The Playgoer: The Theatre and The Museum Should be Friends

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Friday, April 09, 2010

The Theatre and The Museum Should be Friends

Interesting inter-institutional collaboration going on in Boston, where the two biggest theatre companies (ART and Huntington) are teaming up with the Institute for Contemporary Art to present the Emerging America festival of new work.

So far this seems to be just about sharing space and resources.  But it does make me wonder--what other museum/theatre partnerships could be mutually beneficial?  Certainly could help with marketing and building audiences through combined subscriber/memberships lists.

Lots of opportunities for this in NYC, of course, but never to my knowledge capitalized upon.  (Except for MOMA hosting a Wooster Group performance and a "Sunday in the Park with George" meet 'n' greet.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whitney included some performances and panels iwth performance artist during American Century (or whatever that exhibit is called some years back: Tim Miller, etc.)
Do you count Marina Abramovic, currently sitting at MOMA?

Matt said...

I think a Classical theatre (not the deadly kind, though) working out of the MET might be very interesting.

Lisa T. said...

Emerging America is really about trying to make Boston a little less of an artistic backwater and hopefully inspiring audiences and young artists alike. It's a small town, we all have the same lists, but we have an audience base with a very rigid definition of what constitutes theater. Mostly, they think it should be Turner Classic Movies, only live. With the cost of living Boston is inhospitable to young artists and companies. The reason there's no equivalent to Pig Iron in Boston is that there's no appetite for it and no good history of it. If the festival at all succeeds, it would be in increasing that appetite.