We are learning again that the inside can't survive without the outside. In the case of theater, the inside is a set of retail outfits, whose efforts at cooperation are designed to abet individualism first. In many such organizations, the staff's tacit hope is for a middle-class life, a decent wage. There is room for the new in a middle-class aesthetic, but every new thing must be new in roughly the same way. Institutions are built on a faith in a resting place, in safety, in a stable home as a happy place for art.
Many regional theaters have long histories of remarkable work.
But institutions on the inside have trouble making mistakes. Since continuance and accountability are built into their missions, they come to crisis when the world stops or skips. Nature, however, is not continuous and is never accountable. Larger theaters that have lost grip of their spirits allow art, without causing it. They are liberal, static, and sad.