World SUBSIDIZED THEATER ARTS Watch: Dateline Avignon Festival, France: In a perfect world I support government arts subsidies. As one who ran a theater arts non-profit I was happy that the state and municipality were handing out peanuts because I had workers to feed peanuts to. But those hand-outs, even in an oil-rich state were paltry and shameful; even more galling was the double-speak about supporting the arts as something vibrant and necessary for a community while public funds were thrown into sports facilities and yet another white elephant convention center. And in the Bay Area--land of untold tech zillions-- I have to produce out-of-pocket from my full-time job. So I continue doing theater the hard way because that is the nature of an artist: to produce art despite financial odds. Ive been to the Avignon Festival and it was a wonder of theater. Id hate to see it close. Its ironic that its never sports that suffer in economic downturns. And its ironic that the Metropolitan Opera cleans-up in government subsidies despite thousands of deserving performing arts companies that should get a piece of the NEA Pie. My show must go on and it will... sans subsidies...but with good comic art, a skilled cast of comic actors and audiences clamoring to see fun comic plays. That sounds like a winning combination. Merde! to my French compatriots!
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 17:07:48 +0000
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