Recently, during a show that shall remain nameless, a lighting-designer friend turned to me and said, “If I see any more gobos I am going to be sick.” Gobos, for those who don’t know, are filters that allow lights to appear onstage as windows, stars, funny elephants.

Gobos are just the beginning, however, in today’s theater. Stage design, direction, acting, and writing all too easily rely on tricks or fashionable devices rather than fresh invention and inspiration. For the New Year, then, I propose a highly informal, painfully biased, and infinitely expandable moratorium for the American theater: elements of stagecraft that should be done away with, or at least retired for a few seasons, until they regain their integrity.

CASTING The theater cannot compete with television, at least with the things it does well. So let’s leave cooking shows, C-list celebrities, music videos, and “American Idol” where they belong – on the tube.

The unremitting reliance on second tier television actors in complicated parts in new plays is a serious problem. I watch more television than I should, and have enjoyed my share of “Felicity” and “Desperate Housewives.” But at the theater I want to see stage actors, not television stars. I’m not alone: “Doubt” has no big-name stars, real theater talent, terrific word of mouth, and packed houses.

I wish there were fewer one-person shows onstage. (I also wish I could believe that their reason for existing were not entirely financial, but don’t expect this to be fulfilled.)

LIGHTING Having smashed the gobos, we should also do away with starry nights. We shouldn’t have to bear another twinkling sky until there’s a musical biopic about Carl Sagan. Also due for retirement are lighting designs that blind the audience, and flat, frontal, lights-all-over-the-place schemes that make all comedies feel like television.

SETS It’s time to retire ramps, stainless steel, glass boxes, and sleek 1960s-modern rooms. Off-Broadway, designers should stop trying to do John Lee Beatty hyper-realism without the money to do it right. A lack of funds should lead to more resourceful solutions, not cheap-looking dining rooms.

COSTUMES My primary quibble here has to do with how terrific people look. Contemporary plays become unintelligible when everyone seems to shop at Bergdorf’s.

SOUND DESIGN This area, close to my own area of semi-expertise, has its own tendency to go overboard. Death scenes are playwrights’ gifts to actors, but lately we’ve been killing the actors with massive sound cues before they have the chance to die on their own. (Cleopatra: “As sweet as balm, as soft as air … ” Sound cue drowning her out: Giant hissing snake attacking! POW! Mahler’s 5th! Shostakovich! Scene.)

MUSIC I work primarily as a songwriter, and will admit to my own transgressions. In the past year, I have used passages of Bernard Herrmann and Aaron Copland; killed off a wonderful actress with a really loud string quartet; and, worst, referenced the Strokes about a year too late. Finally, I would like to denounce myself for failing to come up with a contemporary musical style that neither reeks of pastiche nor of “American Idol.”

I often think it’s time for a complete moratorium on musicals until we figure out what to do with them next. Ideas, anyone?

DIRECTION Many of these elements earn moratorium status because of overzealous directors. Clever blocking or ingenious scene changes can be exhilarating, but they often become a distraction. (See Elphaba flying in “Wicked” or the extraordinary use of Hugh Jackman removing his shirt in “The Boy From Oz.”) It requires enormous assurance to do as little as possible and to trust that the technique of your actors, authors, and designers will prevail.

The most revelatory staging I have seen in the last few years was Ingmar Bergman’s “Ghosts,” but not because I agreed with his interpretation of the play or because it was especially inventive. In fact, it mostly consisted of an ugly green set with some furniture on a turntable; the turntable allowed almost every scene to be played downstage center.

Mr. Bergman recognized his greatest strength: the extraordinary performance of Pernilla August as Mrs. Alving. As good opera directors know, if you have an artist of caliber, be glad, relax, and do everything in your power to keep her in front of us at all times. More can certainly be more – who would want to do without all those animals in the Met’s “Aida”? – but it never replaces the joy of a single great performance, or of effortless great directing.

CRITICS Finally, theater critics also need to break some bad habits. Dance and music critics, if they have any self-respect, rely on command of their medium’s technique. Theater technique, especially in America, is famously inconsistent and slippery to discuss. Still, that’s no excuse for what finds its way, or doesn’t find its way, into many play reviews.

Describing the way an actor tilts his head or holds her glass of sherry is not a helpful examination of “the art of acting” (a phrase that should be retired). Critics seldom examine sets, lights, costumes, in a way that shows an interest in or understanding of those crafts. Why is a set clever? How do costumes contribute to dramaturgy? What the hell did the sound designer actually do?

And stop blaming playwrights for not writing the kind of play you think should be written. Blame them for structural failings, or for their own inconsistencies, or for writing a terrible play, but trust that they know what they wanted to write better than you do. Instead, encourage them to be bolder, crazier, more fun, more upsetting, more American. If Verdi and Wagner could rescue Grand Opera through sheer force of will, the same is certainly possible here.

Finally, might it be possible to go one year without any Shakespeare at all? Just so we might return to him refreshed the next?

Mr. Friedman, a composer/lyricist working on a new musical, is a member of the Civilians.