If you really want to make it in music, you've got to come here. But that's not necessarily the case for stage directors, actors and playwrights. New York is no longer the place where an actor must live to be an actor, said Carol Waaser, the Eastern Regional director of Actors Equity. Now, you can be a professional actor in Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, San Diego, Seattle. But Azenberg is not so sure that Broadway exerts enough of a lure to the young writers of today and tomorrow.
Playwrights have to be nurtured.
They also have to be able to make a living, instead of writing a play and running out to California to do to three television shows so they can pay their bills. Wasserstein is also worried about where the next generation of New York playwrights will be coming from. I truly think I became a playwright because my parents took me to plays, she said. It's that simple. In order to make sure others get the same kind of exposure, she took arts education into her own hands this past season, inviting a small group of Bronx high school students to attend the theater with her.