All stories by Douglas McLennan on BroadwayStars

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Five Highlights From This Week's ArtsJournal by Douglas McLennan

New York gets its first new major museum in decades. English National Opera continues its slow-motion implosion. The relationship between art and critics frays. Some counter-intuitive findin…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:46PM[SHARE]
Sunday, February 28, 2016

This Week's Top AJ Stories 2.28.16 by Douglas McLennan

Arguably, the dominant cultural issue of our time is the changes in how people are finding and getting culture.  In response, business models supporting culture and the kinds of culture b…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:31PM[SHARE]
Sunday, February 21, 2016

Five ArtsJournal Stories From This Week You Shouldn't Miss (2.21.16) by Douglas McLennan

1. Is Funding Really The Top Issue In The Arts?  Doug Borwick says no. “Insufficiency of funds will never go away. It's a state of being in the nonprofit sector. Overfocus on this a…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:22PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Get Your Damn Ads Out Of My Social Media! (They Don't Work Anyway) by Douglas McLennan

Anyone you know like ads? No. They’re the cackling crows getting between you and what you’re after. They’re uninvited, unwelcome, and we do whatever we can to swat them awa…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:14AM[SHARE]
Monday, February 15, 2016

The "One New Thing" Rule by Douglas McLennan

Adam Grant, in his new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World writes about the necessity of anchoring new ideas in familiar things. To generate creative ideas, it's import…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:32PM[SHARE]
Sunday, February 14, 2016

Editors' Choice: Some ArtsJournal Stories You Shouldn't Miss From The Past Week by Douglas McLennan

1. This week in What-Does-The-Audience-Want? Cheaper tickets, for sure. Or at least the opportunity to pay what they want.  One theatre converted its season to pay-as-you-want and saw a 5…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:12PM[SHARE]
Sunday, February 7, 2016

Five ArtsJournal Stories You Shouldn't Miss This Week by Douglas McLennan

Ah, an old-fashioned press-banning. Feels like the good old days. Of the 162 stories we collected this week, a few memes emerged: It was the week of artistic directors in dance. First,…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:56PM[SHARE]
Thursday, February 4, 2016

We Asked: What's the Biggest Challenge Facing the Arts? by Douglas McLennan

Last week we conducted our first ArtsJournal poll, asking: What’s the biggest challenge facing the arts? We had 3,191 votes, with the largest percentage – 37% – answering f…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:38AM[SHARE]
Sunday, January 31, 2016

@AJDoug's Top Arts and Culture Stories of the Week for 01.31.16 by Douglas McLennan

A new music director at the New York Phil. Some things we're learning about audiences. Some ways of analyzing writing. And the police who mistake a man singing opera for urgent screaming.

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:02PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, January 26, 2016

The Virtual Arts " Have It Your Way? by Douglas McLennan

C-NET came away from this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas pronouncing that virtual reality is going to displace traditional porn. No surprise that the porn industry lead…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:08PM[SHARE]
Sunday, January 24, 2016

FIVE PICKS: Stories From This Week's ArtsJournal by Douglas McLennan

Welcome to our weekly “best of” ArtsJournal. These aren’t necessarily the most important of the 156 stories we found this week, but these particularly caught our eye. Your …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:56PM[SHARE]
Thursday, January 21, 2016

What Makes A Great Blog(ger)? Five Observations by Douglas McLennan

As inconsistent and distracted a blogger as I am, I am hardly a great blogger. But as someone who runs a network of arts blogs, I do have some observations. Great bloggers don’t just g…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:09PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Playing For The Screens " Is Our Obsession With Video Changing The Live Arts Experience? by Douglas McLennan

One weekend last November, the biggest box-office at movie theatres throughout the UK wasn’t for the latest Hollywood blockbuster (the latest “Hunger Games” movie opened th…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:28PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, January 19, 2016

If Dance Can't Pay Its Dancers What Does It Mean To Be A Professional Dancer? by Douglas McLennan

A survey of dancers in the UK  last summer reported that “more than half of professional dancers earn less than £5,000 a year from their performance work.” That’s …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:08PM[SHARE]

Last Week's Top Stories on ArtsJournal by Douglas McLennan

We’re aggregating upwards of 150 stories a week on ArtsJournal these days. Despite the decimation of the daily newspaper arts journalism profession, there are more good stories about t…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:16AM[SHARE]
Monday, January 11, 2016

When Libraries Realize That The Most Valuable Thing They Own Isn't Their Collections by Douglas McLennan

Remember when the internet came along and everyone wondered whether there would still be a use for libraries? Oddly, just as the question was being called, in the early 2000s there was a bui…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:15PM[SHARE]
Monday, January 4, 2016

Is Earning Making Money The New Audience-Building Strategy? by Douglas McLennan

Maybe it’s obvious, but in the for-profit world, making money is the point; profit defines success. In the non-profit world, the relationship between profit and success is more complic…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:09PM[SHARE]
Monday, December 7, 2015

The Innovation Imperative (But Will It Get Us An Audience?) by Douglas McLennan

Recently, an orchestra manager told me that his orchestra was going to be “the most innovative orchestra in the world.” I asked what he was doing that was so innovative, and he r…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:57AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 30, 2015

The Mass Market Ain't What It Used To Be (And What That Means For The Arts) by Douglas McLennan

What does it mean to “engage with an audience”? It’s a fundamental question for anyone who makes anything. Whether it’s a political party trying to win votes, Coke tr…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:13PM[SHARE]
Friday, September 4, 2015

Rules Of Engagement: The Line Between Audience Participation And Abuse by Douglas McLennan

“The rules of engagement in theatre have changed, and now audience participation is everywhere. But artists have a responsibility to take care of those they pick on.”

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 02:25PM[SHARE]
Thursday, September 3, 2015

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Has Been Focused On Diversity. Here's How It's Going… by Douglas McLennan

“Once settled in your seat, I suspect the first thing you'd notice would be the unusual ethnic and racial diversity onstage.”

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:56AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Edinburgh Festivals Post (Yet Another) Record Year At The Box Office by Douglas McLennan

“The fringe broke the 2 million barrier for the second year in a row, recording a rise of 5.24% on last year’s figures to 2,298,080, on an increase in productions of 3.79% to 3,3…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:01PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Is Broadway Due For A Big Market Correction Of Its Own? by Douglas McLennan

“I'm not trying to tell you the sky is falling . . . I'm here to say that what goes up, must come down (or in our case, go flat), and the more we know and understand when these things …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:45PM[SHARE]
Friday, August 28, 2015

Director Accuses Theatre Of "Setting A Dangerous Precedent" By Cancelling ISIS Play by Douglas McLennan

"If a single company gets scared and it is willing to pull work that it has invested time and money and love into… that is a very dangerous precedent."

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 01:13PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Ten Agatha Christie Plays Discovered by Douglas McLennan

The ten plays " five full-length and five one-act works " were discovered by producer Julius Green while researching a book about the author's work in theatre. He heralded the find as a "for…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:57PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Reporter Wants More Impact For His Blockbuster Story, So He Turns To Theatre by Douglas McLennan

“Assassination Theater, now in a run at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, is a provocative multimedia history lesson dressed up as a docudrama. An engrossing, rapid-fire exposé …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:13PM[SHARE]
Friday, August 21, 2015

Manhattan Theatre Club Attacked For Lack Of Diversity by Douglas McLennan

The season, announced piecemeal since December, includes Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love," David Lindsay-Abaire's "Ripcord," Richard Greenberg's "Our Mother's Brief Affair," John Patrick Shanle…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:23PM[SHARE]

Bill Rauch: What It Takes To Be A Leader In The Theatre by Douglas McLennan

“I think leadership is lonely and leadership is frightening, and just the nature of the nonprofit structure is hard, so there is going to be a lot of struggle. And I think that does ma…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 02:26PM[SHARE]
Thursday, August 20, 2015

Former National Theatre Bosses Nicholas Hytner And Nick Starr To Open London's First New Theatre In 20 Years by Douglas McLennan

“While there are 17 other theatres of comparable size (800-1,099 seats) in greater London, with 15 of those in inner London, the new building would be the first large-scale theatre in …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:15PM[SHARE]

America's Theatres Are Looking At Leadership Changes by Douglas McLennan

“Leadership turnover is coming to America's regional theaters. When Theater Communications Group " a service organization for the country's nonprofit theaters " recently surveyed its m…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:05PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, August 19, 2015

An All-White Cast For Shakespeare? What Is Trevor Nunn Thinking? by Douglas McLennan

“Perhaps an all-white cast will one day seem as absurd as Donald Sinden blacking up to play Othello in 1979, but fidelity to 16th-century staging has long served as an excuse for a lac…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 10:51AM[SHARE]

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