Supervisor: dots Anneli Saro
Opponents:
dr Hans van Maanen, Groningeni Ülikooli emeriitprofessor
dr Katri Aaslav-Tepandi, vabakutseline lavastaja ja teatriloolane, EMTA Lavakoolis mittekoosseisuline õppejõud
Summary:
In making their artistic choices, theatres always have to take into account both the tastes of the audiences and the stateˈs expectation. Former is evident through the statistics of attendances, the latter through legislation and subsidy system. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has introduced the notion of the Fields of Cultural Production, where the agents, such as theatres, always fight for both the acclaim of other agents on that field and the outer-field success. Acclaim gives a theatre its reputation, success its economic profit. Bourdieu claims that on the Fields of Cultural Production the economic profit often influences the reputation in a negative way. Therefore with each new production theatres have to ask themselves: how much economic profit can they earn without loosing too much of their reputation. Productions that at the same time get the reputation and economic profit are then Full Games. Since in Estonia culture policy, the main indicator of theatresˈ efficiency is the number of spectators, all the theatres have to strive for Full Games. In Rakvere Theatre there have been 201 new productions between 1985 to 2009, of which only five correspond to the criteria of the Full Game. So the theatre has reached its goal, the Full Game with every 40th production and the Full Games make only 2,5% of all productions. All the Full Games are reviewed more than in average but the reception is always polemic, stating that although there were some questionable artistic choices made for these productions, the former is overshadowed by the eventness of these productions. For repertory theatres that have big venues to administrate and are indirectly subsidized by their number of spectators, the Full Games are crucial for surviving.