[NEohioPAL] State of the theatre

[Lincoln King-Cliby]

One of the things that motivated me to move to Cleveland was how vibrant the
arts scene is and how accessable it is. Ticket prices are, for the most
part, reasonable quality is good, and choice is nearly endless. What
concerns me, though, is the graying audience; maybe it's the productions I
make it to at the times that I make it, but it seems that each year the
average audience member gets a year older.

I've commented on it here before, but I think some of the "arts" eduction in
schools does more harm than good. I can speak from personal experience that
I still have a profound hatred of Shakespeare's works thanks to one too many
monotone "Rome, uh, o...oh Rome-o...where was I?" recitations in my High
School English classes. [GLTF, among others, has provided therapy to ease
that reaction].

Had I not discovered the power of Musical Theater or well-staged drama...
there's a very good chance I would have said "Forget this" long ago.

La Jolla Playhouse in [the] San Diego [area], on the UCSD campus had both
"rush" (unsold tickets at, IIRC, 30 minutes before curtain were available
for some ridiculously low rate) and a "student" program where anyone under a
certain age (22? 23?) could call any time during the week before a
performance and get the same low-low rate. I was fortunate enough to see the
original staging of Jersey Boys twice, among others, through this program.
(And assuming I can make the scheduling and finances work on my end, I'm
planning on attending the touring production rolling through Playhouse
Square later this summer)

There are also younger theater companies producing with an eye toward
younger audiences, such as Fourth Wall Productions that I hope will grow
awareness not only of their own mission but theater in general.

And Cleveland is a fantastic theater market, at least for the audience
member -- there are still literally dozens of companies/venues (Beck, etc.
etc.) that I haven't yet had the opportunity to "try out".

It is kind of depressing though to be browsing profiles on a certain .com
singles site and see plenty of mentions of professional sports and not one
mention of [live] theater, opera, or the orchestra.

When any live production is bad, it's bad, but when it's good it's pure
magic. Theater is a very "in the now" experience -- no two performances of a
work are identical, and what you are seeing is not going to be repeated.

Lincoln
(Cleveland Heights)




On 2/13/08, Fred Dolan <fjdolan at windstream.net> wrote:
>
>  When I was a kid in the 50s maybe 5th grade, I remember going on a field
> trip to see the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. It was a
> life-changing event.
> When I was in high school in the 60s, it was possible to get student
> tickets to some of the annual Metropolitan Opera performances through school
> for about $1.25.
> When I was teaching in the 70s, I offered those same discounted student
> opera tickets to my students and sometimes the most unlikely students would
> dress up and go to the opera.
> I don't know how various theaters handle encouraging young audiences to
> attend their performances today, but when I see empty seats at theater,
> ballet, and opera performances,
> I wonder if any effort is being made to offer high school or college
> students those tickets at drastically reduced prices - like those Met Opera
> tickets that I grew up using.
> I understand that most theaters are understaffed and that a program like
> this takes someone to be in charge of it, but the first order of business in
> building an audience for tomorrow is getting them in the seats today.
> Fred Dolan
> WJCU-FM, 88.7 & wjcu.org
> Arts On The Heights &
> Visiting The Folks on Sunday nights from 9:00PM - Midnight
>
>
>
> ______________________________________
> Support Neohiopal, learn how here:
> http://www.fredsternfeld.com/faqs.htm#support
> ______________________________________
> NEohioPAL is SELF-SERVE. If you need to unsubscribe, change from digest to
> one-at-a-time delivery or vice-versa, go on hiatus while out of town, switch
> from mime to plain text or vice-versa, etc. check out the FAQS at
> http://www.fredsternfeld.com.
> ______________________________________
> Disclaimer: The facts and/or opinions expressed in this message are solely
> those of the person in the 'from' or 'reply-to' header. The fact that this
> message is posted should in no way be taken as an endorsement by the
> administrator of this list. Subscribers should perform due diligence for all
> goods, services and activities promoted on NEohioPAL.
> _____________________________________
> NEohioPAL mailing list
> http://mailman.listserve.com/listmanager/listinfo/neohiopal
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20080213/63d611a6/attachment-0004.htm>