"Theatre is dead."

Irish actor Gabriel Byrne is convinced theatre will die out - because the audiences are too old.

The Usual Suspects star has appeared in several productions, including a starring role as King Arthur in Camelot in New York last year.

He has also received numerous accolades for his onstage performances, including an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for 2005's A Touch of the Poet on Broadway.

And it was during his run in the show that the 58-year-old decided theatre-goers were a dying breed.

Byrne says, ?I looked out into the audience and the theatre was packed with well-to-do, white-haired people.

"After the show I turned to one of the other actors and said, ?Theatre is dead. There?s no one under 60 out there, they?re all white and they can all afford £200 for a night.' Seriously, theatre as we?re doing it now, is dead.?

Thoughts?

Can you please post a link to the article? I'd like to read his words in context. - Thanks.

I counter with "Don't tell me that, I just got here"

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What about rephrasing his statement to "Legitimate theatre is dead"?

The musical certainly dominates Broadway. And people are more likely to attend a musical than a play.

Well, what is considered "legitimate"?

Theater will never die, so long as there are people willing to pay to see it. If the way to get people to pay to see it is to use the dartboard method of matching cast, director and play, then so be it. If the way to get people to pay to see it is to set a popular movie to music OR to put the screenplay and prerecorded songs on stage, so be it. It may not be good, it may not even come close to good, but people will pay to see it.

REAL theater isn't dead either. As long as there are tiny companies willing to produce plays by the likes of Adam Bock and Young Jean Lee and Adam Rapp and Itamar Moses, theater will live on.

Updated On: 4/14/09 at 09:29 AM

Due attention must be paid to developing new audiences, though, and not just as a source of revenue. In a recent Toxic Avenger post, I went on about how ecstatic I was to see so many middle and high school aged kids in the audience. The consensus in the lobby afterward was a general, "That was cool, can our school do that?" from kids who didn't strike me as being your normal school theatre kids, in fact, more seemed to be the ones who would be stuffing the theatre kids in their lockers. Overall, it was relieving to see.

My theatre company actually directs many of its educational programs at teachers. We offer a First Folio Cue Script workshop to teachers to offer them a new way to present Shakespeare in the classroom in place of the old 'Everyone reads a part, oh look I have no lines for twenty pages, I can do my math homework'; it actually requires them to be present and in the moment, and its had some excellent results. It's especially successful in schools that have no drama program.

Let's face it, the days of taking the family to the theatre at $125 a ticket are numbered. That's almost a year of playing World of Warcraft online, which is your 13 year old son going to ask for next Christmas? If the only alternative is to drag the kids to the West Chemung Community and Veteran's Center production of Oliver (with all the boys played by girls from Missus Brazhinski's dance academy), we're not working at the next generation. Unfortunately, most audience development programs are aimed at 25-40 year olds with the income to afford a theatre ticket. How can we get them to buy two more and bring the kids, and how can we get the kids to want to come along?

Updated On: 4/14/09 at 09:56 AM

At this point, I refer to the words of Mel Brooks in that risible credits song he wrote for the end of the new Producers on film:

"It's often been said
That theatre is dead
The critics repeat it en masse
But the theatre's alive
It's gonna survive
Although it's a pain in the ass"

And in my personal opinion, to quote once again the lyrics that are slightly better than the melody for the piece:

"Though it is expensive
At 100 bucks a throw
There's nothing like
A Broadway show!"

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Oh Gabriel, turn the Victrola off.

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The drama department put on a preview of How To Succeed for all the students, and the students were talking and yelling words like "SLUT!" out during the show.

Maybe there were Rocky Horror fans at the wrong theater.

The arts in general in the US are dead.

Nope.

Many schools are getting threatened to have to cut the arts programs because "it is not popular".

I remember hearing that in the 80s. Schools still have arts programs and high schools for performing arts are still in cities all over the country.

At my school, all it is about is sports. The drama department put on a preview of How To Succeed for all the students, and the students were talking and yelling words like "SLUT!" out during the show.

I agree that the behavior of kids has declined somewhat (when does it not?), which has always been a complaint from generation to generation, but I'm not convinced the behavior of the kids at your school is the barometer for the deterioration of the arts in the US. I remember when a group of high school kids got kicked out of a movie theatre in Houston for laughing and making derogatory comments during Schindler's List. Films are still being made. It sounds more like the students were either bored or under little-to-no supervision. They behaved the same way many audiences did during operas, plays and ballets for centuries in Europe. I think that is more of a sign of the deterioration of morals and discipline, not that the arts specifically are dying.

Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, community theatre, school theatre, music, opera, ballet, and all forms of visual arts are still alive and well across the United States. They are evolving as they always have over the centuries.

I don't know which is more detrimental to the arts: people who don't appreciate what they see or "artists" who claim art is dead when things don't go their way. Even in periods of political and social strife including major bans of art and expression, art continued to live underground until it could once again resurface free from the constraints of dictatorial rule. To think art is dead in the US now is to laugh in the face of artists who truly struggled and/or died for their art in times when art was truly under attack.

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And he determined that from the audience of "A Touch of the Poet?"

What did he expect?

Updated On: 4/14/09 at 04:14 PM

Maybe the problem is the school forced high schoolers to watch How to Succeed. Making it mandatory isn't the solution either.

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my hometown's school district almost cut the theatre program at my middle show and high school due to having to create a smaller budget There was such an uproar from current students, former students, and parents during the next budget meeting that they had to work around it and the theatre program was saved (for now).

Theater is not dead; it's just in a slump right now. Once, there was an era of just revues, then there were lots of British shows that came over, and now its all about the movie musicals. It's not going last but it's just a phrase that we have to go through.

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