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Melissa Davis’ (in any other case glorious) elegy for Ebook-It Repertory Theater missed one necessary consider its demise [“The tragedy of our City of Literature’s loss of Book-It Repertory Theatre,” July 30, Opinion]. She rightly notes the declines in company sponsorships, donations, subscriptions and ticket gross sales for Ebook-It and all the different theaters in Seattle.
However there’s one other critical decline which, alas, The Seattle Occasions is a part of: the decline in newspaper critiques. Once I moved to Seattle in 1990, skilled theater productions would get at the very least 4 critiques: in The Occasions, The Stranger, The Seattle P-I and The Weekly. The latter two papers are gone, and The Occasions has severely diminished its protection, to 1 assessment (or often two) per week. The Weekend part not lists stay theater showtimes.
Surprisingly sufficient, when individuals don’t find out about an attention-grabbing manufacturing, they don’t go. Sure, theaters might do extra promoting — however promoting prices cash, which (due to all the different declines famous above) the theaters don’t have.
A well-written assessment just isn’t a present to the theater, it’s a service to the neighborhood.
Terry Moore, Seattle
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