Having lived in NYC, Broadway, off broadway, off off broadway etc. look like they are thriving. I don’t think recorded media comes even close to the novelty and spectacle a theatre production is. Have small towns really lost all their theatres?
I am speaking of the cultural shift in entertainment, from a variety of local live options on most days of the week to just television in most places across the country.
I should also emphasize that the persistence of community theatres that mostly recycle the classics (endless Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and The Crucible) is not a substitute for actual thriving local entertainment, but a shadow and a memory of what once was.
It's not unlike what happened to soccer as television got cheaper and cheaper: You can go watch your town's third division team, or you can watch Real Madrid play on TV. In 3rd division nobody can be professional, in 2nd division you make less money accounting for inflation than 30 years ago, but the top players in the top teams are even bigger stars, now that the entire world can watch them play every game.
And on theater, let's not forget that many parts of the spectacle are almost impossible to take on the road. You aren't going to feed a production of Phantom of the Opera in a small town for 3 months: National tours rely on 2 weeks per large-ish metro. And when you are only going to stay there for 2 weeks, there are things you just can't get away with, economically speaking. The equity Hadestown tour would need to remodel way too much to accoout for the lift on broadway. The non-equity tour, which plays even shorter windows, can't even rely on the turntable on the floor. The car in Back to the future isn't going to fly over the audience, do half as much movement, or get fire effects on the scenario.
And even if you look in Broadway itself, many don't recoup their own costs. For every Hamilton or Lion king there are many shows that don't last 6 months.
By now, that prestige of a live music seems to only really come from a bigger joint, or as more of a passion project than as an expected way to get customers in.
>Have small towns really lost all their theatres?
It's mostly a thing regulated to colleges. So it will depend on that. I haven't seen a smaller town without a college that still has traditional theatre around, personally. Though I have seen forums where that scene would obviously have hosted such events, abandoned.
I also remember in my youth in Miami there were numerous clubs just for different genres of music for Hardcore, Ska, punk and everything in between where people would play local shows. It's all but dead now.
Yes.
I spent the first half of my life as a working actor, and this has been a decades-long process. By "my day" ('90s - '00s) I looked at CVs and heard stories from older actors and said "there was a theatre [by which I meant somewhere that offered paying work] there?"
Summer-stock, where I did a lot of gigs in my twenties, is nothing like what it was then, and I'm sure I would get that response from young actors now, if they heard my stories. Even the larger venues are on life-support. CalShakes closed down this summer. OSF is struggling.
Many places have community theatres, but those are like garage bands: hobbies, pursued for recreation and socialization, where no one draws a wage or has professional aspirations. (And, you know, the vast majority of the attendees have personal ties to the cast and crew.)
It's grim.
Comedy festival shows are a slightly different story, but I'm not sure how effectively they lead to new recurring audience members.
I also see venue sizes and hire as one of the largest risks/problems with greater popularity. Venue hire is expensive AF, but smaller gigs in places like pubs suffer all the same problems as described in the article.
A show has to be significant enough for someone to turn off Netflix, Spotify or a podcast AND leave the house AND commute to a venue, for MULTIPLE people*, all at the same time.
* I assume most people go to shows with other people, unless they're already embedded in the community.
Even San Francisco does not have many venues, given how vibrant a city it once was.
Previously lived in LA, even there venues were closing left and right even before the pandemic.
It's the taste in music too, high rental costs for venues.
Another reason we want to move to NYC once our kids are off to college.
Color me shocked.
On the other hand, I my 150k people city in southern Poland there was no shortage of entertainment, theaters, dance halls and parties 50 years ago under the communist regime.
My grandparents partied all of the time, their pictures are an endless collection of parties, literally people bringing a sausage, a potato salad, few vodkas to some elementary school or industry plant warehouse and having fun from 6 pm to late at night. They went to see live boxing, soccer games, theater, concerts, movies.
I'm 37 none of my friends lives like that, none. There are many more restaurants, probably 20 times as many.
I'm strongly convinced that people used to have more fun once.
My grandma thinks 100% the same. She constantly wonders why are people much better now under any measurable metric like education or wealth, yet they seem to really do nothing in their life.