Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Playgoer: New Stephen Schwartz Opera in Santa Barbara:

This sounds very much like the reasoning by newspaper publishers, on the heels of gutting classical music, books, dance and theater sections over the past three years. It also lends support to Mike Daisey's sardonic postulation in his one-man show, How The Theater Failed America, that the main purpose of arts institutions (and of newspapers too, it would seem) is self-preservation. Unlike CTG, however, a newspaper harbors no illusions of functioning under some non-profit umbrella. In many arts organizations, that distinction has grown increasingly irrelevant.