The fight for survival in the regional theatre begins and ends with a fight for quality. So far, on a trek to the West, Southwest, and Northeast, through 46 theatres in all the possible shapes of professionalism from one paid director to 50 non-Equity paid actors, from university to workshop, I have seen far too little of it. The country is crawling with competence. But from the adequately done Twelfth Nights through the passable Volpones, there is a great aching dearth: nothing is excitingly good or excitingly bad. Nothing horrified me; nothing delighted me. There is very little life out there at all, either generative or even reproductive — the kind of museum life that sends an audience out into the night visibly affected by some longdead playwright's world.