Joe Patti

Back in the late 80s, early 90s I read Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E.D. Hirsch. While I felt his list was a little on the conservative side politically and basically ignored or glossed over important figures and events in our history, I have come to feel he did have a point.

Though I haven’t read the book in at least 15 years, I clearly remember that he wrote that at one time, he could use the phrase “There is a tide” and business associates would know exactly how things stood without explanation. (The quote is from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.)

He bemoaned the fact that he could not do that in the 1980s because of the way students were being educated and the lack of emphasis by families that children be exposed to culturally important things. But times change and old cultural touchstones give way to new.

Just recently I found myself similarly mourning the loss of channels of common culture. Or more precisely, the literal increase in the number of channels. When I was a boy, television was comprised of seven stations the three networks, PBS, two independent stations that 20 odd years later become Fox, WB affiliates and the original WWOR. Because there were so few stations, chances were you were watching the same shows as your neighbors and had something in common to talk about.

When I was in 5th or 6th grade, West Side Story was on Sunday afternoon. The next day at recess, my friends and I had a rumble and I got my first black eye. (Matt Mays ducked when James Barry and I were trying to grab him and I hit my face on James’ head). The inspiration of violence aside, there was no need for explanations about how to conduct ourselves because we all saw the musical the night before. (Well, actually, the dancing was beyond us so we skipped that part and went straight to rumble.)

I have noted the problems advertisers face these days reaching audiences (here and here) because there are so many television channels as opposed to the handful back in the old days.

While cable television and the internet allow more people to become familiar with new ideas than would have been possible when a handful of stations dictated what we knew, the weakness of this system is that now only a comparative handful of people can become familiar with a particular new idea. A smaller segment of the population witnessed the fall of Bo Bice on American Idolthan watched Roots.

Even worse, with more channels competing for eyeballs, the programming is even more mainstream and pitched to appeal to the widest audience possible so even fewer new ideas are being introduced to the country. Though granted, A&E, the History Channel, Discovery Channel, TLC, etc do give me an opportunity to learn about more than that single PBS station I watched — but even they have repositioned themselves to appeal to the most people since they arrived on the cable line up. Their stuff is interesting, but doesn’t challenge general attitudes and thinking.

Honestly, I am a little confounded by the recent brouhaha over Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chair, Kenneth Tomlinson, attempting to scuttle PBS. Or rather, I am confused by the actual attempt. With so many fewer people watching PBS these days than in Nixon’s days when he attempted to interfere with the network of stations, I have to imagine PBS is pretty much preaching to the converted and bringing few new people over to whatever way of thinking he feels is unbalanced.

With all the attention the attempted makeover of PBS is getting, I think more people may start thinking that maybe there is something on the stations that they should be watching. It is that old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. It might have been better to leave well enough alone and let the station be continually overshadowed by competitors rather than give people a reason to yank it into the light, dust it off and examine a lost treasure more closely.

I am not suggesting that cultural values and knowledge be standardized and everyone learn them because you quickly fall into the argument about who decides what is important. I know that the NEA’s Shakespeare in American Communities is controversial for this reason. The same is true with the programs where everyone in a city reads the same book over the summer. If you are picking one artist or one book, you are excluding so many others whose equal value can be argued.

At the same time, these program fill a desire in our lives to touch upon the time that humans lived in close knit communities where we found joy in our shared values, stories and traditions. Yes, times change and we have to face that inevitability.

But there is also something noble about thinking back to things like the family traditions of our childhood and wanting to share and create similar memories for others. Comfort and security can be found in these type of practices. The mistake comes when we grasp on these things as the only true ways to find comfort and security and insist on the same to others.

I don’t know where and how this common base can be built or found. I don’t believe the Shakespeare initiative and all Chicagoans reading A Raisin in the Sun was intended as a declaration of the true things citizens should know about the exclusion of all others. I am not as sure about Hirsch’s book, though there are certainly things in there worth knowing. With so many options for entertainment and information, I don’t know that any of these programs could have a wide enough an influence to create a common base.

It would sure be nice if we had some stronger common cultural ties beyond reality TV these days though.

Having never lived in a place that had such a vibrant arts community that theatre companies were clamoring to carve out new spaces, I read this article on the licensing of new spaces in Chicago with some interest.

(Have to credit the Improvisation blog Making It Up As I Go for bringing it to my attention. Author linked to me, I followed it back and read some entries.)

The League of Chicago Theatres and City of Chicago announced a new set of guidelines for establishing licensed Off-Loop Theatres (Loop Theatres are located downtown in the area encircled by, the “L”, elevated train system.) The League had hoped to have the licenses approved by now but the hurdle they face is the city’s resistance to “the theatre industry’s request for zoning modifications that would allow certain types of theatrical community centers ‘i.e., Off-Loop theatres’ to open for business in neighborhoods not currently zoned for them.”

The new license will only apply to venues with fewer than 300 seats that don’t serve alcohol. According to the article, to be licensed, “a company must supply legal, financial and organizational documentation and then must pass a comprehensive inspection of the facility. Standards for public safety-code regulations will not change under the new PAV.” The changes manifest themselves mostly in the simplified application process-9 pages rather than the 23 under the previous system. Requirements for background checks and length of lease have also been relaxed.

The licenses will be administered out of the newly formed Dept. of Buildings rather than Dept of Revenue. The department will do pre-inspections of buildings for theatre groups to apprise them of the severity of any existing code violations they may have to address if they sign a lease. Also, Freedom of Information Act information on violations, liens, court proceedings on the buildings is available for people to do due diligence searches.

The new department head announced the office phone number and promised that his office would end the incessant passing off of calls and conflicting answers people got from City Hall.

The whole article was very interesting to me since I have never had to deal with some of these issues in my own experience. It was also encouraging to see that Chicago was making efforts to help theatre groups find proper facilities and make informed decisions.

The one caveat in the article though was that now that the city was facilitating the process and loosening restrictions, everyone would be expected to be licensed. The practice of enforcers looking the other way and theatres hoping to fly under the radar would be coming to an end.

To go off a little tangentially. The website that featured the story, PerformInk Online, (It “provides a wide range of news and information for professionals in the Chicago theatre industry”), has recently stated that in the near future, they will only accept press releases online and only at a specific email address. Everything else sees the physical and virtual trashcans.

Added to the stronger requirement of licenses, this is another sign of how theatre folks gotta get their operations disciplined and in order.

Cultural Commons website has an article on their home page Are Culture Wars Inevitable? I don’t think the author, Arthur C. Brooks, really answers the question but mentions some things to think upon.

Essentially, he talks about the state of affairs and then makes some suggestions about changes for the future, but doesn’t really provide any new insights to either area. He says it might not be inevitable, but the statistics he offers seems to show the numbers are against the arts.

This point lurks in the background of my recent study in Public Administration Review with Greg Lewis, which shows that, on an extremely wide range of cultural issues, supporters of the arts bear little resemblance to the rest of the population. For example, we have found that arts donors are 32 percentage points more likely than the general American population to say they have no religion, 18 points less likely to see homosexual sex as wrong, 10 points more likely to describe themselves as politically left-wing, and 12 points more likely to support abortion on demand.

These differences make cultural policy difficult, as long as any of the subsidized content is controversial. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a satisfying policy for any activity if one part of the population perceives efficient treatment of it to involve subsidies, while for the other it involves censorship (or at very least, that it not be government-funded.

The only solace one might find with those numbers is that a greater percentage of the population in the US hold these attitudes he cites who are not attending the arts. (His assertion that “supporters of the arts bear little resemblance to the rest of the population” is therefore false in this regard. Though certainly people who hold these attitudes AND support the arts do stand apart.)

The solution, at least in a public policy realm, he says “come in four types: elimination of direct arts funding; controlling publicly-funded content; and shifting funding from arts supply to arts demand.”
If you are like me, you immediately noticed that there are only 3 options here. The fourth appears 3 paragraphs later–

“a final alternative to these policies is to do nothing. It may be the case that culture wars skirmishes in the arts are inconsequential, compared with the importance of the art subsidized. Whether or not this is the case, however, should be the focus of responsible ongoing assessment of the benefits and costs of art and arts policy.”

His discussion of the ethics held by a portion of arts donors reminded me that some people combine the fact they feel uneasy about how to approach art with the idea that museums, theatres, et. al. are places where people of low morals frequent. Nevermind that these people stand next to them on the bus and behind them at Starbucks. Far more graphic situations occur in movies thanks to digital effects than could ever appear on stage (though granted, part of the thrill of live performance the lack of insulation). Still, there is a stigma attached, deserved or not to the arts by some quarters.

On the other hand, movies rarely combine that lack of insulation while challenging audiences by employing religious icons in unexpected ways. (Joe writes diplomatically.) The experience can be jarring enough without having deeply held beliefs shaken. You have to respect those who face that experience honestly.

You don’t have the respect those who damn it on hearsay and rumor or who approach the experience anxiously awaiting the end when they can enumerate their shock. More than ever, the internet allows people to be insulated from the experience, be no less shocked and appalled and express their disgust to their representative all from the comfort of their homes.

People have always had the ability to choose to avoid and ignore that which did not interest them. Now it seems people’s main interest is seeking out and calling attention to these very things. The groups you fear will be adversely impacted by these horrors have a hard time not being facinated by something everybody keeps pointing at.

Personally, it seems like the conflicting view that comprise the culture wars are an inevitable part of being alive. I am sure there have been plenty of people who were vocal about their disapproval of the type of art the DeMedici’s or the Catholic Church was commissioning. The difference, people will say is that the art was being privately subsidized rather than publicly.

Given that the NEA budget is about 64 cents per person in the US, anyone tithing to the church back then was probably paying more than the typical citizen does today. (Though the church’s holdings were far vaster than they are today so the subsidy may just be as insignificant.)

Ah! Back from Vacation seeing my adorable nephew. I didn’t do much thinking about the arts at all during my visit, though I am quite convinced that my nephew’s drool patterns on my shirts are harbingers of his future genius in the visual arts.

Fortunately for me, a comment by a blog reader set me to contemplation upon my return so I am ready to write!

Indija Mahjoeddin, a randai scholar in Australia recently commented on an entry back in January on a Randai performance I had attended. I had essentially wondered if, for all the personal growth participation had accorded the students, would casting directors of Broadway and League of Regional Theatre venues see any value in that experience or would the students have been better off doing Chekhov?

Indija bemoans the fact that she has a hard time getting past the gatekeepers at theatres because randai is not avant garde enough for some, but not commercial enough for others.

In my email back to her, I basically pointed out the thorny problems with popularity. While appealing to a fringe audience doesn’t always pay the bills, there are some unsettling repercussions to having ethnic art forms become vogue.

When something becomes hot, people want to jump on the bandwagon and don’t want to spend the time to grasp the deeper significance of an art form. Instead they are satisfied with parroting the superficial aspects. Worse, there are people who sincerely wish to learn the true nature, but come in contact with instructors who are teaching the superficial elements.

I wasn’t in Hawai’i two days before I realized that Hollywood had done hula and Hawaiian culture a great disservice (I actually suspected that was the case before I arrived.)

Trying to maintain true to the cultural heritage of a group while trying to make a living wage educating the greater population about that culture has always been a narrow line to walk.

One of the strangest stories I have come across recently is an article that accuses popstar Gwen Stefani of exploiting a Japanese pop cultural trend. It is just difficult for me to see how a woman who borrows lyrics and music from Fiddler on the Roof for her songs is grossly misrepresenting a trend where Japanese girls dress in clothes from other times and cultures.

The unoriginal stealing from the unoriginal seems like a victimless crime as far as the principles are concerned (those who originated the music and styles they have appropriated might be another matter altogether.)

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has been able to successfully present cultural heritage without being, by and large, accused of exploiting that culture. Email me or comment below.

I’d also like to hear from anyone who might have some anecdotes about people who were accused of exploiting or undermining cultural elements only to later be praised as a great disseminator of the self-same material.

For instance, I have always wondered if Carl Stalling and Chuck Jones were vilified for belittling classical music by scoring Bugs Bunny cartoons with it. Today many people credit the cartoons as their first exposure to classical music and in some cases, the initiating incident in their love of the music.

My state arts council sponsored a meeting with a Jonathan Katz, CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies yesterday on the topic of arts advocacy. The state arts council and the gentleman were working together on their presentation and this was the first time they had delivered it so it was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of value, but it had its high points.

Organizations were encouraged to have their board members attend the meeting, but it didn’t appear too many board members were there. I imagine the 1 pm meeting time might have been an impediment to attendance.

A person from the state discussed the process the government went through in order to fund the state arts council. Personally I prefer the Schoolhouse Rock version of how a bill becomes a law rather than the convoluted flow chart describing how it travels through committees, etc.

Mr. Katz pointed out that each of these stages was an opportunity to have a conversation with people about supporting the arts community. His biggest push though was to have decision makers/persons of influence, be they reporters, politicans, bankers, civic leaders, educators, tourism officials, etc., attend an event because that experience changes the whole context of discussing the arts with them.

He got into a discussion of using the value of the arts as part of the conversation with these persons of influence. Since he started talking about economic benefits, I asked him his views on the Rand report Gifts of the Muse – Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts that was recently discussed on Artsjournal.com.

His feeling was that the report didn’t go far enough in terms of suggesting how to integrate their findings into an advocacy discussion in practical terms. His feeling was that you do need to mention the economic benefits because the arts truly make contributions in that arena. But this discussion has to be balanced by the intrinsic value argument as well. It is just as important to bring recordings of kids chattering excitedly about their experiences to the table as it is to have financial spreadsheets at hand.

One of the most interesting statistics he brought to the talk was that between 1993 and 2001, taken as a whole state arts organization funding grew faster than state government growth. The combined state arts funding grew by 6.6% while state governments grew 6.5%. Mr. Katz’s point was that folks were making some pretty good cases for arts funding.

Mr. Katz also provided some interesting insight into the workings of state governments when it came to arts funding. He really reinforced the idea that advocacy can never stop. One of the things NASAA has observed is that the state arts organizations that made the biggest gains in funding also had the biggest losses when the time came to cut back.

The mistake people made was equating the increase in funding as a sign that the state finally “got it” when it came to the arts. The legislatures on the other hand were of the mind that the arts were the last ones to get a lot of money and now it was their turn not to have money.

They also found that organized advocacy groups were more effective over the long term than individual arts organizations advocating on their own behalf. At the same time, there has to be a single advocacy point person who is rallying the efforts of the group in an effective manner presenting a well-organized united agenda.

How do you do good advocacy you ask? Well, NASAA has some good articles on their website, including a survey that helps organizations and state arts councils evaluate their advocacy activities.

In addition to reaching the opinion leaders in the community, you have to employ the community leaders on your board to flex their persuasive skills on your behalf. They might be able to talk their friends into writing a hundred thousand dollar check, but talking passionately about their involvement with your arts organization will generally have greater yields over the long term.

Every board member has to be able to advocate to friends, family, business partners, etc and answer the question “why are you spending your time working them them?” It isn’t an answer that the staff can give the board members and they will sound more convincing if they can talk specifically about why they view organization as a worthy cause rather than to simply say it is a worthy cause.

Advocacy for your work is also more compelling coming from people not directly associated with the organization. If an educator, tourism official, business owner, etc., talks about how money for the arts helps them in their jobs, it goes a long way in convincing the holders of the purse strings.

This is the essence of the best advocacy efforts according to Mr. Katz — telling decision makers how helping you will help them. It will come as no surprise that public figures welcome any opportunity to maintain their position by helping their constituencies and increasing their visibility. Everyone essentially wants to be seen as doing good. If their help will help you to empower kids, then show them how it can be done.

People want to be loved so if they care about you or if you affect someone who they care about, then chances are they want to do something to sustain that affection.

One last lesson I learned from the talk–don’t just concentrate on your allies. Work on converting perceived enemies to your cause as well. This is particularly important when working in the political arena. The reins of power can change hands. If you have set one person or one political party up as your champion, there is an implied message that the other folks that are not-champions.

Converting them will take different messages than the ones you use for your easy allies and it won’t be easy, but in the long run, it can be worth the effort.

As I thought, Drew McManus featured my account of my orchestra attendance on his blog today. I hadn’t expected him to essentially quote my entire letter to him. I am pleased that he did (and corrected some of my lapses where my mind sped along faster than my fingers).

What really tickled me was that Patricia Mitchell quoted from the letter I wrote Drew on her blog, Oboeinsight.com. I guess what I had to say made her happy because her only comment is “YES”

I obviously think my letter on Drew’s blog is worth reading so go take a look!

Just for the record, I did email the marketing person at the Honolulu Symphony and suggested they take part in what I bet will be a national trend by next May. I haven’t heard from her, but considering that they are approaching their season finale and departure of their music director, it is not surprising that she would be concerned with other things.

I would take myself to cultural events more often, but I am such a ungrateful date. I never thank myself for the lovely dinner before hand or the thought that went into picking the event. Sure I am easy and will go home with myself on the first date, but all I get out of the evening is listening to myself snore.

I am sure I will enjoy the experience more if I take a friend the next time as Drew suggests.

I was sort of heart broken to read that the South Jersey Performing Arts Center is going to be closed. SJPAC is located in Camden, NJ and has always been in the shadow of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark when it came to state funding.

In fact, most of the arts organizations in New Jersey’s rural south have been given the short shrift by the NJ legislature until recently. By law, funding was supposed to be distributed equitably between the northern and southern parts of the state. Lawmakers tried to get around that by giving the northern groups more money in return for taking programs to the southern part of the state. A lawsuit straightened that arrangement out a few years ago.

The thing that really makes me sad is that for the second time in three years, through no fault of his own, the executive director, Mark Fields is out of a job. Three years ago, the president of Rowan University decided to close the Glassboro Center for the Arts, a performing arts facility located on the campus.

This raised a bit of a furor because he cited lack of funds despite the fact he had just spent HUGE amounts of money on his own house, including a very expensive piano which neither he nor his wife could play. He also chose that time to pour a lot of money into the football team. As a result, there were fewer opportunities for arts exposure in South Jersey, especially given the fact the facility did a fairly large number of school performances.

The impact of the whole situation was made somewhat better by the fact that Mark would be taking his passion to SJPAC. Now that is gone as well despite the success he brought to the organization.

What’s more, SJPAC is almost the last presenting organization of any size in South Jersey. The state is pretty much deciding to export its citizens’ entertainment spending across the river to Philadelphia. And, of course, it is sending out the message that a cultured populace is not important.

The facility is also about the only one with any ability to serve a large number of school children. And let me tell you, Camden is in pretty sorry shape as it is. Having an oasis of culture upon which to anchor improvements was about the only thing it might have had going for it and now that is gone.

I was reading today about how companies are trying to use graphic novels to get kids interested in reading. I was briefly filled with some hope, thinking that perhaps a child who read a graphic novel of a great work might become interested in seeing a play based on that work too.

Then I remembered it has been tried before.

In the 1940s, Classics Illustrated tried to turn great works into comic books. According to an entry on Toonopedia “The idea behind Classics Illustrated may have been to use the methods of the “enemy” against it, to expose young comic book readers to great literature, and thus awaken their intellectual appetites.”

According to Toonopedia, it didn’t work. There was too much book to squeeze into too few pages. Unfortunately, kids used the books as a substitute for reading the books. A woman who gave me some old Classics Illustrated told me they were the Cliffs Notes of her generation. (Ironically, Cliff Notes were the internet term paper mills of my generation.)

According to the graphic novel article, there seems to be a greater attempt to stay true to the stories and so readers should get more from them than the Classics Illustrated. Though I suspect kids will still hand in papers based on the adaptation rather than the original.

On the other hand, if it provides a degree of cultural literacy where none might exist without them, then bring on the comic books!

I was a monster reader to begin with, but I will admit, I first learned about Crispus Attucks (A black man, he was the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was killed at the Boston Massacre.), George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman and Johnny Cash’s destructive alcoholic life before he found Jesus because I picked up anything that looked like a comic book.

In the 30 years since I picked up the comic book on his life, I have seen Crispus Attucks named mentioned in books maybe 4 times. So in some regard, the medium might actually be more effective at communicating information about important, but generally overlooked people and subjects. The visual format might help students remember the subject matter too. I still remember that Attucks was very mechanically inclined because I can still recall the picture of him working on a clock.

Hard to weigh the pros and cons though. Promoting academic laziness by implying that a graphic novel can replace a book vs. offering visual stimulus to reinforce the information being learned.

A year ago I wrote about how my one sister lives within 10 miles of some of the best theatre and arts venues in NJ, but has a perception that anything not on Broadway isn’t worth seeing (including Broadway tours.)

I have come up against a similar feeling at my current theatre. A graduate of the college is the artistic director of a dance company. He grew up on this side of the island and got his start in modern dance because of the school. He has decided he wants to give something back to the school and our side of the island by doing his shows in my space.

He is getting intense pressure from his board about this decision. His shows haven’t been doing well in our theatre and I feel sort of bad about it. His shows do much better at the big Broadway touring house in town. He barely fills a third of the 1400 seats in that theatre and they charge him much more for renting the place. However, he does attract enough of a crowd to pay his bill and go home with money in his pocket.

When he does a similar show in my 600 seat theatre–which would appear much fuller if he attracted the same crowd–he hardly attracts anyone.

The problem is, people think that if a show was any good, it would be at the theatre in town. This isn’t something I am just assuming–I overheard people reinforce this idea with comments. The most extremely example was when Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed here and sold the house out. Two people arrived late because they went to the theatre in town.

If that wasn’t bad enough–they had called my theatre, ordered the tickets and had them with my theatre’s name emblazoned across them in hand when they arrived! Despite this, the prejudice over powered them and they ended up trying to use the tickets to see Carol Channing.

I can appreciate this artistic director’s dilemmia. I tried to give him an out and pointed that it is tough enough trying to do art these days without purposely placing impediments to making money in your way. (I mean on top of the fact non-profits are not supposed to be covering all their expenses with earned income.)

My concern isn’t really about losing the income from renting to him. I rarely have an open weekend to rent. We are just beginning a partnership to develop a work for a world premiere in Fall 2006. I am excited by his vision and really want my theatre to be associated with the work.

With all the related educational programs being developed in conjunction with a museum and local arboretum, I don’t think we will have any problem creating enough buzz between now and the opening to overcome the perception that we present substandard work. We should have very nice attendance.

When we speak about the value of the arts and how they need support, we usually group all the arts together. Doing so is good since the Ben Franklin quote that “We must all hang together, or we shall surely all hang separately,” can certainly apply in regard to the government funding each might receive if they don’t.

In some respect though, this practice does blur the fact that each branch does things in its own way and the answers for one are not viable for another. But perhaps some are…

I was reading a recent Adaptistration entry about job satisfaction in orchestras. There is a link to an article at the bottom of the entry that was really eye opening for me in terms of the perceptions musicians have about their relationship with the conductor, the rules governing their lives and their place in the orchestra ensemble.

Coming from a theatre background, there were things that were familiar to me such as union defined limits on rehearsal times. Other things like the deference shown to the conductor and the timid manner in which comments and questions were couched was amazing to me.

Certainly there are domineering directors in the theatre who try to keep actors cowed. But that is an individual working on a particular production at a specific theatre rather than the systematic situation Robert and Seymour Levine describe.

This brought to mind conversations I had with a friend in ballet administration. To my mind, ballet dancers have it worst since they have no union protection at all. (Not that I am a big union person. I have had mixed encounters with them. But with a union there is at least a standard of treatment a non-union person can point to.) According to my friend, in addition to weak protections against being overworked, getting the rights to choreography can be a humiliating experience. (And if it is different, please correct me if I am wrong. It seems rather bizarre to me. Perhaps this is only true for a small segment of regional ballet companies with which my friend is associated.)

Unlike music and theatre where securing performance rights is based on fairly objective criteria, ballet is apparently very subjective. The rights are often in the hands of a person (often a ballerina who danced the principal role) who reviews the skill of the ballet company applying for the rights by attending a performance or via a video recording. From what I have been told, there tends to be a lot of criticism of the female dancers’ technique and body weight (especially if they show any sign of having a bust). The male dancers are generally spared as much scrutiny.

I had attended a black tie affair for my friend’s ballet company and was told that the petite, absolutely gorgeous dancer who had charmed me that night might have to leave the company because her “weight” was judged unseemly. (I think the chair I was sitting on probably outweighed the woman.)

I mention these elements to illustrate some fundamental differences in the assumptions three branches of the performing arts have about how things should be done. I could certainly go on for a week analyzing the flaws in the way live theatres do business. In some respect, I wonder if it might be better if different branches didn’t get to know each other better. It is probably easier for an orchestra official to advocate for more arts funding if he isn’t thinking about the barbaric theatres who might only employ actors for six weeks before sending them back to waiting on tables while his musicians are guaranteed an income all year round.

On the other hand, even though their disciplines are grouped together as “the arts.” Managers in each area rarely talk to each other on substantive topics. Who knows if there are efficient solutions to common problems if no one really shares that information. One of the most common expectation of attendees of the National Performing Arts Convention held last June in Pittsburgh was that they were attending a forum for an exchange of ideas with people from other disciplines. This according to the surveys administered by the IDOC project. But according to the final IDOC report (found at the above link) and The Artful Manager’s own observations of his attendance, people gravitated toward their own kind.

Granted, the IDOC effort found that some of the scheduling was not conducive to mingling. I don’t know when the next National Performing Arts Convention will be held, but perhaps an effort will be made to replicate the efforts of every junior high school dance committee and force the boys and girls together in the center of the room. (Leave some room for the Holy Spirit though as the nuns used to say.)

Since the general public is hanging us all together under “The Arts”. It would probably be good to take up residence together under that roof and talk a little. Perhaps we can see the way to better relationships with our actors/musicians/dancers.

Great! I was going to try to get away with not doing a post today, but now Drew McManus has gone and linked back to my website as a result of a discussion we have been having about a recent post of his. Now you know, there is all this pressure to come up with something pithy so that the new visitors he is sending my way will stay and read a bit.

Okay how about–“Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.”

I can’t take credit for that, it is the warped genius of writer Terry Pratchett.

Drew’s ideas are intriguing though. I don’t know if it is viable in practice, but it is something that bears considering. In these changing times, I think any intelligent proposal begs looking in to. Before people label his suggestion as preposterous and not in touch with the reality of how things are done, I actually saw a hint of something similiar in the last two weeks.

In a recent entry I mentioned getting a call from a woman working for a potential competitor.

What I didn’t mention was that this woman was working from her home office as a consultant working up a business plan for the organization. Now granted, if the organization had a building constructed, she might have been working out of there as a full time employee. The fact that the organizing group had picked a person with a home business rather than one with a snazzy office in town might be a harbinger of things to come…or may be not. Perhaps the overriding motivation was that she was cheaper than the guys in town and the organizing group didn’t have a lot of money to spare.

But that is Drew’s exact point.

So we will see how things play out over the next few years. Given that just yesterday The ArtfulManager suggested that the 501 (c) (3) route may be the wrong business classification “tool” for the goals of organizations, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next 25-30 years brought a transitional period where the way arts entities are organizes morphs and perhaps diversifies.

There is an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that just seems like a no-win situation for the arts in Cuyahoga County Ohio. They are proposing using a tax from cigarettes to fund the arts.

Doesn’t seem like a position you would want to be in. If people stop smoking, there goes your funding. At the same time do you want to be encouraging people to smoke so you can keep your funding?

When try to raise money by having fun runs and selling candy bars, you can be pretty confident about telling people that it is for a good cause. You really don’t want to be telling people to smoke because it is for a good cause. Even worse, you don’t want your chain smoking Aunt Evelyn smirking at your disapproving look when she lights up and saying that you should be happy, because she is single handedly underwriting your season.

Probably the only thing worse would be if Nevada started to fund the arts with taxes paid by legal sex workers. Can you imagine an arts manager coming home to find his/her spouse has been involved on one side or the other of that?

“Well you were working so hard and so many hours at the theatre. I figured if you got a little more funding, you would be able to hire some help and be home more often. I was only doing it out of love for you honey.”

Okay, maybe that is a little extreme. Though an amusing image if you picture it in a cartoon rather than actually affecting real life people.

The good news from the Plain Dealer article though is that using tourism taxes like restaurant and hotel tax proceeds is already being considered.

There is a fairly famous economic law out there–some guy has it named after him even, that says that technological advances will make the production of materials more efficient and less expensive. I have been searching for over an hour to find the exact wording and name of the law even though it only has a passing relationship to this entry and I CAN’T FIND IT!! So anyone who know, please tell me.
(Took me two years, but I found the answer-Baumol’s Cost Disease)

Anyhow, this mysterious law has often been invoked when it comes to explaining why doing live performance is so expensive. While other sectors become more efficient, live performances are produced much as they were after the Restoration of the Charles II. We pay the increasing cost of using outdated, inefficient methods. Set construction hasn’t started to employ any new revolutionary materials, costumes are still made by hand, performers still need about the same amount of rehearsal time before the product is finished.

Sure nail guns, power saws and sewing machines have made things faster. However, except for recent advances in moving lights which allow you to use fewer instruments to create the same effect (though they cost more than the old ones) live performance is lagging behind in the efficiency department. (Actual the digitization of sound has really been a boon. Not only can it be stored easy, but laptop computers can replace 20 foot long sound boards)

I mention all this to give a respectful nod to the old inefficient methods. The past week has not been good technologically for me. Our computerized ticketing system stopped printing tickets and no one has been able to revived it. Loading the software on a new computer and borrowing a printer from another theatre hasn’t solved the problem either. It doesn’t help that the ticketing software company has gone out of business. So for show this week and the one coming up in a month, we will have to have printed hard tickets.

The brakes went out on the cargo van we intended for luggage transport duty while I was on the way to the airport. Fortunately no one was hurt (and fortunately they didn’t go out while my assistant was following my new car!) Granted this is more a matter of technology getting old than being new but it added to my frustration.

For the last few weeks we have been having trouble with our dimmer racks (they control theatre lights). The lighting system is about 2 years old so it is as state of the art as any equipment with a computer in it can be. Being computerized, it is very flexible and able to give feedback about operations.

Including about things that aren’t happening.

These “smart” dimmers have decided they are overheating and turn themselves off. However, the air in the dimmer room is 72 F and the insides have been vacuumed so often to remove any offending dust, the equipment vendor has commended us on how clean the racks are.

The reason they go out is a mystery so we often wire around that quadrant for shows so they don’t go out in the middle of a performance. The whole episode has made the technical director nostalgic for the old Strand dimmers which would chug along ignoring anything short of a direct hit by artillery.

The worst part is, attempts to tell the computers in the dimmers they aren’t “smart” and can’t decide if they are overheating hasn’t been successful. They still think they can and will shut down. (Even worse, they are so smart, the error code they give with the overheating isn’t in any of the troubleshooting manuals.)

I am sure many people have similar stories about their encounters with technology where the “improvement” gives you more worries than the trouble it is supposed to be alleviating. For example, in newer cars, if you don’t close your gas cap tightly enough, the “check engine” light comes on–and won’t go out for 48 hours after you tighten it. Makes you wonder why there isn’t a “tighten your gas cap” light and a reset switch for it.

So we often talk in the arts about working together with other arts entities more. But what about helping a new one member of the arts family come into existence with which you will have to compete for sustenance and attention?

I got a call today from a woman who is part of the group planning to build a new arts center about five miles from my facility. I haven’t really come in contact with this project too much yet. However, I am told that when they came to tour the theatre a few years ago, there were a lot of naive ideas about how easy it was for volunteers to sustain an quality operation.

Normally, I wouldn’t worry about such a group too much except that they have supporters in the legislature who want the project funded because there are no theatres on this side of the island. This isn’t something you want to hear people saying while your organization is celebrating its 30th year.

Similar claims were made when the local high school rallied support for a performing arts center to be built for them. They claimed they could never get in to my facility and that once built, all schools could use the space. Now many years later, the school has a lovely theatre space and most all the other schools are still renting from us.

The woman who called was making some very considered, informed comments with a healthy dose of skepticism so I ended up speaking with her for about an hour. She had actually done some market research on the communities in the area so she had a good sense of what the resources were. Also, the size of the facility has been reduced from the 1000-1200 seat range to 860. We ended up discussing topics that would essentially fit in my “challenges in arts administration.”

We talked about the costs to contract, feed and transport performers; typical attendance; where we drew our attendance from; number of people I usually had to run a show; their level of competence; how much I lost despite the fact that my light, A/C, cleaning and 3 person’s salaries were subsidized by the college. Since I had to pay for so many other elements of my operations, I could give a good basis for cost.

I felt a little torn by the whole conversation. While I certainly didn’t want to have another organization competiting with mine for an audience, actually being able to discuss something I am passionate about and to have a person understand the implications of the concepts I am discussing is a wonderful thing.

(Actually, I am still so interested in this topic it has taken me over an hour to write this far. I keep stopping to look up data sources for comparsion and leaving voice mail messages for myself at work to remind me what to talk to her about tomorrow.)

I also got a fair bit of information in trade since she had done some research on the new resort developments out this way and knew the potential population growth figures. Since one of the leverage points I am trying to use with the administration of the college is getting ourselves up to a standard to meet the expectations of the people who will be buying these condos. We will be the closest entertainment option (even if this new theatre is built) to the resort community, so it is important we put on a much better face than we have.

I get in this sticky situation about encouraging people to create art every so often. Most times it isn’t about creating an arts group so much as people wanting to become the next big actor or American Idol. I always get caught between wanting to encourage them to express themselves artistically because not enough people are and don’t have the opportunities they need to and wanting to smack them upside the head with a dose of reality.

Too many people watch reality shows like American Idol and see people with no real training win and the runners up actually parlay the experience into some strong possibilities and think they have a chance of doing the same. It was bad enough with people getting off buses in NY and LA with dreams of greatness before, but shows like that probably minimize the reality of the industry even more. (And they forget, the show is meant to elevate a person with no training over others with no training. Mix in some Berklee and Juillard grads and maybe 3-4 untrained reach the sweet 16 round)

So the question I think I need to call this woman with tomorrow is “Why?” She was just doing some research for the group and I don’t know that she is involved enough in the planning to know the actual impetus. I get the sense though that there are people involved with no performing arts experience who fancy the idea of having a theatre in their neighborhood to enhance the property values and such. And it has been noted, people in that neighborhood strangely don’t like to leave it once they get home. They won’t drive 5 miles down to see shows at my theatre, yet we have a fair contingent of people drive 25 miles over a mountain range to attend.

What would really be great though is if they built an arts education center instead where adults and children could take classes in visual arts, dance, etc and eventually feed in to an interest in my theatre.