LimeyDi

Thanks for the welcome, dstan ... I'll do my best to straighten up and fly right :-)

nerd

But is Broadway considered fine arts?

PTravel

Yes, theater is considered fine arts. What Broadway has become, thanks to Disney, dreadful revuesicals and an audience comprised primarily of casual-dressing tourists who treat a movie theater like their living room and a Broadway theater like a movie theater -- well, that's another question.

dstan

It does irk me to see all the tourists in sweatshirts and jeans at Broadway shows. Is this what a nice night out on the town has become?

Analise

What's worse is these same tourists must think they are the movies as they eat junk food while TALKING to each other during the performance. Ummmm, this is LIVE performance.

In their defense, if the concessions sell the crap and the ushers let them in the theatre with it, they assume that it's all right.

Landing Gear

Don't forget Andrew Lloyd-Webber. I was at the original cast of "Cats," which I believe was the show that started Broadway's ride down the tubes.

Blumie

Apples and oranges.


For some, casual dress implies comfort. The fact that it "implies casual behavior" is irrelevant. If someone actually behaves inappropriately, that's a different matter. But if someone behaves appropriately -- is courteous to and respectful of the other audience members and the performers -- I couldn't care less how they're dressed. Do we really need to expend so much energy worrying about how others choose to live and act when it doesn't really affect us?

PTravel

I agree that casual dress doesn't automatically mean casual behavior. I'm talking with respect to the performing arts and, particularly, Broadway theater. If you've lived in New York for any appreciable length of time and attend Broadway, you've seen the damage Disney (and a few others) have done to audience perceptions regarding behavior in the theater. That most certainly does affect not only audiences, but performers as well, thereby harming the medium itself. This should never have to happen, yet boorish tourists who think Broadway is the same thing as "It's a Small World" at Disneyworld, only minus the boats, are more and more common.

Casual dress shouldn't matter anywhere. The fact is, however, that when it comes to professional theater (and opera and ballet) it serves as a reminder that you're in a theater and engaged in a two-way conversation with the performers, and not at home sitting on the sofa in your wondering, hollering at your wife to get you another beer.

Blumie

Wow, lots of thoughts about your post:

First, you certainly can't blame attire for the fact that the general public likes shlock and that for-profit companies produce the shlock that the general public wants to see.

Second, as much as I despise this crap being passed off as theater, we also need to resist the urge to be snobs. While many of us feel superior about our tastes, at the end of the day who are we to dictate tastes to others?

My conference call is starting. Perhaps more later.

PTravel

I don't. I blame, primarily, Disney for turning Broadway into a theme park at which casual dress is appropriate.

I have an undergraduate degree and two graduate degrees in theater. I was a professional actor for 12 years. I've directed theater and taught acting. This has nothing to do with snobbery, but with a professional understanding of how and why theater works, and what distinguishes theater from other art forms. This also has nothing to do with what the "general public" wants to see. Broadway has always run the gamut from popular comedies and musical to intense drama. However, beginning with Disney's "Lion King" (which, in itself wasn't necessarily a bad show), audience expectations have been shaped by Disneyesque marketing resulting in "Broadway on Ice" attitudes of the tourists who come to see it. Theater doesn't work when audience expectations are shaped to demand that which theater doesn't do, and reject that which only theater can do.

I never let work interfere with my FT posting.

Analise

I think that's the easy way out. If you are upset, blame the people themselves. If they choose not to dress up, your issue is with them. Why not be upset with the annual productions of the Nutcracker then as the audience is primarily parents with their children. The audience is the same now is was when we were young. When we were little, we all dressed up. Today, parents don't dress up and thus their kids don't either. But you're not going to blame Balanchine or the NYCB.

Blumie

You're confusing two distinct issues. You clearly are heavily invested in the theater arts, and are not happy with how commercial theater has evolved. I get that.

The fact, though, that social norms have changed, and that people don't get dressed up in situations where in the past they would have, is a separate issue. People used to get dressed up to travel. They don't anymore. I dress up when traveling on business, and don't otherwise. People used to get dressed up for theater. Many don't anymore. I often do; I sometimes don't. It's not so terrible.

PTravel

As I said in another post, the issue isn't whether they dress up, but the audience expectations for theater created by Disney.

Precisely because they are marketed as annual productions intended for an audience of, primarily, parents with children. When I was a young child, my parents took me to lots of children's theater, which has an entirely different set of stylistic conventions (though the same underlying theory of two-way communication between audience and performers) which, naturally, result in entirely different audience expectations. Children's theater (and the annual performances of The Nutcracker) are great "training grounds" for introducing kids to the fine arts. The problem introduced by Disney, and picked up by some other producers, is two-fold: (1) instead of producing works specifically crafted for the stage (with the exception of Lion King), it tried to reproduce, not adapt, its animated musicals as theater. Film can do things theater can't and vice versa. One thing theater can't do well is spectacle. Nonetheless, Disney, through its slavish reproduction of its musicals on stage, has created an audience expectation for the very thing that theater does the least well. (2) Disney's latter-day musicals (as opposed to its hand-drawn, painted-cel classics), while aimed primarily at children, have a sprinkling of humor intended to appeal to adults, perhaps to keep the parents from getting too bored. The result is a simplistic and childish artistic work. There is nothing wrong with that, as the success of the Disney movies demonstrates. However, due to both marketing and a plethora of touring bus-and-truck companies, it is also what audiences with limited theater exposure now associate with "theater" -- what I think of as "Theater on Ice" syndrome. The resulting productions are not particularly satisfying and never work as theater should because their focus is on things that theater does not do well, while ignoring the one thing theater does that absolutely distinguishes it from all non-live performance mediums.

Then you must be much younger than I. When I was young, the audience for Broadway was primarily locals -- people from New York and New Jersey who saw plays and musicals on a regular basis. Before I went to college, I used to keep a list of every show I saw on Broadway. By the time I left the city for college at 17, there were over 200 shows on that list. Now, the audience is primarily tourists, for whom attending a Broadway show is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

You're focused on clothes. I'm focused on audience expectations.

Not with respect to The Nutcracker. However, I mentioned in an earlier post that I often see very young children at the Met. They are ALWAYS dressed nicely and they are always perfect audience members who clearly love the opera experience. It's not their clothes that suddenly transforms otherwise rambunctious kids into sophisticated opera-goers, but their expectations of the performance, which they learn from their parents, and as expressed, in part, by their clothes, that results in their appreciation of the medium.

PTravel

Social norms have changed. The reasons why theater remains a popular art after 3,000 years haven't.

As I said to Analise, you're focused on clothing. I'm focused on audience attitudes as reflect, in part, by clothing.

Out of my Element

If you think B'way is tourists wearing sweatshirts and jeans, then you're going to the wrong shows. Disney shows? Andrew Lloyd Webber shows? Anything else that has been playing for more than 5 years (Jersey, Mamma, Wicked, etc)? Yes, those are tourist shows.

But if you go see original theater (note: none of the above are plays, they are all musicals), you're going to be with 90%+ New Yorkers, and guess what? They are wearing sweatshirts and jeans. And as long as the phones are off, and the cough drops are unwrapped before the lights go down, who cares what your neighbor is wearing? Just like on planes, we don't dress up to fly, so why dress up to see a show?