Young Audiences

Ahh the age old question of "How to attract young audiences". Here is a post on Parabasis called No Brainer. He lays out very clearly 3 key points that everyone ignores:
1) Do work that younger audiences want to see.

2) Do it well.

3) Price it in a way that they find it affordable.

...ok, yes easier said then done. There are theatres doing these steps and doing them well. Look at Berkeley Rep's American Idiot for instance, or American Rep's Donkey Show and adaption of the scottish play. Affordable, interesting, youthful entertaining theatre, does not mean we have to give up any artistry or intelligence. God, Spring Awakening the great teeny-pop hit that it was, is an adaptation of a play written in the 1890's.

However I have just listed off two rock-musicals. I do not want to be miss-leading. Though I do think the future of theatre and live performance lies somewhere inbetween Musical Theatre and "straight" Theatre (what a terrible description "straight" theatre is...), plays can be just as powerful but we can not ignore the times. We live in an age when the sound is never off. From ipods, to car stereos, to muzak, to Ally McBeal style montages in every form of media we watch, the still silence of a Pinter play or even Rapp's Red Light can be unsettling. That's a good thing, if used properly, and death if not.

It sometimes feels as though young writers are writing for older audiences, or maybe writing for older producers, with whom they would like to see thier work produced. Either that or they are writing for the screen, which is a completely different beast, and a completely different blog-post all together. The trick is, as I have been thinking about this alot lately, as it seems alot of people have been, but the trick is to be brave. We must remember what brought us to this artform in the first place and seek to re-discover performance.