Death and Bullshit
Exchange Theatre has gone tits up. Never heard of `em? That was the problem. “Our season subscribers were not increasing, and neither were our audiences,” said artistic director Sally Brady. At their last show, there were more people in the cast than the audience.
There’s a lesson here. Exchange’s mission was to perform NW and US premieres of European scripts and they thought that was pretty special: “It’s a bitter pill to swallow,” Brady said, “that audiences must not want to see plays rarely seen in this area, and would prefer to see the seventh or eighth production of Noises Off or other familiar fare.” Yesterday’sSeattle Times article about the company quoted Steve Wright (who helps run the Bathhouse, where Exchange performed) saying “No one does what they do…”
Bullshit and bullshit. Annex, WET, and other smaller companies keep doing interesting work and surviving. Exchange, like any other theater, is responsible for its own demise. Their plays either were or felt like “familiar fare”straight-ahead, regular old productions of Playboy of the Western World, The Cherry Orchard, et al.
Now they’re dead and, platitudes aside, I doubt they’ll be missed.