Sunday, February 13, 2011
NEA chairman provokes heated debate: How much art is too much?
washingtonpost.com: "It's a hot-button debate that the nation's leading advocate for dance and theater, sculpture and opera has been spoiling to ignite for months: Does the country have more outlets for the arts than it can handle?
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3 comments:
This is a difficult topic, because I think it's a little true, but only if you're looking at it from a financial point of view. This talk of supply and demand suggests that the problem is there is too much theatre for theatre to make money. But is that what theatre is about? Or what it should be about? And if that's the case, where would theatre be cut? Not taking out a few Broadway houses, but rather slimming down in smaller communities, I'd imagine. And I don't think that's fair at all.
I think the NEA chairman is making a valid point here, and I don't really understand the outrage about the statement. The article points out that there are 71 non-profit theatres in Washington DC alone. That's a very high number. Although a lot of smaller theatre companies come and go, the fact that this number has remained so high recently is quite surprising. Its understandable that the NEA will have to cut down spending to the arts; the economy is bad, and nothing can really be done about it. If a theatre can prove to be self-sustaining, then this shouldn't be a huge blow, and those theatres are the ones that have a big enough fanbase to deserve to survive anyway.
It is true that in some areas there are a large number of theatres (71 is quite a large number)but if they are there because there is at least some demand for the work that these theatres produce. I think the reason people are reacting strongly to this statement is because it sounds like they are going to shut down some theatres instead of just taking away their money. Its unfortunate that this has to be the case but there really is nothing that can be done.
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