DRAMA BABY! Much ado about theatre

This week, theatres are in the focus of our attention, being part of the daily news: they are closing (as do many more urban cultural institutions), allegedly as a consequence of the Lehman crisis. Well, of course theatre needs the attention of the media - but not with that kind of headlines...

We will reveal the many facets and the versatility of national and municipal stages, the off-official theatre scene, and theatre in web 2.0. 2010LAB.tv looks behind the curtain, backstage, and under the seats: where and how is theatre still thriving?

Will theatre closures be a common thing pretty soon? The example of the Wuppertaler Bühnen demonstrates impressively how quick an established theatre and a good ensemble are on the verge of abandonment if the respective town council is deep in debt.

Do we still need theatre?

Where is the lobby of the medium theatre anyway? A good question. We take a serious look behind the scenes and dare to ask: do we still need theatres in these times of empty treasuries and low budgets? People don't go there anyway - or do they? Which kind of survival strategy do the artists develop in or around their professions? Why are so many privately financed musical companies still sold out - or at least do better than any given theatre? Which consequences does that have concerning the culture, the vibe of a city?

Useful alternatives do develop, mostly in the free, the off-official scene, and in the field of performing arts. Here, you have exciting projects managing to combine other art forms and theatre - with equal rights, prolific, and productive. The prestigious contemporary medium of the visual arts offers a high potential for theatres. These syntheses fill some highly interesting, so far unexplored multi-media niches. With them, the venerable medium theatre could restore its self-confidence. These modern strategies of the freelancers are more and more adapted by subsidized theatres and the free scene intertwines more and more with the municipal and national theatres. 

Do we really need an independent new off? Or is theatre simply a dying species? A  proof of the opposite: there are a lot of people who would do anything to work in this field and who are totally committed to the idea, the ideals of theatre.