Monday, April 18, 2011
Southern Theater founders over funding
StarTribune.com: "The historic Southern Theater in Minneapolis, a hotbed of performing arts for more than 30 years, is in the throes of a severe financial and management crisis.
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I'd be very interested (potential thesis spoiler alert) to see where these problems are coming from. Theater and the arts seems to living in an economic pre-apocalyptic: everything is just about to go bankrupt. The solution for this particular company seems to be personnel shifting: firing, hiring, and changing roles of board members and managers. One person interviewed said they are just trying to find a model that works. Language like this makes me think to the national economic picture. Economists are now looking back to see if there were warning signs to the current (potential) economic collapse of the US. While the red flags were there, there weren't as large as one would think. Those who feel this is due to an inherently flawed system, free-market capitalism, would say the solution to the crisis should not have been bailouts trying to get things back to business but a change in the system itself. I wonder if this parallels to all the struggling arts organizations. If one or two fail, perhaps personnel, programing, or audiences can be blamed but if dozens are declaring bankruptcy or are about to, there has to be something else wrong. Perhaps it's the fact that theaters exist as part of the greater economic model or perhaps the solution exists on the regional level, maybe there are economic and management solutions to the arts that are bigger than personnel shifting hoping to get back to business as usual.
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