This Week’s Insights: When we say “diverse audiences” do we include conservatives?… Why are Americans turning away from cooking?… Why some artists resist talkbacks… Does “post-genre” music connect with “post-genre audiences?… When theatre is gentrified.
- Diversity? Does That Mean Conservative Audiences Too? Perhaps the most discussed issue in the arts these days is diversity and attracting diverse audiences. Question: are we attracting audiences with diverse political views? How about diverse economic status? Duncan Webb wonders. “Decades of research have shown that the best demographic predictor of attendance to all performing arts disciplines is level of educational attainment. … For many people, attending a performance is equated with shelling out big bucks to feel stupid in a sea of strangers, to be thrown out of one’s cultural comfort zone. How do we fix that?”
- We Think Audiences Want More Hands-On Experience. So Why Are Americans Shunning Cooking? Although many people don’t realize it yet, grocery shopping and cooking are in a long-term decline. They are shifting from a mass category, based on a daily activity, to a niche activity that a few people do only some of the time. Only 10% of consumers now love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it. That means that the percentage of Americans who really love to cook has dropped by about one-third in a fairly short period of time. So are there any lessons for the arts to be learned?
- Theatre Audience Talkbacks Are Popular. So Why Are Many Playwrights Skeptical? So maybe not all forms of engagement are equal. Many artists worry that engagements outside of the work itself can be reductive. “For theaters, the talkback can connect the venue to its audience, deepen understanding of the work and make the audience feel more like a participant and not merely an observer. Skeptics, however, fear that talkbacks can oversimplify the art onstage or discourage personal interpretation — the stage equivalent of didactic wall text telling museum visitors what to think about a painting.”
- Does “Post-Genre” Music Connect With Post-Genre Audiences? In a time when all of the recorded history of music is available to us pretty much whenever we want, today’s composers resist labels like “classical.” Music is music – and judgments are personal. And perhaps audiences too resist defining their listening habits by genre. But can a culture where all music is just music find its listeners? “Post-genre thinking seeks to move away from objective methods of characterizing music, instead focusing on a more subjective method within which music is viewed piece by piece with an emphasis on the intention and background of the composer. If a composer has no intent of writing within the ‘classical’ genre label, then attempting to understand the piece through a classical lens is irrelevant. But what about the listener? There is no doubt that all listeners have pre-existing connotations surrounding certain types of sounds. Realistically, because we have discussed music in terms of these genre constructions for so long, a listener’s ear may be attuned to relating to music in this way.
- Is Immersive Theatre Just Another Version Of Gentrification? Immersive theatre has become popular with audiences and it’s easy to see why. Experiences are tailor-made for the few who can participate. “The London-based company Punchdrunk has become synonymous with a particular form of immersive theatre, where you are less of an audience member and more of a participant. Punchdrunk takes over a large building, such as an old office block, turns it into a meticulously decorated, multiroom stage set and sends theatregoers wandering through.” But is this merely what gentrification of theatre looks like?
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