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July 24, 2009
Beyond The Product
Doug McLennan over at ArtsJournal has a blog post up today taking arts organizations to task for not keeping up with other entertainment venues when it comes to customer comfort."Despite the fact that the average concert hall was many times more expensive to construct than the new-generation movie complexes, the customer amenities inside the halls constructed over the past 20 years - how can I put this kindly - kind of suck... There's an argument to be made for preserving formal rituals in going out to see a performance. But things change. I like some of the rituals, but I have to admit I often resent the degree to which it is imposed by rigid seats and cramped legroom. And why can't I bring my drink back in to the show?"
This is the kind of issue that those of us who make our living on stage forget to think about most of the time - after all, we don't sit in those cramped seats very often, and to be perfectly frank, if you think the audience spaces are uncomfortable, you should see the backstage areas we work in. (Just for example, if we have more than three soloists on a single concert, we don't have enough dressing rooms for them.) But we should, and this ties into a much larger issue. Doug's been talking a lot on his blog lately about the need for arts groups to realize that we're no longer just competing with other arts groups - we're competing with baseball teams, rock bands, TV programs, and the almighty Internet, and we might want to start acting like we're aware of this.
As it happens, of course, the Minnesota Orchestra recently announced that we're intending to spend $40 million to upgrade Orchestra Hall, and nearly all of that money will be spent on audience spaces like our severely undersized lobby. Now, unfortunately, $40m isn't enough to suddenly transform a 35-year-old concert hall into this, but it's certainly enough to make a tangible difference in the concertgoing experience.
So what are your priorities? What, specifically, do you think we should be spending our renovation budget on? And what popular upgrades do you think would be a huge waste of resources that we shouldn't even think about bothering with?
Originally from Inside the Classics, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Jul 24, 2009 at 12:13 PM