COMMENTS
623
more people," says Socrates in Iris Murdoch's new Platonic dia–
logue,
Art and Eros.
Art speaks to more people only if it is enabled to
do so.
If
the serious theatre in this country acts as a mere embellish–
ment or cave dweller of society, if it fails to seek out the strongest
encounter with the widest cross section of people, and instead suc–
cumbs to fashion, cultural snobbery, passionate and partisan
intensities, the complacency of a commodity, or any of the other
alibis which fill the void of a missing public dimension, then it will be
that much closer to dwindling into just another consumer want,
toward which the new economic order and so many other forces in
America are pushing it . And then the particular thrust and strut of
American theatre which so many of us admire, the urgency with
which America's best art makes its statements without the shelter of
tradition or classicism or habit, will be that much more confined .
