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Online communications have made critical reviews widely accessible, enabled a broader range of opinions to be heard, and led to increased critical dialogue among audiences. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how arts organisations’ strategies for engaging with critique have evolved in the digital age.

This paper uses a content analysis of the online presence of 45 organisations. Based on the results, the organisations are classified into three different strategic approaches. The organisations’ publicly available financial data are analysed to explain differences in the choice of strategic approach, and specific cases are used to better understand their strategic execution.

Organisations are engaging in three primary strategic responses: ignoring outside critique, presenting only positive reviews and ignoring or “spinning” negative reviews, and presenting all critique regardless of source or valence. The financial analysis suggests that the choice of strategic response varies across organisations of different sizes and approaches to advertising. Case analyses suggest that the strategy of presenting all critique has the potential to deepen audience engagement and value.

Previous research on critical reviews has focused on traditional media and the importance of the professional critic. This paper is the first to examine strategies for coping with the complex, multiple-voiced nature of critique in the current online environment. The findings suggest questions for future research and provide initial guidelines for organisations in determining a strategic approach to responding to critique.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the influence that newspaper, blog and social media sources of information about a play have on respondents’ willingness to purchase a ticket to a theatrical production.

Respondents saw two advertisements and one review for theatrical productions. The authors randomly varied the version of each advertisement and review so that information regarding the production appeared to originate from a newspaper, blog or social media site. The authors asked respondents to rate the professionalism of the review and advertisements and how likely they were to purchase a ticket. The authors also collected demographic information.

The authors found that newspapers, blogs and social media had similar influence on respondents’ willingness to purchase a ticket. Respondents also viewed the blog-based play review as being as professional as the review from a newspaper. However, respondents were more likely to say they would purchase a ticket to a well-known play than a new play. Female respondents were more willing to purchase a play ticket.

Implications for marketers include the usefulness of non-traditional media (e.g. blogs, social media) in promoting a play – especially for new plays. Theater critics will find that their opinions are equally influential, regardless of whether the medium of publication is traditional (e.g. a newspaper) or digital (e.g. a blog). Principal limitations are the artificiality of a true experiment and an overly simplistic pricing method in the study.

Professionals selling tickets to theatrical productions should use favorable quotes and responses from social media and blogs when marketing tickets because audience members trust that these sources of information as much as newspapers. Internet-based theater critics should appreciate that they are perceived as being as reputable as newspaper-based critics.

Research on theater advertising is extremely limited (especially outside of Broadway), as are studies on the influence of theater critics. The study adds to this meager body of research and provides needed practical guidance to theater marketers.

While holistic studies devoted to the information behavior of humanist scholars have begun to appear more frequently in the literature, there has been, until quite recently, a persistent tendency to consolidate humanists rather than attend to the variant gestalts, material working conditions, and values that might distinguish one from another. This chapter is a response to recent calls for more finely granulated descriptions of specific humanist disciplinary practices. It offers a close examination of the information behavior of theatre researchers, both academics and practitioners. For reasons that the chapter explores, theatre researchers constitute a user group that has been profoundly neglected. Using both quantitative and qualitative data obtained through a survey of listserv members of the American Society for Theatrical Research and the Theatre Library Association, the chapter examines the impact of theatre culture on theatre research practices. Moreover, inspired by Brenda Dervin's “Sense-Making Methodology,” this chapter offers the embedded perspective of a researcher who is herself a theatre scholar as well as a practicing librarian. The chapter ranges widely, illustrating its findings with, for example, published rehearsal memoirs, statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor, white papers produced by the National Endowment of the Arts, performance theory texts. Topics covered include the history of theatre studies as an academic discipline, the multiple job-holding/unemployment culture of practitioners such as actors and directors, the differences in focus and methodology that distinguish practitioners from scholars, the marginalized status of dramatic literature in university English departments. Several themes that emerged through analysis of qualitative data are discussed: the contrast between scholarly rigor and the tendency of the practitioner to “satisfice,” the conflicting claims of text and artifact, the impact of geography and teaching-intensive institutional affiliation on researchers’ access to resources. The author concludes that it is not only inadvisable and inaccurate to generalize behaviors across humanistic disciplines; it is equally inaccurate to assume that all researchers within the same discipline will manifest the same characteristics, or even that the same researcher will apply the same strategies to all projects. The only generalization about the information behavior of the theatre researcher that can be made is that it is highly task and context dependent.

Canadian Almanac and Directory. 1847— . A. $39.00. Published by Copp Clark Pitman, 517 Wellington St. W., Toronto, Ontario M5V 1G1, Canada; available in the U.S. from Gale Research Co., Book Tower, Detroit, MI 48226. Editor: Susan Walters. LC CN75–32392. ISSN 0068–8193. ISBN 0–7730–4043–9 (Copp Clark Pitman); 0–8103–1186–0 (Gale). Now in its 134th year of publication, the Canadian Almanac and Directory offers a great deal of useful information in a compact form. This source embodies a straightforward, no‐nonsense attitude; the extended feature articles, news summaries, and lifestyle items that have become standard fare in American almanacs are conspicuously absent here.

Examines the debate over “Higher superstition” (Gross and Levitt, 1994). Puts forward the arguments in the book and the response to the book from members of the US science and technology studies community. Asserts that increases in technical control have been at the expense of social and individual control. Mentions “diversionary reframing” – changing the subject, possibly by diverting attention away from the subject matter to the person doing the criticizing. Explores public attitudes towards science and technology, quoting a number of layman approaches to the bafflement of science. Identifies the irony in Gross and Levitt’s arguments, particularly in developing the interface between science and technology. Recommends paying more attention to the social construction of beliefs.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

With the growing importance of an online profile, how arts organizations deal with criticism and reviews is an important topic to the sustained survival. The ability to enter into a dialogue online with both potential and actual audience members gives these organizations a unique pool of information about past, current, and upcoming projects. Deciding how to deal with both the professional critics as we as the public online is seen as a key aspect of an arts organization in the digital age. As such, Johnson et al. (2016) have looked at the available in formation to ascertain how fully these organizations, specifically theatres, should engage with criticism to best effect.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practice of casting celebrity performers in London West End theatres. The paper uses the literature on celebrity to explore the impact that casting a celebrity has on the London theatre audience.

The pervasiveness of celebrity culture forms the background and starting point for this research. In the first phase, theatre managers, directors and producers were interviewed to explore their views on the practice of celebrity casting. In the second phase, an audience survey was conducted. The approach taken is exploratory and is intended to illuminate the conditions under which a successful celebrity-focused strategy can be constructed.

A distinction between fame and celebrity was drawn by both theatre professionals and audiences, with celebrity status being seen as something that is created by media exposure and being in the public eye. This is in contrast to fame, which is earned by being famous for something, or some achievement. Theatre audiences are more likely to be attracted by celebrities who have theatrical expertise and not by someone known simply through film, television or the all-pervasive gossip columns. Celebrities with a background in theatre and film were seen to strongly draw audiences to the theatre, as opposed to those with a background in reality TV shows, search-for-a-star shows or for being half of a famous couple.

The paper is focused on the theatre and makes an original contribution to the current discussion of the power wielded by celebrities. It is the first empirical research on this aspect of the theatre business. Its contribution lies in understanding audience members’ interpretation and understanding of celebrity to ascertain the extent to which they perceive celebrities as credible to perform theatre. This is based on a differentiation between their mediated fame and expertise. It is helpful and useful information for producers when deciding whether or not to cast a celebrity and to which audiences that the celebrity might appeal.

When Eugene O'Neill died, theatre critic Brooks Atkinson said of him, “A giant writer has dropped off the earth….He shook up the drama as well as audiences and helped to transform the theatre into an art seriously related to life.” (New York Times, 30 December 1953).

This study focuses on how the creation of a new market identity, defined here by the social categories that specify what to expect of products and organizations, helps legitimize normatively illegitimate products and thereby facilitate the formation of markets for these products. A product is given a legitimate market identity by recombining existing product and status categories in a way that is both isomorphic with and differentiated from these preexisting categories. I argue that the creation of a new market identity helped create a market for feature films that combined legitimate comedy and illegitimate pornography following the legalization of pornography in Denmark in 1969. Topological analyses of the cultural content of all the film posters used to promote Danish films between 1970 and 1978, and regression analyses of the status of the actors appearing in these films document the importance of market identity in legitimizing illegitimacy.