To the editors:
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Although written with a good deal of affection, Miner’s article clearly illuminated the basic flaw in Tom’s approach to his work, a flaw which eventually sunk both him and the theater which he was hired to guide. It is a flaw that was also apparent two days after his arrival in Chicago when he told the Page 10 section of the Sun-Times that Chicago theater lacked ambition and churned out mediocrity–an opinion he was able to offer without the benefit of having seen much, if any, local work. Tom was always willing to prejudge and form impressions based on little or no information if that prejudgment favored his preconceived opinion.
The comments Tom made came in the forms of choice and interpretation of the subject matter. We were treated to views of Chicagoans as illiterate gangsters (Little Caesar) and post-nuclear animals incapable of intelligence (Betawulf). Women were invariably viewed as ball-busters (Rubber City, The Stranger in Stanley’s Room) and victims somehow deserving of their violent fate (Titus Andronicus, Betawulf). These views were continually backed up by his negative comments in the press and at the League of Chicago Theatres retreats about the “backwardness” and “stupidity” of both the artists and theater patrons of Chicago.
The only point in the article where my sympathy was aroused came towards the end when Tom characterized the citizens of Fairbanks as “fundamentalist Christians and liberal granola crunchers.” Sadly, it made me think of the old maxim, “Those who do not heed the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.”
