The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more

The sharp-tongued critic and master of letters, Gore Vidal, once declared: “The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.” In this fiery pronouncement he warns of the hollowness of misplaced labor, the tragedy of devoting skill and passion to empty pursuits. For the theater, like the soul of any art, is meant to elevate, to provoke, to reveal truth; when it squanders itself on trifles, it corrupts both creator and audience.

To do well what is not worth doing is a subtle but deadly sin. The craftsman may polish every stone, the actor may deliver every line with mastery, yet if the work itself lacks meaning, then all that brilliance is wasted. The debasement Vidal speaks of lies not in failure, but in success without purpose—in the glory of a performance that dazzles but does not nourish, that entertains yet leaves the spirit barren.

The theater, more than mere spectacle, has long been the mirror of humanity. In the days of the ancients it carried the myths of gods, the tragedies of kings, the laughter of fools—all serving to instruct, to humble, to inspire. To forget this sacred calling is to reduce the stage to a marketplace of noise and glitter. And in that forgetting, both artist and audience are diminished, for they are trained to applaud what should never have been raised upon the stage at all.

Yet Vidal’s rebuke is not despair but challenge. He calls the artist to courage: to choose what is difficult but worthy over what is easy but hollow. To raise stories that disturb complacency, that pierce falsehood, that remind men and women of their mortality, their folly, their greatness. For the true measure of art is not the perfection of its craft alone, but the worth of its message, the depth of its truth.

So let this wisdom endure: whether upon the stage or in life, do not glory in skill without substance. Ask always—is this worth doing?—before asking—can I do it well? For to master the meaningless is to debase the self, but to struggle with the meaningful, even imperfectly, is to rise to the nobility of true creation. The theater, and indeed all art, must remember this, lest it forget its sacred duty to the human soul.