why are you on this listerv cat and write all the e-mails, if you believe
what you just said. if it's that bad...
dennis--------------------------Dennis,I don't see the situation as being "bad" at all. Community theater in America and "basic" theater forms like professional wrestling are doing better than ever. Poetry slams and hip-hop theater draw large and enthusiastic young audiences. I'm just pointing out that people doing intellectual, performance art, or other "fringe" performance work may well have niche audiences and have either to work to develop those audiences in creative ways or change what they do until they find the audience they want.Funding is, essentially, dead. Marketing, collaboration, and self-help are in. If small theaters can't market their product and then deliver as promised, then that product may have a small, but potentially very devoted, following that extends internationally. If the product is actually inferior (see my other email today) from a performance point of view, then there isn't any reason for that theater to succeed -- except perhaps as a training ground. (I constantly run into artistic directors who are so heavily into hype-spin mode [esp in NYC] that they don't realize that the disjunct between their promotional spin and the performances they deliver has created a sort of "disbelief turbulence" that makes audiences feel "conned" and even angry. When you get several groups spreading "disbelief turbulence" in one town, audiences navigate around them, looking for more reliable venues.Cheers,Cat