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Like a parent that doesn’t like to see the kids fight, I get uneasy when I see arts groups competing with each other for limited resources when they could be collaborating at least partially with their efforts. What really makes me uncomfortable is getting caught in the politics between them. This afternoon I had a group call to inquire about renting the facility. After I sent them an application they apparently sent out an email blast adverting that they were doing the show. (They shouldn’t have until they got approval for their event but that is another matter.) I get a call a few minutes later from the leader of the group the applicants split off from asking if it was true we had a show going on that night. His group does a show here every year and from the subtext of his questions, I guess he sees his splinter rivals as a threat.

I have frequently mentioned differing opinions about interpretation or what subsection of a discipline to emphasize as a basis for creating a separate organization but I don’t know if I have ever addressed the motivation of raw drama. Unfortunately, there are plenty of instances where dislike for others has caused a schism in organizations.

I will concede that sometimes it is healthier to split off rather than continue in a bad situation and that it can result in a stronger organization. We do have a case where we deal with an original group and a group that split away because they felt the parent group was too disorganized. I can attest that the splinter group is indeed much more pleasant to work with because they are organized. (They also pay their bills on a timely manner!)

In the majority of cases I have come across, the separation dilutes the effectiveness of each entity. I was talking to a gentleman with a long institutional memory who told me that locally when Federal funding for a WPA-like arts program ran out those involved in a dance company split into smaller groups, many of which replicated the efforts of the others. Even though the fragmentation was generally amiable, the result is that every Christmas brings 4-5 competing versions of The Nutcracker. Some versions are more family friendly than others which serves as a good alternative to the one very formal production which appeals to the aficionados. That still leaves 3-4 groups competing for the family audience and it shows in some of the attendance numbers.

Passion and anger has been known to inspire works of art but more often it seems to spawn unimaginative polemics. There is nothing stopping either from filing for non-profit status and soliciting grants to support their work. As a funder or patron It is rather difficult to discern among those who are in conflict whose ideology is more pure and sincere. A friend gave me a tour of her town once and pointed out the homes of two theatre groups noting that the community wasn’t really big enough for both though they were rivals whose bitterness was sometimes played out publicly. One was slightly more successful but the other enjoyed the largess, and accompanying cachet, of a well known film actor. As a result, neither needed to make peace with the other though they and the community might be the better for it.

Via a listing on the Chronicle of Higher Education website today, I became aware of The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). The survey which is entering a trial phase with plans for national reach starting in 2010 will extensively query alumni of arts high schools, college/university programs and conservatories about the training they received and its applicability in their careers.

According to a press release on the SNAAP website,

“Arts alumni who graduated 5, 10, 15 and 20 years earlier will provide information about their formal arts training. They will report the nature of their current arts involvement, reflect on the relevance of arts training to their work and further education, and describe turning points, obstacles, and key relationships and opportunities that influenced their lives and careers.

The results of the annual online survey and data analysis system will help schools strengthen their programs of study by tracking what young artists need to advance in their fields.”

The press release also acknowledges that upon graduation, artists don’t often perform the exact work they for which they trained. The release charitably suggests that “they may work at the boundaries between disciplines.” I suspect the survey will find in many cases people end up doing work barely tangentially related to their training in the arts. Long time readers will recall that I covered an attempt by Tom Loughlin, a professor at SUNY-Fredonia to track the success graduates of his program were having getting work in any entertainment related pursuit. While his method wasn’t entirely scientific, I suspect the results won’t be diametrically opposed to what SNAAP finds.

I am prepared to be encouraged by unsuspected rays of hope that the SNAAP survey uncovers. They note that the approach of the creative economy will generate a demand for people with arts training so if the results do lead training programs to reevaluate their approaches and make their students more employable, it could certainly be worth the costs. The FAQ on the SNAAP website notes other benefits to policy and decision making related to the arts. (Including parents and students considering it as a career path.)

Something I found interesting in the FAQ was the response people had to early versions of the survey.

“The initial testing of the SNAAP questionnaire indicated that arts alumni were frustrated because the survey assumed a linear career, and suggested that all events and experiences were equally important.

An interactive graphic interface, the SNAAP lifemap will allow survey respondents to tell their stories and to indicate the relative importance of events and experiences to their careers, whether they work in or outside of the arts. “

The introduction of the lifemap feature as part of the survey is an intriguing approach since it will be generated as people answer. Personally when I fill out surveys it is frequently difficult to decide between the extreme categories. I am faced by the question about whether I strongly (dis)agree or emphatically (dis)agree. I think if I saw a graphical representation of how my answers were being interpreted, in this case the relative importance of chapters in my life, I could answer more accurately. (i.e. Oh no, that’s not right, job B had a much greater impact than job A, let me go back and revise). This isn’t an approach that can be used with all surveys since it obviously influences responses, but in some cases it can be helpful. In fact, it could actually assist in self reflection if a person came to the realization that Job A actually influenced them more than they realized and they can’t honestly massage the numbers to make Job B appear more prominent.

As has been my habit the last couple years, I wanted to make people aware of that the Emerging Leadership Institute of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ is accepting applications for participants for the program at the conference next January. The application deadline is June 30 so you have a little time to complete the relatively simple application.

The form and other information may be found here.

Those who have attended have had a good experience, myself included. I am optimistic about the future of the program as the APAP leadership seems to be taking active steps to improve and advance it. I haven’t been directly involved with these changes though I have been talking and nudging people. There is a longer term agenda that I would like to see come to pass.

If you are involved in the presenting field (performer, agent, presenter, etc.) or know of someone who is, please consider applying or encouraging someone else to do so.

When you see a person quoted in the newspaper talking about a controversial or important issue, it can be difficult to develop an empathetic connection with them because the written word has an inherent insulating element about it. I have been following the travails of the Honolulu Symphony for quite some time now. I have had conversations and email exchanges with some of those involved that it hasn’t been appropriate for me to report on here.

Although the heroic dedication of the Honolulu Symphony musicians who have been playing without pay since before Christmas (they are about 7 weeks in arrears right now) is easily perceptible in writing, it seems to fall short of what I feel listening to them tell their stories.

Earlier this month, the local public radio station interviewed musicians about how they were coping. Some remained stalwart, some said things were getting tough and they had to start looking for work in other states though it killed them to do so. There is a sense that the financial difficulties and not knowing when the next paycheck will come is wearing on the musicians, even if they don’t overtly mention it. You can hear it in their voices. There is also gratitude for public gestures of support like a dentist who didn’t charge one musician for his services.

At the same time, as the musicians go through these difficulties, they are going out and performing concerts to show their solidarity with hotel workers who had been fired and then partially rehired according to some elusive logic. The musician organizing the effort notes that the same could happen to them. I wondered if it was a tacit acknowledgment of the hardball decisions made by the board and management of the Jacksonville and Columbus Symphonies. Not to mention the abrupt closures of Aloha and ATA Airlines which staggered the state last month and left thousand out of work. It is to the Honolulu Symphony Board’s credit that they haven’t been talking about closing during all this.

I should acknowledge that last week an unnamed donor made a $1.175 million gift to the Symphony. It doesn’t solve all the problems, but it helps a lot. (I also should mention that my theatre is one of those the Symphony owes money.) The interviews I linked to aired a week prior to the news of the gift and in fact were conducted a few weeks prior to the air date so the lack of certainty about the future was very real. The good news for the musicians is that Executive Director Tom Gulick is on the record as saying all the backpay, including a restoration of cuts the musicians granted under a previous administration adjusted for inflation will be paid to the musicians.

Whether this good fortune proves a temporary reprieve for symphony operations which will prove unsustainable or just the break they need to implement a well considered plan to renew the organization remains to be seen.

Well apparently as my windows shifted around during my recent attempts to enhance my web feed links, I accidentally deleted part of the right hand sidebar. I have tried to restore and also improve that sidebar, but I am pretty sure some blogs that I added after creating a back up copy have gotten left out. I have a good sense of what has been omitted but I am going to go back through the last 6-12 months of posts to double check and perhaps pick up a couple more that should be included.

If I am missing your blog and listed it before, let me know! Sorry about making you disappear.

A few months ago one of the readers expressed an interest in having the blog feed changed to provide the full entry instead of just the summary. Drew over at Inside the Arts did a survey and discovered that most people want a full feed instead of a summary.

As a result, I have added a full feed to the blog. You can choose the summary or full feed in the left sidebar. You can also choose the feeds via the orange icon in the navigation bar of your web browser. I haven’t figured out how to differentiate between the two Atom feeds listed there yet. But if you mouse over them, one is named atomf.xml and the other is atom.xml. The one with the “f” will deliver the full length feed.

Enjoy.

CNN.com had a piece from CareerBuilder.com about the top 10 job prospects for Non-Profits. The growth numbers they cite apply to “advocacy, grantmaking and civic organizations field and administration is still the place to be salary wise.

I was rather amused at the opening lines of the piece-

“Do you feel your contributions in the workplace are overlooked? Are you consistently swamped with work at the office, but still feel empty when the week ends? At the end of the day, are you ashamed of what you’ve accomplished and how you reached the end result?”

Except for the bit about how you reached the end result, I think I am safe in saying that even non-profit people feel this way about their jobs. Though for non-profit people, the shame at the end of the day is more over how little you have accomplished in relation to what needs to be done.

Working in non-profits bestows no special grace that eliminates these feelings but they certainly may be offset with a greater feeling of satisfaction than you had in your for-profit job.

Just in case you are curious to compare some salaries, CareerBuilder also did a list of the top jobs in 10 industries back in February.

I think I witnessed an honest to god significant Pro-Am occurrence last week. (I say significant because there are a lot of smaller examples all around me everyday.) One of the professors at my school, Paul Cravath, donated his book to the college library last Friday. Not a big thing in itself certainly, but it was how it got published that is interesting.

A gentleman with a passion for the Cambodian art around Angkor Wat was interested in the story behind the figures of dancers found in the area. Having read two sentences somewhere of the professor’s doctoral thesis on Cambodian Dance Drama, he asked the read the whole thesis. The gentleman decided the thesis should be published and set about making it so despite having never published a book before.

Now the professor has a gorgeous looking book published supported by a nifty website. This week, the book appears on the cover of Publisher’s Weekly. Okay, sure it shares the cover with 11 other books, but still it is pretty impressive. (Its the one on the bottom row in the middle.)

Granted, it wasn’t cheap to print even 800 copies but nothing says that Pro Ams are necessarily poor. The man who funded the project seems pretty canny and has a plan to recoup his nut in a manner that doesn’t depend on making college students spend a lot of money on it as a text book. The idea that one man’s passion for Cambodian art would inspire him to publish the work of another having no experience in doing so is mind boggling to me. I suspect that in a 5-10 years this sort of thing might not be so surprising.

In fact, the practice might prove a little dismaying. In the discussion of his book, Engaging Art, at the APAP conference, Steven Tepper mentioned that while people might be inspired by the technology facilitated Pro Am environment to write a book, their enthusiasm and hard work might not translate into something worth reading.

So you may ask, does the world need a book on Cambodian Dance Drama? Well I can attest that it is pretty comprehensive. It is also probably the definitive book on the subject since no similar text exists in English, French or Cambodian. Given that the author got out of Phnom Penh while the Khmer Rouge were shelling the airport, he may have been the last one to see some of the source materials.

If it does prove to be of some value, its availability to scholars and the public will be the result of one man’s passion. Otherwise, its sole existence would have been in a box under a bed and in a microfilm archive.

There are times on my blog when I am critical of people’s practices or state/imply that there is action that needs to be taken to improve a situation. With that in mind, I also think it important to acknowledge when people do act to rectify a situation. Such is the case with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. As I have mentioned, I am involved with their Emerging Leadership Institute and have been one of the initial forces behind making the experience worthwhile for the once and future participants.

A number of alumni (including those who had just graduated) met during the conference to discuss what where we wanted to see the program go and how the APAP leadership could help. In attendance was newly hired Education Specialist, Scott Stoner who had declared before a room full of people on the previous day that if APAP didn’t make significant inroads in developing a significant knowledge base, thinking strategically and making use of the people that they have on their team, he wouldn’t be working there next year. So we knew we were dealing with someone who was quite serious about effecting change.

So two days ago I had a conference call with the other two people who helped spearhead the effort to get the ELI alumni together and advance our agenda with the APAP administration. (Laura Kendall, Lied Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Joe Clifford, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College. Smart, passionate people. Give them fulfilling jobs with good pay!) We spoke about involving more people in planning and programming for next year. We also divvied up responsibility for talking to different people at APAP to remind them about the changes and additions we would like to see implemented.

Imagine my pleasure when I got an email yesterday from APAP sent out to all alumni signed by Scott Stoner and others essentially committing to address all the issues we had discussed at our conference meeting. My partners in crime and I pretty much don’t have to do any reminding.

Among the the things they have committed to do are:

Send a letter from Arts Presenters’ President/CEO Sandra Gibson to recent graduates’ chief administrator – acknowledging the value of participation in the program and you as a member of the ELI network (done)

This was actually very important to the alumni. I am thrilled to see it has already been done. The ELI alumni feel the experience is valuable but don’t believe the chief administrators feel the same. Frequently, they won’t send new people to the conference or resend the program alumni. We felt the letter would help reinforce the value of participation in the administrators’ minds.

But we also know that conference attendance involves a considerable investment of time and money. While the ELI alumni are committed to finding ways to help finance or reduce the fees for returning alumni, we are also dedicated to providing opportunities for interaction between the annual conferences which is where the next three goals APAP has come in.

Identify links to online and other information and resources to assist with building knowledge and skills.

Identify opportunities for ELI members to meet on-site at state, regional and national arts meetings and conferences (links to meeting calendars and suggested events will be forthcoming in the near future)

Create a home for ELI on the Arts Presenters website and an online facility for peer-to-peer networking

This last item was actually fairly important to the ELI alumni. We had been frustrated with the Listserv as a communication tool. Until Scott Stoner mentioned that they were going to try to create an improved communication system, one of our agenda items for the meeting was to decide on an alternative mode like Yahoo Groups.

One last thing related thing I want to say. I was very impressed by how thoughtful and perceptive my colleagues in the ELI program are. In addition to all the aforementioned items we felt were important, there was also well considered conversation about where the ELI program fit into the greater process. People noted that in two years the student volunteers at the conference would be ready to apply for the Emerging Leadership Institute. It was also noted that since the first ELI class was 6 years ago, those early attendees were moving beyond the emergent portion of their careers.

By the end of the meeting a loose framework for three stage track starting with greater focus on improving the conference experience of the student volunteer and grooming them to apply for the ELI program a couple years down the road. Then would come the ELI experience and the aforementioned improvements. Finally a person would transition into an Advanced Leadership stage with a slightly different system to support their needs and goals.

It was a little strange to be organizing a group for the first time, turning to some of the members and telling them that they should make plans to leave and start their own group. Fortunately, those people were already of the same mind. They were happy the effort to organize was going forward, but they suspected they were moving past the scope of the group.

Yes, I know it all sounds very self-congratulatory. Frankly, having left a lot of meetings in my time feeling good about the future when the discussions came to pass and then having nothing actually develop at all, I am a little dazed to be involved with an effort that is apparently bearing fruit. (Though I am still realistic enough not to count my chickens.)

Want to know why people get depressed and cranky after the Christmas and New Year holidays? It’s not that the cold blustery depth of winter sets in with no joy in sight until the Spring. It is entirely the Salvation Army’s fault. According to an article on giving by Arthur Brooks, psychologists “…believe that charitable activity induces endorphins that produce a very mild version of the sensations people get from drugs like morphine and heroin.”

So it isn’t all the snow. People are just going through withdrawal when the Salvation Army packs up their bells and kettles. You may think all that bell ringing is annoying, but in reality, they just leave you wanting more.

The article cites a number of surveys and studies which have found that people who give, be it time, money or blood, are much happier than those who don’t. “American households, people who gave money to charity in 2000 were 43% more likely than non-givers to say they were “very happy” about their lives. Similarly, volunteers were 42% more likely to be very happy than non-volunteers. ”

There is a chicken-egg question in the article. Do people who are happy to begin with give more often or does giving lead to a feeling of happiness? Brooks cites a study that shows more happiness after giving, but I still wonder if predisposition has something to do with it.

In any case, it seems that scheduling the annual deadline for tax deductible giving with the Christmas holidays is well timed. If having the atmosphere permeated with goodwill doesn’t provide the impetus to give, the tax incentive adds a little more motivation.

I got an email from the Theatre in Chicago website about a new technology they are using. Because they have such a large archive of podcasts, they have partnered with EveryZing whose product turns audio into text allowing you to search for terms. From their FAQ page:

The text-based search results include snippets from the audio and video portion to help you figure out if the result is relevant. You can even click on the words to begin playing the media from that exact point.

I tested it out on Theatre in Chicago website by searching for shows and directors. True to its claim, it delivered just the portion of the podcasts in which I was interested.

I haven’t figured out how it might be used for promoting arts organizations or adding value to a patron’s experience yet. If someone reviewed you on television or radio, you would want to just include that portion of the audio and video on your website. You would also have separate links to individual promotional videos you made for each show rather than having people type in search terms to find specific footage in a larger video. Even if you were going to have voice directions to your space available to people who have web access on cell phones, you would want separate files for each direction of origin.

The use that did immediately occur to me was to enable understudies to hop around a video to learn the blocking of the person they are going to replace. Just type in the next spoken line and you can zip to that scene. One could also do research and related activities with the search tool.

Given that using the service appears to be free and EveryZing encourages people to use it to make money off their content, if other practical uses occur to someone out there, let me know. I know there are clever people out there and it would be great for arts organizations to be able to provide more value in what they do.

In the course of writing my entry two days ago, I noted that the Theatre Communications Group had hired Teresa Eyring as the new executive director just before Christmas. Teresa was most recently the managing director at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis and will take up her new role in March.

Given that TCG’s previous executive director, Ben Cameron, had worked as a director of Target Stores arts philanthropy efforts, also in Minneapolis, you have to wonder if there is something about that city that makes it a finishing school for executive directors of national arts organizations.

Well, you don’t have to wonder, but it is fun to do so. In light of the new gorgeous facility the Guthrie Theatre just completed, there definitely is something intriguing going on with the arts in the Twin Cities areas.

I kept poking around the TCG website looking for interesting tidbits as I am wont to do. I found one survey about the benefits (health, dental, life, retirement, vacation) theatres give to their employees. Not surprisingly the people working for organizations with budgets of $10 million were better off than those with less than $500,000.

The report provides a reference if you want to cross reference what you might get from your job with the trends in the same budget group. It also mentions some of the non-traditional benefits some places give that might be adoptable to make life more pleasant at your place (Subsidized Yoga, etc).

The other thing on the TCG site that caught my eye was a link to the United States Artists, a joint venture of Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson Foundations. The organization was formed from the realization that while support for arts organizations waxes and wanes with the times, the individual artist is never funded very well. Every year they plan to give $50,000 to 50 artists based on the idea that “$50,000 is a common entry-level salary for art college faculty in America today. Hopefully, this funding will enable some artists to pursue their art full time.”

If you are thinking “Oooo, how can I get one of those,” the only way is to work hard at being good at what you do. USA solicits nominations from a group of people whose identities remain secret. Not even the nominators know who else is nominating. The $20 million from the aforementioned foundations is just seed money to start the program. With additional fundraising, they hope to increase the number of awards per year.

Check out the 2006 Fellows awarded last month.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy for this week features an article about non-profit blogging. The blogs it mentions aren’t on my favorites list (ones I read already) but might be of interest to you. Some of the blogs give tips about fundraising, others are more watchdog in nature and others are more general in focus.

I will list a couple of the ones mentioned since the article doesn’t provide links. Each blog has its own list of links so my small list will start you on your way to greater exploration. Some of the material is more appropriate for people running huge charities and foundations than for development staff of individual arts organizations. There is something for everyone in this little list-good ideas, thoughtful analysis, words to the wise and a couple chuckles.

I wanted to suggest taking a look at the story too as it discusses the different motivations people have for blogging. Some of the reasons might resonate with you and inspire you to blog. The field is pretty empty according the article. Only about 100 non-profit blogs in a sea of millions.

Watch Dog and Critical Eye Blogs

White Courtesy Telephone
Charity Governance Blog
Where Most Needed
Don’t Tell The Donor
(Not mentioned in the article. Came across via someone else recently. Can’t recall who or where.)
Trent Stamp’s Take (written by president of non-profit watchdog, Charity Navigator)

General Resource Blogs

Gift Hub
The Agitator -Written by Direct Mail Fundraisers
Donor InSite
Donor Power Blog – Just a caveat about the advice– it is written by a for profit consulting firm according to the article. That said, very interesting reading and I there doesn’t seem to be a hard sell for their services or areas only available to clients.

I was attending a seminar on public relations today and the speaker addressed some issues about blogs which I realized are self-evident to me as a blogger, but might not be so clear to anyone pondering starting one.

As much as I like to talk about how useful blogs can be to arts organizations, they aren’t for everyone. As with any application of technology, you shouldn’t be trying to use blogs or podcasts or whatever because they are the hot new thing everybody is using. Employing a technology poorly with no sense of purpose is worse than employing it poorly with an objective. If you have a purpose, then you know what direction to pursue to make the technology work for you. Without a purpose, you are forever flailing.

In relation to blogs in particular-

Don’t start one if you don’t have time to regularly devote to it. The online community is voracious. If you commit to writing every day, write that often. If it is weekly, then stick to that general schedule. If you aren’t producing as promised, people will stop visiting. Since you are probably blogging for the exposure and public relations benefit a lack of regular visitors has little value. Worse, people may start filling your comments section with insults and harsh criticism if they think no one is minding the store.

Blogging is definitely time consuming unless you are the type that can produce prolifically with little effort so you definitely want to make sure you have the time. One of the important operative words there is YOU. One of the mistakes the public relations people cited is having subordinates ghost writing for the head of an organization since the boss rarely has the time. The damage that is done and the loss of faith that occurs when it is revealed that the boss isn’t the one writing is often quite great.

At the very least, the person under whose name the entries are being written should be reviewing the material before it is posted. Ideally, they should be the one hitting the post button.

My last pointer is the most difficult to advise people about due to a lack of hard and fast rules. Be careful when and how you respond to criticism. Some times you have to respond quickly to avert a real crisis in progress. Often you should only do so after some consideration and letting your temper cool or not at all. Unfortunately, fiery invective and wild accusations often appear to require addressing immediately lest the blogosphere think ill of you.

It is only later that you realize you proved the old maxim–It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Thanks to search engine caches, it can be rather difficult to expunge the record of what you said from the internet by simply editing your entries. Blogging and emailing have joined driving as activities you shouldn’t engage in while agitated.

I got a call this weekend from a company doing a survey on local radio. The purpose, I was told, was to improve local programming. I told the girl I wasn’t sure I could help since I didn’t listen to local radio, but rather listened to a feed from a radio station over the internet.

I am guessing she decided my answer fell in the doesn’t listen to radio category because she thanked me for my time and hung up. I also assume that she was working for a company hired to conduct the survey and not for the company(ies) who commissioned it and thus had no real investment in exploring why I didn’t listen.

If the purpose was to improve the quality of local programming, the next questions should be: what do I listen to, if such programming was offered locally would I listen and if not, what is it about the online feed that was so appealing?

Even if I didn’t listen to any radio at all and only to my CD collection or iPod, a little discovery as to why I didn’t listen to radio might be in order. My reasons might be reversible if the right station came along.

Of course, maybe they didnt really want to improve programming but had some sort of agenda they were pursuing with the survey. One of the cardinal rules of decision based surveying is never ask a question you have no intention of acting upon.

The whole incident made me think maybe I should look back at the surveys I use to see if they are still pertinent. I also got to thinking that perhaps I should also read the responses a little more closely to see if they clue me in to other questions I should be asking. There may be a single perfect survey question for determining loyalty and growth, but there are plenty of other things I want to know.

Have you ever visited a Renaissance Festival and wished you had the guts to dress up in those costumes and speaking in a faux cockney accent?

Well now can from the privacy of your own home! Sort of.

The MacArthur Foundation recently awarded a grant for the development of Arden: The World of Shakespeare. According to CNet “The idea behind the project is to produce a virtual world steeped in the rich lore and characters of the playwright’s work.”

The game will be a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft. Different parts will be devoted to different plays. According to the article, they are going to start with Richard III.

The grant was awarded to Edward Castronova who has famously studied the economics of online games. Arden will continue some of his work in this area and provide an arena for sociologists, political scientists and economists to study human behavior under changing situations.

But to the player these motivations shouldn’t be discernable during game play. They will be there for the fun.

The game universe will be generally limited to what could be found in Shakespeare’s universe. Magic will be limited to what might be found in The Tempest or MacBeth as will technology, professions, etc. Though finding Shakespearean text will empower you.

Though the intent is mostly to benefit social sciences, I wonder if playing the game might not provide good research for actors. Find out how a peasant might have really felt after spending hours of drudgery online. Want to discover real motivation for delivering Henry V’s St. Crispen’s Day speech? Get ye to the Battle of Agincourt. (Of course, you might be felled by dysentery on the way if the game keeps things realistic.)

I thought I would bring up the topic of jealousy to no particular end other than the fact it exists but no one really talks about it. I am not sure I have any suggested solutions. I just wanted to throw it out there.

The jealousy I am talking about is the type felt by the staff and supporters of the lesser arts organizations toward the local or regional darling. Unless you have worked for the top dog all your life, you know what I am talking about.

Sometimes the envy is just over the choices audiences make-Why do people go to see that shallow tripe rather than attending our shows where we deal with real issues?

Other times it has to do with perception that funding is going to the wrong place–The community rallying around the financially mismanaged behemoth, securing emergency donations from the state, banks and individuals, eliminating the usual annual gifts to you.

The upshot is, you essentially develop an inferiority complex despite all your protestations about how much better your own performances are. It may keep you running lean and mean to stay competitive and thus avoids burdening the community with another mismanaged organization. On the other hand, by constantly defining yourself in relation to another organization, you can place yourself in a box of your own building and ignore opportunities for growth.

I have worked for both the top dog and the underdog. I have even worked for the mismanaged behemoth that was sucking the money out of the community. Even though I didn’t have anything to do with the mismanagement and was working 14-18 hours days to make up for the staff shortage, I felt guilty about the diversion of funding from other orgs.

It is great to be the organization with the most goodwill. It is easier to rebuild goodwill having lost it than it is to generate it from the start. Individuals may defect, but a community on the whole is fairly forgiving.

A lot of it has to do with the physical and social environment the organization is in. About a year ago I cited an Urban Institute study that said there were two factors that would immediately cause a person to decide not to return to your organization again- “not liking the venue and not having an enjoyable social occasion.”

A case in point- There is a newly renovated facility in town. It has new equipment, gold leaf, new marquee…the works. It is essentially a rental house and doesn’t program a balanced season like I do. Since people are pretty much making their entertainment choices at the last minute, the distinction isn’t apparent or important to them.

Everybody likes that place best even though there are a lot of one way streets to navigate and no free parking (and the garage next door fills up quick.) Once you get inside, the surrounding allow you to feel like you are attending an event of note. If you don’t, they have a liquor license so you at least numb yourself to the lack of that feeling.

It is hard not to feel a little jealous or inferior. We once had patrons go there for one of our shows despite the fact we had mailed them tickets two weeks before that clearly had our venue name on them. If the show is any good, it must be happening there is apparently the general feeling.

What really drove the popular sentiment about that theatre home to us was an article written a month ago about the world premiere show we did this past weekend. Two days in a row, in the Thursday newspaper and in the Friday Fall Arts Review, a columnist wrote that the show would premiere at my theatre in rough form and then a refined, more formal performance would be at this other theatre.

What lead him to write that? Well the company performing the show was thinking about renting this other theatre to do school outreach performances. They asked the facility to hold the date. The facility put it up on their website calendar, but because it was tentative, there was no time or prices listed and the description actually listed outreach activities. The company ultimately decided not to do the performance, canceled the date and the web listing came down 7-10 days after it went up.

The artistic director of the dance company theorized that people couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to premiere a show in my venue and rationalized the details from the scant evidence available.

In the end, since I sold out, the stories had no negative impact on me. There may be some who decided they would wait for the show to appear at the other theater who are going to be disappointed or confused when they show up since someone else has rented that date.

I really don’t think I am so much in competition with shows at the theatre as I am with the general perception and aura of prestige that surrounds it. Little by little I am trying to create an identity for us and carve out our little niche. While there are a lot of people who think the 8 mile drive to my place is WAAAAY out in the hinterlands, there are people who live even further out who think the 8 mile drive to my general neighborhood is civilization. There are fewer of them, but they deserve to be served too.

Mostly, I want to concentrate on keeping nimble and out of a box of my own construction. I don’t have a lot of advice about constructively dealing with envy to offer, but avoiding self-constraint seems like some small wisdom.

I noticed this just before I started to travel back from vacation. I thought the deadline to apply was Friday but it is tomorrow. Still, the application is fairly easy to fill out and if nothing else, interested parties can keep their eyes open to apply the next year it is offered. (The praises quoted are from the 2004 institute. Don’t know if they just forgot to update the page or if it is bi-annual.)

Theatre Communications Group is having a New Artistic Leader Institute in San Diego in August. “The goal of the Institute is to orient new and prospective artistic directors to the non-artistic aspects of leading a theatre company.” The criteria for New Artistic Leader is those who have been in their current position since 2004. As is implied by the Artistic Leader term rather than Artistic Director, the program is open to a number of artistic positions. “Resident directors, associate artistic directors and freelance artists are also eligible to apply”

There is a $300 application fee and scholarship monies available.

Although this is the fourth year TCG has done this, the curriculum for this year has yet to be set and will be formulated by a task force in the coming weeks. This seems to imply the program attempts to address the latest concerns of artistic leaders.

Anyhow, if you are interested get thee to the information page and application!

I don’t have a lot of time for the entry I had in mind for today so I in the interests of doing something shorter, I point once again over to Michael Rice at Cool As Hell Theatre. He recently made a podcast about the 10 Laws of Being A Good Actor. They are certainly his personal laws and not always something your acting teacher will tell you. That is what makes them so great. You aren’t going to learn how to be a great actor from his 15 minute podcast. He makes some observations I have never heard anyone make and does it from the point of view of a seasoned actor smacking novices upside the head for being silly and self-absorbed.

This is not to say everything he says is equally good. His suggestion about breaking the 4th wall during an audition might backfire on an actor depending on how someone interprets his advice and how the casting people envision the proper way to audition.

His advice about preparing for and executing an audition is fairly sound–especially his point about not sabotaging yourself by apologizing or sighing about your performance. He does a good job of scolding of actors who aren’t flexible enough to briefly entertain other approaches and those who can’t graciously accept criticism.

The biggest thing Michael has going for him is the way he expounds upon his rules. He is fun, engaging and entertaining. Frankly, the biggest reason I keep coming back is to listen is his cool as hell standard intro to each podcast. (Though be warned his podcasts may contain language some might find offensive.)

I had a meeting with my radio account rep today. We were just talking over how the past season went, what promotions were effective, what type of tie-ins we might do next year, that sort of thing.

One of the things I hadn’t been happy about was a web campaign I had tried out. I spent considerable sums each month to have a special page on their website listing my season events. I also had banner and skyscraper ads that popped up on the radio station’s homepage which lead to this events listings page.

However, there were a couple problems. First, every time a radio ad ran it told people to go to the radio station page. This was good because their site address is easier to remember for regular station listeners than is my theatre’s. Unfortunately, unless they got there at the right time in the rotation, they wouldn’t see the banner ads and thus couldn’t go to the special page.

They could always see the event listed on the Best Bets section of the website which was prominently positioned. Clicking on the Best Bets link would take them to my website though, not the more expensive page the station was hosting.

The other problem was that the special page and the banner/skyscraper ads were handled by the corporate office 5,000 miles away in Atlanta. When there were problems, and there were quite a few frustrating incidents, it could take days to fix. The worst part was that the problem would repeat itself the next month or next show. I suspected a different person in Atlanta was handling it each time. The Best Bets portion of the site was handled locally and I had few problems with it.

I mention this as something of a cautionary tale for others who may consider similar arrangements. On the whole, I think the special page was a poor use of my money. I had little control of when people would see the page and no guarantee they could find it when the call to action to visit the radio site for more info went out over the air.

People were guaranteed to find the Best Bets link to my webpage on a fairly consistent basis when the call went out. Because that option was more dependable and because I know I can control what people see on my website, I am going to stick with radio ads and Best Bet listing for next year.

I think the banner ad set up does have its uses. There were probably people who visited the radio station’s site for some other purpose, saw the banner ads and viewed the information about the theatre and upcoming shows. If I was leaving the same ad up with minor monthly changes or wanted a separate place designed specifically for the radio station’s demographic, it would have had some more value.

Because I needed to have it changed on a weekly basis at the height of my season and wanted people to always see my information when they visited with the intent to find it, the special page didn’t meet my needs. In the future, I might consider generic (rather than show specific) banner ads that lead back to my website as a tool to generate general awareness of my theatre as people visit the radio homepage.

In many respects, these issues solidified my belief that local control of information is much better than distant control when it comes to customer service. This isn’t even just a matter of the local vs. corporate office. There were a number of times this past season that I made changes to our website when I noticed mistakes or wanted to clarify an issue that was generating confused phone calls. I was often thankful that I could effect the changes myself rather than call a web designer to implement them as I had to in the ancient days of the web (1997).

Because you often had to pay a web designer, you might not make small changes or might delay the fixes until you had accumulated enough problems to make contacting her/him cost effective. The ability to improve ones public face numerous times a day is a small blessing with potentially big rewards in my eyes. (Though you may still want to limit your request for updates to once a day lest your web designer strangle you.)

It is only a coincidence that this entry like the one last week is about a theatre podcast. I only recently noticed that the Talk Theatre blog/podcast page had merged with Theatre in Chicago to become Talk Theatre In Chicago and wanted to explore it.

Not living in Chicago, I don’t know what other resources exist, but I have to think this site is set to become the premiere source of info on theatre in and around Chicago. There are listings of current shows, what is coming soon, a separate link for kids shows, news about theatre around town and the collected reviews for each show from the papers around town.

And there are the podcasts. What I like about the podcasts are the way they are presented to visitors. There is a brief description of each show and then when you follow the link for a particular show you have the choice of listening to the complete show or going directly to the news, reviews or interviews segment.

One thing that became apparent though was that it may take a little while for people to become accustomed to formatting their programs for the podcasting medium. The first podcast I chose to listen to was an interview with Goodman Theatre Executive Director Roche Schulfer.

Unfortunately, the start of the interview was reminscient of the conferring of an honorary doctorate by a university. The interviewer went on and on for nearly three and a half minutes reciting Schulfer’s bio. I actually haven’t listened to the interview yet because after a 1:30 or so, my only interest was seeing how much longer the dry recitation was going to continue.

I am happy to report that after sampling a handful of other interviews and reviews, the host reached the point of the program much quicker. My first impression as a theatre person though was that this l-o-n-g intro was not wise on a medium mostly utilized by people with expectations of more immediate gratification and shorter attention spans.

Podcasts in general and the Talk Theatre in Chicago website in particular, provide super opportunities for introducing and educating people with little experience all about theatre. You can visit, find a performance near you, read the reviews for it and listen to a podcast so that you can at least start to become familiar with theatre vocabulary and the way people discuss it.

But first they have to be interested enough not to skip over an interview because it starts out so damned boring!

I can understand why folks would want to give people their due and I concede that I often ramble a bit in my writing from time to time before getting to the juicy interesting stuff. I too have sinned! On the other hand, theatre people should know that exposition should be played out across the length of the play rather than clumping it all at the beginning. (Again, I too have sinned.)

The endeavor looks like a promising resource for the Chicago theatre community which has always had a great reputation to begin with. It would be super if other cities could adapt/expand on what they have done for the culture of their communities.

Just as a follow up to my Does Bono Like Ballet entry. I did indeed take the plunge and use that approach in my ads (see below) and press releases.

I actually antagonized over that approach in my print ads because someone suggested that it might alienate U2 fans. You can be the judge, of course. I figured since it essentially complimented the fans for their good taste and didn’t automatically assume liking U2 and ballet were mutually exclusive, it wouldn’t raise too many hackles.

Still, I showed the ad around to people and asked their opinion. Most people though it was cool. The most extreme reaction was “What the F@%^?” from a guy who misread the ad, followed by a chuckle and a comment that it was a cool idea.

The guy who suggested the approach might alienate fans said I should run it by the people at the alternative weekly paper since they would be most plugged in. I didn’t actually run it by them, but did send the ad and press release well in advance and waited for a reaction.

Imagine my glee when I saw that they ran with the angle I cooked up in today’s edition. The writer sort of took off with the general ideas I introduced in my press release. Hopefully it will attract the paper’s readership to the show because right now sales are pretty much contained to the ballet audience.

My ad, however, didn’t appear in the paper. The publisher apologized and said it was in the first proof but accidentally got bumped on the second for a free ad. I was somewhat happy at not having to pay for the publicity until I remembered my friend’s suggestion that the staff of the paper would be a good judge of whether the approach was a good one or not. Suddenly I began to wonder if it was an accident after all…

Hmm, my attempt to set this as an image did not work too well. You can now view the ad here

One of the entertaining activities the artistic director at a job I once held and I used to engage in was reading the solicitation faxes that came in. Some times the entertainment came from imagining the reactions our audience members would have if they ever saw some of these groups on stage. Other times the entertainment came when we saw that someone was trying to pass a group off as an iconic band.

As they say about spam emailing and telemarketing, these agents wouldn’t advertise if it didn’t work. After hearing a story on NPR today, I figured a caveat emptor entry might be a good idea. If you don’t follow the music world closely, you can end up thinking you are buying a performance by legends at bargain prices only to learn that you are getting what you paid for (if not less).

The NPR story was about “truth in music” laws popping up in some states saying people can’t use the name of iconic music groups unless there is an original member in the group. The story mentions The Platters prominently because in addition to some of the original members using the name, the impressario who developed them owns the rights to the name and sold it all over the place to people without any relation to the group at all.

Some groups it is fairly easy to know you aren’t getting the original group. The Glenn Miller Orchestra is one example. It doesn’t take much effort to realize the originals ain’t performing. There is a group performing under the same name in the UK and Germany, but again, it is tough to confuse which group you are about to see.

Other groups it is a little more difficult. For instance, WAR still tours. There were 8 original band members and about 35 other members throughout the years. Currently, keyboardist Lonnie Jordan is the only original member of the band still touring under the WAR name. Under the existing state laws, he is welcome to do so.

The question is, what constitutes an original member? Pete Best was the original drummer for The Beatles for two years, but outside of a Trivial Pursuit game, few would name him as such. Had the band been any less famous, he might have a case for touring with a band called The Beatles under the state laws. (Of course, this also assumes they retained ownership of their songs.)

The biggest impediment to anyone touring under a band name is someone with claim to the name complaining that they are misrepresenting themselves. Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, both very identifiable as members of The Doors have been forbidden to tour under The Doors name or even as The Doors of the 21st Century as a result of a suit by the third remaining member, John Densmore.

Ultimately, if you are thinking about presenting a famous act. It might behoove you to check the names of the people who performed on the best albums against the current list to determine just how famous the band remains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps a positive result of the arts having to justify their value in terms of education, economic benefits, etc., apparently some colleges and universities are contracting artists using availability to do residencies as a primary criteria.

In the article “Campus Precedents” found in APAP’s September/October Inside Arts (alas, the article is not available online) Jenna Russell cites a number of schools like Ohio University and Dartmouth where residencies are scheduled before performances. She quotes Clarice Smith PAC’s (at U. of MD) Marketing Director, Charles Helm, “We won’t have [artists] here if they can’t stay longer to work with students. It is absolutely imperative.”

The residencies aren’t just in topics directly associated with performing arts either. According to the article, a residency at Dartmouth had performers rappelling down the walls of the science center lobby while a physics professor talked about the elements of momentum and gravity in the performance.

But even classes in arts subject areas are getting a more enhanced experience than they have in the past. The residencies allow students to become involved in master classes and open rehearsals essentially gaining insights and skills they won’t get in their normal classes.

Unfortunately, while the residencies have been educationally valuable to students, it hasn’t increased student attendance at performances significantly. There has been some growth, but students still comprise a minority of the audiences at these residential campuses where students can walk to the arts center and student tickets are under $10.

This is all very interesting to me since some faculty on campus have started thinking about how the events in the season can tie into their classes. I have also been thinking that perhaps my ticket prices could be a little lower for students, but that doesn’t seem to be any great incentive according to this article. I have also been following Andrew Taylor and Drew McManus’ recent entries on ticket pricing as an element in deciding to purchase.

As promised, I have delved into the Community Arts Network webpage I cited yesterday. Though in all honesty, there wasn’t much delving going on. I hardly clicked upon a link before I came across an article that piqued my interest.

Caron Atlas’ “Cultural Policy: In the board rooms and on the streets” offers some thought provoking stuff. She starts out talking about how pretty much every choice we make in our lives is a cultural policy issue. No big surprise there really. It isn’t something we can escape.

The next paragraph really got me thinking though.

Cultural policy is both a product and a process, a framework for making rules and decisions that is informed by social relationships and values. It is not easily defined in the United States. In fact, for much of our history, our government has had an official policy of not having a cultural policy,…But not calling something a policy does not mean there isn’t any…In the United States, policy and policymaking are more often implicit than explicit, and thus they are frequently invisible. This prevents us, as a country, from being able to have a conversation about the value of art and culture within our society. And de facto or invisible policies can become undemocratic and unaccountable.

This may seem self-evident to many people and I have to admit, subconsciously, I think I derived that notion from everything I have read. But I had an a-ha moment reading that bit about lack of explicit cultural policy acting as an impediment to conversation.

It isn’t just that arts are disappearing from the schools and that the breakdown of the family unit and the competition of computers and DVDs are contributing to the decline in participation in the arts. We, as a people, don’t have the ability to discuss the value of what may be lost. It is all monologue rather than dialogue with the cultural folks talking at rather than with the public.

The situation has as much value as an African bushman trying to explain to me the importance a dangerous practice like hunting a lion with a wooden spear has as a rite of passage. I may admire the courage of the young man engaging in the practice, but I will never grasp how the processes results in the creation of a valuable member of the community.

There are so many nuances that the man understands instinctively having been a part of that culture that it would never occur to him to communicate because he takes them for granted as basic truths. I, on the other hand, would probably have no appreciation for the nuances as they would be foreign to my culture.

Another interesting point that Caron points out is how culture and public policy have been connected, especially as a weapon in the Cold War. (An area Drew McManus just recently explored on his own blog.)

The public works programs of the WPA (Work Projects Administration) in the 1930s and of CETA (Comprehensive Education and Training Administration) in the 1970s supported workforce and community by providing opportunities for artists to help rebuild the nation with their art…In the ’60s, an understanding of art and culture as a scarce resource that needed proactive government support led to the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts…And now, in the post 9/11 21st century, diplomats argue for a U.S. reentry into UNESCO as “a real opportunity to advance the ideological interests of the international coalition against terrorism.

Alas, an initiative to employ our artists in a similar manner in the current international conflict hasn’t emerged (Atlas’ article was written in 2002).

Atlas engages in a good discussion of the myriad decisions in other areas can be de facto cultural policy decisions. She then makes a number of suggestions about how people can become involved or at least aware of how cultural policy is being shaped. One of the suggestions that caught my eye-

Be a sustained part of policy discussions about the other issues besides the arts that are of concern to our communities. Acknowledge and reject priorities set by cultural policy efforts that are not in the interests of a community. For example, arts districts can bring gentrification and cultural development can impose another definition of culture than that which is embraced by community members…

I have often read about how artists move into a neighborhood, the neighborhood becomes the place to be, rents skyrocket and then the artists can no longer afford to live in the place that their very presence made cool. What I never really recognized was that this process could also end up displacing close knit ethnic groups and eroding their identities.

Even if the process doesn’t break up ethnic groups or neighborhoods that have established identities for themselves as a group, folks who might never have had the time, opportunity or inclination to consider cultural activities might just start appreciating the work of those strange artists down the street when the landlord tells them their apartment is about to become a luxury condo at triple the rent.

The situation can also give the impression that culture is only for the rich or perhaps that if the cultural activities were any good, the wealthy would be moving in to co-opt it as their own.

Postscript– No sooner did I post this entry than I remembered, I actually had read about artist wrought gentrification threatening the Hasidic community of Williamburg in Brooklyn (a blogger features this poster about their fears). Thanks to Google, I was able to find a story by a Columbia University journalism student on the topic.

I also found this reprint of a New York Times article about some women who are trying to keep the ethnic members of the community from becoming displaced altogether.

Back last April, I cited a paper by the Independent Sector supporting, among other things, a simplified, unified grant application process so that one application might be applied to many granting institutions.

I haven’t found a unified process yet, but I have experienced a very simplified one recently. The National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts has a program where they give artists grants to develop a work in conjunction with a presenter partner. The paperwork for that looks about normal.

However, if the performance group wishes to take the work on tour, the National Dance Project will provide money to presenters to defray the artist fees. All the presenter has to do is send a very simple letter of intent (and NDP provides a sample template for the letter) to the tour coordinator which they pass on to the National Dance Project.

The NDP sends an evaluation form and a very easy to complete final report form which the presenter has to fill out (Took me about 30 minutes) in order to receive up to 25% of the artist fee back as a grant. Other than making sure print ads, press releases and program books have funding credits and writing letters to legislators telling them NEA money is well spent, that is it. NEFA makes it very easy to decide to present a work.

Actually, it seemed too easy. I was searching frantically for the grant application my predecessor did to make sure I was in compliance. The only back up I had was the letter to the tour manager declaring our interest to present it—surely that couldn’t be all we did to apply for it!

To some extent it was good that the application process was so simple. The deadline for 2005-2006 was Jan 21. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference just got over on Jan 11. That only left 10 days for presenters and agents to finalize dates and prices and then get letters of intent written up and submitted to NEFA.

I got an email from the members of my booking consortium who attended the APAP conference essentially telling me arrangements had been finalized and I had one day to send off letters of intent to a couple agents. Ironically, this was at the exact time I was frantically running around trying to locate the aforementioned phantom grant application so I could do follow up for the NDP funded show we just did so my understanding of the whole application process suddenly coalesced resulting in me stammering “That’s it?! That’s all I have to do?!”

So my hat’s off to ya New England Foundation for the Arts for making it easy on me!