You might not know it from the sold-out crowds at Broadway’s big-budget musicals like “The Book of Mormon” or “Wicked,” but theater is the artistic discipline in America that is losing audience share at the fastest rate in recent years.
According to a survey on public participation scheduled to be released on Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts, one out of every three Americans, or about 78 million people, visited an art exhibition or attended a performing arts event in 2012. That figure represents a drop across the board since the last survey in 2008, but the slide was steepest for musicals and plays. For musicals, the 9 percent drop in the attendance rate between 2008 and 2012 was the first statistically significant change in that category in more than 25 years. Straight plays fared even worse, with a 12 percent drop over the same period, a figure that has contributed to a whopping 33 percent rate of decline over the past decade.
Art museums and galleries are also having trouble competing with other attractions. Ten years ago more than one in four Americans passed through their doors; now the figure is closer to one in five. Researchers for the agency’s latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts said they could not offer reasons for the results; they may be attributed to significant shifts in behavior or, perhaps, simply to the scope of activities that were counted.
“At the end of the day, I’m not troubled by it,” said Heather A. Hitchens, executive director of the American Theater Wing. “I believe that all this technology is fantastic, but nothing is going to replace the live experience.” Other arts advocates said interest in the arts over all remained strong and cautioned that there was not necessarily cause for alarm.
Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit organization in Washington, said that shifting rates reflected, in part, an expanded definition of the arts and a wider variety of ways to participate. Ethnic music was once ignored, he said. “There is a lot more that is happening now,” Mr. Lynch said.