Canadian programming matters; that we should want it to exist. This isn’t about “telling Canadian stories to Canadians.” It isn’t about seeing pictures of beavers, Mounties and canoes on our screens. It’s about participating in a living culture, and recognizing that a living culture is often a local culture.
Category: AUDIENCE
Why Young People Probably Won’t Be Watching The Oscars
“The Academy has managed to nominate one of its least-commercial best picture slates ever: six indie films (“Boyhood,” “Birdman,” “The Imitation Game,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Whiplash” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and two studio features (“Selma” and “American Sniper”) that have yet to open in wide release. So far, the highest-grossing movie of the best-picture nominees is “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” at a modest $59 million domestically.”
Disrupt Culture? (Better Figure Out What’s Being Disrupted)
“Data suggests that audiences are agnostic in their habits of cultural consumption — and increasingly ambivalent about the platform by which they consume that culture. The Innovators Dilemma suggests that those who look with condescension upon the competitive emergence of cheaper, arguably poorer quality cultural products do so at their own peril.”
Kierkegaard Gets Right To The Heart Of Boredom
In a section of his 1843 masterwork Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, … the Danish philosopher defines boredom as a sense of emptiness and examines it not as an absence of stimulation but as an absence of meaning – an idea that also explains why it’s possible, today more than ever, to be overstimulated but existentially bored.”
Trying To Give Everyone A Good View Has Made Theaters More Exclusive, Not Less
Prewar theaters “had a greater capacity at the lower price levels than at the higher, a contrast to today, where there are very few cheap seats and they are all at the very back or the very front. … Seat prices have been levelled up rather than down on the grounds that all enjoy an uninterrupted view of the actor.”
Theatre Companies In Southern California To Release A Plan To Bring Diversity To The Stage
“Tim Dang, producing artistic director of East West Players, has written an initiative that calls for at least 51% of those employed by Southern California theater companies by 2019 to be people of color, women or those younger than 35.”
The Thing About Theatre Audiences? They REALLY Want To Talk To You
“I’ve started to suspect that occasional theatregoers want to engage with a new play sooner than I previously thought and stay engaged for a longer time. They’d like more information before they see a show. They want more things to read and watch afterward. They want to hear from the director and the playwright and the designers, possibly over drinks.”
Concert Companion – Orchestra Tests App To Enhance Your Listening Experience
“At a time when most orchestras are policing interruptive phones during concerts – in China, red lasers zap offending users – here smartphones were not only kept on but encouraged, though the specially designed darkened screens created by the app are theoretically not distracting to nearby patrons, and repeated messages appear on phone screens reminding everybody to turn down the ringtones.”
Is Our Creative Class Going Out Of Business?
“According to Scott Timberg, a former arts reporter for the Los Angeles Times, we are witnessing a transformation: a downsizing of our cultural capital generated by ‘anti-elite rage, market populism, and corporate consolidation.’ The creative class is being exploited rather than supported — by its supposed ‘friends’ as well as its enemies.”
Whose Job Is It To Raise An Engaged Audience?
“We need to raise our audience. As experienced audience members, we need to provide feedback regularly. Finally, it is our job as teachers in all facets to radicalize and actualize our students to understand the “why” and not just the “how” of making music for others.”