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Wednesday, January 22, 2020
British musicals 'at risk without subsidies like other theatre'
Stage | The Guardian: British musical theatre is at risk of being left behind by America unless there is investment in original work that values underrepresented voices, according to industry figures who have called for arts subsidy to be spent on the sector.
3 comments:
Reesha A.
said...
This article talks about something that I had not heard or thought about in regards to the British theater arena. British Theater is often credited as one of the few few forms of commercial theater, catering to the entertainment of millions of people across the globe. With that in mind, it was really surprising to read an article that talked about the aforementioned theater style dying, because of its inability to present more diverse work, which is even more surprising, given the present wave of diversity and inclusion. With this article, it is almost clear that in addition to receiving art subsidies, more diverse voices of storytelling must be included and given a platform in the country, because that is something that the public wants: they want to hear, refreshing and challenging stories to watch, unlike the regular, formula driven theater pieces, otherwise the article wont be wrong when it says that the British theater will eventually die.
I thought this article was really interesting because I know very little about the British theatre scene. I guess I had always assumed it was the same as Broadway but in London because it seems like so many shows go to the West End from Broadway and so many shows come to Broadway from the West End. But it turns out the scenes aren’t the same. The part of this article about subsidies and money didn’t make very much sense to me, but the parts about producing more diverse and original work really did stick with me. I agree completely that theatre needs to be more diverse and that completely starts with producing more works by diverse playwrights. It seems like a lot of people believe that only old and well-known shows can make a lot of money and be successful, but this article makes that point that that isn’t true. I feel like I write a lot of comments about how more theatres need to produce original works and not just well known shows, because it is something that I really do believe, but I am not sure how we get this to happen. I think producing organizations need to just read more articles like this.
Since I often think musicals from both West End and Broadway together as Western musicals in comparison to Japanese musicals, I have never really thought about the difference in those two industries. I strongly agree to the fact that audience nowadays crave diversity and originality. By supporting playwriters, performers, and productions from various backgrounds will lead to the development in the fundamental strength of the industry as a whole. Meanwhile, this article made me question how globalization is affecting the theatrical culture in different countries. While diversity and originality in individual works are considered important, I feel like the theatrical cultures in each country is becoming more and more uniformalized as international economic competition intensifies. It has been long been debated how globalization implies Americanization, and this article made me think perhaps the theatre industry is also under the influence of this process. Since the musical is one of the hardest forms of art to separate economic competition and creativity, it is extremely difficult to find a sweet spot. However, I think this is also business in the musical industry is so so interesting!
3 comments:
This article talks about something that I had not heard or thought about in regards to the British theater arena. British Theater is often credited as one of the few few forms of commercial theater, catering to the entertainment of millions of people across the globe. With that in mind, it was really surprising to read an article that talked about the aforementioned theater style dying, because of its inability to present more diverse work, which is even more surprising, given the present wave of diversity and inclusion.
With this article, it is almost clear that in addition to receiving art subsidies, more diverse voices of storytelling must be included and given a platform in the country, because that is something that the public wants: they want to hear, refreshing and challenging stories to watch, unlike the regular, formula driven theater pieces, otherwise the article wont be wrong when it says that the British theater will eventually die.
I thought this article was really interesting because I know very little about the British theatre scene. I guess I had always assumed it was the same as Broadway but in London because it seems like so many shows go to the West End from Broadway and so many shows come to Broadway from the West End. But it turns out the scenes aren’t the same. The part of this article about subsidies and money didn’t make very much sense to me, but the parts about producing more diverse and original work really did stick with me. I agree completely that theatre needs to be more diverse and that completely starts with producing more works by diverse playwrights. It seems like a lot of people believe that only old and well-known shows can make a lot of money and be successful, but this article makes that point that that isn’t true. I feel like I write a lot of comments about how more theatres need to produce original works and not just well known shows, because it is something that I really do believe, but I am not sure how we get this to happen. I think producing organizations need to just read more articles like this.
Since I often think musicals from both West End and Broadway together as Western musicals in comparison to Japanese musicals, I have never really thought about the difference in those two industries. I strongly agree to the fact that audience nowadays crave diversity and originality. By supporting playwriters, performers, and productions from various backgrounds will lead to the development in the fundamental strength of the industry as a whole. Meanwhile, this article made me question how globalization is affecting the theatrical culture in different countries. While diversity and originality in individual works are considered important, I feel like the theatrical cultures in each country is becoming more and more uniformalized as international economic competition intensifies. It has been long been debated how globalization implies Americanization, and this article made me think perhaps the theatre industry is also under the influence of this process. Since the musical is one of the hardest forms of art to separate economic competition and creativity, it is extremely difficult to find a sweet spot. However, I think this is also business in the musical industry is so so interesting!
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