Corporate sponsorship. In-theatre advertising. Naming rights. How far would you go to get funding for your next show? And how much of your artistic direction would you yield to the corporate dictators in exchange for that production budget you’ve always dreamed of?
Have advertisers finally gone too far and sunk their yellowing fangs into theatre’s pristine underbelly?
Brian Logan, of the Guardian UK’s Theatre & Performing Arts Blog, thinks so:
“Is it theatre? Is it an advert? Or are we all too media-savvy to acknowledge the distinction? My will to live came under renewed assault yesterday with the official announcement of Pot Noodle: the Musical on the Edinburgh Fringe. The show isn’t, as its title might suggest, just another wacky Fringe wheeze devised by attention-seeking theatre-makers. It’s orchestrated by Pot Noodle themselves, in cahoots with the ad agency Mother – who together have decided that putting on a show in Edinburgh is the next step in selling dehydrated snacks to the masses.”
Check out the full rant here: Advertising in theatre: the slag of all snacks.