[Innovation Crisis in Public Theatre? A Longitudinal Study of Theaters in North Rhine-Westphalia, 1995-2018].

Abstract

This paper examines cultural innovations in German public theaters, using North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) as the most populated region as an example. While existing analyses, including social structure-centered audience research, have focused on the demand side, diagnosing in particular the steady decline and aging of the cultural audience, our analysis addresses the supply side, especially the number of premieres and new productions as well as their adoption into the repertoire. The paper shows that recent efforts by public theaters on the municipal or regional level to increase both the number of venues and the number of plays have not been sufficient to stabilize the declining audience. Too few new plays are scheduled, of which even fewer make it into the long-term repertoire. Our results suggest that theaters can retain their capability for renewal only by staging significantly more new plays, thus attracting new audiences. With regard to such renewal, decentralized competition as a characteristic of the NRW theater landscape seems a favorable institutional context.