Lasting Fame in Theatre

A realization:

People's fame in theatre may be able to be predicted to some degree based on their job. Here's my theory.

Actor's tend to be famous in the short term--their names will be better know than their contemporaries in other fields for their lifetimes, and maybe...between a half century and a century afterwards?

Directors and Designers occupy a kind of middle territory: they are remembered for a few hundred years maybe---basically, they remain influential (if they've done something really revolutionary) as long as people can respond to them, go against what they say. Then, someone will unearth them, copy what they did or have the same idea, and people will start responding to that artist, and the cycle starts over.

Playwrights are famous in the long term---Sophocles, Shakespeare, Synge, yadda yadda. Now, I know the first two also theoreticaly also directed their own work---but we don't remember them for their influence on directors, we remember them for their plays. Case in point---Sophocles introduced some very important inovations in scenery, etc, etc---and was very important to Euripides for that innovation...but did Stanislavski base his directing off of Sophocles' work? I'm pretty sure he didn't.


Ok folks! Disagree with me! Help me refine this idea.