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The Pause To Refresh Employment Models

April 20, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

Earlier this month, the Albany Times-Union reported that there won’t be much theatre occurring at the storied Willamstown Theatre Festival. The reason is based on the staff walkouts and subsequent investigative reporting by the LA Times I wrote about back in 2021.

Recognizing there are many issues to address in addition to the complaints of exploitative overworking of staff and interns and unsafe working conditions, the Festival is planning on presenting different performing artists, staging readings and cabaret performances and partnering with neighbors this summer.

The reason for the absence of theater at the Williamstown Theatre Festival amounts to what is essentially a public atonement for how the festival treated interns, apprentices and other staff for decades and a commitment to finding a new model for producing a season of world-class summer theater, the company’s artistic leader said.

[…]

In Williamstown, the theater festival launches in mid-July with four performances over three days by the stand-up comic Hasan Minhaj, followed by weeks of cabarets, staged readings and workshops by artists-in-residence. Williamstown alum and Tony Award winner Laura Benanti will perform a concert, well-regarded stage and screen actors will participate in readings by known and upcoming playwrights, and the festival will contribute financial and artistic resources to assisting its neighbors at Barrington Stage on a revival in Pittsfield of “A New Brain,” a 1998 musical by BSC’s longtime associate artist William Finn (“Falsettos,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”).

Near the end of the article, writer Steve Barnes wonders if the festival can continue in the same vein as they have historically operated if they have to pay a large swath of previously unpaid interns given waning philanthropy and diminishing audiences. The festival for their part says they will be working to create a stronger relationship with audiences:

In another symbolic choice, most audiences this summer will join performers on the stage. Minhaj and Benanti will do their shows for crowds in regular theater seats, but for staged readings there will be rows of seating on three sides of the stage, and tables, chairs and drink service will accommodate onstage cabaret patrons.

Gersten said she hopes the new perspective for audiences will make an impact on them. “It was important this summer for me that people share our point of view, that they’re on the same level with the artists as we work toward these changes,” she said.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Working In The Arts

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Does Your Real Estate Serve Your Current Strategy?

April 18, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

Bloomberg recently had a piece about how the Girls Scouts of Colorado recently opened a space in Denver known as DreamLab, envisioned to be a third space for girls.

As spaces for young people to hang out grow scarcer, and the mental health of young women, especially, reaches unprecedented lows, the Girl Scouts is investing in properties girls can make their own.

“We really want the Girl Scout DreamLab to be their third place,” after home and school, said Anne Smith, senior vice president of property strategy for Girl Scouts of the USA

Two other DreamLab spaces are under construction in NJ and LA and more may be on the way based on how Covid has apparently impacted Girl Scout operations and use of physical spaces.

“Troops found that the traditional public spaces they’d relied on to host meetings, like church basements and libraries, were getting harder to access. Girl Scout staff were embracing remote work like the rest of the workforce, leaving offices empty. Some Girl Scout councils started selling properties, as membership dues dropped.

[…]

Data showed that the best-utilized spaces were those within a 20 to 30 minute drive from the majority of their membership, for example. “There were a lot of different data points that show that our current model wasn’t meeting the needs of our girls,” said Smith.

The Denver DreamLab occupies about 4,000 square feet of leased space in a new property chosen for its prime location: It’s within 15 miles of nearly 30% of Girl Scouts of Colorado members as of 2020, and by 2026 it’s projected to be within 15 miles of more than 150,000 girls between the ages of 5 and 17.

I wondered if this might serve as an example or inspiration for arts organizations in some way. I don’t know exactly how at this point. Back in January 2022, the Long Wharf Theater announced that after nearly 60 years operating in permanent spaces around New Haven, CT they were going to pursue being an itinerant company so that they could provide services closer to the communities they hoped to serve. So there is something of a precedent for arts organizations disinvesting themselves of their spaces.

While there are performance, rehearsal and offices spaces that have been offered to arts organizations similar to how it seems DreamLab is being offered to Girl Scout groups, I don’t know that many arts organizations who have utilized these resources have done so with the intentional goal of being itinerant so much as adapting to the opportunities being made available.

It may not seem like a big distinction on paper, but you could say the same about Vine, Instagram, and Tiktok. While Vine seemed to be everywhere for awhile, it fell out of favor relatively quickly while other similar apps thrived.

Arts Facilities, Business Models, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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When To Belt Out In Song And Not Belt The Person Sitting Behind You

April 17, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

By now most people have probably heard about the brawl between audience members at a Manchester, England performance of The Bodyguard because people were singing along to “I Will Always Love You.” The more I read, the more I wonder if maybe opening the bars at the theater 1.5 hours before curtain might be as big a contributor as people having poor etiquette.

Assuming many have read their fill about the incident, I wanted to point to a different article in the Toronto Star which interviewed ushers at performances in that city about audience behavior. While they say they have also seen their share of rude behavior and vain attempts to keep people from singing along with shows, the ushers point to examples of productions leaning into the trend:

One way some producers have been able to satisfy audience’s cravings to turn the theatre into an enormous karaoke bar is to end the shows with a big medley — a so-called Megamix. The recent “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” tour in Toronto used that, and wannabe Broadway singers got to belt out the songs with the cast and record themselves doing it on their phones.

Aislinn Rose [artistic director of Toronto’s not-for-profit Theatre Centre] believes theatres could go even further and designate certain performances as sing-along shows
[…]

“I’m not advocating for every performance to look like that, but there’s an opportunity to build an incredibly loyal, live following of people who want to engage with live performance. I think we should find a way to support that.”

Apparently there was a time when some Toronto based productions were trying to get audiences to sing-a-long, and couldn’t so maybe there is an element of be careful what you wish for here.

Ironically, Mirvish Productions programmed sing-along performances for their production of the Queen jukebox musical “We Will Rock You” way back in 2008-2009. It didn’t catch on.

“We printed out lyric sheets and everything,” said Karastamatis. “But very few people sang along.”

But as the article suggests at the end, you generally don’t plan to spend a lot of money on a ticket to listen to the people next to you sing off-key. So unless you are doing a show like Rocky Horror which has a long tradition of audience participation, having designated times or performances where people can sing along is probably going to be the best approach in the short term.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

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A Link Between Awe And Generosity

April 13, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

Thanks to Barry Hessenius for providing my post topic today. He sent a link to an Inc magazine piece titled “Want to Raise Kind, Generous Kids? Take Them to an Art Museum.” Readers will know that I am not really big on discussion of art as a prescriptive solution based on inchoate theories and research. So I was interested to see they connected the sense of awe art generates to an increased generous impulse.

Certainly, museums make children more worldly and cultured, but how do they make them kinder? The link, according to the new study, recently published in Psychological Science, is awe. A whole line of research, and a much talked about new book, shows that experiencing awe can help adults. Feeling a sense of smallness in front of sites greater and grander than you–be that the Mona Lisa or the Milky Way–tends to tamp down runaway egos and make adults humbler, kinder, and more relaxed. This latest research looked to see if awe would have the same effect on children.

The research was conducted with 159 kids aged 8 to 13 so I am a little cautious about any definitive statements based on such a small sample size, but the results pointed to exposure creating a tendency to be more generous.

Of course, art isn’t the only source of awe in our lives. The article says ” simply looking for the awe-inspiring in the everyday can increase our perception of awe and its associated benefits” even if you don’t have ready access to museums. Some people experience awe from the natural beauty present in their every day activities, for example.

The bottom line is that nudging your kids to notice and appreciate the greatness and grandeur of the world around them won’t just make them more observant and aesthetically appreciative. The latest science shows it will also nudge them to be humble, kind, and caring.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

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