BACK TO THE UNDERGROUND
Does the future belong to non-corporate art?
The essay below appears as the Foreword to Dimes Square and Other Plays by Matthew Gasda, to be published next month by Applause. Gasda, David Levine, and I will be appearing on a panel about the book, moderated by Merve Emre, next Thursday, April 20, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Gasda’s new play, Afters, in which I appear, premieres next week. Tickets are available here, and feel free to avail yourself of the discount code “wealthcommon.”
It would be absurd to say that we are living in a golden age of the underground arts in America. The last half century has seen the consolidation of book publishing under five international corporations. Independent film, which was flourishing as recently as two decades ago, has now become a pendant on a rotating set of franchise pictures screened at multiplexes that are shuttered week after week. Television and popular music are dominated by corporate streaming services that distribute their product by algorithm. Broadway is captive to the jukebox musical, the star-driven revival, and productions that generate hype from topicality.
Yet the same technologies and material conditions that have brought about this scenario cannot help but cause the rise of something like its opposite.