What is the value of local theatre?

As I continually struggle to define the value of live theatrical productions as part of  the art and entertainment landscape going forward, I thought this piece from Carey Perloff at the Huffington Post was an important piece of the puzzle.  It's not very long, so you should read the whole thing, but a choice nugget would be:

What's happened to the American non-profit theater in the interim is interesting. In a desperate attempt to feel relevant in an increasingly digital universe and to remain solvent at a time of huge decreases in arts funding, the regional theater has all but abandoned its alternative stance (the whole notion of a permanent company of actors being one of the first ideas to go) and now actively pursues commercial success and a presence in New York. It has become standard operating procedure for regional theaters to accept significant "enhancement money" from commercial producers in exchange for the use of their theater and their subscription audience to try out Broadway-bound material. While this has allowed large-scale musicals to be developed and previewed across the country, it has also sapped the regional theater of its artistic muscle and its individuality. Since he who pays the piper plays the tune, it is inevitable that the artists working on an enhanced musical are far more likely to take direction from their Broadway producers than from the non-profit theater's artistic team, with the result that the work is "local" in name only.

This has come into focus for me quite a bit since I moved to Chicago.  Here, the phrase "going out to the theatre" seems by default to mean seeing one of the big musicals downtown.  I know people that go to these shows all the time, that have never even been to see a show at Steppenwolf, The Goodman, or Chicago Shakespeare, much less anything on a smaller, more home-grown scale. 

When I lived in Portland, I struggled with a similar quandary to the one Ms. Perloff mentions.  Portland LOVES the Local and the DIY when it comes to anything.  But when it comes to performance, that means  snything except theatre.  Live local music, festivals of local films, reading by local authors, even live comic-book making.  But not live theatre.  I don't actually believe that in Portland it's for the reasons that Ms. Perloff suggests (the Portland-New York theatre circuit just doesn't really exist that way in my experience). Also, she should probably attribute more of her show's success to the built-in local audience for the adapted material.  I doubt if they could boast the same revenue/audience turnout if the text had been wholly new.  Yet rejecting New York aspirations could be a valuable tool in trying to maintain a pinky-hold for live theatre.

Anyway, this is something I've continued to think about often over the last decade, and will probably subject the non-existent readers of this blog to further ramblings in the future.