[NEohioPAL] State of the theatre

Wed Feb 13 13:29:00 PST 2008

Before Fred moves this discussion elsewhere, let me
just add...
    A) We do theater for kids everyday
    B) they love it, and I think it makes a difference
    C) Doing theater as a professional actor, and
living in Cleveland...
   Unless you have a spouse that is solvent/working,
(and I have several friends in that category, which is
fine)...I have to say...Fuhgeddaboutit.
Tom Kerr
www.kulturekids.org
--- Lincoln King-Cliby
<lking-cliby at lincoln.homeip.net> wrote:

> 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
> >
> >
> >
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