So, apparently Shanghai is going to be the next big theater center in the world. New York has Broadway, London has the West End, and now Dreamworks is piling $2.4 billion into the Chinese city to make it a third entertainment destination to rival those two great theater capitals.
I don't quite buy it. Well, I can't afford to, I haven't got a couple of billion to spare (I need my billions, thank you). Weak jokes aside, can one really in one grand sweep of a checkbook create the new West End, China-style?
Well, one might argue that Manchester City Football Club's rich new owner has spent and been rewarded with success. But building the world's most expensive football team is one thing. Players aren't bricks and mortar, and theater-making is about tradition, about heritage, about art and craft and style passed down from generation to generation. You need great schools alongside great buildings. You need great audiences, and you need to educate them to be great audiences that great actors can play off and to.
Wander around Broadway, or Theaterland. They are pretty big areas. And they exist in the context of their cities. Those theaters sprung up organically, and they sprung from indigenous art forms like vaudeville in many cases.
Other cities have tried and failed to supplant the two biggies. And some, like Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Amsterdam and Chicago, have in various ways succeeded. But it has never quite been enough. Something has always been missing.
To build something big and flashy and exciting, that's always possible with money and flair--it's called Las Vegas--but to create a real theater hub like the West End and Broadway? Well, the DreamCenter, as Dreamworks are calling it, will doubtless be fun and impressive. And maybe one day it will get to where its creators say they want it to be. But it won't be today. And it won't be tomorrow. But I wish them luck.
