the New York Times last month (and thanks to Michael Murphy for pointing this out to me) that "The latest demographic report from the League of American Theaters and Producers, the marketing umbrella agency for Broadway, shows that during the 2005-6 season, 19 percent of Broadway theatergoers were from New York City, down from 31 percent in 1980-81" ("The Great White-Bread Way," NYT, 10 Dec 2006). So Broadway has really become mainly a tourist attraction. It is no longer "New Yorkers' theatre" to which others visit. It is now a theatre principally for others.

Meanwhile, the traditional (and by traditional, I am thinking back as far as Classical Greece) use of theatre as a unifying and defining event for a specific community has been displaced from Broadway to the outlying regions of North America. Consider the example of Canada, where, prior to that watershed 1967-68 Broadway season, we had a handful of really important theatres: those that had been established in the 1950’s, including the Stratford Festival and Theatre du nouveau monde; and a few others that had been added in the 1960’s, including Shaw Festival, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Vancouver Playhouse and so on. But none of these produced much Canadian drama to speak of. The theatre in this country was, largely, a foreign theatre.

But 1967-68 was a watershed season in Canada for other reasons, for it closed off the national centennial celebrations and left the country with a strong interest in nationalism to fuel theatrical aspirations. And it was in the years following, we saw founded in Canada an immense number of important theatres which made a huge contribution to the national drama, such as: Confederation Arts Centre, National Arts Centre, Great Canadian Theatre Company, St Lawrence Centre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Toronto Free Theatre, Blyth Festival, Thousand Islands Playhouse, Alberta Theatre Projects, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Globe Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Persephone Theatre, Belfry Theatre, and so on.

And it is here, in these smaller regional theatres---not just in Canada, but in the United States too, of course; though that is somewhat outside my expertise---that the traditional functions of theatre are being upheld.

I've got more thoughts about this, but no more spare time to explore them at the moment, so I'll have to leave off there.

Tractatus Logico-Westernicus

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Talk low, talk slow, and don’t talk too much.” — John Wayne

Apparently, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was a great fan of movie westerns. Which pleases me, because I am a fan of both. I imagine that what appealed to Wittgenstein in the western was partly the economy of the sparse dialogue, which is so characteristic of the genre and is roughly parallel to the terseness of Wittgenstein’s own style; and perhaps it was partly too the way in which metaphysical questions are, in the best westerns, evoked, engaged and explored by the action and the cinematography without any attempt to settle them in an explicit verbal way. To be sure, there are trite westerns, just as there is pretentious philosophy, but the best of each expand our horizons, help us to take a broad perspective.

As a side note, I don’t know how well it is known, even now, that Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolph Hitler were classmates when they were about twelve to fourteen years old, at the Realschule in Linz, Austria.


It’s astonishing to think of; and one wonders if Hitler’s irrational hatred of Jews took some root in what must have been the depressing evidence of his own mediocrity when he found himself sharing a classroom with young Ludwig. In any case, Wittgenstein is presumably the boy alluded to in Mein Kampf: “In high school I did learn to know a Jewish boy, whom we all treated cautiously, only because various experiences had taught us to doubt his reliability.”

Now Hitler, there was someone who talked loud, talked fast and talked far, far too much.

Historical Questions for New Year's Eve

I was out having drinks with my friend Danyal last night, and I was telling her about how earlier this week a news item had declared that a researcher, after combing through the human bones and litter in the basement of an abandoned Tuscan church and then conducting DNA and chemical tests, had conclusively proven that Francesco Medici (and almost certainly his wife too) died of poisoning in the late 16th century---likely at the hands of his brother, Cardinal Fernando. Thus, a more-than-four-centuries-old rumour was confirmed. This led us into a sort of (admittedly somewhat nerdy) parlour game for while in which we thought of different things we would like to find out from history. I was thinking about this again today, and I occurred to me that, given that New Year's Eve is a time for looking back, I should record some of these for your amusement, gentle reader:

What was said in the fifteen-minute conversation between Charlotte Corday and Jean-Paul Marat between the time she was left alone with him while he sat in his bathtub (v. the famous David painting) and when she actually stabbed him to death?

What was the acting of Richard Burbage, David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Edmund Kean and others really like?

Did Jane Austen really talk in the way that she wrote?

What were Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed like, as public speakers? Is it blasphemous to wonder if they used notes?

What did Salome's dance look like?

Why, given that Hannibal, the legendary Carthaginian general, spent about sixteen years in Italy with his army, ravaging the country, did he never in all that time build siege equipment so that he could take the city of Rome?

How sexy really was Cleopatra? If the artists who portrayed her were competent and she had to make up for a none-too-prepossessing appearance, how exactly did she do that? A demonstration, please.

Did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really die in Bolivia, or did they make it back to the USA?

If we can only see one of all the many lost Greek tragedies, can we please just see the most amazing of them? Is the very best of the Greek tragedies actually one of the extant group?

Was Shakespeare bisexual? Was he Catholic or Protestant?

Who were the dark lady and the fair young man of the sonnets?

What the hell was the book publisher Warburton's cook thinking when she used all those single copies of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays to line her pie pans?

What really did happen to Ambrose Small, the Canadian multi-millionaire owner of the Grand Theatres chain, who one day in Toronto in 1919 simply disappeared off the street in the block or two between his bank (where he had just deposited a check for $1 million) and his office? For that matter, what happened to Ambrose Bierce, the author of "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" who disappeared in Mexico just a few years earlier? Was someone, after all, just collecting Ambroses?

Moose Marsh

Let’s face it: most of the classic ballet stories seem pretty dumb when you remove all the dancing and just look at the little synopsis they give you in the programme. And, of course, all those old ballets are so terribly Eurocentric, built on corny European folk-tales (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty), drawing on European stereotypes (beautiful princesses and handsome princes), and featuring Europeanish fauna (swans, fauns and, uh...firebirds?). This past summer, driving along highway two, and with nothing better to occupy my mind, I asked myself: why not early Canadian ballets? Ones with dumb Canadian stories, embarrassing Canadian stereotypes and exclusively Canadian (or, at least North American), fauna? Where, in heaven’s name, were they? Determined to rectify this nationally mortifying cultural lacuna, I set to work, and so it is my pleasure to offer you the synopsis of Moose Marsh:

Act I: The Garrison

Pokinfunatus, a Huron maiden who works in the tavern and household of the sorcerer, Comte Frontenac, is admired for her startling resemblance to a patronizing racial stereotype by all the voyageurs who pass through the garrison on their way upstream; but she is especially beloved by Ti-jean, a French-Canadian trapper who is no slouch in the offensive stereotype department himself, and who supplies venison to the Comte’s kitchen, where it is prepared for the hungry and loutish voyageurs who regularly stop at the Frontenac garrison. Comte Frontenac is engaged to an aristocratic woman named Showerilde (legal disclaimer: any resemblance to Bathilde, from the ballet Giselle, is purely coincidental) but has become bored with her. Having spied Pokinfunatus as she brings large platters of meat from the kitchen, he uses his black magic to disguise himself as one of the voyageurs, and in this guise demands that she dance for the voyageur team. As the tom-toms play an appalling pastiche of “aboriginal music,” she does so, the Comte and the voyageurs shouting their boorish encouragement while Ti-jean looks on anxiously. Pleased with Pokinfunatus’s performance, Comte Frontenac declares that he will marry her. Pokinfunatus raises a pretty eyebrow at this and is about to retort, when suddenly she is interrupted by Ti-jean, who declares the Comte to be a fraud who is already engaged to Showerilde. Pokinfunatus immediately rebuffs the Comte with a withering arm-crossing and tongue-clucking. The red-faced Comte vows vengeance upon them both and when Pokinfunatus snorts contemptuously, saying “talk to the ‘how sign’”, she is suddenly made to vanish in a puff of smoke. Enraged, Ti-jean attempts to attack the Comte, but he is restrained by the other voyageurs who, heavily inebriated and to be frank, somewhat slow on the uptake at the best of times, still believe the Comte to be one of their own. Ti-jean, in hopes of both finding Pokinfunatus and conclusively exposing the Comte’s imposture to the other voyageurs, puts on a tuque and a preposterous beard and as the voyageurs depart he joins the group, slipping unnoticed beneath the large canoe as it is portaged across the stage in the famous “canoe dance” (a challenging piece choreographed for eight males who in a series of dazzling arabesques and pirouettes, create the impression that a 600lb canoe is floating, while being able to see nothing but one another’s feet).

Act II: The Enchanted Marsh

In the event, it has proved unnecessary for Ti-jean to expose the Comte to the voyageurs, because he is quickly expelled from the team because of his incompetent paddling and his maddeningly incessant complaints about the mosquitoes and blackflies and the blisters on his pale aristocratic hands. Fleeing the voyageurs’ brandished paddles, Comte Frontenac escapes into the woods, pursued by Ti-jean. However the Comte eludes Ti-jean, who, now lost and exhausted, comes to the edge of an enchanted marsh where he collapses. As dusk falls, a pack of porcupines (the female corps du ballet) emerge for an evening dance on the shore, a performance that involves a good deal of skill not only in imitating the extremely short-legged gait, but, especially during the linked-armed sequence, in the dexterous avoidance of one another’s spiky tutus. (Perhaps it is needless to remark that any less than fastidious observance of port de bras here will have painful consequences.) After a preliminary dance, a pack of beavers (the male corps du ballet) arrives, and the two rodent choruses pair off for a series of virtuosic displays of waddling. Lurking near the back of the pack of porcupines is one with an improbable long black braid and a jagged-hemmed suede mini-dress (looking a little peculiar, to be sure, draped as it is over all those quills), by means of which clues Ti-jean recognizes Pokinfunatus. She shyly comes forward—although Ti-jean suggests that it might be best if she did not come too close—and explains that they have been bewitched by Comte Frontenac. She says that the many women who have refused the Comte’s embraces have been transformed into porcupines (“My sweet unembraceable you,” he had snarled); the beavers had all been young men whom the Comte had coaxed into clearing tracts of land on which they were promised they could settle, but, when they had finished, he invited them to his tavern and, once they were drunk, transformed them, with his trademark heavy-handed irony (“Come along, you eager beavers! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!”), so that he could seize their farmland for himself. The marsh emerged from all the half-finished glasses of beer that were left at the tavern, most of which, she adds with a certain distaste, were almost certainly corrupted by back-wash. Now each evening, they all gather by the edge of the marsh and wait for the moonlight, when they will briefly resume their human forms. The conversation is interrupted when suddenly the beavers begin slapping their “tails” (danced by means of the highly taxing “rapid-squat” technique) to warn of the approach, through the marsh, of a giant Moose. The Moose boastfully attempts to intimidate the beaver-males by means of a series of giant leaps which they cannot possibly match with their short rodent legs, but Ti-jean, abetted, at least in appearance, by his thigh-high leather boots, surpasses the Moose by leaping back and forth over its back and winning the applause of the chorus. Suddenly the envious and humilated Moose charges Ti-jean, who deftly leaps over a beaver dam which the Moose, in his rage, is tripped up by. Having the Moose at his mercy, Ti-jean declares that, having noticed that the Moose’s antlers are improbably pristine and fuzz-free in a manner with which only an aristocrat would bother himself, he believes the Moose to be the Comte in disguise, and threatens to have the Comte’s head stuffed and mounted back in his own dining-room unless he reveals himself immediately. Comte Frontenac reveals himself at the very moment that the moon rises and the rodent-dancers begin a transformation back to their human shapes, a process which, Comte Frontenac declares, he will allow to be permanent when the dawn comes. A celebratory dance ensues, and the Comte, moved to penitence by the joy of the others, offers to dance with each of the maidens in turn to choose one of them to be his wife. This, alas, proves an imprudent promise, for the maidens have not quite divested themselves of all of their porcupine traits. However, the Comte, nothing if not a man of his word, persists in dancing with one partner after another, until, bristling like a sea-urchin, he falls into the marsh of beer dregs and backwash and drowns disgustingly. Ti-jean and the beaver-men —very carefully— lead Pokinfunatus and the porcupine-maidens on a dance back towards the garrison.

(And listen, before anyone asks: no, I really don't have "a thing" about porcupines, although I will admit to finding it mildly fascinating that something so funny-looking can also be so terrifying, and also to having woken up with nightmares for several nights running about a decade ago, immediately after I was forced to use pliers to remove half-a-dozen quills from my dog's mouth...ONE...AT...A...TIME. Make what you will of that, Dr Freud.)

Hatfields and McCoys

One frequently hears an argument made about the relevance of the theatre in the modern age, even from rather arcane artists like the director Peter Sellars, to this effect: “it is our responsibility, in our contemporary multi-media society, to do more than move audiences to feel (which a well-produced tv commercial can do in 15 seconds). We must instead move them to some kind of change perhaps even some kind of action.”

I take Sellars’ point about the futility of merely concentrating on invoking emotions. Stimulants of that sort can be had terribly cheaply. Furthermore, living in our sophisticated media-savvy world, many of us have become so used to this sort of manipulation that we are, if not altogether inured to it, at least ready to shrug off emotions within moments—a sort of necessary aphasia for minds overwhelmed by a media-saturated world.

On the other hand, I have my serious doubts about the suggestion that we should undertake to move people to action with the theatre. For if we consider this to be the main purpose of theatre, frankly, there are far better vehicles for doing so. The television or the internet, for example, used deftly, will reach far more people more immediately than any theatrical production. Moreover, even more troubling, to me — and perhaps to others — is the question of whether the director (or playwright, perhaps) must then decide ahead of time what action, exactly, she wants to make people take. If she does, isn't that pretty manipulative? And, in these terms, would that mean that the best production was that which was most lucid in its propagandistic intentions? (Anyone for the Soviet “boy-meets-tractor” plays?) And if she doesn’t, isn’t that pretty irresponsible? (“I shifted people out of their apathy: some of them became missionary doctors and others suicide bombers...”)

Having said that, of course, one must accept that there have been many people who felt, or at least have said that they felt, that this was, indeed, the task of theatre. Bertolt Brecht, for example, seems to suggest this in his theories; and who can doubt that he is one of the Twentieth Century’s most important playwrights? At the same time, we see, ladies and gentleman, in the other corner, wearing the black trunks, the number one contender, Samuel Beckett. If we look into Beckett’s plays with the question of what sort of action they are advocating in mind, we are likely to conclude that he wants nothing from us other than complete inertia. Some of us will not be comfortable resting with such a means of measuring the validity of theatrical work, then. Naturally, others are, and it is perhaps this which has led some commentators to conclude that all theatrical scholars or practitioners had to fall into one of two mutually exclusive camps—the Hatfields and McCoys of twentieth-century theatre: Brechtians or Beckettians.

I, however, repudiate that conclusion, happily having a foot in each camp. But that does rather force me to come up with some answer to the dilemma of how to reconcile Brecht’s (apparent) insistence on action-advocacy with Beckett’s (apparent) complete indifference toward anything of the kind (but cf. his Catastrophe). Well, I think the answer lies in this: what theatre does, better than anything else, better than any other art form, better than any other form of communication, is pose questions about the relation between the individual and society. And it is my belief that this is the crucial imperative facing us theatrical practitioners (and scholars): to identify the questions we want to ask —sometimes very old and yet perennially vital, sometimes very new and startling— about what sort of people we are, what sort of people we want to be and what sort of world we want to share.

Favourite Actor

Occasionally I am asked to name my favourite actor, and the question seems to throw me into a mild panic, perhaps because I have never sat back to consider methodically the question: what are the elements that combine to make an actor a favourite? It's difficult to consider the question apart from the characters the actor has played, of course. (Who can tell the dancer from the dance?) But, supposing one can, where a single character has been played by multiple actors...? In the case of the many actors who have played James Bond, for example, I can say confidently that Sean Connery remains my favourite. But why? It obviously doesn't merely have to do with how "realistic" the actor is (that, for better or worse, would probably go to Daniel Craig), and even less, I think, with how physically appealing the actor is (Pierce Brosnan would win out there, I guess, though this may be thought tepid praise in any case, coming as it does from a heterosexual man). Rather, I think it has something to do with rather more abstract qualities which we find compelling. To draw an analogy, I'd say that just as we may find Louis Armstrong's phrasing of a particular song deeply memorable and indeed, compellingly imitable, so do we admire the music an actor brings to certain characters. Considered in these terms---and without even entering into the parallel column of assessment, which would have to do with the physical equivalent of music: the dance of facial features and bodily posture---I am beginning to suspect that my favourite actor of all time may be the late Mel Blanc --- the man who provided the voices of Foghorn Leghorn, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester the Cat, Wile E. Coyote (Genius), the Tasmanian Devil and every other bit character in the Looney Tunes cartoons. The truth is that I remember more of the subtleties of his inflections, delight in the details of more of his deliveries, relish in more of his comic timing, and find more joy in his flamboyance than in the work of pretty much any other actor I can name. Now that's compelling work. So, here's to Mel.

Subsidies and The Supposed Right-Wing Intellectual Deficit

(As will become apparent, there is a sort of pun in the title of this blog which inevitably arises from the complaints made by conservative commentators such as that to which I have provided a link below.)

Every so often, I feel compelled to wearily answer the neo-conservative, pseudo-Darwinist suggestion that the natural way of things demands that theatre should respond to the market economy, and accordingly, if it cannot survive on the free market, it would be better to atrophy and die.

Really, this is tiresome silliness. For example, let's look at the idea that theatre's “natural” state is to be commercially viable. The fact is that, historically, no theatrical activities which posterity has considered “important” have ever been totally self-sustaining. From the time of classical Athens, when the support of wealthy benefactors to pay the costs of the productions along with the Periclean theoric fund (to subsidize playgoers) was necessary, through to Elizabethan England, when Shakespeare's company depended on the patronage of the crown and various wealthy supporters (the equivalent of subsidy rather than corporate sponsorship, because the decision was not made—or at least not entirely—with regard to concerns about whether the support would “enhance profit”), through to any current leading theatre company, the necessity of subsidy to abet the creative communal focus embodied by theatre has been accepted and embraced. Theatre is a communal art form, and its presence always has been vital to the health of any literate community, a point which may be demonstrated by a long string of historical examples.

Now one response to this point is to argue, along the lines suggested by Adam Smith, that it is the “invisible hand of the market” which best expresses the will of the community, and that in such a perspective, arts subsidies must be considered an abomination. Indeed, this reasoning runs, the only real resistance ever offered to the will of the market economy comes at the hands of so-called “elitist intellectuals.” In short, the suggestion is that, protecting any aspect of a culture from the rough and tumble of a free-market economy is inherently elitist, and is a notion fostered purely by “left-wing cabals.” Inevitably, at this point, the finger points toward universities: what are they teaching there, anyway? (And here, of course, is where I feel the two sides of my career moving together to be galvanized into a coherent defence). Along these lines, there have been a number of recent suggestions, in the United States especially, that academia at large has been insufficiently respectful of conservative ideas

For a sterling example, of this sort of argument, CLICK HERE.

But this suggestion of “unfairness” is based on specious reasoning. No natural, nor any other sort of law suggests that there should be any absolute apportionment of right- and left-wing ideas in academia. Rather, plausible ideas are presented for consideration and —here we smile gently at those cherish Adam Smith’s reasoning— must be considered in the rough-and-tumble of free debate. The reason that theories of a flat earth do not have currency nowadays is not because of any conspiracy against such ideas, but simply because they do not stand up to sustained logical scrutiny. Similarly, if neo-conservative ideas have less currency in academia, it is probably because their flaws are more easily exposed upon any deeper consideration.

Now, to be fair in this matter, rather than relying on any biased characterization, let’s turn to an actual advocate of neo-conservative philosophy. For example, consider this quotation from a neo-conservative explication of the free-market philosophy of Frederich von Hayek, one of the central thinkers in the neo-conservative pantheon:

“The price mechanism of the free market serves to convey information about supply and demand that is dispersed among many consumers and producers and which cannot be assembled or coordinated efficiently in any other way. The abysmal failure of command economies, or of command devices in mixed capitalistic economies, vindicated the prediction originally made by Ludwig von Mises in 1920, and later promoted by Hayek, that only a free market could coordinate an efficient allocation of resources into productive industries. Hayek thus shared with Hume a profound conviction that 'we should be sensible of our ignorance.’” (http://www.friesian.com/hayek.htm)

This is a good example of the half-wittedness (I'm afraid I feel I must choose between that pejorative and “disingenuousness,” which seems to be worse because it implies moral turpitude rather than merely incompetent thinking) of the “free-market” advocates. In this model, the monetary unit (for example, the dollar) is taken to represent a perfect embodiment and expression of the will, the determination of the people. But they aren't thinking things through. Because they need to answer: why, in any realistic ethical model, should the person with more dollars in his wallet have an opinion inherently more valuable than that of the person who has less dollars in his wallet?

This is what I mean by “half-wittedness.” There is, in such neo-conservative assertions, a total refusal or inability to recognize that linking political franchise to buying power entails a momentous ethical problem: that capitalism inevitably ensures an inequitable and insensible distribution of financial means with regard to individual identity, and that this inequity is an abomination in the sight of democratic principles (not to mention any sensible awareness of how the common weal might not be identical to personal profit). Why, for example, should the opinion of Bill Gates inherently matter more than the opinion of, say, Jared Diamond, the writer I alluded to in a previous posting, who wrote Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse? Gates spent most of his career discovering ways of harnessing the current discoveries about computer programming for maximum personal profit; Diamond spent most of his career understanding how the world has found itself in the environmental crisis it is now in, and in trying to recognize what history has to tell us about how to avoid ultimate catastrophe. Gates has his reward for being shrewd and a little ruthless in finding himself a multi-billionaire; but should we also offer him proportionately more say in how our society should be run than Diamond, who, ultimately, has concentrated all his brilliant intellect on just that very question? Who should have more of a say in the future of our civilization? The richer or the more thoughtful person? Those who believe with a faith that seems quasi-religious, in the clarity and purity of the free market, will say Bill Gates. Those who believe that the convictions of individual persons, and not their relative spending powers, should determine social policy, will answer differently, for they are looking for ways for individually non-profitable and yet socially-beneficial ideas to be heard above the roar of commercialism.

In short, there can be no doubt that completely state-controlled economies, such as the Soviet Union, amply have shown their limitations; but so, again and again, have the unfettered activities of free-market economies. The reason that academics tend to favour social-liberalism is not that they believe it to be a perfect answer for our problems, but merely that they believe it to be less bad than any other system heretofore suggested.

I will return to the question of public subsidies for the theatre in a future posting. I bet you can't wait.