Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States

In spite of what the New York crowd would have you believe, local theater is alive and well. Across the Hudson, even beyond New Jersey there is a culture that is alive. In many cases this culture is reflected in a theater that is far removed from Broadway, and ignored by the Broadway play wrights. Ms. Cohen-Cruz (although a New Yorker) has looked outside the New York boundries and studied both the history and the current state of local theater. She has looked at the South and at the larger regional theaters around the country and described the vitality that exists there. This book is really good in its analysis of local theater. I think, however, she needs to do one more book. I live in the far west, and there is theater here as well. Many smaller communities have amateur productions that relate to the unique culture they have. Salt Lake City, for instance, has two. One, put on by the Mormon Church tells the story of the development of their religion and it's life in the Salt Lake valley. The other is a secular production that is rewritten each year to poke fun at the foibles of the church and local government. Here, further west than that I'm off this weekend to see a local play called Cathouse Afternoon. It does not reflect church values.