Variety: If you can't beat 'em, take their business model.
Over the past few years, London's commercial theater sector has watched U.K. nonprofits generate hit after hit and nab award after award by offering bold new shows with top casts at lower cost, and lower ticket pricing.
Producer Howard Panter, creative director of Ambassador Theater Group, the country's largest, with 39 venues in London and outlying regions, is aiming to mix the subsidized sector's creativity with his commercial savvy in order to modify, or at least augment the way the West End produces shows.
1 comment:
It's so interesting to see an article form a European perspective. NOt only is the terminology very different but the entire idea of the thing is so extraordinary. I tend to think of theatre in America, at least broadway theatre, to be very much for profit. The idea that in Europe a for profit theatre might get a foothold is humorous because I think of large scale theatre as always being for profit. What a different environment, where they have so much money that goes into the arts that they can have such great non-profit theatre, and at the same time it raises the question: would theatre be better if the free market did what it is doing and pushed for more innovative methods and models?
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