Here’s a coincidence for you: both The New York Times and The Washington Post devoted space in the Sunday paper’s to stories about the high price of theatre tickets and the various initiatives being tried to make tickets more available.
Both articles chronicle a variety of efforts that bring ticket prices down to $20, or even $10, to help prompt people to go to theatre when they otherwise might not. They also both note that in many of these schemes, corporate or foundation philanthropy is making the work possible. So even as we applaud these theatres, companies and foundations, another article, from Monday’s Times, about the impending elimination of philanthropic giving in New York by Altria, should give us pause.
Someone must always foot the bill for audience development initiatives, be it people of means who support their favorite theatre company above and beyond the price printed on the ticket or larger entities that see the value of theatre in the life of their community. But as the Altria article makes clear, changing corporate realities or philanthropic thrusts can have profound effects on the groups they’ve historically supported. Only time will tell whether those who go to theatre first on a $10 ticket will someday underwrite the next generation when its time to bring them into the fold.
Posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 10:23 am
by
Howard Sherman
Filed under:
Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the
RSS 2.0 feed.
You can
leave a response, or
trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply
