Could you tell me what theatre means to Americans today and what part of their culture it constitutes? How do people in the US perceive theatre within their culture today?
Thanks a lot. 
Dialectgirl
methinks I smell a homework assignment…
Hmm, as an American I perceive theatre as theater.
Indeed, and a horribly-posed one at that.
Americans as a whole are too diverse a group to have one coherent cultural view on anything.
Pick up one month’s worth of Entertainment Weekly. Count how many pages are devoted to movies, TV, music, video games, books, and theater.
Not that that’ll give you a wholly accurate percentage, but it does illustrate the basic interest level that probably exists in the readership (which, I presume, is a fairly mainstream cross-section of the country).
But keep in mind, ArchiveGuy, that pretty much everybody in the country gets to experience the same movies, TV, music, video games, and books. Theater is far more local, so it wouldn’t get the same kind of coverage in a national magazine.
I think the first three replies to the OP say what needs to be said.
This thread, if allowed to stay open, can best be answered in Cafe Society, our forum for the Arts.
But, homework questions are discouraged on the board.
Your call, Uke. 
Moved from GQ, by samclem GQ moderator
Wait. A titty bar’s a theater, right?
I would say outside of a few cities the theatre as cultural force in America is dead or dying.
The only answer is that there is no single answer.
Live theater in the United States has no single cultural meaning or identity.
In small towns, community theater is more of a social construct than art or entertainment. Friends and neighbors get together to work on a project for a few weeks. The townspeople gather around, enjoy the spectacle for a few hours and everyone goes home happy.
Some theater is simply an enterainment form, in competition with cinema, television, concerts and everything else.
A few communities have theater that is cutting-edge art, and serves as training for new authors and actors as well as a testing ground for new ideas and treatments.
[QUOTE=dialectgirl How do people in the US perceive theatre within their culture today?
[/QUOTE]
Mainly visually and aurally. If olfaction is perceived, that’s not a good thing.
I agree, with an exception for Sinese’s Stanley at Steppenwolf.
Although I’d agree that tactile perception brings us into an entirely different category.
There is theatre outside of New York, LA and Chicago? I’m gobsmacked!
I miss the Shakesphere Theatre in Atlanta. Sure it was just gussied-up dinner theatre, really. But the actors had fun and were enthusiastic about their parts. Far better than a lot of other “local” theatre, where it’s obvious the actors are a) resentful of being trapped in a “small town” (theatre-wise); b) pretending that someone from a “real” theater company is in the audience just waiting to whisk them away to Broadway.
Sorry, that should be “Shakespeare Tavern”.
dialect girl, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, we’re glad to have you with us.
Many of our members resent being asked to do homework for someone, and so you might get some slightly hostile responses (your question certainly sounds like a homework assignment.) Other members will be happy to provide you with references and links where you can find the information on your own and deal with it on your own, but you’re unlikely to find anyone writing a three page paper for you.
If we’ve misread the situation, we’re certainly very sorry.
Eh. Do the “guests” get to dance with the cast of Tony and Tina’s Wedding? (I’ve never been, so I don’t know). If so, that would certainly be a tactile dimension without being…erm…too different.
See Waiting for Guffman.
It varies a great deal, and you need to define your terms. The tours of most hit Broadway shows are sold out as they move around the country, and it can vary from the usual Disney and pop fare (Aida, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, 42nd Street) to more daring shows (Urinetown, Copenhagen).
In almost every newer city there are grand old theaters built by the founding fathers between 1870-1920 to show the snobs back East that their city had ‘arrived’; the ones surviving are usually cherished and booked solid.
Regional theaters are probably the best incubators of new plays today, many of which move to Off-Broadway if not Broadway (economics is a big problem today, especially with straight plays–Eve Ensler’s newest, The Good Body, is closing prematurely this weekend). Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco in particular have great theater scenes. And some of them are in cities that are not in the first tier–the George St. Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the Signature in Arlington, Virginia, and the Long Wharf in New Haven, Connecticut come to mind. Top playwrights and composers will premiere stuff there and their fans will travel thousands of miles to see it.
That said, the average person is either very interested in theater or hardly at all. It’s getting more and more expensive and for most families it’s a rare treat, to be planned and enjoyed, but it rarely changes the national discourse any more. The last play I can think of that was discussed nationwide is ten years old–Angels in America.
Now go to broadway.com, playbill.com, theatermania.com, and broadwaystars.com and start researching!
The American Theater is divided into:
- Disney musicals which are like Disney on Ice without the skating but which tons of people see
- Shakespeare that a few people see
- Revivals of Miller and Albee that fewer people see and often only to see Gary Sinese, John Mahoney, and Laurie Metcalf in the flesh instead of on TV
- High school and local theatre productions which are seen by friends and family of the cast
- Small theater productions of new works, which are all about coming to terms with ones homosexuality, why one doesn’t get along with ones parents, or both and which are seen by nobody at all