5,707 posts
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Post by lynette on Mar 5, 2019 21:02:02 GMT
O Neil, it's not my fault. When I was a kid there were still plenty of us with outside loos and the only hearing was a coal fire in one room. Ok, so I personally had an inside toilet, you'll be delighted to know but my general point is that the baby boomers were very much post war babies. It is impossible to convey the feeling of the time. Huge progress, national health service, and also fear, Suez crisis when my own dad would have been eligible for a call up to the army if war had broken out, and the BOMB. That our parents took us to the Theatre was a miriacle. That they valued education wonderful though mine didn’t know anything about libraries. A friend took me to a library for the first time when I was twelve. I don’t know when it all went wrong, when the 'dumbing down' began.
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1,863 posts
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Post by NeilVHughes on Mar 5, 2019 21:38:07 GMT
I think what I was trying to convey is that despite the obvious positive changes which have happened something has changed and the ‘Daily Mail’ mentality has become the pervasive one for a majority of a generation.
Back to, Is British Education Guilty of Failing... is the part that I cannot reconcile, we are allegedly dumber but more educated or is it schooled.
I hope it is educated and we can feel the benefit of the policy making a difference in the coming years.
One thing that I can ask, what was the mix of Theatre goers in the 70’s, 80’s, photographs seem to indicate a similarity to now,
is it just
18-25 clubbing / gigs / finding life partner etc , little time and inclination for sitting quietly in the dark.
25-45 raising a family / TV primary interaction with drama
45 - lessening of family commitments and gravitation towards Theatre for drama even though rarely as a treat.
Sweeping generalisations I know, with the obvious Theatrical bias of a Theatre Forum are we projecting our interests and not really seeing things are carrying on as they always were and the changes we want are happening on the Stage at the moment and as this more open and diverse generation reach the ‘Theatre’ phase this will be reflected in the audience.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2019 1:17:24 GMT
We have the most educated generation in history, I have a lot of faith in the current generation as demonstrated by the climate change action. The issues we have now is more the ignorance and selfishness of my generation and the preceding retired babyboomers who had the educative media when we were growing up. I fully agree about babyboomers (and I came in just after, according to how they categorise these things). There is a big difference between a younger generations understanding of a limited number of issues, however, against a lack of wider understanding (I speak as a teacher, so with a fair degree of experience of this). The way that education has been forced to teach to the exam means that education is deep in certain areas yet limited in scope. On who attends theatre, I do think that there are more younger people in audiences now; partly through efforts regarding this but also because theatre has become more diverse. There are times, when attending immersive events for example, when the average audience age is much, much, lower than in general. |
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3,040 posts
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Post by crowblack on Mar 6, 2019 9:04:55 GMT
attending immersive events for example, when the average audience age is much, much, lower I genuinely think youngsters hate the idea of sitting still and not being on their phones for any long period of time - certainly they don't want to switch them off in cinemas! |
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3,040 posts
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Post by crowblack on Mar 6, 2019 9:39:07 GMT
It's also far far easier to book tickets than it was when I was young - then we had to phone up, send a cheque off by post and had no idea about the quality of the seats we'd bought. Celebrity casting is theoretically a great way to get people into a theatre for the first time - the first things I booked for and went to see with schoolfriends were some acts we'd seen on the TV. Crucially, though, the tickets were cheap. If your first experience of theatre is going "oh wow, my favourite TV actor is in a play" and then discovering the stalls are £125 each and even the back of the circle is £75, while an interval drink also costs a small fortune you very quickly get the impression this isn't for the likes of you. Cheap offers for children are not much good if a parent has to pay that much to accompany them.
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