Prologue: I read a great article in the Star Tribune's A&E section yesterday (Sunday). Unfortunately, the article is not online so I can’t direct you to it and I’ll need to be vague about the details, as I didn’t bring a physical copy home with me. I can only assume the Star Trib has neglected to put the article online because those Minnesota jerks just wanna piss me off. Seems logical.

Anyway! The Star Tribune had a great article in their A&E section yesterday (Sunday) about expensive suburban arts center/theaters, as there appears to be somewhat of a glut of them built within the past 10 years over there. Like, really nice ones. In particular, they focus on the arts centers of Bloomington, MN; Burnsville, MN (above); and Hudson, WI – all of whom include multiple theaters, the main stages seating over 350 people and up, with Burnsville’s Main Stage venue seating over 1,000.

The article talks about the frustrations of theatre directors and theatre goers – and performers! – over seating capacity. Many of these 1,000 seat arts centers are too large for most community shows, yet too small for national acts like they get at the competing Mystic Lake Casino. This is the issue we talked about last week with the opening of ECCT’s new 275-seat performance space (which actually might fill a seating-size niche in the local community of venues). So it’s a problem shared by many – especially since a combination of local and national acts appears to be what's need to help keep struggling art centers afloat.

BUT! What’s most interesting to me is Bloomington, MN. The Bloomington Theatre and Art Center complex also hosts the local city council chambers. How cool is that? What’s more, the Star Trib article quotes the mayor of Bloomington as basically saying the arts center is considered as part of the city’s parks and recreation department. I’m no city official, but that sounds like a pretty sweet line of thinking.

Photo credit: Slowtypist (Flickr)