Slog - The Stranger's Blog

Line Out

The Music Blog

« Long Time No Talk | Slogdance 2 - The Arrival »

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Theater Don’t Pay

Posted by on January 19 at 16:37 PM

Your neighborhood supplier of corporate theater (the touring productions of The Graduate and The Lion King at “Broadway in Seattle at the Paramount”) changed hands recently. The infamous Clear Channel Communications got rid of its theater and concert division—which produced 12,000 theater productions, 10,000 concerts, and 600 “motor-sports events” last year—and the new company, called Live Nation, went public. Guess what happened? Clear Channel stock shot up, and Live Nation’s promptly plummeted. The lesson? There is no money in theater.


CommentsRSS icon

No money in theater? Stop the presses!

Theatre's run by old guys and young people who worship them and want to be like them. It's become an irrelevant art form, which is a shame because, with some post-modern perspectives in influential positions, I think that could change. But when Rent is the closest we've come to modernizing the musical, and we're still doing Shakespeare and Arthur Miller plays in 100 seat playhouses, one must conclude that theatre is nowhere close to culturally relevant.

Hih___

Shakespeare, try this simple reality checl --- 100 poeople at 1,000 venues times 40 production.

Yeah, sure, no audience. You are simplistic in your theory.

Rent is OK, it is the genre that sucks Musical comedy as a benchmark of what --- I forgot the the 1940's.

Here's the thing with your Shakespeare argument: It's the EXACT SAME AUDEINCE, Urba. The same 100-200 people watching every run of the same plays. Your argument assumes each audience is unique.

And most of them are either diehard students, students forced via class asignment to see the play (and keep in mind many of these Shakespeare productions are school productions or part of a weekend festival), or its biggest audience: old people. Go to a show and you'll see what I mean.

What happens when old age collectively takes the boomers? I wouldn't say this is I wasn't once a theatre performer and participant myself.

Have you never been to a Shakespeare in the park production? A heckuva lot of people - most of them not old - attend these contemporary productions of classic plays in the parks. Go to a show this summer and you'll see what I mean.

Most of those Shakespeare In The Park shows are free. It's much easier to get people to come out for one of those shows if they don't have to pay to see it.

Also, the point of the original post was that there is no money in theatre, and free Park shows only defend that. Charge even as little as five bucks a head and watch the attendance plummet.

Hello! Very interesting and professional site. sport books casinos tramadol online loan lorazepam generic clonazepam

It looks like you really had a nice time.

Very interesting & professional site. You done great work.

A very nice website !! Very well Done !!!

Follow your dreams, you can reach your goals.

Hi there! Your site is cool!

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 45 days old).