Articles

March 2009 - Issue 1, vol. 1

The Business of News

The Other Woman

State vs. Private College

Where Have All The Newsmen Gone?

OMG…I’m the Grasshopper

Hype and the Improper Brand

Who's Pulling The Strings?

Voyeurism and the Modern World

The Thinker

The State of Broadway

by Kyran

Am I the only one noticing the deterioration of Broadway? There was a time when it was the symbol of innovative and forward thinking as well as a source for original score. There was a time when movies came from theater and now we are seeing Hollywood giving back as movies and pop music filter into theaters. But is this a good thing?

Have the inmates overrun the asylum? As business replaces creativity, has the place that we once looked to for high art become a playground? With cartoons taking over the theater, will we again see sophisticated and topical statements being made? Will the transformation of Broadway move from the copycat trend that is becoming to standard to picking up where innovative plays challenged the formulaic structure and re-ignited interest in a dying art?

I have always had a love/hate relationship with musicals on Broadway. I enjoyed the musicals that I got to see as a child, but it was not until I was in college that I really began to enjoy the theater. I was in London and theater was an event. Now, you don't dress for the theater. I was in Paris and people have stopped dressing for the opera. It makes the old ways seem antiquated and the formality seem like novelty.

For all of my differences with the theater for it's lack of edge, I found that my heart sank with each Disney release. The Lion King was the only one that reached high art in it's interpretation...but their aspirations seem to have ended with that achievement. I bristled at the loss of the original score. While I have always felt that the music of Broadway should feel more modern in it's styling, I did not wish for it to be replaced with recycled hits from a pop star's catalogue...unless it was a biography.

The change that Rent brought to modernize the musical seems to be part of a bygone era. As Broadway struggles to find itself, I hope that the shift in the economy leads producers to ask serious questions about where the future of theater is going and to take risks that further the art and push the envelope in ways that both challenge the audience to think and respond. It is true that the theater is an industry driven by profitability, but it is patronized by lovers of art and those seeking new and novel experiences.

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