Answer the following questions in clearly written sentences, as a paragraph or series of paragraphs:

• What is the author’s thesis/main idea?
• How is the argument structured: what points are made to support thesis and in what order?
• How does the author support her opinion? What kind of evidence does she use?
• What conclusion does the article draw?

• Thesis: Theatre is dead.
• Argument: Very cyclical, propaganda-like statements that don’t actually say anything at all. The conclusions are decided and then minimal evidence is twisted to support them.
• No evidence. There’s just opinions mounted onto more opinions, supported by things that happened without mentioning the things that happened afterwards.

In the article “There is No Revolution, Televised or Otherwise”, Kristine Nutting argues that Theatre is dead, and that there is no room for post-revolution, or revolution at all, when it will be turned against the Theatre to kill it even more. Nutting expresses her opinion in this article with strong words and voice, leaving no room left for argument.

Theatre is dead, leaving behind no reason to revolutionize it. This is ideal for the industry, as “death is even more beautifully marketable than revolution because it can be modelled [sic] and posed” (86:2) for magazines. Gil Scott Heron is referenced, though the words being responded to aren’t quoted. It is stated that he is wrong and that the revolution wasn’t kept off of television, it simply never happened. People are too afraid to talk about ideas and the arts are dwindling and watered down. Nothing great moves on because mediocrity is what is rewarded. The shallow, forgettable empathy raised in simpler, safer plays is mocked and Nutting states that Theatre should be allowed to “die with the symptoms of late capitalism” (87:3) and “die with its white, upper middle-class audience–all over the age of 55.” (87:3) Anything that attempts to be more than safe is deemed offensive and having no worth. It calls the theatre out on producing play after play about “a white family and their dismal lives” (87:5). Theatre has become nothing more that “Art with a capital A, pretty art that means nothing” (87:5), and is something that nobody but the actors themselves enjoy for any reason deeper than how pretty everything was.

Nutting calls out our culture on reducing us to voyeurs at a peepshow, which is the only thing that is honest anymore. The article has several images and brief information from “Pig: A Peepshow of Forbidden Acts from the Farm” in sidebars.

The text is very cyclical but it always moves back to the primary conclusion of the article: Theatre is dead.