Yeah, I know that anyone who subscribes to ArtsJournal has probably already seen this, but given our recent discussions about the "value" of the arts, I thought it'd be relevant to highlight this article here at Theatreforte. Arne Zaslove over at the impressive Crosscut Seattle outlines the sad history of his city's theatre scene.

The first round of Ford Foundation money, which had created the regional boom, faded away, and corporations shifted money from arts to social services. Costs kept escalating as the scramble for funders and subscribers got more intense. A city such as Seattle, which had practiced little birth control about artistic groups during the boom years after the World's Fair, had a lot of mouths to feed.

The whole article is definitely worth reading, if for nothing else than it might make you feel a little less lonely when you look around your city and wonder whatever happened to all the cool little theatres that used to be around. While theatre in some cities may fare marginally better than others, it's important to remember that this crisis is on a national scale, and it's impacting theatre artists no matter where they live.