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Daniel Urrutiaguer
Daniel Urrutiaguer (2002) approaches the assessment
of an arts creative capacity from the
Daniel Urrutiaguer, 2002, ‘Quality Judgments
and Demand for French Public Theatre’, in
consumer perspective. In his study of consumer
Journal of Cultural Economics 22, 185-202.
demand for publicly subsidised theatres in France,
he argues that ‘the image of each theatre influences
perceptions of quality’ and that ‘the theatre is a
much more appropriate level than the different shows to explain the variance in
demand’ (187). Noting that previous studies have found that quality assessments
of professional reviewers have low statistical significance in predicting demand
for theatre, Urrutiaguer hypothesises that this stems from differences between
the theatre-goers’ subjective perceptions of quality (189, 194). As a result, some
audience members trust the assessments of theatre critics, while others base their
expectations on alternative indicators of quality.
Urrutiaguer proposes two alternative measures that might signal quality to ticket
buyers:
1. Since ‘theatrical institutions’ subsidies are … distributed according to a
political assessment of their artistic interest and the civic role they play in
the city’s life’ Urrutiaguer examines whether the growth rate of the theatres’
subsidies over the previous year affects audience demand (193). While he
finds that large increases in subsidies are correlated with audience demand,
his conclusion that this ‘indicates similar quality judgements by local authorities
and audiences’ reflects that the direction of the causalities is not clear
(199).
2. Based on the assumption that the directors who are appointed to run
publicly funded theatres are the ones who are mostly highly regarded (195),
Urrutiaguer argues that the proportion of a theatre’s productions staged by
directors who head up other public theatres may be interpreted as a sign of
quality by audiences (193). Whereas Boerner focuses on the repertoire in her
examination of opera companies, Urrutiaguer thus considers the reputation
of the directors who appear in a theatre’s season programme to be the primary
indicator of organisational quality for public theatres in France. While this is
no doubt a rather crude measure of the quality of an organisation’s programming,
the number of directors who are recruited from other theatres may also
be interpreted as an indication of how well each theatre is connected to other
theatre companies, which might in itself be a sign of creative capacity. Indeed,
Urrutiaguer draws on methods derived from network analysis to calculate
the proportion of productions that were staged by directors who head other
theatres within the network of public theatres.
CREATIVE CAPACITY OF AN ORGANISATION 109
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences