{"id":754,"date":"2005-08-26T00:30:52","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T07:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2005\/08\/maybe_were_trying_too_hard\/"},"modified":"2005-08-26T00:30:52","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T07:30:52","slug":"maybe_were_trying_too_hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/maybe_were_trying_too_hard.php","title":{"rendered":"Maybe we’re trying too hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those cultural managers who make every extra effort to provide context, background, depth, and framing around their upcoming productions, in an effort to engage the potential audience with meaning and purpose, this story out of the U.K.<\/a> will likely drive you mad.<\/p>\n

The new play by film director and playwright Mike Leigh has sold out before it opens…and nobody knows anything about it. The working title of the work doesn’t add much insight: A New Play by Mike Leigh<\/i>. The actors have been rehearsing off-site. The marketing department is in the dark. For publicity, there’s a poster with a palm tree on it.<\/p>\n

And yet, 16,000 tickets are sold.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman in the article insists that the shroud of mystery is not a ploy, or a gimmick, but just a by-product of Leigh’s way of working — in highly improvisational and immersive interaction with his actors. Says the spokeswoman:<\/p>\n


\n”Mike Leigh has always worked this way. It’s not like he’s come over all grand recently — he’s just trying to get the best out of his actors. He doesn’t want to break into their own world and interrupt their soul-searching, and doing PR would weaken that. It’s not at all a publicity stunt. We’re not trying to hype it up. We really don’t know what to expect.”
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We all know that the lure and power of a well-known and well-respected artist can sell tickets, regardless of what is to be presented. But usually, there’s at least the patina of product description required to close the sale…providing that sense of purpose to the managers and brokers in the process.<\/p>\n

If all art sold this way, the bulk of us would be out of a job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those cultural managers who make every extra effort to provide context, background, depth, and framing around their upcoming productions, in an effort to engage the potential audience with meaning and purpose, this story out of the U.K. will likely drive you mad. The new play by film director and playwright Mike Leigh has sold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}