|
Presented by The National Arts Journalism
Program
and Columbia University's School of the Arts
Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism
October 29–30, 2001
Summary
| Program | View
the publication
Reports
from the Research Frontlines
Monday, Oct. 29, 2001, 5 p.m.
Moderator:
Andr·s Sz·ntÚ, National Arts Journalism Program
Panelists:
Randall Bourscheidt, president, Alliance for the
Arts
Karen Hauser, research director, The League of
American Theatres and Producers
Christopher Hawthorne, alumnus, National Arts Journalism
Program
Kevin McCarthy, senior social scientist, RAND
George A. Wachtel, president, Audience Research
& Analysis
Michael Janeway, director, National Arts Journalism Program: In
the interest of time, given a fairly packed schedule, our panels
will work this way: I will briefly introduce the moderators as we
go. We¨ll skip the usual format of opening statements by panelists.
Your programs have extensive biographical details on each one. Our
moderators will go straight to a directed conversation, referring
to panelists¨ credentials where appropriate. The moderators will
have discretion to take a few questions, depending on the clock
and the schedule. But the real Q&A time will come tomorrow from
2:30 to 4:00 in an open session.
Finally, let me identify those working with us who¨ve made everything
possible and who can answer questions and help in whatever way you
may need. And maybe they can stand up as I call them so you¨ll know
who they are: Vicky Abrash, conference organizer, in the rear of
the room; Andr·s Sz·ntÚ, deputy director of NAJP; Research Manager
Jeremy Simon; and our program associates, Rebecca McKenna and Aileen
Torres and Peggy Chapman. They¨re all here to help you.
Andr·s Sz·ntÚ will moderate the research discussion. He is greatly
responsible for previous NAJP research and publications, including
ìReporting the Arts,î our study of arts coverage around the country.
Sz·ntÚ: We are speaking of new ways of doing business. This is probably
the first conference at Columbia that¨s actually on time. We¨ll
take care of that. I¨m Andr·s Sz·ntÚ. I¨m deputy director of the
National Arts Journalism Program. After these announcements, we¨ll
take a look at the big picture.
There was, of course, reality before Sept. 11. It was riddled with
all sorts of problems, and these problems will confront the theater
even when the current ones • the current deep problems • hopefully
go away. So joining us today are five researchers to provide a reality
check and get some of the basic facts on the table. Their findings
should outline some of the basic parameters • we¨re not going to
get into hair-splitting research here • that shape the past, present
and future health of the New York theater. But if we do this, I
won¨t be able to read anymore [laughs]. Thank you very much. You
can all go home now.
In the interest of time, I will, as we will in all subsequent panels,
spare you a lengthy recitation of our panelists¨ extremely distinguished
resumes. You can read those in your conference packet; let¨s just
say they know what they¨re talking about. I¨ve asked them to keep
their remarks to about 10 to 15 minutes, and I do have a gong, in
case something goes awry. If things do go at a fast clip, there
may be a little bit of time for discussion amongst you, and perhaps
a question or two from the audience, although that is unlikely.
Let me remind you that tomorrow, we do have an open microphone question-and-answer
session in the afternoon, so I hope that you will certainly share
your questions and concerns at that time, because there certainly
won¨t be enough time for everyone¨s today. You can also speak to
the panelists at the reception down the hall that immediately follows
this panel.
Before we begin, one more note about what we¨re trying to do. Mike
has already said a few words about this. We¨re really trying to
synthesize a report here, catalyze all sorts of information, research,
into a report that all of you will see hopefully before the end
of the year. The goal of this conference is really to collect some
of that information. We¨re doing some of that right now, and we¨re
certainly going to continue to do that tomorrow and also in these
open sessions. But in case you do not • because I know there are
dozens and dozens of experts here in the audience • in case you
do not have a chance to share these in full, I would like to invite
all of you to share them with us: myself, Mike Janeway, Chris Hawthorne,
who¨s the editor of this report, and also Jeremy Simon, who is our
research manager. So please feel free to go up to them with any
leads, information, reports, books, what have you. Please share
them with us, and we¨ll try to integrate them into this report.
So let¨s get started. The panel will proceed from the general to
the specific. All the panelists will stay seated. Kevin McCarthy
will be the first one speaking. He¨s a senior social scientist at
RAND in sunny Santa Monica, Calif. Under his leadership, RAND has
recently published two major reports, one of them specifically focused
on the situation in the performing arts nationwide. Copies of that
report are in the back. And I¨ve asked Kevin to outline some general
trends that have defined the landscape of the performing arts in
recent years.
McCarthy: Thank you very much, Andr·s. I¨m delighted to be here,
and I want to express special thanks to the Pew Charitable Trusts
for funding the research that I¨ll be talking about today.
What I have done here is collect a series of slides that are really
collections of headlines. I won¨t be talking about any of the stories
behind the headlines, but as Andr·s has said, the report is in the
back. What I would like to do is start out • and this report really
looked at the performing arts as a whole, not just theater • and
give you sort of the overarching headlines on the performing arts.
First, the arts as a whole face increasing competition for two reasons,
one of which has to do with the increasing diversity of entertainment
options that are available in the society. Just as importantly,
it also has to do with the changing structure and amount of leisure
time that Americans have available and the fact that they are increasingly
focusing their leisure time on home-centered activities.
Second, in terms of organizations, the traditional distinctions
between the for-profit and nonprofit world are beginning to break
down, and new organizational forms of importance are really arising
because of the size of organizations • big versus little, those
that target broad audiences versus those that target niche audiences.
The third feature has to do with the financing, and this won¨t surprise
anyone, and this obviously predates the 9/11 tragedy. Financial
issues remain pressing, as they have for at least the last 40 or
50 years in the nonprofit as well as in the for-profit performing
arts sectors.
Finally, the terms of the policy debate are shifting away from federal
funding and increasingly toward issues of how to stimulate demand
and how the arts can benefit the larger public interest.
In terms of audience trends, I want to go a little bit more deeply
here. The first point to make, which most people may not think of
but is clearly tied to this home-centered nature of leisure activity,
is that many more Americans participate in the arts through the
media • by watching things on television, listening to the radio
• than they do by attending. And that situation, to highlight a
point that was made in the earlier presentations, may get more intense
because of fear over recent events. Second, the good news is, total
attendance at the performing arts across the board is generally
up. The bad news is, that¨s mostly because the population has gotten
better educated and there are more of us. The actual rate at which
people attend is not changing much at all. Third, attendance • and
this relates to the points that were made earlier about how to bring
in different kinds of people • attendance at live performing arts
events is heavily skewed toward those who go a lot, the frequent
attenders. The real problem, in a sense, is not just to keep them,
as someone said earlier, but to get the casual attenders to go more
often and, most particularly, to get those who never think about
going to actually attend. The final point, which may be promising
in some sense, in terms of attendance, is that hands-on involvement
• that is, actually getting involved and doing it yourself • is
actually increasing.
The organizational structure of the performing arts world is also
changing. As I suggested before, the for-profit/nonprofit distinction
is blurring, and we can talk about that more later. But the big
guys, whether they¨re for-profits or nonprofits, are acting an awful
lot more alike than they are like the little guys. Growth patterns
differ sharply by sector. There¨s been tremendous growth in the
nonprofit sector, mostly due to the addition of lots of very small
performing arts organizations out there. On the commercial side,
on the other hand, what you¨re seeing is consolidation, as many
of these places are consolidating and agglomerating, which is part
of global economic trends Size and marketing strategies, as I said
earlier, are becoming more important. A key point, which I think
is relevant to things you heard in the last session, is that mid-sized
organizations, even before 9/11, were facing very special problems.
I can¨t go in-depth about that right now, but they are facing real
problems that are likely to get worse, not better.
OK, financial pressures. A key issue always, ever since Baumol and
Bowen wrote the classic study in the mid-¨60s. The key points are:
1) average expenditures on a real basis • that is, so many of the
comparisons I see in the arts don¨t control for the fact that the
dollar is not the same value over time • have mostly been stable.
Earnings constitute about half of non-profit¨s total revenues. I¨ll
talk about how that differs for the theater, because it does. And
the earnings gap • that is, the gap between total expenditures and
earned revenue, both ticket sales and associated earned income of
all sorts, which you heard a little about earlier • remains a critical
factor facing nonprofits. Moreover, up until now, contributions
have been making up most of that gap • that¨s not just individual
contributions, that¨s from foundations as well as corporations.
But there are changes in the patterns of how corporations are giving,
and the decline in stock value will have a direct effect on foundation
giving. So getting that contributed income, which has been critical
to making up that earnings gap, is likely to get more difficult,
not easier, in the future.
Finally, public funding, which we hear an awful lot about, and which
most of the public debates have tended to focus on, is really a
trivial portion of total nonprofit revenues and of course doesn¨t
enter into government revenues at all. It¨s about 5 percent of the
total of the average nonprofit¨s revenues, and about 80 percent
of that comes from state and local governments, not from federal
governments; and that has consequences in terms of the institutions
that they give to.
How does theater compare with this performing arts picture? First,
theater has higher attendance rates than any of the other performing
arts. And, it¨s higher for musicals than it is for dramatic theater
and also has less reliance on the media. That is, if you compare
attending a live performance versus listening through the media,
the gap is much less for theater than it is for the other performing
arts. I don¨t quite know why that is, but it certainly is true.
Second, for-profits, which are generally about 20 percent of the
live performing arts, are generally over half of the live performing
arts for theater. So theater is very, very different in that structure
compared to other performing arts. On the other hand, the market
• by which I mean, what fraction of the total revenue is made up
by the top four, or the top twenty, organizations • is much less
concentrated in theater than it is in other areas. With opera, for
example, the top four nonprofit opera companies earn about 58 percent
of total industry revenues. In theater it¨s about 7 percent. And
that¨s true whether you talk about the top five or the top twenty.
Theater constitutes lots of relatively equal-size or smaller-size
organizations, so that the market is distributed very widely in
the theater in this sector.
Earnings constitute a larger fraction of total revenues than they
do for other performing arts organizations. Overall, about 50 percent
of the revenues of performing arts organizations come from earnings.
In theater, it¨s about 60 percent. In areas like ballet, it¨s about
30 percent. Now, that¨s a good-news/bad-news situation: It¨s a good-news
situation in that you¨ve got a market out there. However, it also
puts you more at risk for things like 9/11, so that if in fact attendance
drops off, you¨re going to feel that effect more profoundly than
other performing arts organizations will feel it.
There¨s less reliance on individual contributions • that is, money
donated from individuals or foundations • than elsewhere, and particularly
from individuals than others. It¨s about half of the total amount
of revenues, or percentage of revenue, that comes from individuals
for theater versus the other performing arts.
Finally, the terms of the policy debate are changing. Traditionally,
as I think I¨ve already suggested, much of the policy debate about
the performing arts has been focused on how much money to get from
NEA, and that has tremendous symbolic importance for the arts. But
as I¨ve mentioned, public support is a very small fraction of total
revenues, and it¨s shifting from the federal to the state and local
levels. That means, generally, that it¨s increasingly focused more
on the instrumental benefits of the arts than it is on art for art¨s
sake. There is much more emphasis being placed in the policy debate
on the public benefits of the arts: that is, how in fact do the
arts benefit individuals, the culture and the society more generally?
I think an absolutely critical issue that predates 9/11 but becomes
even more important in light of that is the central issue of how
to increase public participation for the arts. We are facing a performing
arts environment in which the market is increasingly going to drive
what¨s produced and how it¨s distributed. And in that environment,
it is critical to think about how we can increase demand and broaden
the involvement of people with the arts more generally. Thank you.
Sz·ntÚ: That is truly a command performance. You¨ve come in under
your time limit, making that much more room for the others.
As Mike said in his introduction, one of the main points of interest
for this conference has been the need to think more systematically
about public policies that help to define spheres of the arts such
as the theater. But as Kevin says, on the national level we see
few answers to that question, because New York theater is mainly
the beneficiary of state and local funding.
So we now narrow our focus and go specifically to an overview of
the situation of nonprofits and performing arts in New York. Randall
Bourscheidt is president of the Alliance for the Arts, which is
a New York-based research and advocacy organization. And he too
has a report, but you can¨t read it yet. It¨s called ìWho Pays for
the Arts?î We were going to co-host a conference right here in this
room on Sept. 20, which for obvious reasons we¨ve postponed to probably
January. But the report, Randy tells me, will be out before then.
Today, he will give a preview from that and talk about some specific
characteristics of the New York performing arts landscape.
Bourscheidt: Thank you, Andr·s.
Why should we care about the future of theater? Or, since I assume
anyone attending this conference does care, why should the city
care? Why should ordinary people care? Elected officials? Business
leaders? The answers to these questions, which I leave to others
on the conference agenda to answer, lie partly in the economic realm.
The arts are a $13 billion industry in New York City, with a key
role in attracting visitors and supporting industries like hotels
and restaurants. But answers to the questions about the theater¨s
future lie equally in the spiritual realm, or I should say, the
community realm. Who of us is surprised the theaters were among
the first to open their doors after the disaster of Sept. 11, or
that the mayor¨s earliest and today most-frequently quoted words
included a recommendation to go to a show?
Before I launch into a lot of numbers, I¨d like to begin by saying
that the future of theater lies in the hands of the people of the
theater. Their creativity and their willingness to deal with adversity
and the issues that occupy our minds in these difficult times will
allow theater to survive in a very adverse economic climate.
Today, I will primarily address the condition of the nonprofit theater
industry. Broadway has major challenges now, especially because
tourism is drastically reduced in this city. However, tourism, a
major economic engine for the local economy, is a significant component
of the audiences of only a small group of larger nonprofit theaters.
The smaller nonprofit theater companies have audiences closer to
home and, as seems to have been the case in the last six weeks or
so, they¨re quite loyal. The nonprofit theater world is nevertheless
wrestling with serious economic threats to its economic well-being.
These are caused primarily by the current recession, but they are
the result of certain trends in corporate and government support
that go back to the mid-1990s.
To set the stage for this discussion • and the whole discussion
of this conference • I would like to share the findings of the report
that Andr·s mentioned, which we will be publishing shortly. This
is a report that the Alliance for the Arts did, analyzing sources
of income for nonprofit cultural organizations of all types in New
York.
We looked at income data for 575 organizations, based on reports
to the Department of Cultural Affairs in 1999. A smaller sample
of 334 groups, all funded by the Cultural Affairs Department, were
studied to assess trends in economic sources over the period of
1995 through 1999. No one knows what the funding world or the marketplace
for nonprofit theater will be like when we return to a more normal
life and healthy economy. However, we can assume that the same basic
system for funding nonprofit cultural activity will remain in place.
Nearly every source • corporate, foundation, individual contributions
and government funding • is temporarily empty after Sept. 11. The
very serious financial impact this is having on all nonprofits has
not yet been thoroughly analyzed. Nevertheless, the former patterns
of arts funding just before the disaster and the economic downturn
are the best starting places from which to make predictions about
the future. I will leave the predictions to the wizards who will
follow me • George • but let me describe the funding scene of the
late 1990s.
In our soon-to-be-published study called ìWho Pays for the Arts?î
the Alliance found that like most sectors, the arts have a few very
large players, economically speaking, and many small ones. Indeed,
29 organizations, whose names we all recognize, account for 71 percent
of the 1999 income of our sample of 575 groups. Out of a total of
575 groups, you see 29 that have budgets of $10 million a year or
more. Their share of the total income is 71 percent. The 165 organizations
with budgets of $100,000 a year or smaller share one-half of 1 percent
of the total income of this study.
We broke the sample into broad categories. Performing arts accounted
for well over half the organizations and about half the income.
Out of some 575 study groups, 323 were performing arts organizations
and they received almost half, 49 percent, of the income. I don¨t
suppose this map contains any surprises, but it is dramatic, and
it represents an interesting fact about what we¨re talking about,
and that is that the community we¨re describing • the nonprofit
arts organizations, performing arts organizations in general, and
theater in particular • is spread throughout the city. Broadway
is a neighborhood. Theater in New York is citywide: however, it
is intensely concentrated in one borough, as you can see. Two-thirds,
in fact • 383 of the total sample of 575 • are based in Manhattan.
The remaining 193 are spread throughout the other four boroughs:
66 in Brooklyn, 43 in the Bronx, 60 in Queens and 24 in Staten Island.
I think these numbers are pretty parallel to the number you found
for the nation, Kevin.
In 1999, the operating income of the 575 cultural organizations
studied totaled $1.5 billion. One-half of total operating income
was earned from admissions, 21 percent, and from other earned income
was 30 percent. ìOther earned,î as we define it, includes space
rental, revenue from shops and restaurants, endowment income and
so forth. Well over a third • 38 percent • was contributed by private
sources. Individual contributions and memberships account for the
largest share, 16 percent, followed by foundations, 11 percent,
corporations, 5 percent, and other contributed income, also 5 percent.
Government funding accounted for 11 percent of operating income.
New York City • 7.5 percent of that • and specifically the New York
Department of Cultural Affairs, which was 6.4 percent, was the largest
source of government funding, followed by New York State, at 2.6
percent of the total, and the federal government, at 1.2 percent
of the total.
These income patterns were the result of a period of robust growth
during the last half of the 1990s. Total income adjusted for inflation
grew by 22 percent in that period from 1995 to 1999, fueled by the
following: a 30 percent increase in earned income, but not much
shared by the performing arts • and I¨ll come back to that. Thirty
percent increase in earned income and a 21 percent increase in private
contributions. These significant increases outweighed a 2 percent
decrease in the relatively minor share of government funding.
The relative importance of these income streams is highly dependent
on budget size and discipline. Earned income ranged from 53 percent
of income for very large groups to 39 percent for the small organizations.
Conversely, government funding comprises 8 percent of total income
for very large groups to 28 percent for the small groups. Not surprisingly,
income growth between 1995 and 1999 was strongest for larger organizations
and did not filter down to smallest groups. The income of very large
groups • on the order of $10 million or larger • grew by 24 percent;
by contrast, the smaller groups¨ income decreased by 12 percent.
Looking at 1999 income sources by discipline, we see that the performing
arts have very different income patterns than their visual arts
counterparts. Performing arts organizations are much more reliant
on earned income, which is 58 percent of the total. They are strongly
dependent on admissions for income. Theater in particular is much
more reliant on earned income than the other performing arts. In
1993, nonprofit theater received about three-quarters of all income
from admissions and other earned sources. In comparison, dance earned
57 percent. The performing arts derive a smaller portion of their
income from private contributions than the visual arts, and they
derive much less of their income from government sources • 4.7 percent
including the City of New York. I was a little surprised to hear
Ginny Louloudes refer to the importance of government funding, because
it is clearly not supported by the numbers.
Looking at these trend data by discipline highlights the precarious
position of the performing arts. Overall growth in the ¨95-to-¨99
period for the performing arts was only 40 percent of that of the
visual arts. Earned income for the performing arts saw weak growth
during the boom years, slightly more than one-tenth of the rate
for the visual arts. There was almost no growth in admissions •
less than 5 percent • compared to a 66 percent growth in admissions
for the visual arts: very, very dramatic differences. In the same
period, government funding to the performing arts decreased by 15
percent, and 2 percent overall. Against this trend, contributions
to the performing arts increased nearly 30 percent.
Stratifying performing arts by budget size reveals the vulnerability
of the smaller performing arts groups. Total income grew by 15 percent
for the largest performing arts groups, but decreased 25 percent
for the smallest. Contributed income grew substantially • by 35
percent • for the very large, and decreased 31 percent for the smallest.
Government income decreased sharply for all budget sizes, but especially
for the smallest, which lost 28 percent in government support.
In conclusion, even before the events of Sept. 11 and the trauma
they inflicted on the economy, certain key facts and trends were
already apparent: all small cultural organizations are extremely
vulnerable. Income for the largest groups rose 24 percent in the
late 1990s but fell 12 percent for smallest. Government funding
to the performing arts fell by 15 percent in the late ¨90s, meaning
less than 5 percent came from government in 1999. There were major
shifts in funding from the poor to the rich in the late 1990s: corporate
contributions went up 27 percent for the largest performing arts
groups but fell 38 percent for the smallest. Earned income grew
strongly in the late 1990s for this sector, 30 percent overall,
but only slightly, 9 percent, for the performing arts, including
theater. Thank you.
Sz·ntÚ: This audience is of course comprised of different segments,
some who have sort of an ear for numbers and some who don¨t. But
this was extremely dramatic data you were sharing with us. If one
were using more bombastic language, then you would say that the
government has abandoned a lot of these organizations, and especially
the small ones are getting stiffed. But Randy would never put it
that way.
That was some of the scene-setting: federal trends, city and state
trends. Now we go to some of the more industry-wide trends that
refer to audiences and finances within the theater industry. We¨re
going to do two presentations on a related theme, but we begin with
George Wachtel, who has an outfit called Audience Research &
Analysis. He¨s been analyzing Broadway attendance figures for decades.
He was for 18 years the head of research for the League of American
Theatres and Producers, and he will now give us an overview. He
will focus mainly on some historical data that puts the boom of
the recent years, and also the crisis of the recent weeks, in perspective.
Wachtel: Thank you for inviting me, Andr·s, I appreciate it. And
as with the original arts study that was done with the Port Authority,
this looks like a seminal work. These are the kinds of statistics
that give us something we¨ll all be able to hang our hats on in
the years forward, when we take seriously the issues that confront
the nonprofit arts.
I¨m going to talk today a little more about the for-profit arts,
of which there really is only a small portion. And there are three
messages I would like to convey. One: that the precipice that many
of us seem to be on is part of a long-term cycle • and I¨m going
to address the fact that the ups and downs of the theater industry
look a little like a sine curve on an oscilloscope. The second is
that the historical divide between Broadway and off-Broadway is
no longer as sharp a line as it once was, and you really see that
manifested in terms of the audience. The third point has to do with
a lost generation of theatergoers, which may in fact not be the
generation we may think it is.
This quote comes from a reputable source, and it points out that
theatergoers between 21 and 35 are just not going to the theater
anymore. The only thing is, it¨s from 1951. Arthur Gelb. Based on
a pretty good study that was done by the late Arthur Cantor, originally
a press-agent and then a producer. A few other quotes from that
article point out that the high cost of tickets, in 1951, was the
leading reason why people didn¨t go to the theater as much as they¨d
like to. Also, the inaccessibility of theater tickets. There are
a lot of layers upon which that evidences itself, but lately we
find there are more and more prime tickets sold at a premium, and
the public has a perception that they don¨t have access.
There really aren¨t any good attendance figures prior to when Variety
started collecting them in, I think, the mid-¨80s, but we¨ve all
made attempts at estimates, and there are a lot of good sources
I¨ll name at the end of the presentation to help us. I estimated
that in 1929, a banner year • and when I talk about a year, I¨m
really talking about a season in this case, so this would be fall
1928 to spring 1929 • just missed the big boom, the big bottom there.
We sold 10.5 million tickets in that year. But Broadway was not
what it is today. If Jolson did three weeks of a variety show, that
would be a Broadway show. The definition doesn¨t hold up at all.
But when we move to the golden era of theater • we look at the late
¨50s, early ¨60sòwe never sold more than eight million tickets a
year.
By the mid-¨60s, and with the economic boom that was going on, we
had some very good years • as many as 10.5 million tickets in 1966.
Baumol has also made some estimates that are actually a little bit
higher. By 1973, however, it had fallen by half to 5.4 million tickets.
And then every year through the ¨70s it increased just a little
bit, peaking at 11 million tickets in 1980. It was extraordinarily
consistent growth.
The question is: Why? Well, there were several reasons. One was
the presence of the post-World War II baby boomers. Those are the
25- to 34-year-olds, who married late, were single, were going out,
and they represented the biggest slice • demographically, age-wise
• of the audience in those days. In fact, 55 percent of the Broadway
audience in those days was under 35 years of age.
And there were significant marketing developments that occurred
in the ¨70s. Number one: the first time a TV commercial actually
showed a scene from a show. I mean, I can remember the ad for ìPacific
Overturesî in 1974, where a talking head got up and read the review
scrawled on the screen. Bob Fosse choreographed a number from ìPippinî
and put it on TV. Actually, the number wasn¨t in the show, but he
choreographed it, and that was the first slice-of-the-show commercial,
and the rest, as they say, is history. Credit cards were never accepted.
You had to make two trips to the theater: one to buy the tickets
and one to see the show. American Express was first; I think it
was in 1973. And the very successful ìI Love New Yorkî commercials
were initiated on Valentine¨s Day in 1978.
OK. Then it all fell apart. By 1986, attendance had dropped to 6.5
million tickets. New productions had dropped from 61 in 1980 to
33 in 1985. And while attendance did reach 8.1 million • there¨s
that magic 8 million number again • in 1988, the season that ìPhantom
of the Operaî opened, it was flat afterwards for years. In fact,
it did not surpass 8 million until 1995.
Now this may be a little hard to read, but I¨ll explain. You have
two color lines there, the yellow and the red. The yellow is the
growth of Broadway attendance through the 1990s, which is phenomenal.
The perspective I¨m trying to create is that where we are now is
not just the place from which we¨re falling. It¨s a very high place.
And at the same time, tourism rose from 22.7 million visitors a
year to almost 38 million, and as you can see, these two are inextricably
linked. Not only do the sort of wavy curves go along, but I¨ve written
trend lines through each of them; those straight lines there show
the upward growth. And you can see that the yellow trend line for
theater actually has a slightly higher slope than the one for tourism.
What else was going on in the 1990s? The precipitous decline in
crime, which meant that New York was a place that people wanted
to come to visit • that¨s on the left axis there. On the right axis
is national personal income, rising markedly through that period
and allowing people to be more generous in their vacations. This
is a recap, not so much of all the years but of what I consider
significant highs and lows. And if you were connecting the dots,
you would see it goes like this: After the early recession of the
Kennedy years, attendance was kind of down. Then the ¨60s boomed
and got us up to 9.6 million in 1966. First the oil crisis, all
the way down to 5.4 million. New York was a terrible place to live;
they were about to tell New York City to drop dead. Then in 1980,
with the highest hotel occupancy achieved until just 1997, we hit
a benchmark that I thought we¨d never hit again, of 11 million people.
It was extraordinary. A number of culminating forces, as I¨ve alluded
to earlier, in terms of marketing developments, and the baby boomers,
but also ticket prices were relatively affordable in inflation-adjusted
terms. A ticket price for a big show in 1970, top ticket, was $15.
In 1975 it was still $15, even after an awful lot of inflation.
But what happened after that, for example in 1980, the top ticket
price on Broadway • ìThey¨re Playing Our Song,î for example • went
to $27. In 1984, just four years later, ìLa Cageî was $47.50.
Now I¨m not implying gouging here: there was tremendous double-digit
inflation. I remember applying for a mortgage and being told I would
be charged 18 percent for a co-op apartment. The rate of inflation
and the unions and the labor negotiations had gone on. The idea
of cost-of-living clauses was new. Those first contracts had no
ceilings, and there was one three-year contract with one union that
cost over 50 percent • not the actors union, but it got reflected
in the higher ticket prices and also reflected the higher production
costs. None of us are really addressing the enormous increase in
expenses. No matter how good an attendance is, the profitability
on Broadway is just not there like it used to be.
Now I want to move on a little, to talk about audiences, per se.
These aqua vertical lines represent the presence of 25- to 34-year-olds
in the audience, according to various surveys that were taken by
Playbill, by the 20th Century Fund, by the League, by myself, by
TDF and others over the years. And you can see that by 1980, those
baby boomers just disappeared, for a couple of reasons. First of
all, they got older and fell out of the age spectrum. But if you
look after 1980, you can see how little they were there. Look at
the last three bars: 1990, 1996, 1999. You see a little bar added
there for people who are under 18. Now that wasn¨t tracked before.
But what happened is, all the boomers got older and they started
to take their kids to the theater • ìSecret Garden,î Disney and
all of that. In between, we may have lost a generation, but the
boomers are still there, and the boomers are going to continue to
be there, and they¨re going to be a strong presence. And when you
talk about the audience aging, it may not be such a bad thing, because
they represent a very significant part of the demographic.
Now here¨s that lost generation. The 18- to 24-year-olds, if you
look after 1980: el gone-o. They¨re just not there. There may be
a lot of reasons. One reason I suggest is the lack of funding in
public schools for arts education. But they just aren¨t there anymore.
Now, in a seminal study we did for TDF in 1997, we were able to
compare Broadway and off-Broadway audiences, and here we see that
the plays that used to be done on Broadway are now being done off-Broadway.
And the audiences that used to go to those straight plays on Broadway
are now going to the institutional theaters. And as a result, somewhat
of a hodge-podge that becomes off-Broadway then includes some commercial
and some not-commercial. The mean age of the off-Broadway audience
is actually older than the Broadway audience. So it¨s not an avant-garde
type of thing anymore, BAM being perhaps the youngest performing
arts audience, and of course older theatergoers being obviously
much older than people who attend the nightlife venues.
Yet, it¨s worth noting that the Broadway out-of-town audience is
about 50 percent of the audience, and off-Broadway is 25 percent
• and you know, 30 years ago, Broadway was only 25 to 30 percent
out-of-towners. So, off-Broadway is also benefiting • the larger
off-Broadway shows, and the better-known ones are also benefiting
from the incidence of tourism.
In this next chart, the darker brown line is the season in which
the Gulf War occurred; and as you can see, business dropped off
at that point in January of 1991 and never really recovered for
quite a long time. The impact continued to be felt. A lot of tourists
were not flying, were not coming here from Europe. Yet if we look
at what happened this season, we see the bottom fell out after Sept.
11. Yet if you follow that orange line, it¨s come all the way back
up. Now I have two qualifiers on this: One, this is attendance,
not dollars. There are a lot of discounts out there. So if you factored
in the money, the orange line would be down a little farther. As
Jed and others have suggested here today, they have come back. But
it takes a while for the full impact of tourism to be felt. I hope
that the industry will consider some kind of pooling of the haves
and have-nots in the coming winter, because it¨s going to be pretty
cold out there. Thank you.
Sz·ntÚ: Thank you very much, George. At the beginning, I was saying
this is the panel where we look at some of the big-picture stuff,
and I think this is a very good example of that. Obviously, we¨re
all very much preoccupied by the fallout of Sept. 11 and the response
to that, but I think all these presentations have made it clear
that there are very pressing factors that go, in some respects,
way past the capacities of the agencies that are responding, and
even refer to broad demographic patterns.
We¨re going to continue zeroing in on the present now. With the
help of Karen Hauser, who now sits in the same chair as George used
to, as she is the current director of research at the League of
American Theatres and Producers. I¨ve asked her to share some of
their latest audience figures, that is to say, prior to Sept. 11,
and then some of the most up-to-date, hot-off-the-press research
that she has on the fallout that George was just describing, and
the rebuilding, and the responses that follow from that.
Hauser: The League is continually doing financial and weekly statistics
on shows, but we also are in and out of the theaters all the time
doing audience surveys. And this little presentation is kind of
a combination of both kinds of research in the last few weeks since
September 11. Now I¨ll just go through it with you.
Since Sept. 11, the Broadway industry has been working together
to mitigate the short-term financial losses to the greatest degree
possible. Producers, theater owners and unions have come together
in unprecedented collaboration to address concerns and prepare for
the future.
Just to take a quick step back • and this will allude to what George
was talking about also • the last few years have seen record-breaking
booms, and the economy has started to show a slide in ticket sales.
So this is the sixth month of 2000, compared to the year before,
and to the next six months, and then this past summer. So if we
just look at the percent difference, it was a 20 percent growth
to a 3 percent growth, and then a little dropoff of almost 1 percent
in the last few months. So that had started to level off even before
Sept. 11.
The week of Sept. 11, weekly grosses tumbled when three performances
were canceled, and this was the sharpest weekly drop in history.
And we did look at Pearl Harbor, the J.F.K. assassination, the Gulf
War, and this was the most dramatic. Five shows closed earlier than
they had planned, and others saw dangerous declines in ticket sales
and lots of refunds to the people who couldn¨t attend the shows.
And these were the differences in grosses. It¨s just for the couple
of weeks before, in comparison to the previous season. They were
off by a couple of percentage points, and then that week, with three
canceled performances, showed a 65 percent drop.
However, the industry did get immediately together to respond to
that, and made some agreements with the unions and royalty participants
to reduce costs, cut vendor and advertising costs, in a lot of instances,
completely. Theater rents were waived for those shows that were
most in danger of closing, and those were the long-running shows
that were light on tourists. Garnering $5 million of donated media
for an industry-wide campaign, and also, as John Breglio said before,
receiving tremendous support and visibility from Mayor Giuliani.
This was just one of the examples of one of the media campaigns
of posters with the Giuliani quote that was all over Times Square.
Also, a commercial was made, which you may have seen: the ìNew York,
New Yorkî commercial, for which everybody donated time and money
and. Nothing was paid for there.
Since then, ticket sales have rebounded, whether it was in response
to the mayor or to the commercials or to people just wanting to
get out. Ticket sales did rebound more quickly than anybody anticipated,
although not quite up to last year. But you can see they did go
from a loss, a dropoff of 65 percent, now to 6 percent less. The
week that just ended yesterday, it was only off about less than
2 percent. That has really come back a lot.
Sz·ntÚ: Do you have the cumulative figures for that? Or are those
figures dropoffs week by week? So when you say ìminus 65 percent,î
then you have ìminus 23î • is that on top of the minus 65?
Hauser: No, that is just this week compared to the same week last
year. So the 65 percent is the real dropoff, because there were
performances canceled, and then it was 23 percent in comparison
to the same week in 2000. And then the week that just ended yesterday
was only off by less than 2 percent. So it looks as though we¨re
really coming back, which is the good news.
However, there were some changes that we noticed in the audience,
and in why people were coming to the theaters; specifically the
lack of tourism. Within a few weeks right after Sept. 11, we were
back surveying in theaters, probably starting Sept. 20 • and this
is through the beginning of October • and we are continually doing
this. We¨ll have another round next week. So, granted, this isn¨t
every single show that was surveyed within these few weeks, but
we did see that New York City residents comprised 26 percent of
the audience; same with the suburbs, another 26 percent, domestic
tourists were 44 percent, and international tourists were 4 percent.
So that does say that the tourists are still there. However, there
was a huge dropoff in comparison to the fall before. The domestic
tourists had dropped 12 percent and the international tourists were
a 64 percent drop, from this 11 percent to 4 percent. So the dropoff
in tourists was really accommodated for by local audiences.
We also asked theatergoers if the recent attacks on the World Trade
Center, recent events, did influence their deciding to come to the
show, and a third of them said, ìYes, it did.î Twenty-three percent
of those said they wanted to support the city and the theater, 10
percent said they were just trying to resume normal activities,
7 percent thought they had better chances of getting tickets, 4
percent just wanted a diversion from current events, and 1 percent
was worried that their show might close. And this is the same question,
just broken down for where people came from. So you can see that
the New Yorkers were influenced more; they were more affected than
other people: 42 percent said that their decision was affected by
the World Trade Center.
And the other change that we noticed was that people were buying
spur-of-the-moment. People weren¨t buying for three months from
now. And people were buying the same day, or for a couple of days
in advance. We asked people, and 27 percent said they had bought
their tickets the same day, as compared to 19 percent the day before.
In this middle column, we just took out ìThe Producersî because
we thought that might skew it a little bit, because people seeing
that show were going to come no matter what. So they had their tickets
and they were there, and it was a big difference. Here, one-third
of the people bought on the same day, which is a lot higher than
usual. Also, you can see that New Yorkers did respond to that, moreso
than the other group. The international is high, but international
visitors do tend to buy last-minute, moreso than domestic visitors
or suburbanites in general. So it¨s mostly the New Yorkers that
we were looking at here.
Finally, we looked at where this leaves us all, and what concerns
we¨re facing now, and those are the possible continuation of lower
weekly grosses. Even though we seem to have rebounded, we don¨t
want a 10 percent loss for the entire year, because that would be
a problem. So hopefully, that has gone away. But there has been
a sharp drop in advance ticket sales, as I said before, with people
buying the day of. That¨s great, to get people into the theaters
for now and for great weekly business, but that makes it very difficult
for producers to predict the future. And that¨s going to be a problem
when their reserves are down.
It¨s also a problem if there¨s a general decline in tourism. We
obviously can¨t control if people don¨t get onto planes. And while
in the short-term it does seem as though the local people made up
for that, whether it was in response to all the marketing campaigns
or the mayor. But we don¨t know how long that¨s going to last, or
how long that patriotic feeling will last. We had a lot of donated
media, but people can¨t afford to keep doing that • we¨re not going
to be able to just keep making commercials that can entice people.
There¨s also the difficulty of attracting future investors for upcoming
shows • and not just future shows • because people and investors
have pulled out, and producers have had to figure out new ways of
financing.
And finally, there¨s just a general loss of tourist money. Broadway
is a $3 billion-economic-impact industry to the city. And over half
of that comes from visitor spending. So this will have a lot of
repercussions on the city, which is why the government officials
are being so supportive of us. You know, bigger effects than just
the theater tickets of the day.
In conclusion, we obviously can¨t predict the future, except that
we¨ll keep trying to appeal to people¨s emotions and patriotism
and focus marketing efforts on locals in the northeast corridor,
where people can come in on a bus if they¨re not going to fly. We¨ll
keep working with state and government officials on tourism campaigns,
encouraging more visibility from whomever the next mayor is, and
hopefully that will come about. And we¨ll keep doing audience research
like this so we can predict future changes in where our ticketbuyers
are coming from.
Sz·ntÚ: Thank you. We¨re coming to our last presentation, which
will shift the focus yet again. Tomorrow, we¨ll cover a much broader
landscape, including some other very critical issues that define
the health of the theater. Focusing on two of those today will be
Christopher Hawthorne, who¨s an alumnus of our program and a freelance
writer and editor. He¨s, among many other things, an expert on urban
architecture and design, and he is going to draw in his presentation
today from the report that he has helped us edit.
This is probably a good moment to acknowledge some of the other
authors of the report. You¨ve seen Mike, and Jeremy has been mentioned.
But in addition, Tony Brown is another one of those people who you
can go up to and share your thoughts and concerns with. He is the
theater critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and an alumnus of
our program. Adam Langer • who is very busy relaunching the wonderful
new Book magazine where he¨s senior editor • is not here, but he
will be tomorrow. He¨s also a theater critic and playwright and
also an alumnus of our program. And finally Michael Paller also
helped us with this report. He¨s a dramaturg and theater producer
and an alumnus of the School of the Arts drama program.
So, we¨re going to finish up with Chris. Maybe there will be some
time for conversation. Chris will share some conclusions about real
estate and the press infrastructure of the New York theater • concerns
that we will return to at great length tomorrow.
Hawthorne: Thank you. As Andr·s indicated, I won¨t be attempting
to summarize the whole report, for a number of reasons. First of
all, we relied quite a bit on the RAND data and some others that
we¨ve already heard presented tonight. Also, we¨ve had to revamp
the report quite a bit in the wake of Sept. 11. So, with those two
things in mind, I will be focusing, as Andr·s said, first of all
on the press coverage of theater in New York, which is one of the
areas where we did do a good deal of original research.
The first part of our analysis of press coverage of productions
in New York was to pick four productions that we considered representative
of particular categories in New York theater. Those are: a high-profile
Broadway musical, in this case, ìAidaî; a major off-Broadway production
that transferred to Broadway, in this case, ìProof,î the Manhattan
Theatre Club production of David Auburn¨s play; third, a touring
show, ìO Pioneers!î which was produced by the New York-based Acting
Company, began in New York in Queens, went on a tour of 16 small-
and mid-sized cities around the country, came back to Manhattan
for a three-week run and then was finally an off-off-Broadway show.
Then, we did ìCannibal! the Musical,î a Horse Trade Theater production
that ran at a small 60-seat house on West 4th Street
As some of the other panelists have mentioned, there¨s increasing
evidence that the gap between Broadway productions and high-profile
off-Broadway shows is shrinking, particularly in terms of revenue,
budgets and so forth, and even in the buzz and attention that those
shows get. But in terms of press coverage, according to our findings
at least, there is still a significant gap between high-profile
• the highest profile • Broadway shows and off-Broadway shows, even
those that transfer to Broadway. Broadway shows, particularly musicals,
simply continue to enjoy significant built-in advantages when it
comes to press coverage, particularly in terms of advance press
• pieces that appear before the opening of a show.
The darkest column represents pre-opening feature/preview shows.
And in the case of ìAida,î the show received a total of 35 pieces
in advance of its opening. Of course, this show had a lot of good
hooks for the press. It was the first major Disney production after
ìThe Lion King,î it was Elton John¨s musical, and it had some trouble
during its out-of-town tune-ups in Atlanta and Chicago, which gave
the press something to talk about.
Now look at ìProof,î which received not a single preview article,
and that is true also after it made the move • and we¨re talking
about significant features • and it went on to win the Pulitzer
after it made the move to Broadway. But before that, during the
period that we looked at, it received no major preview pieces at
all.
Now look at the middle column, which is reviews. Now ìProofî received
actually a total of more reviews than ìAida,î but that¨s mostly
because it made that move, and it was re-reviewed by every publication
except for The Times. So it had a total of 21 reviews, as opposed
to the 15 for ìAida,î but that was split about evenly between its
Broadway and off-Broadway runs.
And ìCannibal,î you¨ll notice on the far right, had about as many
hooks to attract media coverage as a production of its size could
hope for. It¨s a show written by Trey Parker, who¨s one of the creators
of ìSouth Park,î the Comedy Central series and the movie, which
was quite successful. It was an adaptation of a cult film that itself
had something of a following and had attracted a good deal of press
attention. And still, even with those advantages, it managed to
garner just five pieces and a total of about 1,000 words of coverage,
compared to about 40,000 total for ìAida.î
The next slides are drawn from a survey that we conducted over a
two-week period this year, from March 26 to April 8. Now these figures
are small, so I¨ll have to take you through the more important among
them. Now this is, admittedly, small • we¨re just talking about
a two-week period, and this is necessarily a subjective exercise
• but there are some interesting tidbits that emerge.
The first is that, not surprisingly, The New York Times produces
the most coverage of theater. In this two-week period, it produced
just over 20,000 words of total coverage, and that¨s including reviews
and feature pieces. But what¨s interesting is how close Newsday
is. Newsday is actually very close to The New York Times, in terms
of its coverage, producing in this period almost 19,000 words. And
Backstage was the third most prolific source of theater coverage,
with just over 9,000 words of coverage in that period.
Also interesting to look at is Time Out New York. It¨s a hard publication
to define, but it exists somewhere between a newsweekly and an alternative
weekly, reaching a significantly younger audience than the traditional
newsweeklies do. And whatever you think of its coverage, it has
become an important voice in theater coverage in New York and has
helped to fill the vacuum left by Time and Newsweek, which are barely
covering theater at all these days, especially in the period that
we looked at. There was one short piece in Time, of 160 words, and
nothing at all in Newsweek. Of course, that was just two weeks,
but I think that¨s typical of what¨s happened with the newsweeklies:
They¨re not devoting much coverage to theater these days at all.
So a source like Time Out is important, given those facts.
The next slide is similar to the one you just saw, except that it
shows a distinction between articles and reviews. The New York Times,
you¨ll notice, for this period • and this is a typical balance •
is doing many more reviews than feature pieces, about two-thirds.
Backstage and Time Out are doing about as many feature pieces •
that is, non-review pieces • as the Times does, and also way more
than anyone else. If you look to the bottom of this chart, the outlets
that are doing less theater coverage generally are not doing many
feature pieces at all; they¨re mostly just doing reviews. If you
look at the Village Voice, for example, they¨re doing almost exclusively
reviews now, at least in this two-week period. And I think that¨s
typical, generally, of their coverage.
The next thing that we tried to do • another subjective exercise
• was to try to figure out a way of comparing positive versus negative
reviews in the same two-week period. Our very able research manager,
Jeremy Simon, read all of the reviews from this period, in all of
these publications, and decided whether a review was positive, generally
speaking; neutral, generally speaking; or negative, generally speaking.
He then came up with a ratio that we thought would help express
whether the preponderance of reviews in a particular publication
were negative or positive.
One thing we found, at least in this two-week period, is that the
reviews in this period were more positive than one would expect.
All the ones that you see on the right side of this chart, at least
according to our unscientific method, were more positive than negative.
With Time leading the way, and then The New York Times, significantly,
liked a good deal more of the productions than it disliked during
the period that we looked at.
The next few slides have to deal with the changing ways in which
Americans are consuming culture these days, and the implications
that has for theater and real estate and the spaces that house live
theater.
This slide, looking at national nonprofit figures, compares revenue
from subscriptions versus single-ticket sales. It shows that for
the first time, in the year 2000, total revenue from single-ticket
sales surpassed revenue from subscriptions. Now, this fact has all
kinds of implications for the theater, particularly in terms of
programming, such as whether subscriptions will continue to be able
to subsidize riskier works as they have in the past. But we¨ve chosen
to include it because it reflects an important trend in American
society at large: namely, that we are increasingly drawn to cultural
offerings that offer us a degree of flexibility in terms of when
and how we experience them. We are much less likely these days to
plan well ahead • and we¨ve seen some other figures tonight that
back up that notion • and more likely to make our decisions about
how we consume culture at the last minute. And Sept. 11 has only
exacerbated this trend.
What the shift also means is that Americans are drawn to those centers
of culture where they can consume works of art and culture in a
flexible way. The biggest place we¨ve seen this change is in the
museum industry. A museum is a place that allows us to tailor our
cultural experience much more than the theater industry does. These
are RAND figures showing general attendance growth from 1982 to
1997. This is theater, musical theater and then museums all the
way to the right, which have shown more than 30 percent growth in
that period. Here¨s some local evidence of that same boom in the
museum world. On the left are attendance figures from the Whitney
Museum, and on the right figures from the Museum of Modern Art.
One caveat: these figures from MoMA show a dropoff in the last year,
which has partially to do with the fact that the museum was closed
as part of their expansion, as well as other factors, including
a strike. But what these both show is a percentage growth in the
last few years of something like 40 percent in attendance for these
two museums, especially if you go one year back in MoMA and look
at ¨94 through ¨95 to ¨98 through ¨99; it¨s something like 38.5
percent. There are similar numbers at the Whitney; smaller total
figures, but a similar jump in attendance. I think if we looked
at figures from the other major museums in New York, we would see
similar figures. And even in a booming economy, those are remarkable
attendance rises.
There are a number of lessons that we can draw from the boom in
museum attendance in the last few years. One that I think that has
some implications for theater is that museums have become public
spaces in this culture; they are places that we gather. We may meet
a friend at a museum cafê or visit the gift shop in a museum without
even entering the museum, but in terms of earned income, the museum
can still benefit from that visit even if we don¨t buy a ticket.
On the other end of the spectrum, we may spend an entire day at
a museum: eating, seeing a film and then an exhibit, then visiting
the gift-shop on our way out. And the museum, aside from being a
gathering spot, offers us a lot of advantages in terms of flexibility,
as I mentioned before. If we visit with a large group or with children
in tow, we know that we can tailor our experience to a remarkable
degree and leave when we want to and stay just as long as we want
to. Increasingly, this is an attractive option for Americans as
they think about how they want to experience culture.
I think the theater industry can learn a great deal from it, as
it thinks about how it will build its centers in the years to come.
There are signs that the industry is already beginning to think
along these lines, particularly in Europe. In London, The Royal
National Theatre has long existed as this kind of center, with shops
and classes and live music and food and so forth, to go along with
performances at fixed times. The Royal Shakespeare Company has just,
for example, announced a very ambitious physical renovation that
takes some cues from what¨s happening in the museum world. In the
next few years, the RSC will knock down its theater to build what
it calls ìa waterfront theater village,î which will offer educational
programs and restaurants and shops along with productions. The artistic
director of the RSC, Andrew Noble, says about this plan: ìI love
the idea that people could arrive in the morning, take part in an
education program, have lunch in a fantastic restaurant, visit a
costume exhibition, join a fight workshop or a voice workshop, and
then in the evening see a show. If we are serious about turning
a new generation of people on to theater, then we need to create
new ways into the experience. Make theaters more accessible, more
welcoming, and more lively throughout the day • that¨s a crucial
part of the mix.î
I think it¨s important to add that this doesn¨t have to threaten
the traditional attraction of theater as one of the last bastions
of purely live performance in this culture, which as we all know
is increasingly mediated. The 8 o¨clock curtain is still the focus,
and should still be the focus, the anchor of a theatrical institution.
It¨s just that we have to think about ways to give people a number
of reasons to visit the theater, and at other times of day, and
not necessarily at a fixed time. And what this can do, really, is
move theater away from what it has traditionally been, which is
kind of an either/or proposition. That is, you either spend $60
for a ticket, or you don¨t. And there¨s not really much middle ground
the way there is in a museum, say, where you can spend a little
bit of time and a little bit of money, or more time and more money.
The last slide is of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by
Frank Gehry, which opened in 1997. And I end with this slide in
the hopes that it will begin a conversation that can continue tomorrow,
and I hope beyond then, about theater and its real estate, theater
and the physical spaces that house it. One of the real driving forces
behind the museum boom in the last three or four years has been
the way the museum industry has linked itself with another boom,
and that¨s the general public¨s revived interest in architecture
and design. Bilbao has become sort of a pilgrimage site since it
opened. And the people who go there • and it¨s not an easy place
to get to, having gone there last year • are not traveling to see
the motorcycle show or whatever happens to be hanging in the museum.
They¨re going to see this remarkable piece of architecture.
And in terms of how this connects to theater, I think it¨s important
to note that this is now essentially the international sign for
museum. It means ìmuseum.î It says ìmuseumî in the same way that
a red octagon says ìStop,î and that¨s about as powerful a piece
of marketing as a cultural industry these days can possibly hope
for. What museums have done is to remake themselves as destination
points, places where viewing art may be the primary reason that
someone goes there, but it may also be the secondary or the tertiary
reason. They¨ve become showplaces for a kind of catch-all contemporary
cultural experience: the boardwalk, the public square, the movie
house, all rolled into one spot.
There¨s no reason that theater couldn¨t hold a similar place in
society. The fact that theater is also thinking about ways to bring
in new audiences and diversify its offerings, I think, allows an
opportunity to think about using showcase architecture in the same
way the museum industry has. And there are other clues that the
theater industry, or parts of it, are beginning to catch on to these
trends. The BAM cultural district that is beginning to be developed
in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, for example, is out
front on some of these issues. The BAM LDC has hired two of the
most important firms in contemporary architecture, Rem Koolhaas
and Rick Scofidio, to help map out its master plan. And I would
bet that in the next couple of years, depending on what happens
of course • it¨s a project that is, like most ambitious projects
in New York City these days, up in the air in the wake of Sept.
11 • as it moves forward, I guarantee you that a significant amount
of the coverage that it gets in the press will be about the fact
that those two firms are involved, and they have made it clear that
they want to continue to make important architecture a part of the
plan as they move forward even past the master-plan stage.
In closing, in a place like New York City, especially in the kind
of economic and political climate that we¨re in now after Sept.
11, it¨s very tough to broaden our imaginations enough to imagine
a center for theater that would do the equivalent of what Bilbao
has done for the museum industry. It¨s also important to say that
even in the midst of a booming economy in the late 1990s, just getting
a new theater built in a place like Times Square was really a tremendous
accomplishment and often was the product of an imaginative and fragile
coalition of public and private interests. But if the theater wants
to be a popular art that appeals to the culture as a whole, if it
wants to think long-term in the way that Schuyler Chapin suggested
earlier in the evening, it will have to think aggressively about
how to define a ìtheaterî as something much larger than a box to
hold a performance at 8:00 each night. That¨s it. Thank you.
Sz·ntÚ: Since we do, miraculously, have just a couple of minutes
until we break, I was thinking of just throwing out two quick questions
to the panel, and maybe we¨ll take one or two questions, but it
will have to be very fast and snappy. And the two questions that
I would like to raise for you are: If you could ask for any kind
of data from the great data god in the sky, what would it be? What
is the most important missing piece of the puzzle here? And the
other question is, if you had to point to the single biggest crisis
point, based on your research for the New York theater, what would
it be?
Wachtel: I¨d just like to speak to the question of data. All of
us up here, I think exclusively, have focused on quantitative data:
how many people go, why do they go, what¨s their age, things like
that. It¨s been a long time since anyone¨s done any qualitative
research in terms of: ìwhat are the satisfactions, what are the
needs and wants of theater-goers, what can we do to motivate people
of different constituencies, age groups, ethnic backgrounds, to
participate in the theater?î I mean, marketing¨s a great thing,
but sometimes I look at some of the programs that go on and they
seem peculiarly uninformed in terms of what are the drivers of interest
and attendance. Some of the points you make about museums are well
taken. In terms of it as a place, it is not just a thing to go to,
it is a place. It¨s also a lot cheaper than theater: and MoMA, just
to be clear, is not closed. But I¨d like to see more research of
evaluation research.
Bourscheidt: Speaking as if I was a member of the nonprofit theater
community, I envy Broadway its ability to look at weekly numbers.
We will have weekly numbers for Sept., Oct. and Nov. 2001 in about
five or six years, if some foundation gives us some money to pull
the numbers together and analyze them. More likely, we will never
have those numbers. That is the condition of nonprofit culture in
America.
McCarthy: I just deny the whole premise of your question --• that
there¨s a single best piece of information. It really depends upon
what you¨re focusing on. We¨ve talked a lot about audiences here.
I think we need better information on the match between audience
characteristics and program characteristics. We have virtually no
information on programming and what goes on and how it has changed
over time, and that¨s important to do. But to look at audiences
without thinking about what¨s happening to artists and how their
characteristics are changing • that¨s a central piece of all of
this, and we know virtually nothing about artistic careers. To talk
about that without looking at financingÈ I mean, you can¨t make
that choice, Andr·s. We¨re at much too primitive a stage in the
research on the arts.
Sz·ntÚ: Well, I think that would be a good point to close.
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