Quote:
Originally Posted by incognism
Again, to reiterate my comments upthread, the Playhouse Theatre Company was poorly managed and over the past few years made absolutely no attempt to connect to the community at large.
While there is a strong contingent of arts supporters in Vancouver, there is an even greater amount of "casual" supporters who will show up if the material is accessible. Touring shows (Broadway Across America/Canada, Cavalia, Cirque) have had great success operating in the city. Bard on the Beach has been an outright winner over the past decade. The Arts Club (the far better run theatre company) is running three separate stages with fairly impressive attendance numbers.
The problem with the Playhouse was that in the last few seasons, for whatever reason, they decided to push their lineup to include mostly high-flautin, pretentious, artsy shows and could not captivate the casual theatre patron to spend their discerning entertainment dollars on them.
Say what you will about the Arts Club doing White Christmas and Beauty and the Beast year after year, but the money made from these tentpole shows funds the smaller, more experimental productions.
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Not true, I wouldn't call La Cage Aux Folles, The Drowsy Chaperone or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels "high-flautin, pretentious, artsy shows". Though it doesn't speak well of a supposedly world class city that anything requiring actual thought won't fly on the stage. A more justifiable complaint might be that the Playhouse relied onto many one man shows as their finances deteriorated.
Another issue might be the location. Vast segments of the population no longer want to go downtown. Add to that the Playhouse micro-neighbourhood was a bit of a wasteland after dark.
Given the repeated moves forced on the company by the Olympics, surely the BC Liberals have some sort of Olympic slush fund they could have tapped into to recompense them.