Monday, November 17

Hungry Ghosts: The Business of Art

As our country's economy continues on its downward spiral, many businesses are encountering financial trouble. In the past year, the theater community has been beaten to the ground with a stick. It has become so bad that major theater companies are practically giving away seats for free. Downtown Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group is offering 10,000 tickets for only $20, their slogan: "All Performances, All Three Theaters, All Season for About The Price of a Movie and Soda!" With these rates, now is the time to go to the theater. However, the drain on our economy is not the only reason for the reduction of audience members. As I scoped the Internet looking for answers, I came upon a post from The Next Stage and an online essay from blogger Sarah Ruhl. Reading these posts I have concluded there are two main problems with having a thriving, successful theater community in America today.

The first, and most obvious, difficulty is getting people to go to the theater. According to The Next Stage's post, Theatre is Dead, Long Live Theatre, finding an audience comes rather easily. Finding people who are not family or friends is the difficulty. "The problem is not only getting our marketing in their face, but convincing them to spend time and money on our little thing they know nothing about, using only our enthusiasm." I know from experience how draining it can be to promote and find all the work that was done made hardly a dent. The second dilemma has two parts: having the "right" kind of theater community and dealing with theater as a profiteering business. Sarah Ruhl talks about various audience types; the wise, the innocent and the know-it-all. Then she goes on to write about how people in New York are hungry ghosts and hungry ghosts cannot be satiated. To them, it is not an artistic endeavor but a possible money making organization and they must learn how to make it succeed. How can they make it run forever? "And if a play were to run forever, could it properly be called theater anymore? Instead it would be an ossified strange thing, dangling half-way between live theater, a parade and an amusement park ride. Think of the longest running plays...what happens to them...what do they become...restaurants and plays should not be open for longer than the half-life of a chef, because they are about consumable items." As I have written many times, theater is an expression of civilization. Plays are not meant to run year after year just to make money. I suppose if the theater can communicate the author's message while making money, then that is a good business. I have commented on both of these posts. Below are the links to the websites as well as the comments which were posted by myself.


The Next Stage: Theatre is Dead, Long Live Theatre

I really enjoyed this post as it seems this is always a relevant problem in the theater community. It does not matter where you are or what the economy is like—the theater can never get the audience it usually deserves. I was just in a production of Our Country’s Good at my university. It was an amazing show with a beautiful set in a theater that holds around 350. Our largest audience was our last Sunday matinee with a total of approximately 115 audience members, most of which were family or friends. I really love how you play a bit of the number game. Unfortunately, just telling people about a play does not mean they will come. Out of those 5760 people you say 20 will come. That is just so disappointing, isn’t it? As someone who is in love with acting and the theater because of the thrill and the beauty of telling a story, I find it so disturbing when people don’t want to go. However, when people go they are blown away with what they are missing. How can we let the rest of the world to continue to believe theater is a waste of time and money? As a whole, the theater community needs to ban together to fix this problem. Let’s start talking, maybe someone will finally listen.


Sarah Ruhl: Essays I Don't Have Time To Write (Part 3)

Sarah,
You discuss many topics, all of which I find very interesting and meaningful. I have come away reading this with some new ideas that I still need to mull over in my head. However, one thing I can write about now is about the first topic on this post. I found it extremely thought provoking. The line "Instead it would be an ossified strange thing, dangling half-way between live theater, a parade and an amusement park ride" was probably the most interesting thing I have read about theater lately. People are so concerned with making money and establishing something the integrity of a play and the author's word are at risk. I would love to ask the studio head how he could possibly allow a show like Cats to run for so long. Honestly, I don't really even like that musical. But besides that fact, these productions have become freak shows and it saddens me that people don't see that. When I see a good show, I leave the theater feeling something I didn't feel before the play. Or I am contemplating the message, what the author wanted me to hear. Why go to the theater to watch something and leave without ever questioning what it was you just invested time and money on? These "hungry ghosts" and know-it-alls don't really understand the world in which we spend a lot of time and I feel truly sorry for them. They don't know what they are missing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have read both posts from Next Stage and Sarah Ruhl. A change certainly has to happen. What is it though and who will lead the charge? The image of hungry ghosts is so powerful to me, and so sad - why go to the theatre if it never fills you up?

I've been lucky enough to work and live theatre on the small scale in high schools where the process is almost always thrilling and life changing while the product, well, not so much. :)

It's nice to have a connection to the process of theatre rather than the product, the selling point, the thing that tries to satisfy a ghost.

It will be interesting to see where theatre goes in the next little while.

 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.