The Actor as Private Man

Extract

If, as I suspect, we are pausing for prophecy, then we might as well admit that, where dreams for the theatre in America are concerned, we must be so many Cassandras. The timbre of our pessimism need not ring with the old lugubrious echo of the original tragic Greek; to be fair to our time, when we have to believe that we control our fate, the echo can be taken from the Giraudoux Cassandra, ironic, bemused and mad only to those who are madder than we are. The question should not be, “What's next in theatre?” but rather, “What ought to be in theatre (and when, if ever)?” “What's next” bears the misleading implication that we have truly been somewhere in theatre and that there are signs, people, and forces clearly leading us somewhere else.