Russian arts minister: Let audiences decide on subsidy
mainIrina Tarasova, Russian arts minister, has announced a five-point tick-box that will be distributed to audiences at state-sponsored theatres from next year. She said that those theatres which get low audience ratings will be penalised with loss of subsidy.
She added: ‘If the state spends 30 million rubles on a production, it has the right to take into account audience reaction when most of the reviews are negative.’
Reaction from cultural leaders has been predictably hostile. One artistic director said: ‘In theatre there is no ‘like’ and ‘don’t like’. We are dealing with more sensitive distinctions. The state should fund innovation.’
This would only makes sense if the reactions were averaged out over something like a five year period. This would allow theaters to find a balance between popular stagings and those that might be challenging or provocative. And in some ways, the survey is not needed, since ticket sales already tell the overall story.