Reading time: approx. 15 Min.Art Democracy“Half full is the new sold out!” host Barbara Schöneberger joked about a year ago when she looked at her theater audience. And she was right.
Even now, countless months after the last lockdown, far fewer people go to classical concerts, the theater and the opera than before the pandemic started.
The numbers tell the tale: At the Frankfurt Opera, for example, about 5,000 out of 12,000 subscribers have jumped ship. The Vienna Burgtheater was at 83% of capacity before COVID and is now at just 68%. At some other theaters, as little as 25% of the audience is still showing up. There is talk of a pandemic-related drop in attendance.
In the cultural sector, COVID has been incinerating audiences like a kid burns ants with a magnifying glass, but it's just accelerating a trend that had already started beforehand. The previous continuously shrinking visitor count is now circling the drain. Young people, who were a minority in theaters and opera houses anyway, are now a rare sight, and older people are fewer and fewer. Is it fear of another COVID contagion? Not likely. The overcrowded trains when tickets were offered for 9 euros would contradict that.
Then what is it?
“People started to prefer listening to an audiobook on the sofa in the evening or watching a movie on Netflix,”says Klaus Biesenbach, Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie. And Armin Petras, former Artistic Director in Stuttgart, now in Cottbus, says, “We have to provide reasons for people to want to go back to the theater.” People have established new habits, and we have to break them: “We need to get people back out of their gopher hole.”
According to Birgit Mandel, Professor of Art Education at the University of Hildesheim and an expert in audience development, the problem is structural: “Germany has about 140 public theaters, and still more private ones, along with 130 operas, symphonies and chamber orchestras, and 80 festivals on top of that,” she explains, “Every night something different is being played, and every night the houses are expected to fill!” That would have worked in the days when the stages had a monopoly on entertainment and education. But now, although the theaters are still at the center of town, they're not the center of interest.
“In Germany, the theater has always been for the intelligentsia,” Mandel says, and the ticket prices make sure of that. Nowadays, a pleasant night at the theater usually costs more than a month’s subscription to Netflix. Culture organizers are already reacting to the situation with “U 30” flat rates and “buddy tickets” – and federal Culture Minister Claudia Roth also wants vouchers for young people, modeled on the French culture pass.
But it will take more than just cheap admission to fix the problem.
“What goes on in the theater has to be relevant,” Mandel says. Goethe's “Faust” and his image of women don’t cut it in an era of liberation and diversity. “We need new plays, new themes, new formats,” Mandel says. Theater operators have known that for a long time, and many have changed their programs – with moderate success.
One dazzling exception is the Schaubühne, in Berlin. Why is it continuously filling 90% of the seats despite the crisis? First of all, because the capital city is also an exception: “People move to Berlin partly for the theater offerings,” explains Petras. And secondly, because the Schaubühne succeeds in using stars to draw in crowds – almost half the company is known from the TV police drama “Tatort”.
But even outside Berlin there are success stories.
Mandel thinks it's worth looking abroad and points to England. There, subsidies are granted not only based on how well the house does, but also based on whether the audience represents a cross-section of the neighborhood where the house is located.
And what does that lead to? “At the Contact Theater, in Manchester, young people have had a considerable influence on the program for several years now,” Mandel explains.
Another exemplary case is Theater Basel. Its lobby is open all day, making the house much more than a pure performance venue, but also a café and meeting place. Or, as Mandel calls it, a “community builder”. There are lots of ideas like that. For example, what if a theater's seats were equipped with more comfortable seating? There's definitely a reason why the comfortable two-person seats at the Astor cinema in Germany are regularly booked up. And by the way, it's the only film theater that is matching its audience numbers from before COVID, according to the operator.
And why do culture fans mob the coat check after the performance instead of discussing the play for an hour over a glass of wine at an attractive theater bar?
The culinary concept for venues during intermission also leaves something to be desired: Is it easier to eat a vegetarian bowl standing up than the obligatory salmon finger sandwich with lettuce and creamed horseradish? And why are the theater's pretzels usually staler than the program?
And that brings up the program booklets. “With their complicated texts, they often seem to be addressing a professional clientèle,” says Mandel.Which leads to another point: promotion of the arts. Not only are the program booklets behind the times, but also the folded monthly performance schedules that come in the mail. “My 16-year-old daughter made it clear to me that if I want to reach her, I have to use the channels that will get to her,” says Petras.
Jochen Sandig has noticed the same thing. In an interview, the Artistic Director of the Ludwigsburg Festival said, “Today it's not enough to advertise in the daily newspapers or city magazines. You have to work the social media very strongly, and that requires a lot of creativity and stick-to-itiveness.
Because first the target audience has to follow you, visit the website and subscribe to the newsletter. We strive for a growing community that is active and shares content.”
And yes, the older patrons may sometimes get irritated that the printed program booklets are now less comprehensive and there are more QR codes linking to the digital platform, but: “I have a feeling that even this part of the public has become accustomed to digital information and online ticketing.
The pandemic has catalyzed this process. We really had no choice. We needed to reach the public, we wanted to stay on the air, and for months that was only possible in digital or hybrid form.”
During the pandemic, Sandig brought a “digital stage” to life for his festival, with help from companies like MHP and Porsche. If you open the website, you see a colorfully lit theater space. When the recording starts, the chandelier moves to the ceiling and it gets dark. A moment Sandig finds somewhat magical, reflecting real life: “When the audience suddenly goes quiet shortly before the performance begins.
The productions were not only streamed to computers at home, but also projected on a large screen in the castle courtyard, where the audience followed the performances free of charge – with great enthusiasm.
“The busier the place of transmission, the stronger the magnetic effect,” Sandig explains. Also, because you reach a random audience that actually just planned to go get a pizza but then wind up on the church steps drinking an Aperol spritz and taking in the music. As they say: You have to go where the people are. Moreover, a public viewing is also a live experience, something collective.
When it comes to streaming to private computers, “Today after the lockdowns, we prefer to time delay our premiers in hopes that people would rather experience the concert live for the first time and then take the opportunity to listen to it again and to share their enthusiasm for the content,” says Sandig.
Digitization has long since shown how indispensable it has become to the cultural sector. Both in the dissemination as well as in the staging itself.For example, Detlev Baur, Editor-in-Chief of the theater magazine "Die Deutsche Bühne", likes the "punktlive" collective. With their productions “werther.live” and “möwe.live”, he found a theater on his desktop. The actors rehearsed online, the performances were streamed live, and Goethe and Chekhov's classics were retold anew. The viewers see how all the characters chat and send text messages and scroll through Instagram and Facebook feeds, or flirt with each other on Zoom calls. The 2020 German Multimedia Prize was even awarded for the interpretation of Goethe's epistolary novel “Werther”. And in late September, the troupe performed their third play at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, “odysseus.live” – set up as a talk show that people could follow both in the theater and online.
Thus, if you want to reach a new audience, you have to blaze new trails. And a lot of theaters have opened up. The Augsburger Staatstheater sends virtual reality goggles to their clientèle. In Bremen, the program includes a play written by AI. And during the Bach Festival in Leipzig two years ago, part of the choir sang in St. Thomas Church, but other singers interpreted the work at home, recorded themselves and later everything was combined to form a complete work of art.
Digitization is opening new opportunities in the exhibition sector also. Right now, the show “Monet's Garden” is touring Germany, featuring the paintings of Claude Monet as 360° videos projected through the room. Petals float through the air, rivers lap by, the images come alive, and you can step inside and immerse yourself in them. The air smells of lavender, and music from Monet’s contemporaries can be heard. An immersive experience that is already inherent in the huge formats of the impressionist paintings, and shimmering with color, says Nepomuk Schessl, Producer of the exhibition. He even thinks, “If Monet had had today’s possibilities, he would probably have done it similarly to the way we have.”
In this sense, Birgit Mandel also hopes for “vivid productions that are both an artistic experience and also make community perceptible.” And Sandig wants to see “fulfilled souls within filled halls.” Neither one wants to see art turn into mere events, but into a more intense experience. Something that Sandig has worked on for decades. For example by freeing art, dance and music from traditional spaces and contexts.
In the early 1990s, for example, he transformed a department store passage in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse into the legendary Tacheles art gallery. He also transformed a historic pumping station on the banks of the Spree River into the Radialsystem event center and performed Brahms' Requiem in Bordeaux as “Requiem Human” in a former German submarine bunker.
“Spatial performances of this type change personal perception a lot,” he says. There is no longer a front or back, no frontal performance, but an interaction. To achieve that, he also likes to place the instrumentalists and singers among the audience. “At first, you can’t place the sound of the instruments and voices – then you suddenly realize the actors are right nearby and you’re in the midst of things.”
Crossing traditional boundaries is also a given for Biesenbach, the Head of the Neue Nationalgalerie. “Actually, we need to proclaim the long museum year and long nights as the normal state of things.”
Because, “For me, the collective and proactive are the utopian mission of modernity and of art.”
In Cottbus, Petras is currently putting on the “Two-Penny Opera” – a rewriting of Berthold Brecht's “Three-Penny Opera”.
“By chance, we ran across this record by the London band The Tiger Lilies and thought, This could be something for the whole family!” Petras explains. The result is an art rock circus with a big surprise at the finale: Outside the theater, a circus wagon awaits the audience, where the show goes on after the performance.
Sounds promising for the future.
Discover more:
Im Zeitalter des Homo Digitalis
How digitalization will change our life, thinking and being.
Goodbye Routine, Willkommen Krisenmodus!
Why surprises accelerate progress. Why emergency situations are no cause to panic. Why crises do not automatically lead to disaster. How "new normal“ becomes "better normal".
Author: Verena Richter
Verena Richter studied theater studies and in the course of her journalistic career also specialized in art, architecture and design.
Scroll down to continue
Swipe to continue
Swipe to continue
Art Democracy
“People started to prefer listening to an audiobook on the sofa in the evening or watching a movie on Netflix,”
“What goes on in the theater has to be relevant,” Mandel says. Goethe's “Faust” and his image of women don’t cut it in an era of liberation and diversity. “We need new plays, new themes, new formats,” Mandel says. Theater operators have known that for a long time, and many have changed their programs – with moderate success.
Mandel thinks it's worth looking abroad and points to England. There, subsidies are granted not only based on how well the house does, but also based on whether the audience represents a cross-section of the neighborhood where the house is located.
Is it easier to eat a vegetarian bowl standing up than the obligatory salmon finger sandwich with lettuce and creamed horseradish?
During the pandemic, Sandig brought a “digital stage” to life for his festival, with help from companies like MHP and Porsche. If you open the website, you see a colorfully lit theater space. When the recording starts, the chandelier moves to the ceiling and it gets dark.
Digitization has long since shown how indispensable it has become to the cultural sector. Both in the dissemination as well as in the staging itself.
In the early 1990s, for example, he transformed a department store passage in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse into the legendary Tacheles art gallery. He also transformed a historic pumping station on the banks of the Spree River into the Radialsystem event center and performed Brahms' Requiem in Bordeaux as “Requiem Human” in a former German submarine bunker.
In Cottbus, Petras is currently putting on the “Two-Penny Opera” – a rewriting of Berthold Brecht's “Three-Penny Opera”.
Discover more: