Sunday, January 23, 2011
No Need to Call a Sitter, Playwrights Horizons Has Done It
NYTimes.com: Any parent of small children knows that the cost of hiring a baby sitter is often higher than the cost of tickets to a play. So now Playwrights Horizons is offering affordable, professional child care during three of its Sunday matinees.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
What an awesome idea! This sort of innovative thinking, while maybe sounding simplistic, is surely an important part of the longevity of the art form.
We need to promote parents with young children to go to the theatre. Hopefully they in turn will pass along their love of theatre to their own children, and support the next generation of theatre artists and audiences.
For the youngest of kids then simple child care is sufficient but what if slightly older kids had special projects planned, little workshops in acting and theatre related activities. This could be a direct engaging activity for the kids to get them interested in the theatre too!
I wonder how this will work out costs wise for these theaters. On the one hand you have opened up access to a wider audience by allowing parents to have the ability to relax and see a show.
On the other hand it's a pilot program. I believe the research that is mentioned and you can see with some places like IKEA that the concept isn't old and is proven to be viable. I wonder how well this program will work though and if it will only succeed for the big name shows.
As a father of a 4 year old and a theater enthusiast I would like to weigh in on this issue. While this does sound like a wonderful initiative I personally am not sure that I would use it. The criteria of who my wife and I let watch our Daughter is very high and rarely do we ever leave her with "strangers". Am sure that the staff of Playwrights Horizons are wonderful people but if their show is something we were interested in, we would find child care. I do not think this program will sway our decision.
Now, what we are looking for are things that we can do WITH our daughter. Time with her is precious and I bring her to as many events as possible. We all three attended DanceLight last weekend ant Carnegie Mellon University and she loved it. This was not exactly a kids show but is was something that we could participate in together.
I wish the best success to the Playwrights Horizons and I hope this program helps pack the house.
Is it really that difficult to find a babysitter? This sounds like a great idea in theory, however cost wise it doesn't seem smart for the theater. Having a child care center requires more than just "finding a baby sitter". Hiring employees, finding a suitable space, buying things for entertainment, and possibly feeding and changing the children add up. Additionally, just as Dale mentioned, parents are probably not going to want to leave their children with strangers. The search for childcare takes parents a great deal of time. It would be understandable to consider that parents would be more comforted having their children close by, but overall this sounds like more of a money suck than a gain.
While I think that this sounds great, I don't know that it'll work out well were it to be implemented nationwide. I mean, while parents send their children to daycare, don't they go through a process to find the right daycare that they hope will take good care of their children? Or what if there are things specific to your child that could arise during a performance? What if your child needs certain medicine at a certain time?
The idea of a childcare center at a theatre sounds great, but will it work? I don't know. And as with every decent idea, someone else will adapt it, and soon it won't be just a special feature that Playwright's offers, but something that many theatres across the country could offer. And then this attraction to Playwrights A is lost, and it becomes a costly expected standard.
Now this is a GREAT idea. The cost of quality childcare these days is quite astonishing--and often it's a matter of dropping the child off somewhere that is foreign to them or begging friends or neighbors to take care of the kid for a few hours.
Now obviously, not all NYC theatres can offer this. Playwright's Horizons is in a good position in that they are their own producing company with their own wonderful space where they have room enough to accommodate this type of service. I think most Broadway theatres would have a difficult time offering this to parents, not only because of space issues, but also because of liability stuff...
I do think it is interesting that the babysitting company employees are working artists... hey, if you can't get onstage at Playwright's maybe you can go play with the kids?
I remember being left in a room full of kids and a few babysitters at some out of town wedding when I was little. I'm sure my parents were a little anxious about leaving me with her but I loved it. I think parents should know their children well enough to know if this would be a suitable option for them. I think for many kids it would work really well. For others it would be a horrible idea. It's really on the parents.
Post a Comment