Theater Kids Revisited

 

[Last June, I posted “Theater Kids,” devoted entirely to “How To Tell If You’re a Theatre Kid,” an excerpt from John DeVore’s memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway (Applause, Theatre & Cinema Books, 2024), published on the American Theatre magazine website.  This past January, a New York Times article caught my attention, so now I’m going to revisit the topic of “theater kids.”  I think the titles of the individual articles I’m reposting pretty well reveal what this collection is about.

[In the introduction to the 23 June 2025 post, I define what a theater kid is:

a young person, usually a student, who is deeply passionate about and involved in theatrical performance.  They are often characterized by their enthusiastic embrace of performing arts, particularly musicals, and may exhibit traits like spontaneously breaking into song—almost always one from a musical—or quoting lines from shows.

[I go on to say, “I wasn’t a theater kid,” referencing my autobiographical post “A Broadway Baby” (22 September 2010)—though I acknowledge that that label did fit me.

[The three articles below are the New York Times report that started off a little brouhaha in the theater world, the Playbill article that called attention to that to-do, and a management association article that lays out the insiders’ response.  If you were a theater kid, or you knew one, you might find the exchange interesting—perhaps even touching.] 

“HOW ‘THEATER KID’ MORPHED INTO A POLITICAL INSULT”
by Sopan Deb 

[The New York Times article ran on 8 January 2026 in “Arts” (Section C).  It was posted online on 21 December 2025 as “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult.”]

Used as a pejorative, usually by the right, the phrase tags ‘the outsiders, the weirdos.’

Move over Karen and snowflake. There’s a new go-to political put-down: Theater kid.

Last month, the comedian Tim Dillon referred to New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, as a “theater kid,” arguing that Mr. Mamdani’s victory speech was “a little cringe.”

[Tim Dillon (b. 1985) is a stand-up comic, podcaster, and actor known for his unrestrained satirical humor and social commentary. He hosts the popular podcast The Tim Dillon Show, which covers news, politics, and culture and airs at 9 a.m. (Pacific Time) Saturdays on YouTube (video) and Spotify (audio). The referenced show about Mayor-Elect Mamdani was broadcast on 8 November 2025, four days after Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election.]

After Mr. Mamdani appeared in the Oval Office for a surprisingly cordial meeting with President Trump [Friday, 21 November 2025], Jack Posobiec, a Trump loyalist and conspiracy theorist, wrote on X, “Theater kids always crumble if you actually press them.” (He also released an episode of his podcast titled “MAGA vs The Theater Kids: Do You Want Drama or Do You Want Victory?”)

Mr. Mamdani, a former improv student, actually is a theater fan. But he’s not the only target.

When Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed from a news conference in June after trying to question Kristi Noem, the [now-former] homeland security secretary, The Daily Caller [right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. and founded by political commentator Tucker Carlson and political advisor Neil Patel] published an article with the headline ”Democrat Theater Kid Learns He’s Not Above the Law.”

Weeks later, the conservative publication American Thinker [daily online magazine dealing with American politics from a politically conservative viewpoint] ran an article saying that Mr. Padilla and a Who’s Who list of prominent Democrats were, you guessed it, theater kids. After a group of Democratic lawmakers released a video last month reminding troops that they could refuse illegal orders, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center [U.S. government agency responsible for national and international counterterrorism efforts], described them as ”theater kids encouraging an insurrection.”

You get the picture, which raises the question: What did theater kids do to attract so much scorn?

It depends on whom you ask.

For Scott Jennings, a conservative CNN commentator, the increased use of the term is a result of “performance-based radicalism” on the left. As an example, he cited a video from 2019 that resurfaced in the final weeks before a special election for a House seat in Tennessee. It showed the Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn, in tears, being dragged out of Gov. Bill Lee’s office during a sit-in protest, which called for the removal of a state legislator accused of sexual assault. (Ms. Behn lost by 9 percentage points in a district that Mr. Trump carried by 22 points last year.)

“These people are a sandwich board and a megaphone short of the loony bin,” Mr. Jennings said in an interview. “They think it’s actual politics. They think this is something good, and the rest of us are looking at it going, ‘Man, there go the theater kids again.’”

It’s not clear when the term gained currency, but an early example of its use as a pejorative dates to the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign when the conservative operative Matt Whitlock said on social media that Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was “just a theater kid performing a sketch.”

Caricaturing political opponents with simple insults has become a hallmark of Trump-era politics. Think “Low Energy” Jeb Bush. Republicans, led by the president, have elevated name-calling to an art form, but Democrats have dabbled, too, with mixed results.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, called Republicans “weird” and turned it into a calling card of his candidacy. More recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a leading Democratic critic of Mr. Trump who has worked to position himself for a possible 2028 presidential run, has taken to mimicking the president’s approach — calling him “Dozy Don,” among other insults.

Social media has made such put-downs catch on faster.

“In politics, just like in journalism, you’re always trying to make 10 words five, five words three, two words one, right?” Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said. “The way to do that really effectively, and we’ve seen this for generations, is you find ways to short-circuit that through connotations.”

Using “theater kids” pejoratively is a way of tagging opponents as dramatic and performative without having to use those words, Mr. Gorman said.

Theater kids became an indelible part of the culture when television series and films like “Glee,” “High School Musical” and “Smash” [see “‘What I learned from Smash (if I didn’t know anything about theater)’” by RonAnnArbor (9 June 2013)] hit the airwaves, though the popularity of those shows set theater kids up as the subject of parody.

“We are a ton of energy and we can be chaotic, but I find that that’s not actually the qualities that people are pointing out when they talk about the theater kid,” said Zhailon Levingston, a director of the upcoming Broadway production of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” “What they’re talking about is the person who refuses to stay silent in the face of something that needs to be spoken to.”

For the last half-century or so, it hasn’t been considered “cool” to be a theater aficionado, said Julia Knitel, who was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the musical “Dead Outlaw” [2025].

“‘Theater kid’ being the bullied party is a tale as old as time,” Ms. Knitel said. “We’ve always been the outsiders, the weirdos. It’s a quick cultural shorthand to treat us as the underdog.”

Some see a more harmful motive for deploying the moniker as a political insult.

“My initial reaction was just that it feels homophobic,” said Jacob Kerzner, an assistant professor of musical theater at Syracuse University. Mr. Kerzner added that theater is an unusual art in that “you couldn’t replace theater with any other art form in this context.”

“‘They’re all painters now’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it,” he said.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the author of a recent biography of Lin-Manuel Miranda [Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist (Simon & Schuster, 2025)], said that using the term was part of a larger culture battle.

“A lot of kids playfully adopt the ‘theater kid’ moniker, even with its tinge of attention-seeking excess, because theater offers a space for performing a wider range of emotions and identities than much of our society allows,” Mr. Pollack-Pelzner said in an email. “Since right-wingers want to crack down on exploring gender, race and sexuality in schools, it’s sadly not surprising that they’d try to wield ‘theater kid’ as an insult to discredit progressive politics.”

The dings against theater lovers have come mostly from the right, but not exclusively so. Dhaaruni Sreenivas, a data scientist who has worked for Democratic consulting firms, wrote on X that the perception of the Democratic Party “as a safe space for rule-following theater kids is really bad for our image.” She followed that up with a Substack post [Substack is an online, ad-free platform that enables writers, podcasters, and creators to publish content directly to subscribers via email, while offering options for monetization through paid subscriptions] titled, “Theater Kids and Playing Risk.”

“You know the kids in ‘Glee’? Super cheerful and go-getters?” Ms. Sreenivas, who was a delegate for Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, said in an interview. “They’re kind of despised by their peers. And it’s a problem because Americans kind of are nerdist. They do not like nerds.”

To Ms. Sreenivas, theater kids are “desperate for the approval of authority figures” and “really want to follow the rules and get rewarded for it.” Basically, she added, “they want to perform being good kids.”

Not everyone minds the moniker. Theater kids, Ms. Knitel said, are emotionally intelligent, empathetic, communicative, charismatic and in touch with their feelings. Those qualities, she said, don’t align with the “current administration.”

“They don’t want us to be empathetic and they don’t want us to care about those around us,” she said, “and they don’t want us to be open to expanding our horizons and feeling things deeply, because then we’re not as easily going to fall in line.”

[Sopan Deb is a New York Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.]

*  *  *  *
“IN RESPONSE TO NEW YORK TIMES,
EDUCATIONAL THEATRE ASSOCIATION LAUNCHES
PROUD THEATRE KID CAMPAIGN”
by Diep Tran

[Playbill, the National Theatre Magazine, picked up the story with a report on 23 December 2025 revealing that the Educational Theatre Association had taken umbrage at the content of the Times’ article.]

The campaign is in response to an article that said that “theatre kid” is the new conservative insult.

On December 21, the New York Times published an article with the headline: “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult” [that's the online title; see above]. It attributed the rise of conservative pundits using “theatre kid” as an insult, to denote a “performance-based radicalism”—such as a conspiracy theorist calling incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a theatre kid (though Mamdani has said he listens to Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen in the car).

In response, the Educational Theatre Association has launched the Proud Theatre Kid campaign to celebrate theatre kids everywhere. Said Dr. Jennifer Katona, executive director of EdTA, “This weekend, our members made it clear that the New York Times article touched a nerve. We felt it was important to stand up as leaders of the theatre education community and affirm what ‘theatre kid’ really means: creativity, discipline, collaboration, and empathy. The response today has been overwhelming, and it underscores the pride and unity of this community.”

The Association asked its followers to share why they are proud theatre kids. One respondent, who is a reverend, wrote: “My son is 14 and is confident, kind, and creative. I couldn’t be prouder! What a wonderful life both of us have found in the theatre. The world needs more of what theatre creates.”

Another respondent wrote: “The best description of theatre that I’ve ever heard is ‘the gym for empathy.’ It strengthened my ability to listen, to express complex ideas, and to put myself in others’ shoes. I can see why that’s threatening to certain politicians and pundits.” 

The Educational Theatre Association is a nonprofit focused on theatre education, serving as a professional association for theatre educators. EdTA is the parent organization of the International Thespian Society, a student honor society that has inducted more than 2.5 million thespians since 1929. Additionally, EdTA operates the Educational Theatre Foundation, the organization’s philanthropic arm dedicated to increasing opportunity and access to school theatre.

Said a representative from EdTA: “At the heart of this campaign is a simple belief: if even one student misses out on the life-changing impact of theatre education, we are all worse off. We want our community to stand together and refuse to let anyone else define what ‘theatre kid’ means.”

EdTA and Playbill are currently collaborating on a new Content Creator Scholarship that will send three students to the 2026 International Thespian Festival.

[Diep Tran is an arts journalist and editor based in New York City.  She is currently the Editor in Chief of Playbill.  Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, NBC News, New York magazine, Time Out New York, Backstage, CNN, Salon, Primetimer, Broadway News, New York Theatre Guide and other publications.  Her previous day jobs include being features editor of Broadway.com and senior editor of American Theatre magazine.  In 2023, she was named on Gold House’s A100 list as one of 100 most impactful Asians.  She loves musical theater, period dramas, and sci-fi/fantasy TV shows.]

*  *  *  *
“TEACHERS’ GROUP LAUNCHES
EFFORT TO RECLAIM ‘THEATER KID’”
by Mark Athitakis  

[EdTA’s position and its response were laid out in Associations Now in a 13 January 2026 post.  Associations Now is a daily news platform of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), which serves professionals in the association management field.]

The Educational Theatre Association’s #ProudTheatreKid campaign caught attention on social media, providing a boost to its advocacy message. 

A national theater organization launched a pop-up campaign to push back against the increasingly pejorative use of the term “theater kid,” galvanizing its member base in support of its advocacy goals.

On December 21, the New York Times published an article titled “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult” [see above]. The story showed how the term has been used to criticize New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), and other Democratic lawmakers.

The story naturally caught the attention of the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA), which represents theater-education professionals and supports middle- and high-school theater students through its awards and foundation programs. 

“We absolutely felt like there was no space to not respond,” said EdTA Executive Director Dr. Jennifer Katona.

According to Katona, the organization has two million alumni across its 97 years of existence. “That’s two million theater kids,” she said. “The theater kid is our brand. It’s who we are, it’s who we care about, it’s who we talk about every day. We take a lot of pride in that, and we truly believe that a theater program in a school is not just about the performances, but about all the skills that are developed for students’ involvement in that, and also what that program does to the school and the community at large.” [See the post on this blog “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines” (21 July 2011).]

Though EdTA’s staff was largely off for the holiday break, it developed a rapid social-media response, using the hashtag #ProudTheatreKid on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. “Theatre kids are academically strong,” the posts read in part. “They are emotionally intelligent. They are collaborative leaders and creative thinkers.” Readers were encouraged to share their own theater experiences growing up.

The posts struck a chord with EdTA members theater fans in general. The Broadway industry bible Playbill covered the campaign [see above], and the posts drew more than 1,200 shares on Facebook and more than 7,700 likes on Instagram. “If it wasn’t up by that evening, it was the next day,” Katona said. “It’s probably four or five times the reshares, if not more, that we usually get,” she said.

More than just attempting to blunt the use of “theater kid” as an insult, the campaign has given EdTA a platform to promote its advocacy work entering 2026. Last week, EdTA used the term “proud theatre kid” as a way to encourage registration for its annual March advocacy summit, which includes a visit with legislators on Capitol Hill and workshops on how participants can promote theater education in their own communities. 

“This comes at a time of years of their craft being under attack, with no-drag bills, the slicing of budgets, and the way some of our states and teachers have been censored,” Katona said. “So this felt like a line in the sand for everybody. This is really propelling us into action. It goes beyond just asking people to change your Facebook status. It’s: Let’s try to come together and go to DC and talk about the value of what we do. That’s where we’re taking it.”

[Mark Athitakis, a contributing editor for Associations Now, has written on nonprofits, the arts, and leadership for a variety of publications.  He is a coauthor (with Mark Lasswell) of The Dumbest Moments in Business History (Portfolio. 2004).]

Community-Based Theater

by Kirk Woodward 

[Following his article on “Staged Readings” on 11 February 2026, Kirk Woodward, Rick On Theater’s most prolific guest-blogger (just shy of 150 posts out of 1,335, including several multi-parters), is back now with a piece on “Community-Based Theater.”  It’s a subject about which Kirk knows a great deal, having toiled in its fields—as an actor, director, playwright, composer, rehearsal and performance accompanist, and probably most of the jobs that exist in that arena—during the span of his theatrical career.

[This isn’t surprising, since Kirk lives in Little Falls in New Jersey’s Passaic County, which is right next to Essex County (where he used to live), about 60 miles and an hour-and-a-quarter drive or train ride west of New York City.  From my experience and observation, Essex County has an exceptional number of performance venues and theater companies, both professional and community-oriented.  One might even say that it’s a little theater-mad, so there’s a lot of theater activity and interest thereabouts. 

[Kirk, as you might expect from someone with that kind of credential, has some pretty firm ideas about CBT, as he dubs it in his post.  For one thing, he has a more inclusive definition of community-based theater than is perhaps standard for what is more generally known as “community theater.”  (I’ll let you all read for yourself what distinction Kirk makes between the two.)

[A little over a year-and-a-half ago, I posted an essay by Jaan Whitehead called “Art Will Out,” originally published in the October 2002 issue of American Theatre magazine (volume 19, number 8).  The repost was part of my occasional series on the regional theater in the United States, and Whitehead, a New York-based author, theater executive, and political theorist known for her work in the performing arts, had a great deal to say about community-based theater.  Here are significant passages on the subject:

[C]ommunity-based theatre [is] theatre deeply rooted in a particular community, which itself is an essential partner and collaborator in the work.  Not to be confused with the local amateur groups that are often called “community” theatres, the community-based theatres I am talking about are professional theatres, usually ensemble theatres, that choose to work and live in a particular community, articulating the voice of that community through their art.  Going back to the central connection between the art and the audience . . ., it is the artists who create and preserve this connection, . . . community-based theatre [devoting most of its creativity] to the integrity of the audience.

. . . .

[C]ommunity-based theatre . . . had its origins in the Depression [1929-39] but has experienced its main growth in the past two decades.  The Community Arts Network [a project active from 1999 through 2010 that promoted information exchange, research, and critical dialogue in the field of art] calls this “art made as a voice and a force within a specific community of place, spirit or tradition.”  The aim of community-based theatres is to become an indigenous part of the community, creating a theatrical voice for that community but also becoming one of its civic institutions, like schools and libraries.  Many of these theatres reach audiences that have never experienced theatre before, and the relationship that develops between the artists and their audiences is very alive, a process of mutual creativity.  And, although much of the work has intellectual roots in the ideas of the same thinkers who inspired the avant-garde such as [Antonin] Artaud [1896-1948; French dramatist, poet, actor, and artist who became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century avant-garde theater] and [Jerzy] Grotowski [1933-1999; visionary Polish theater director, teacher, and dramatic theorist; fundamentally redefined 20th-century performance], community-based theatres have added to their work other influences, such as commedia dell’arte [a form of improvised theater that originated in northern Italy in the 15th century and flourished across Europe through the 18th century], storytelling, folksongs and other more populist forms of expression.

[Aside from my caveat that Kirk uses more expansive criteria for community-based theaters, readers will find that Whitehead’s description of CBT’s in this country largely aligns with Kirk’s.]

I was proud of myself for inventing the term “community-based theater” (speaking about theater in the United States – conditions may differ in other countries).

Doing a Google search, I found that not only did I not come up with the term, but that it is widely used. Briefly overcoming my resistance to Artificial Intelligence (AI), here is a description that AI provides:

Community-based theater (CBT) involves local, non-professional groups using volunteers for actors and crew, focusing on accessible artistic participation, social connection, and entertainment for the public, often producing plays and musicals for fun, education, and to reflect local culture, distinct from professional theater by its amateur, volunteer-driven, and community-focused nature. 

Key Characteristics

 

•        Volunteer-Driven: Relies on unpaid actors, directors, and technical staff from the community.

•        Non-Professional: Primarily a social and artistic activity, not a paid profession.

•        Locally Focused: Often produces shows relevant to the community's interests and provides local arts engagement.

•        Accessible: Welcomes all experience levels, with some groups requiring no audition or experience.

•        Varied Scale: Ranges from small local troupes to large organizations like the Omaha Community Playhouse (OCP; Omaha, Nebraska). 

Types of Community Theater

 

•        Traditional Community Theater: Non-profits staging musicals and plays for general audiences, like AfterWork Theater (New York City) or Spring Lake Theatre (Spring Lake, New Jersey).

•        Civic/Participatory Theater: Programs like Public Works at The Public Theater (New York City) that deeply involve community members in creating ambitious shows with professional artists.

•        Specialized Groups: Groups focusing on youth, specific genres, or community dialogue, such as the Jersey City Theater Center (Jersey City, New Jersey) or West Hudson Arts + Theater Company (WHATCo) (Kearny, New Jersey). 

Why It Matters

 

·        Cultural Hubs: Often the only performing arts source in an area, bringing entertainment and participation.

·        Skill Building: Offers a stress-free environment to learn acting, singing, and technical skills.

·        Community Building: Connects people through shared creative projects and provides a space for community reflection and expression. 

There’s merit to this description, but it actually describes what’s usually referred to as “community theater.” In my usage the term “community-based theater” has a wider application than the AI description indicates. It does mean “local, non-professional groups using volunteers for actors and crew,” commonly known as “community theater.”

 

However, for me the term Community Based Theater (hereafter CBT), in a wider way, describes any theater in this country, including professional repertory companies, that is not run primarily for commercial purposes (as are Broadway shows and related touring companies).

 

Where art is concerned, rigid distinctions seldom work well, boundaries are porous, and definitions often have to leave room for exceptions. For example, traditionally “community theater” (also historically referred to as “little theater”) has meant performances of Broadway plays and musicals by local, amateur theater companies. As I indicated, this seems to be primarily what AI is talking about.

 

My use of “CBT” includes those theaters, but smaller ones too, for example, performances of plays that friends of mine and I have staged in living rooms, with audiences of maybe a dozen people at a time, and larger theaters too, like regional theaters (see below). And it includes larger theaters too, such as “regional theaters,” discussed more below.

Why does the use of the term “community-based theater” (CBT) matter? For me this line of thought began as a way to explain and even justify the kind of theater I do. I have made a little money as a playwright, but certainly not a living, and some of my plays have had multiple productions, but, again, not tremendously.

An aspect of CBT that is not included in the AI description is that in many cases the artistic standards and intentions behind CBT can be as high as those of commercial theater – or higher – although abilities and resources may lag behind Broadway standards. What the AI description of CBT leaves out is the determination of many in the field to live up to the highest artistic standards they possibly can.

A professional in any field has advantages that an amateur does not have – greater experience, working with others of high skill levels, training with leaders of the craft, not to mention benefits such as payment, a contract, unions, a budget, and so on.

However, non-professionals can reach as high as their abilities will take them (and they can take theater classes too), and my own experience is that many in CBT assume not only that they should achieve the highest levels of artistic achievement, but that they can.

Sometimes, indeed, they do, and CBT has often been the starting point for professional careers. After all everyone has to start somewhere – few if any find themselves instantly at the top of their profession.

My wife, Pat, was an excellent director, probably the best I’ve worked with, partly because she assumed that “Broadway standards” were what the cast was reaching for. She knew that by no means everyone had the ability to reach those standards; but she made that a goal, and many were surprised at what they could actually accomplish.

By the way, the distinction “professional/amateur” may not be acknowledged in the same way by people in theater and those outside it. Those not associated with CBT may assume “professional” means “getting paid for it,” and “amateur” means “not paid or little paid.”

For many CBT participants I know, however, however, “amateur” means something more like “not dependable for working hard at the craft” and “professional” more like “dependable at all times and in all circumstances,” a definition that obviously is achievable whether one is paid or not.

There is a similar ambiguity between “commercial” and “non-commercial” theater. In some European countries, in particular, theater is subsidized by the government at some level. In the United States, although varied kinds of government assistance are possible (for example, for state university theater programs), most theaters are basically responsible for coming up with the money they need to operate—especially now, with the National Endowment for the Arts curtailed.

This is as true of CBT as it is of Broadway and regional theater. (The Metropolitan Opera in New York City recently announced major cutbacks in staff and programming because of funding difficulties. Opera is a form of theater that’s particularly difficult to sustain.)

Except in unusual circumstances (including state government subsidy of university theaters), every theater has to run on the profit side of the balance sheet or it will have to close. Even if no actors are paid, others on the staff – directors, musicians, technicians – may have to be paid, depending on who’s available.

Performance space must be rented or, if owned by the theater, property taxes must be paid. Plays, both published and new, if not in the public domain, almost always require royalty payment. A building must be heated or cooled. Insurance may be required. Material for sets and set construction, lighting and sound setups, and costumes ordinarily take money.

So ordinarily a CBT is likely to be commercial on the business side, even if it doesn’t pay its actors. Some, of course, do, which brings up the question of “regional theaters” – major, professional, top-quality theaters like those I mentioned in the AI list at the beginning of this article.

Of course, again, strict distinctions aren’t necessary, and may not be possible, but from what I know of the beginnings of “regional theaters,” major operations like Actors Theater of Louisville (Kentucky), the McCarter Theatre Center (Princeton, New Jersey), Arena Stage (Washington, DC), and the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis, Minnesota), began with literally a “community” impulse – the desire to bring the highest quality theater to their own towns.

All those theaters are professional – their staffs and actors are paid. Some put on plays that go on to be performed on Broadway. But all originated in impulses that were not exclusively commercial.

For example, I was present (as a high school student) at a meeting in the 1960’s when Richard Block (to this day an active director and speaker) and Ewel Cornett (1937-2002) combined forces to create the Actors Theater of Louisville. I remember their enthusiasm and their determination to bring quality theater to their city (and they did).

The same can be said for many “regional theaters,” major operations such as the McCarter Theatre Center, Arena Stage, and the Guthrie Theater. All those theaters are unquestionably professional – their staffs and actors are paid. Some put on plays that go on to be performed on Broadway.

But all the theaters originated in impulses that were not merely commercial. So to call them CBT is not out of the question, despite their scope and the size of their budgets.

In talking about “community-based theater,” it’s worth asking what community we’re talking about. “Community” is often a loaded word. Which community – what segment of the population – does a CBT represent? As the drama critic Eric Bentley (1916-2000) wrote in his seminal book In Search of Theatre (1953):

“The general public” is as much of an abstraction as “the common man.” Today there are dozens of publics separated by differences of interest as well as by levels of taste, intelligence, and education.

But I think there are two communities in particular that can be seen as sources of inspiration for CBT, and the two are not mutually exclusive. One is a community of those interested in civic development, who believe that a theater will enhance the city’s or the area’s life. The other is a community of artists who want a theater as a place to work and to do worthwhile productions.

An example of both communities working together is the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where the desire to enhance the reputation and culture of the city met the interest of the director Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971), who with co-workers was looking for a place to do significant theater.

I suspect that more than one CBT has failed because the community of actors, excited about the possibility of doing theater, didn’t sufficiently consider the community in which they would be based.

A plus for CBT is that it doesn’t have to cost an enormous amount of money. (There are exceptions here too – as noted above, opera, even for CBT companies, is nearly always extremely expensive to perform.)

It can cost as much as nine million dollars to put a play on Broadway, and up to twenty million dollars or more to put on a Broadway musical. Those figures are likely to be outdated in a few years, and not by getting smaller.

At the other extreme, I have staged a play with four actors for literally no money at all. It was satisfying to see the play, which I wrote, produced and well-acted, but obviously its impact was modest. On the other hand, many Broadway productions cost vastly more money and vanish with little evidence that they were ever there.

This observation leads to the question of what CBT can achieve beyond the simple purpose of getting a play staged. I remember my friend and theater expert David Semonin asking that question – in effect, if a theater isn’t top rate, why bother? David’s question is provocative. Here are some of my answers.

CBT is important to commercial theater because it can help create an appetite for Broadway and similar plays and musicals, familiarizing audiences with the material if not necessarily with the same staging. It can be a “feeder stream.”

A successful commercial play – a big Broadway play or musical – will have its own value, and a traditional function of CBT has been to make such shows available to local audiences, often years after their initial success, and to provide an opportunity for people to appreciate the worth of such shows.

Art – definitely including theater – is always a process of borrowing, lending, or trading elements from one iteration to another. The painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is said to have recommended that artists “steal from the best,” and the cross-fertilization of commercial theater and CBT repeatedly demonstrates how that principle works.

CBT also allows people to perform on stage (or direct, design, costume, and so on) who are not able to do so in a commercial setting – a group that includes the majority of people who have experience in theater.

A friend of mine with years of Broadway experience once remarked to me, “The higher you go in this profession, the less the satisfaction.” I suspect this is true. A failure on Broadway, for example, can cost investors a fortune and artists a great deal of prestige. The stakes for CBT, although important, are significantly less threatening.

Another benefit of CBT is that it can help train actors and sometimes help prepare them for work of greater scope. A few years ago, a CBT theater in my area, the Theater League of Clifton, staged the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (which first opened on Broadway in 2002, based on the 1967 movie) with a woman in the title role who was then around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Her name was Rachel Zegler (b. 2001). Subsequently she was selected by the film director Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) to play the role of Maria in his film version of the musical West Side Story (2021; 2022 Golden Globe Award) and has since had a stellar career in films, on Broadway, and on the West End in London.

[After WSS, Zegler appeared as Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023; 2024 People's Choice Award), and then as the title character in Disney's Snow White (2025),  She made her Broadway debut as Juliet in Romeo + Juliet (2024) and her debut in London’s West End in the title role of the musical Evita (2025; 2025 Stage Debut Award).]

My experience is that fine performances are possible in CBT. This is not to say that if the same performances were transferred to Broadway they would always have the same effect, and productions by necessity adapt themselves to their circumstances.

Still, excellent work is possible. The playwright and reviewer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), looking not at theater but at the equivalent of CBT in music, wrote:

I do not mean that if the singers had been transferred from the little schoolroom and the mild cottage-piano to the stage of Covent Garden or the platform of St James’s Hall, with a full orchestra thundering around them, they could have produced the same effect. Suffice it that they did produce it in Penult [a small English town], and gave me thereby greater pleasure than I often get from singers with far greater pretensions. (Shaw on Music, 1955, Doubleday Anchor)

Certainly it’s possible for a person to appear in play after play and not learn anything. Today, however, training in theater is widespread, as is talent, and there are likely to be people in a production that one can learn from, sometimes through observation, sometimes through explicit advice.

There are many other things to learn from participating in CBT. Years ago my wife, Pat. and I took our high school-age children on college visits. The thought occurred to us that a substantial number of people graduate from theater programs each year, and parents may wonder – we wondered – how do they all find work in theater?

They don’t, of course, at least not necessarily in commercial theater. But more than one dean of a theater department explained to us that the skills one learns in theater are “portable.” One learns things like being on time, focusing on tasks, listening, taking notes, getting along with people, analyzing and evaluating, and of course reading and presentation. (See the ROT post “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines” [21 July 2011], which presents an argument for teaching theater, and the arts in general, in schools.)

One also learns important things about life – that successes are to be enjoyed and treasured, that not everything succeeds, that it’s important to do one’s best even when the moment looks bleak, that there’s value in victories of many sizes.

Theater at all levels is a matter of doing one’s best, and, if that doesn’t work, trying something else. In that, as in so much else, it resembles the life it imitates.

Theater, by its nature as a community activity, also helps draw together the people who work in it. I am friends to this day with people I worked with in CBT decades ago.

CBT also provides a tryout arena for new and unproduced plays. At a minimum, an author may have the experience of seeing the play performed for an audience, and the play may possibly achieve other productions (this has happened, I am happy to report, to me).

It might also be published. Publishing companies that specialize in playscripts want to see evidence that the play has been performed before they will consider adding it to their catalog, and a CBT production can fulfil that requirement. And, of course, it might ultimately have a future in commercial theater, although such cases are rare. (See “Be More Chill: The Journey” [28 April and 1 May 2019], a collection of articles about a play that started at a community-based theater, made the unlikely transfer to Off-Broadway and then Broadway in 2015-2018.)

Traditionally over the years many community theaters, in particular, have been conservative in their programming, offering primarily comedies and musicals originally produced on Broadway. However, CBT also offers the opportunity to see plays that might otherwise not be staged, or that might not have been well received in their initial productions in more commercial theater.

My observation, for what it’s worth, is that as the number of interesting plays grows (and it is growing), the more willing even community theaters may be to try plays that are unusual or possibly disturbing.

A number of CBT’s now host new play contests or invite submissions. This, as I can testify, is an enormous encouragement to playwrights.

It’s fair to ask what the future holds for CBT. I don’t think there’s any question that its manifestations will change. Art, including theater, is continually morphing. For example, current audiences seem to prefer shorter and shorter plays – a new three act play is almost an impossibility, and one long act often takes the place of two shorter ones.

At the commercial level, theater has no choice but to program shorter plays, to consider new kinds of audiences, and to utilize and emphasize technology in productions. All these trends can be seen on Broadway now. Some will have more effect on CBT than others.

What will be the impact of the wave of technology – most spectacularly and dangerously AI – on CBT in the next generations? When I reached middle and high school, the two largest avenues for student growth were sports and the arts – primarily theater.

Today’s students are familiar with many more kinds of sports, and as for performances, they are more likely to be making YouTube videos than hunting out the local community theater. At least it seems that way to me. AI is a wild card so far, but it’s bound to have an impact.

The fact that schools still do “school plays” encourages me, because if theater grabs you it doesn’t let go (the phenomenon known as being “stage struck”). I also have hope for inventiveness, for exasperation with technology, and for a continuing human need for accessible forms of self-expression.

As I was completing this article I read a statement from Brooke Hartman Ditchfield, the new Artistic Director of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, which has combined with another theater under the name of Circuit Arts. Her message, which illustrates much of what I’ve written here about CBT, reads in part:

We are exploring a variety of plays to stage at the Playhouse, with a particular focus on new works, supporting playwrights, and championing emerging voices. . . . I believe, especially at this moment in time, that theater is a vital part of the democratic idea, and that a thriving theater community reflects a thriving community as a whole. My aim is to carry that vision forward in the plays we produce, the artists we champion, and the audiences we draw to the Playhouse. New work from bold voices, co-productions with collaborators near and far, theater that sparks conversation, ignites curiosity, inspires reflection, and welcomes all; these are the ideas that I, and all of us at Circuit Arts, are so excited to bring our energy to.

So “Support Your Local Community-Based Theater.” There’s a worthwhile slogan!

[As usual, Kirk’s remarks suggest a number of further comments, some from personal experiences that illustrate his statements.  For example, In Kirk’s discussion of the "two communities" for CBT’s in the U.S., I see as an example of the first, “those . . . who believe that a theater will enhance the city’s or the area’s life,” as Washington, D.C., and of the second, those who “want a theater as a place to work and to do worthwhile productions,” as Los Angeles.

[As I report in "'Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)" (25 December 2011), Arena Stage was definitely started to bring theater to the Washington, as D.C. didn't have much indigenous theater before 1950.  Before Zelda Fichandler (1924-2016), with her husband, Thomas C. Fichandler (1915-97), and Edward Mangum (1913-2001), founded Arena, theater in Washington meant a touring show at the National Theatre, the Capital’s Broadway-level house, or a college production at Catholic University, whose pioneering university-based theater program was started in 1937 by Father Gilbert V. Hartke (1907-86).

[In the program note for Arena’s opening production, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, on 16 August 1950, Fichandler wrote:

Local in origin, [Arena Stage] was founded in the belief that if drama-hungry playgoers outside of the ten blocks of Broadway are to have a living stage, they must create it for themselves.  Arena Stage was financed by Washingtonians—students, teachers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, government workers, housewives—who love theatre and who want to see it flourish in the city in which they work and live.  Its permanent staff of distinguished actors and technicians, many of whom have come to Arena Stage via the stages of other cities, now all call Washington their home.  (Quoted by Fichandler in her essay “Institution-as-Artwork,” American Theatre 30 January 1986 [online only], <https://www.americantheatre.org/1986/01/30/institution-as-artwork/>, 2 March 2026; reprinted in The Long Revolution [Theatre Communications Group, 2024]; originally published in Theatre Profiles 7 [TCG, 1986])

[In Los Angeles, I discovered that there are scores of Off-Off-Broadway-type troupes founded by and for all those chronically under-employed film artists who are starved not just for work, but for theater, where many of them got their starts. The phenomenon, which allowed screen artists to showcase their talents for film and TV scouts, developed in 1972 and proliferated through 1985.

[Kirk’s comment, quoting something attributed to Picasso, advising theater artists to “steal from the best,” reminded me of a remark that I recall my college theater director, Lee Kahn, used to say.  (Kirk and I were college classmates, and I checked my memory with him and Kirk confirmed that Lee did often say, “The first rule of theater is theft.”  Kirk even added that “that can be applied to all the other arts I know of, too”—which sounds about right to me.]

[As for theaters that failed because the leadership "didn’t sufficiently consider the community in which they would be based," I give you Peter Sellars (b. 1957) and the ANT in the 1980s (as I described it in "‘Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)."  (ANT—Sellars's proposed American National Theater at the Kenedy Center when he was newly appointed artistic director there (1984-86)—may not have actually qualified as a "community-based theater," but it was the "community"—i.e., Washingtonians and D,C.'s theater press—that scuttled his directorship and the prospects for ANT. 

[Sellars actually said, “I think it’s my job, to do things that are obscure,” and the Kennedy Center lost audience from the start of Sellars’s tenure.  When Ajax, his last production, closed a week early due to poor box office, he more or less said that he didn’t care if people complained about his productions as long as they were talking about them.  He essentially insulted and dismissed his audience.  He left Washington with a year left on his contract, and ANT basically just died.

[In re: the discussion of "amateur" vs. "professional," I found this on ROT in "Greatness Thrust Upon Them” (27 May 2023)—which I assume is Kirk’s recollection of the conversation he had with his friend David Semonin:

My friend David Semonin (1941-2010), about whom I’ve written in this blog (see “Saints of the Theater” on Rick On Theater, 30 December 2011), had a way of asking questions that stick in the mind.  One day, probably after he had seen one too many local theater productions, he asked, “What’s the justification for community theater?” 

At the time and place he asked that question (decades ago in Louisville, Kentucky), admittedly there wasn’t a lot of outstanding non-professional theater (or professional for that matter – Actors Theater of Louisville was barely on the horizon at that time).  Theater has its skilled professionals. What do amateurs bring to the table?

. . . .

The word “amateur” unquestionably provides the basis for one answer to David.  It doesn’t mean second-rate (or worse), it doesn’t mean less good than something else, it doesn’t mean naïve or shoddy.  It comes from the Latin word “amator” or “lover,” from the verb “amare” meaning “to love” – a strong, passionate word.

An amateur, then, is a person who’s fallen in love with an activity, and that’s what so often happens in theater – one is “stage struck,” overwhelmed by a powerful attraction.  This was certainly the case for me.  I was fifteen when my friend Perry Baer invited me to a Saturday morning work call at Louisville Children’s Theatre (now Stage One, a very fine professional operation).

[I added, in the afterword to this post:

Many ROTters may know this, but the British don’t use ‘amateur’ with the same negative connotation that we do in the U.S.  A case in point: when I was stationed in Berlin with the army and helped start a theater group at the air base, we sort of modeled it after a similar group the British forces had.  Their troupe was called BATS, which was an acronym for the British Amateur Theatre Society. 

One of our founding members was the British wife of a U.S. Air Force NCO, and she wanted to name our group TAT to emulate the British group—but we went with the Tempelhof American Theatre because of the derogatory sense of ‘amateur’ in American usage. 

[I made this point several times on Roger.

[“Be More Chill: The Journey” (28 April and 1 May 2019), which I cross-reference when Kirk addresses the occurrence of a play originated in a CBT transferred to a commercial theater, is a collection of articles about a play that started at the Two River Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey—a community-based theater—on 30 May 2015 and opened Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center on Theatre Row on 9 August 2018 and then went to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre on 10 March 2019 for 30 previews and 177 regular performances. 

[The musical was nominated for the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, and on 20 October 2018, it was announced that Shawn Levy and Greg Berlanti will produce a film adaptation of both the novel and the musical of Be More Chill.  No release date has been announced, though reports are that a script has been written, but shooting hasn’t started.

[Kirk has informed me that the quotation from Brooke Hartman Ditchfield of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse was from an e-mail to supporters from last February.  Ditchfield is the new artistic director; her predecessor, MJ Bruder Munafo, had served for 30 years and retired at the end of 2025. Ditchfield was previously director of Circuit Stage, part of Circuit Arts, a Martha’s Vineyard community arts organization that has recently merged with MVP.

[MVP is an archetypical CBT.  At the merger announcement, the Playhouse board of directors chair said that both arts organizations “are dedicated to creating accessible, meaningful, and diverse cultural experiences—year-round and Island-wide.”  He added, “Together, we can . . . ensure that live theater, film, music, comedy, and community events continue to enrich the Vineyard.”  These are fundamental goals of community-based organizations.

[For readers who don’t know, Martha’s Vineyard, which is Dukes County, is one of the two principal islands off the south shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Barnstable County); the other is Nantucket, which is Nantucket County.  Both islands have many small islands associated with them; one of the Vineyard’s smaller islands is Chappaquiddick. off the eastern end. 

[The year-round population of Martha’s Vineyard is small, a little over 20,000 (about the size of Ashland, Oregon), but during the summer, the population swells to over 200,000 (Little Rock, Arkansas).  Most of these summer residents are affluent, and many are artists in various fields.  Generally speaking, they’re a sophisticated lot, which is why the arts, including theater, are important to the islanders, both vacationers and year-rounders.  This is one reason that organizations like the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse and Circuit Arts are important and supported, and why groups like these feel so connected to their communities.  It’s almost a perfect symbiosis.]

AI Art

 

[On 21 February, I reposted the transcript of a PBS News Hour report, “Replicating Classic Art Works,” that covered the use of computers to reproduce works of art.  Now I’m taking a look at the employment of computers to create art with artificial intelligence.  Among other questions this development raises, as you’ll read, is “Is it art?” 

[It’s too early for a definitive answer yet—art critic Jerry Saltz says we’ll have to wait and see where this effort takes us—but you can read about one “artist’s” work and notions and decide what you think.  (You can always change your mind later.)

[Take note that there are links to several additional CBS news stories on this subject embedded in the two 60 Minutes reports republished on Rick On Theater.  I recommend reading them as well.]

“AI ARTIST REFIK ANADOL USES MASSIVE DATASETS
AND AI TO CREATE IMMERSIVE WORKS
SHOWN AROUND THE WORLD”
by Sharyn Alfonsi, Michael Baltierra, Aliza Chasan,
Erin DuCharme, and Chrissy Hallowell

[This report was a segment on 60 Minutes (CBS News) on 22 February 2026. The online transcript has a video of the broadcast.]

Refik Anadol [b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey] paints with what he calls “a thinking brush[.]”

The 40-year-old Turkish American is not an artist in the traditional sense; he uses a computer, massive amounts of data and artificial intelligence to create immersive, ever-changing visuals. 

[Anadol attended Istanbul Bilgi University, where he received a BA in photography and video in 2009 and an MFA in visual communication in 2011. In 2014 he earned an MFA in design media arts at UCLA.]

His work, where man meets machine, has been embraced by some of the world’s most prestigious museums, auction houses and collectors and has made Anadol a darling of the tech world. He’s teamed up with Google, MIT and Microsoft to create large, public installations. Supporters call his work revolutionary. But critics question whether art created with AI can truly have meaning, arguing it’s devoid of human emotion, lived experience and intent.

“These are all, I think, true,” Anadol said. “That’s why I believe, [in] human-machine collaboration. We are really completing that bridge where I feel like most likely where we are going as humanity, and just be sure that it’s done right, that it’s shared right, and celebrate this new age of imagination.”

What is AI art

Anyone able to hop online can generate images with AI by inputting a prompt into an AI image generator. What Anadol does is different. For more than a decade, he says he’s worked to ensure his process balances human creativity and machine intelligence, driven half by man, half by machine. 

“In my mind’s eye I can compute, I can imagine geometrically what exactly the mind’s eye is looking for,” he said. 

To create his work, Anadol and his team curate enormous datasets: sometimes hundreds of millions of images. For one project, he used 200 million photos of Earth, including data from NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration, United States’ federal agency responsible for the civil space program and research in aeronautics and space exploration]. For another, he curated more than 150 million images of California landscapes.

“When I think about data as a pigment, I think it doesn’t need to dry. It can move in any shape, in any form, any color, and texture,” he said. 

The images he and his team curate are converted into data points representing color, texture and shape. They’re then plotted into multi-dimensional space. The AI system learns patterns from that data, and then creates its own images. 

The images, Anadol said, “only exist in the mind of a machine.” He then applies algorithms to blend those outputs into his signature fluid style.

Something worthy of attention, or “a half-million-dollar screensaver?”

Some in the art world have embraced Anadol’s work. His large-scale installations have been displayed on landmarks including Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Casa Batlló in Barcelona and the Sphere in Las Vegas [see Sphere (24 and 27 December 2023)]. His pieces have sold for upwards of $1 million at auction. In 2022, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, commissioned a 24-foot installation called “Unsupervised,” which filled the museum’s lobby [19 November 2022-29 October 2023].

Visitors sat in front of “Unsupervised” for hours, transfixed by what they saw, according to recently-retired museum director Glenn Lowry [b. 1954].

Anadol trained an AI system on publicly available metadata from the museum’s entire collection[.] He says the finished work, “Unsupervised,” reimagines 200 years of art. 

“He wrote some algorithms that allowed the data from one object to evolve into the data of another object to become yet a third object or a fourth object never before seen,” Lowry said. “I think people found it deeply satisfying.”

Museum visitors typically spend about 28 seconds looking at great works of art, studies have found. Anadol said viewers spent an average of 38 minutes looking at “Unsupervised.” 

Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz [b. 1951] doesn’t think the lingering crowds are evidence of artistic success. He called “Unsupervised” a “half-million-dollar screensaver.”

“How long you spend with a work of art is not a sign of success so much as your willingness to get quiet within yourself, go to uncomfortable places, become comfortable in those places, asking yourself questions,” Saltz said. “In front of a Refik Adanol, you sit down, go into a stupor, and you don’t have to think much. You go, ‘Oh, there goes a painting that looks a little like Renoir [Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919); French Impressionist artist], morphing into one that looks like Picasso [Pablo Picasso (1881-1973); Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theater designer], morphing into an amoeba.’”

Most of it is “crap,” Saltz said. But he cautioned against overreaction, noting that most art made during the Renaissance was also “crap.” 

AI, he says, is still in its infancy.

“AI is one day old. And we’re already having conversations, ‘I hate it, you love it. It’s good, it’s bad.’ It’s new, it’s young.”

Whether AI becomes a transformative artistic medium, he said, will depend less on the machine — and more on the human using it.

Lowry, who ran the Museum of Modern Art for three decades [1995-2025], said skepticism around AI mirrors the reaction to the advent of photography 200 years ago. 

“When suddenly the human hand is removed from the making of an image, what does that mean? And I think artificial intelligence is analogous to that. But I don’t think you can stop technology,” he said.

[See my post on Gres Gallery in which, in Part 1, there’s a brief discussion in 1957 of the distinction between the official customs criteria for “sculpture,” which had to be “hand-made” and “man-made” (and therefore designated “art”), and newly conceived modern abstract sculpture that was largely “machine-made” (and therefore labeled “manufactured” or “fabricated” metal or “new decorative art pieces”).]

Theft allegations 

Some artists argue AI systems are built using copyrighted works without permission from the original creators. New York-based artist and author Molly Crabapple [b. 1983] has called the training of generative AI models on copyrighted artwork “the greatest art heist in history.”

“When we talk about art heists, typically, we’re talking about one painting being taken from a museum, two, three [paintings.] They stole billions and billions of images,” she said. 

[In "AI in the Arts Is the Destruction of the Film Industry. We Can't Go Quietly" by Justine Bateman (4 June 2023), I quote a passage from “Artificial Intelligence, Real Consequences,” an article in the Spring 2023 issue of SAG-AFTRA magazine (vol 12, no. 2), that explains the TV and film actors’ position on this same issue (which is also shared by the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA), the union of television and film writers, who went on strike in 2023 in part over this matter):

As the technology [i.e., AI] improves at a dizzying speed, the laws protecting copyright and other intellectual rights will be tested. SAG-AFTRA emphasizes that governments should not create new copyright or other IP [intellectual property] exemptions that allow AI developers to exploit creative works, or professional voices and likenesses, without permission or compensation. AI that generates text and art doesn’t create it from nothing; it is trained on the hard work, brilliance, inspiration, sweat and creativity of countless artists — artists who have financial obligations and families, and who deserve to be compensated for their efforts [underscoring added].

[WGA’s sister unions either joined the writers on the picket lines or had scheduled votes to authorize doing so before the settlement with the producers was reached. Meanwhile, production in Hollywood was shut down.]

She believes museums, galleries and auction houses shouldn’t buy or display AI art that’s been trained on other artist’s work without consent or compensation. Popular AI art generators are “corporate plagiarism bots,” according to Crabapple. She said they’re trained on art, including her own, scraped from the internet. 

“No artist has been asked for their consent. No artist has received compensation,” Crabapple said. “In fact, we don’t even see credit.”

AI companies have told lawmakers that what they are doing falls under fair use, a legal doctrine which allows copyrighted works to be used without permission under certain circumstances. They claim AI is studying and learning, just as a human would. But a group of artists have filed a class action lawsuit against four of the AI companies that make art generators, accusing them of copyright infringement, among other things.

Anadol said he understands his fellow artist’s concerns with commercial AI image generators. Since 2020, he said he’s only worked with what he calls “ethically sourced” datasets 

“This is the most important part of art making with AI. It takes a lot of teamwork, a lot of thinking, research. We always start with permission, then we know exactly where information comes from,” Anadol said. 

What’s next for AI art

Anadol is now building DATALAND, a 20,000-square-foot museum dedicated to AI art, in downtown Los Angeles. 

Visitors can expect to wear devices around their necks that pump out different AI-generated scents, such as rain and flowers, to accompany what they’re seeing. Anadol says eventually, another device will monitor viewers’ vital statistics. That data will be used to change the art in real time.

When DATALAND opens this spring, it will be the world’s first museum devoted entirely to AI arts: a massive canvas to celebrate Anadol’s optimism about technology. Anadol insists AI is not a threat to art, but a tool to create works no human could create alone. 

[Sharyn Alfonsi first appeared on 60 Minutes, the CBS News flagship broadcast, in 2015.  She has been honored with numerous accolades over her career, including an Emmy for Outstanding Recorded News Program with 60 Minutes, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, a Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in Television Journalism and a Gracie Award for National On-Air Talent in News or News Magazine.

[Alfonsi joined 60 Minutes from ABC News as a New York-based reporter who appeared regularly on Good Morning America, World News Tonight and Nightline.  She was the co-anchor of the ABC franchise “Made in America” where she revealed that the uniforms to be worn by U.S. Olympic athletes were made in China.  Her investigation for Nightline showed the often cruel world of the puppy mill industry, exposing factory-like breeding facilities in the Amish country of Pennsylvania.

[Aliza Chasan is a Digital Content Producer for 60 Minutes and CBSNews.com, based in New York.  She earned a master’s degree in journalism from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in 2015, focusing on urban news during her time there.  Chasan started her journalism career in New Jersey, where she reported on local news.  Before coming to 60 Minutes and CBS News, Chasan covered breaking news, politics and local news at outlets including PIX11 News, the New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo.  Chasan won an Online News Association award for her work on The Missing with NY City News Service.]

*  *  *  *
“WHEN AI BECOMES A PAINTBRUSH, IS IT ART?”
by Brit McCandless Farmer

[Linked to the report posted above was a piece on 60 Minutes Overtime, the CBS News website on which stories broadcast on-air are discussed in further detail, posted on 22 February 2026.]

This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi stepped into a new frontier of artistic expression: the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence-generated art. She profiled Refik Anadol, the 40-year-old Turkish American artist widely regarded as a pioneer of this emerging form.

Anadol doesn’t mix acrylics or sculpt with stone. Instead, he paints with data.

For one recent work, he fed an artificial intelligence model 200 million photographs of Earth, drawing heavily from archives provided by NASA. The result is a sweeping, immersive digital installation — a living canvas of color and motion that feels at once cosmic and intimate.

“When I think about data as a pigment,” Anadol told correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, “I think it doesn’t need to dry. It can move in any shape, in any form, any color, and texture.” [See Alfonsi’s report above.]

It’s a poetic description of a process rooted in code. His installations, projected across walls and ceilings, envelop viewers in constantly shifting landscapes generated by machine learning systems trained on vast image libraries. The effect can feel, as Alfonsi put it, “a little trippy.” [See article in the first link in this post above.]

“It is trippy,” Anadol replied. “Because I think as artists we ask what is beyond reality.”

The critics weigh in

Anadol’s work has appeared in some of the world’s most prestigious museums. But as A.I. art moves from tech labs to galleries, the art world is grappling with a bigger question: How do these creations stack up?

Jerry Saltz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for New York Magazine, is both skeptical and curious.

“Right now, AI art seems to be an average of averages,” Saltz told Alfonsi. Algorithms are trained on vast datasets of existing images, themselves products of countless influences. The result, he argues, risks becoming “vaster, and more average,” rather than more profound.

For Saltz, great art emerges from something machines fundamentally lack: lived experience.

“I want the algorithm to experience death,” he said. “I want the algorithm to know the feeling of feeling like you have a fat neck, or bad hair . . . I want to train the algorithm to experience carnality.” Without sex and death, Saltz suggests, there is no art.

And yet, he doesn’t dismiss the technology.

“I like to think of it as a material,” Saltz said. “Artists use materials. A digital file is a material.” To reject A.I. outright, he argued, would be like rejecting oil paint or the novel before engaging with them. “I wish it well. And I would never, ever ignore it.”

Fear, replacement, and ethics

Part of the anxiety surrounding A.I. art is existential. Artists, like professionals in many industries, fear replacement, Saltz said.

“We all have a latent fear of being replaced by AI,” Saltz acknowledged. “I guess I think that we will be on some level.” His prescription isn’t retreat — it’s reinvention. Artists must become “better, or more useful, or more unique at what we do in order to keep our jobs.”

The ethical questions are thornier. Is it fair — or legal — to train an algorithm on the work of other artists?

Saltz thinks so. Artists have always borrowed, referenced, and reinterpreted what came before them.

“There are no laws in art,” Saltz said bluntly. “All art comes from other art.”

Is it art?

Last year, artist Refik Anadol brought his vision to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain [in situ: Refik Anadol, 7 March-10 December 2025]. For that exhibition, he built a custom A.I. model trained on open-access photographs, sketches, and blueprints from the archive of Frank Gehry [1929-2025], the legendary architect who designed the museum itself.

The system processed Gehry’s architectural legacy and reimagined it as a fluid, morphing, digital spectacle.

Saltz once dismissed a similar installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art as a “glorified lava lamp,” dazzling but ultimately decorative [Unsupervised – see above].

Which raises the central question of this cultural moment: When a machine recombines humanity’s visual history into something new, is that art? 

[Brit McCandless Farmer is an award-winning journalist with a career spanning print, broadcast, and digital news.  As the digital producer for 60 Minutes at CBS News, Farmer extends the broadcast’s reporting online, giving the 60 Minutes audience a deeper dive into the subjects on television, and helps introduce the news magazine to a new generation of viewers.  Her work has been recognized by the Webby, Gracie, Wilbur, and Telly awards.  

[Previously, Farmer worked at the CBS Weekend Evening News and CBS This Morning, where she produced interviews with presidential candidates, elected officials, and business leaders. Before joining CBS, she worked at CNN, where she was a member of a producing and reporting team that won a Peabody Award.  She is the immediate past-president of the Carnegie Mellon Alumni Association Board, a former trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.]