Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Lyn Gardner asks if theatre membership schemes strike the right balance between raising income and attracting would-be theatre-goers.
Lolita Chakrabarti on loving and loathing theatre: “a pretentious self-inflated profession” able to “ignite, surprise and wake up sleepy 15-year-olds.”
Annah Feinberg on surface-level programming, becoming huge beyond repair, and the illness currently plaguing non-profit American theatre.
Friday, 24 January 2014
Rosie Millard wonders whether power-house galleries like Tate, which is so effective at wooing the private sector that it gains sponsorship from the likes of Hyundai, need public subsidy too.
Elizabeth Freestone on developing the co-existence of live and on screen theatre: why shouldn’t a big theatre screen a small show?
Monday, 20 January 2014
Jo Verrent finds arts organisations, producers, venues and artists to be surprisingly uncreative when it’s comes to access.
Jesse Norman says there’s no point in free entry to the arts if you can’t get to them, as two-thirds of the country live beyond affordable travel to national cultural organisations.
Max Stafford-Clark explains the long-lasting impact of Arts Council England’s last round of funding cuts on the theatre company Out of Joint, in an extract from his new book ‘Journal of the Plague Year’.
Downloads haven’t reduced the number of sell-out music gigs, and Lyn Gardner suspects that digital platforms wont be a threat to theatre-going either – quite the reverse.
Thursday, 16 January 2014
Dominic Dromgoole on the Globe theatre: from scepticism and suspicion, to success, to creating a new revolution with candlelit theatre.
Lyndsey Winship says “there is no dozing off, zoning out or mentally writing your shopping list” in multi-sensory immersive concerts.
Lyn Gardner considers how star rated reviews influence theatre attendance and the decision to buy, or not to buy. Is it time for a new reviewing system?
Rupert Christiansen on the need for opera to rediscover the virtues of simplicity for the sake of its audiences.
Eric Gibson wonders where New York’s Museum of Modern Art is going with its latest extension, seeing as Nicholas Serota’s commitment to new at Tate never came at the expense of the old.
Monday, 13 January 2014
Ivan Hewitt on music’s first steps to becoming more than just accompaniment to social occasions, and the relatively new role of the listening audience.
Wednesday, 08 January 2014
In cities that have experienced the impact of a vibrant arts culture, no one is having an argument about the economic value of the arts, says Benjamin Barber.
Tuesday, 07 January 2014
Terry Teachout on why live theatre is in trouble with on-demand mentality threatening theatrical intimacy.
Monday, 06 January 2014
In the social contract of performance, what happens when someone coughs? asks Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim.
Feargus O'Sullivan on historic London theatres which weren’t built to last.