| re: I'm sure you're right and I mourn their absence. | |
| Posted by: ryhog 04:28 pm EDT 07/14/24 | |
| In reply to: I'm sure you're right and I mourn their absence. - portenopete 12:30 pm EDT 07/14/24 | |
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| I don't question your personal sense of loss, borne of what you grew up on, but I can't agree with either of your main points. First, I think there are a lot of people interested in and passionate about the theatre. I think focusing on Broadway confuses the question but I see quite a bit of enthusiasm there and also off and off-off broadway and regionally. I travel around a decent amount and am regularly shocked by the vibrancy of the theatre communities I find (and that eclipse what existed in the last century). I get what thrills you, but other things thrill today, and the world has always and continues to evolve. OH, MARY did not get to Broadway because of ads in a newspaper or even reviews in it. (The Times was late to the party, to its shame.) And Escola did not just drop from the heavens. You may not be excited by how theatre is communicated now, but with due respect, it does not sound like you (or many of us here) are what is needed to carry theatre forward through the next couple of generations and beyond. Your second point is based, I think, on value calculations that do not hold up today. Full page ads in the Sunday Times cannot be justified financially, either short term or long. They are short-lived, which would be ok except that they cannot be correlated to sales. Before the internet reached critical mass, sure, but not now. The issue is not a lack of interest in theatre but a lack of interest in print newspaper. The essential audience does not get its news that way nowadays. Beyond that, there is a very vibrant online critical presence, not just in NYC but in most markets where there is regional theatre. Those bylines you want us to laugh at are not what people follow but there are very reliable online reviewers in most all relevant markets. There are, in fact, more critics regularly publishing reviews today than at any time in recorded history. Papers that depend on print have issues that will never be cured because there is no indication that people are ever going to go back to getting their hands dirty (if they ever did). There are a significant number of major national online theatre websites (including this one) that publish reviews from around the country, not from fake critics but very real ones. So while I can wish you sincere condolences in your time of mourning, I can't sign on to the etiology you have offered for where things stand now. |
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| Previous: | re: I'm sure you're right and I mourn their absence. - KingSpeed 05:31 pm EDT 07/15/24 |
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