Theater vs. sports: Stat just didn’t add up

Did you know that more people attend the theater in Los Angeles County than attend all professional sports events combined?

I know this is true because I read it in the newspaper -- this newspaper. This statistic appeared in an Oct. 6 Calendar article, attributed to Lee Wochner, president of Theatre LA, a nonprofit organization that presents the annual Ovation Awards for theater.

Wochner offered the statistic to disprove the suggestion that people may be staying away from the theater because ticket prices are too high. To put it another way: If the Pantages is going to charge $127 for a special Saturday night VIP ticket, the show’s lead character better not be just the “Lion King” but ruler of the whole galaxy. In Wochner’s view, people are attending plays and musicals despite the hefty price tag.

And he is not the only local arts administrator who has quoted this statistic, or something like it. It is one of those floating factoids that everyone seems to have heard from somebody else.

But four out of five doctors agree: A statistic on the loose is a dangerous thing, particularly in the cash-strapped performing arts world, where proving the popularity of one’s art form can help in the never-ending scramble for funding. So this reporter was sent into the murky underworld of arts attendance data to investigate from whence this information came.

First a bit of history to explain the need for this dangerous mission: In 1993, researchers at UC Irvine reported that listening to Mozart improves IQ test scores. The brain boost only lasted about 15 minutes -- but that did not stop a generation of anxious soon-to-be parents from blasting Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major at the expectant mother’s womb. In the ensuing decade, other scientists disputed the “This is your brain; this is your brain on Mozart” distinction. But the obsession with trying to link the arts with some other social or educational benefit remains. Theater attendance boosts the local economy because theater-goers go out to dinner, pay to park their cars, gather afterward at local bars to buy as many drinks as it takes to get one’s companion to confess that he/she didn’t understand the third act, either. All this means jobs, jobs, jobs -- perhaps a future bartending position for that poor little fetus who prefers Eminem to Wolfgang Amadeus.

But you can’t help but question the numbers. There are 56,000 seats at Dodger Stadium, 20,744 at Staples Center. There are 76 seats at North Hollywood’s Interact Theatre. Other theaters are larger -- 2,700 seats at the Pantages, 2,100 at the Ahmanson. But with all the mega-sports events at all the mega-stadiums, more people attend the theater? Maybe in WochnerWorld, but not likely in Southern California.

The first call was to Wochner, who was most obliging. He said he thought the statistic might have come from a study commissioned by the Los Angeles mayor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Theatre, 1992. He immediately faxed over a page of statistics from that study.

On the list: “Theatre in Southern California is a half-billion-dollar industry ... over 4 million theater tickets are sold in L.A. every year.... There are 269 producing companies in greater Los Angeles .... There are an average of 120 shows running in any given week.” And encouraging news about the Southland’s theater-going public: “60% attend more than five shows per year ... 47% earn over $50,000 per year ... 88% have attended college ... 30% attend sports events.” The last one’s close -- but not the Holy Grail.

Well, city government always involves a lot of paper; maybe the sports/theater statistic could be found in some other document. But Deputy Mayor Julie Wong was unaware of any study that might contain it and suggested calling the Visitors and Convention Bureau. I also put in a call to the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, which operates under the aegis of the mayor’s office, hoping the document had ended up in its files.

The Visitors and Convention Bureau had zip. Neither did Cultural Affairs. But Sandra Rivkin, of the Cultural Affairs public relations department, referred me to Lars Hansen, executive director of cultural relations at USC and past president of Theatre LA. Hansen also has served as executive director of Pasadena Playhouse.

Hansen had heard the sports/theater statistic but had never seen any documentation to prove it. He vaguely recalled another statistic from his tenure at Theatre LA from 1999 to 2001 that noted that the number of plays produced in L.A. in 2000 was 1,100, compared to 600 in New York. But, he added, New York shows play in larger venues, whereas in Los Angeles “you can open a theater by opening a closet door.”

Hansen recommended putting in a call to Laura Zucker, executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. As a longtime arts leader, Zucker had a hazy memory of being peripherally involved in a cultural impact study commissioned by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce in the mid-1980s, when she was running a small theater.

Zucker said she thought Jack Kyser, now chief economist with L.A. County Economic Development Corp., had headed up the effort.

“It was a long time ago,” Kyser mused. He remembered the study but didn’t know where to find it. But he knew someone who might: Kathleen Shilkret, assistant curator at the Wells Fargo History Museum. Shilkret, who was publications manager for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce during those years, said she had a copy of the study at home.

Shilkret called -- to say she couldn’t find it. She’d moved; boxes had gotten scrambled. But maybe Chamber of Commerce communications manager Lisa Fitch could locate the document.

Eureka -- Fitch did. She wasn’t able to pin down whether the economic impact study with surveys directed and written by Kyser was completed in 1985 or 1986, but the study, commissioned just after the successful 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, fit the rough time frame and Shilkret’s description: about 100 pages, blue cover, gold lettering, a cutout on the cover shaped like the chamber’s then-logo.

An excerpt from the report: “In the LAACC Arts Survey, the attendance for local arts organizations during 1984 was tallied. This head count totaled 22.9 million and included people attending performances, visiting museums, touring exhibits, etc. These were both local residents and tourists enjoying all aspects of the local arts.

“This audience of 22.9 million people can be compared with the 14.6 million people who attended professional sporting events in the Los Angeles area in 1984. This Los Angeles area is big in sports, but it is even bigger in the arts. So much for the cultural wasteland sobriquet.”

So there you have it -- the story of how one hopeful local arts statistic can become distorted after 18 years of playing telephone. It was never true that theater attendance alone rivaled that of attendance at professional sporting events.

But even though it was his original quote that launched this investigation, Wochner is quick to defend theater based on other qualities than mass appeal.

“Anyplace in the country, only 1% to 3% of the population is interested in the theater, and in the sticks, it’s only 1%,” he admits (if you want to know the source of this statistic, find it yourself). “Like it or not, theater is not a populist art form. But this is a vibrant theater town; I don’t think the media recognizes we’re a theater town.”

It’s not that we don’t care; we’ve just moved on. In October, Associated Press reported that a new study by the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts concludes that more than 9 million people attended museums, theaters and concerts in the Denver area in 2001, more than double the number attending professional sports events. United Press International says that, nationwide, museum attendance topped 1 billion for the first time last year, “more than double admissions to professional sports events.”

It’s true -- I read it in the newspaper.