| I'm sure you're right and I mourn their absence. | |
| Posted by: portenopete 12:30 pm EDT 07/14/24 | |
| In reply to: I would not bank on seeing any. - ryhog 01:55 am EDT 07/14/24 | |
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| It's a different culture now and it doesn't seem to me like there are a lot of people who are interested in and passionate about The Theatre. There are lots of people who are interested in and (God knows) passionate about individual shows and performers and- in rare cases- creators, but a devotion to the art form and the world itself seems diminished. Those two-page spreads or block-long billboards spoke to the outsize grandeur of Broadway and no matter how cleverly insidious constant Tik Tok clips might be, they don't thrill me like the sight of the Cats poster did emblazoned on the Winter Garden billboard as I exited the subway at Broadway & 50th when I was 15. I saw quite a bit last season- 25 or so shows- and there's no absence of great work. But the way news of it is disseminated and promoted just feels so sporadic and unexciting. Of course, the two-pagers were meant to be visual representations of newsies and town criers ringing their bells and hollering pull quotes from dozens and dozens of critics. New York still seems to have a quorum of reputable critics but outside the city, critics and theatre writers are thin on the ground. I saw a major regional theatre full page ad this week in a print newspaper and there were about six quotes with raves and exclamation marks and then I noticed that five of the six were all from the same paper. (The one paper that continues to employ a full-time theatre critic.) So many of the pull quotes you see on websites trying to duplicate the old newspaper style will have bylines like "Martha P., Toledo OH" or "#spazz_monster6969". (I'd like to see David Merck try to track down a fake theatre critic with the moniker #spazz_monster6969....) |
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| Previous: | I would not bank on seeing any. - ryhog 01:55 am EDT 07/14/24 |
| Next: | re: I'm sure you're right and I mourn their absence. - KingSpeed 05:31 pm EDT 07/15/24 |
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