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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Something Vicious This Way Comes

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January 2007 its coming was foretold and a great moan of despair did issue from the people while others cheered and hailed the arrival of the dread behemoth. Many tried to scurry from its path and have just now recognized their failure now as the shadow of the mighty beast falls upon them.

Now cometh the king….

The LION KING!!!!!!

Last week the Honolulu Advertiser ran a story about the impact The Lion King, which opens in two weeks, is having on the local arts community. Back when Phantom of the Opera came to town, the seats at many theatres were pretty much empty.

Having learned from the past, many organizations started scrambling as soon as the rumors started gained credence. Hearing the performance hall would be occupied, the symphony shifted to another venue and the local school which stages a two day holiday extravaganza started making other plans. The annual Nutcracker production lucked out by having the Broadway tour end just before their scheduled performance.

Many of the other performing arts organizations are experiencing ill effects already. Said one theatre manager “It’s scary, terrible. We moved up our production (from an original October play date) hoping to avoid overlap with ‘The Lion King.’ In retrospect, it would have made little difference…”I keep hearing ‘We bought our “Lion King” tickets and we’re broke,…'”

One group has seen a rise in season subscriptions and other has seen a drop though they attribute that to getting their brochure out late. One group is hoping to fill the house by offering what the Lion King can’t–alcohol during a performance. The group plans to perform two shows in cabaret style and offer a standard drink with the show.

A number of those quoted in the article thought their might be a trickle down effect with people getting excited enough by the show that they would buy ticket to the local performances some time in the next two years. There was no mention if theatres saw a surge in the years after Phantom.

I wonder then if it is wishful thinking as one of those optimistic about a trickle down is also quoted as saying most of those who attend the Broadway series aren’t regular theatre goers. The intent of his sentence was to state what I am sure is his mistaken belief that those who enjoy musicals at his theatre won’t join non-attendees in exhausting their discretionary income at The Lion King.

He also inadvertently points out the reason why his theatre probably won’t enjoy a significant attendance increase from trickle down in the near future– most of the people attending the Lion King aren’t disposed to attend live performances. If people there were a trickle down effect from attending a Broadway show, the regional and local arts scene would be exploding as a result of all the bus tours motoring their way to Broadway and Las Vegas.

For most of those attending, The Lion King is an infrequent treat they give themselves and their family. Even though they could all attend a local performance for what a single ticket to the Broadway show costs, that isn’t part of their regular practice and may never be unless they know someone in the cast.

So how do things stand for my theatre you wonder? Well we haven’t gone on sale yet because we are just making last minute tweaks to a new ticket system. My first show doesn’t open until a month after The Lion King does. This might not work in my favor since the buzz about the Disney show will probably reach its apex about that time and fuel additional ticket sales.

Unlike those who were interviewed for the newspaper article, my theatre doesn’t produce Broadway musicals so we are at least offering an alternative to that. Our season is also weighted with more shows in the Spring. Now whether there is going to be a enough disposable income around after the Lion King and the holiday season are finished is anyone’s guess.

As much as I criticize the trickle down view as naive, there really is no other way to approach the situation but to be optimistic. Doom and gloom isn’t going to help. Finding the ways to pitch your strengths over your competition is standard business practice. In some ways, we local arts organizations aren’t in much different a position than video game manufacturers who face a competitor rolling out a new console just in time for Christmas. Often they time the release of some new exciting game to show the value of the established game systems. We each have to figure out what our version of that practice will be.

Good Acting and Voice Skills Wanted, Will Provide Body

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Second Life is getting a lot of buzz these days as the medium through which people will interact and perhaps get their entertainment in the future. Political candidates have offices and give speeches there. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will give the opening concert of their season there next month motivated by the desire to be the first to do so.

But I heard something today that is motivating me to keep my eyes and ears open for some other alternatives. A student who has had a long association with the theatre came in today and announced she was going to move to Spokane, WA in January to work for Cyan Worlds, creators of the Myst games.

She has been playing Myst Online for sometime now and decided she was going to visit the company this summer. She apparently told them she was coming, when she got there she announced she was going to work for them. Judging from the number of pictures she got with the founder and other employees, they did nothing to dissuade her ambitions. (It also doesn’t hurt that they are advertising for the job she wants.)

I was mostly amused as she talked about her visit. (“The woman in this picture doesn’t know it yet, but she is going to hire me.”) But my ears really perked up when she mentioned that the reason she liked the game was that it was like theatre and performance art. Every month a new chapter in the story is introduced by the game staff to drive the plot forward similar to a TV series. In the interim, the players work together to perform tasks and solve the puzzles for which the Myst games are famous.

I won’t pretend to know much more about the game beyond what I have read online. A couple things I did come across got me thinking that the dynamics of the game might have some lessons for the future of performing arts.

First of all, while players will have the ability to influence the storyline and submit created content, the game administration still retains control of how things proceed. This is in contrast with games like World of Warcraft where there is almost no attention paid to the plot. Second Life allows people a great deal of control over the environment to the point where people are developing and selling real estate in the virtual world. However, that control also equates to the ability to vandalize and destroy property which has been purchased in real dollars at some point in the process.

User created content may be all the rage, but as Andrew Taylor pointed out back in May, there are a lot more people are watching the content rather than creating it. At this point there is still a large majority who want to see well made content (or at least videos of people making fools of themselves) and don’t necessarily crave a high degree of control from the experience.

Live performance in the future may come to mean interacting with virtual avatars of performers. Acting may regress a little. Since appearance will be a function of good design and rendering, the most highly paid actors might be those who have good voices and improvisation/acting skills necessary to interact with people rather than those who look good.

It would be a sort of reversal of the emergence of talking films where people who looked good but had bad speaking voices found themselves out of a job. You have to look no further than Tony Jay who wasn’t a bad looking guy but had a gorgeous voice. He got a lot more work as a voice over artist for cartoons and video games than for his physical presence so it is not tough to see that the real money for performance may soon be in having a good voice and a sense of drama.

Is Social Network Fundraising Worth It?

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Via Non-Profit Marketing Blog, are a couple links to Frogloop, a blog whose goal is to “catalyzing expertise in nonprofit online communication.”

I haven’t gotten a chance to really look at the site, but Katya at Non-Profit Marketing blog linked to an interesting piece on using social networking sites like Facebook to fundraise. The short story is, it is too early in the process to tell if it will be effective. But the guys at Frogloop do a super job analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the practice. They also offer tips on how to position your organization to be most successful.

To top it all off they even provide a Return on Investment calculator to figure out if it is worth tasking an employee or volunteer to work on developing fundraising efforts on social networks.

I plugged in a few different numbers and as near as I can figure it, you pretty much already have to have a powerful fundraising machine at your disposal (think Sierra Club) to make social networking worth the investment. It seems the type of thing that will complement efforts by providing people with an alternative way to give and encourage others to do the same. It doesn’t appear that social network fundraising is going to provide leverage for small organization to raise big money unless the cause is already poised to take off.

I would be really interested to learn if someone (perhaps the good people at Frogloop) have created a similar calculator for direct mail, phone appeals and the other tools fund raisers use. I assume the tools are out there, I just haven’t seen them.

On the other hand, ignorance might be bliss. I might discover I would save money if I stopped asking for it. Though as Andrew Taylor pointed out back in May, some times fund raising events aren’t about making money.

The Queen of Wands In The Kitchen

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For some reason the past two weeks have been chock full of site specific performances in my city. I don’t know if this is a trend or a coincidence. I thought I would make mention of them in the hope that others might find inspiration in them. Considering one event sold out an extended run very quickly, I would imagine it earned a mention on butts in the seas.

Said event, which I was unable to get tickets for, took over a house that was set to be torn down for a performance of “The Living Tarot.” The dance company repainted all the rooms to create an interpretation of different Tarot cards. When the audience arrived, small groups were given a tarot reading (with a very limited deck, of course) and were lead through the house in the order that their reading dictated. Company members were stationed in each room to perform the essence of that particular card.

The project was quite intriguing and I am sorry I was not quick enough with my credit card to secure tickets. This isn’t the type of thing one sees often considering the dance group not only found someone willing to let them take over the house before it was torn down but also convinced businesses nearby to let the audience park in their lots.

The second performance I saw this past Friday in the rotunda at city hall. Since Friday was a state holiday, the group was able to set up their performance during the day and leave it up for a show on Saturday evening. The rotunda was set up with stages reminiscent of the old traveling carnival attractions (i.e. painted canvas hawking the strong man). I’m told the original intent was to have people walk around from station to station as the performances rotated but somehow most of the action ended up at the center stage and the audience mostly sat. I am not quite sure what caused the plan to be changed.

The performances were a mixed bag in terms of quality and some of the segues between pieces didn’t quite work. On the whole, it was interesting. Even with the focus of the event being on the center stage, the setting and the social dynamics enabled them to use the space and interact with the audience to a degree that a proscenium stage would have allowed.

The final event I wanted to mention wasn’t site specific per se, but it was in an unorthodox location. On Saturday I attended a fundraiser for a dance company at the furniture store cum bar, restaurant and theatre I wrote about earlier this year. It was the first time I had been to the facility, (first time I have ever been valet parked at a furniture store, too), and I have to say the juxtaposition works despite what I feel was some healthy skepticism on my part.

As impressed as I was by the architecture, I also appreciated the design of the event. Admission was $20 General, $100 VIP with various rewards, $250 for even better perqs, including dinner. While $20 didn’t get you all the benefits, you could wander through various rooms including the restaurant and watch the entertainment in each location. The way the entertainment was programmed, most everyone would gravitate toward the bar and the theater. There was plenty of room for those who did wander into the restaurant section that they could stand apart from the diners without disturbing them but still enjoy the performances.

I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I thought it was cleverly done to make those who paid $20 feel as if they got more for their money by allowing them access everywhere while also insuring that those who paid $250 were not in a situation where they felt their experience was diluted by throngs hovering at their elbows.

I have a feeling that great dynamic was just dumb luck but I am going to ask the artistic director running the fund raiser if it were planned. It seems like a winning atmosphere to cultivate, especially given that I was coaxed into parting with a little more money that evening.