Taking the Show on the Road
As the American population grew and spread westward, so did the number of theaters. From New York City,
TABLE 4.5
| Demographic distribution of adults personally participating in the arts at least once in the 12—month period ending August 2002 | ||||||||||||||||||
| U.S. adult population | ||||||||||||||||||
| Millions | Percent | Jazz | Classical | Opera | Choir/Chorale | Musical play | Act in plays | Ballet | Other dance | Music composition | Painting | Writing | Photography | Pottery | Sewing | Own art | Purchased art recently | |
| Note: Percentages may not equal 100% due to rounding | ||||||||||||||||||
| *Not including Hispanics | ||||||||||||||||||
| SOURCE: "Table 17. Demographic Distribution of U.S. Adults Personally Participating in the Arts at Least Once in the 12—Month Period Ending August 2002," in 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, 2004, http://www.arts.gov/pub/NEASurvey2004.pdf (accessed September 9, 2004) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Gender | ||||||||||||||||||
| Male | 98.7 | 47.9% | 65.1% | 40.0% | 37.4% | 38.2% | 37.6% | 44.3% | 14.1% | 38.3% | 72.9% | 35.7% | 39.5% | 45.0% | 34.2% | 7.1% | 44.7% | 45.0% |
| Female | 107.2 | 52.1 | 34.9 | 60.0 | 62.6 | 61.8 | 62.4 | 55.7 | 85.9 | 61.7 | 27.1 | 64.3 | 60.5 | 55.0 | 65.8 | 92.9 | 55.3 | 55.0 |
| Total | 205.9 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Race and ethnicity | ||||||||||||||||||
| Hispanic | 22.7 | 11.0 | 4.6 | 4.4 | 6.7 | 6.6 | 3.8 | 10.4 | 6.6 | 11.2 | 3.0 | 8.7 | 6.3 | 6.5 | 8.2 | 8.6 | 4.0 | 5.1 |
| White* | 150.1 | 72.9 | 83.0 | 87.1 | 80.8 | 68.1 | 87.4 | 68.4 | 76.5 | 72.7 | 78.0 | 79.9 | 78.2 | 81.2 | 80.6 | 80.3 | 87.3 | 85.4 |
| African-American | 23.7 | 11.5 | 10.8 | 2.4 | 6.2 | 22.0 | 6.6 | 17.6 | 13.1 | 9.7 | 14.6 | 7.4 | 12.1 | 7.6 | 6.9 | 6.8 | 5.3 | 6.4 |
| Other* | 9.5 | 4.6 | 1.6 | 6.0 | 6.4 | 3.4 | 2.2 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 6.4 | 4.4 | 3.9 | 3.4 | 4.7 | 4.3 | 4.3 | 3.4 | 3.1 |
| Total | 205.9 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Age | ||||||||||||||||||
| 18-24 | 26.8 | 13.0 | 18.7 | 17.9 | 12.6 | 13.4 | 14.0 | 27.4 | 41.0 | 19.0 | 31.8 | 23.3 | 23.3 | 14.6 | 17.6 | 8.5 | 6.4 | 8.9 |
| 25-34 | 36.9 | 17.9 | 15.8 | 14.0 | 14.6 | 14.8 | 15.9 | 17.5 | 12.6 | 19.4 | 25.3 | 21.3 | 20.2 | 19.3 | 20.3 | 14.6 | 14.3 | 19.0 |
| 35—44 | 44.2 | 21.5 | 24.5 | 21.3 | 18.3 | 21.6 | 19.4 | 26.3 | 26.4 | 20.1 | 21.3 | 20.1 | 20.4 | 26.2 | 22.9 | 20.4 | 23.2 | 24.5 |
| 45—54 | 39.0 | 18.9 | 28.2 | 26.5 | 23.2 | 20.1 | 22.0 | 15.4 | 9.2 | 19.1 | 14.8 | 18.0 | 18.2 | 19.9 | 20.7 | 22.0 | 25.4 | 24.0 |
| 55—64 | 25.9 | 12.6 | 7.2 | 10.6 | 14.9 | 14.7 | 13.9 | 8.3 | 6.7 | 10.4 | 5.0 | 9.9 | 8.9 | 11.5 | 10.2 | 15.1 | 16.0 | 14.2 |
| 65—74 | 17.6 | 8.5 | 3.2 | 6.7 | 9.5 | 9.6 | 7.7 | 3.9 | 0.4 | 7.6 | 1.4 | 4.7 | 5.0 | 6.0 | 5.7 | 11.0 | 8.9 | 7.2 |
| 75 and over | 15.5 | 7.5 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 6.9 | 5.8 | 7.0 | 1.2 | 3.8 | 4.5 | 0.3 | 2.7 | 3.9 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 8.5 | 5.8 | 2.2 |
| Total | 205.9 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Education | ||||||||||||||||||
| Grade school | 11.6 | 5.6 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0.9 | 1.3 | 0.6 | 0.1 | n a | 0.9 | 1.5 | 1.1 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 1.3 | 4.2 | 0.8 | 0.6 |
| Some high school | 20.1 | 9.8 | 1.9 | 1.5 | 2.1 | 5.3 | 2.1 | 6.6 | 5.8 | 8.2 | 4.7 | 5.9 | 3.9 | 3.9 | 5.6 | 6.8 | 2.4 | 1.9 |
| High school graduate | 63.8 | 31.0 | 10.2 | 10.4 | 16.9 | 22.4 | 16.7 | 18.1 | 15.2 | 21.1 | 19.5 | 22.6 | 18.0 | 21.9 | 27.6 | 29.0 | 16.3 | 12.9 |
| Some college | 56.9 | 27.6 | 37.3 | 27.6 | 31.2 | 34.7 | 32.3 | 35.3 | 37.7 | 37.6 | 36.8 | 37.3 | 35.8 | 32.3 | 36.3 | 31.7 | 31.1 | 29.9 |
| College graduate | 36.1 | 17.5 | 30.1 | 35.0 | 25.2 | 23.5 | 27.1 | 29.5 | 21.2 | 20.5 | 24.4 | 22.3 | 26.2 | 26.3 | 20.2 | 19.0 | 29.7 | 31.5 |
| Graduate school | 17.4 | 8.5 | 19.8 | 25.3 | 23.7 | 12.8 | 21.2 | 10.3 | 20.3 | 11.6 | 13.2 | 10.8 | 15.2 | 14.8 | 8.9 | 9.3 | 19.8 | 23.2 |
| Total | 205.9 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Income | ||||||||||||||||||
| Less than $10K | 14.4 | 7.0 | 3.2 | 6.2 | 3.9 | 5.4 | 4.2 | 2.9 | 15.7 | 5.9 | 9.8 | 6.5 | 8.5 | 4.4 | 7.3 | 7.5 | 2.9 | 2.3 |
| $10K to $20K | 22.7 | 11.0 | 8.1 | 5.5 | 10.3 | 12.3 | 6.8 | 8.4 | n/a | 9.5 | 11.4 | 9.9 | 9.5 | 7.4 | 9.6 | 13.2 | 5.8 | 4.2 |
| $20K to $30K | 25.0 | 12.1 | 6.8 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 11.3 | 6.7 | 11.1 | 19.8 | 15.0 | 9.7 | 11.4 | 10.6 | 7.8 | 10.9 | 13.2 | 7.3 | 6.5 |
| $30K to $40K | 24.2 | 11.8 | 13.5 | 16.0 | 9.0 | 14.9 | 13.8 | 17.5 | 4.8 | 14.6 | 15.1 | 14.4 | 13.8 | 11.6 | 12.8 | 13.4 | 11.7 | 10.5 |
| $40K to $50K | 17.6 | 8.5 | 10.2 | 14.9 | 10.1 | 10.6 | 13.3 | 16.4 | 12.4 | 9.8 | 10.1 | 10.2 | 9.9 | 11.3 | 9.2 | 10.4 | 9.3 | 7.5 |
| $50K to $75K | 34.7 | 16.9 | 21.1 | 25.0 | 19.8 | 21.8 | 20.3 | 20.7 | 14.6 | 21.1 | 19.6 | 18.0 | 18.4 | 21.3 | 21.7 | 19.4 | 22.0 | 22.9 |
| $75K and over | 45.8 | 22.2 | 37.1 | 31.4 | 42.9 | 23.7 | 35.0 | 23.1 | 32.7 | 24.1 | 24.2 | 29.6 | 29.2 | 36.2 | 28.5 | 23.0 | 41.0 | 46.0 |
| Total | 205.9 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
TABLE 4.6
| Frequency with which people maintaining their own Web sites update their sites, 2003 | |
| Population = 202 | |
| SOURCE: Amanda Lenhart, John Horrigan, and Deborah Fallows, "How Often Do You Post Material on Your Web Site?" in Content Creation Online, Pew Internet & American Life Project, February 29, 2004, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Content_Creation_Report.pdf (accessed August 7, 2004) | |
| Several times a day | 4% |
| About once a day | 6% |
| 3–5 days a week | 7% |
| 1–2 days a week | 11% |
| Every few weeks | 25% |
| Less often | 42% |
| Do not know/refused | 5% |
the leading theater center, hundreds of companies took their performers on the road to bring entertainment to settlers all across the country. Until the early 1900s the theater—which included opera, drama, comedy, and musical shows—was America's principal form of entertainment. An original American theater type was the showboat, which sailed up and down the Mississippi River entertaining passengers, the gamblers who made a living on the river, and the residents of the towns where the boats docked.
Broadway
The modern period on Broadway began in New York City with the founding of the Theater Guild in 1918. It was the first commercially successful art theater to produce plays of the same caliber and quality as those produced in Europe. Other theaters soon opened, and they prospered right up to the stock market crash of 1929. The nation recovered from the Great Depression that followed, but theater did not because more and more people were going to see motion pictures or staying home to listen to the radio and, later, watch television.
By the turn of the twenty-first century it had become extraordinarily expensive to put on a Broadway show. In some instances, the extravagant sets and breathtaking special effects overshadowed the play. For example, the show Sunset Boulevard involved two separate stages, and in Miss Saigon, a real helicopter landed on the stage. The costs involved in staging a successful theatrical performance on Broadway had become almost prohibitive. As a result, fewer and fewer shows were produced there. Financial backers, concerned about minimizing their risks, appeared more willing to finance revivals of shows that were successful in years past or stage plays drawn from movies. Examples of revivals in the early 2000s included classics such as Fiddler on the Roof and Gypsy, as well as newer fare such as John Kander and Fred Ebb's darkly comic 1970s musical Chicago.
In 2004 forty venues were designated as Broadway theaters. In 1980 there were sixty-one new Broadway
TABLE 4.7
| Demographics of Internet content creators, 2003 | |
| Population for Internet users = 1,555. In the Race/Ethnicity category, 6% of respondents fall into the "other" category | |
| SOURCE: Amanda Lenhart, John Horrigan, and Deborah Fallows, "Who Creates Content," in Content Creation Online, Pew Internet & American Life Project, February 29, 2004, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Content_Creation_Report.pdf (accessed July 7, 2004) | |
| Men | 51% |
| Women | 49% |
| Race/Ethnicity | |
| Whites | 77% |
| Blacks | 9% |
| Hispanics | 9% |
| Age | |
| 18–29 | 28% |
| 30–49 | 48% |
| 50–64 | 20% |
| 65 + | 4% |
| Household income | |
| Less than $30,000 | 19% |
| $30,000–$50,000 | 21% |
| $50,000–$75,000 | 17% |
| $75,000 + | 31% |
| Education level | |
| Did not graduate from high school | 6% |
| High school graduate | 19% |
| Some college | 29% |
| College degree+ | 46% |
| Type of home Internet connection | |
| Dial up | 63% |
| Broadband | 37% |
shows, by 1991 just twenty-eight new shows had started, and in 1996 thirty-eight shows opened. In the 2003–04 season, there were thirty-nine new shows: twenty-four plays, thirteen musicals, and two "specials." Total box office sales for the 2003–04 season were $771 million, up 6.9% from the previous year, according to industry newspaper Variety. Attendance was up almost 2%, to 11.6 million, with the average ticket price rising $3.20 to $66.47.
Touring versions of Broadway shows were successful as well. During the 2002–03 season 12.4 million Americans bought $642 million worth of tickets to see traveling productions of hit shows around the country, according to the League of American Theaters and Producers.
In New York City there were also about 150 "Off-Broadway" and "Off-Off-Broadway" performance spaces, which presented an estimated 1,500 productions annually. Attendance was approximately seven million in 2002, according to the Alliance of Resident Theaters of New York.
Nonprofit Theater
The Theatre Communications Group (TCG; www.tcg.org) represents the interests of nonprofit professional theaters in the United States. At the end of the 2002–03 season, its membership consisted of 454 theater companies in forty-six states and Washington, D.C., up from 228 in 1996. These groups included ensembles, touring companies, children's theater groups, and small companies. During 2002–03 they held 63,330 performances of 4,787 different productions: the classics, modern plays, musicals, new plays by American and foreign playwrights, experimental works, and plays aimed at young audiences. In 1980, 14.2 million people attended TCG members' nonprofit theater productions; in 1994, 20.7 million did; and in the season that ended in 2003, attendance was eighteen million.
The TCG's annual report for 2002–03 noted that 4% of member theaters had budgets of $10 million or more, 7% spent $5–10 million, 6% spent $3–5 million, and 25% spent $1–3 million. The remaining 58% had budgets of less than $1 million. Nonprofit theaters employed forty-two thousand artists, administrators, and production staff in 2002–03.
Going to Concerts and Operas
Research conducted by Audience Insight for fifteen orchestras and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation found that in 2002 just 17% of adults in the United States reported that they had attended a live classical music performance. Americans attended classical music concerts in a variety of settings, including traditional concert halls, school auditoriums and gymnasiums, churches and synagogues, and outdoor venues.
Although just over 3% of Americans typically attended opera performances each year, opera audiences increased by almost 50% in numbers from 1982 to 2002 (see Table 4.1.) In 2002–03 North America's professional opera companies offered 2,112 performances of 401 fully staged productions. According to OPERA America, a service organization that supports the creation and performance of opera, the ten most frequently produced operas during the 2004–05 season were: Madama Butterfly (Puccini), Don Giovanni, (Mozart), La Boheme (Puccini), Carmen (Bizet), The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), Tosca (Puccini), Rigoletto (Verdi), Aida (Verdi), The Mikado (Sullivan), and La Traviata (Verdi).
Rock and Pop Music
The 2002 NEA survey asked Americans which types of music they liked to listen to. Almost half said they liked classic rock/oldies, while two-fifths said they liked country western, and almost 30% each said they liked blues/R & B, mood music/easy listening, jazz, classical/chamber music, and hymns/gospel music. When asked what their favorite type of music was, 16% said classic rock/oldies, 15% said country, and 14% said they preferred no particular genre.
Given these findings, it was not surprising that the best-attended concerts in America were ones given by well-established rock, country, and popular music performers. According to Billboard magazine, the top concert tours of 2003, in order, were those of the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Cher, Fleetwood Mac, the Dixie Chicks, the Eagles, the Dave Matthews Band, Aerosmith/Kiss, Metallica's Summer Sanitarium, and Billy Joel/Elton John.
The Rolling Stones' 116-date September 2002 to October 2003 world tour was 99% sold out and attended by 3.4 million people worldwide, according to Billboard. It grossed $299.5 million. For his 2003 shows, Bruce Springsteen grossed $181.7 million, and Cher took in $76.3 million at the 116 shows of her two-hundred-date "Farewell Tour" in 2003, which grossed $145 million over two years.
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