Monday, October 25, 2004

 
Local theaters in ongoing search for target audiences:
...research on theater demographics tends to support the premise of a gradually aging audience. A survey by the National Endowment for the Arts found that the median age of attenders of plays and musicals was 45 and 46, respectively, in 2002, an increase of two years since 1992. (In the same period, audiences for jazz, classical music, opera, ballet and art museums aged even more.) More recent surveys have found that the average American adult theatergoer is now 46 or 47, a bit older than the total adult population's median age of 45.
What's more, the NEA found that in the decade between 1992 and 2002, the percentage of young people in the overall theater audience shrank significantly. Playgoers between the ages of 18 and 34 decreased from 33.3 percent of the total audience to 27.6 percent; young-adult attenders of musicals went from 32.6 percent to 27.4 percent. In the same period, theatergoers between the ages of 35 and 64 increased their audience share
(from Chicago Sun-Times).

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