Time to Pick Shows

So I haven’t even had the first performance of this season occur and I have already started on the process of picking performers for the next. The Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii (of which I am now a board member!) had a meeting on Monday to discuss what we saw when we were in Spokane, WA at the Western Arts Alliance conference. I was expecting it would take 12 hours from the way people spoke, but it really ended up taking about 6. (Which I think was actually due to the president limiting presentations and moving things along.)

About 10 of us sat in a theatre watching DVDs and tapes projected on a screen and listening to CDs. We went through the list of potential artists people were considering by category (and there was strangely a bit of debate about grouping Latin and Jazz into the same category–mainly because many of the artists up for consideration seemed to be Latin influenced Jazz or vice versa. After listening and watching said offerings, there was considerable discussion about artists mislabeling their genre in an attempt to repackage themselves.)

In any case, people in the consortium were only interested in about 20% of the artists I suggested alone (as opposed to ones I was asked to pick up information for prior to the meeting and thus knew there was interest in). I would have felt a little slighted that they weren’t taking the suggestions of the new guy seriously if it weren’t for the fact that about an equal number of proposals by one of the more senior members also met with a lack of interest.

In the end though it might be a good thing since I will only have to take the lead on two or three artists if a number of members of the consortium are ultimately interested in presenting them next season. I will probably approach many of the performers I alone was interested in because I chose them in part for for their small company size and lower fees and so can likely afford them on my own.

Those that many people are interested in I will have to take the lead and negotiate on behalf of the others, collect feedback and information, plan the routing from one island to another on a series of dates (and since the dates for at least one theatre will inevitably fall on a week night rather than a weekend, see how things can be shifted beneficially.) It is probably better for me being new to the scene to avoid too many instances where I have to be answerable to people outside of my own organization and patron base.

One last observation, I don’t know if it was coincidental timing or a shift in the Force, but the day after I returned from this meeting, I suddenly had 4 calls from agents asking me if I had considered their material. I hadn’t told any of them about the meeting, yet something inspired them to call.

And of course, as luck would have it, none of them represented people we wanted to present so I ended up talking to people I really had no interest in speaking with.