Audience Relations

Connecting To Your Community

by

The arts blogosphere (or at least a small corner thereof) is abuzz with joy with the news that Scott Walters received NEA funding for his <100k Project. As noted on the <100k Project site, the purpose "is an attempt to 'bring the arts back home” to small and rural communities with populations under 100,000.'"

I come from a rural town and have something of an interest in the project's success for sentimentality sake, if nothing else. I think I would be pleased for Scott regardless of my background. The <100k Project has been percolating in Scott's head and on his blog for quite some time now. I am glad to see he is able to move forward toward implementation. (The grant he received is to convene people to address the issues he wants to tackle.)

One of the things I hope to learn by monitoring his progress is strategies for reconnecting one’s community. I am currently in a small city/suburban setting and every community is different so I don’t expect to take things whole cloth. It is just that the late arrival/early departure issues that lead me to opine on an audience’s responsibility to a community continue and are ever irksome. Mostly it is due to this being the time of year when we have a lot of events where performers’ friends and family attend. Most stick around for the whole show but a large number, 50-80, arrive late and depart early.

Friday night I saw a group departing where one woman energetically exclaimed that the piece that just finished was surprisingly good. I noted there were still more high quality pieces to come. She shrugged, said “meh” and continued out with her friends. I don’t discount the influence of the group over the individual. Had she been alone, she might have stayed. It should also be noted that the event hardly fell in the “sit quietly and appreciate the cerebral high art” category. The audience was energetic and expressive.

I mention this because while I do believe an audience member does have a responsibility to the whole, I don’t believe the behavior necessarily has to conform to a traditional status of sitting quietly in a dark room. Attending a performance is a communal relationship between the audience and the performers. It should be approached with the intent of arriving on time and staying until the end. Various factors may conspire to thwart this intent. I know that in the early days attending was a social event and a place to be seen. That doesn’t mean today it should be viewed as a party where you arrive late, stay long enough to be considered to have made an appearance and depart. If a person is going to a performance, it should be with the intent to stay. It represents a commitment to the entire community assembled there.

None of this is to say performing arts organizations shouldn’t meet their audiences part way. From everything I have recently described about my experience, the reader can rightly point out that expectations about the attendance experience are changing. Opportunities for greater interactivity can and should be explored. There are plenty of scenarios where one need not commit to sitting immobile or staying the entire time.

I don’t want to wax too poetic while idealizing the relationship between performers and the audience and among themselves as a sublime sacrament. I think it is that sort of thinking created the idea was the audience’s place to sit quietly and receive.

Yet in a time when people mediate their day to day experience through phones, texting, iPods, computers, televisions and the like, a communal gathering for a shared experience becomes more precious and can verge on the sacramental so the items of distraction should be laid aside. There is nothing wrong with sitting quietly and absorbing an experience be it at a performance, in a gallery or a mountain top. The key difference is that the audience should want to do so rather than be expected to do so. I think the time is past when arts organizations can directly tell people how they are supposed to behave and cultivate a constructive relationship. People don’t want to learn how to be poised and cultured too much any more.

I believe success will be a matter of reinforcing certain values in a more indirect manner. It will be phrases used in speeches, press releases, program notes and brochures. Hopefully it won’t be the same phrases in every community because every arts organization and dynamic with their community is different. I will be working on formulating ways to deliver these concepts. It is also the sort of thing I hope Scott Walters’ project will generate.

Sitting quietly in the dark doesn’t necessarily have to be a passive experience. If you know what you are looking for it can be very exciting and intriguing. Before I go any further, let me just say that nothing ruined the experience of attending a performance like knowing I had to write a paper about it. Audiences need to be informed so they can process the experience but their education can’t leave them paranoid about analyzing every moment to find some answer.

Having gotten that out of the way..

Live performances, as with movies and video games, have had the lighting, sound, costumes intentionally designed in a certain way. How aware you are of these elements and how they affect your experience can enhance your enjoyment. The same with the decisions made by the director and performers. Was that pause for dramatic effect? Were lines forgotten? Are things so disorganized back stage, there is a long empty moment? Or is it a trick to make us think things are going wrong?

It doesn’t require years of education to ask these questions, just an awareness that these factors play a part of a live performance. Recognizing these elements, but not knowing what the reality might be can make any performance experience, including those in movies and television exciting. But the uncertainty of live performance combined with the inability to rewind and scrutinize makes that experience all the more engaging. And there is the added opportunity of tracking a live person down after the show to ask. Making people available to illuminate the situation, even if it is by email a day or two later, is added value for audiences. Good performance discipline requires you don’t acknowledge a flub during the show, but there is no need to grin foolishly and own up to it afterward.

But as an audience member if you arrive late, leave early and spend the interim texting you can miss these things and keep your mind from processing and pondering what is happening. So yeah, for you it is probably boring. But this is a communal experience you are likely also keeping others from doing the same with all the motion. Or maybe the whole thing is poorly done and incredibly boring or bad and you are within your rights to get up, leave and do something else.

Before you do, be sure you aren’t confusing something you don’t understand with poor quality. I think Kyle Gann said it best in his entry for Take A Friend to the Orchestra Month back in 2005. Insert whatever you are seeing for classical music references.

…At the same time, keep in mind that there are lots of different kinds of musical enjoyment, some of them perhaps unrecognizable as such simply because you haven’t experienced them yet. What I always noticed, starting out, was that if a piece bored me, it was likely to always bore me, but if it irritated me, something interesting was going on.

Probably the reason I became a musician was that I kept going back to the pieces that irritated me to figure out why anyone would write something that’s irritating..

It is not the composer’s job to come up with things that you like (because who, working in his studio, can predict that?), but it is his or her job (though a lot of
bad composers deny this) to be clear and communicative. If you get the idea of the piece, the composer has succeeded, and the idea is yours to like or not. Again, watch your reaction – but don’t assume that your immediate reaction is the only important one. As far as I’m concerned, a forgettable piece is bad, but one I’m still thinking about three days later must have something going for it.

More Economic Alfalfa

by

Back in March I linked to a story about how Philadelphia was trying to revitalize its South Street district by arranging for artists to temporarily take over empty storefronts.

Artsjournal featured a story from The Guardian today about a similar effort in London which seemed to be designed a little more constructively for artists. My concern about the Philadelphia initiative was that the artists’ tenure in the spaces was rather tenuous. In London’s case, the project is arranged by the South London Gallery who has secured a three year lease and will place artists in the stores for six month residencies. While this may ultimately be a much shorter time than the participants in the Philadelphia program will enjoy, at least the parameters are known from the start.

In fact, The Guardian piece acknowledges just how unstable such an arrangement can be. Referring to arrangements like the one in Philadelphia where landlords are persuaded to offer storefronts for free or low cost, Stroud Valleys Artspace director Jo Leahy notes,

“The downside for the artist is that they’re welcomed with open arms during the recession, they help to regenerate an area – and then they get tossed out when they’re no longer needed, because the economy picks up and the rents go up. So it’s worth having eye on the future, and trying to insure yourself for when times improve.”

And the good the artists’ residencies did for the city of Gloucestershire was measurable. Leahy notes that the 25 storefronts her program utilized in 13 years rented easily when her organization moved out. Even more importantly, it warded against the encroachment of negative influences.

“Leahy adds that the estate agent she works with has reported lower rates of vandalism in shops used by artists, as opposed to those that are left empty. Art in shops puts the feelgood factor back, she argues. “It’s another way of judging a town. We’re used to measuring a place by how busy the cash tills are. This is about measuring somewhere by its ideas, by the things that people are making happen here.”

What I thought was most constructive about the project South London Gallery is spearheading is that they are not merely content to plant artists in the storefronts and hope something grows. South London Gallery, which has an outreach manager, is hoping to bring arts exposure to the neighborhood in which they are located but whose residents they rarely see enter their doors. While they hope the people do one day come to the gallery, their immediate goal is to “demystify the process of creating art, taking it away from the private studio” and locating working artists in the familiar space of a business people used to patronize.

Does The Audience Serve The Community?

by

Performing arts organizations are very much aware that they are increasingly at a disadvantage offering entertainment in a single location at set times in an environment when it can be obtained on demand, paused and continued. This weekend I really started wondering if we are ceding too much ground without a fight. Today, Artjournal.com happened to link to a piece on The Guardian website by Mark Ravenhill where he expressed something akin to my thoughts.

“But on one subject there does seem to be an almost universal consensus, and that is that you – the reader, the listener – are bored, most of the time. Look at any contemporary guide to making art, or working in the media, and the assumption is that an audience’s natural state is one of restless ennui. Our job as writers is to provide a sort of espresso shot. Grab them quickly, grab them hard – otherwise they will change channels or walk away.”

What I was thinking this weekend is that while we always talk about arts organizations needing to better serve their communities. We often hear how we have to change our processes and our thinking to acknowledge the changing expectations of our audiences. This is absolutely correct. We need to evaluate the ten thousand things we do every day in the context of shifting expectations.

But I got to wondering. Are our audience members serving their community very well? Don’t they have a responsibility to the larger group and are we complicit in letting them get away with shirking it?

This weekend we presented our annual dance festival where invited groups of students and professional companies perform short pieces. I have sort of resigned myself to the fact people are going to walk in at 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 minutes into the show. I think that perhaps I have started ceding too much in the way of lowered expectations to our audience.

We do close the box office 30-45 minutes after the show has started when it appears the trickle has finally abated. We still end up turning 10-15 people away who don’t have tickets but admitting that many or more who do. You know, the people carrying the pieces of paper with the time emblazoned across them who should therefore know things started 75 minutes ago?

Over the last decade or so I have trying to shift away from the disapproving figure looking at his watch noting just how late people are. It used to be that you ended up watching television monitors or wandering around the lobby if you missed the last late seating interval. Recently, I have begun to wonder if the kinder, gentler, forgiving approach in hopes of making the attendance experience of a dwindling audience feel more welcome may be counterproductive in the long term.

What really annoys me isn’t so much the late arrivals but the early departures from events after friends have performed. I have addressed this in the past. When there are children involved either as audience members or performers, the message this conveys is that the arts have no value outside of an acquaintance’s involvement in them. For older people, it further socializes the idea that the live experience is disposable.

The dance pieces this weekend weren’t lengthy or based on some abstract concept. Each group had about seven to nine minutes to perform so if you didn’t like what you saw, it was over shortly. The first piece of the night was a satire of ballet. Even if you don’t know enough about ballet to get some of the jokes, a lot of it was just physical comedy. I can think of a number of reasons why people might choose not to attend in the first place, but once one is in the theatre, it was fairly clear one need not be an initiate to enjoy the performance.

Lest you think I am attributing poor intentions to people who had other motivations for leaving, a few groups told us outright they were leaving because their friend was done dancing. (The same thing happens with our choral concerts.)

Getting back to the idea of the individual’s responsibility. Attending a live performance constitutes a relationship. It is a relationship between you, the audience and more importantly, the performers. This is the case even with those you don’t know personally. These performers can only be at a specific place at a time which dictates some of the constraints of the performance. Even though you seem to be one of possibly a very large group in the audience, how you conduct yourself has a definite impact.

This is the message the arts need to convey. Not in an explicit lecture, but in the subtext of what we communicate be it in person or via the technological tools we employ. Last week I was musing about what back to basics value the arts can embody. I am starting to think maybe it is personal relationships.

People are beginning to become disenchanted with a situation where they have 10,000 Facebook friends, but no one to bring them chicken soup when they are sick. While we have grown tolerant of it, I’ll bet people would prefer not to be placed on pause while someone answers their cellphone or displaced by a texted conversation.

Half the battle can be won by heeding the advice we have been receiving for years–provide places and opportunities for people to socialize. In some respects that is the easy part because it just involves money for renovations, furniture and staffing.

The other part of the equation is communicating the values of responsibilities to the community without preaching. It is a fine line between encouraging people to arrive promptly and remain, and adopting policies which make them feel like they are being punished for breaking the rules. For those with little experience in attending performances, it may sound contradictory to tell them not to feel inhibited about expressing approval for a wonderful performance even though people are glaring at them but that they should heed the glares when they start screaming and whistling as their friend appears on stage. One calls attention to an excellent performance, the other calls attention to you and your relationship with an individual.

Printing guidelines in programs and on your website counts on people taking the time to review them. Also, at first glance they appear to be the hidebound list of rules which intimidate some from attending in the first place. Curtain speeches can be more personable but….is preaching the the choir of prompt people.

Surely, something should be said otherwise you miss the opportunity to reinforce the value of the experience you are offering. The repercussions of not doing so might not be immediate but manifest in the next generation (or absence thereof). If you stay positive, you can be explicit and thank people for valuing the experience of live performance unmediated and insulated by technology. You welcome the opportunity to discuss the performance in person with the audience in the lobby or coffee shop after the show. And if they need time to digest the experience, you would love to read their comments on the organization’s web forum later.

Interacting with the late comers/early departers in a constructive way is tough. They already know they are breaking a convention and are prepared for any conversation, including directions to the restrooms, to be instilled with some degree of disapproval or scolding. The one approach that comes to mind leaves a lot of opportunity for patronizing tones to creep in.

My thought is that the ushers in the lobby be gracious and say he/she will escort the late comers in since it can be difficult to get ones bearings in the dark. While awaiting an appropriate break in the action, the group lingers near photos of the performers. I haven’t worked out the gist of the conversation yet because everything I think of can easily slide into the wrong tone. Essentially using the photos to give a face to the performers, the discussion touches on how long the rehearsals were and how much concentration is needed to perform before a live audience. How much the late comers will hopefully enjoy the performance and how important their approval is to the performers.

As you might surmise, the subtext is about how the performers and audience interact. While the artists are professional and will give their 110% performance regardless of audience size or reaction, things are likely to go to 125%+ for a good audience. I don’t want the performers to be vague and distant in those people’s minds, especially if their seats are indeed far from the stage. I want the late comers to feel a connection between themselves and the performers, seek them out on stage, realize the importance of their presence and hopefully, of their responsibilities, relative to those assembled in the facility.

The opportunity to actually see and interact with performers at some juncture contributes to this goal. I have made plenty of other entries about aloof artists and administrators so I won’t get into those aspects of the experience.

I am going to continue to think on the whole idea of reminding people they have a responsibility to the community rather than believing we need to passively accept shifting expectations. I would like to hear other people’s thoughts on this matter. Remember, I am not suggesting this stance be adopted to rationalize not changing. I merely propose that faced with millions of people Twittering everywhere they go, it doesn’t automatically follow that we need to accede to the expectation of Twittering being permitted during performances.

I am also intrigued by the idea of the arts embodying the values of personal contact and would be interested in seeing if anyone has any thoughts along these lines. I think much can be accomplished if we avoid declarative statements like You should/shouldn’t, must/mustn’t… Something as simple as, “(Discipline), It’s All About Contact” on a poster and ten thousand images can immediately be plugged in below the caption and a campaign begins.

My TAFTO Favs

by

Next week the entries for this year’s Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month (TAFTO) begin. I have always enjoyed reading this series, even before I had any association with Drew McManus or joined Inside the Arts. There have been a couple entries from the past that have really stuck in my mind. While you are waiting for this year’s installments, I thought I would post a couple links to some of my favorite entries.

Nothing should be read into the fact that I haven’t included entries from 2008. These are my favorites and I make no pretense at being egalitarian. Nor am I being modest by excluding my own contributions. This is a list of the entries that popped out at me and remained in my memory over the years. Last year’s entries were just fine and whet my appetite for the 2009 batch.

2005

I really enjoyed some of the earliest entries because they focused on some of the rules for attending the orchestra. Really many of them can easily be applied to attending any arts activity whether it be performance or visual arts experience.

For this reason, Kyle Gann and Sam Bergman’s entries back in 2005 are among my favorites. They approach some of the intimidating aspects of attendance with honesty and humor.

One of the entries that I immediately associate with the whole TAFTO initiative was the WNYC interview on Soundcheck when Drew took Soundcheck host John Schaefer’s brother, Jerry to a Bartok performance at Carnegie Hall. The interview, which may be downloaded here, requires RealPlayer to play. In my view, the interview constitutes the most effective entry in the TAFTO effort. Jerry speaks with complete candor about how he only liked 2/3 of the experience. If I only had one entry to choose to help me convince someone to attend an orchestra performance, this would be the one because the listener can be most guaranteed that they are receiving an honest appraisal, realize they probably possess the capacity to evaluate and enjoy the experience, and recognize they have permission to be bored and not enjoy every moment.

2006

In this batch of writing, I liked Jerry Bowles account of how he and his wife had cultivated an appreciation of culture in general in his nephew by treating him like an adult. His entry serves to remind all arts people that appreciation of our products is a gradual process rather than an instantaneous event. Also, getting to that point requires communication, patience and trust that people will find their way rather than needing a dumbed down approach.

Kevin Giglinto’s entry traveled along the same lines, except that he spoke about his personal interactions with music that took him from Led Zeppelin through Husker Du and Sonic Youth to working for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). When he first encountered Led Zeppelin, Husker Du and Sonic Youth, he had no doubts about his relationship with the music. Even though each initial experience challenged what he knew, he believed in his capacity to comprehend it.

The prospect of working for CSO intimidated the hell out of him though.

“I probably felt the same perceived barriers that people have in their minds today that stop them from entering the doors for the first time. I asked myself the same questions I know they are asking:

“What if I don’t understand the music?”
“Will I appreciate it less without that understanding?”
“Is this music really for me, given what I usually listen to?”

Then came the first performance I attended. On the program was Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony…When the music ended, and the audience erupted with applause, I realized that all the questions I had in my head prior to the experience were irrelevant. It was the music. It took me over with the same incredible rush that I experienced with The Who, The Clash or whoever else occupied my musical drive. It was the music.”

I can’t leave 2006 without mentioning Alex Shapiro’s “screw the rules, let them wear party hats” post which I believe is still one of the most commented upon entries on the Adaptistration blog. The entry remains a must read. Alex’s point is essentially that one generally doesn’t prepare to go to a rock concert being overly concerned about hearing the lyrics much less grasping the whatever imagery and metaphor they invoke but we are pleased if we do. Going to a classical music performance should be approached in the same anxiety free manner.

And if you are thinking, yeah but at a rock concert, part of the excitement is hoping some hot guy/girl will bump into while screaming “Wahooooo!!!!”, Alex is right there with you wishing it would happen in our symphony halls.

I also enjoyed Pete Matthews recounting of his visits to three different classical music events with the same friend in the course of a month. It was just a nice, comparison of the types of music you can hear and the sort of places you could hear it. I was most encouraged by the quality experience they had in a high school auditorium given they also attended at Avery Fisher and Carnegie Halls.

2007

James Palermo, General Director of Grant Park Music Festival caught my attention with his vow not to apologize for loving classical music. I think a lot of us have found ourselves falling into the same mindset and needing to pull ourselves out.

Then I read a quote attributed to the great soprano Leontyne Price about the value of the arts. I’ll never forget it:

“We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it’s time to show us at our best.”

When a President dies, at the funeral we feature the hottest opera star singing Amazing Grace. When the media wants to associate something with class or value, it invariably uses baroque or classical era music. If a marketer wants to conjure up grandeur or power, it’s Verdi’s Anvil Chorus or Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries.

So, I vowed to stop apologizing for loving and understanding classical music. Whenever I hear negative comments from friends or colleagues, I remind them that the music is enjoyable, revelatory and full of great things for anyone who is open enough to experience it without prejudice, regardless of social class or race.

One of the most singular posts in the TAFTO was produced by Bill Harris who engaged in an extensive analysis about whether Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month was a worthwhile endeavor. His work is so insightful and unlike any other entry in the TAFTO series, it is impossible to ignore.

Hope you took a look at some of these past entries and will join the fun over at Adaptistration next week for the new installments!