Theatre, Booze and Blatant Blagging

Every now and then I tear myself away from the moreish bite size chunks of reading matter on crack site Jezebel and force myself do some more academic reading about proper cultural stuff. However, my intensely gossip driven core drew me straight in to a piece about theatre and alcohol.
I love both, no problem there then. I don’t love it so much when they charge me an hours cleaning wage for a handful of Merlot but free alcohol, that’s a no brainer right?

However recent academic research into the ethics of Stella’s sponsorship of Hipster Interactive Lovefest Punchdrunk’s latest performance explored possible drawbacks of a alcohol mixed with theatre.  This New Year I completed one of those incredibly accurate tests which randomly selects resolutions for you which told me to give up alcohol at the same time as reading an article telling me to give up alcohol whilst running through my status updates in which friends told me to give up alcohol on the new ‘Movember’ – Dryathalon. Now I know Punchdrunk is all about the elating effects of alcohol but is it prudent, ethical or even, dare I say, a little bit uncool for a company to be associating itself with a drink affectionately known as 'Wifebeater'?  If , in order to survive, companies and artists look toward sponsorship, surely we need to choose sponsors with a similar moral stance. Now with Punchdrunk, an alcoholic sponsor makes sense, and I can’t blame them for wanting to extend the metaphor especially when it makes such a useful prop, but surely a room full of audience members toting pint glasses covered in advertising is a far cry from the allure of those ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ esque black masks.