<p>nicksmtmom, not everyone liked “Angels…”. In fact, many critics disliked it intensely. No Tony matters to me, nor would it to you. What matters to any audience member is the experience they are having with the play. You clearly didn’t have a good experience in the first 75 minutes, so you left. It is a difficult play to be sure. </p>
<p>But our job as faculty is to teach the art form. Making someone cry or tap their toes really isn’t that hard. But making people think, truly take them on the journey and sustain that journey from start to finish. That takes an artist, with craft, discipline and talent. Training is about craft, talent and discipline and to achieve those things we need to take the students outside of their comfort zones. Nobody can understand where they are unless they leave that place. Everyone needs to understand where they are willing to go, and where they cannot go. They need to define themselves as people in order to define themselves as artists. That’s not an easy journey. But it in many ways begins to separate entertainers (and I don’t use that term in the pejorative) from artists. </p>
<p>"When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, “We’re all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.” If you’re not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that. -DAVID MAMET</p>