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Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice. I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/) My most recent role is as Theater Manager at the Rialto in Loveland, CO Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

Carl Sagan Sings About The Universe

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Hat tip to Artsjournal.com which had the video below as the video of the day last week. I normally don’t watch the videos there but something inspired me to and I am glad it did.

The video is a remix of Carl Sagan from the Cosmos television series with a little Stephen Hawking from the series Stephen Hawking’s Universe. The remix is an effort by Symphony of Science which creator John Boswell says “is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the masses, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Science and music are two passions of mine that I aim to combine in a way that is intended to bring a meaningful message to listeners, while simultaneously providing an enjoyable musical experience.”

Right now there are four videos on the site. As is the case with so many musical groups, my favorite so far is their “early work;” their first video seen above. Symphony of Science remixes the footage from Cosmos and other science shows using auto-tune to make the speakers “sing.”

Given my recent post about interdisciplinary use of arts in education, I was pleased to see an example of someone doing just that. While the videos weren’t designed for classroom use, they could easily be used as part of instruction. The videos also reminded me of the TED video featuring Mallika Sarabhai I wrote about last month. Specifically about the quote so many people seemed to love – “You have treated the arts as the cherry on the cake. It needs to be the yeast.” I seemed to me that video editing and music helped an thirty year old science series bloom a little.

I had other concerns on my mind than watching a science show back in 1980. I never realized just how beautiful the imagery was that Sagan conjured during the series both visually and descriptively in the narration. It belies the common notion of science being dry and sterile and Symphony of Science gives it another interesting twist. I see that all 13 episodes are available on Hulu. I may have to take a look at them.

Info You Can Use: Cell Phone Donations

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If you have been excited by the prospect of using cell phones as a mode of donation after hearing of the success in raising funds for Haiti, you may want to do some research and calculations. The cell phone and credit card companies have gone out of their way to make it easy to donate for Haiti relief and waived most of the ancillary costs.

You on the other hand, probably won’t be so lucky.

Hawaii Public Radio had a short piece covering a meeting sponsored by a local foundation on the subject of cell phone donations this week. (link downloads mp3 file. This link if first doesn’t work. Look for raising funds..social media) A representative from a cell phone company talked about the costs to set something like this up- $500 set up fee, $400 monthly fee and a a .35 per transaction fee.

With costs like that, it would likely only be worth your while if you had a large group of people already giving that you wanted to provide an alternative mode for donating.

Now that said, I can easily see the costs coming down as those for whom it makes sense use the service. Once all those involved with the transactions create more efficient processes, the service may become more affordable. Someone is likely to invent an app for the iPhone or Facebook which will facilitate the whole exchange and two years from now it will be a $2 billion business in $25 average increments.

Another observation that is made in the story related to social media was in regard to who one puts in charge of coordinating it. One speaker cautioned against putting the youngest person in the office in charge of social media just because they understand the software the best of anyone. “They know the tools, but they don’t understand the sophistication of your message and they don’t always understand the intangible qualities…of how you actually communicate with people out there.”

I have a suspicion this is something a lot of people have already thought to themselves but were afraid to say it for fear of showing just how out of touch with social media and its great power they are. It just takes a visit to sites like Failbooking.com to see some pretty poor choices when using Facebook. Though to be fair, I sort of question the wisdom of this water safety ad by Royal Life Saving Society Australia.

Edmonton Symphony Orchestra To Audition Jug Players

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According to his letter to NPR’s All Things Considered in response to a recent story, Bill Eddins, the musical director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, said he wanted his orchestra sound like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a string band out of North Carolina. Well, actually he said “this is what I want my orchestra to do” (his comment is read at 1:30).

I can only assume there will be some auditions for jug and banjo players opening up soon so I thought I would get a jump on it.

Even though Bill and I both write for Inside the Arts, I have never met or spoken to him. But when I hear him say things like this, talk about his experience touring with Renee Fleming in South Africa with such verve and get in trouble for wiggling his butt while conducting, I get excited.

I have never been a big attendee of orchestra or even chamber music concerts but I really am convinced that if anyone can help me come to enjoy the music and the experience by sheer force of personality and enthusiasm it is Bill. (His co-writer Ron Spigelman’s efforts at outreach and lowering the intimidation factor would probably convince me to attend in the first place.) Of course, the fact that Bill’s family is from Buffalo, NY just like mine is already gave him points with me. I hope the folks in Edmonton realize what an asset they have.

BoardChemistry.com

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Boards seem to be a real hot topic recently. Thanks to a massive blogroll listing on the Clyde Fitch Report, I became aware of a ArtPride NJ blog post pondering why Gen X/Y is not well represented on non-profit boards. Leonard Jacobs of the Clyde Fitch report also weighed in on the subject of boards yesterday. (Busy day over at CFR, one hopes they didn’t spend all their time with the blog on Valentine’s Day.)

Hat Tip to Nonprofit Law Blog for pointing out a tweet to a Fast Company article about how for profit companies looking to provide their employees with a positive experience serving on non-profit boards can start a coaching/match making service.

I like the idea of taking the time to perform a diligent examination of your options, expectations of membership, mission and other details to assure your interest in the cause. I don’t see too many companies investing the resources to create such an office, especially in these economic times. I am wondering if this might be a task better suited to chambers of commerce or local chapters of the United Way. A centralized resource like this would be a benefit to a wider range of people and organizations than one limited to a few companies who are able to support the activities. And perhaps the central office could make an effort in concert with its members to encourage the Gen X/Y set to explore joining boards.

And if that works, maybe someone will work up a questionnaire and algorithm and make it an online service. Maybe I should go off and register BoardChemistry.com right now!

Bonus Link- Hat Tip again to Non-Profit Law blog who linked to the document the IRS uses to evaluate your non-profit during an audit.

Headbanging With Saruman

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I had heard something about Christopher Lee creating a heavy metal album about Charlemagne a little while back so I went searching for more information. Sure enough, I found an article about a project the actor has undertaken to create an album of symphonic metal about the Holy Roman Emperor from which he is a direct descendant.

There is more information on the project at Charlemagne: By The Sword and the Cross. The album isn’t released until March 15, but you can listen to some samples here.

It isn’t screaming 80s Heavy Metal. That would be a little too much to hope from an 87 old. The Charlemagne snippets sound more like Broadway than heavy metal. One of the samples is actually labeled as a rehearsal for the stage musical. Though Lee apparently has collaborated with the metal group Manowar. You gotta give it up for a guy who will make a foray into metal at that age.

Much as I am a Lord of the Rings fan and liked his role in the Star Wars saga, I hate to admit the songs didn’t really excite me. I didn’t think it was very good Broadway type material much less metal. But if his star power leads to some people learning and perhaps remembering some history along the way, I can’t complain too much.

Guest Poster: Kim Witman

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Kim Witman of the Wolf Trap Opera Company is celebrating today’s announcement of the WTOC 2010 season by doing guest blog posts and interviews in a few places across the blogosphere. I was intrigued by the idea of a virtual season announcement across the blogosphere so I agreed to host one of her articles.

Each participating blog will have a piece on a different subject so you will have to “collect them all” to get the full picture of the Wolftrap Opera Company season.  Check  Kim’s blog at www.wolftrapopera.blogspot.com for a complete list – all of the links should be active by midday on Tuesday, February 9.

You Decide How it Ends

We’re always looking for hooks, aren’t we?  Flashy, attention-grabbing ways to get folks’ attention.  So I know you won’t believe me when I say that the original motivation for this summer’s Zaide production was not marketing-based.

You see, Mozart didn’t finish Zaide.  He wasn’t writing it on commission, and he started it on his own when he was in between jobs.  A real commission with a paycheck was offered (for Idomeneo), and he had to go where the money was.  So Zaide was put aside, and he never got back to it.  To complicate matters, the point at which he broke off writing it gives no clear indication of what the ending might be.

The setup is pretty simple.  The hero (Gomatz) and heroine (Zaide) are prisoners who fall in love.  The other characters are the Sultan who’s holding them captive (and who has his sights on the beautiful Zaide), and two guards (Osmin, who is essentially evil; and Allazim, who takes pity on the young couple).   Gomatz and Zaide escape, with the help of the sympathetic guard.  They are recaptured by the other guard, and the Sultan condemns them to death.  And that’s where Mozart stopped.

The source material for the story is from an older libretto titled Das Serail, itself probably derived from Voltaire’s play Zaïre.  And here’s how Das Serail ends:  The Sultan discovers that 1) the kindly guard once saved his life, and that 2) Allazim is the father of… you guessed it… Gomatz and Zaide, who are brother and sister.

Well, this is a century before the opera world took on Siegmund and Sieglinde.  And although there’s plenty of precedent in mythology and literature for addressing incest, the fact that Mozart quit at this point is a bit of a conundrum.  Probably coincidental, possibly not.

Zaide is a Singspiel, an informal entertainment which doesn’t aspire to be “high opera.”  It isn’t a comedy, but there’s every reason to believe that it would have aspired to a happy ending.  (Witness what happened to Don Giovanni a few years later, where a happy ending was essentially grafted on.)  Would Mozart have gone on to make his dictator benevolent?  Would the Sultan’s actions be a prototype for Tito’s clemency?  And if so, would the impetus for his forgiveness have included a discovery that encompassed the specter of incest?

We’ve talked about doing this opera literally for decades.  Director James Marvel feels that the best way to present it would be to allow uncertainty to take a place at the table.  We will prepare at least two endings (maybe three), and during the intermission of each performance, the audience will vote on how they would like the opera to end.

When we came to that solution, I didn’t hesitate to embrace it on other levels.  As a producer, I am eager for our audience to have an investment in the performance, to interact with the opera in a different way.  The choose-your-own-ending aspect of our production will make its way into our web and printed materials, and if it engages some folks who might otherwise not be interested, I shall not complain.  But what I’m happiest about is that the device first emerged from our approach to the challenges of this beautiful yet problematic opera.

(Zaide will be performed on June 11, 13, 15 & 19, 2010)

Honolulu Symphony No Longer Stands Apart

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There is an oft expressed sentiment in Hawaii that the state is about 10 years behind the current trends. The Honolulu Symphony administration, however, seems to be right in step with the current approach symphony management nationwide takes while in negotiations with their musicians.

In an interview that aired last Friday on Hawaii Public Radio, Honolulu Symphony Executive Director Majken Mechling echos the usual arguments about musicians only working part time, being overpaid for their services and being obstructionist. My heart sunk when I heard this during my morning drive to work last Friday. These arguments sound so similar to those espoused by other symphony organizations across the nation, I wondered if Mechling, who was recently executive director at the local chapter American Diabetes Association, had researched those symphony negotiations in preparation for the symphony job. Intentional or just coincidence, I believe it was a mistake to follow this approach in terms of public and musicians relations.

The symphony administration has gone from the exemplar of civil relations with musicians I cited about a year and a half ago and Ron Spigelman praised about a year ago, to just like most every other symphony.

The Honolulu Symphony musicians’ pay was about 12 weeks behind by the time a large donation late last year caught them up. They had been continuing to play for about a year even though the gap in how far behind their pay was continually increased.

Last April I had observed that the moral victory the musicians achieved by their dedication to their organization in spite of not having been paid didn’t put food on their table or pay their mortgages. I will likewise acknowledge that dedication, commendable as it might be, doesn’t pay off the symphony’s debts today.

But I can’t imagine that the decision to donate $2.13 million to the symphony last September wasn’t in part influenced by the dogged loyalty the musicians showed to the organization. I am sure the musicians’ gesture impressed a number of people enough to make less publicly recognized donations.

Now about three months after the symphony filed for bankruptcy protection, to hear the musicians disparaged as if they hadn’t provided such a significant sign of their investment disturbs me. Frankly, even if they are being obstructionist, it is hard to blame them after enduring such a long period of uncertainty and making concessions only to have things fall apart on them anyway. Even if the musicians aren’t as cordial in private as they were before, where is the benefit in employing antagonistic language?

I certainly don’t condone any threats Mechling may have received from musicians or their supporters. But after a long period where the relations between the administration and the orchestra were at least publicly polite, there doesn’t seem to be anything to gain by being critical of the musicians. The organization still retains a halo of goodwill. What is the cost of being complimentary of the musicians or saying nothing? The situation may unavoidably end with the number of musicians being severely cut. It would be better that the narrative continually be that the orchestra has always valued its musicians, always honored their loyalty and is heartsick to have reduced their numbers. That would be the sort of thing that convinces donors the orchestra is still worth supporting, even in it’s diminishes capacity.

The thing I disliked the most was Mechling’s comparison of the dealings with the musicians union to that of the state and its union employees. I believe she was trying to tap into the popular sentiment expressed on online comment forums that was recently running against the state employees while they were making obligatory noises resisting pay cuts and furloughs. (Disclosure: I am represented by one of the union bargaining units which did settle and take pay cuts and furloughs.) I believe her attempts were misplaced and unnecessary. For one thing, the state employees would have been striking and making all sorts of noise if their pay was just a couple weeks in arrears. The musicians barely made the slightest critical statement publicly against the symphony. Even now Steven Dinion’s comments in the interview that they have been frustrated by the process and don’t understand the administration’s agenda are about the strongest public statements that have been made by the musicians on the situation.

I understand and empathize with the frustration Mechling may be feeling having taken the helm of an organization that seemed to have cause for hope only to have bankruptcy declared a short time later. The time she was provided to feel any sort of elation was quickly curtailed and now she is faced with overseeing the (hopefully) partial dismantling of a long storied institution. This includes being faced with making decisions about the futures of 80 some individuals. That can’t be easy. Artists, administrators and technicians grousing about each other in turn is a national past time in the performing arts. Limiting the timing and the forum in which these are done, however, is critical.

Engaging Production Blog

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Over the last few months, I have been following Don Hall’s An Angry White Guy In Chicago blog as he discusses the process behind the show he is directing, The (edward) Hopper Project..

Hall directed a play based on Edward Hopper‘s iconic Nighthawks painting. He was inspired by a retrospective of the artist at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper via Wikipedia.org

What has kept me coming back on a consistent basis is the fact that he does such a great job talking about his process and holding my interest when so many production blogs fail to do so.

So I thought I would direct a little attention his way (though he certainly doesn’t need my help) and point out some of the entries that caught my attention most:

-His discussion of how to make a play written by a group work. He acknowledges writing by committee generally isn’t going to yield anything of quality and talks about working through the conflicts he had with people who didn’t agree with his cuts. (And here is a reposting of Time Out Chicago preview piece he inserts into his blog later in which his process is described less charitably. To his glee, it seems.)

-Post about the start of rehearsal

One of the interesting things he does is reposts all the reviews of the work, starting on January 19 (if you followed the link to all the Hopper entries, just scroll up and start reading upward from the review by Joe Stead.) He then reflects, pretty fair and honestly for the guy who directed it, about the review, further discussing what his aims had been.

He acknowledges why some people may find the show difficult or dislike the style in which the show was presented. He says as much in response to one of the first reviews

“I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a sigh of relief that someone appreciated the fractured narrative structure and found it “consistent with the mystique evoked by Hopper.”

His review of reviews illuminates in one place the truth that you shouldn’t attempt to gear your show toward pleasing critics. What each seemed to think he lacked contradicted at least one other reviewer.

-One of the entries I loved the most since I have never heard of anyone else even trying to experience their show in this manner is the entry where he listens to his show being described for the blind. He laughs so hard that he approaches the point of sabotaging his own show.

However, Don does suffer some repercussions for his practice of reprinting reviews whole cloth and receives a cease and desist letter in response. The Chicago Tribune Theatre Editor pre-emptively reminds him of the limits of fair use when he provides Don with the link to the review which appeared in that paper. (I assume he does that with all the blogs and not in reaction to the desist letter.)

While I don’t wish legal action on anyone, I appreciate the reminder about the intellectual property issues and concerns one must be cognizant of when creating art. From what I understand, the cease letter was sent in reaction to reprinting a review from a web only publication. Since he fully credits and links to the original review, the only motivation I can think of for hiring a lawyer is that the advertising revenue lost by not having people visit the site. I am not sure Don was even asked to take the post down prior to receiving the letter. As more newspapers move to web only presences, I wonder if this sort of thing will become more prevalent.

Making Spitballs In Art Class

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Last week, over at Dewey21C blog, Richard Kessler linked to the Arts cover story in American Teacher magazine (starts on page 10). The magazine is published by The American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country so this is going out to a lot of people.

I know we have heard it before, but it really got my hackles up to read about the arts being viewed as a fun subject or a “frill designed to provide students with a break from their regular classroom routine.” So learning isn’t supposed to be fun, eh? Well I am glad educators finally came out and admitted what I suspected in elementary and high school. I hadn’t realized enjoyment was such an impediment to one’s ability to learn.

The thing is, an arts teacher has to great crowd control skills. Because students view it as a relaxed, enjoyable experience, arts classes engender the energy of gym class without the opportunity to expend it with physical activity. Teachers need to be adept at channeling that energy into creative outlets rather than goofing around. Classes can often require the materials supervision of a science lab so teachers need to make sure students don’t leave the room with substances embedded in their clothes that weren’t there when they arrived.

Besides, anyone who says learning about the arts is fun clearly hasn’t had a conductor lecture about a piece ad infinitum prior to a concert.

I am only half kidding about when I make that comment. There is plenty of serious scholarly work that has been done on the arts that can be taught. The fact arts can be fun and be the subject of significant study should be to its credit. I will admit that the arts haven’t done a good job showing its connection to other disciplines.

We talk about the arts’ inherent power to raise test scores but art is not created in a vacuum entirely independent of any other discipline. Maybe that fact needs to be explored and exploited more often. An artist often needs to be a historian and researcher. They need to know about the properties of materials and how they interact. (The number of times I have heard about ceramics being ruined when a person uses low fire clay in a high fire kiln is proof enough of this.) The artist needs to know about physics and mathematics. (Fibonacci progression in music, anyone?)

Paper making alone can be used in conjunction with history (Silk Road, preservation of knowledge, expansion of literacy) and science (what is the volume of water that different types of pulp can absorb).

This was what I had in mind when I talked about arts teachers needing to be good classroom managers. I was once involved with an outreach project where we went into schools with paper making. We didn’t do anything in connection with science and history and maybe we should have. But as far as I am concerned, any teacher who can keep kids engaged and on task when they have the ingredients for a massive spitball on the table in front of them is truly a master teacher.

Funny Thing Happened While Revising Bylaws

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I was really surprised at some recent developments in my block booking consortium today. For about a year we have been scrutinizing our bylaws because people began to realize that practice was deviating from the specifics of the document. I had contributed some information on bylaws to the conversation based on material I wrote about in an earlier entry.

Since the last meeting a committee had met to discuss the bylaws. I wasn’t surprised to learn that people were leaning toward merging with the organization that “birthed” us. Most of the membership overlapped so we generally ended up having meetings together. The only defining difference between us were the genres of entertainment we booked. The discussion of merger brought up many technical questions that will require consulting a lawyer.

One of the interesting questions that arose was if we dissolved one organization and consolidated everyone into the other, could the funds of the dissolved organization be absorbed by the remaining organization. While non-profits’ assets are usually only transferable to other non-profits, an organization’s charter may specify where the assets should go if it ceases operation. Someone mentioned a group to which he belonged had stipulated the funds be split among some local music programs.

What surprised me was the amount of introspection that was occurring about the organizations. It turns out my experience as a member, that of a partnership to leverage our buying power and to collaborate on grants, is not the ideal upon which the groups were founded. There is a lot of history of which I am unaware. At one time there was a much greater focus on community education projects. And the membership was much larger. As coordinating tours started monopolizing greater amounts of time at meetings, the organizations became less relevant for many members and they started drifting away.

By the time the meeting ended, we decided to have a retreat prior to our annual meeting in May to examine the identity and purpose of the groups in addition to discussing whether they would merge or not. This was the last of my associations I expected to be organizing a retreat to contemplate its ideals. Everything has been very practical. Discussions have revolved around times, dates, hotel rooms needed, artistic fees and whether a group offered ed services.

Now people are questioning whether we can be a force for arts advocacy in our community.

I am starting to get a little excited about this planned retreat in May and what might develop.

Theater That Revolves (Among Other Things) Around You

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It has been a busy week for me. All the entries this week were started on the day prior to the time stamp and finished after midnight. In the interests of getting to bed a little quicker, I want to offer you a short entry with this very cool video from TED.

Joshua Prince-Ramus, an architect on the Wyly Theatre of the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas speaks on the process they went through to create a space that is able to recreate itself. In this building, the seating and the stage actually fly in and out providing as few as two people the ability to shift the space into multiple configurations. In addition, an audience can either enter through the lobby or directly through one of the pivoting exterior walls.

Though he admits it would take a little too long to do in a 15 minute intermission, he suggests a show could start in a thrust configuration exit to an intermission and have the audience return to a second act in arena configuration–with the audience entering and exiting through different modes of egress.

All of this designed with the aim of the building serving the needs of the artist rather than the artist fitting the work to the building.

All very cool. And *sigh* very expensive, I am sure.

Chatting In The Gauntlet

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For the discomforting performance I referenced in yesterday’s entry, we had set up a seating area on stage so that audience members could sit there and watch the performance looking out at the audience in the permanent seats. The cast referred to it as a gauntlet arrangement and from the tension it evoked, it was probably an apt description.

Can’t Talk Now, I Am Acting
Part of the performance involved the participation of “volunteers” from the audience. These people were chosen from those seated on stage and at one point, they help secure a performer in a bungee rig. An interesting thing happened. One of the volunteers started chatting with the artistic director while the bungees were being flown in about how much he had wanted to take her master class and maybe even take a dance class at the college. Striking up a conversation during the performance was a pretty strange thing to do, but the show was a little strange itself. After the show he spoke with all the cast members and even emailed the group complimenting the performance.

Those that spoke to him didn’t get the sense that he normally had problems acknowledging social boundaries. He was just really excited by his experience and wanted to talk about it.

Encourage People To Text During Your Monologue?
I started to wonder if this might be a sign of things to come as people begin to expect that the ease and immediacy of social media conversations be translated into their face to face encounters. We have already seen the negative side of this with people talking on cell phones and texting during performances. But this incident Saturday night gave me some insight into the constructive possibilities if a performance was well-designed to take advantage of these impulses.

There seems to be a growing practice at conferences that people Twitter about the speaker/panels, often with the hope that someone is monitoring the tweets and will adjust the content accordingly to either address areas of interest/questions or move past the boring parts. This sort of interactivity could be harnessed for a performance to change its direction every night.

But I wonder if there is a way to create an entirely new dynamic between performers and audiences in which a more extensive interaction than the way having people call out suggestions at improv shows transpires. I don’t know exactly how it would manifest, but I can imagine the performers would act to guide things in a general direction and integrate audience members either individually or as a collective resource.

How Sharper Than A Serpents Tooth Is A Marginalized Audience
What I am fairly certain of is that it won’t be a matter of trying to adapt what is already done to include patrons. People may find some successes, but shoehorning your audience into King Lear isn’t going to cut it in the long run. The format may evolve from current practice in stages, but I think it will depart from it eventually.

The success of this idea hinges on the guy from this weekend being a sign of things to come where people are less self-conscious about stepping forward to become involved in social interactions in general rather than an outlier. Given that those who watch YouTube videos far outstrip those who contribute, I don’t expect self-consciousness to ever erode so far that everyone will want to be up on stage.

Fits With Other Trends
It occurs to me that a situation where those with training/greater experience in the arts act to guide those with less dovetails well with other trends we have been hearing about. It would allow Pro-Ams to become more involved and pursue their interests if greater opportunities existed. If arts people became more adept at directing people without arts training in various activities, then perhaps they will gain the requisite skills to drive the creative economy we are told is emerging.

Getting What I Wanted…And Then Some

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From the “watch what you wish for” file. Last Friday I was driving home pondering the fact that far fewer people purchased tickets over the phone or in person than they did even five years ago. As a result we have lost an opportunity to speak with people and gain clues about what their impetus was for coming to the show and what sort of experience they expect. Certainly, we can speak with people in the lobby before the show and at intermission, but both our ability and time frame in which to act on things we learn is impaired. We also aren’t getting information like “my wife asked me to call for tickets for our friends and ourselves…” to learn who it is that initiates the attendance process.

Technology allows us to provide information and an opportunity to purchase 24 hours a day. However, I being to feel that the communication stream between our patron base and ourselves is increasingly one way. We provide the information telling them about the show on our websites, emails and stories but we get relatively little back from our community. If they didn’t buy tickets, we might not get any sign of response at all. Lack of purchase may not necessarily indicate lack of interest, just use of the wrong communication channel to reach people.

So as I was driving home Friday, I started pondering making today’s entry an open letter to our communities telling them they needed to be partners in the communication process to let us know if we were meeting their expectations.

Then came our show on Saturday.

We had advertised the performance everywhere noting that it was for mature audiences only. You couldn’t buy tickets online without seeing an image of the brash performance group making crude gestures (crotch grabbing, etc). We didn’t hide that the show might offend people. We warned people we suspected might be upset by it, including mentioning that it might not be suitable for their kids. We made a similar announcement before we opened the door that night.

Within 10 minutes people walked out and asked for a refund. I gave it without question because there was worse than that to come and I didn’t want to be accused of manipulating them into sticking around. More people walked out at a particularly intense scene. One woman threw her program book down in the row in front of me and criticized the choice of the performance while the show was continuing on stage before storming away from me. (This was the person who had come in to buy tickets and we cautioned against bringing her kids.)

Let me just say at this juncture that the show, while quite unsettling, wasn’t providing an extreme experience. There is far more coarse language concentrated in the first 10 minutes of David Mamet’s American Buffalo. The subjects being covered frankly and with some profanity, were not pleasant ones as you might imagine. I started to realize that people may be confusing being made very uncomfortable with actual obscene acts. Far more violence and sexual situations can be seen on television and in film but there is nothing to mediate the experience when it is live.

I admit that the show made me uncomfortable as I knew it would and I approached the lobby at intermission and the end of the show with some trepidation. But I guess everyone who hated the show had already left because no one approached me with complaints.

-One woman praised me for being brave enough to present the piece. She said of the four people in her group, she liked the show the best. She also said we gave her group something to talk about on the ride home. They were one of the last people to quit the lobby that night.

-Another woman told us that she was amazed at how far the performers went with the subjects. She noted that most of the time, groups were afraid to really commit themselves to fully exploring tough subjects so she was amazed when she realized they had reached the point people usually retreated from were going to just continue on. She said something to the effect of “I have had these conversations in private before and was flabbergasted that someone was saying them aloud for all the world to hear.” She said she was going to blog on the experience. We told her we hoped she would and asked her to send us the link.

-One of our students said his perspectives had changed.

-This weekend the performers forwarded comments attendees had left on their website. The commenters repeated the sentiment about the show giving them a lot to talk about.

I was surprised that we didn’t receive any negative emails or calls about the show over the weekend. The woman who complained to me in the theatre during the performance did call today to continue her criticism. I mostly just listened and let her talk. She told me how the show was inappropriate for the type of organization she perceived we were. Even though I didn’t agree with her about the type of places these shows should be performed; the responses of other audience members clearly showed there was some value in broaching the subject, I didn’t mention any of that.

This was the conversation I was yearning to have with my audiences on Friday. I didn’t necessarily want to have a criticism infused discussion, but I was getting what I had wanted–an audience member telling me how she perceived our organization and what she valued about it.

I really don’t have any desire or ambition to upset my audiences to elicit these sort of conversations from them. I would love for them to say these things to me all the time. But even if I was having rich, meaningful conversations with my audiences all the time, I would still present challenging work that made sense for us when I had the opportunity. Conversations on those subjects are desirable as well.

If I Were David Byrne…

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I just couldn’t help it.

When I started reading the reactions (Theatre Ideas has a good discussion in comments section) to David Byrne’s blog post about how spending on the arts is prioritized (including what sort of arts were getting priority), the first thing that came to mind was a line from Crash Test Dummies 1993 song, “When I Go Out With Artists.”

The song starts out with the singer feeling overwhelmed and somewhat alienated by all the specialized language surrounding art and feeling a little anxious about being asked what he thought of the art. He imagines David Byrne wouldn’t have that problem.

If I were David Byrne
I’d go to galleries and not be too concerned
Well I would have a cup of coffee
And I’d find my surroundings quite amusing and
People would ask me which were my favorite paintings

All I could think upon reading Byrne’s entry was that he actually is concerned about the measure of art, acknowledging that he doesn’t really get Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, though he doesn’t feel he is any less accomplished as a musician for it. I very much get the sense that if Byrne was in the Crash Test Dummies’ hypothetical gallery, he wouldn’t find his surroundings very amusing if one was required to subscribe to tightly defined standards of evaluating art.

Of course, not everything is negative in Crash Test Dummies’ universe. While everyone is pretty snooty, single malt whiskeys get their proper due and greater exposure.

Only 15 Minutes Of Fame For Tragedies?

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Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 makes some fascinating reflections on the impact of technology on giving vis a vis the Haitian earthquake relief efforts.

I confess a huge amount of skepticism when I had first heard that one could donate to the relief effort via text messaging on your cell phones. I wondered how much the phone companies were profiting off this and how big a cut the donation processors would be taking. Apparently I wasn’t the only one because according to Bernholz, the phone companies have waived the fees under pressure of public opinion.

She also talks about the possibility that those who received funds may be under greater scrutiny. I remember after Hurricane Katrina, many people were horrified to learn how great a percentage of their donations were going to administrative overhead at the Red Cross and similar organizations. The Red Cross has shown some transparency by tweeting near real time updates of the climbing donation totals. Bernholz suggests that Twitter may become the platform where this is not only reported–but where people also question what has been done with the money.

The suggestion that really grabbed my attention was her idea that technology might cause/allow people to acquire “Donor Attention Deficit Disorder”

That people all over the world can be so instantly engaged and moved to donate is certainly a good thing. But does it come with costs?

On Wednesday, January 13, #Haiti was a trending topic on Twitter all day (a measure of what the millions of tweets are discussing). By Thursday, January 14, it was gone. Does the ability to give instantly and painlessly (mobile donors won’t even see a charge for the gift until they get their next phone bill) make it extra easy to give and move on? Will “donor fatigue” be replaced by “donor A.D.D.?”

The concept that even tragedies have only 15 minutes of fame before people move on is pretty chilling. If the best tactic for successful fund raising is providing people with an opportunity to give at the point where the emotional appeal is greatest, it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain any sort of long term support. And how long will it be before people become inured to solicitations of calculated to concentrate a great deal of emotional response in a short span. Such an approach might stunt efforts to gather support for true tragedies.

It probably doesn’t help that we are told to just give money. Granted, in this case, it just isn’t practical to become physically involved. Much less so that after Hurricane Katrina. There is also something of an underlying message that once you have given, you no longer need to be engaged with the problem. All you are being asked to do is just give money and you can accomplish that by doing something you enjoy doing everyday–text a number.

First Creative Campus Class Reports In

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As I have been reading blog entries about the recent Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conference, (APAP) I have seen mentions of Creative Campus project presentations. Since this information isn’t widely disseminated, I thought I would give the projects and the participating organizations some publicity to share the news of their success.

First a little history, APAP administers the grants program but the original idea emerged back in 2004 at the 104th American Assembly. (The paper they produced on the concept may be found here.) The first group of projects is drawing to a close (though some were only one year projects and have been completed) and the granting for the next group is in process.

Many of the organizations in the first group created dedicated webpages to archive their efforts which you may be interested in visiting.

Dartmouth College dedicated themselves to exploring the class divide in the surrounding community as well as within the college community.

The University of Nebraska Lied Center worked with multimedia performance group Troika Ranch to create a new performance piece, bring the disparate departments of the university together in creative experiences, and most interesting to me, adapt motion performance software for modern dance for use with rehabilitation patients.

This is not to be confused with the efforts of the University of Kansas Lied Center’s project, Tree of Life Creativity – Origins and Evolution which involved a intra-campus collaboration as well as partnerships with other campuses.

The University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium, still displaced by the damage caused by the flooding of summer 2007, commissioned the development of a world premiere, Eye Piece, in cooperation with various departments. The work explores the process of gradually losing eye sight. The topic may seem a strange one until you learn that the university’s Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration was a project participant.

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s current theme is Diasporas. I say current, because it the description implies there is a different theme each year. Indeed, the APAP website information about the project lead me to believe it was about the death penalty. The university’s some times controversial summer reading program is a partner in this project along with the departments of communications, dramatic arts and resident LORT company, Playmakers Rep.

I wasn’t able to find information about their respective projects on the Hostos Community College or Stanford University sites, so the final project is Wesleyan University’s Feet to the Fire on global warming. This project involved interdisciplinary learning that appears to have permeated every corner of campus activities and moved out into the surrounding community. From the video summary of the project, it sounds like people who attended their events felt the power of the arts was essential to getting the message across, as was suggested in recent posting.

Even though the project officially ended last June, the university has continued to provide the experiences they initiated. Like most grant programs, I am pretty sure this was the goal–that the funded initiative will be perpetuated. If you are inspired by what you see, it is unfortunately too late to get into the current grant cycle. But it is the perfect time to start conversations about what you might like to do–including prodding a local university member of APAP to get involved.

Art. IT CAN INFECT YOUR BRAIN!!!!!

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Before the Christmas holidays I was watching a TED video of Golan Levin using interactive technology to manifest visual art in response to human action. The video is pretty cool itself, but there is a section starting around 6:30 (video embeded below) with Jaap Blonk performing Kurt Schwitters’ tone poem The Ursonate. (There is a longer YouTube video segment of Blonk’s performance here.)

Much to my surprise, the cadence of Blonk’s recitation ran around in my head for a few days after. I don’t know if it qualifies as an ear worm since I couldn’t tell you a single word. Though I could spout nonsense syllables in an approximation of Blonk’s performance. Maybe that is the point. The experience sent me to a website containing recordings of the work, including two by Blonk whose delivery varies in the two decades between the recordings.

I am sure if I started pondering the intent beyond the composition, I would be told I was over thinking it. But I am also certain that like the works of e.e. cummings, there was a great deal more energy invested in its creation than is initially apparent.

I immediately thought of my undergrad acting classes where we were supposed to carry on a conversation using numbers rather than words communicating our intent employing various vocal qualities. We generally limited ourselves to a pretty narrow range of expression.

I probably wouldn’t have appreciated the performances back then. Listening to Blonk’s and some of Schwitters’ recitations today, I recognize just how fun language can be. (I haven’t listened to all the different recordings.) Blonk especially seems like he enjoys playing with the sounds, luxuriating in the pleasure of pronunciation and takes joy in the enthusiastic exclamations. (I didn’t watch the YouTube video above until after I listened to the audio so my impression of his joy is almost entirely aural.)

By listening to vocalizations that are bereft of meaning, I also feel like I gained slightly more insight about how music acquires intellectual significance for people.

This is what is so great about the arts to me. I watched the TED video because I have an interest in technology and the arts. I thought the inclusion of Blonk’s recitation was fun, but it didn’t especially excite me. I wasn’t about to seek out performances of Dada tone poems at the end of the video. But something about it penetrated into my brain where it was identified as interesting compelling me to return for further investigation.

 

Outsourcing Creativity To The Rich?

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Newsweek recently had a short piece on the increase of Pro-Ams, though that isn’t what they called it. I don’t know that there has been a precipitous increase in the rate at which people are engaging in these activities since I wrote about it two years ago, though I would grant that it probably has since I first wrote about it four years back. I felt like they were just playing catch up on how things were developing. And not very well, either.

One of the reasons I didn’t post yesterday was because I was doing a lot of reading of other blog posts. Among them was an excellent series of posts by Ian David Moss on the Pro Am subject (h/t to Adam at The Mission Paradox). The post itself make a good argument, but his “Further Reading” links at the bottom really expound upon his point.

That point, summarized too simply in the face of many well-constructed discussions of the subject, is that as people acquire competence and are willing to perform a task for less money, or have the resources where they don’t care about their losses, starving artists ended up starving more.

It seems the age old narrative of the threat to employment coming from poor immigrants or residents of foreign countries who are willing to work more cheaply than Americans is being rewritten a little to include people who are wealthy enough or have enough leisure time. Moss mentions amateur wine makers who essentially knocked the profitability out of high end wines by accepting lower margins. But the same factors are at work when families support students through their low/no paying internships allowing them to gain valuable experience and often cachet of working for prestigious companies.

Though they didn’t refer to these things directly, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) piece I referenced four years ago, Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper did suggest that money and opportunity were going to divide those who had a variety of cultural choices from those whose choices were tightly limited.

One of the reasons economic forecasters say that the next phase of the economy will emphasize creativity is that creativity can’t be outsourced. That may be true, but as I read these blog posts, it didn’t take long to realize that it can be underbid and even crowdsourced. If you are going to be competitive in the coming economy, your are apparently going to have to get creative about being creative.

Just as today, those who can make a living in the arts are going to have to possess skills and vision beyond that of the average person. The bar is getting raised.

While I won’t deny the reality of this situation and am concerned, I guess I have a more optimistic view over the long term. I imagine it is because my facility does a pretty active business renting out to community groups. I am using some of the proceeds from rentals to support the presenting side of things so I see a lot of it as beneficial.

I will freely admit but for the support of family and friends, the quality of the work produced often wouldn’t garner much attention. Those I interact with are not necessarily moving us toward some Pro-Am utopia. There are a lot of erroneous beliefs about how simple things are to accomplish because they benefit from the efforts of professionals with Master’s degrees, additional training, long professional experience and hearts of gold.

While I agree that an increase in Pro-Ams will glut the marketplace, over the long term my hope is that amateur participation will increase appreciation for the arts and the effort that goes into them. Some will keep at it, but eventually many people are going to realize they can’t make a living doing the art for nothing and scale back. Even if they are replaced by younger folks, they will hopefully retain an interest in the areas they had invested themselves.

The complicating factor is that these Pro-Ams are likely to contribute to changing the whole game. They may not be content to do things as they have always been done and will create new standards for what live performances look like. So we may all still be in danger of losing our present jobs even as a resurgence of interest in dance, music and theatre emerges 15-20 years down the road when younger folks today approach their 40s. Which at least these days is an age where people start to re-engage with the arts.

Ah, Proscenium!

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I am beginning to understand why performance spaces were constructed in the first place. I have done some talking in the past about how performances may need to be uncoupled from the traditional performance spaces to have significance to audiences whose entertainment experiences continue to evolve. But now that I am actually trying to do that…. Well, I begin to see the wisdom of having a controllable environment.

I think the problem is that we are trying to offer people a traditional experience in a non-traditional space. I have moved performance operations to remote locations and run outdoor music festivals so I am familiar with the logistics of having performances in places that were not designed to accommodate them. Some of that will help me make arrangements for our site specific production, the Celebrity Project. In the long run though I think committing to taking art out of the traditional spaces is going to require a concomitant effort to change expectations about where and how arts can be experienced. (And yes, it certainly can be argued we are trailing so far behind in that respect, we may not be in the position to shape and define these expectations.)

But in some ways, I think we are hobbling ourselves by cleaving to old practices. Our concerns revolve around getting enough lighting equipment to different outdoor locations. People will move between different locations, but will stay there for a long enough time that they may want to sit so we will have chairs set up. But the chairs need to be set up in a way that has good sight lines but doesn’t congest the movement of people between different areas.

I am starting to think that next time maybe the site specific show needs to make more use of the site specific features like natural light. The Greeks might have been big on outdoor theatre, but they knew the natural features were of great importance. But with a show dealing with celebrity, moments in the limelight certainly can’t be neglected. Modern technology helps us cheat a little and put shows where we want them rather than needing to places with natural sound reinforcement.

Part of this is because are somewhat slaves to audience expectations. If we have a show as an event rather than just a happening on the street, people have a certain expectation of length to motivate them to make the drive. Comfort and accessibility for aging audiences during that time period need to be addressed. They will also want to see and hear everything that is going on from whatever vantage point they are at. All these considerations shape the staging and seating arrangements for our performance.

Most nights we only need to direct audiences to locations that meet these expectations once a night (we assume they can find their way back pretty well after intermission.) For this project, we will need a good plan for doing it multiple times over the course of an evening. So even as rehearsals start today, we are starting to plan. Though not too carefully too soon as I am sure the layout will change a number of times before the show opens.

How Much Am I Bid For This Sweaty Towel?

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When it comes to fund raising, I imagine there have been quite a few people who have looked around their buildings wondering how much they could get for various objects laying around.

They probably aren’t the first, but Philadelphia radio station, WXPN has started an auction section on part of their website in the hopes of shortening their fund raising drives. They offer a mix of objects from access to special seating sections at concerts and dinners with artists to old stuff they found laying around their former building.

There are times I have joked about selling the towels artists have used on eBay to raise funds, but sent them all to the washing machine. I wonder if I have been too shortsighted….

If you are like me, your problem isn’t that you don’t have plenty of interesting stuff to auction off. It’s that your budget is so tight, you have recycled the stuff so many times you can’t decide which significant performance to claim it belongs to.

In fact, it may have more value to schools teaching art restoration. Students can practice removing successive layers of paint to analyze the techniques used. Most of the stuff you have is probably good for at least five-ten semesters of instruction before they reach the original finish. This is probably the way to go anyway since the multiple attempts to repair the objects over the years have endowed it with a good three pounds extra in glue and screws and a strange tilt when placed on a flat surface.

But in all seriousness, it is something to consider to raise some extra funds. Certainly, it can’t become a veritable business unto itself for your organization or else the IRS may be stopping by to review your non-profit status. I know there are a few theatres around that rent/sell costume pieces just before Halloween to clear out their storage areas and generate a little income.

XPN’s auction site seems to be created via AuctionAnything.com. Services like theirs can provide a more professional environment than something like eBay can. However, given the cost, it would likely only be worth it over the long term, (as opposed to single use around a special event), if you intended to offer things consistently and had someone tasked to attend to the arrangements.

Sing Your Way To Cleaner Water

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There was an interesting TED conference video about the power of arts to drive social change from a November session in India. I have seen performance pieces that deal with sexual assault and violence before, but the speaker, Mallika Sarabhai, shows examples of using skits and songs to advance public health concerns. In this case, to teach people to filter their drinking water through clean cotton cloths folded eight times.

Some of her examples are polemical, but after finishing her first piece she points out that a performance about a controversial topic is a lot more palatable than walking in the room and announcing that you are going to talk about the controversial topic. She argues that social leaders who strive for change need to harness the universal language of the arts to bring it about.

My favorite quote: “You have treated the arts as the cherry on the cake. It needs to be the yeast.”

My First Solicited Book Review

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Disclaimer
I recently received a request from the authors of Performing Arts Management: A Handbook of Professional Practices to review the book. (Actually, it was from one of their student assistants.) While I have read and summarized books on this blog before, they have been books I have been interested in reading rather than ones I was solicited to read. The only consideration received for this review was a free copy of the book. When I was asked if I would like to read the book, I told them I was interested in learning more, but made no promises I would write a review, much less say anything nice about it.

My Approach
I am not going to even attempt to approximate the format or voice of some of the more prestigious book reviews. Mainly my approach is going to be as a person who used theatre management texts both as a student and as a professor, seasoned with my experience working in the industry.

Overall, Great
By and large I thought the book was really excellent as a resource. Nearly every time I made a note that they hadn’t covered a topic, I later came across a chapter segment where they handled that subject in great detail. The authors, Tobie Stein and Jessica Bathurst, conducted a massive number of interviews over a number of years which yield a great deal of practical advice.

Weaknesses First
Most of this entry is going to praise the book so I thought I would get the few criticisms out of the way first. Though they were extremely thorough and detailed in most areas, one of the subjects that I would have liked to see covered was volunteer recruitment and the care and handling thereof. This includes board recruitment. Given the importance of these two groups and their comprehensive coverage of so many other areas, I was really surprised there was very little about recruitment, cultivation and retention of volunteers.

New York City Is The Center
The other thing is that the book is VERY New York City and theatre oriented. This is probably no surprise given the authors live and work in New York and Brooklyn. Many of the people and prominent organizations they need to interview are located there. There are mentions of arts organizations outside of New York like the Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theatre and New England summer stock theatres, but everything seemed to come back to New York. Discussion of Las Vegas focussed on how Broadway shows were abridged for Vegas audiences. There are interviews with people from other disciplines certainly, but so much seemed to orient on theatre.

The section on touring seemed to assume that the reader would be presenting a touring play or musical. In some regard, these are the best disciplines to cover because all the unions potentially involved gives something of a “worst case scenario” of the issues that might need to be addressed in a tour. The options of music and dance are mentioned and some of the agents interviewed mention the dance companies they represent. But the focus was so heavily on plays and musicals, I am afraid students using the book might think that is the only sort of touring that goes on.

I was also concerned that people who intended to work in other parts of the country and present differ types of performance may feel the book didn’t contain anything of value for them. I think this is especially true these days when arts organizations have to be more nimble with the type of shows they present and produce. At the very least, it would have been nice to have a contract for a dance tour or musical group included in the examples at the end of the touring chapter.

No, Performing Arts Management Isn’t Boring
The final thing I thought was a weakness for the book was employing the “professional input quote” technique in the first chapter. For most of the book, these quotes are extremely valuable and add great insight. I will even mention a couple instances later. In the first chapter, it drags it down. Here is an example on the second page of the chapter. In the first full paragraph starting with “Commercial producers organize…” The authors took three different interviews with people in different times and places and made it sound like they were participating in the same discussion.

As I read, I could see this book from the student’s point of view. If these were the sort of discussions arts managers had, the job was deadly boring. What was quoted weren’t interesting anecdotes, but rather dry definitions of commercial theatre that were probably better just stated outright rather than quoted. These definitions were made more difficult to comprehend by the inclusion of lengthy background information on the person being quoted. Do I really need to know that Sean Patrick Flahaven is Managing Director of the Melting Pot Theatre, a small off-Broadway non-profit producing theatre to absorb the fact that “The goals of the commercial venture are to first payback its investors, then make a profit and then make something with artistic integrity.” That is his only contribution on that page and he doesn’t appear again until three pages later.

As I have have mentioned, the practice of quoting people is very valuable throughout the rest of the book. There are times later in the book when quotes are also used to provide dry definitions, but they appear amid varied information and citations. But at the time, I was just dreading the whole book was going to be like the first chapter and wondered what I had gotten myself into when I agreed to read the book.

Where It Was Strong
Okay, having gotten that out of the way. I was really impressed by a lot in the book. It was much better than the text I had learned from *mumble* years ago. The comments from different arts professionals interspersed throughout the chapters made good on the promise of the book’s title to discuss the practice of arts managers.

Producer Richard Frankel’s story about how Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman turned the process around and “auditioned” producers for the production of The Producers was great. The way he described the lengths he went to make his proposal stand out was reminiscent of the things actors will do to get themselves remembered at auditions.

Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Peter Gee discussion of the way they decided to furlough employees in the wake of the financial downturn following September 11 was very relevant to the current times.

Well Supported and Designed
Every chapter has examples appropriate to the subject matter. Many right from the people cited in the chapter. I was impressed with the amount of material included in some of the chapters. Charts, graphs, spreadsheets, etc from multiple organizations were included in many chapters so that the student has examples from groups of different sizes and budgets to compare.

The thing I appreciated in terms of classroom activities was that there were discussion questions and occasionally activities/exercises after every section of a chapter. I know as a student that I would skip over the questions at the end of a chapter unless otherwise assigned. The placement of these questions are good on many levels: They are harder for the student to avoid. If a student doesn’t quite understand what they should derive from a section, the questions immediately emphasize what concepts were important in the preceding text. The questions are valuable to a professor for the same reason–if students don’t seem to grasp a concept, the questions are readily available to facilitate learning and reduce pressure to think of discussion topics to lead students to comprehension.

Clear Investment of Time
What impressed me most was the time spent on some of the subject areas. In text books I have encountered before, mission statements received a few paragraphs. In this book, there was an entire chapter on crafting mission statements and how they fed into visions statements and formulation of organizational strategy.

The legal considerations surrounding the decision to found a for or not-for-profit also received an entire chapter. Included was information on filing for non-profit status, including the forms needed and the time line for gaining state and federal approval of your application. While I said I was disappointed that board recruitment wasn’t covered, I thought the book did a very thorough job discussing bylaws and board structure and responsibilities.

I also really appreciated the treatment the book gave Educational Programs. They talked about structure and how to set them up. Included were tips on creating professional development opportunities for teachers and teaching artists. There were some nice examples of program evaluation forms at the end of the chapter.

Since many of my duties include facility management, I was happy to see a chapter on that topic. The examples of forms and policies at the end of the chapter were as long as the chapter itself. There was a chapter devoted entirely to labor relations familiarizing the reader with pretty much every organization representing artists and labor that one could conceivably ever deal with.

I was also impressed by the amount of time the authors devoted to discussing how a agent puts a tour together in the touring chapter. I have never seen the process covered in a text book before, much less in such detail. (I have also engaged the artists represented by one of the agents so I was glad to see him getting so much space.)

I think the strongest statement on the reality of the arts was that the longest chapter in the book was on how to develop a funding base followed in length by the chapter on ticket selling strategies. Again, there were a lot of good examples at the end of the chapters and the authors really encouraged people to take a realistic view of their organization and place in the community when it came to positioning themselves as a cause worth supporting and patronizing.

Good As General Resource, But What About The Students?
Most of the textbook could serve as a general resource for anyone becoming involved with presenting and/or producing performances. And of course, since that is the goal of many students who will use the book, it succeeds in that respect. But for as long as I have been involved in the performing arts, there were a few sections that provided entirely new information to me (e.g.- detailed discussion of non-profit incorporation process). So I will be holding on to this copy.

The one chapter that is particularly valuable to students though was on internships. One of the biggest challenges for students is getting a meaningful experience out of their internship. Not only does the book come right out and say this, but like the rest of the text, student anecdotes about their interning experiences fill the chapter. There is a detailed discussion of how to seek and land internships as well as what to expect.

Should It Be Included?
This chapter also delves into organizational dynamics a little bit too. This is an area I was a little on the fence about in respect to whether more should have been included. Some arts management texts I have seen do include a discussion of this topic. Is it crucial to learn if you are getting into performing arts management, especially given the length of the book already? That is hard to say. While we are all generally subconsciously aware of organizational dynamics operating around us, I personally found it helpful to have the different ways decisions are made in an organization pointed out to me when I was in school. Given the informal structure of many arts organizations, there are often systems in place by which things get accomplished which have no relation at all to job titles.

So anyway, there is its. Performing Arts Management: A Handbook of Professional Practices by Tobie S. Stein and Jessica Bathurst. It seems a valuable resource thanks to an incredible amount of research and interviewing. (The footnotes for each chapter will knock your socks off.) I plan to keep my copy for quite awhile.

Holiday Break, Sort Of

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I am taking a semi break from posting this week. I have been asked to review a book so I am devoting some time to reading it right now. I am also working on some housekeeping issues for the blog. There are some rough spots that developed when I moved the blog over to Inside the Arts last year. I have been whittling away at them over the months but am trying to make a push for the home stretch this week.

I plan to be back to my regularly schedule by January 4.

Hope you have a Happy and Prosperous New Year

Staying Married To The Artistic Process

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I came across an interesting article in The New Republic, by way of Arts and Letters Daily that suggested that a shift in business school orientation partially contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. At one time universities focused on training graduates to manage manufacturing businesses and often had mini-factories on campus to give students practical experiences.

The focus since about 1965 has shifted to finance and consulting. While this has been largely beneficial for the economy, (until they started creating bad financial products), it is one of the reasons why the country has become weaker in manufacturing. That has been pretty bad for the country.

“Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM’s top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background….But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, “That’s how you end up with GM rather than Toyota.”

At first this was just an interesting theory to me, but then I realized that this describes exactly what people are afraid will happen if arts organizations are “run more like a business.” The fear is that decisions will rest entirely on return on investment and will be divorced from the manufacturing process as it were.

There was a time I would not have imagined that any arts organization would have a disconnect between the administration and the artists. I assumed that the administrators would be passionate about the arts with which they were associated. Why else would someone work so hard for so little pay?

Nearly five years ago, I cited observations that orchestra administrations were disassociated from the performances and performers. Given all the conflicts and closures since then, I don’t think the overall environment has gotten any better since. I also don’t assume that this situation is necessarily unique to the orchestra world.

In the last week I have heard Michael Kaiser on his Arts in Crisis tour and Andrew Taylor debating the utility of the arts management degree. In both conversations there was an obvious focus on training arts managers well. But the necessity for training boards well was mentioned too.

It seems to me that maybe the need to advocate the intrinsic value of the arts is necessary internally in addition to external constituencies. Perhaps one of the dangers of emphasizing the economic contribution of the arts to the community is that it creates greater expectations for boards and administrators that the art and its creators be ever more economically viable as well.

Squatting As Economic Stimulus

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In the last year I have posted about businesses encouraging the presence of artists in Philadelphia and London as a strategy for filling empty store fronts and infusing vitality into neighborhoods. I also wrote about artists taking advantage of obscenely low real estate prices in Detroit to purchase properties and establish a little artist colony in that city.

So I read with some interest a Guardian story about an cultural organization in London which is, though they reject the term, squatting in the high rent commercial district. The aim of the group, The Oubliette, is “to support the arts without the need for public or private sector funding.” (Appropriating involuntary in-kind donations of space from the private sector doesn’t seem to be a problem, however.)

The group does a little work prior to “moving in,” generating a business plan and proposal which highlights, among other things, the security they bring to the empty property.

They even have a sort of business plan, which they plan to tout around the capital’s wealthy property magnates. The goal? To persuade the rich to lend their empty properties to the Oubliette to use for exhibitions, concerts and plays. “It’s an alternative way of offering extraordinarily wealthy people a way to contribute to the arts without an enormous pecuniary investment,” according to the erudite Simon.

[…]

In terms of floor space, their new gaff would be the envy of nearly every arts centre in the country. It is so big, in fact, that last Friday’s event, a collaboration with homelessness charity The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields, only used parts of the ground and first floors. There was an art exhibition, featuring work by homeless people, as well as the Oubliette’s artist-in-residence, Philip Firsov, and a number of different classical music groups staged mini-concerts in some of the building’s many rooms.

The event was one of many unusual partnerships the Oubliette are trying to forge in an attempt to turn squatting into a legitimate way of showcasing the arts without the taxpayer’s help, while disassociating themselves from wilder, less well organised squatters in other London mansions.

[…]

The group is currently in the process of preparing PowerPoint presentations to give to the owners of empty buildings – both commercial and residential – to persuade them to allow the Oubliette to use their spaces as arts platforms. A draft pitch, seen by the Guardian, attempts to sell squatting as a way of providing free security, preventing property devaluation and adding value to the community.

Twenty-four-hour security costs £7,500 per guard per month, claims the pitch, adding that a derelict property can “result in a loss of up to 18% value on neighbouring property prices”. What’s more, the Oubliette pledge to improve empty buildings. “Our dedicated team includes certified workers in electrics, plumbing and construction,” they say, promising to “return the property back to the owner clean and functional within 28 days’ written notice of wanting the property back”.

The Oubliette is based around a “live-in core” of eight people with distinct roles, including “IT guru”, “PR operative”, “graphic designer”, “legal adviser” (a trainee barrister), “artist-in-residence” and “copywriter”. They have grand plans, according to Simon, who until 2002 was an IT worker living in Chelsea. “Our long-term strategic ambition is to negotiate for consent with an owner of a suitable empty premise for leave to remain,” he said. “Occupying properties in high-profile locations allows us to raise public awareness and garner support, whilst also furthering the organisational aspects of our project and pitch to proprietors.”

He is confident of success, and claims to have successfully negotiated consent to squat in eight properties in London in the past seven years.

While I don’t really condone squatting. I am pleased that they commit to improving a location rather than conforming to the stereotype of artists for whom mundane concerns like maintaining their environment interferes with the connection with their muse. Part of me hopes their presence helps drive real estate prices up. We all know that the arts can lead to the gentrification of run down areas. Usually the artists are priced out of the area before they can contribute to the gentrification of an already gentrified area. No one knows what the ceiling for economic stimulation by the arts might be.

Remember, The P Stands For Personal

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I had a situation emerge related to personal URLs (PURLs) that sort of put me off. I have written about these personalized web addresses which allow you to provide a customized experience for the recipients before. I hadn’t really thought that someone might invest the time and expense of creating PURLs and not provide a customized experience. When I had such an experience, I began to question the motivation and wasn’t entirely pleased with the direction my thoughts turned.

One of my alma maters sent me a brochure saying “Joe, a lot has change since X” and provided a URL that incorporated my name. (To protect my vanity and the specific school, I am not going to mention the date of my graduation.) This created an expectation that when I visited there would something like then and now photos of the campus. Perhaps there would be one of those lists noting that kids born the year I graduated have never known a world where different situations didn’t exist. Maybe there would be a really detailed list of all the weddings, births, promotions and general accomplishments of my graduating class.

But other than my name, it was a really, really, really generic web page. The alumni page on the school website is actually more engaging. One of the links to a virtual tour lead to a YouTube video which had been removed by the poster.

One of the prominent features was a donation appeal letter by the student featured in the mailer. So at this point I start thinking maybe the whole PURL set up was to measure which alumni were engaged enough with the school to use the PURL so the school could follow up with additional appeals. This made the whole set up seem calculated and not at all personal.

I actually emailed the alumni office last week saying all of the above. I told them that the PURL created an expectation of a personalized experience and when it did not emerge, I began to suspect the worst. I have yet to hear back from them.

Quite honestly, I think I could have made the same mistake. Even if I hadn’t wanted to necessarily follow up with a donation appeal, I could imagine using PURLs to see what percentage of lapsed donors and ticket buyers were still engaged with my theatre. I probably wouldn’t create a PURL with their name but rather embed a unique code in a link they clicked through on or have a situation where people would self-identify. When we are convinced we have a way to more accurately reach and measure our intended constituency, I think it is easy to overlook the recipient’s perspective and expectations upon receiving a communication.

So my advice here is that if you create an expectation of a personalized experience, whether it is in person at your performances or via an online presence, you should be perceived as making an effort to provide it at the very least.

Wry Kaiser

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Michael Kaiser was in town as part of his Arts In Crisis tour. The session was videoed. I don’t know if it will be placed on the internet, but the content was pretty much the same as when he spoke in Madison, WI. I had watched that video back when Andrew Taylor discussed Kaiser’s visit to Madison. If the video of our local session becomes available, I will post it.

I am not going to give a synopsis of his talk here as I am wont to do. His thoughts are pretty widely disseminated through videos like the in WI and via his column on Huffington Post. I am just going to reflect a little on the experience.

He was a very entertaining speaker and the session was quite enjoyable. I encouraged my Assistant Theatre Manager to go because he hadn’t really heard any of this before. And our discussions after about how we should proceed were pretty productive.

Our mayor is the chair of the culture and tourism committee of the National Conference of Mayors and he is pretty enthusiastic about those causes. (He also bills himself as the “Singingest Mayor In America.” I was surprised that he didn’t take the opportunity today.)

He spoke, I think longer than anyone expected, about how important the arts are. He also stayed for the full 1.5 hour session. This impressed on me how important the topic of the arts was to him because he is always on the go. I have seen him get off a 7 hour flight that crosses the international dateline, speak at a meeting about public transportation and then out to another meeting. Since he was still around as the Q&A started, the moderator brought him back up to the stage to field questions about the arts in the city.

A few observations about the session with Kaiser. The first isn’t predicated on something he said. The session opened traditionally with a welcoming chant and then a hula display. I am not Hawaiian, nor am I practitioner of any Hawaiian performing arts. However, my investment in those art forms were such that I wished they had done a slightly different program. The hula was accompanied by singers playing ukelele. This is something many people are familiar with due to movie depictions. So what I found myself wanting was for a performance on ipu heke–double gourd drum. I wanted him to go away perhaps surprised about Hawaiian performing arts and knowing more than he knew when he arrived.

Later, I was gratified to hear him say that was what he aimed for in his programming–having people surprised at some of the events he put together. His example was the Arab Festival at the Kennedy Center earlier this year. He noted nobody expects you to celebrate Arab art in the current political climate.

At one point he underscored how much the arts are dependent on the kindness of strangers when it comes to arts education. This is no great revelation, I am sure. He gave the example of a 3rd grader who benefits from her teacher loving the arts and providing many opportunities for exposure. When the child moves on to 4th grade, if the teacher doesn’t like the arts, then the child doesn’t get any exposure. If the 4th grade teacher doesn’t like math, they don’t have the option of shirking instruction in that. It occurred to me this is actually the case even in states that mandate an arts component because few schools value the subject enough to monitor compliance or ensure a valuable experience.

For me, the talk solidified and confirmed some thoughts I had over Thanksgiving about how I should be approaching various elements of my job. It was good to have the Assistant Theatre Manager start to move in the same direction. I hadn’t really spoken with him about my thinking yet because I hadn’t entirely figured out how to put it into practice. Today was a good catalyst for that conversation.

Information You Can Use: Tax Treaties and 30% Withholding

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I was recently fortunate enough to get into a conflict with my disbursing office on the subject of the 30% withholding for foreign performers.

Well, admittedly, I didn’t feel lucky at the time. The whole issue is very confusing and time consuming. However, the outcome is such that I am a good deal wiser and more informed about the process. And more importantly, I managed with the help of the artist’s agent and the IRS to secure full payment for the foreign performers.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the issue, count yourself lucky but also be aware that you may become embroiled in a situation requiring you to withhold 30% of an artist’s fee in the future in the absence of a treaty or the proper tax paperwork. I did a couple entries about five years ago which you may want to take a look at to gain some background.

The group we were looking to bring is coming from New Zealand. Their agent was on the ball and sent me the requisite tax paperwork claiming exemption back this summer. Not wanting to have any problems crop up when it came time to send the deposit, at the end of July I sent a memo accompanying the paperwork which included the details of the engagement asking if the 30% would be withheld. I was told it wouldn’t be. It wasn’t until the check was cut and on its way over to me that the decision was made to cancel that check and issue another one less 30%.

At question was Article 7 of the US-New Zealand Tax Treaty which reads:

“The business profits of a Contracting State shall be taxable only in that state unless the enterprise carries on business in the other Contracting State through a permanent establishment situated therein. If the enterprise carries on business as aforesaid, the business profits of the enterprise may be taxed in the other State but only much of them as is attributable to that permanent establishment. “

The agent provided an interpretation where the first Contracting State was NZ. Our disbursing office interpreted the first Contracting State to be the U.S. and deemed the performance to be goods “created” in the U.S.

In came the IRS to the rescue! You won’t see that phrase too much in life so let me say it again. In came the IRS to the rescue!

The Central Withholding Agreements office provided the following guidance which they have given me permission to reprint for your edification. Be aware that all countries have different tax treaties, but many of them are very similar to the one the US has with New Zealand so this information can be applicable in many cases.

In the following, “business entity” refers to a production company or other type of operation which owns the rights to the production and performances being presented. The presumption here is that the artists/performers are either employees or contract players for the business entity, having no ownership interest or risk from loss in the production, thus making the business entity, rather than a venue or other payer, the withholding agent for payments to the artists. Payments to these performers would be subject to rules, regulations, and treaty considerations for the individuals as artists. The business entity may apply for a tax treaty benefit with regards to payments made to the business entity if the business entity is permanently located in a country that has a tax treaty with the United States.

A valid withholding certificate, W-8BEN, presented by the business entity to the venue is used to claim a tax treaty benefit for Business Profits. CAVEAT: The business entity MUST have a US Employer ID Number on the form W-8BEN to qualify for the exemption, otherwise 30% of gross income is required to be withheld and deposited with the US Treasury on behalf of the business entity.

Tax Treaties between the US and other countries are worded so that each country reads it and approaches it as a reciprocal agreement. In each case, the “Contracting State” is the country of residence of the business entity and the “other Contracting State” is the country in which they are performing services for remuneration.

Therefore, a US business entity applying Article 7 of the US-NZ tax treaty would use the US as “Contracting State” and New Zealand as the “other Contracting State” thereby claiming exemption from tax in NZ but being subject to full taxation in the US. The business entity could not claim exemption if they had a permanent establishment in NZ.

SIMILARLY, the NZ business entity would flip-flop the terminology taking NZ as the “Contracting State” and the US as the “other Contracting State” thereby claiming exemption from US taxation and subjection to full taxation in NZ. The business entity could not claim exemption if they had a permanent establishment in the US.

As a result, a non-resident alien business entity as described above will provide to the venue a Form W-8BEN claiming the business profits tax treaty provision. The venue is relieved from any withholding responsibilities for payments to the business entity.

The business entity is still required to withhold and deposit on any payments made to or for the benefit of the actual performers.

For the withholding requirements on the individual non-resident alien artists or athletes, you may contact the IRS at CWA.Program@IRS.gov

It should be noted, that while the payment may be exempt from the 30% withholding, the foreign company must still deduct U.S. taxes from payments made to their performers. More information on this may be found on the Artists from Abroad website.

Mad Man Delayed

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I had marked this video intending to post it during Inside the Arts “Mad Men Week,” but totally forgot about it until coming across it today. The video is Rory Sutherland talking about how ad men create perceived value for objects. The has a great sense of humor so the video is just plain fun to watch.

My favorite bit comes toward the end when he talks about Post cereal’s roll out of Diamond Shreddies which literally turned the old Shreddies cereal on end. Inexplicably, the move was a little controversial and Post issued a “combo pack” of both cereals. (I gotta hope the controversy was manufactured by Post.)

The thing that might be most valuable for arts people is a quote at the end of his talk where he cites a quote “Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new.” Though in the case of the arts and current attendance trends, the familiar may be an entirely new experience.

He says it isn’t a bad definition of what advertising people’s job is: “To help people appreciate what is unfamiliar. But also to gain a greater appreciation and place a far higher value on those things that are already existing.”

Okay no surprise there. Apropos to my previous comment, arts people try to make their disciplines familiar to those who haven’t had much interaction with it every day.

Holiday Memes? Bah! Humbug!

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So our glorious Inside the Arts leader Drew McManus laid down a challenge of a Holiday Extremes Meme. Now, I think if you are a musician and can only name two of four good holiday concerts and one of the two (of four) worst concerts you name involves YOU performing, it isn’t quite fair to those of us who are non-musicians!

I have been to fewer holiday concerts than Drew, though I do remember the Christmas cantatas of my youth when the Catholic and Presbyterian congregations of my small community would come together so there would be enough people for a decent size choir.

One of my favorite Christmas music memories though was when I lived in Florida. There was a radio station in Tampa at the time which started playing Christmas music for hours on end starting Christmas Eve. There were some really great songs there that I had never heard before. You would go from Bing Crosby to “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and then back to some choir softly singing.

That was when I heard the Bob Rivers’ classic, “I Am Santa Claus”

I have great memories of driving up to my sister’s house at 5 am Christmas morning listening to the music. Unfortunately, there was a year of new management and they stopped that practice.

However, in the spirit of offering new songs for the season, I wanted to turn people on to one. Don’t be fooled by the band name, Hoots and Hellmouth, or the title, A Song for Solstice, I am not trying to undermine the religious nature of the holiday. It is a nice song for the season without being cloying. The music comes courtesy of public radio station, WXPN’s 2008 12 Days of Christmas where they offered 12 free downloads of holiday music from local artists.

A Song for Solstice was smack in the middle at Day 6. If you want to check out other alternative holiday songs, scroll around on the page. I admit to being a sentimental sucker for #4 Dan May’s “Christmas in My Hometown.”

Volunteering Your Way to #1

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I was listening to Andrew Taylor’s interview with Artsjournal.com founder/editor Doug McLennan today. During the interview McLennan mentioned all the ways in which organizations were creating online communities to help them achieve things. One of the ways he mentioned people’s contributions were rewarded was via a ranking system to show who had been most productive.

I started thinking about whether this might be a useful way for arts organizations to motivate volunteers. At one time, I had heard that creating contests and achievement awards for volunteers could be counterproductive in terms of motivating and retaining volunteers. I wondered if the new online rewards environment may have changed this. After some reading and thinking on the matter, I decided a ranking system is probably still not useful in many of the traditional functions of an arts organization.

One of the things I read which confirmed my recollection advising against rankings is that many volunteers are motivated by other factors than rankings. Also, different people have different ranges of ability. If someone is providing assistance because they believe in the organization but is in a situation where recognition is accorded to those who are hustling for first place, they may become disheartened. One suggestion I read was to have people compete against their own old milestones. Online communities have a certain anonymity that can insulate one from emotional investments. This may not be the case when a volunteer is working to benefit people and causes with which they can personally interact and experience.

There is also the issue that online contributions can be made on ones own schedule. Involvement and duration are self selected. Whereas many arts organizations engage volunteers during certain hours and events. There is also often a person acting as a gatekeeper determining who gets to contribute and when. A person striving to be number one may find time constraints and scheduling favoritism shown others inhibits their ambitions.

Scoring people for activities that aren’t constrained too much by time deadlines may be still possible. You can open up archives and newspaper/props storage and just let people go at it cataloging and organizing things on their own schedule. Though physically getting in each other’s way in cramped storage areas is also a problem that online activities don’t face now that most people have fairly speedy bandwidth.

If anyone has any feedback in terms of reward systems that were meaningful and didn’t alienate volunteers, ideas for ways to motivate volunteers given the expectations of the internet age or even tasks you can turn to the internet group mind to accomplish (like designing Drew McManus’ Twitter page) I would love to hear them.

You Must Be This Naked To Be Appealing

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I received a call today from a person who had attended the student final performance on Friday. He was complaining about the content of the pieces the students performed, both the dance and monologue/scene pieces. I had actually delivered a curtain speech before the show warning people about this since there were children in the audience, but he had arrived late and missed the announcement.

When I brought the subject up with the drama instructor, I learned there was actually some content he had overlooked when he informed me which pieces might be offensive. Our conversation transitioned to a recent study by the University of Leeds that found women should bare 40% of their bodies in order to attract a mate. Any less and the attraction goes down, any more suggests a chance of infidelity.

We wondered if there was anything to be derived from this in terms of stage costuming. Is a lack of clothing past a certain point considered lewd on stage? Given that the study was done in a dance club, it may be more applicable to dance given that the ratio of clothing plus gyrations must factor in somewhere. Of course, people go to a club with a level of expectation that is likely different from those of performance attendees.

While it would be nice to have a magic number that we knew would be safe to go up to without too many negative repercussions from audiences, it probably isn’t in the best interests of artistic expression to have an exact formula. The ratings of the MPAA have shifted over time due to changing public standards. If point values are attributed to inches of flesh exposed, then people would forever be running around with measuring tapes and parsing percentages. (Ah ha! She is wearing open toes shoes! If we compute those in to the over all ratio of her body, she is 40.1783% naked!! I become more scandalized by the moment!)

There is also the matter of some shows that frequently have nudity like Equus and deciding you want nudity in your show as part of your artistic vision. So while it might be helpful to know what the general tolerance level of an audience might be, there is probably too much opportunity in having it turned into a metric to suggest pursuing research in this direction.

And there would need to be more research because the methodology used for this study seems a little shaky. On top of that, it measured the responses of men. Most tickets are purchased by women so it would be necessary to discover where their perceptions lay.

These Theatres Ain’t Dead Yet

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So last week was indeed cause for Thanksgiving and perhaps optimism for the arts as a whole as news came that two shuttered notable theatres, the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami and the Beverly, MA North Shore Music Theatre would be reopened thanks to the efforts of other theater operators.

According to a Boston Globe article, William Hanney, who has a history of buying and quickly reopening businesses, has arranged to purchase the theatre. His intention is to generally preserve the traditional programming of the facility but revamp the staffing structure which he felt was was too top heavy and would need to be evaluated.

Coconut Grove Playhouse will undergo a similar restructuring according the Miami Herald, except the focus will be on the physical plant. They intend to replace the 1100 seat theatre with a 300 seat theatre and a footprint for a 600 seat theatre. Since the Coconut Grove board has a previous agreement with a development company, there is a possibility the new theatres won’t occupy a space within the facade of the old theatre. The new theatres will be operated by Coral Gables based GableStage whose proposal was one of four the Coconut Grove board received.

I don’t know the full story behind the revival. I am assuming the Playhouse owns property beyond the confines of the theatre building if they are able to provide space for up to two theatres outside the facade of the old building. I also haven’t been able to discover if the board had sought proposals from arts organizations to occupy the space or just entertained proposals for a variety of uses and happened to accept one from a group who wanted to bring performances there again. I would like to think that despite the $4 million debt which is likely what prompted their deal with a real estate developer, the board was dedicated to preserving the arts in Coconut Grove and resolved to set aside some of the space for that purpose.

If anyone can fill in the blanks, I would love to know.

What is encouraging to me is that there are people who recognize the value of performances in their communities and are working to bring them back. Of course, in both examples the thing to note is that the plan for success includes streamlining operations rather than restoration of the previous environment.

Update: Thanks to CLJ at South Florida Art Scene for providing more background on the situation in the comments section.

Acknowledgement from Unexpected Quarters

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Last week I received an email wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving from one of the B&Bs we stayed at in Ireland this past summer. Thinking back to my discussions about developing emotional relationships with customers over the last few weeks, I thought that was a particularly clever gesture.

A lot of social media software tracks your friend’s birthdays and anniversaries, so I wouldn’t be surprised to receive an email for that occasion. These folks are apparently paying attention to holidays that have some significance in the country of their former guests. I received plenty of domestic Thanksgiving greetings and wishes, but it is the one from Ireland that sticks in my mind because you don’t often receive acknowledgment of an occurrence which holds little significance to another.

I have no plans to return to Ireland in the next year, but there is a pretty good chance that should I do so in the next five years, I will remember this gesture as I recall my last visit and make plans to return.

Support of Great Numbers

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Today I got an appeal from a performing arts group asking me to vote for them on the Chase Community Giveaway Facebook page. The top 100 organizations get $25,000 and the top voted organization get $1,000,000. I am a little leery about this. First of all, I wonder if Chase is using this to gather names to offer their banking services to. I am also concerned about charitable giving becoming a matter of popularity and campaigning. I have never had any interaction with the group who emailed me. They likely got my address by buying a database from a professional organization of which I am a member. Now they are spamming me in an appeal for my support.

I do appreciate it when people outside corporate giving offices are provided an opportunity to direct donations. Many organizations I have worked for have benefited from employer matching donations. For Subaru’s 30th anniversary in the US, they asked their employees to nominate causes to which they would donate cars. A place I once worked received one of those cars. (And my next car is likely to be a Subaru as a result.)

Every September, a local grocery chain allows people to donate to charities at the cash register and they match it. We send out emails alerting people to this opportunity. The people we email already have a relationship with us in some form.

Just like with American Idol voting, giving based on voting results provides too much opportunity for stuffing the ballot box using scripts, duplicate Facebook accounts and other little tricks. Not only do charities not deserve to have their funding decided in this manner, but their staffs should be pursuing their core purpose, not frantically monitoring internet voting standings and trying to rally votes. The constituencies that many of these groups serve may be immensely grateful for the help they receive, but may not have the ability or time to get online to express that appreciation by voting. Those who deserve the support most may not even make it on the radar.

However, if giving decisions are going to be made via social media tools, then it behooves non-profits to raise their public profile so that people are aware of their work and accomplishments and can advocate for them.

On a related note, you may or may not be aware that when Dutch Bank DSB dropped out as sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Speedskating team, Stephen Colbert called upon his viewers to pool their money and donate to sponsor the team. The Colbert Nation logo will appear on the team’s uniforms starting at the World Games.

It started me thinking that maybe the arts should do something similar. Perhaps we could funnel our money through Americans for the Arts. But the question is, what team to sponsor? The gymnastics teams with their choreographed floor exercises might seem a good fit, but may be too obvious. Maybe the pole vaulting team. “Americans for the Arts, proud sponsor of the US Olympic pole vaulting team. Americans for the Arts, catapulting America to new heights.”

Okay, a little corny, but it could be fun. Think of it- whatever team we picked would have some of the best visual promotions out there. Visual arts could be creating all sorts of pieces in tribute to the athletes in action. We might even end up with an Olympic mascot that wasn’t immediately forgettable.

How Do I Assess Thee? Let Me Count

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The authors of Human Sigma take a pretty damning view of the evaluation process of most companies as being antithesis to productive improvement of the employees.

“First, where did the set of things to be rated come from? Did they come from a systemic study of the necessary outcomes of your job, or did they come from a committee of people who described all the things they think you should do in your role? Does the list mix hard financial and operational outcomings with fuzzier ratings that sound good but may nor may not have any bearing on how well you do your job (as compared to how others think you should do your job)?”

They also feel the way those measures are utilized during the evaluation period is flawed.

“Once your manager has identified your “deficiencies,” how much of your review is spent discussing them and how to fix them? Now compare that with the amount of time you both spend discussing the ways in which you most naturally and powerfully think, feel and behave, and how better to capitalize on that.”

Their feeling is that “most workgroups and managers can be optimally measured with only two classes of metrics: the critical financial and operational outcomes that are the purpose of that business unit and the HumanSigma level of that unit.” In their mind, the aim of the evaluation process is to forge a productive and trusting relationship between supervisors and subordinates rather than a primarily corrective one.

As mentioned in my earlier entry, the focus of an evaluation should be on what the employee is expected to accomplish, not how they are supposed to do it. It isn’t about if they are working hard toward a goal or following every prescribed step, but rather if they reach the goal. (As a cog in an bureaucracy with an often inane attention to detail, I am all for that!)

Achieving a situation where such an approach will be successful starts with the hiring process. The authors urge focusing the interview and hiring process on inherent talent plus willingness to pursue new skills and mastery as a measure of performance. They counter the argument that it is difficult to identify and measure talent by noting that there are instruments out there, that while not perfect, are accurate enough to be useful in assessing an individual’s talent. Even with talent, hard work is necessary. Even someone as talented as Mozart was pushed to practice early in life by his father.

They cite the necessity of 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery for everyone, regardless of talent. Without effort, even a great talent atrophies. This is not to say that hard work allows people to achieve mastery in the absence of talent. A person receiving training which emphasizes their talent will likely progress at a much greater rate than one whose talents are unsuited for the position.

I would really love to know if there is any performing arts organization that actually pursues a hiring process that even closely approximates this approach for their non-performance employees. In an industry which subjects highly skilled and talented artists to grueling audition processes which are often resolved by attempting to discern minute differences between people, how many administrative managers, executives and general employees are subjected to a comparable detailed assessment of their talents and abilities in relation to the various dynamics of their positions? For most arts employers it is matter of experience and passion for the arts (for some, passion doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite.)

Two years ago I wrote about an article by Peter Drucker urging people to learn about how they work best and communicate that information to colleagues and supervisors. Fleming and Asplund make a similar suggestion when it comes to rewarding people in relation to how they would like to be recognized. Some people love attention and want public parties, others don’t and would prefer a private intimate acknowledgment. Rewarding people counter to their preferences may undermine their investment in the company.

I think that the company’s varying procedure for rewarding employees needs to be made very clear from the outset otherwise other employees’ investment may be undermined vicariously. Someone who has a big party thrown for them to celebrate their success may be perplexed and hurt when no overt recognition is accorded an esteemed co-worker who achieved just as much.

These same basic suggestions are applied on a larger scale to workgroups and segments of a company. Each group has its own set of traditions and symbols associated with celebration. Trying to replicate that with another group hoping to motivate them may fail because the practice has no significance to them.

Their suggestions for corrective action are more measured. You accentuate the positive quickly and publicly, but consequences for sub-standard performance, while clear, are not as enthusiastically applied. Their purpose is to remove fear as a motivator for improvement. If change does not manifest, the authors suggest mentorships and retreats as later steps for bringing about change.

Most of their suggestions are far more nuanced than I am able to present here. For example, awards where one group continually wins or everyone gets a chance at winning are equally worthless in helping to motivate improvement. Likewise, many mentor programs and retreats are ineffectual.

Obviously, if anything I have said in the last week or so of entries sparks your interest, you should pick up the book to explore further. While I have linked to Amazon’s listing in my entries, it was for convenience sake rather than to sell anything. I got my copy at the library.

Gulp! Let Employees Set The Rules

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So getting back to my Human Sigma discussion in this entry. There is quite a bit I am skipping over generally because I have discussed many of the concepts before in other entries. For example, the idea that customers can develop an emotional investment with a company based on how different factors align with how a person identifies themselves. The surroundings and other customers conform to their idea of cool and upscale and so they develop an attachment with it.

One thing authors Fleming and Asplund mention that evoked an “ah-ha!” connection for me was the importance of having design empower customers. People want to feel competent in their relationship with your organization and design contributes to that. This is why many chain stores have standardized layouts. Nothing erodes the confidence of a do-it-yourselfer like not being able to find what they seek in a big box hardware store by yourself.

This made me think of the need to have easy to navigate websites and voice mail systems, but most importantly for the arts—an easy to navigate season brochure. How many season brochures have you picked up and couldn’t figure out how to buy single tickets much less fully subscribe to a season? The fact that people aren’t subscribing much any more may be a partial blessing for organizations’ relationships because negotiation of many a brochure has been the bane of arts patrons.

One study finding I alluded to in earlier entries is that Human Sigma isn’t just about getting customers highly invested in the company. According to their research, even within the same company, the branches that were most profitable had high emotional investment by both customers and employees. Having one group actualized but not the other is good, but having both improves success exponentially.

Now you may be thinking this is great and your organization is about halfway there because arts people almost by definition are highly emotionally invested in what they do. But they aren’t necessarily invested in promoting and interacting with patrons. If you recall the list of quotes in yesterday’s entry, at least one artist wondered why he/she needed extra training to be an arts educator given all they had received in their discipline.

Employee-Customer interactions contain the most terrifying suggestions in Human Sigma because Fleming and Asplund urge instructing employees about the end goal but leaving it to them to achieve it. Because a standard script of responses can’t cover all eventualities, the authors essentially propose using one as a FAQ document rather than as part of a set procedure. This is pretty scary because it requires giving up a lot of control. Though I should note, it doesn’t mean relaxing standards, just re-evaluating how those standards are measured.

Instead they suggest creating a series of strategies employees can use to improve their interactions with customers. Rather than rewarding people on the basis of how many people they can process in an hour, the focus is on engaging in conversations to assess their needs. “The uncomfortable truth here is left on their own, employees will develop their own strategies for interacting with their customers and their fellow employees, whether you play a constructive part in that process or not.” They posit that you are better off involving yourself at the start to keep it constructive.

The process is more than I can explain here so you will have to read the book if you are interested. In summary though, they say that the best environment to help people develop new strategies for customer interaction is one where they are held accountable for their mistakes and high quality feedback is provided. What they aren’t suggesting is that each person does their own thing, but rather that employees be allowed to develop new approaches by group consensus.

One of the things that popped out as I read the book was the concept of decision making silos. These silos emerge when decision making is compartmentalized rather than shared throughout the organization. The example they use was an airline whose advertising arm promised much better service than the front line service personnel had the resources to deliver. In fact, each had been provided with contradictory guidance. Advertising was tasked to improve market share, the front line was instructed to ruthlessly control costs. Neither consulted the other to discuss how to resolve an essentially mutually exclusive set of expectations.

I have talked about how marketing isn’t just the job of that department before. The authors go a step further by suggesting the position of a Chief Human Sigma Officer who will watch out for such conflicts and has the authority to move an organization toward more interactive decision making. They suggest consolidating all marketing and human resource responsibility into this executive position. (Though acknowledge other configurations are possible.) I don’t know how this might manifest in many art organizations. Though given that disciplines like theatre are merging artistic and management executives into one position, maybe merging marketing and human resources isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

I am nearly done with my discussion of the book. Next entry- Assessment and Reward

Art That Scans

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I have a few more thoughts based on the Human Sigma book I have been discussing over the last few entries. However, I wanted to present some fun stuff I have recently come across as something of a palate cleanser before I move on.

In something of a reverse of Al Hirschfeld’s work where people would try to find a bit of information, the name Nina, in the lines of his art, a Japanese company has created art out of informational lines. Via Dark Roasted Blend are these great images made out of functioning bar codes. The company in question, Design Barcode, won a top advertising award in 2006 for their work which appears all over products in Japan. A short promo video they made claims they have never had a misread. To watch the movie, click the arrow in the upper left corner.

The other tidbit I thought I would share is a link to Richard Kessler’s blog, Dewey21C. I have been biting my tongue for the better part of a month over the comments he quotes in his entry, “The Things I Hear About Arts Education.” The tongue biting is my attempt not to make snarky remarks in reaction to some of the sentiments he cites.

Regardless, they bear reading since he says they are all real quotes because they represent a spectrum of views about arts education. Some of my favs:

We like arts because there are no wrong answers.
School Principal

We do not like the arts because there are no wrong answers.
CEO

Parents are the key to arts education.
Foundation Staff Member

Parents are a waste of time.
The very same Foundation Staff Member

Parents in low income areas don’t care about the arts.
Arts Education Consultant

We must do something about ensuring that artists entering schools have basic training.
Director of Arts Education/Cultural Organization

After all the training artists have already received, why should we have to receive additional training? We’re not teachers; we’re artists.
Teaching Artist

That You Care Is What Matters

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Yesterday I alluded to the research findings presented by Fleming and Asplund in their book, Human Sigma, that how you handle customer problems is more important to your relationship with them than actually solving the problem. (I should mention, HumanSigma is a program of Gallup so they have a lot of experience in surveying.) They say that “customers who encounter a problem and are extremely happy with how the company handled the problem often have levels of emotional attachment equal to—and in some cases exceeding– those who have no problem at all.”

The Means, Not The End That Matters
They say that customers don’t expect a business will always resolve a problem to their liking, “but they do except the company to handle them in an exemplary way.” There is also the issue that not everyone has the same expectations of a solution to contend with. They use the example of receiving an undercooked meal at a restaurant. Some people may be content with having the meal cooked properly and the offer of complimentary dessert. Others may feel the whole meal should be free. You are likely to be more successful creating good procedures to address problems than you are at creating solutions that will please everyone.

They have found that people who have a high emotional investment are likely to give a company the benefit of the doubt when a problem arises viewing it as an honest mistake or even pondering how they may have contributed to the situation. Those with low engagement are more likely to place heavier blame on the company for the problem making it more difficult to please them.

Steps to Resolution
Fleming and Asplund suggest six steps that should be part of resolution procedures.

First is to acknowledge the problem exists. Second is to apologize. They are quick to add that apologizing is not accepting the blame. Lawyers warn clients not to apologize out of fear it can be used against them in lawsuits. But according to a NY Times story, policies of apologizing have cut malpractice suits and legal costs for the University of Michigan and University of Illinois hospitals. People who feel wronged view the refusal to apologize as a lack of empathy for the situation and so they escalate matters in an effort to gain acknowledgment.

Good resolution processes can actually strengthen a relationship with people who have experienced a problem. According to Fleming and Asplund, people who have encountered a problem and have been extremely satisfied with the way a bank handled it were 51% full invested in the bank versus 26% full investment by people who never experienced a problem. They say that apologizing validates a person’s trust in the company and reinforces their value as a customer.

The third step they suggest is “Take ownership of the problem and follow up, even if the problem is unresolved.” Promising to follow up by a certain time or date is better than a vague “as soon as possible” because the customer may feel they have to continue checking in on your progress. Even if you haven’t solved the problem by the appointed hour, it is better to contact the customer with that information than leave them wondering or in the position of having to track the contact person down again.

Suggestion four is to handle problems on the spot rather than bumping it to a supervisor. This means empowering front line service people to respond with a solution appropriate to their position. If the customer is not satisfied, then someone higher in the chain can be contacted. They use the example of a hotel chain that generally had managers resolve problems with free nights’ stays. Among the steps they took were to empower housekeeping to offer gift baskets, robes and bouquets of flowers and only refer a problem to the manager if a person was dissatisfied. Because they weren’t defaulting to free accommodations to resolve their problems, their costs dropped and satisfaction rose.

Their fifth suggestion is have a process which quickly brings the problem to the attention of a supervisor or manager. The mention a logging system which alerts managers if a problem remains unsolved after a certain period of time. Most arts organizations are small enough that a computerized system is not needed to communicate complaints to other staff. Just the same, there is plenty of opportunity for the complaint to lie dormant on someone’s desk and never be brought to a supervisor’s attention so the importance of communicating a complaint needs to be emphasized. The authors warn to be wary that your system not make people feel their responsibility in addressing complaints ends upon handing them off to someone else.

The last suggestion is to leave people better off than they were before the problem occurred. Even if the solution is not the one they desired, they should still be in a better position than they were before. Presumably this means gaining intangible benefits such as feeling more valued as a customer and perhaps having a specific contact person who can address future difficulties if the current problem hasn’t been completely resolved.

Business Solutions Unfair to Customers

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Emotional Advocacy
Yesterday, I started writing about the book, Human Sigma by John Fleming and Jim Asplund and as promised, I wanted to continue exploring the book today. One of the things I was happy to see addressed was the idea of the single question customer survey. I had pondered the validity using the question, “Would you recommend this company to others?” in a past entry.

Fleming and Asplund note that not only do you miss a lot of information by asking only one question, but also all advocates are not created equal. As discussed in my last entry, people can be satisfied and thus have no reservations about suggesting a company or service to others, yet they aren’t really invested in the company and may defect. Then there are those who are emotionally invested and can serve as enthusiastic promoters.

The authors don’t have any specific suggestions about what questions to pose on satisfaction surveys, likely because they urge you to “get under the hood” of customer relationships and ask about things that matter. What matters to one business may not have any significance to another.

The authors give an example of a survey they conducted at an amusement park where most of the feedback they received was negative. People complained on and on about the parking, lines, the prices, the food and the lack of shade. When they were asked if they would return, everyone said they would without hesitation. The deciding factor was their childrens’ enjoyment. Had they the same experience on a Saturday night (sans the lack of shade) at one of our performance venues, they would never come back again, but the vicarious joy they experience through their kids provides an emotional connection with the theme park.

Fairness In Interactions
Later in the book, the authors discuss perceptions of fairness and how that can feed people’s emotional investment. That section of the book is fairly long so it is difficult for me to cover all the ways interactions can be viewed as fair or not. Anyone who has worked in customer services knows that people’s preferred treatment can swing between wanting to be treated exactly like everyone else to wanting an exception made for them, all depending on their situation.

There were a few examples they gave that are recognizable as significant the arts world. For instance, subscribers and donors who have invested themselves in your organization expect preferential treatment in return for their loyalty. (The example the book gives is airline frequent flier program.) If you launch a campaign to attract new business that offers a better situation to new people than to long time customers, you run the risk of alienating them. An example that comes to mind is the low introductory rates offered on cable television packages that are only good for new accounts while you get no recognition for your long term relationship.

Another example in the performing arts world can be found in ticket exchange policies. Many organizations have a no return/no exchange policy with subscribers and donors being the only exception. As long as policies and procedures are enforced equitably, there is no problem. But once you perform an exchange for a flat tire but not my canceled babysitter excuse, then the inequity in the system is exposed. And then there are policies that are confusing to patrons from the start such as why internet and phone orders incur a service fee but walk up orders don’t.

Business Solutions Unfair
One example they give as an impediment to good customer relationships is the phone queue with the recorded message about your call being important leaving you to reconcile how this can be if the place is so poorly staffed the average wait time is twenty minutes. What the authors say about this really struck me, (my emphasis) “From the customer’s perspective, any process or system whose primary purpose is to solve a business problem rather than a customer concern is unfair.”

They also note that treating people equally can appear unfair. If your customer service staff follows the exact same scripted process with customers not recognizing that the script can’t cover all eventualities, the result may make you look incompetent and patronizing for asking questions or suggesting solutions which obviously do not apply to the situation.

Tomorrow I want to address what the book says about solving customer problems. It turns out how you attempt to resolve a problem is much more important than whether you actually solve it.

Emotional Satisfaction

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A two years ago I had been entranced by a comment Neill Roan made about arts administrators being so emotionally satisfied with their jobs, they didn’t feel the need to keep current on the latest literature and theories about arts administration. Earlier this year, I was in touch with Neill on another matter and asked him about the source he had cited. The book was Human Sigma by John Fleming and Jim Asplund.

Human Sigma and Emotional Satisfaction
I had assumed Human Sigma would be about psychology or the biological factors which emphasize or inhibit our actions. Instead, the book is a response to the Six Sigma process which the authors feel is detrimental to employee and customer interactions. Six Sigma seeks to reduce inefficiencies in the workplace. The authors note that human interactions, especially those with customers, are inherently inefficient and trying to make them otherwise can be alienating.

Biology does actually wield a lot of clout in our decision making processes. The authors cite NYU neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux who,

“has argued that it is much easier for emotional responses to influence our thinking than for rational responses to temper our emotions. This is because the neural pathways that extend from the emotional system to the cognitive or thinking system of the brain are wider and faster than those that extend from the cognitive system back to the emotional processing areas.”

This is a contributing factor to the field of behavioral economics which examines why people don’t always behave rationally in their own best interests. The book mostly focuses on employee and customer interactions. My intention is to talk about some of the things that caught my interest in this and future entries.

Even though the book doesn’t explicitly address how high emotional satisfaction can cause people to–well, it is difficult to find the right word because most either connote willful or unconscious neglect or incompetence, let’s say overlook—the need to keep abreast of latest developments, there is a lot be learned about how people make their decisions. In fact, some of this might help explain why people choose to devote themselves to causes with low material rewards like the arts in the first place.

Satisfaction Ain’t Enough
About 10 years ago I went to a session on customer service where the speaker said that satisfaction and competitive price doesn’t contribute to a long term relationship with a customer. She noted that people who were satisfied with the service they received would still defect to a competitor. The book breaks this down on a finer level distinguishing between those who are emotionally satisfied and those who are rationally satisfied. Those who are emotionally satisfied with a company have a far greater investment in the company than those who are rationally satisfied.

What surprised me was that those who are rationally satisfied “behave not any differently than customers who are dissatisfied.” They use the example of a credit card company. Those who were emotionally satisfied spent an average of $251/month and used the card 3.1 times a month. Those who were rationally satisfied spent an average of $136/month and used the card 2.5 times each month. Those who were dissatisfied also spent $136/month and used the card 2.2 times.

The authors make the point that tending to a person’s emotional satisfaction can actually enhance their material value to your company. Investment in relationships is an investment in the financial health of your organization. We in the arts should understand this because of our constant efforts to woo and maintain relationships with donors. Even though we have a list of benefits we provide for different levels of support, we will go above and beyond to stay in a donor’s good graces.

The example of the credit card company was really apt in my case. I just canceled the card I had for 20 years because I felt the card company violated our relationship. I started the card with a $500 limit in 1989 and had gradually built it up to nearly $30,000 after the last two decades. After the fiscal crisis in 2008, they cut my limit by more than half despite my excellent credit. I never needed anywhere near the limit, but it was a point of pride for me that I had built it up to that level. Not an easy thing to build excellent credit while working in the arts.

There was also some deceit a couple years back when Bank of America bought the credit card company. They sent me a letter saying my card number had been compromised. When I called to find out who had been lax with my card information so that I could avoid the company, they gave me the run around before finally admitting everyone got the letter as an incentive to move to the Bank of America card.

That episode made me leery, but it was the credit limit cut that sent me into the arms of my credit union. I tolerated all sorts of rate hikes and the suspicious changes of payment due dates, but when they attacked the source of my pride it was over.

When I called to cancel the card, they didn’t even try to stop me. I have heard stories about companies being willing to reduce interest rates and do other things to keep customers, but they didn’t even ask me to reconsider after I told them my reason. I wonder if they have received so many calls they have learned that there is no use in talking people out of it.

We Shall Engage Them On The Park Benches!

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Something I thought I had posted but I can’t seem to find is my belief that getting other people to talk about whatever experience they have had in the arts is much more effective than you telling them what is so great about the arts. Perhaps I only spoke about it at a lecture or with a group of people, but my basic idea was that if you are somewhere like a wedding and you get on the topic of what you do and people mention that they have attended a performance or a museum/gallery show, you should inquire about the experience.

It doesn’t matter how long ago it was or if they didn’t particularly like it. Try asking them what they did like about the experience. What was valuable to them? What wasn’t? Don’t get too much into explaining why they should or shouldn’t have enjoyed something. This is also a conversation, not an interrogation or survey. If people talk about not knowing what to wear or when to clap, that is an opportunity to offer advice. Telling people why Mozart was the greatest may not be productive if people take it as a statement on their ignorance.

My goal is to connect people back to their positive memories about an experience and help them feel they have some ability to correctly evaluate their experience. Essentially, I want to help them convince themselves the arts hold something of value for them.

I often have these sorts of conversations around theatres with audiences, but that is essentially preaching to the choir. I don’t have as many opportunities to do so outside of a performing arts venue. Or at least perhaps I have been slow to recognize and exploit those opportunities.

My assistant theatre manager (ATM) managed to do so yesterday and I was happy to take a lesson from his example. As I mentioned, we attended a career day at a local high school yesterday. As we were leaving, a gentleman on a bench greeted us and asked what we had been up to. The ATM mentioned who we were and what we were speaking to students about. I don’t recall exactly how, but he managed to get the guy on the bench, a security guard at the school, talking about the poetry he wrote. He hadn’t written any in a long time and lost his notebooks years ago, but he did remember lines he wrote when he was in high school and started reciting them for us. He also recited some haiku he wrote.

Assuming we were professors, he “gave” us his poetry to recite to our classes feeling that college students could identify with the sentiments expressed by verses he wrote when he was their age. We agreed he was probably right about that. We encouraged him to try his hand at poetry again and maybe read it at an open mic night somewhere.

I knew within a minute of the conversation’s start that this was how we should be engaging people all the time. Certainly we don’t want to harangue people to come clean with the experiences they hold close to their heart. But if they are willing to start, we should keep them talking about it for a bit.

Who Knew They Were Talking To Theatre Guys Today?

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The assistant theatre manager and I team spoke about working in the arts at a high school career day yesterday. Ah, I forgot the joys of teenage apathy in the classroom! Actually, I think the lack of engagement we received was due to the design of the routing assignments the students were given. We were told that the students choose which speakers they wanted to hear. The reality was that they chose which career track in which they had an interest. We were part of the arts and communications track.

We didn’t discover this until about 5 minutes into the first session when we finished our intros and asked people about their arts involvement/interest and the response was barely tepid. It turned out that none of them knew they were going to a room where theatre people would be speaking. They had simply been assigned to the room. The same was true in the second session, only we asked earlier. Few in the room were involved in performance or visual art creation even as a hobby. Those that were didn’t seem to have a lot of confidence in their abilities and no one in the room was exclaiming that someone was being too humble and was actually awesome.

We had come prepared on selling the arts as a career, but this was going to be a tougher sell. At the same time, it was a really great opportunity to introduce the concept to people who had never really considered it. I am not sure how successful we were, but there were a couple people who stuck around after each session to ask us about our performances (we brought brochures, of course) and talk a little bit about their arts experiences.

Another benefit to speaking to this sort of audience was that they seemed to take our warnings about how tough it was to make a living in the arts seriously. There didn’t seem to be anyone who felt we were talking to the others people in the room who weren’t as talented as they. We didn’t just speak about having careers in stage, screen and art galleries but also noted the importance of creativity in the coming economy.

Next week were are speaking at the career day of another school. Knowing what we do now, I am going to contact them again and determine what it is exactly the students are selecting when they are choosing to attend our presentation. We had brought a simple powerpoint presentation comprised mostly of images of shows we had presented to give a sense of what opportunities were available. If the students we interact with next week are going to have the same level of awareness about the arts as those today did, we will probably alter the content a little to better suit our audience.

Bye, Bye Patio

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For me, one thing that would make Mad Men better is if their efforts to market products took a bigger role and the behind the scenes drama took a smaller one. I would think Don Draper was as big a cad if he slept with 1/3 less women. It is around the time of this show that marketing started to transition toward the needs of the consumer. Prior to this the focus was either on: Production- If I make a lot of a high demand product, people will buy it; Product- If I make a high quality product, people will buy it; Selling- If I take an existing product and use different techniques to sell it, I can sell high volumes of it.

It isn’t until around 70s that conducting market research to ascertain customer tastes and designing the product with that in mind came into practice. This is a great simplification of what the different approaches were. What I have wanted to see is the company evolving toward new approaches as competition for business pressed them. The show is still pretty enjoyable in any case.

There was one episode this season, episode 4, “The Arrangements,” whose subplots resonated with me. The main one revolved around the commercial for Pepsi diet soda, Patio. The Pepsi representative wants an ad that inserts their product in a reproduction of Ann-Margaret in the opening scene of Bye-Bye Birdie (seen below). The guys at Sterling Cooper recreate the opening flawlessly, so much so I imagine there would be intellectual property lawsuits had it run without the movie studio’s permission. In the end, though everyone agrees the commercial is exactly what was requested, the Pepsi representatives say there is something wrong with it. They just can’t put their finger on it. After the clients leave, one of the ad men points out what is wrong is that the woman in the commercial isn’t Ann Margaret.

For me it was illustrative of the problem you face when trying to jump on a popular trend. If the original does well, you can only fail in the comparison by trying to copy it exactly. The best you can do is put your own original spin in something and even that may fail. Most attempts at recreation and revival are made after the impact of the original has started to fade from people’s memories.

The whole idea of riding the coattails of popularity is still new to the characters in the show they are puzzled when their attempt fails. Even though it is disappointing to them, it sort of excites me to know there was a time when advertising wasn’t as slick and calculated as it is these days. In truth, there are still areas where advertisers are stumbling today. This Friday on the On The Media radio program, there was a piece responding to a New York Times article about how DVRs are actually helping to improve the television ratings used to determine advertising rates because people AREN’T skipping commercials as everyone, including the people selling the machines, assumed they would. Shows are actually getting better ratings three days after airing than they did on their air date thanks to DVRs.

Ann Margaret

Mad Men Ad

The other part of the episode that connected with me was where a young guy comes in wanting to promote the sport of jai alai. He has a lot of money to spend and some grand ideas about how to promote it. Personally, I didn’t think the efforts would be successful, but figured maybe they were appropriate for the time period. Turns out, the ad guys figured they had a fool from whom they would soon part his money.

The thing that struck me was that as he left the meeting, the potential client said “If jai alai fails, it will be your fault” to which one of the ad guys said something to the effect of “everyone believes that.” It brought me back to a couple places I worked where the attitude was when the show did well, it was a good show but when the show did poorly, it was because the marketing department did a poor job. The truth is, there are some things the public isn’t interested in seeing. The world record audience for jai alai was set in 1975 with 15,500 people. As of today, the Philadelphia 76ers have the worst average home attendance in basket ball with about 12,000 people. The Minnesota Timberwolves which falls at 15th of 30 teams in attendance averages 17,600 people. (Source: ESPN website)

And by way of comparison, in their 1975-76 season, the 76ers averaged 12,400 in home attendance. In 1964, the year Mad Men is currently, 76ers average attendance was 4,300 (NY Knicks were about 9,200). I am sure there was a lot of promotion and work done to make basketball more popular since 1964. The presence of players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell probably helped excite the imagination of crowds in ways jai alai players didn’t. It is intangibles like the structure of a product and the personalities associated with it that create an interest in it that a lot of money can’t buy.

Well, okay, there is a lot of money being spent today to bring personalities and products together. But back then and in the trenches of arts organizations today, lots of money thrown into marketing can’t assure success. (Which assumes there is a lot of money to throw into marketing.) Actually, I can go full circle with this. The fictional ad the Sterling Cooper boys put together for Patio soda didn’t work because they didn’t bring the correct personality together with the product. The real Patio did capitalize on the personality of brand identity and became Diet Pepsi in 1964. The other Patio flavors were later phased out “because soda consumers were primarily interested in brand-name products.”

Bootstrap Conducting

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Continuing on with the theme of young artists forging places for themselves, I was recently reading about a young conductor, Alondra de la Parra and couldn’t help being impressed. The interview I read was in the Arts Presenters’ magazine, Inside Arts. I don’t know what the general consensus of her abilities is in the orchestra world, but that hardly prevents her bootstrapping efforts from being inspirational to other young artists and administrators.

Apparently the transitional moment in her career came when the Mexican consulate asked her to put on a concert and she ended up as a one person “manager, press agent, producer, presenter, fund raiser and conductor” for the event. She describes the experience as a nightmare and had decided to go back to school. However, so many people saw the event as a success and told her she had to continue on. That is how she ended up founding the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas which describes its mission as “a laboratory for artistic expression, embracing our responsibility to support promising young performers, composers, instrumentalists, conductors and all kind of diverse artists from Latin America and beyond.”

Watch the video here to learn more about their philosophy and the way they are involving school children in composing music for the orchestra.

One of the benefits of having had gone through that initial trial by fire is that Alondra feels “it makes me relate to almost every person that goes into a symphony orchestra, from the PR director, to the stagehands to the librarian.” Reading Adaptistration all these years, this is apparently a rare quality among musical directors. She says as much in detail in a 2008 NYT article. (2nd page, 3rd column)

At the end of the Inside Arts piece, she is asked what she would like presenters to know about orchestras. She makes the oft mentioned points about demystifying the music so that people don’t feel they need to know every detail about the piece and the composer–and of course the appropriate time to clap–to enjoy the performance. At the end she comments, (my emphasis) “When you go to a rock concert, nobody is going to ask you do you know who the band is and do you really know their first album in ’82. Nobody cares as long as you yell and jump and enjoy it. The next time, you’ll know the song. You’ll sing the song.”

I would like to think that there is a chance for orchestras if more leaders like her start emerging. There is a lot of excitement surrounding Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. El Sistema has come to the US and will perhaps manage to transform the lives of young people here as it has in Venezula. (Is it my imagination, or does Latin America seem poised to save classical music?)

As I read about the Honolulu Symphony facing bankruptcy, and the problems other orchestras are facing it seems that the excitement generating can come none to soon.

“Creativity Is Time-Consuming”

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Last week I received an email from a Patricia Martin who was apparently trying to spread the word about a survey of American Life and Culture she had recently released. I get a lot of these emails but don’t often feel the subject is relevant to my blog. This time it was. What I liked about the survey results is that they are written to convince people to involve culture in their business whether it be in regard to employees, part of their customer relations or both. The format is easy and quick to read and every page has a “take away” for that section in the margins.

Since I had been reading about the feeling that the youngest generation of arts professionals didn’t have a good work ethic in the Americans for the Arts leadership salon, I was encouraged to read the following and hoped the methodology of their survey made it true.

“We found some 60-year-old bloggers held the same opinions as 24-year-old poets: they are willing to work hard in their creative endeavors. Content creators say they spend a lot of their time producing and spreading their creative expressions. They don’t spend time gaming online.This may be because creating original content is demanding—as is mastering and maintaining a social network online. Creativity is time-consuming. The time demands of a creative life, no matter what age a person is, require allegiance to one’s art.”

Other sections talk about this group valuing education and living within one’s means. I understand that there are always going to be at least some people who match these descriptions. I am hoping the percentage of those embracing these philosophies is high. I look around and it doesn’t seem it is so. We hear all about how young people are using social media technologies to spread the word about their passions, but I haven’t seen it yet. Or rather, I haven’t seen it done effectively.

The cast of the show going up in two weeks has Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube pages set up for the show. I have been keeping an eye on them and except for the Youtube page, none of them are very well developed. This isn’t a case of their approach not appealing to me. This is a matter of there not being even the most basic content on the pages to make people interested in the performances. The twitter page more or less says “going to rehearsal tonight” over and over again. They are handing out flyers with all the social media page addresses on them but there is nothing there to see. My hope is they are actually handing out the flyers we printed up with information about the show along with them.

It is said that very few people create online content and the majority consume it. I suspect that just like everything else in life, there is only a small percentage of those producing who have the capacity to create something worthwhile. The idealism of the millions exercising their creative powers doesn’t hold up to reality because a lot of them are playing video games rather than investing the time to hone their skills.

Perhaps I haven’t come across those dedicated to becoming effective because they are off working on getting better.

Talkin’ Bout Emerging Leaders

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Okay special double blog post today. Since my other entry was dealing with education and arts people following their passion, I felt I needed to call attention to the Emerging Leader conversation that has been transpiring in a special blogging salon on Americans for the Arts website. It started October 16 and just finished today.

There are a lot of great entries on the blog, including ones that question the definition of Emerging Leader in terms of age and experience. American’s for the Arts defines Emerging Leader as “either new to the field, with up to five years of experience, or are 35 years of age or younger.”

Ian Moss’ post on Generation Y and Entitlement garnered a long series of comments and is worth reading if have any young people working for you or ever plan to. Other participants add to the conversation like Ruby Classen’s entries on why jobbing hopping by a younger generation seeking a broader skillset can be viewed as lack of loyalty by long time arts leaders.

What was also interesting was reading that a number of veteran arts leaders were contacting people involved with organizing Emerging Leaders at Americans for the Arts and 20UNDER40 who saw these efforts as a storm the Bastille and kill the old folks.

Just as great to read the rebuttals from the veteran leaders too both as entries and comments. It shows that people from many stages in their careers are aware of these issues and engaged in these conversations.

It was also a little disconcerting to learn that because of the internal politics of some organizations, people who wanted to participate felt they had to remain silent.

People share their stories about lack of confidence they have had about their career choices and direction. This includes difficulties in finding jobs in the first place, of course. As many entries as I have linked to, it ain’t near all of them. If you have any interest in arts administration at all, bookmark the site and resolve to spend a couple minutes everyday reading a few entries until you have gotten to them all.

J-Schoolers Now With The Rest of Us Doing It For Love

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Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher, an editor for the Dallas Morning News, ponders the fate of J-school students suggesting they had better be in it for the love.

“Can you imagine going into debt and devoting two years of your life to earning an advanced degree in a field in which you have very little chance of earning a living? I mentioned this to my wife, who, like me, holds an undergraduate journalism degree. “Can you believe people are actually going to journalism school anymore?” I said. She responded, “You and I, when we were that age, would have been completely romantic about it, and wouldn’t have listened to older people who told us there would be no jobs for us.'”

Hmm, sounds like some other industry I know of. What was it again?

He goes on to talk about writing a grad school recommendation for a young journalist he knows.

“And yet, I warned him not to go to journalism grad school, because of the job market, to no avail. He’s got passion, and he’s got hope. I can recommend him to these schools with great confidence in his ability to do the work required of him. He will emerge an even more capable journalist than he already is. Any magazine or newspaper would be lucky to have this guy working for them. If only potential paid the bills! Sigh.”

Ha ha! Finally we get our revenge on those two bit critics who panned our shows! Now they shall be brought low and learn how it feels to ply your craft out of pure love of doing it and have people who have little understanding of their work tell everyone it stinks!

Actually, that sounds a lot like what playwrights and novelists go through. In reality, journalists are really just talented writers who found a format for expression that would pay them regularly for exercising their art. Unfortunately, it seems that time has passed and what was an exception looks to join the rule of the arts and humanities where there are a lot of hard working and talented practitioners and few notable successes that everyone believes they can become.

How I Used My New Lobby Toys

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Drew McManus asked if I had any photos of the mobile lobby screen I described in an earlier entry in action. I hadn’t thought anyone would be interested in pictures of people watching a Powerpoint slide show so I didn’t take any pictures.

As an alternative, I thought I would post some of the slides we used. The first is the Americans for the Arts ad I described in my earlier entry. You can click on each to enlarge.

Americans for Arts Slide
Americans for Arts Slide

For the group we had performing, I had three informational slides like the one below to give attendees some background information on who they were about to see.

Dervish Slide Photo: Dervish
Dervish Slide

I also included slides about upcoming shows to whet people’s appetites.

Black Grace Slide Photo: Duncan Cole
Black Grace Slide
Celebrity Slide Photo: Michael Harada
Celebrity Slide

Finally, following the philosophy that it is especially good during tough economic times to let patrons know you have productive plans for the future, I featured a slide on a show we will be doing a year from now.

Poliahu Slide Photo: Tau Dance Theater
Poliahu Slide

One thing you may notice is that the last slide has a much smaller image than any of the previous slides. Given the size of the screen, I needed images that looked good at 72 dpi at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 lines. That last image wasn’t really able to hold its quality at those settings. Just a tip for people planning to try something similar. I am sure if I was more adept at image manipulation (and had the time), I could have made it work.

Photos: Dervish- Courtesy Dervish; Black Grace- Duncan Cole; Celebrity- Michael Harada; Poliahu- Tau Dance Theater.

Film Burdens

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This past week I attended a number of screenings at the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF). For as long as I have been here, I had never been to the festival and I didn’t know why. I started planning out the movies I wanted to see via their online schedule about a week before the festival started and was disappointed how many films on my list I would miss because of work and other obligations. Hopefully, some will show up in local art house theaters in the next few months. Still, I ended up seeing four films over the course of the last week and weekend. One of them I rushed which was fun even though they ended up adding another screening in response to the demand.

There was a huge crowd at every screening. I hope they did well. They lost their naming sponsor this year. When the president of the festival mentioned the loss of the sponsor I suddenly remembered that the reason I never attended the festival before was my impression has always been that the festival was comprised of insular elitist snobs who congratulated themselves on their taste. It think this was a result of the name- The Louis Vuitton Hawaiian International Film Festival. This year, there was no Louis Vuitton and I found my self anticipating the festival and wondering why I had never attended.

In my defense, I have a little baggage in this regard. When I was a student, I volunteered for a week at a film festival where the clientele was very much comprised of self-congratulatory elitist snobs. That was the demographic the festival literally catered to- one of the vendors sold brie, grapes and a baguette as a meal and the rest offered similar fare. Being a poor college student, I was going down the street to get pizza and burgers most of the time. That festival is no longer in existence. While its demise was a result of bigger problems than limiting their audience appeal, I am sure it didn’t help.

That said, I greatly appreciated that the audiences at HIFF were of a higher quality than I have experienced in most movies. Even though each screening was filled to near capacity, people generally watched in respectful silence (I’m looking at you, running commentary guy who was sitting two seats to the right of me yesterday.) No cell phones sounded despite the lack of the multiple appeals you generally see in movie theatres. The audiences seemed pretty representative of the usual movie audience demographics. If anything, it skewed younger than I anticipated so I might have expected more talking and cell phone use. I think the fact the shows were packed actually helped eliminate extraneous sound because people were so concerned about having their seat counted as available for rush seating, a small percentage seemed to buy concessions. (No brie, plenty of popcorn.) Or at least they kept the ice rattling to a minimum.

Also, as a friend remarked, attending the festival provided a greater guarantee that the movie would be of good quality. Presumably most people were there to watch something they can’t often see rather than be social.

Not everyone felt the movies were great, of course. One of the films I was interested in sold out so they added another screen to run concurrent with the first. I wasn’t aware of it at first, but the movie starred a local actor who has gone on to some success. I think that might have accounted for a large portion of the demand. When the actor introduced the film, she mentioned that it was definitely an art house film and that the director didn’t hand you the movie. There was an expectation that you might be angry or confused when the film ended.

That certainly seemed to be true at the end of the movie. As people filed out, some were already on their cell phones telling friends how much they hated the movie. I was a little disappointed that forewarned the movie might challenge them, they hadn’t given themselves the opportunity to even digest the experience or go next door to the Q&A and ask the actor what the heck was going on. I went on Twitter and there are a lot of negative tweets from that night too.

What I observed seems a testament to just how much pressure arts creators and presenters are under now to please people. People are not only rushing to judgment, they are rushing to tell their friends. That sort of word of mouth is sure to make it difficult for people who wish to be subtle or inspire thought with their work to do so and get the consideration and recognition they are due. If you want people to think, they aren’t likely to be dashing off tweets as they walk out of the theatre. Also, 140 characters may not be the best medium for praising your subtlety.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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