by Chelsea Sutton

I was lamenting to a friend just earlier today that I don’t think my voice has a place within American Theatre.

I tend to be too strange or impossible for many theatres. And too normie, too traditional for others. I’m solidly in that “too weird” or “too much” category that does not qualify me for popular entertainment, and definitely doesn’t fit me into the artistic elite.

I was meeting folks for the first time at a residency recently, and I mentioned going to Meow Wolf — an experience I actually really love, especially the one in Santa Fe. And the experimental artist I was speaking with immediately shut it down as commercial, called it “dumb” and the precursor to things like the Ice Cream Museum. I felt shame almost immediately. This was a clear moment where I was able to place myself in the rankings at this residency — I’m too dumb to ever be a serious artist, too gullible by pop entertainment and selfie museums.

I’m not enough of an “artist” to be taken seriously but I’m also not enough of a pop artist to ever make any money.

I think there is room for all kinds of aesthetics and styles in the American Theatre. And I’ve been wrestling with my place in it for a long time.

But then of course the NEA and the Kennedy Center may be falling. The few national establishments that dictate what theatre is in this country will be narrowing their scope to only pieces about how great the Constitution is, etc. Wanting only plays that uphold ideals, and never question them.

We have such a long fight ahead. And so much of the turmoil over the last 10 years has sometimes made it seem like this art stuff doesn’t matter, when people are dying and infrastructure is crumbling.

And maybe on some level it doesn’t. But then you threaten our Kennedy Centers, and the possibility — nay, the reality — of a real, actual oppression of art. Of our voices. And it is terrifying. And it also makes the art seem even more important.

And we need all of us. The experimental, the popular, the weird ones in the middle to resist. Because rather than trying to fit into the American Theatre, we’re going to have to build a new one. And American Theatre 2.0.