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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.

As The Drill Spins

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I have come to the conclusion that tartar control toothpaste does not operate as advertised. There is no other explanation for the inordinate amount of time the dental hygenist spent on my teeth today after all the dedicated brushing and flossing I do.

Reclining as I was gave me some time to ponder however.

One of the things I was pondering was The Artful Manager calling attention to a book excerpt by Guy Kawasaki. I especially liked Kawasaki’s concept of replacing mission statements with mantras. He is right on the money, I think, with all the reasons he gives for this.

I went to Kawasaki’s website intending to read the chapter Andrew Taylor was citing from. Instead, I got a little sidetracked and ended up reading a high school commencement speech Kawasaki gave a decade ago. It too has some interesting points, but the one I pondered whilst my teeth and gums were tortured was the anecdote about the ice harvesters. (#8 on his list of things for grads to do)

I actually cited this story about ice harvesters putting put out of business by ice makers who were put out of business by refrigerators back in August. While the guy who told the story to me came to less dire conclusions, he also delivered a message close to the one Kawasaki does.

You would think that the ice harvesters would see the advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they could think about was the known: better saws, better storage, better transportation.

Then you would think that the ice makers would see the advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is that the ice harvesters couldn’t embrace the unknown and jump their curve to the next curve.

Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you’ll be like the ice harvester and ice makers.

I tell you, this is one of the core concerns of my career. If this blog is a stool, the pursuit of how to successfully take what my readers and I are doing to the next stage is a leg. I am convinced I won’t really know the right steps to take until I look back on my life and identify what they were. Heck, the correct tactic might end up being something I write but don’t do that ends up inspiring someone else who pioneers the next phase.

Heck, this guy might represent that new place. He does a video blog on his commute to work and interviews people on his drive. According to a Boston Globe article he is absolutely dedicated to remaining within the constraints of his commute. He picks up interviewees on his normal route and the interview only lasts the duration of his drive.

It might be emulating and drawing inspiration from this sort of project which will form the building blocks of the next direction of things. Creators of art are always talking about communicating Truth with their work. These interviews during a drive in greater Boston get closer to reality TV than the edited to make it interesting versions we have on television today.

Will people grow disillusioned by the manipulated version of reality and flock to the theatre in droves? Probably not. Will the disillusioned defect in a large enough number to revitalize a reconfigured arts? Maybe.

Kawasaki says there is value in making an educated, well planned attempt.

Oh, by the way. I don’t have any cavities.

Playwriting and Tulips

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It seemed to be so close to being added as an afterthought that I almost skipped over it, but in his Field Letter this month, Theatre Communication Group Executive Director Ben Cameron touches on the fact that people are staging readings of plays without negotiating royalties.

“Please understand that this represents a grave misunderstanding of legal obligations – any public reading of a play, whether admission is charged or not, requires negotiated rights and payments of royalties to writers.”

I worked for a play publisher once upon a time so I know the details of this requirement. Often I had to point out to people that it was their decision not to charge people and that had no bearing on the cost of producing the play. You paid the hardware store for wood and paint and the theatrical supply place for costumes and gels even though you aren’t charging admission. With a little creativity you can do the play without any of these things and yet the person you don’t want to pay is the person whose vision provided the outline for what to build, paint and light.

Intellectual property theft is really big in the news and I can’t help but wonder if in 20 years or less we will have an entirely different view of intellectual property rights. Despite all the high profile cases about music piracy, I don’t know if stricter laws and aggressive prosecution will ultimately prevail. I suspect this will become even truer as the media and formats in which property stored becomes less and less tangible.

Around the same time I read Cameron’s letter, I read an article about tulips on Slate. Before you ask what tulips have to do with IP rights, let me assure you, quite a lot in both a literal and allegorical way. The article mentioned a memoir by a professor at Wesleyan University who saw a student picking tulips from her flower garden. She chased after the student and challenged the act.

You don’t own them,” one student said to her, “they’re nature. God made them.”

“God made them?” said Rose. “You think God made them? Did God call White Flower Farm and order the bulbs? Did God put it on his credit card? Did God dig holes for the bulbs in the fall and mix bone meal in the dirt to feed them and cover them with mulch in the winter? If you think God did that, you’re an idiot!”

The student told Rose to “chill.” Then, she writes, they spent “several vivacious minutes, engaging in what the Wesleyan Bulletin calls education outside the classroom.”

(And just as an aside, if you read the article you will realize God never intended tulips to be in North America. The lengths to which the Dutch go to simulate the conditions of eastern Turkey’s mountains where the flower originates are astounding.)

If this is the attitude of some about tangible objects, just imagine how they might view material that exists digitally and is easily transferred to other people or copied. It is much more difficult to conceive of the effort that went into creating a book these days than it was when monks painstakenly copied tomes.

This is not to say that people have no concept of the value of labor invested to create digital media. There is a multi-user game called Medievia that has long been the target of derision by members of the online gaming community for using a widely available code base called DIKU to create their game and then removing the credits required by the license. Medievia made the claim that the game was completely re-written but an investigation showed the changes were superficial. The length of debate on the legality and enforceability of the DIKU license is quite amazing and mind boggling. But it goes to show that there is some healthy respect for the effort people put in to creating works.

It should be noted that the creators of DIKU didn’t make much, if any, money on their creation. People are allowed to use the software for free if they don’t charge for the product either. The esteem people have for the rights of intellectual property creators may be indirectly proportional to the amount of money they make off the product. If Microsoft had created DIKU, you probably wouldn’t hear a peep.

The whole subject of IP rights is so fraught with complex issues it is impossible to try to address in one night’s entry. My purpose in posting tonight is to posit this idea–If we assume that in future years protection of artistic expression as we know it today will be nonexistent in practice if not in fact, what can artists do to shape the new situation?

Since the creations of people who don’t profit from their work seems to enjoy some protection among online society, artists seem to already be in a position to take advantage of the new world order.
Though between an opportunity to reap millions off your creation and having people jump to your defense online, I figure artists will still dream of money.

In a world where the open source model is creating operating systems like Linux and reference “books” like Wikipedia and popular music is often comprised of borrowed bits of other people’s music, can an artist hope to be much more than first and most honored among many contributors?

I surely don’t know. If anyone comes across a person or group who seem to be providing a model for the future on how to assert your identity and retain credit for your labor without resorting to ultimately futile stopgap measures, I would love to hear about it.

Leading From the Top

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As many of you know, I live in Hawaii. Yesterday was a state holiday celebrating the birthday of Prince Jonah Kuhio who was an heir to the Hawaiian throne when Queen Lili`uokalani was overthrown by American businessmen.

It got me to thinking about Liliuokalani and her predecessor, King Kalakaua and their relationship with the arts. Even in captivity Lili`uokalani, who was an accomplished songwriter and writer, had a profound effect on Hawaiian culture. Many of her compositions, including Aloha `Oe, are still sung or used today.

King Kalakaua had an even greater impact on the arts. He is known as the “Merrie Monarch” for his patronage of the arts. He is especially known for his revival of many Hawaiian cultural traditions, including hula which had been banned because missionaries viewed it as obscene. Today, the Merrie Monarch Festival is an annual hula event held in his honor.

As I think about these things, I can’t help but wonder if the United States has lost something by not having the example of monarchy that patronized the arts as a strong element of its cultural heritage.

Certainly foundations spread funding around to more organizations than any noble patron could ever do. There is also no arguing that the Medici, Vatican and Elizabethean support of the arts was predicated on the works matching their agendas and validating their power. As I read the historical influences of the arts in the United States in Joli Jensen’s Is Art Good For Us?, I can see some benefits to the way things developed here.

However, the example of a national leader supporting the arts can go a long way. The proud anti-intellectualism of the current administration aside, with a few exceptions, it is difficult for me to think of any time a president attended an arts event or sponsored one in the White House. This is not to say that they didn’t, it is only that there wasn’t much ado made of it in the media. On the other hand, I can easily recall stories about trips to Camp David and Crawford, Texas and what the places generally looked it.

The few exceptions I mentioned earlier don’t bode well for presidents. The first examples that pop in to my mind when I think of presidential support for the arts are Lincoln at the Ford Theatre and Kennedy’s tribute to Robert Frost at Amherst College which is viewed as the impeteus for the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. (Though it was President Johnson who signed the act creating the NEA.) President Clinton also comes to mind with his sax. He might have been a good proponent for arts funding if he had a better relationship with Congress. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out well for any of these gentlemen.

The presidency has many traditions that it engages in from tree lighting, egg hunts and turkey pardoning. It would be great if someone could influence a president to begin the precendent of making an annual donation to some arts fund or foundation (to prevent the appearance of favoritism to any group or genre) with great fanfare. Actually, it would be great to see the president attending an event with great fanfare as well. However, as busy as the president can tend to be, it might not be a good message to send if some crisis continually leads to cancelling attendance.

When Artists Get Old

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By way of a weekly newsletter from NYFA, I learned about the start of a continuing study by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia University that looks at the needs of aging artists. They had conducted earlier research on New York artists (along with those in other cities) in 1988 and 1997. According to the executive summary, there is an urgency to this study based on the impeding retirement of baby boomer artists.

While foundations and other funders have long directed their largesse to emerging and even mid-career artists, notably few have concerned themselves with the artist as s/he matures into old age- artistically, emotionally, financially and chronologically. Special attention to aging artists is important for material support and policy-making and is made more urgent in a time of scarce resources when the baby boomer generation is about to enter the ranks of the retired.

Among the problems faced by the Research Center is actually finding artists. “Past evidence shows that as people age, they often become more isolated from each other, making it difficult for organizations to serve them as a group as well as posing many individual problems.” The Research Center uses a methodology developed by sociologist Douglas Heckathorn previous employed to conduct a survey for the NEA that required them to seek aged jazz musicians.

I heard a series of interviews on NPR last year about the jazz survey which really underscored the plight of these jazz musicians now that they had retired. It was the recollection of these stories that made me notice the call for study participants on the NYFA newsletter.

If you read this blog and are an aging artist (62+) living in the five boroughs or know someone who is, contact the Research Center for Arts and Culture at 212.678.8184 or email rcac@columbia.edu. There is also a meeting on March 27, 2006 from 6-8 pm about the study.

Are You Worth Your Age?

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Last week Slate had a short article about how young people are underpaid in relation to their productivity whereas older folks are overpaid in proportion to what they produce.

At the same time, Adaptistration cited an article in San Francisco Classical Voice that revealed the salaries of musicians and administrators in the Bay area.

As I look at the fact that the SF Opera’s Musical Director makes $600,000 and the concert master makes $126,000, I first have to wonder if he is really about five times more productive each year than she is. I don’t know their respective ages or education and experience levels, but I can’t believe that the difference is in direct proportion to the gap in their salaries.

It leads to the question of what it is that is valued in the arts. I know Drew McManus has bemoaned the disparity between executive compensation and musician salaries so I won’t tread upon that ground.

It is easy as a person not earning that much to cast aspersions upon those who do. I can’t say that by some strange twist of fate I won’t end up making a large amount of money before the end of my career. I can honestly say that I have a hard time believing I will ever be worth that much to an organization.

I certainly feel that my value will grow as I become wiser about addressing challenges and planning prudently, but I don’t know that I will become so adept I will be worth $600,000. (This is coming back to haunt me at some future salary negotiation. I can feel it.)

Now in comparison with some corporate CEO salaries and benefit packages, this sort of pay scale is downright parsimonious. Those guys may be brokering billion dollar deals, but it is the masses who are responsible for that sort of valuation. In this context, it seems only right that the leadership of a large non-profit be well-compensated.

But what about the mission of a non-profit? Is the community well served by a senior person making that much money? If the opera had hired someone as music director who would accept $200,000, would the quality suffered significantly? Perhaps the fundraising would be more difficult with a lesser name at the helm and instead of saving $400,000, there would only be a $100-$200,000 surplus. But if that money could be sunk into the productions, outreach programs or low cost ticketing, wouldn’t the organization mission be better served?

It is very easy to spend other people’s money to be sure. The opera’s business is its own and it seems to be doing fairly well. If the board and the community is happy and feels the opera is fulfilling its role, more power to them and more money to their administrators. (Don’t want to burn any potential bridges 😉 )

This isn’t really about the opera, but about the industry at large. I just want to send a question or two rattling around people’s minds about whether there is a point where people are too well compensated to the detriment of the organization’s mission.

And harkening back to the Slate article, are they being paid out of proportion to what they produce for the organization. It could be argued that if someone attracts $1 million in donations to the organization, they are worth a percentage of that. In theory, the money was solicited to benefit the mission of the organization so the percentage granted as a bonus in one form or another really needs to be scrutinized.

It is the high percentage of a donation that goes to administrative costs that tends to be the main point of criticism for charities like the United Way. Arts groups don’t need that to become the story for them.

B.i.t.S Shaping/Warping Young Minds

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It has recently come to my attention that there is a college course called Audience Connections at Drury University in which my blog is required weekly reading.

After considering the grave danger inherent in my ramblings being used to shape the nascent minds of artists, I was rather pleased and honored.

Ron Spigelman who teaches the class and is also the music director of the Springfield (MO) Symphony, has graciously granted me permission to post some of his thoughts from correspondence we had following his comments on my blog entry.

The purpose and goals of the Audience Connections Class are:

The Audience Connection:
Music, the organic art form that can give a life purpose and fulfillment for the performer and the listener. Right now, little more than about 1 in 10 people in America listens to Classical music, and even less attend live Classical Music performances. This class is an attempt to address this problem directly.

COURSE GOALS:
1. For students to begin to be able to reach out to audiences of all ages with music in a way that makes the art form accessible, fulfilling, visceral, and most importantly, relevant.

2. To understand and implement advocacy and activism through performance and explanation, to audiences who are on the whole without musical training.

3. To learn skills by which to encourage individuals or groups to attend a fine arts performance who have rarely or never done so.

So how does my blog come in? As you might imagine, it is because blogs like mine deal with current events and influences. (They also apparently read Adaptistration and Greg Sandow’s blogs, but I am sure mine is their favorite since it deals with something more than just classical music. And I am sure this little shout out to them won’t hurt either.)

I heartily approve of his integration of blogs and news from Artsjournal.com into class discussions. Of course, it is easy to admire his technique because it is exactly what I would be doing if I were teaching right now.

The way he is conducting class sounds really productive, if only to get students thinking issues inherent to their art and trying to apply it in a manner that will facilitate a relationship with the audience.

We range from arts funding, politics, the argument over the intrinsic versus the instrumental and thanks to the internet our examples are global and most importantly …are happening now!

The students each perform to the class and are coached on connecting. They have to justify their favorite works of art whether they be Pop songs or Paintings and do it from an audience perspective focusing on the personal rather than the analytical.

After Spring break one of them is actually going to cold call some elementary schools and play to the students and interact before he does his jury performance. I am of the firm belief that if all music students did this…then they would appreciate and learn the art of true communication instead of playing 4 years of juries to professors…

The next big challenge for his students is to practice what they have learned in the real world. It is one thing to discuss these subjects among people with whom you have a shared vocabulary and set of values and another to do it with anxious patrons who may loudly declare that classical music sucks because they resent mom for dragging them along.

Ron didn’t mention it, but I would imagine with all my references to Drew McManus’ docent program, (I mean, I mention it so much do I even have to provide a link anymore?), he may decide to have students gain some real life experience and fill a similar role at some Springfield Symphony or the Springfield-Drury Civic Orchestra performances.

Bonding Over Brisket

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One thing I have observed during my career in the performing arts is that while working in performing arts is that while the pay isn’t always too good, there are always some good bonding moments you don’t usually get in for-profit companies. (Unless you work for a cool internet start up that provides all sorts of fringe activities in the office.)

I was just wondering if anyone had some good stories. Sharing this sort of information can help other organizations with some good morale boosting activities. I am looking for things outside of the annual Christmas party.

What got me thinking about this subject is that somehow tomorrow became chocolate chip pancake day. It is strange that I don’t know how that came about given that I am the one making the pancakes. If it turns out well, perhaps it will be a fairly regular thing. We just had a long string of performances so it is a kind of celebration/thank you for all the hard work.

Food seems be a common theme in some of the events with which I have been associated. One summer theatre I worked at had barbeque Wednesdays. The theatre provided the grills, you provided the meat and veggies. Since we were a bunch of poor theatre people, the cuts of meat tended to be a little on the cheap side. But I have to say that people were pretty creative about what they used for marinades. Some pretty good taste combinations that year.

There have also been some afternoon teas for staff during tense times. Strike dinners at midnight where a volunteer corps provided the food–was good for getting the volunteers and staff to bond.

I think there is some unspoken rule bumping around the collective unconscious of many performing arts theatres about the tech director buying pizza for the crew at significant stages in the building process. It is never at the same stage on every show–sometimes it was tech week, sometimes it was earlier in the process. I have always instinctively known what night it was going to happen without being told. I have also done it at what seemed to be the proper confluence of events.

My current job is the third one I have held where I have secretly hidden candy filled eggs around the building for staff and students to find (and when the plastic eggs are returned, I refill them.) It never loses its appeal for me since the people who figure out I am the Easter bunny don’t tell the new people. Actually, last year one staff member didn’t even make an attempt to puzzle out my identity. He said nice things happen around the theatre so infrequently, he wasn’t going to question it lest the benefactor decide to stop.

A couple places I worked at held all night scavenger hunts. One place did it at the end of the season to close things out. The other did it at the beginning of the season to rally energy (though in the short term, they all ended up sleeping through the next day.)

The element that contributes most to the success of any bonding/morale building event seems to be either that it originates from the workers instead of the management or the workers have really bought into the idea. It seems that if management decides everyone needs to do a teambuilding activity like a Ropes challenge course, the effort either meets a lot of resentment and falls flat or is only marginally effective.

Events like the ones I have mentioned tend not to cost as much as team building exercises either. So if anyone has some good ideas that have formed the basis of solid staff relationships, type up a comment or email me!

To Affinity and Beyond!

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My thanks to Brendan Glynn Marketing and Communication Director of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for his comments on my affinity entry from last week.

I had emailed a list of questions to the communications coordinator at the center last week. I don’t know if he passed them on to Brendan or if Brendan just happened upon the entry since he says he is jumping in to the conversation. In any case, he answered all my questions an more. His outline of the plans for the new position in affinity marketing are very interesting.

What was really unexpected were his plans to adopt the approach Santa presented Macys in Miracle on 34th Street and send patrons to his competitors.

“If they are lovers of modern dance, traditional thinking would say not to let our patrons know about something going on at another venue. I disagree. We cannot stand in the way of an enthusiast finding out about a performance in another venue, so why don’t we take the high road and be the first to deliver that message to them. If there is a way we can bring value by offering up their interests to the table, it just helps to build our relationship with those patrons even further. Eventually, some can look to us as the source of information for their theater and entertainment interests.”

Is this sort of idealism foolish or is it going to work like it did in the movie and endear the center to the public? If I am a philanthropist living in Miami, I don’t know if I couldn’t help but be impressed by their boldness.

Also, if other performing groups start sending their seasons to the center for dissemination, it gives the center a better sense of what is out there so they can plan their offerings accordingly.

I will try to remember to check back in a year once they have an affinity person in place and see how things turned out and what changes they are planning to effect. It’ll be interesting to see.

All You Need Is A Good SWOT

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My college is going through a SWOT analysis process at the moment and each division and department is supposed to fill out a 29 page form detailing where things stand.

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. Wikipedia has a good primer article on it, including a few warnings about how not to use it. I also found a web page that performs some SWOT analyses on familiar corporations.

Essentially, the analysis serves as a tool to get organizations talking about the internal factors (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external factors (Opportunities and Threats) in relation to a project or venture. It doesn’t have to be applied to an entire organization, but perhaps to a sub-area like ticket office operations. Small groups within an organization can employ this process in order to make recommendations to management.

I just thought I would toss this information out there as an FYI. While it does have its weaknesses, the process is fairly easy to use and doesn’t require participation by everyone in the organization to be effective.

Does Bono Like Ballet?

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Earlier this year U2 scheduled a concert on the same day as we had scheduled a ballet company. I had two concerns about this 1- The publicity and stories in the media were going to totally eclipse anything I managed to get written/broadcast about my performance. 2- I really wanted to go to the U2 concert and failing that, wanted it to sell out so they would add a show.

Last week brought an announcement that the U2 show had to be postpone bringing welcome relief to both my concerns. (Except now I have to join the competition for tickets!)

Back when the two shows were postioned on the same night, every time I mentioned the fact, people told me not to worry because U2 and ballet don’t share audiences.

Really?

U2 started getting airplay in the US around 1983. I figure conservatively that the ages of people who became interested in them ranged from 13 to 30. Today that 13 year old is 36 and the 30 year old is 56. True, a lot of those 56 year old probably retired from the whole concert scene and weren’t planning on going to see U2. A lot of them probably weren’t planning to come to the ballet that night either.

I can’t believe that there aren’t U2 fans who don’t go to the ballet though. I don’t know if Bono is one of those guys who won’t go to the ballet if his wife doesn’t push him or not. But I think I am on pretty firm ground claiming that he would appreciate the mastery and artistry he saw on stage.

I am seriously considering adopting this approach as a way to promote the performance. At this point, I don’t expect much more than our usual dance crowd to turn out.

I was thinking of something along the lines of:

“U2 is Postponed so come to the ballet!
What? U2 fans don’t go to ballet? How do you know?

The founders are former NY City Ballet dancers and their aim is to make ballet about the fun instead of the perfection of technique. If there is one thing U2 fans know, it is artistry and that is what this company offers.”

I wrote this in my head on the drive home so it is still rough, but you get the thrust. This is the stated aim of the ballet company so I am not misrepresenting difficult material as accessible to sell tickets. I will have to ponder it some more, but I don’t think this approach will alienate my usual audience, (such as it is), either.

In addition, I am pondering taking some inspiration from Drew McManus’ “Take A Friend To the Orchestra,” and offering a special rate if people mention they are taking a friend to the ballet–“So You Can Talk About What You Saw Afterward.”

The whole idea of ticket pricing and discounting is always a hot topic rife for debate. I am in a particularly tough spot since Neill Archer Roan just responded to a comment I made on his blog that he applauded my decision to avoid rush discounting. Now here I am saying I might do that. (Though the discount will be available prior, I predict most people will wait until performance night to invoke it.)

However, last week I also invoked Neill’s entry, “How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.”

I think proposing you bring a friend along so you can talk about the experience can cause a mental shift from “who the heck do I know would want to go with me?” to “hey, X is a smart person, maybe (s)he would be interested in trying something new.” Even though the situation hasn’t changed, suggesting that you will be inviting a friend to share a new experience rather than trying to convince someone to come along so you don’t enter an alien experience alone is less intimidating.

It’s also easier to convince said other person that you are inviting them along to enjoyable experience if you aren’t giving off a vibe that you desperately feel the need to have a familiar presence to anchor you in an alien environment.

Anyway. Some things to still ponder before I start writing press releases and ad copy. If nothing else, the idea is a good jumping off point since it is more interesting than my typical campaigns. Not much to lose. And while the potential gain might not ultimately be all that much either, if I do get a positive response, maybe I learn how to reach the community a little better next time.

I’ll let you know what happens.

Searching for Your Affinity

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A job description came to my attention thanks to one of my old professors passing on some job listings from graduates of my program. The job is for an affinity marketer at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Florida.

Affinity marketing is generally the approach to marketing that focuses finding customers interested in a certain product or topic, then offering that customer related products and services. It has been around since at least the late 90s and has been mostly related to ecommerce. This is the first time I have ever seen the position advertised in an arts setting.

I found an <em>Inc magazine article that talked about affinity groups in business. While the article isn’t exactly about affinity marketing, it does point out that shared affinity doesn’t mean living in the same town, driving the same cars, working in the same industry and going to the same churches. One of the groups it profiles is comprised of those “who are all under 40 and managing companies of a certain size, operate from a similar frame of reference, even though they may have vastly different businesses and experiences.”

Andrew Taylor made a few posts in recent months that points out a few ways shared affinity can be addressed in the arts.

The Broward job description has some interesting duties listed which appear to be part of these affinity marketing efforts.

– append the current database with lifestyle and psychographic info

– identify potential niches, clusters or anomalies within the database and append consumer profiles in order to target audiences and create marketing strategies.

– coordinate the marketing message to specific individuals or cluster.

– analyze and utilize data to identify opportunities and implement tactics

– manage subscription communication for affinity program patrons

It might be a sign of just how new an effort affinity marketing is to the arts that the job description doesn’t even list prior experience in affinity marketing as a desirable plus. Actually, I wonder if it is an entirely new position for the organization. I didn’t find anything on the website that collected information that might indicate the sort of connections for which they might be looking.

I am going to drop a line to the person who forwarded the info to my old professor and see what the story is. Let you all know what I turn up.

Why Didn’t You Advertise This?

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As I continue to ponder and decipher what people are really telling me on their audience surveys, I came across this entry on Neill Archer Roan’s blog, How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.

In his entry, Neill says:

An effective info-mediary must anticipate the informational needs their customers require, then provide it: on-demand. Effectiveness in this role requires not only substantive and informational expertise, but also a clear understanding of the form in which consumers want the information delivered and the channels through which the information feels most accessible and credible.

(He also makes a lot of other valuable observations so go read it. I am just focussing on this idea though.)

Neill’s point here cuts right to the heart of a comment I am trying to figure the answer to-“Why Didn’t You Advertise This?” Now given I get this comment most from people who have attended the event for which they are bemoaning the lack of advertising, obviously something worked to get them in the door.

Often they did see/hear an ad or a story or heard about the show from a friend. The problem they have is that they learned about the show close to performance time and had such a great experience, they are concerned that having almost missed it, they will lose out on something equally great in the future.

I usually try to find out what communication channels are best for reaching them. I ask it on the survey and of course also interview the commenter in my lobby. Many times I discover they read the newspaper/listen to the radio station where the ad ran but they missed it amidst all the other ads and stories in the paper or because they were concentrating on driving or talking on their cellphone when the radio spots ran.

What the patron wants is to have known about the show earlier. The problem is, most of my audience doesn’t make a decision until the last minute so it doesn’t make sense to spend money to promote it earlier. (I often suspect that is the method the worried patron uses as well, but if giving the benefit of the doubt will sell tickets earlier, I am all for it!)

The free publicity opportunities, like calendar websites, I take advantage of in July and list my whole season. The information has been available there and in my brochure since then. The newspapers have also had my calendar listings since around then too, but they don’t list the events until closer to the date when it is actually news. Because the information is categorized so well, people often get information there first even if they missed the ad on the page before.

So how do I communicate effectively with the highly interested person who is not on my mailing list? I have no definitive answers.

It appears my efforts at using opinion leaders in the community as word of mouth advertising has been slightly effective since attendance has been nudging up slightly. But I admit, it is a precarious situation. It is the method I can exert the least control over (which means it probably has the highest level of credibility with the public) so I can’t direct who is reached.

My marketing campaign for my last show was almost entirely word of mouth supported by ticket giveaways on radio shows that played the genre of music of the group I was presenting. I figured I would sell it out so I didn’t plan any print advertising.

We were doing a pretty steady business based on the brochure and word of mouth from August to January. Nothing big, but a steady trickle. Things got better in mid-January when the radio giveaways started. Based on this surge, I expected the show to sell out a week or so before the show. A week out we were only half sold and there were days where almost no one was buying.

Now what I think happened was all the folks who planned ahead had gotten their tickets and the procrastinators were holding true to form. I panicked a little and took out a print ad in the free alternative weekly.

As you might imagine, I need not have bothered. In the last couple days we were deluged and then had people turn up early the night of the performance in hopes some seats would open up.

Just as the word of mouth method was precarious, but ultimately rewarding for me, it probably seems even more so for the person who hears about it at the last minute and fears missing out in the future.

It is upon such fears large mailing lists are built. I still don’t have a dependable channel to reach the other heretofore unreached people to let them know what they might be missing. I am pretty sure no one does or they would be trying to sell it to me. I suspect each community is different so the best solution is cobbled together from existing technologies and methods.

Giving In To The Inevitable

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Though I have railed against the screening of blog entries in the past, I have activated the requirement that commenters register today. I had 600 comments this weekend, most of which were advertisements for any number of services both mundane and erotic.

In the course of deleting them, I accidentally erased a new comment (I don’t know from whom it was, sorry about that.) So in order to save my readers from my blunders, I instigated this measure which I hope will cut down on the garbage.

Struck Down By Artist Visa Problems

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I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened. You hear about it happening to someone else–and you hope it stays that way. Yesterday I received confirmation that because of problems getting travel visas, one of the foreign performance groups for my season won’t be making it this year.

My partners and I are scrambling to figure out if we can reschedule them for next year since we have already paid hefty airline ticket prices and hope to use them. We are also looking into whether the fees and other paperwork we have completed can be applicable to a trip next year.

I have spent the last two days implementing contingency plans–namely figuring out how I will refund all the ticket purchases and publicize the cancellation in a way that doesn’t alienate my audience for next season.

One semi-fortunate element of the timing is that the news came just a day or two before the ticket purchases would have really picked up due to our promotional efforts (which had to be cancelled as well, of course). Had we found out a week or so from now we would have quite a few more tickets to refund. (An order did sneak in over the internet just as we were changing the web page and disabling the order functions though.)

It is amazing how many people have to be contacted when something is cancel even in addition to the audience members. I had to inform my staff, caterer, the car rental place, the hotel (we almost got hit with a penalty for cancelling because it was less than 30 days out), the print, radio and television advertising reps, the print, radio and television media who were going to do stories and calendar listings.

One of the people I forgot initially was the company providing the sound equipment and backline. Thankfully my tech director remembered to ask. I also had to break the disappointing news to a student group who were preparing a big welcome for the performers.

It is too early to determine what problems, if any, will come of this since so few people know about the cancelation. One of the things I am watching with interest is the way my partners announce the change. Currently, the alteration in their seasons hasn’t appeared on their websites. They are telling customers it is cancelled because a woman called to see if the show was cancelled at my theatre upon learning that the group wouldn’t be appearing near her.

It Helps Them Too

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I had an experience this weekend that showed me a value to arts funding I had never come across before. It isn’t going to convince foundations, arts councils and the federal government to necessarily pour more money into the arts and humanities, but it does go to show just how much good the money is doing.

This weekend we hosted a performance of Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, a traditional dance group from India. They are really a remarkable group based on their process alone. Every 6 years 6 women are chosen to enter the world’s only dance village. For these six women, every cost is taken care of. There are day students and week long seminars that are periodically conducted. Those people have to pay, but those chosen for the residential program have all their needs attended to..sort of.

The life they lead is somewhat akin to monstastic. There is no vow of silence and there are days off to go into town. However, the day runs something like: wake up, dance, help make breakfast, dance, help garden, study Sanskrit, have lunch, dance, etc.

The thing I found out this weekend though is that there is almost no written record of the classical dance forms. Everything was passed by word of mouth. One of the group’s projects is to assemble a library of material because right now they have to consult materials in the New York Public Library on their annual trips to the U.S. All the photos and other records of performance in India are held by families who are very resistance to sharing.

There is a classical text on Indian dance that is rather complete. An Indian woman has apparently made it her life’s work to translate and annotate it but almost no one uses it. One of the dancers commented on the irony of meeting a white, male Asian Studies student here that was more familiar with the book than most of the dancers in her country.

Another thing that surprised me was that there is apparently no tradition of dancing as a group in India. If there are 4 women dancing somewhere they are essentially each doing solo performances. The road manager told me that one of the biggest hurdles they have had to overcome is instilling a sense of performance discipline in the members of the group so they work in unison and ignore things like a flower falling from another dancer’s hair. Everything the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble has learned about spacing, coordinated complementary movement and interaction with other dancers they have learned from Western choreographers.

One of the group leaders was overjoyed to learn that a respected dance teacher from the local university was attending the show and had come backstage to visit. The professor in question had recorded Indian dance before in one of the dance notation forms and the dancer wanted to consult with her on how it was accomplished and the suitability of the notation style to traditional Indian dance.

Now one might argue, perhaps correctly, that if you are codifying a form that has not been and adding group choreography where none ever existed, you are no longer performing the dance traditionally. Honestly, I think that is a discussion for another entry and perhaps another blog.

It seems to me that if a group is trying to record and preserve cultural traditions which have nearly been lost a number of times due to sickness and disasters killing off gurus, that is a laudable goal. Indeed, some of their measures are actually doing more to preserve elements of performance. They periodically video tape themselves so that when they notice they have somehow started doing something differently, they can go back and see where the change started creeping in.

What seems incredible to me is that arts and humanities funding in the US is providing the references, resources and trained expertise to aid this group in the discovery and preservation their culture. It is common to hear about foreign entities consulting with our scientists, corporations and government in order to make their lives better and solve problems. It is easy to forget that our artists have some useful advice to provide too.

What Are You Really Asking Me For?

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One of the primary rules of surveying people is that you shouldn’t ask a question if you have no intention of acting upon the results. With that in mind, one of the questions on our audience survey asks patrons to make suggestions specifically on areas that are within our power to change.

The specificity of the question doesn’t seem to impede suggestions wholly outside the scope of our abilities to address. A recent suggestion in that space was to have an off-ramp added to the interstate near our building.

Another woman commented that she would have liked to have the opportunity to purchase materials from the performers. I am 98% sure this was written by the woman to whom I explained prior to the show that unlike most of our performers, the group had not brought materials to sell.

While my initial reaction is usually exasperation, I try to figure out what the audience member is really trying to tell me. In some cases, the artists people suggest reveal the fact that people don’t quite understand our mission or that we would have to charge $1000/seat to afford performers and their technical requirements in our small theatre.

The interstate off-ramp is understandable because the theatre is 300 yards from the interstate but the exit is a mile away. You would think an institution of higher education would warrant its own exit, but the campus wasn’t set up with one, alas. (What’s worse, because the interstate is lower than the campus, you can’t see the theatre from it. So while 80% of the population is stuck in traffic in front of the theatre every morning, few could tell you where it is.)

I can also understand the impulse of the woman who wanted some merchandise. She had just seen something she had never seen before, (Indian dance-Nrityagram Dance Ensemble- They are really quite above the level of other Indian dance performers), and felt the need to have something to help her continue processing the experience when she went home.

For all the notes in the program book and the research on the dance form that had gone into our informational lobby display, there was probably a great deal she did not know or understand about what she just saw. I had read all that information and more and many of my assumptions about traditional Indian dance were destroyed in a 20 minute conversation with one of the group members.

This woman didn’t have the benefit of any of that so I can understand that she may have felt a little lost at sea and asked for the only thing she could imagine we could provide that might help her out.

I didn’t get to speak with her as she left though. Maybe she was just an idiot and obstinately refused to accept the fact she couldn’t by a souvenir. Making assumptions like that doesn’t drive me to provide a better experience though.

Painting Your Pension

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Thanks to a newsletter from NYFA I became aware of an innovative pension plan for artists.

The Artist Pension Trust provides pension services to artists “a group whose career trajectories and employment patterns make existing pension programs inaccessible.”

They do this by essentially having artists invest their talent instead of money. Each artist makes annual contributions of work over the course of 20 years. The pension funds come from the sale of the art work. The proceeds of the sales are distributed as follows:

“40% is directed to the pool and distributed pro rata among all the artists…and 40% is directed to the account of the artist whose work was sold. Each artist receives an equal share of the pooled funds generated by the sale of the works held in the Artist Pension Trust, thereby benefiting from the collective success of all of the artists in his/her Trust. Each artist is additionally rewarded according to his/her own individual market success, since 40% of the proceeds of the sale of his/her work can be invested in the artist’s individual account.”

The thing I like about this arrangement is that not only is each individual rewarded for his/her own success, but it also encourages all the contributing artists to promote their fellows. Instead of viewing each other entirely as competitors for art buyers’ money, there is a benefit to openly advocating another’s work.

The remaining 20% of the proceeds will go to the pension fund administration fees. This may seem like an excessive amount until note that the fund has to store the pieces and promises museum quality care and presentation.

This Is What I Am Doing With Your Money

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I was reading a comment to a recent entry on Boards over at Artful Manager where the writer pointed out that but for a dissenting voice, the public may never have learned about some of the biggest recent scandals involving non-profit mismanagement of funds (San Francisco, Capitol Area United Way)

After thinking about how a few jerks made the difficult task of fund raising more difficult, I started thinking about how arts organizations can show good faith with their donors and illustrate where the money went.

The big donors have concrete symbols like seats, lobbys and halls with their names emblazons which they can associate their donations. But for the people who give substantial portions of their disposable income but don’t quite rate architectural features, the physical connection becomes more difficult.

Sure, their name is in the program book, but it cost a couple cents to print and most folks will toss it away at the end of the night. If the donor has paid for admission to a performance or exhibit, it becomes difficult to grasp the abstract concept that the admission fee is only paying for the first 45 minutes of the evening and their donation combined with those of others is paying for the rest.

I was just curious to know if anyone has come across a novel approach to giving donors a better sense of what their money is doing. Something that just came to mind was borrowing on the whole adopt a child from the third world idea and having school kids that benefited from an outreach project write to specific donors.

Another alternative is to have an open books approach and mail home an annual report similar to the ones mutual funds send out outlining how the past season went with revenue statements and balance sheets. Actually, it would probably be even more impressive if you presented plan for the future season with the percentage of earned and unearned revenue you intended to devote to each show.

I imagine one might have to exercise some care if you were planning risker fare and had a chart showing that you were devoting a larger percentage of unearned revenue than earned based on the assumption fewer people would want to see it or would pay as much as other shows to see it. Donors may feel that most of their donation was going to a smut filled show and complain. Might be good to break out unearned into foundation, private, government and show it mostly as foundation.

Anyhow, as I said, if anyone has come across a good program that gives donors a real sense of the value of their contribution to the organization, let me know!

Seeing Ideas Implemented

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I was looking at Ben Cameron’s Field Letter over on the Theatre Communication Group’s website today. (It may be replaced by a new letter soon so you may have to click on the Archives link, search for field letter and find the one dated Jan 15, 2006). As I read I began to recognize some ideas that have been bandied about blogs recently appearing in practice.

A couple of examples he cited reminded me of Drew McManus’ docent idea.

“Geva Theatre Center’s (Rochester, NY) pre-talk sessions with actors. An actor is paid a stipend to do this before every performance, as I recall, inviting the audience into the creative ideas of production before they see the play, even giving them ‘teaser’ moments to look for in the play.”

I know that I often come back to Drew’s docent program in my posts, but it really seems like good audience relations to offer guidestones to patrons who may might be experimenting with attendance for the first time.

Another good related example Cameron cites had a couple points that really caught my attention. (My emphasis)

Associate artistic director Sean Daniels of California Shakespeare Theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area writes, “I had at one point thought that marketing Shakespeare to 22-year-olds was nearly impossible, but we went from 1,000 to 3,000 ‘under 30’ tickets in our first season.” This was made possible through a multi-tiered strategy:

–the creation of a group of ambassadors, empowering them to speak for the theatre;
-organizing events marketed towards and created for younger people (‘shindigs’), featuring drinks before and dancing afterwards, but with the play always being the centerpiece of the evening, “not a great evening with a play smushed in the middle”;
-using marketing muscle, through blogs for all artists, so people could have personal conversations with them;
-creating a comprehensive intern program to train 18- to 35-year-old administrators;
-recruitment of under-35-year-olds to the board; and finally, and most importantly,
–making sure “that bringing in young people was not a marketing initiative, but an artistic one'”a shift of the conversation from what young people want to ‘how do we create more points of access to the work we’re doing'”a viewpoint that informs the strategic plan, the board work and more

I included the whole quote because many organizations are desperate to attract younger audiences. There are a couple good strategies here for doing so. I wasn’t sure many people were going to click through to Cameron’s letter so I wanted to present them here.

My first emphasis of course links back to Drew’s docent program.

The second emphasis locked right into Andrew Taylor’s entry yesterday where he cites Neill Archer Roan whose study of audience trends shows that nearly half of an organization’s audience is lost every year replaced by new people drawn to performances by good marketing.

Andrew quotes Neill

“the course of our work, our client organizations have discovered that their marketing departments have effectively acquired new accounts (some in the range of 60% to 70% of audiences as new or re-acquired) while the rest of the organization — most of which has held itself harmless in this dynamic — has failed to retain the audience that marketing has acquired.”

It is great that California Shakespeare Theatre gets the concept that everyone has to work to retain the audience because the turnover numbers were a surprise for me. Though as a point of focus for organizational committment, it does make sense to adopt this approach.

One last note from Ben Cameron
“But these articles raised for me an additional question-are we connecting artists and potential audiences outside of the performance event itself? I’d love to know more about what people are doing in this way. If your theatre is undertaking new strategies, please let me know I’ll report back about what folks are doing.”

If you got something to share, let him know-his email is bcameron@tcg.org.

If you aren’t sure you want to bother a man as busy was Ben Cameron must be with your strategies, email me and I will share here. You are actually likely to see your good ideas posted online more quickly with me after all 😉

How Shall I Educate Thee

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I’ve touched lightly upon the problems with the training of theatre professionals a couple times in entries. I never really got into it in the depth that Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas did in a recent entry.

It is an interesting read just for the simple fact that how artists are trained should be a periennial topic of discussion. I agree with Walters that offering BAs and BFAs in the arts is a disservice to students because the programs have too narrow a focus at a point in a student’s career when they need to have a wide variety of experiences with which to inform their art later.

Walters quotes at some length Tony Kushner’s keynote address to the 1997 Association of Theatre in Higher Education conference (reprinted in Jan 1998 American Theatre) which borrowed Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” title.

Among the sentiments Kushner stated were

“we should abolish all undergraduate art majors…any college or university worth its salt tell its undergraduate students that henceforth they cannot major in theatre, the visual arts, writing, filmmaking, photography or musical composition….[and instead] must prepare to spend the next four years of their lives in the Purgatory of the Liberal Arts.”

There are a few bits of knowledge Kushner feels students should know with which I don’t quite agree. I don’t know that people come across alexandrines enough in their careers that they would remember what it was much less need to memorize the definition in the first place. And I don’t know that my hormone laden brain could have really absorbed the Poetics when I was in college. I came to a greater understanding when I looked back upon it later in life.

I do think that if you are going to get into the arts as a career you are probably better served by someone telling you to get familiar with history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, political science and literature and then come back and you’ll talk.

Even BA programs that theoretically don’t have the conservatory focus and are supposed to provide a well-rounded education tends to have an organizational culture, if not an overt policy, that the Art and all related activites are to receive first priority. Certainly the discipline to rehearse, be prepare for performances, sculpt, paint, photograph, etc are important habits for artists to cultivate. But if the degree calls for a well rounded education, the program focus should be equally distributed.

Just as a disclaimer, I will say I think this is more possible to realize for visual arts, dance and theatre. I don’t know as much about music but I get the sense that you pretty much have to be focussed on your instrument all day, every day or you are doomed. I am not saying this is the way it should be. It just seems to be the way it is. Even dance where a woman’s career is over by the time she is 30 seems to allow a little more leeway when it comes to exploring the forces that might influence the formation and expression of dance.

In fact, Walters quotes an article by a Juillard faculty member saying something quite similar.

The longer students stay in a conservatory the narrower their definition of life in the arts becomes. Julliard’s president, Joseph William Polisi, noticed, as he traveled around, that many graduates were not leading full, juicy lives. He began to feel responsible for too many graduates who were thinking that a life in the arts is only about technique and gigs. Faculty members weren’t be encouraged to send graduates out there to explore other art forms or ask big questions. We weren’t modeling the very life we wanted them to lead.”

“…Ninety percent will be piecing it together in some different way: working in other fields, originating work, collaborating with artists of other fields, starting theatre companies and launching business endeavors. We need to model the way for students and young artists to think and be joyful and make meaning of this hodgepodge that is a contemporary career. [emphasis mine.-Joe]We’re good at rehearsing Shakespeare scenes and improvising the hell out of awkward situations. But we’re not so sensitive to training inner skills that will make a sustainable creative life in the theatre.”

The obstacles to creating a program where a student is prepared to be an artist in all these ways isn’t just in the difficulties related to changing the teaching methods and prevailing culture of a training program. There is also the expectations of the students that need to be surmounted.

There seems to be a real focus on only learning what is necessary these days. In part it is a function of the internet society where you can learn all you want to know about something whenever the need may arise. Students are looking for the minimum training they will need to get a job. With the cost of college these days, it is hard to blame them. My theory about the disparity between male and female enrollment in college these days is not that fewer men are able to get into college, it is that the requisite training/experience for the careers the men want can be found in other places.

If you tell a student that if they want to be an actor, they need to spend four years pondering philosophy, history, literature and all the rest and then they can go on to get a masters in acting and then go get a job, the student is going to take their tuition money to your competitors, independent acting classes, or use it to move to NYC to try their luck.

Mailing Your Stamp of Approval

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I had a “what a great idea” moment this evening which turned to “good idea with reservations” a few minutes later. I will share the idea with you in hopes that someone out there will have the influence with the right people to make this happen (or start up a company to do so).

I got a Valentine’s Day card from my nephew today mailed with a stamp with his picture on it. Apparently, Stamps.com has a service that allows you to place photos on a stamp template and produce legal to use first class mail stamps. The drawbacks are that you pay about $10 for the privilege ($17.99 for 20 vs. 7.80 of the regular kind) and you have to wait for them to be mailed to you.

What popped into my mind was that it would be great if arts organizations could create stamps with images/logos connected with the organization. Not only could the organization use the stamps, but they could make the images available to supporters to use for their own stamps. Given that a lot of greeting cards get mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the stamps could help support end of the year donation drive with a slew of stamps saying “We Support X Theatre” or some such.

One of the pesky additional problems I mentioned before is that unlike Kodak’s Ofoto.com, Stamps.com doesn’t allow you to store your images online and then allow your friends to access them. You could get around this by emailing images to interested supporters, but then they would have to place the image and format the stamps. It isn’t hard to do, but if you aren’t comfortable with technology, it could be a disincentive.

I wonder if Kodak could get in on this less expensively than Stamps.com. They offer a dozen stickers for $3.00 so 24 would be $6.00, toss on $7.80 for postage and $13.80 is cheaper than Stamps.com with four more stamps. It would just be a matter of arranging for the Post Office’s sanction. Still because you have to wait for the stamps in the mail, it might not be cheap or immediate enough to garner widespread patron support.

It would be really great if people could print out the stamps from their home computers. You can already print out postage without images from your home computer and printer. Probably the only thing holding this back is the fact most people don’t have high enough quality printers at home to produce a decent looking image. Once they do, you will probably see homemade postage become more widespread. It would actually be a little more secure than the current black and white print at home postage which has to be monitored for photocopying.

Of course, will we still be mailing things then?

Keeping the Name You Got

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Back in September Drew McManus wrote about the importance of buying all important variations of your internet domain name address.

I just want to mention the importance of keeping the domain name you got. Within the last month, I visited the site of an agent and a performance group and both had let their name registration lapse.

As a result, no one could make an offer on any of the agent’s performers (especially given that he was on the road) or check out any of the other acts he represents. Nor could he receive any email because his address was his domain name which was now defunct.

For the artist, neither I nor anyone else interested in getting background information on the group could do so. All the information that would support press releases, all the video and music clips and all the pictures that will get audiences excited that the performance is coming to their town–it is all inaccessible. They too were on the road with their manager so getting support materials sent was difficult. Like it or not, the internet is the way prospective clients and patrons research performers and venues.

I contacted both entities pointing out that their internet presence was gone. I discovered in one case, the answer to why it lapsed was fairly simple but it is a cautionary tale for others.

The main reason why domain renewal gets overlooked is because no one is getting the reminders. The people who handle the registry of names are pretty organized and are eager to remind you to renew as far as 90 days before it is due. Because renewal is fairly cheap a lot of people pay for multiple years up front. The problem is, if the person handling those arrangements for your organization leaves and you delete his/her email address, you might never receive the reminders.

The lesson here is insist that the contact person email address be set to something generic like webmaster@yourdomain.org that passes to each new person in that position.

The registry companies will also try to reach you by regular mail too. However, if that address is incorrect or you moved or got a new PO Box and your forwarding has expired, you miss out again. Even if you do get the piece of mail okay, the companies have lot of services they want to offer you so the mail tends to look like junk mail. Especially if it is addressed to a person who worked there a year ago or is addressed generically to Webmaster.

Heck, if you aren’t a tech saavy person, even registering online is confusing. Check out GoDaddy.com . How quickly can you figure out how to register a domain name for the first time? How about renewing it?

Also, another reason to have email go to a generic address that can be passed around. It is two years after the old tech guy left, you don’t know the password for the account associated with your domain name. You can have your password sent of course–but it is going to the old tech guy’s email address which was deleted. (Of course, you could just recreate his email address with your own password, but the example wouldn’t be as scary.)

The worst case scenario is that the domain name is allowed to lapse for so long it goes up for auction and is purchased by someone else who then offers to sell it back to you for $10,000 or more. Though if you go that long before someone points out your website isn’t working, it probably wasn’t helping your organization’s public image and relations to begin with. Or people don’t think enough of your company to point it out.

Information Wants to Be Free–But The Internet Won’t

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Came across something a little disturbing yesterday. I don’t remember where exactly. It took me awhile to track it down via Google.

According to the Center for Digital Democracy, phone and cable companies are moving to make every action we make on the internet billable. There is also the possibility that competitors and people espousing views they don’t agree with might be marginalized. Apparently all the money I am paying for my connection isn’t enough for them.

My first thought was that this will probably backfire on them the same way trying to restrict file trading hasn’t really been beneficial for record companies. Yes, they control the methods of communication and that is a lot of leverage. But if there is one thing you can depend on American ingenuity for, it is finding away to circumvent the Man. Some college kid or a municipality or a competitor will see a need to be filled by an alternative.

And if people are faced with the choice of spending a Friday night running the meter on their cable modem or spending some of the same money on a live performance, maybe they choose the live performance, eh?

But assuming that the companies are sneaky and gradually introduce fees so that people will come to accept them, this could also represent a threat to arts organizations. It could become more difficult and expensive to promote your shows via email and digital media than it is now. And what happens if the president of the local cable company is on your competitor’s board and decides to curtail your bandwidth and exposure on the internet ever so slightly?

This isn’t something you want to think about, but probably should keep your eyes on.

American Contribution to The Arts

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I have been reading along in Joli Jensen’s Are The Arts Good For Us? I haven’t gotten too far because some tough weeks have made me long for escapist literature rather than material that I need to take notes on.

She is discussing Alexis de Tocqueville’s view of the arts from his famous Democracy in America. She notes that he felt America’s ties to European arts would keep the young democracy from devolving into barbarism until it developed art of its own.

I got to thinking, what uniquely American things as the country contributed? Blues? Jazz? Television? Movies? Rap? One might cringe at the idea of some of these things representing our contributions. Remember though that none of these things are bad in and of themselves. It is just the expressions via these media that have been lacking at times. Just as sometimes, the expressions have been breathtaking.

The idea that it is the expression, not the art form that is good or bad come upon me while listening to NPR on the ride home today. They were profiling Daniel Bernard Roumain, a classically trained violinist (for as much as that term might mean) who refers to his style as “dred violin.” He is a Haitian-American with dreadlocks and a silver nose ring who likes to experiment with all the sounds he can get out of his violin. His compositions are infused with rock, jazz, hip-hop and classical inspirations.

I don’t know much about classical music, but as I listen I get the feeling that there might be some real worth in what he is doing. Some of his work really sounds interesting. He could be contributing something to the whole music scene, regardless of genre.

But what is it about his pop-inspired music that is so compelling that isn’t in the music of Bond with whom I am not really impressed? To me it seems as if he is concentrating on exploring how different musical elements fit together well rather than if it sounds marketable. There is also some real there there.

Which isn’t to say he isn’t concerned about being marketable. The fact that his look is a marketable commodity is discussed in the interview. But so is the fact that his look will only be cool for so long and will only take him so far.

For all the bombast in the image they are trying to create for him and his group, there is a real humility. He wishes his mastery of classical music was better. He is relieved that a sightreading of a piece he composed for the Lark Quartet integrated as well as it did.

While he has plenty to keep him busy with his group and ten commissions lined up, it remains to be seen if his talent and approach are of a quality (and timing) that will have lasting appeal.

Revisiting Recent and Old

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A little revisiting of former topics to check on how things are going.

Back in May I covered the troubled times the Honolulu Symphony was having. I had actually started out exploring what appeared to be an attempt at a new organizational structure. However, that just ended up being a preamble to developing tensions.

Recent reports show the orchestra is starting on the way back. Donations and ticket revenue are up though attendance is down and their is still a $370,000 deficit.

The good news is that this is down from a near $2 million deficit a few years ago. There are new people on their board of directors and the organization is taking steps to improve their service to the community. The symphony is looking at revisiting their pricing structure for the seats.

And they are pursuing that elusive question of how to make the symphony interesting for regular folks.

Which brings us to the second retrospective, the ever popular, “But Do You Really Think It is Good For You” By way of Artsjournal.com is this book review in the Washington Post. What Good Are the Arts? is a book that examines, according to reviewer Michael Dirda “an intensely argued polemic against the intellectually supercilious, the snooty rich and the worship of high culture as a secular religion for the spiritually refined and socially heartless. Anyone seriously interested in the arts should read it.”

Many of the concepts Dirda quotes sound a lot like those suggested by Joli Jensen in “Is Art Good For Us?” Five years ago I probably wouldn’t have thought long upon it, but in days where non-fiction is peppered with fiction and plagiarism, I have to say I found myself wondering if her work (or those she cites) are in his bibliography.

Alas, my life has been busy and I haven’t gotten too far into Jensen’s book. Hope to soon. Keep watching this space 😉

Send Him Your Comments Yearning to Be Free!

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Drew McManus has been hinting about good things in the wind for awhile now and finally let the cat out of the bag.

Drew is going to be doing a research project for Eastman School of Music’s Orchestra Musician Forum and Senior Editor of Special Projects for Polyphonic.org (coming April 2006).

His research project is going to address the issues which American orchestra musicians see as impacting their professional lives. The study will be used not only to improve conditions in orchestras, but also allow training programs to give their students the training and tools to cope with the realities of life as an orchestra musician.

What is really interesting is that the study is even being done at all, though there is clearly a need. I was thinking it was extraordinary that such a project be funded when I read Drew’s observation that:

Most sponsors prefer to direct their funds toward ‘solutions’ regardless if the issues are well defined or not. Directing resources toward identifying issues and developing questions isn’t a very sexy endeavor and this organization deserves a great deal of credit for understanding that without a strong foundation on which to build, any structure you put up may not be very sound.

To make this happen, Drew estimates he needs to interview 1,400 people from 90 orchestras so watch for a survey in the mail! This will probably be the biggest opportunity orchestra musicians have had a chance to speak out en mass since, well, I don’t know when. Unless they are on strike, you don’t see too many queries posed of multiple musicians on most any topic.

Congrats Drew. We will be watching and expecting great insights to emerge!

More Is It Good to Come

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Andrew Taylor recently encouraged in a comment to an entry to take a look at Joli Jensen’s Is Art Good For Us?. He had blogged on the book about two years ago.

Well I got it from my local library today and will dive in and take a read rather than writing at length today.

Based on the second page of the book, it may turn out to be an interesting read. Jensen states flat out “In the end I want to convince you that Tocqueville and Dewey have it right and everybody else has it wrong.” We shall see if she does a good job arguing her case or is overly biased.

I Nearly Wet My Pants Trying Not to Laugh

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I don’t buy or rent a lot of DVDs. I don’t go to the movies all that often, truth be told. It isn’t because I think live performance is superior or anything, it is essentially because growing up in rural New York, we didn’t get out to the movies much. I have never really been in the habit of attending too many movies.

I did read a lot and as such did attend the Lord of the Rings movies when they came out and did ask for the box DVD set for Christmas. Amazon had it on backorder for quite awhile so it just arrived today.

As I was covertly previewing the first five minutes at work today, you know, just to make sure there weren’t any problems with the disk, I got to thinking what a great tool the performers and production team commentary would be for teaching people the basics about the arts.

It would be an expensive undertaking to pull the video production resources together to produce a DVD. However, I think foundations that support audience building and arts education efforts would probably be happy to underwrite the creation of a tool that could be easily duplicated and distributed to serve large numbers of people.

In fact, foundations would probably be more interested in paying for generic educational videos that many organizations could use rather than ones that specifically prepared audiences for shows in an upcoming season.

I think it would be very helpful to people to have the ability to watch a play and then go back and listen to the actors comment on what they might have been feeling during the show (I nearly wet my pants trying not to laugh) or to the director and designers talking about their choices and how it contributes to the feel of the performance.

The same could go for dance and music. A dancer may comment on how their heart soars at a particular place in a ballet even after performing it 50 times or how a piece looks deceptively simple but actually involved hours of practice. Symphonies could break the commentary down by section and conductor, perhaps.

If the commentary was designed well, pointing out what people should look for, explaining the process and providing points of reference to which people can relate, (parallels between elation during performances and sports activities, for example), it could become a powerful educational and intimidation allaying tool.

At the speed with which video can be delivered over the internet, the videos wouldn’t necessarily have to be only available on DVDs at the organization or local library. Arts organizations could have the videos available for download or streaming on their website or on a hosting site specifically designed with the bandwidth to host video.

Heck, maybe the local cable company would be interested in having it in their free video on demand library. Given that they would probably advertise it as a service to their subscribers, the cable company might go as far as add a little bit at the end saying “if you feel like checking out live ballet in your area, here is a listing of companies in your region.”

As I write this, ideas are forming in my head about how it might turn this into a reality. As a presenter, I don’t have an opportunity to do something like this with the groups I bring in because they visit for such a short time. But I do know some local companies that I might inspire and some video production people who might work on it.

Watch this space in the coming months, I might have something to report.

Get A Job in DC

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Have to give a shout out to DC Arts Jobs blog.

The purpose of the blog is “An informal collection of job postings at arts organizations in the Washington, DC area, focusing on development and special events, but encompassing other functions and other cities as well. Some light commentary is provided where the author thinks she has the scoop.”

The listing isn’t comprehensive, just what comes to the writer’s attention. The thing I like about the blog is that while it is similar to some theatre blogs that only list area performances (in this case, jobs), Christina also highlights issues that could impact one’s ability to find a job. (And the entry titles clearly differentiate the news and info listings from straight job listings)

Amidst recent job listings you can also find entries with commentary and links on the economics of dance, how to deal with getting fired, how to get a job in philanthropy, planning for succession when leadership retires and the labor relations problems the Washington Ballet is having.

There are also links in the sidebar to other arts issues blogs, arts job sites, arts policy sites, headhunting companies and arts organization sites broken out by discipline.

Just wanted to bring some attention to Christina’s work because it is an interesting approach to arts blogging that I hadn’t seen before. Hopefully it will inspire other people to create similar blogs for their geographic areas.

Faithful Enthusiasm

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Back when the earth was cooling, the occasion of myfirst entry was having a letter I wrote to The Artful Manager appear on the Artsjournal website.

The letter essentially talked about tapping into community leaders, among them church leaders, to help increase attendance at performances. I am doing well with leaders in other communities giving me a hand in getting the word out, but the church situation has me a little puzzled in some ways.

We have a church rent the theatre every Sunday and see very little cross over to our performances. We have posters with upcoming events plastered all over the building so it is hardly a mystery about what is coming up. Yet we get very few comments made to us or on our surveys saying they heard about the show because they come every Sunday.

Our programming is far from being offensive and is quite appropriate for the family. We just aren’t seeing the results one might expect and I don’t quite know why.

What gets me to thinking about this is that for the next three nights, we have an entirely different church having a worship conference in our space. Most of it will be a lot of praise and worship gospel singing and preaching. Tomorrow they kick the whole thing off with a half hour performances from one of the biggest gospel singers around.

In preparation for this half hour performance, the church has come in and painted our dressing rooms (we have a lot of classes during the year so the facility gets quite a bit of wear and tear) and when I left work tonight, they were carrying in leather sofas for her use.

That’s a heck of a lot of enthusiasm they are investing into making things right for a real short show.

It is also the type of energy I wish I could tap in to.

Next year we are looking at some gospel singers and that will certainly connect with the church audience. However, we are looking at these musicians because they are great musicians first and not to attract the churches.

I book with an eye to taking advantage of the opportunity to bring in great musicians that I think people will enjoy. If there are interested Latino groups available on an annual basis, I will happily grab them because I know people will buy tickets. But I am not looking to fill a Latino slot on my roster every year. Nor am I interested in discarding great opportunities because they don’t fit into gospel slots.

Smart thing to do though might be to co-produce similar events in the future. Promote the event in my brochure, run ticket sales through my box office, let the enthusiatic church members handle hospitality, security and technical equipment since that is where their strengths lay and then split the box office proceeds.

A partnership that plays to our individual strengths might be beneficial to both of us. I don’t know that we will ever generate a crossover interest from the audience, but what we are doing now isn’t meeting with much success. A partnership of this type might also not make economic sense since we experience little financial risk in renting to the group. But we would also realize less of a loss than if we had engaged an artist on that date ourselves since we aren’t bearing all the costs.

The question will be, if we do co-produce with them, is it replacing a show we would have done alone or are we doing it in addition to the shows we would have done and therefore are losing on the potential gains of a rental opportunity?

I will let you know how things shake out next season!

What Am I Promoting?

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Mitch from McCallum Theatre made some comments on my entry yesterday and said something at the end which I thought would be the basis of a good entry.

I am a new reader of your blog. I read it because it was called “Butts in Seats.” I’m not sure that is really what you are promoting.

It is a good observation because while I have been writing about what it is I am doing in emails to people, it has been awhile since I stated it in the blog. Given that projects like this can evolve over time, I thought the start of a new calendar year might be a good time to state what it is I am trying to accomplish at this stage.

The blog isn’t simply about putting butts in the seats. The purpose is to talk about the environmental/financial/social challenges, debates, idealistic conflicts, emerging opportunities, solutions, what have you, inherent to running a not-for-profit arts organization.

For-profits are primarily concerned with putting butts in the seats. They aren’t challenged with the necessity of having to balance serving the community with financial stability. They may decide to make it a paramount concern, but it rarely is part of their founding mission statement and not a statutory requirement of their corporate status.

So what the blog is all about is filling the seats and trying to address all that too.

Mitch is absolutely right in his comments, it is the job of the organization to reflect the desire of the community. There have been shows of certain genres that I have been involved with that appealed to absolutely no one in my organization, from the executive director to the maintenance workers, but filled the house because we booked a high quality act in that genre and the community clearly expressed an interest in that genre. Most of the time your job as a performance booker isn�t to showcase your personal taste even though you are hired based on your good taste.

What I was mostly addressing in yesterday’s entry was the fact people can be convinced a mediocre violinist is talented because they look good in a slinky dress. They rush to buy tickets, but stick up their noses at the great violinist because Eastern Europe dentistry isn’t what it is in West.

As I mentioned earlier, there is an internal debate that typically goes on in a lot of non-profit arts managers minds and hearts as they try to figure a balance between these two violinists. What enhances the community life more–1000 people whose experience is broadened by exposure to a poppy rendition of classical music or 300 people who choose to attend a concert that requires more concentration to understand, performed by a person with great mastery of the subject.

Will any of those 1000 people become interested enough by this first exposure to classical music to try out more challenging fare? If so, then booking that performer is a wise choice as part of serving the community pursuit of personal growth.

If the answer is no and booking the performer actually diminishes people’s respect for classical music but fills the coffers and allows the organization to continue, then the decision to engage the performer is less clear cut.

When I talk about being cynical and elitist, I am actually just trying to show the internal dialogue going on so that readers can gain some insight into the process and perhaps not feel they are alone in these thoughts. It’s no crime to have elitist thoughts as long as you recognize they might unfairly narrow your view of things and seek a more equitable method of making booking decisions. (Consulting with community members whose judgment you trust, for example.)

In the arts there is always going to be the debate between idealism and practicality. You can lean against the stage door and groan “why do people like this crap” but the truth is, you booked the performance despite your personal taste because it isn’t about you, it is about the community you serve.

Many times the value to the show isn’t in whether it is good art. Sometimes you are teaching kids about dinosaurs, sometimes it is about diverting a community’s thoughts from a great tragedy that has struck them, other times it is to create community bonding by getting everyone to bring their awful voices together to sing Christmas Carols.

I won’t make the claim that I am not an elitist in some respects, but I am very much aware of my own pedestrian tastes in many areas including the arts. One of my mottos is “Customers are idiots. I should know, I am one.”

If you read back in the blog a bit you will see that I join other bloggers in acknowledging that many arts organizations take a condescending view of their patrons. Proposed solutions to this include trying to find ways to create an atmosphere in which more effective patron conversations transpire.

These programs aren’t aimed at making people smarter about factual information as much as knowledgeable about how and why choices are made and the relationships between things. Drew McManus’ docent program for example aims to foster discussions about things like the intention behind a particular mix of pieces chosen for a symphony concert. Why Haydn is an important composer is part of this conversation, but it isn’t the conversation.

Mostly why I write this blog is to help me clarify my position on things and give people something to think about to clarify theirs. I hope that someone is reading bits from time to time and it isn’t all just falling into the ether of the net.

Certainly I hope for constructive feedback and criticism because all this blog is really is a less anti-social way to publicize my internal thoughts and discussions than talking aloud in a public place. Talking to myself, no matter how impressed I am with what comes out of my mouth, will only get me so far in developing effective approaches to arts management.

But Do You REALLY Think Revisited

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As promised, I am addressing some comments from my But Do You REALLY.. entry. Actually, it will be one of the comments today, but that should be enough.

Mitch from the McCallum Theatre makes some provocative statements in the comments section.

A couple of things about the business we are in: 1) 90% of everything that is offered at WAA or APAP, in other words, the arts “marketplace” is crap. 2) 90% of arts administrators can’t tell the difference between what is good and what is crap.

While I wouldn’t completely agree with the 90% figures in both cases, I would say that yes, some of the conference offerings are of a poorer quality than I might expect and there are a lot of presenters out there who aren’t as discerning as they should be.

However, I would say that the quality of performer at conferences is largely due to the fact that many big names don’t have to show up–you will solicit them and technology allows smaller names to make an effective pitch to you in your office. DVDs, faster internet connections, streaming audio and video, email, etc. can showcase performers far better than, well, a 20 minute conference showcase where they lack control of most elements.

While a DVD is no substitute for a good live performance, (otherwise, why book the live performance), it may make more sense to people to forego the expense and time of making a trip to a conference and invest in a quality electronic media package.

As for the arts people with poor eyes for talent, well the self-same technology that makes it easy for performers to solicit bookings from presenters also makes it much easier these days for people to set themselves up as presenters.

What is actually dangerous about this situation isn’t so much that they have bad taste as the fact they lack an understanding of the business and the costs involved. In the last few months I noticed that a group I had engaged last season was returning to appear at a place about 12 times the size of my venue with the expensive union crew to match. We easily sold out our performance, but I had my doubts about filling this new place. On the other hand, the concert was capping off a week of festivities so I figured these folks knew what they were doing.

Yeah, not really.

I found out this week that they were bigger on dreams and assumptions than experience. Some of the coordinators at the venue apparently made some attempts to ground the presenters but they went full steam ahead with the confidence born of ignorance and lost a lot of money.

Anyhow, back to the comment section there. What Mitch writes a little later is most interesting.

That said, it is entirely possible to engage the public in intellegently purchasing tickets to arts events they will enjoy and will be happy to pay for. Once you have the ability to determine what is good and what is crap (and remember only 10% of us can do that), then the rest of the job is just marketing.

Know your market and respond to the needs of your market, and you will be successful…Listen to your customers and you will learn what they want. Program the good (not the crap) from the artists your audience wants, and you will be successful.

Without getting into a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance type discussion of quality, I would argue that good and what your audience wants aren’t necessarily the same thing and many times are mutually exclusive. The aforementioned conferences don’t have to offer good stuff, just what people want to see or can be convinced they want to see.

Just look at Broadway. Most everything there is a retread of an existing story or a revival. Phantom of the Opera just passed Cats as the longest running show earlier this week. I really don’t think the show is all that good. It has its high points, but generally drags through the second act until the sewer scene. The sewer scene itself is only interesting for the spectacle of the fog and rising candles until you get to the confrontations at the end. Yet this is what people will pay to see so that is what is programmed.

I took a look over at the McCallum Theatre to see what constituted good stuff. Right on the home page was Lord of the Dance which has often been the butt of many a joke. Really the strength of that show is mostly the spectacle of seeing 40 people Irish step dance. Having grown up in a highly concentrated Irish community, I can tell you under normal circumstances, watching that sort of dance gets pretty old fast. Honestly, more power to Michael Flatley for finding a way to make it interesting.

It is clearly something people want to see, too. Lord of the Dance and performances of Broadway shows are the only shows scheduled to run five nights. (Correction, I see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme run longer.)

It may sound elitest and cynical, but I have sometimes despaired the fact that I have been involved with productions that are reinforcing the idea that a particular performer is talented rather than just easily marketable. All arts organizations go through that of course. They present the easily sold performances to help underwrite the better, less likely to be attended shows.

Often people know they are buying tickets to the happy, fluffy show with lots of wow and little substance. However, other times people may not be familiar with an artist but they know that the arts center has offered some truly great people in the past and trust that this performer is of that caliber.

This is the situation I hate because these trusting people come in and see a performer whose draw is more image than ability. They don’t quite like the show, but they figure if X arts center is presenting them, and the show was sold out, they are worthwhile and maybe they should buy the CD, etc. This sort of thing only reinforces the whole idea that mediocrity wears the same face as excellence.

In a couple weeks a beauty pageant is renting my facility. I got a call from a faculty member saying her friend wanted to see the stage. It turned out, the friend was the mother of a contestant who wanted to try out her talent piece on stage. The young woman is a figure skater but lacking ice is doing her routine on inline skates. Given that plastic wheels on wood is different than metal on ice she was wise to want to test the surface. (Especially since the stage is 30 years old, riddled with traps and not as smooth as it was in its youth.)

There are obviously some ice skating techniques you just can’t execute on a stage. However, it was interesting that the contestant’s mother was encouraging her to do certain showy things that she acknowledged would have disqualified her daughter in a skating competition. She then asked me if I knew who the judges would be in the hopes that none of them would know ice skating rules.

The question that came to my mind was–are you honestly exhibiting your skill if you would be disqualified in your arena of expertise for doing something simply as a crowd pleaser and not based on practical safety concerns?

It is a tough question to answer since in the arts breaking rules is known as mapping new ground, collapsing preconcieved notions and engaging in activities that will have people calling for your NEA grant to be revoked. Doing crowd pleasers is referred to as responsibly attending to the financial health of your organization.

Don’t you just hate it when your idealism recoils in revulsion at the same time your heating oil company fills up your tank for the winter?

Is This Any Way To Foster Appreciation?

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I am getting some great comments on my But Do You Really Think It is Good For You entry. Better than I expected really.

I was going to do a response to some of the comments, but between wanting to wait for more comments to come in (since they seem to be doing so) and finding I wanted to ponder my responses a little more, I have decided to tackle something else.

When I was touching on how difficult it can be to be a blogger and professor and thinking about how people expressed their feelings about the arts, I couldn’t help but think back to my own experience teaching a theatre appreciation class.

I have really enjoyed most of the theatre classes I have taught, but the one class I have felt most intellectually and idealistically torn over was the appreciation class.

Part of the problem I think was the expectations everyone had for it. For most students, it was an easy way to get fine arts credit for their liberal arts degree. Some came to class with an honest desire to learn more about the theatre, most came or were advised to come to get their credit and get out.

For the school the class was a way to keep their dollar per student ratio down. Since most theatre classes are intensive and low student to teacher ratios are necessary, the professor’s salary divided by the number of students in class results in a rather high number. But take a department as a whole, if you offer two or three sections of a class with 400 people in each section, you offset that high salary ratio and make the department look productive.

As horrible as this may sound, remember this is essentially the same way many funding institutions assess the effectiveness of their grants–by number of people served by programs they underwrote. Non-profit arts organizations often take on programs that don’t serve their mission well so that they can get funding to support their core interests. In the same regard, theatre departments create really poor environments for cultivating appreciation in an attempt to justify and maintain their existence in order to pursue their main interests–educating theatre majors. (And one wonders if this is where the future arts leaders learn the lesson of supporting the mission by doing what is not in the best interests.)

Four hundred people in a room isn’t necessarily bad, of course. By many accounts you would call it a nice atmosphere in which to enjoy the arts. But if there are 300 people who don’t want to be there and would rather talk on their cell phones or to each other, you got a pretty crappy atmosphere for the 100 who are interested in the subject matter. One professor and one TA have a hard time competing with and controlling that sort of disinterest.

Asking people to leave ellicited the “I paid, I got a right to be here” response. Challenging people to defend why their dollar was more valuable than the dollar of the people who were interested and wanted to pay attention earned some uninterrupted time. Lack of regard returned in subsequent classes and different arguments for attention had to be used.

Lest people be tempted to look at my resume in an attempt to figure out where I am talking about. Let me simply state, it is like this all over. A similar situation existed where I did my graduate work and where my friends went to school. It probably exists where many readers go/went to school. Certainly it occurs more in large university settings than in smaller colleges just by stint of enrollment numbers.

The thing is, the existence of these classes is also harmful to students pursuing performance as a major. This is most dismally illustrated at college performances said students are required to attend. Because they don’t want to ruin their weekends, these students will buy tickets to the Wednesday or Thursday performance thereby providing the student performers with the harrowing experience of playing to the most unresponsive audience they will ever meet. (While I can’t speak for all fine arts appreciation classes, I have noticed the same trend in music appreciation audiences.)

The Intro students will attempt to arrive late or leave early and get their attendance slip validated. Since the house staff (mostly comprised of students) has been instructed to apply the attendance rules strictly, an antagonistic relationship often developes. The Intro students resents that they are being compelled to attend and the theatre major resents that it is necessary to compel attendance. (If the school doesn’t enjoy strong community attendance, the theatre major may grow to feel this is true for all audiences.)

The real question is a takes the form of a debate of sorts- Are schools failing students by not giving them a more conducive environments in which to cultivate an interest and appreciation of art. OR Are schools wisely only investing an appropriate portion of their resources because so few of the students enrolling in the class have a genuine interest in detailed explorations and discussions of theatre.

Of course, this begs the question, if so few students are interested, why are they required to take the course? The answer most likely is that some group of people somewhere argued that exposure to the fine arts would make students better, more well-rounded citizens.

Which all gets back to the original question–is there a better way that makes sense economically and from an education philosophy point of view and creates a positive experience for all?

Is there anyone out there in large schools doing it?

I Am Bachelor #3

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Okay, I am outing myself. In the examples Drew McManus uses in his entry today, I am indeed the person mentioned in Example 3.

Of course, the only reason I am admitting it is because as Drew noted, things have turned out fairly well for me. Partially because there were a lot of people who were interested in new uses of technology on my hiring committee. It is also partially due to the fact there are enough things to write about that it is easy to exercise restraint when the temptation to gripe arises.

However, you might be surprised to learn how incorrect assumptions about the freedoms accorded those who work in higher education are. There have been a number of stories recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education (here and here for example) and in a recent series on education that appeared on Slate which have noted the very act of blogging, regardless of the tone or even subject matter, can ruin an academic’s chance for a job or tenure.

In some cases, even tenured professors were viewed as wasting time on blogging that could be better spent on publishing in academic journals.

It is all enough to give a job applicant pause as noted in a Chronicle column by a doctoral candidate and blogger who received dire warnings about blogging at a career counseling session. She ultimately felt that the act of blogging made her a better scholar (boosted by the fact that one of her entries received fairly honorable recognition.)

I certainly feel that it has made me a better manager since reading my old entries helps remind me of some good ideas and concepts I had.

Over time I think blogging will become a more accepted method of scholarly discussion, research and publishing. This will be especially true as those who frown on the practice retire and are replaced by bloggers and those who may have benefited from reading them.

There would certainly be an opportunity for a much wider, more extensive peer review of papers than there is currently. Of course, there would be much wider, louder, and public debate over these issues. Unfortuantely, perhaps without the investment of reflective time that the current system includes.

Still the speed of receiving such replies could be helpful in scientific research, even with all the concerns about industrial espionage and intellectual property rights, by allowing scientists to posit ideas, discuss conumdrums or ask if anyone had come across materials with certain properties.

Other than Andrew Taylor, I don’t know any other arts bloggers in higher education settings so it is difficult for me to gauge whether arts faculty are any more or less accepting of bloggers in their ranks.

Exits and Entries

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I was looking through some of the blogs I have listed here today in order to catch up with what people have been doing. I really hadn’t been reading since Thanksgiving so I got ready for a long session.

Much to my disappointment, some great blogs have disappeared.

My London Life hadn’t been updated in a long time, but now it is completely gone. I only discovered it a year ago on my search for just such a blog. It was a great, frequently updated accounting of a London director’s life in the theatre as well as discussing the process he engages in.

What was really a surprise was the disappearance of Spearbearer Down Left. According to George Hunka over at Superfluities, Spearbearer packed it in last week. George and Spearbearer frequently used their blogs as forums to debate similar topics with each other. It was often dense stuff and I had to really had to read what was being said.

I tried to see if the final pages were archived on the web somewhere by one of the search engines, but didn’t have any luck. It is a mystery to me why he stopped. It seemed he hardly lacked for intelligent things to say.

On happier notes, I found more of those blogs I had been searching for a year ago via Greg Beuthin over at Extension 311.

By the grace of his eagle eye, I was lead to California Shakespeare Theater’s actors blogs for Nicholas Nickleby and director’s blog for Othello.

The entries were a little thin in my opinion. The director’s blog only covered the tech week through opening so you don’t get to see how things evolved through the rehearsal process. The actors’ blogs, while informative and providing a behind the scenes look at challenges and insecurities, aren’t updates as frequent as I would like. (With the exception of Jim Carpenter’s who has a nice consistency.)

I think perhaps the entries by these folks were infrequent because they really didn’t view blogs as a potentially valuable tool for removing the veil of mystery for patrons. And that’s okay, these things take time to evolve for both practioners and readers alike.

But it is in contrast with the entries of a blog Kool-aid drinker like Greg Beuthin. His blog entries as alter-ego Palmito are both frequent and informative about the process. (His entry on why they are singing children’s songs in rehearsal for example.)

All his hard work may not have put any more butts in the seats though, sez he back on Ext 311

Interestingly, most conventional wisdom seems to indicate that having a blog would encourage people to come see the show. While that may be true, it’s unclear how much of an effect the blog has had on attendance (I haven’t been asking nor handing out surveys…). What I do know is that people who have seen the show are reading the blog afterwards. Hmmm – I’ll take it anyway. 😉

But Do You REALLY Think It is Good For You?

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I recently came to the realization that there may be an attitude out there about the arts which is nearly as detrimental as viewing them as elitist and intimidating.

The director of my division resigned so all the area coordinators recently met with administrator who would be essentially overseeing us until a replacement is hired.

The other two coordinators spoke at length about the challenges their areas faced. My turn came and I mentioned the difficulties geography and competition posed for us. One of the other coordinators told me that the solution was simple, if I could get people to come see one show they would come back for the others just like when many students came to take motorcycle safety, they decided to continue with digital media courses.

I was a little annoyed because I seem to constantly have to explain to people the Field of Dreams situation while once true, is not quite so valid any longer. I tried not to sound too exasperated while I pointed out there was a lot more competition for people’s time and income than there used to be.

I also pointed out that her example was a little flawed because motivations to take motorcycle safety and digital media differ. In her terms the only product I had to offer was different varities of motorcycle safety.

In retrospect, I wondered if I shouldn’t be at least grateful that she felt my performances were of a quality that people would naturally want to come back for more. Then I realized, she hasn’t really been to a performance in the last 10 years or so (and she lives on the far end of the theatre parking lot).

So then I am thinking she may just attribute all performances with a sort of mystique and power. This seemed okay because the arts are always trying to convince the public that the arts have value in their lives.

And that is when it hit me–that doesn’t do any good if people aren’t actually adding arts attendance to their lives!

It sort of reminded me of the Just Say No drug campaign of the 80s. Kids would shout “Just Say No” on command, but since that is as far as the campaign went, the kids didn’t internalize the concept and make it a part of their lives.

I am starting to think maybe I need to go back and look at all those surveys I have recently cited where there was a nice response among people saying they they felt the arts were an important part of their lives. I want to go back and compare the percentage of respondents to that question to the percentage of people who actually attended. (Taking a quick look back at my entry on an Urban Institute study, I get the impression they actually scrutinized that.)

To some extent, arts people only have themselves to blame because “the arts are good for you” is a major reason given when people don’t want music cut from the schools or don’t want funding cut for an organization. Certainly, these claims are usually accompanied by statistics showing things like how math scores improve for kids who take music.

On the other hand, sometimes arts people don’t back it up with evidence or are the worst purveyors of this attitude themselves. One of my predecessors in a job I have held told me the story of how she had the opportunity to have a great choreographer’s company perform at the theatre. Wondering if this person’s work might be beyond the local community, she asked around to gauge interest.

She was told how what a coup it would be to have the company, how wonderful to have the opportunity, etc. Dance people especially were quite enthused.

Performance came–dance community didn’t. When my predecessor asked the dance folks why they were so excited and yet didn’t attend, the answer was essentially that it was important for the public to see this choreographer’s works, but they personally weren’t interested.

So two lessons from this-

1) When you ask if people are interested, you gotta explicitly ask if they will show up.

2) If you find they are really more excited about other people seeing the show, you ought to revisit your cost/benefit ratio calculations.

Productive Use of Board Energy

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I am happy to see some promising signs from Honolulu Symphony. Last May I made an entry on reports of infighting and tension in the symphony board and administration.

There may still be some simmering anger in the organization but it appears there are also some attempts to expand the reach and visibility of the symphony thanks to the generosity of a board member.

An email sent out to managers of theatres on all the Hawaiian Islands by an officer of the State Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism noting that a symphony board member “is the pilot of a small private airplane that may be available to fly small ensemble performance groups (i.e., Honolulu Symphony and others) between the Hawaiian islands at greatly reduced cost or possibly no cost. I thought you might find this of interest.”

What is particularly interesting, if true, is the offer to fly groups other than the symphony’s internal one to the other islands. Now granted, most of the chamber groups in Honolulu are comprised of symphony musicians. However, these folks are in business for themselves so the symphony doesn’t realize any monetary benefit from their efforts.

It is pretty expensive to fly an entire orchestra and their instruments interisland so it isn’t as if the symphony can realistically be looking to develop an audience on the other islands for their performances. (Although there is a high speed ferry in the works.) Perhaps some more people will fly in to Honolulu to see the symphony there, but it is hardly going to reverse any financial woes.

Even if it is an attempt to gain musicians more employment so they won’t look to the symphony for their main source of income, the board is still showing a lot more concern for the artists than most have in recent years. (Examples from Adaptistration here, here, and here)

It will be interesting to see if anyone takes advantage of the offer and what developes from it.

Taking Up The Challenge

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Since I am transitioning out of holiday mode here, I am not ready to blog on topic and seriously, but instead am taking up the gauntlet Drew McManus threw down and am doing the Meme of Four thing.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life (not in chronological order):
-Census Taker
-Grocery Warehouse Quality Control Auditor
-Beverage Supervisor at a Rennaissance Faire (I was even in costume!)
-Computer Lab Assistant
(Yeah I have had a lot of theatre jobs, but that is what you expect me to list right?)

Four movies you could watch over and over:
-Lord of the Rings Trilogy (cause really, it is only one really long movie, right?)
-Ghandi
-The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai too, of course)
-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Four places you’ve lived:
-Cedar City, UT
-Sarasota, FL
-Potsdam, NY
-Honolulu, HI
(Alas, I find I could actually answer this question about three more times without repeating.)

Four TV shows you love to watch:
-The West Wing
-Fullmetal Alchemist
-Deadwood
-Mythbusters

Four places you’ve been on vacation:
-Portland, OR
-Washington, DC
-Zion National Park
-Panama City Beach, FL

Four websites you visit daily:
–Artsjournal.com
–Ucomics.com
–Salon.com
–Bullshido.com (10% for the education, the rest for the entertainment)

Four of your favorite foods:
-Open face everything bagel with veggie cream cheese, slice of tomato and salt and pepper
-NYC pizza
-Hot Dogs with grandmother’s bizarrely appealing barbeque sauce
-Well made carrot cake (as much as I love chocolate, a good carrot cake will lure me away)

Four places you’d rather be:
-Hugging my 10 month old nephew
–Powell’s City of Books
-Night sledding by a full moon
-Still living in the entire second floor of a Victorian house

Partnerships-Hang On A Minute There

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Well, if I hadn’t actually gone looking at the Cultural Commons website yesterday on my own initiative, I would think maybe I was set up. After talking about how many partnerships failed yesterday, I come across a success on Artsjournal.com today.

Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (NC) have embarked on a joint venture with both occupying same building. The result, called ImaginOn, is an organization that isn’t quite a library or a theatre, but a little of both with museum qualities thrown in.

There are separate areas for children, tweens and teens. The whole project is quite innovative and exciting and might provide a possible template for libraries (and theatres) in the future. Especially given that big performing arts centers don’t seem to be doing very well these days. Witness this story on Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and Andrew Taylor’s coverage of the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts’ decision to get out of the presenting business.

I have talked about how arts organziations desperate for their own survival have pooled resources to allow them to occupy the same building. But those organizations didn’t integrate themselves as well as these folks in Charlotte.

Also, according to the article, the groups started to explore a partnership back in 1997 before the opportunity to have a joint facility ever emerged.

The article also doesn’t hide the fact that the collaboration didn’t come easy. “But for all the shared, there were still plenty of differences, such as funding sources, governance, management, and organizational culture.”

My hat is off to these folks for overcoming these difficulties and recognizing what assets the other guys brought to the table.

Partnerships, What Are They Good For?

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Waaay back in June, I saw this piece on the Cultural Commons website on partnerships that I meant to write on and never did. So here I go.

Essentially, the Urban Institute did an evaluation of the Wallace Foundation’s Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation (CPCP) initiative. While some organizations involved in the initiative found the experience valuable, there were problems. The biggest being that none of those involved continued the partnerships after the grant funds ran out.

The Urban Institute found many reasons why there were problems. Some had to do with foundations expectations, including a belief that partnerships were the solution to all problems.

Although all of the foundations told us they wanted to support “genuine” partnerships and avoid ventures formed solely to obtain funds, it would appear that in some cases they were unwittingly encouraging precisely such behavior by providing incentives that ironically put creating partnerships before cultural participation.

Other difficulties emerged from friction between the partnering organizations. Some problems came from just the plain fact that there wasn’t enough staffing with time, skills or opportunity to effectively execute the planned activities. And then there were the instances where the partnership just ran counter to the missions of the organizations.

The summary got me thinking about the whole subject of partnerships a bit more. When you talk about them as a concept, they sound great and like the solution to woes. Big companies collaborate with each other and with universities with regular success, why not non-profits? Is there too much ego and desperation to hold on to one’s hard won turf to make it successful?

About two years ago a friend was giving me a tour of her town. Despite having a fairly affluent demographic and strong attendance at other arts events (in some instances HUGE attendance), there was no major theatre group in town. Instead, there were two or three small theatre groups trying hard to get a performance out. It’s too bad they don’t try merging instead of trying to do their own thing my friend said.

Reading this thing about partnerships brought this experience to mind. I am sitting here trying to imagine what compelling reasons there might be not to merge.

-Classical group vs. Contemporary group?
Nah, theatres regularly offer such mixed fare in their seasons

-Avant Garde works vs. Mainstream?
Have to wonder, if you are offering an alternative to another group that has a weak presence itself, are you really offering an alternative at all? Again, market the organization the right way and the varied offerings only make you look more interesting.

Really, the only reason I can see not to merge is fear of losing what ground you have gained and personality differences. (Pretenious guy from NYC vs. the authentic locals, for example.)

This isn’t the same as partnerships where the participants expect to maintain their distinct identities. However, it goes to show if people with much more to gain and lose, (depending which way they go) can’t come together, it is easy to understand why partnerships might have difficulties.

Putting My Words Where My Money Is

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After writing my blog for nearly two years, I finally got around to doing something that seems like a blatantly obvious step–I engaged people at working in a discussion of the implications of an article I wrote on.

Up to this point, I have attempted to translate my theories into policy and practice at my job. People at work do read my blog so from time to time someone initiates a conversation about what a genius I am. Occasionally I refer to a situation that arises as being similar to something I have blogged about.

While I have come into work and asked for feedback on a change I was considering, I have never actively solicited a dialogue specifically about something I have read. A couple weeks ago, I did just that.

I told my assistant theatre manager that I would like her to read The Diversity of Cultural Participation report I wrote about at the end of November. I told her when she was done, she could let me know and we would discuss the implications to our operations when we had the time.

Despite my insistence that she not, my eager assistant manager went home and read it over Thanksgiving. We had our discussion last week. For the most part, our discussion reminded us about the importance of continuing to be hospitable to our audiences so they feel socially fulfilled. (One of the few areas where a negative experience does not get the benefit of the doubt.) We also came up with some promotional ideas to try out after the New Year.

The real value in my mind of the discussion wasn’t in the brain storming and the policy making. The ideas may ultimately yield very little on time and money we may invest in them. The real value was found in process of discussing my vision, her perception of where she is fitting in to the organization, where she is proud about being effective (and where she feels ineffective)and her sharing some ideas she hasn’t felt comfortable mentioning.

There is something about discussing theory that seems to remove some of the restraints on discourse. I guess conversations at weekly staff meetings on the need to repair the golf cart and buy new lighting instruments aren’t conducive to topics like what activities are contributing to one’s self-actualization. Who woulda thunk it?

I am starting to consider doing this sort of thing on a periodic basis with some alterations. (Some folks in the building wouldn’t relish a reading assignment.)

I also got to wondering if any other organizations out there went through a similar process where articles were passed around with the intent of engaging in serious analysis. Actually, I should qualify this by saying passing around in the absence of a crisis. I have seen plenty of articles circulated with dire portents about funding. I am curious about when someone takes the initiative while in a fairly secure position.

I’ve seen boards do it in preparation for retreats. One organization I worked at passed a book around among the senior administration, (I wasn’t one of them, alas), with the intent to discuss it. I don’t know if it ever happened.

Anyone have any tales of conversations they have had on a fairly regular basis where a dialogue about vision and theory transpired? (Note I use the word dialogue– pretty one-sided speeches by the executive director don’t count.)

Email me or pop a comment in the old box below.

I Will Be Waiting For My Nomination

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No applications to the arts world today. Just silly idle speculation. Hard to wrap my mind around writing on serious topics during the holiday season. (Mostly because I am so busy buying gifts!)

According to BuzzMachine, the Pulitzer Committee has decided to judge submissions of breaking news and photos that appeared online only separately from mainstream print and broadcast media.

As BuzzMachine notes, blogs like mine that don’t report on breaking items are lumped in with mainstream stuff. But you know, in a few years they will come around. Perhaps by then I will be ready for my 15 minutes of fame.

Too Many Actors

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They are singing my song over at the NY Times today. If you didn’t catch it via Artsjournal.com, check it out here before it disappears into the paper’s archives and you have to pay for access-So Many Acting B.A.’s, So Few Paying Gigs.

While I am not rabid about it, I have considered it my mission over the last twenty years or so to attempt to dissuade people from going into acting as a career. In my mind, people romanticize their ability to go to New York City and get an acting gig after a short period of suffering in a chic spacious warehouse loft. That’s how television and the movies portray it after all.

The NYT article however echos some of my sentiments.

“It’s just tragic how many people want to go into this business,” said Alan Eisenberg, the executive director of Actors Equity. “These schools are just turning out so many grads for whom there is no work.”

“We’re producing too many people,” Mr. Steele [executive director of the University/Resident Theater Association] said, “many of them poorly trained or moved into the field without the connections or relationships necessary to make their transition to a career possible. It’s as if medical school were graduating people without giving them internships at a hospital.”

“Twenty years ago, you didn’t sense the kind of urgency these kids have now,” said Mr. Schlegel, who represents many successful New York theater actors…”Now they think if they don’t get signed by an agent right away, they’ve failed. They never think they’ve got to learn the ropes a bit, get seasoned. They want to know, ‘Where’s my TV series? Where’s my film audition?’ It’s wrong, of course, but that’s what they think, and in a business where we fall all over the young ones, you can’t blame them.”

As you might imagine since these acting programs need people taking instruction from them in order to justify their existence in the university, none of them are reducing the number of students they are graduating. Rather they are including classes in how to get jobs upon graduation as part of their training regimen. Students learn about auditioning effectively, networking, etc.

Just for the record, I don’t know if I have ever dissuaded anyone from going to NY or LA to pursue their dream. Honestly, I never expect my dire pronouncements about how tough the market is, how there will be 10 other people with their level of talent who look just like them at every audition, some of them will have more experience and are a surer bet. Then there are the minimum 10 other people who are better looking, more talented and more experienced who are showing up too. I also go into the cost of living in New York City, the crime, the cold, the dingy apartments, etc.

Its hard to picture that your mind for the glow of stars in your eyes. My sole hope is that knowing what I have told them, they make semi-realistic contingency plans to deal with all potential problems I have mentioned.

One last quote from the article I want to feature in an admittedly snarky attempt to further comment on the American Idol entry I made yesterday.

Ms. Hoffman’s auditioning seminar is one effort to iincrease the responses. Too much vibrato, Ms. Hoffman told a young man who sang the U2 song “With or Without You” and finished each line with a lovely tremulous quiver. Vibrato is more expressive than communicative, she said; in an audition, you want to communicate.

He still had trouble. “It’s really hard, I know, to stay on pitch when you’re straight-toning,” Ms. Hoffman said, this time adding, “So you can add the vibrato if you feel yourself sliding off.”

That is one lesson I took away from observing auditions at a training program with which I was once associated. Vibrato might sound impressive and appeal to the crowds, but it can indicate a lack of mastery of ones vocal instrument.

Idol Blog

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I am not a big fan of American Idol for a number of reasons. Mostly because while it positions itself as picking the next big national star, it is essentially picking a palatable compromise performing in a narrow niche market.

However, as I have been a big proponent of performers blogging about the process they go through to prepare for a show, I feel compelled to present an article that recently appeared on the NY Foundation for the Arts site featuring one woman’s blog about her attempt to become a contestant on American Idol.

She doesn’t get accepted to be a contestant, however her blog is interesting because it shows the extent she went to to prepare–everything from high heels training, mishaps in a tanning booth to getting former MTV News anchor Tabitha Soren to practice interview her. She even had blog readers vote on what earrings, shoes and tshirt to wear to the auditions.

While I don’t know I would ever encourage anyone to audition for the show other than for the practice, I do like appreciate that she took the time to write about the process so others could reference it and learn from it. (Even if it means they would draw encouragement from it to audition for the stupid show.)

Go check out Marisa’s American Idol Audition Training Blog

All Passion Is Not Created Equal

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I have been reading Greg Sandow’s book in progress, The Future of Classical Music? over on Artsjournal.com. I haven’t linked to him much, but I am always interested in what he has to say in his blog about arts communications–often how press releases and program notes are written well and poorly. Many times I go and scrutinize what I have written after reading his entries.

One thing in his book that really floored me was his report of the lack of passion in orchestra administration.

The people who work for major orchestras typically don’t go to concerts. Almost never in the office of the orchestra will people come to work and talk about the music. Isn’t there something wrong with this? I’ve talked to a consultant who’s worked both with orchestras and with theater companies, and he’s stunned by what he finds in orchestras. In a theater company, people come to the office the day after a new production opens, and the production is all that they can talk about (the play, the acting, the directing, the sets and costumes, everything). But at orchestras, after a concert, no one says a word. If this is great art, where’s the depth, the transcendence, or even the certainty, both audible and visible, that everybody’s giving everything they’ve got?

I guess I always assumed that people involved in an art organization had some passion for it. As a person who comes out of theatre, I pretty much pictured what Greg describes as the day after in a theatre as happening in ballets, orchestras, museums and galleries. I figured I wouldn’t understand the conversations as people employed the jargon of their particular niche or used obscure terminology to inflate their sense of self-importance.

I never imagined that the conversations wouldn’t take place. A career in the arts is a labor of love after all. Analyzing how well or poorly something when the next morning with equally impassioned people is one of the few rewards one gets for choosing this path in life.

If what Greg says is true, it puts a lot of things in a different context for me. When Drew McManus over at Adaptistration criticized orchestra administrators as heartless individuals who were out to enrich themselves at the expense of the musicians, (I am generalizing his sentiments a bit here, though not too far off), I figured they were perhaps people without the talent or discipline to be musicians but possessed still of a passion for the art.

Now I am starting to wonder if they aren’t just heartless individuals out to enrich themselves on the labor of the musicians. Okay, may be it is a little hyperbolic to ascribe nefarious intent to orchestra administrators. There are certainly better ways to go about exploiting the labor of others.

I have to wonder if the whole orchestra system needs to be revamped. If people can’t be moved to discuss the basic merits or disappointments of a performance, they don’t deserve to benefit from the performance revenue. (Which isn’t to imply that people who do talk about it should be permitted to exploit others either, of course!)

Another related bit of information comes from the entry just prior to the third chapter of Sandow’s book in which he talks about quality control in orchestras.

“Who in an orchestra has the power to tell the musicians that they’re not playing well enough? Not the executive director. My partner in this discussion had gotten shot down by his musicians simply for bringing the question up. Not the chairman or president of the board. Can anyone imagine a board leader going out on stage after a rehearsal, or gathering the musicians in the green room after a concert, and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, that simply wasn’t good enough”? It doesn’t happen.

So the job falls to the music director. But music directors absolutely don’t do this, to my knowledge, about concerts that they don’t conduct. Some people in the discussion even brought up names of music directors whom they thought were happy when their orchestras played badly for someone else.”

This revelation didn’t strain my incredulity as much because I understand that different industries have varying operating situations and standards.

I come from the theatre world where the stage manager is empowered to tell the actors the quality is falling and where actors can be fined under union rules for repeatedly straying too far from the vision of the play. In late 1996, Cameron McIntosh, the producer of Les Miserables, fired most of the Broadway cast because he felt the show had become stale.

I am not going to even consider claiming live theatre is at the zenith of quality and artistic excellence. They got problems for which I can’t even begin to start to suggest solutions.

I will say that if there is any truth at all beyond these stories about lack of passion in the administration and apathy (and perhaps plain intentional antagonism) among musicians and musical directors in regard to quality, it is a clear starting point for turning the fortunes of orchestras around.

How can audiences have an appreciation for the experience if the orchestra itself doesn’t value what they produce? As with live theatre, quality control and passion won’t solve all problems and result in fiscal solvency.

But at least when you say “We have a great product, why won’t anyone show up,” you are speaking with certainty and with a unified voice top to bottom.

Why So Many Nutcrackers?

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I have often wondered why the heck ballet companies always decide to do Nutcracker every year instead of mixing their offerings up a bit. I know it is a money making show that pays for other productions, but there are three companies performing it in my city alone!

Sure there are theatre companies that do A Christmas Carol every year, but it is nowhere close to the frequency with which Nutcracker is performed.

From some observations I have made of regular season ballet performances, I don’t think the show is helping to convince people to come for the Nutcracker and return for the Coppelia.

Just to be fair though, I thought I would check to see if anyone was doing any alternative shows.

I Goggled Christmas Carol Ballet and found one performqance in upstate NY, Traverse City, MI and Chattanooga, TN. There is a production in Australia. Royal New Zealand Ballet has done it, but aren’t this year. Northern Ballet Theatre in the UK last performed it in 2003.

London’s Royal Festival Hall did it in 2000. Athens (GA) Ballet Theatre did it in 1999, as did Honolulu Ballet Theatre.

It goes further back in time from there.

I Googled It’s A Wonderful Life Ballet and came back with nothing except a teasing mention of the ballet in a Ballet Oklahoma dancer’s bio (scroll down to Emily Fine)

Googling Messiah Ballet turned up a load of links–all of the in Canada, with the exception of past productions by Carolina Ballet. Granted, few of the productions are/have been performed at Christmas, (Easter is the alternative time of the year it is performed), but it was the only other subject area I could think that might be turned into a ballet.

I don’t know if the fact that many companies who have done non-Nutcracker performances haven’t done them in a long time is an indication that people are so used to the concept of Nutcracker, they can’t imagine going to see any other subject.

Some might say the ballets have their audiences well-trained to accept what they are offering. Yet the fact they can’t wean people away from Nutcracker and on to a variety of shows may mean they have the people trained to a fault.

Many of the original articles are no longer available from the respective newspapers, but this post-Christmas 2005 summary from Artsjournal tells an interesting tale.

Boston-Cutting salaries because they were booted from the Wang Center by the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and had to make due in a smaller space.

Colorado- Fights Radio City Christmas show to a draw

Pittsburgh-disappointing holiday sales (and this is before they stopped using live music)

Philadelphia-Penn Ballet’s numbers hold steady.

Utah-Opening season with Nutcracker because it is money maker.

Be What You’re Like

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I came across an article in Backstage, by way of Artsjournal.com that put me in mind of the chorus of They Might Be Giants’ “Whistling In the Dark.”

There’s only one thing that I know how to do well
And I’ve often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that’s be you,
Be what you’re like,
Be like yourself,
And so I’m having a wonderful time
But I’d rather be whistling in the dark

The article in question, “Hung up on Tent Poles, Studios Think Too Big” looks at many great movies that haven’t done well financially in recent years because big movie studios are paying big movie studio prices to make independent studio quality films.

Audiences are looking for high quality films and the studio are responding by making films that are clearly worthy of being made. They just aren’t going to be as wildly popular as a Harry Potter movie and bring as big a return on investment. The article points out that it is difficult for studios to be economical because directors and actors know that the studios have the money to pay them and can stubbornly hold out. If the studio wants the picture made badly enough with the draw of a star, they relent.

As is often the case with my entries, I see a lesson in this for arts organizations!

Because our audiences often use NYC based arts organizations (Broadway, The Met, NY Ballet) as the yardstick by which they measure the quality of our offerings (though I often have my events compared to Las Vegas shows!) there is often pressure on us to grow bigger, better, and more professional in quality.

If we were once avant garde, we may be accused of selling out. But who cares, we are putting more butts in the seats and that is paying for all the improvements we need to do. Its pays the salaries of the development office and for lobbying the government to build a performing arts center.

I am guessing you can see where I am going with this so I will stop here. It is hard to resist the lure of becoming bigger and better, even if improved standing in the community is not the goal. If we are reaching out to underserved kids, we feel pressured to expand our programs so we can get more money to support our important outreach activities.

Reading the Backstage article gave me hope. The fact the big guys have a hard time producing worthy stuff economically means that there is a probably a niche in the arts world that the small, hungry orgs can serve successfully without having to grow too big.

Now if only we can get more people out to see the performances 😉

High Quality Experience, But Not Fulfilling

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I was reading about a recent Urban Institute study on attendance at cultural events in the Chicago Tribune today. Many of the results weren’t surprising–people go to live performances to socialize and go to museums to expand their knowledge.

What made me want to read the study more indepth was the report that “…attendees at music and dance performances, plays, and fairs were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the art.” Yet at the same time the article mentions that “…people who go to art museums, dance performances, concerts, plays, or arts and craft fairs find the experience less emotionally rewarding than they had presumed.”

I understand that quality of art and emotional reward can exist exclusively of each other, but the suggestion that people didn’t have high expectations of the quality and yet looked to have a larger emotional pay off didn’t quite make sense.

A short newspaper article can hardly explain all the intricacies explored in a 48 page report of course. Even though the article warns that the report’s author, Francie Ostrower, forms no opinions about why there is no emotional reward, I had my own theory.

My theory being-People view live performance as high art, full of meaning and power. The report of the performance exceeding expected quality is actually an expression of relief at understanding what is going on. However, there is an assumption that if one comprehends the work, one will be enriched with the meaning and power of high art. Walking out with out a profound understanding of the nature of the universe results in an emotional let down.

But that is just the theory with which I started.

In the process of reading the report-The Diversity of Cultural Participation, I picked up some other interesting tidbits.

Interestingly, many people did not go to cultural events that they say they find very enjoyable…Many people who said that they most enjoy dance had not gone to a dance performance during the previous 12 months. The same was true for plays and concerts. On the other hand, this was far less common among those who most enjoyed museums and galleries.12 These findings suggest it is easier for people to attend certain types of cultural events than others…(e.g. because museums do not require advance tickets)

-“Frequent attendees are likely to be civically engaged.” People who volunteer, go to church, belong to associations, vote.

-“Frequent attendees are more likely to donate” Not really surprising.

“Frequent attendees were more likely to have gone to multiple types of events and to have attended each type of cultural event. Thus, frequent attendance at cultural events is associated with more varied attendance, indicating that multiple art forms would benefit from increases in overall arts attendance.”

Don’t know if this result implies that it would be beneficial for organizations to pool their resources and perform at a central location thereby offering the public variety at a familiar location. Other results of the surveys show the people who attend plays are more likely to attend dance, live music, and museums/galleries.

Among the reasons people attended the arts were socialization (it will probably come as no surprise to learn that the survey found people most often attend in groups), wish to experience high quality art, gain knowledge, support a local organization, learn something about ones culture and to have an emotionally rewarding experience.

Interestingly, the more frequent a person attended, the more reasons they stated for attending.

“Frequent attendees also cited a greater number of strong motivations for attending cultural events during the past 12 months. On average, they cited 3.5 major reasons, compared with 2.6 major reasons given by moderate attendees, and 2.2 among infrequent attendees.26 This strongly suggests that frequent attendees’ active engagement in the arts is driven by the very multiplicity and variety of positive experiences they derive from the arts.”

It would seem then that whatever approach one takes in marketing and advertising performances is likely to appeal to one of the motivators for a frequent attendee. Of course, if a competitor offers a similar product in a way that appeals to more of these criteria, you may end up back on square one.

According to the report, attendance at different event types is strongly motivated by the aforementioned reasons in varying ratios so the elements that promotions highlight must change as well.

Minding your audience surveys is very important:

“Interestingly, even substantial percentages of those who expressed a negative judgment about some aspect of their experience said they would attend a similar event again.”

So you get a chance to make things better the next time around. However, there are some deal-breakers right from the beginning-

“The two negative experiences most likely to result in respondents saying they would not attend again were not liking the venue and not having an enjoyable social occasion.”

In regard to the whole emotional reward question, I think the way the Chicago Trib article was written somewhat overstated it as a problem. According to the report, people who expected to get a rewarding experience, got it. In fact, pretty much everyone got what they came for:

two-thirds of those who said that a major motivation for attending was to experience high-quality art strongly agreed that the artistic quality of the event was high. Likewise, most (56 percent or more) who were strongly motivated by a desire for an enjoyable social occasion strongly agreed that they had one; most who were strongly motivated by a desire for an emotionally rewarding experience
strongly agreed that they had one; and most who strongly wanted to learn something new strongly agreed that they did learn something. And almost all who did not strongly agree, agreed.

It made me wonder if this was another piece of evidence for the suspicion that the plethora of standing ovations today are a result of people convincing themselves they got what they paid for.

There were some variations by event type though that need consideration by arts administrators.

“Fifty-seven percent of those who attended a play said a major reason they went was that they thought it would be emotionally rewarding–but only 43 percent strongly agreed that it was.

Forty-six percent of those attending music performances said a major reason was that they thought it would be emotionally rewarding–but only 37 percent strongly agreed that it was.”

It was in terms of high quality that numbers went the other way, few people entered performance halls expecting high quality and a greater number exited feeling they had experienced it.

Since it is tough to know if the people who said they didn’t have an emotionally satisfying experience were some of the same people who had a quality experience, I can’t say if my hypothesis (which, granted was more of a semi-educated suspicion) holds any water. (Though the percentage of change in attitude on both topics is quite close.)

As poor a job as a newspaper article can do summarizing a 48 page report, my blog entry is hardly an improved transmission of all the valuable info (and I haven’t tried to be.) Give it a read! (Especially since the meat of it is only 27 pages long.)

Be Nice to Your Playwright

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I am so pleased to be finding more and more arts related blogs out there and the most recent I have come across is just great.

Joshua James’ Daily Dojo is a working, living playwright’s view of what a working, living playwright has to go through in that line of work these days.

I started reading his November 8 entry where he discusses his frustration (quite entertainingly) with the way directors/actors/etc feel scripts are just a starting point to do their own thing.

Come to find out, this long entry is just the latest entry in his “Talkin’ Smack About Theatre” series. Two other entries (Hey, What’s That Guy Doing In a Dress and Hey, What’s That Guy…Part Deux) give actors, directors and others advice about how to get the most out of working with a living playwright (and how to work with other people in general.)

The other entries in the series are a rant on how so much Broadway is a cover of someone else’s work (ie adaptation, revival, etc). I haven’t had a chance to read the cover entries yet, but the “Guy In A Dress” entries, while long are a lot of fun to read.

The titles come from Joshua’s experience showing up at a theatre to find a character in a dress because he is “making bold acting choices.” He does a great job exploring the friction behind the necessity of remaining true to the playwrights intent and choices and the urge artistic people have to explore the opportunities the material presents beyond the limits the playwright set.

He acknowledges that some of that exploration can be illuminating for the author too–provided he is consulted and included at all. He also shares a number of anecdotes where the playwright’s name shouldn’t even be used in association with the work because the changes blatantly run counter to what he/she was trying to achieve.

Again, he presents it all in an entertaining manner –writing dialogue and presenting courtroom testimony accompanied by parenthetical sidebars of advice– all the while making his argument/plea for empathy/compassion/cooperation/consultation with playwrights.

Death of Curiousity

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I responded to an Artful Manager post today commenting on how I didn’t see the harm in taking pictures of stage sets on backstage tours even though technically it is copyrighted work because it at least showed people were excited by what they saw. I noted that I would worry if they weren’t entranced by an experience with theatrical illusion up close since it would mean there was one less thing they saw value in the arts experience.

As I finished writing, I realized that I had probably unconsciously channeled the sentiments of an article I read this weekend care of Arts & Letters Daily. In an article on Triangle.com, J. Peder Zane discusses the surprising lack of curiousity students seem to have these days.

“…such ignorance isn’t new — students have always possessed far less knowledge than they should, or think they have. But in the past, ignorance tended to be a source of shame and motivation. Students were far more likely to be troubled by not-knowing, far more eager to fill such gaps by learning. As one of my reviewers, Stanley Trachtenberg, once said, “It’s not that they don’t know, it’s that they don’t care about what they don’t know.”

I actually mentioned this article to my technical director today and he told me he could see it happening in his stage craft class. He had a gurney with a sheet over what appeared to be a body next to where his students sat yesterday and not one of them lifted the sheet to check it out.

Part of the problem is that there is so much to know these days about everything, even the mundane, that people are forced to specialize in gathering information on specific areas. As a result, people are primarily interested in learning more about topics that are immediately useful and discard anything else.

Without social pressure to be well-rounded, people are becoming less so. Because so much information is available so easily and quickly, there is no need to worry about not knowing until the need is imminent. Want to impress a girl with your knowledge of the controversies surrounding who actually wrote Shakespeare’s works? Check out the Wikipedia entry and take a side trip to collect some sonnets to whisper in her ear.

This sort of trend should be of concern to arts organizations. Where there might once have been hope that as young people matured, they might suddenly decide that it would be valuable for them to engage in visual and performing arts experiences and might one day come a knockin’, there is a danger now that they will never consider there is any value in doing so.

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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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