{"id":17662,"date":"2014-01-10T05:35:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T10:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=17662"},"modified":"2014-01-09T17:47:11","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T22:47:11","slug":"stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment, cocooning unto themselves.\u00a0 Even going to the movies is too communal and too much trouble for a lot of us, who prefer to wait until we can watch a new film when it comes out on Netflix, rather than getting out of the house.\u00a0 But this tendency is wreaking worse havoc on live theater.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Bruce Gee for putting me onto this column from Terry Teachout, drama critic at the Wall Street Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

From Terry Teachout, How Theaters Can Combat the Stay-at-Home Mindset \u2013 WSJ.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The house lights fade to black. The room falls still as an actor steps from the wings and speaks the simple words that set a plot in motion: \u201cO for a Muse of fire.\u201d \u201cYes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve.\u201d \u201cThis play is called \u2018Our Town.'\u201d Suddenly the outside world vanishes and you\u2019re swept into a parallel universe of excitement and adventure, poetry and magic, fear and hope.<\/p>\n

\n

That\u2019s what it feels like to go to the theater and see a great play. But when did you last do so? A week ago? A year? Or do you now prefer to stay home and watch cable television or use Netflix NFLX +0.49% to stream a movie?<\/p>\n

If so, you\u2019re one of the reasons why live theater is in trouble.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the National Endowment for the Arts\u2019 latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, the most statistically reliable study of its kind. Not only did \u201cnon-musical play attendance\u201d drop to 8.3% from 12.3% of U.S. adults between 2002 and 2012, but attendance at musicals also fell, to 15.2% from 17.1%, the first time the latter figure has declined since 1985. That\u2019s really bad news. Musical comedy has always been live theater\u2019s bread and butter, the ever-popular fare that never fails to fill the seats. If fewer people want to see \u201cFiddler on the Roof\u201d or \u201cThe Lion King,\u201d then the pillars that hold up American theater are crumbling.<\/p>\n

A big part of the problem for New Yorkers is the horrifically high price of tickets to Broadway shows. But 63% of all Broadway tickets are bought by spendthrift tourists. Fortunately, off-Broadway and regional-theater seats don\u2019t cost nearly so much. I just saw a play in Boston, the Huntington Theatre Company\u2019s superb revival of A.R. Gurney\u2019s \u201cThe Cocktail Hour,\u201d for which tickets ranged from $25 to $95. (By contrast, the top ticket price for Broadway\u2019s \u201cThe Book of Mormon\u201d is a whopping $299.) And the vast majority of professional stage productions, both in New York and in the rest of America, are presented by not-for-profit theaters like the Huntington. These companies, of which there are about 1,800, mounted 14,600 shows in the 2010-11 season, as opposed to 118 commercial productions on Broadway and elsewhere. Yet they, too, view the NEA\u2019s bad-news numbers with alarm, as they readily acknowledge. Even at the top-tier resident regional companies, subscription income, still considered the most reliable yardstick of a resident company\u2019s economic health, is much weaker: Adjusting for inflation, it\u2019s plummeted 13.7% since 2008.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s gone wrong with theater? It isn\u2019t a matter of quality control. I\u2019ve been reviewing performances from coast to coast since 2004, and I continue to be impressed by what I see. Instead, what I\u2019m hearing from regional artistic directors is that they\u2019re being slammed by the on-demand mentality.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . . ]<\/a><\/p>\n

So do you go to plays anymore, whether professional productions or your local community theater?\u00a0 Just when your child is in a school play?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s\u00a0 missing in watching a film by ourselves on Netflix at home, versus going to a theater and watching it with others?<\/p>\n

How do you account for our desire to just stay home instead of going out on the town?<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment, cocooning unto themselves.\u00a0 Even going to the movies is too communal and too much trouble for a lot of us, who prefer to wait until we can watch a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,45],"tags":[704,2526,2953],"class_list":["post-17662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-media","category-television","tag-drama","tag-entertainment","tag-theater"],"yoast_head":"\nStay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-10T10:35:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-01-09T22:47:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/\",\"name\":\"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-01-10T10:35:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-01-09T22:47:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He has authored over 25 books on Christianity and culture, literature, classical education, and theology. Dr. Veith previously held academic and editorial roles at Concordia University Wisconsin and WORLD Magazine. A respected voice in Lutheran and classical education circles, he holds a Ph.D. in English and several honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, live in St. Louis and have three children and twelve grandchildren.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\",\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gene_Edward_Veith\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/author\/geneveith\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater","description":"What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment,","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater","og_description":"What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment,","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/","og_site_name":"Cranach","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/","article_published_time":"2014-01-10T10:35:13+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-01-09T22:47:11+00:00","author":"Gene Veith","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gene Veith","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/","name":"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-01-10T10:35:13+00:00","dateModified":"2014-01-09T22:47:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1"},"description":"What with Netflix, on-demand TV, Hulu on the iPad, and videos on the smart phone, more and more people are staying at home for their entertainment,","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/01\/stay-at-home-entertainment-vs-live-theater\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Stay-at-Home entertainment vs. live theater"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/","name":"Cranach","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1","name":"Gene Veith","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Gene Veith"},"description":"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He has authored over 25 books on Christianity and culture, literature, classical education, and theology. Dr. Veith previously held academic and editorial roles at Concordia University Wisconsin and WORLD Magazine. A respected voice in Lutheran and classical education circles, he holds a Ph.D. in English and several honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, live in St. Louis and have three children and twelve grandchildren.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gene_Edward_Veith"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/author\/geneveith\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}