This. There are a lot of plays I’ve seen recordings of where all I can think at the end is “I wonder how different it would be if their target demo wasn’t the upper middle class?” I remain convinced that if “Rent” wasn’t geared towards that demo Mimi would not have lived, for instance.
We can say “Do what you want, your audience will follow” all we want, but while some forms of art do well as passion projects (not to say you shouldn’t pay your artists, you should, but not the point), journalism is not. It takes a lot of consistent time focussing on it, and you can’t do that on your nights, and weekends off.
This. There are a lot of plays I’ve seen recordings of where all I can think at the end is “I wonder how different it would be if their target demo wasn’t the upper middle class?” I remain convinced that if “Rent” wasn’t geared towards that demo Mimi would not have lived, for instance.
We can say “Do what you want, your audience will follow” all we want, but while some forms of art do well as passion projects (not to say you shouldn’t pay your artists, you should, but not the point), journalism is not. It takes a lot of consistent time focussing on it, and you can’t do that on your nights, and weekends off.