SO... A little ways in the past, there was a comment about wanting to franchise black box theatres across the United States, and while that is an admirable notion, theatre to the masses and al, there is an intrinsic problem with theatre, that theatre doesn't gain any advantages with an economy of scale. Big shows are always more expensive. Always. Even for big theatres producing a host of shows, the big shows are expensive.
Every actor, ideally, requires a living wage for the entirety of the production, and that's expensive. So are sets and electricity and play rights... Theatre is, when we imagine it as fully produced, expensive... And if we want society to pay for it, we need to figure out a method of translating that cost into a worth to society beyond pure entertain, and more broad tan elitist Art.
Okay. Response done.
3 comments:
hullo there!
So. I came upon here to thank you for the comment you gave on my blog a couple of days ago. I put up that specific blog for a class and had initially thought you were a classmate, so imagine my surprise when I finally click your name and see that you are an "emerging playwright", as you proclaim!
I rarely come across people with whom I could talk about theatre, so yeah. Similar interests for the win.
As for your blogpost: I am all for black box theatres everywhere, but I am also a fervent believer that big production doesn't always have to equal what may be termed as "quality" theatre. Abigail Katz recently talked about something similar concerning Broadway productions here.
It's a somewhat similar in the publishing industry (though less expensive than theatre as you cannot offset some of the costs by digitizing, as you can with books. A direction I see become more fully realized in the next five years).
Creating large conglomerates is all the rage in publishing houses, but Independent Publishers are the ones who have seen the most growth and success in the last couple years. Their business models more flexible and tend to create high-quality material instead of dabbling in Brand Name authors that merely pay the bills.
You could get good deals as a larger Theatre CO. but you risk a lowest common denominator scenario. As IFM states in his blog above, the amount of money needed to pay everyone, would become an encumbering burden to bear.
IFM I am really enjoying your blog frequency. Keep it up.
I think quality theatre is something we aspire to, big or not. At least I hope so. the largest issue for me is, besides the concept of producing challenging artistic AND entertaining theatre, is being able to provide a living wage to the artists and technicians within the theatre, and for any scale production, be massice regional rep theatre or tiny black box, that is a major challenge.
Earlier, Jeny had mentioned hr desire to have a chain of black boxes across the nation. I think it is admirable to spread art to the masses, but I fear th effects of franchise theatre. Producers already flock together, producing seasons which are so similar as to be stultifying.
My piece. And I figured out how to comment. Whee!
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