Requiem For The Vancouver Playhouse

NobodyKnows

LikeUncleDaveKnowsVille

It seems to me that David Berner has both the up-close-and-personal view as well as the big picture view just about right when he talks about the demise of The Playhouse in Vancouver:

...Membership subscriptions dropped from 8,000 to 4,500? That's not my fault or the city's....

{snippety doo-dah}

...It is true that the company should have been put on solid funding by various levels of government. It is also true that the arts in Canada net so much less support from governments than they should. It is also devastating for the many actors, writers and people of stage craft that they will have one less place to work. All of that is so.

But nothing can ruin a good day like bad work on a stage and that's what the Vancouver Playhouse has been dishing out and pretending to be high art for a great many years...

It is crummy.

But that drop in the number of subscriptions suggests that the folks from the Playhouse were just not doing what was needed to keep folks coming in the door...

However, I think that what Mr. B. hopes now happens, which is:

...I hope a ragtag band of fiery young arts guerrillas (with a real sense of flair and presentation and engagement AND money management) come along and occupy that dead old space and blow some real sexy spiritual life back into the place...

...Might have already happened, in that there does seem to be lots of vibrant stuff going on already which may have accounted, at least in part, for that big drop noted above.

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