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 was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA. 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.

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Yo Mama Says Mozart For The Win!

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Well my esteem for Stephen Colbert was nigh upon worship already due to his encyclopedic knowledge and slavish devotion to the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, but he may have gone up another notch last night. Ah, who am I kidding, the Tolkien knowledge pretty much eclipses everything else. But last evening’s show was pretty impressive since he had Yo-Yo Ma as a guest. The interview begins at about 13:30. Unfortunately, there isn’t a separate clip of the interview so you have to advance the slider. Though there is one of Yo-Yo Ma’s performance after the interview.

What’s the big deal you ask? Yo-Yo Ma is pretty much everywhere. That may be true, but is he on a show that with the audience demographics of the Colbert Report for over a third of a 21 minute program? What made the incident important in my mind was the recollection of Dana Gioia’s graduation address to Stanford University’s Class of 2007 where he noted popular culture once celebrated the achievements of public intellectuals and artists making household names of people like “Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead…”

He commented that the blame doesn’t flow in one direction, “Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.”

So when I see Yo-Yo Ma on Colbert’s show joking with Colbert about the variety of ways people pronounce his name, (including Yo Mama), and referring to himself as being Joe the Cellist in some people’s eyes, I get a little optimistic about artists’ ability to converse with general audiences. I am encouraged when Colbert asks questions like, “Are the candidates addressing the concerns of Joe the Cellist” (here are their positions, by the way) and noting Yo-Yo Ma’s involvement with a variety of projects like the Silk Road Project because it raises general awareness about the importance and reach of artistic endeavors.

Whether it was intentional or not, Colbert addresses the whole issue of classical music being elitist and artists being aloof from the general public which opens the door to Yo-Yo Ma talking about the necessity for humility and collaboration. Colbert also asks if we are winning the classical music wars since the Chinese are studying Mozart and we aren’t clamoring to learn the pipa. Ma replies that it is Mozart that is the real winner. Colbert revisits the idea of classical music being elitist by asking if there are any good cello works about American themes like “pick up trucks and kicking ass” This segues into a request that Yo-Yo Ma play a song for Joe the Truck Driver. I don’t know if the piece he and his friends play is necessarily for Joe, but it also doesn’t conform to any classic music orthodoxy. In fact, I hope the look on Yo-Yo Ma’s face while his bagpiper yawps and hoots at him makes all the average and not so average Joes curious.

Attitudes won’t change overnight but increased awareness through conduits like the Colbert Report can help in the battle. Despite the self-involved bluster his television persona exhibits, Colbert has used his position to advance causes he believes in. One of his Lance Armstrong parodies resulted in a $171, 525 donation to charity.

One comment Dana Gioia made in his Stanford address that I totally forgot about until I went back to link to it, “When a successful guest appearance on the Colbert Report becomes more important than passing legislation, democracy gets scary. No wonder Hollywood considers politics “show business for ugly people.” Given all the potential fodder for comedy during this election season, I wouldn’t be surprised if the significant time devoted to Yo-Yo Ma wasn’t intended to advance an agenda and perhaps put Colbert’s influence to work for culture rather than politics for one night.

Colbert has begun to have musical guests on his show more often. Perhaps it is time to get in touch with his talent booker and send some intriguing performers his way.

Apparently I Am Going To Be To Blame In The Next Election

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Thanks to a rift in the space-time continuum this weekend, I received this cautionary video dated November 7, 2008 from my future self. Apparently, I will be responsible for great calamity in the next election.

Perhaps it was due to my selfish belief in my own dark horse candidacy. (No embed link so you will have to visit the site. Make sure to watch until the end!)

The first video was put together by MoveOn to encourage people to vote for Obama on election day. The second one just seems to be purely for entertainment value. I don’t know what is involved with the technology but I can see all sorts of potential for the arts. With an ever increasing desire for personal, customized service, I can see this technology becoming more sophisticated and widespread.

You could have personal URLs to a webpage with a video from the point of view of driving up to your venue, picking up a ticket envelop with their name on it and then entering the theatre to see a bubble with an arrow with the words “John and Mary Smith’s seats” hovering over their actual seats.

For a capital building campaign you could have a virtual tour of the proposed facility and have the name of the donor you are courting appear on the plaque on the wall, in the program book, seat plate, brick, etc. And because the technology enables you to fill in the blanks, you can send the same pitch to hundreds of people at a time. You can probably also update wall plaques with the names of those who have already given for those who need the incentive of seeing their names among august company.

I have seen websites where you can upload photos and have faces appear in the video. As you might imagine, it doesn’t always integrate smoothly because of the way the image was cropped, the way faces are turned, etc. I’ll bet within five years someone figures out how to make it work more believably.

Voice overs on the other hand I can see being viable in a shorter time. Make a video of a man and woman who aren’t on your staff. Then record employees reading script prompts “Acme Museum welcomes….”, “…., you will notice the various benefits you can avail yourself of at Acme Museum.”

Then you can go back and have the same people read off names- John (pause) Smith (pause), James (pause) Smythe (pause). Loop the audio in with the video players, insert the names and you have a video where the people are talking personally to your patrons.

The reason I suggest using people who are not your employees is so that people aren’t confused by the actual person’s voice when they meet them in your lobby. Having employees do the prompts and the names preserves the continuity of the voices. As you acquire new patrons you can have your employees go back to the studio and record their names to be inserted. While there is probably significant expense associated with creating something like this the fact that you can record and edit so much of this on a home computer brings the cost down from where it once might have been.

Finally, We Can Walk Tall And Funky

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I generally don’t post on Fridays but sometimes there emerges such a compelling piece of news, you can’t ignore or delay it’s reporting.

Artful Manager Andrew Taylor has once again exhibited great foresight and leadership of Arts Administrators the world over by composing…

It is available for download so you can put it on your iPod and listen to it before going into a meeting and exude the cool, funky confidence that comes with having a theme song.

They Took My Beautiful Coke Machine!

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Yes, we lost a good friend today as the guys from Coca Cola removed the vending machine from my building. This summer we had a fire inspection and were told that we couldn’t have the power cable for the machine running under the door into the scene shop. The door wasn’t pinching the cable in any manner and the inspector admitted that it wasn’t necessarily a fire hazard. But apparently safe practice requires we not have the power cord run there even though it isn’t a trip hazard either.

The powers that be decided they would rather get rid of the machine than drill a hole in the wall so it was adios to the Real Thing. Whether this will constitute a safety hazard as people working late at night have to run out to other buildings to get their caffeine fix remains to be seen.

Though I don’t the fire inspectors were really fully aware of it, the history of horrific death tolls in theatres provide ample reason to closely monitor safety operations. One of the most famous theatre fires was Chicago’s Iroquois Theater fire in 1903. This was a disaster of Titanic proportions as the theater billed as “absolutely fireproof” burned down within five weeks of opening due to a series of poor judgments and scrimping and not installing all the fire safety measures they were touting. The fire itself killed 572 people and the death toll from related injuries eventually brought it to 602.

In 1811, 72 people perished in the Richmond Theatre Fire. In 1876 nearly 300 died in the Brooklyn Theatre Fire

All three of these fires occurred in December which may be a sign to stay away from theatres during that month. All of them were caused by light sources. The Iroquois fire by sparks from an electric light that ignited drapes, Richmond by a candelabra that flew out unevenly an lit the drapes and Brooklyn by a kerosene lamp that…lit up the drapes. These are only a few of the many fiery theatre incidents from history.

The theatre going experience is much safer now that technology has moved away from flame based lighting technology and have adopted safer methods and standards for electrical lighting. In the past, as with today, theaters and fire marshals come into conflict over the circumstances surrounding performances.

Of course, many a proactive theatre stays ahead of the fire marshal’s objections by instituting and disseminating safety procedures. Some theatres even have a process for reviewing stage sets at the design stage.

The loss of my soda machine notwithstanding, the fire marshals were pretty fair in their evaluation of our facility. The changes they required were appropriate to the amount of traffic an area got and the training and familiarity with the facility possessed by the main users of those areas. The interaction was certainly not as antagonistic as some of the experiences I have had and stories I have heard.