Thursday, September 13, 2007
Houston's arts scene is booming
Houston Chronicle: "Houstonians may complain about $3-per-gallon gasoline, but managers of the city's major performing-arts groups have to be smiling about the good fortune the current oil boom is bringing them."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Our job is quite related to the economics. While the economics is in bad condition, people’s income decrease and the purchasing prices increase, the expenditure they first intend to save is for entertainment. They may just watch TV at home or stay in the world of internet to get entertained instead of going to theatre. Then, people, like us doing entertaining work are affected a lot. Therefore, the marketing department, box office and customer service need to work harder and find out alternative strategy to have the audience back to theatre.
Yeah! Houston! I wish I had been able to appreciate the arts in Houston. I never attended the theatre all that often when I was there, but really it has a thriving artistic basis. I'm still not sure why anyone would voluntarily live there, especially a bunch of artists, since it's about as far from LA or NY as you can get, but the art district is not only a beautiful place in the middle of an ugly city (constantly under construction), but it also provides a wide area with the ability to keep up with the arts. Houston and surrounding areas don't have to rely on touring shows or small community theatres (not that there's anything wrong with that) for its art. It's a true hub of culture for much of south texas.
Along with the economy in Houston, a lot of the downtown companies have been restructuring their season selection and/or marketing. For example, the new artistic director at the ballet has been get away from repertoire work and doing shows set to Moby. The Alley has basically combined Marketing and Fund raising as two sub-sections of one department and got Time Warner to be a sponsor.
While I was in H-town in high school I often heard that a lot of the arts organizations were "resting on their laurels" from kids to long time subscribers. I've noticed just from a Marketing standpoint that people have started to realize that they need to make their companies look interesting or else no one will come see their shows. or sponsor them.
Post a Comment