Daily News

Theaters in Trouble

A few articles out there on economic trouble putting theaters in peril and even closing their doors:

On Blog Stage: More Shows Are Closings, But Broadway Is Optimistic 

The list of Broadway shows closing in January has reached double digits, the New York Daily News noted yesterday. Many of those are early curtain calls related to a struggling economy, as we’ve been reporting daily on Blog Stage andBackStage.com, but some seasonal shows with scheduled closings are contributing to the exaggerated stats.

At the Village Voice:Downtown’s Ohio Theatre Likely to Close

Before 66 Wooster Street became the Ohio Theatre and various apartments, it had a former life as a textile factory. Theatrical legend has it that before the first performance–in what was then called the Open Space–the cast and crew went down on hands and knees, armed with magnets, pulling decades of dropped pins and needles from the floorboard. Many years later, the Ohio is on pins and needles again. The building that houses the Ohio is being sold, and in a few weeks or months the Ohio Theatre will almost certainly cease to exist.

And on Bloomberg: Silicon Valley Theater Collapses, Blames ‘Tarzan’ Co-Producer 

Silicon Valley’s largest performing- arts organization is preparing to file for bankruptcy this week and blames a theater in Atlanta, 2,442 miles east, for its collapse.