“The report comes after the latest figures from the Society of London Theatre reported an 11th consecutive year of growth among West End theatre box office takings, measuring gross sales of more than £623 million in 2014. Similarly, attendances for the 53 theatres in full SOLT membership grew to 14.7 million in 2014, a 1% increase on the previous year.”
Category: AUDIENCE
As The Internet And TV Converge, A New Free-For-All Competition For Eyeballs
“To prosper, analysts say, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu will have to spend even more on the production and marketing of exclusive comedies, dramas, films, documentaries and other shows. The greater the acclaim and the more exclusive the offerings, the easier it will be to distinguish the services and persuade people to pay up every month.”
Director Peter Sellars On Art, The Audience, And Controversy
“For me, the art that’s made with the audience in mind is so numbing and insulting and demeaning – because it’s assuming that I don’t have a really interesting and complicated life, and somebody knows what I think. And nobody knows what I think because I’m still wrestling with what I think most days, so I hate it when somebody tells me what I think.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist Says People Now Read Novels Purely For Fun
Mario Vargas Llosa: “You have such a mass of information about everything that qualification disappears completely, and everything is equally measured…. Now the novels that are read are purely entertainment – well done, very polished, with a very effective technique – but not literature, just entertainment.”
How Did An 1830s Woodblock Print From Japan Go Viral?
“Hokusai’s print was becoming more familiar just as the word tsunami was working its way into the English language … and the word and image soon became linked.”
Classical Music Should Be A Short Click Away From Every Kid
“Spotify and iTunes have plenty of classical music. Unfortunately, they hate it. (Or seem to.) Keeping the four movements of one symphony together can be a stiff challenge because the only unit of music these sites recognize is the ‘song.'”
Add ‘Sells A Lot More Comics’ To The Reasons For Making Superheroes Female
“The first five new Thor books are currently selling more copies than the last five Thor books from 2012 by close to 20,000 copies per month, not including digital copies.”
Older Americans Are Flocking To The Stage
“The 50-plus crowd is stage-struck. Across the country, growing numbers of older adults are joining theater companies and signing up for classes in acting, directing and playwriting. Many – empty-nesters or newly retired – have never set foot on a stage and are seeking new outlets. But many others … caught the acting bug in high school or college, before pursuing other (paying) careers.”
The Most Visited Attraction In The UK Is …
The British Museum. “But it was London’s Imperial War Museum which saw the most significant increase in visitor numbers across the year.”
The Pittsburgh Symphony Asks Potential Audiences What They Think Of Classical Music, And Finds Painful Answers
“Participants described classical music performances as boring, relaxing, soothing and long. They said older people, musicians and rich people were the sorts who attended them. And they said the genre made them feel relaxed, sleepy, peaceful and mellow.”