Theatres will do anything to get audiences through the doors. But, as the New York Times has reported recently, the NYC-based Playwrights Horizons has decided to go one step further than most and is now offering a babysitting service for selected performances. According to Leslie Marcus, the venue's managing director: "The combined cost of theatre tickets and childcare is the factor most often cited by people with young children as the reason they rarely attend the theatre." So the creation of this affordable service means that, while the usually overstretched mums and dads "are watching the show, their children ([ages] 4 to 12) will be upstairs in a rehearsal space ... watched by Sitters Studio, a babysitting company made up of working artists".

A simple but rather brilliant idea, which not only helps out audience but also provides employment for the artists who look after the kids. As Isaac Butler says, it's a fine example of a theatre working in concert with its community: "[T]heatre is inconvenient and can be a pain in the ass to see. Playwrights Horizons went and polled their community, found something they could do to make it easier and are now doing it." As our financial climate grows ever colder, perhaps theatres in the UK could consider similar schemes to ensure their audiences keep the box-office phone ringing.

In other news, the playwright and academic Dan Rebellato has recently penned this moving tribute to his late mentor, the academic David Bradby. Too often it seems as if there is an invisible but immovable barrier that exists between the professors and the professional theatre world. What was refreshing about Bradby's approach is that he had little time for these unnecessary and unhelpful divisions. As Reballato points out: "As a public advocate for our discipline, as a giver of papers and chairer of panels, he had a commitment to clarity, lucidity, of inviting everyone to join the broadest possible conversation about the theatre and its relation to the world." If, like me, you had never met Bradby, Rebellato's piece is particularly worth reading because it gives a fine sense of the value and importance of the man himself, as well as his work.

Tassos Stevens is currently considering a different kind of theatrical memorial on his blog, All Play. Stevens was recently walking along the South Bank – in an area where, almost five years ago, he helped create a theatrical Valentine's event he describes as "a night of almost alchemical serendipity: nobody died; they made the boat in the nick of time; it was a mild, clear and moonlit February night; three pairs of people met and fell in (some kind of) love; although not made for any reason but the love of it, it catalysed pretty much everything that I find myself doing now." While on his walk he noticed, attached to a jetty, a tiny memento – "a small and well-weathered loop of string that five years ago (almost) had something tied to it, itself now long gone. Spotting that trace, doing a double-take, felt like some kind of magic." Theatre is defined by its transience, of course, but there is something quite beautiful about the idea of it leaving these small archaeological traces which, while appearing banal for most people, are loaded with significance for a few. I will certainly be keeping any eye out for this weather-beaten scrap of string next time I am by the river.

Finally, it's becoming apparent that the best source of cutting-edge theatrical news is The Onion. For proof, look no further than this fascinating and important report demonstrating how a history of alcoholism in the family can put you in serious danger of creating a one-man show about it. If ever there was an argument for being teetotal, then this, surely, is it.