BROWNING THE AUDIENCE

posted by James Reel

    Over the weekend I attended two cultural events that drew disproportionate numbers of Hispanics. One was the Borderlands Theater production of the bilingual play El Deseo/Desire; the other was a performance by Mariachi Cobre with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Wouldn’t it be grand if that sort of turnout could be sustained through the season?
    Anglos have outnumbered Hispanics in Tucson since the middle 1890s; the local Latino population stood at only about 36 percent in the 2000 census. But even given that ethnic balance, there’s no way that Latinos constitute one-third of Tucson’s performing-arts audience.
    I’m not sure that anyone has ever conducted a thorough study to determine why the local Hispanic arts audience is so small and what might be done to build it. There’s a danger in generalizing about the group, of course—we’re talking about people of different ages, incomes and cultural backgrounds; some belong to families who’ve lived here for generations, and others crossed the border last week. Even so, they have one big thing in common: their absence from the theater and concert hall.
    Borderlands Theater does the best job of attracting a Hispanic audience; indeed, it’s the only company in town with much Latino pull. Part of the reason is that it presents plays revolving around issues of immigration and cultural difference, hires a fair number of Latino actors, and employs Spanish in its shows, ranging from a smattering of Spanglish to the true bilingualism of El Deseo/Desire. Even so, the big Hispanic turnout for opening night last Friday seemed unusual even for Borderlands. Perhaps Borderlands and a new, competing troupe doing more plays predominantly in Spanish would cultivate a steady Hispanic audience, although such fare would lose the monolingual Anglo members of the core theater audience.
    It seems patronizing, though, to belive that only Hispanic subjects will draw a Hispanic audience. I enjoy plays about people and subjects that have nothing at all to do with me, and I must say that I rarely recognize myself in the characters on any local stage. So why would Hispanic-friendly theater have to be some sort of cultural mirror? Well, perhaps that’s what it takes to draw people who have little local tradition of arts attendance, whether the reasons are economic or cultural. Maybe only when they get into the theater habit will they start taking a chance on the Neil Simon and Noel Coward frippery draped across too local theater schedules.
    Attendance at this past weekend’s concerts involving the Tucson Symphony was quite a differerent phenomenon. Nobody in the hall was there to hear the TSO. It was a special concert revolving around Mariachi Cobre, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of Monsignor Arsenio Carillo, and raising money to renovate some facilities at St. Augustine Cathedral. So the audience consisted of fans of mariachi music in general and Mariachi Cobre in particular (the group originated in Tucson before becoming the “house band” at Walt Disney World’s Mexican pavilion), members of the Hispanic Catholic community turning out to support the honoree, and families of the kids in the school mariachi and ballet folklorico groups that participated in the performance. The Tucson Symphony had little impact as a backup band for the mariachis, and its couple of solo numbers—Chabrier’s España and Moncayo’s Huapango—didn’t represent its normal Beethoven-centered programming. There’s no way a special event like this will recruit a new Hispanic audience for the TSO’s regular fare.
    Next season, the Catalina Chamber Orchestra is engaging guest conductor Enrique Bátiz in an effort to draw a Hispanic audience. Even if Bátiz does lure some curious Latinos, I’m not sure that this one-shot deal will have any lasting audience-building effect. After all, from its inception the Catalina Chamber Orchestra has been led by a Latin-American conductor, Enrique Lasansky, so putting a Hispanic role model on the podium doesn’t seem to be what it takes to get Latinos into the audience.