ATW: "I am not a fan of professional sports. I have nothing against them (for that, you have to get me started on college sports and the ethical and educational issues involved), I just don’t connect with them the way so many do. For the record, I enjoy the occasional baseball or hockey game or tennis match (live and in-person, of course), but I don’t live and die by the fortunes of any team. And yet I feel that the arts could learn a lot from sports
Monday, April 25, 2011
Hits, Runs and Errors
ATW: "I am not a fan of professional sports. I have nothing against them (for that, you have to get me started on college sports and the ethical and educational issues involved), I just don’t connect with them the way so many do. For the record, I enjoy the occasional baseball or hockey game or tennis match (live and in-person, of course), but I don’t live and die by the fortunes of any team. And yet I feel that the arts could learn a lot from sports
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As good as some of the author's points are, I think he's missing an important one. Sporting events also garner a lot of attention because the fans, on one level of consciousness or otherwise, fantasize about BEING those athletes themselves. Now, I'm using broad strokes of generalization here but the vast majority of the most popular sports' fans once played their particular game of choice themselves (or wish they had) and they tend to follow one or two teams from areas they feel they have a connection with (IE, their home town, alma mater, etc).
Theatre, for the most part, lacks this ability by virtue of what a theatre company IS. True, there are shows where audience members identify with a character because they wish they were him/her and certainly a great many theatre companies have patrons who follow that company's seasons and press particularly because they like THAT PARTICULAR theatre company. But I don't think a lot of what makes professional sports successful is a model that the arts can assimilate with a similar success.
I'm not a sports person at all, so when I first started reading this article, I did not like the idea of the arts needing to learn from sports. But Sherman makes a bunch of good points. There is a secret nature to the arts that make it feel like an exclusive club, whereas sports is very open and most people can enjoy it. Also I agree that there is not enough variety in theatre. There is pretty much a sport to cater everyone, but if you don't like theatre, it will be hard to find anything theatre related that you like. I feel like many more people bond over their favorite sports team than the amount of people that bond over their favorite musical or playwright. But what can we do to fix the accessibility of theatre? I guess this is something we will have to ponder.
I would agree about fans; people do not dream of being live performers (those who do typically become them). Movies are along the lines of sports because people do want to be those actors or actresses.
Also, I think another issue is that the author assumes something which is not necessarily a truth. This is that theatre has the equivielent of Big Leaguers. There is of course Broadway and the for-profit seector, but these do not reach beyond certain areas and at this point, are no longer the means for bringing people together. For example, here in Pittsburgh we have the Steelers, who, whether you know football or not, are in the back of everyone's mind. Even without seeing a game, I can comment on the Steelers. Not so with theatre experiences. Another issue along these lines is accessability. Live events which insist on remaining live are just not going to reach enough people to command the attention that sports teams do. Especially since theatre is often so localized. When you move, you cannot keep seing theatre shows at The Mark Taper Forum, whereas you can continue to watch baseball at Dodgers Stadium.
I think we can learn a lot from sports. Though sports are popular for different cultural reasons, the sports industry is not as big as it is only because sports are fun to watch/play. The sports industry is huge because we have made it such.
Can we do the same with theare? I don't know. In bits and pieces we are doing many of the same things that the sports industry is doing. But in this day and age can we really change theatre's cultural value? I don't know but I hope so.
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