Culture: live performance returns to its pre-pandemic level

With 257.5 million euros in rights collection in 2022, the results “exceptional” carried out by the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD), which has more than 50,000 members, prove particularly “a very strong revival of live performance”, indicated Tuesday, February 7 its general manager Pascal Rogard. This sector is, with 64.9 million euros collected in 2022, almost back to its pre-Covid low water level (–0.2% compared to the 2017-2019 average).

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This return to grace of the performing arts comes from “with a very strong dynamic outside Paris”, specifies Mr. Rogard, even if in January, the improvement was finally observed in the capital. Oddly, the health of the sector is verified by the royalties collected by the SACD (according to the number of performances, the price of the ticket and the filling of the rooms). And not by statistics from professionals in theatre, dance, music…

In the cinema, the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC) publishes the number of spectators each month, to the nearest chair. The National Music Center’s mission is to manage an observatory of the economy and data from the sector, but live performance as a whole remains a blind spot in public policy. The creation of a live performance observatory has been promised for ages, but the file is progressing at a snail’s pace.

solo chords

So that “the Minister of Culture is unable to give an attendance figure even in public theaters and subsidized stages”deplores Pascal Rogard. “Even if the recovery is much better than that of the cinema (–24.9% between the end of February 2022/January 2023 and the average for the same period in 2017-2019)she can’t announce it”, he observes.

This does not prevent the director general of the SACD from hoping for an amplification of the public support for writing given to authors during the pandemic. A help “necessary for the theater to offer works in tune with the times”.

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SACD’s other collections come mostly from audiovisual, cinema and the Internet, amounting to 192.2 million euros. There again a sharp increase (16.6% compared to 2021). Agreements signed solo with the platforms promote the SACD repertoire. And the fears related to the fact that they risked imposing American law and copyright in France are no longer appropriate.

Contracts approved by the CNC and the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) must comply with French law and moral rights, failing which the signatory producer is deprived of financial support from the CNC, and the platform cannot count the work in question in respect of its obligations.

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