I'm a fan of theatre and I'm feeling depressed. The cause of my depression is the fall lineup at the major houses. "A Naked Girl on the Appian" way is at Roundabout, "Fran's Bed" is at Playwrights Horizon, "Absurd Person Singular" is at MTC. At Vineyard there's a musical about slavery. The comedy "A Naked Girl" revolves around a rich family of writers in the Hamptons over an excitable weekend. "Fran's Bed" seems like it's a memory play having to do with a bed-ridden woman's mid-life crisis, played by Mia Farrow. "Absurd Person Singular" is an Ayckbourn play set around a cocktail party. Is it just me or does this seem pretty anemic, especially considering the times we’re living in? In the age of terrorism, war, exploding absurdities and hypocrisies, life-and-death struggles for freedom, love, liberty, life, rampant fanaticism, rising poverty and declining faith, why do most of the big plays premiering this fall seem like they're something out of a English tea room, pre-Wilde? Why would anyone want to blow $100 on a tepid, stagey, feeling-okay version of a itcom? Where are these plays coming from? I feel like I'm in a time warp. Granted, I'm a 26-year-old Black male. In the theatre world, I'm in the very small minority. But I'm not asking for Black work, just work that strikes as present and fresh. But if I were to get on the minority issue, there are two plays with minorities in them: one is about slavery and the other is a 20+ year old dusty piece of kitchen sink realism, "The Soldier's Play" by Charles Fuller. Are you kidding me?!! A Black slave and an angry soldier. And I'm not asking for purely topical plays. I hate hot-button issue art. But there has to be some sort of connection to reality, to what most Americans are living through, to a historical age that we might look back on as the beginning of the anti-crusades or the waning glory of our empire, the rise of China, the clash of fundamentalism (Christian, Jewish, Muslin). Can we find a higher form of plot above a couple of white people with cocktails, stuck in a room, or a bed, or a house in the Hamptons? Okay, so what I am asking, begging, in desperate search of when I approach the altar of theatre? What I seek is a crowd filled with people, of different colors, from different neighborhoods, belonging to different classes, in rapt attention, nodding their head, feeling empathy, sympathy, maybe even a catharsis. What I came to expect from theatre was a room where magic happened due to the primal, the visceral, the universal. "Angels in America" came to us in search of something higher and truer amid the death and decadence of urban life. "Porgy and Bess" in Moscow, "Death of a Salesman" in Beijing. What I expect is at least the attempt at speaking to the citizens of the world, not the graying patrons of Broadway, but CITIZENS of the world. Have we become so cynical that we don't even expect our artist to strive for universality? Have we become so enamored with celebrity faces and names, that we will stage any slipshod piece for the sake of sticking a name on a billboard? What happened to tragedy, social comedy, sweeping landscapes? What happened to the big emotions, sweeping gestures? Last year, there was a bump in the direction of sweeping theatre. I may have been imagining it but it seemed like there was a temporary backlash against the paper-thin simpering dramas, the feeling-okay lukewarm comedies, and those damn one-man cheapies that are decimating the opportunity for true theatrical dialogue instead of monologue, and action instead of explanation. I may have been dreaming but it seemed like all the awful events which had fallen upon us had struck a chord. There were plenty of awful microwaveable dramas and piece-meal whiny satires against Bush. But amidst the shrieking, last year there were some plays that reminded me of why I go to see theatre. And above all, there was a desperate and energetic attempt. Unfortunately it appears that last year was less a revolution against mediocrity than a bump on the road toward the infantilizing of our art. To call theatre an altar these days is met with derision, and rightfully so. Would you want to worship at this temple? A place where dumbed-down safe and sycophantic commercialism has superseded the religious devotion to Art, yes damnit I said Art, with a capital 'A.' The market stalls are now in the temple and the mercenaries do business in the aisles, selling t-shirts, toys and trinkets. Every few years (or more like days) someone blows up about the death of theatre. I know, I've done it, I've watched people do it, I've led drunken theatre students into fits of swearing and cursing against commercial Broadway. But I'm not talking about death. I'm talking about something much worse. If theatre were to die, at least we could give it a respectable burial and move on with our lives. I'm talking about the more insidious debasement of it. The corrosive narrow-minded cynicism against great ideas. Pimping used to be limited to the tourist traps on Broadway, but now it has spread to off-Broadway, off-off Broadway, Brooklyn, community theatre, the Fringe Festival. All the places that were supposed to be in reaction to the soulless White Way. Now it appears we do nothing more than try to ape Broadway's glitter. I'm receiving calls to sign up or resubscribe to some of the off-Broadway houses. But there isn't one thing worth looking at. As a Black man, an American, a fan of theatre, a citizen of the world, a living breathing soul, there is very little that is alive or breathtaking going on. There is nothing spiritual going on in our temples. Aurin Squire PS: They're turning "Spiderman" into a musical. To visit this group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dramatists/