The big problem with TBA's "Free Night of Theater" is that it in no way addresses the actual problem - it misses the forest for the tree.
The problem is this:
- Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline.
- Fewer adults are creating and performing art. Only the share of adults doing photography has increased.
Yes, there are a myriad of reasons why this is the case - film, TV, and The Intertubes have all made entertainment cheap and easily accessible. Arts education in schools has declined as well, leaving many children without a chance to experience the arts growing up. As media continues its descent into the toilet, so does arts coverage, leaving the public less informed about what's going on.
However, the problem with all this and with the thinking behind "Free Night of Theater," is that it refuses to place any of the blame for the rapid decline in audience on the Theater Community itself.
And yes, the Theater Community holds at least some, if not a large part, of the blame.
The problem with TBA's "Free Night of Theater" is that instead of asking the Theater Community to take a look at itself with an honest and critical eye, it assumes that everything is right with Theater, it's just these other factors that are getting in the way, and that once we can show people how jaw droppingly awesome theater can be, the general public will have no choice but to succumb to their newfound lust for live performance and spend $70 on a ticket to MacBeth.
Wrong.
"#1 barrier to attendance as the price of admission, with the #2 being "I don't want to spend money on something I might not like." What this means, to me at least, is that there are a lot of people who don't know they like theatre because they don't feel like they can spend the money to try it out." - Clay Lord, TBA's Marketing Director, responding to some questions I posted in comments on one of Chloe Veltman's blogs.
If the No. 1 barrier to attendance is the price of admission, should the Theater Community not take a long, hard look at its ticket prices? And ultimately, lower them?
If the No. 2 barrier to attendance is that people are nervous they might not like a show, then shouldn't we be offering them better shows? At least shows that are more likely to appeal to new audience members?
Instead of trying to answer these tough questions and actually solve the problem, the solution TBA has come up with is to give the product away in the asinine hope that people just don't know that they want to spend $100 on two hours of entertainment written 400 years ago.
Baloney.
Recently, TBA hosted a teleconference (subsequently turned into a podcast and posted here), which was called "Innovating Through a Crisis," and invited a number of Exec Directors of theater companies big and small to discuss how the recession is affecting them and how they're getting through it.
Again, this is an example of TBA missing the point. The problem is not the recession - the recession only compounds the real problem, which is the double digit decline in audiences over the last 20 years.
However, the one thing that was interesting about the podcast was that what appeared to be working for theater companies were mainly two things: talking to their audiences (can't believe this is a novel idea to some companies) and reaching out into their communities either by staging new work from those communities or simple involving those communities in other substantial ways.
Frankly, every theater company should be doing this all the time. But too often companies are only engaged with those who give them grants or big donations. The rise of not for profits has effectively ended the Theater Community's responsibility to audiences and instead made it culpable to the arts foundations which supply the money.
This is a huge problem and it doesn't appear that anyone really wants to acknowledge it. Theater faces big challenges these days from all sorts of entertainment and new technology and dwindling media coverage, leading to one simple solution: evolve or die.
Giving away the product is no evolution, it's just life support.
Again, Mr. Lord, my sincere apologies if this comes across in an ass hole tone (I am sure it does), but just like you, I love Theater. And I get viscerally angry when I see something that I think is hurting not only my ability to participate in and enjoy theater, but also everyone else's.
