JEOPARDY! Champ Ken Jennings Tweets American Theatre Soon Will Be Dead

On Saturday night, while much of America was either engulfed by college football or preparing themselves for the circus of Donald Trump hosting SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, record-setting JEOPARDY! champion Ken Jennings released a series of tweets that appeared to be extremely dismissive of both the present and future prospects of the American theatre. While some followers defended Jennings saying that he was joking or that it was satire, the insulting tone drew the ire of a number of theatre fans, myself included.

Jennings' tweets were in response to another from BuzzFeed's Senior Editor Louis Peitzman, an avid theatre fan. Peitzman tweeted his displeasure with inconsiderate and disruptive theatre audiences, a sentiment that has unfortunately become all too common recently.

While comments like Peitzman's are quite familiar to theatre fans, Jennings' reply took the conversation on a surprising tangent.

Jennings tweeted, "@LouisPeitzman silver lining: soon they will all be dead and American theater with them."

The quiz-show champion was assumedly taking a jab at theatre audiences that are often believed to be elderly, not to mention rich and white. As noted above, followers know Jennings to, at times, be playful and to stir the pot on social media, but the tweet didn't sit well with Howard Sherman, director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School College of Performing Arts School of Drama and Senior Strategy Consultant with the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

Sherman responded to Jennings by tweeting, ". @KenJennings @LouisPeitzman So let me get this straight, Mr. Jennings, the death of the American theatre is a 'silver lining'? Really?"

After Jennings asked Peitzman if all of his "followers are like this?," Sherman replied, "Don't ask him, Mr. Jennings. Answer someone who loves theatre."

Up to this point, Jennings' tweets could easily have been explained as a joke that didn't translate well online, but in his next message, his final one on the subject, Jennings' doubled down on his animosity towards the theatre and its audience.

He wrote, "@HESherman @LouisPeitzman ok but they'll have to turn up their hearing aids."

Since Jennings did not appear to wish to engage in a substantive discussion, Sherman made his point clear:

He then followed up by saying, ".@KenJennings @LouisPeitzman The death of theatre will only come from snobs and elitists who reinforce stereotypes about audiences."

While theatre professionals across the country work tirelessly to attract new generations of theatre audiences, especially in relation to the assumption that theatre is reserved for an aging population, according to the Broadway League, the recently wrapped 2014-2015 Broadway season not only saw the highest grosses in Broadway history ($1,365,232,182, undoubtedly aided by ever-increasing ticket prices), but also the highest attendance in history as well with 13,104,078 million audience members. Even though Broadway is just a portion of America's vast theatrical community, these are not exactly statistics of a dying industry.

Furthermore, according to the League's 2013-2014 Demographics Report (the most recent available via their website), the average age of a Broadway theatre-goer was 44-years-old, just three years older than Jennings. That number has fluctuated between 42.2 and 45 years of age since 1998. According to those same League numbers, the percentage of Broadway theatregoers 50-years-of-age and older is 43.6%. While not the highest on record (2009-2010 came in at 47.4%) that is certainly a concern for theatres fans, and more so to producers. That is why family shows like MATILDA and THE LION KING are so important in introducing theatre to children, and why the Broadway League annually runs youth outreach programs like Kids Night on Broadway, and recently introduced BwayZone.com to make Broadway stars and information accessible to fans of all ages.

Similarly, it is impossible to over-estimate the impact of inventive, boundary-breaking works, like HAMILTON and Deaf West's SPRING AWAKENING, which appear to be especially engaging to fans in Generations X and Y and Millennials. While Sherman would know far better than I, I imagine that the crowds of young fans attending each #Ham4Ham show are far more optimistic about the theatre's future than Jennings is.

However, should the rise in the average age of theatregoers really come as a surprise now that the country's 74.9 million Baby Boomers are ranging in age from 51-69? According to the United States Census Bureau, the median age of the country has risen 7.2 years to 37.2 since 1980, the first year in the League's data. While I admit that unless it is a batting average or completion percentage, statistical analysis is not my area of expertise, these numbers do not appear to be that far off from of what would be expected, and, in some cases, actually look quite promising. Not to mention, as Twitter user @NicholasYenson pointed out, the average age of a JEOPARDY! viewer is 65 years old according to grandparents.com, and, as far as I know, no one has yet begun the death march for the beloved quiz show.

To digress back to Peitzman's original point, Broadway has been hit with a rash of high-profile incidents of disorderly behavior in recent months. First, in July an intoxicated audience member attempted to charge his phone in an on-stage outlet during HAND TO GOD's intermission. Then a few days later, Patti LuPone was forced to snatch a phone from a disruptive audience member during a performance of SHOWS FOR DAYS. And, last month, the first preview of Roundabout's THERESE RAQUIN was halted when an audience member threw a bouquet of flowers onto the stage and shouted a marriage proposal to star Keira Knightly.

Whether it is rude audience behavior or an aging ticket-buying clientele, there are certainly things for theatre fans and administrators to worry about, but I am not sure that the situation is as dire as Jennings' believes it to be, in fact, I'd be willing to make that assumption a true Daily Double.

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Do you think that Sherman was right to call-out Jennings' comments, or were us theatre fans just being overly sensitive? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or on Twitter @BWWMatt. If you want to follow along with my "366 in 366" articles, you can check out #BWW366in366 on Twitter.

Banner Image Photo Credit: Ken-Jennings.com

Correction: A previous version of this article failed to include Sherman's position with the New School.