Big names don't stay long in regional theater, if they come at all.

The three ungainly strippers in "Gypsy" had it right. "You gotta get a gimmick," sang burlesque strippers Tessie Tura, Electra and Mazeppa, individually and in chorus.

Author Jule Styne and composer Stephen Sondheim, like theatrical entrepreneurs throughout history, knew that talent wasn't always enough.

Mike Daisey has found one, either by coincidence or as a well-thought out tactic, but it's rare when a one-man show with a four-performance run, playing on Monday nights at Joe's Pub, a small space that is part of the Public Theater in New York's East Village, receives a major advance piece in the Sunday New York Times and a review that runs more than a column in length. The Times' review was mostly happy, as were those in Time Out New York and Variety.

But Daisey's show is called "How Theater Failed America," and theater types across the blogosphere reacted at warp speed.

I was alerted to it recently on one of the theater news-gossip-opinion sites on the Internet; it came from The Stranger, a weekly alternative newspaper in Seattle, and was called, "The Empty Spaces, or, How Theater Failed America."

I learned that it also was a performance piece, though I do not know which came first.

It's a powerful screed about Daisey's life and career, and it campaigns for a radical change in the way the Rep and many other theaters operate, whether in St. Louis or across the country.

Not really. It seeks a return to the American regional repertory theater tern of a half-century ago--a system that was tried for a decade in St. Louis and failed, as it failed just about everywhere else.

When David Frank came here in 1972 as artistic director of the Rep, his concept was for a permanent (or at least season-long) company that would do a season in which almost every actor would perform in every play. Frank, who grew up in England, was thinking of his home turf, though similar groups operated in this country. A good idea, as audiences came to have their favorites--Joneal Joplin, Arthur Rosenberg, Lewis Arlt, Bob Darnell, Brendan Burke among them--and enjoyed seeing them do different roles. Frank also scheduled a Shakespeare play for every season.

But after a few years, it became obvious that it did not work. Not every actor could perform in every style. Some were classically trained. Others were fine with American realism but had difficulty with Shakespeare or Moliere. Some out-of-town actors were hired for a production or two. Frank's company was weak in terms of women actors, and actors of color until John Cothran and Stephen McKinley Henderson came along.

Both men have gone on to (certainly) bigger and (perhaps) better things. Cothran is a West Coast-based actor in a variety of TV shows and movies. Henderson has been in most August Wilson plays on Broadway, receiving excellent notices, showed up often on "Law and Order" and has a recurring role on "New Amsterdam."

But for all those ticket-buyers who liked seeing an actor do many different roles, there were ticket-buyers who were tired of seeing an actor over and over again and wanted new faces. And actors didn't necessarily want to spend their time in St. Louis, even if there were many opportunities in the '70s and '80s to do good-paying commercials or voice-overs while they were here. That, by the way, is another story with many ramifications to be dealt with down the road.

It's tough to get New York-based actors, who dream of Broadway, to commit to St. Louis, or any other mid-sized city, for more than a month at a time. They want to keep auditioning, and they worry about what they will miss while they are here. For example, Holly Hunter, while here in "Buried Child" many years ago, used her day off to fly to New York and audition for "Children of God," though she did not get the role. She was here for only one play, but her performance still resonates.

Actors will agree to come to St. Louis, and when a better opportunity comes along, he or she will call Steve Woolf and ask to be released from the obligation. Artistic directors at regional theaters know the feeling and the experience.

"And you can't say no," Woolf says.

Whether or not you agree with Daisey, it's always good to have discussion, and controversy, too. He's a good writer, and I'd like to see the show, and maybe talk about it afterward. In any event, discussion and interest are extremely important, and we need more of both.

Daisey also blames regional theaters for becoming bloated, for spending more money on advertising, marketing and money-raising than they should. In some cases, I'm sure this is correct, but contributors need massaging and fund-raising is an integral part of the business. I wish the government were more generous to the arts, maybe as generous as it is to farmers and mall-builders and security organizations, but I don't see that happening.

Daisey would give more money to actors and less to front-office types, and while that may be fine for actors, the other people involved in the production, whether on stage, back stage, front of the house or wherever, are contributors to the success of the show and, more important, to the entire experience--a key factor in bringing people back.

Joe Pollack is a former St Louis Post Dispatch columnist.