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Who Knew They Were Talking To Theatre Guys Today?

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The assistant theatre manager and I team spoke about working in the arts at a high school career day yesterday. Ah, I forgot the joys of teenage apathy in the classroom! Actually, I think the lack of engagement we received was due to the design of the routing assignments the students were given. We were told that the students choose which speakers they wanted to hear. The reality was that they chose which career track in which they had an interest. We were part of the arts and communications track.

We didn’t discover this until about 5 minutes into the first session when we finished our intros and asked people about their arts involvement/interest and the response was barely tepid. It turned out that none of them knew they were going to a room where theatre people would be speaking. They had simply been assigned to the room. The same was true in the second session, only we asked earlier. Few in the room were involved in performance or visual art creation even as a hobby. Those that were didn’t seem to have a lot of confidence in their abilities and no one in the room was exclaiming that someone was being too humble and was actually awesome.

We had come prepared on selling the arts as a career, but this was going to be a tougher sell. At the same time, it was a really great opportunity to introduce the concept to people who had never really considered it. I am not sure how successful we were, but there were a couple people who stuck around after each session to ask us about our performances (we brought brochures, of course) and talk a little bit about their arts experiences.

Another benefit to speaking to this sort of audience was that they seemed to take our warnings about how tough it was to make a living in the arts seriously. There didn’t seem to be anyone who felt we were talking to the others people in the room who weren’t as talented as they. We didn’t just speak about having careers in stage, screen and art galleries but also noted the importance of creativity in the coming economy.

Next week were are speaking at the career day of another school. Knowing what we do now, I am going to contact them again and determine what it is exactly the students are selecting when they are choosing to attend our presentation. We had brought a simple powerpoint presentation comprised mostly of images of shows we had presented to give a sense of what opportunities were available. If the students we interact with next week are going to have the same level of awareness about the arts as those today did, we will probably alter the content a little to better suit our audience.

J-Schoolers Now With The Rest of Us Doing It For Love

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Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher, an editor for the Dallas Morning News, ponders the fate of J-school students suggesting they had better be in it for the love.

“Can you imagine going into debt and devoting two years of your life to earning an advanced degree in a field in which you have very little chance of earning a living? I mentioned this to my wife, who, like me, holds an undergraduate journalism degree. “Can you believe people are actually going to journalism school anymore?” I said. She responded, “You and I, when we were that age, would have been completely romantic about it, and wouldn’t have listened to older people who told us there would be no jobs for us.'”

Hmm, sounds like some other industry I know of. What was it again?

He goes on to talk about writing a grad school recommendation for a young journalist he knows.

“And yet, I warned him not to go to journalism grad school, because of the job market, to no avail. He’s got passion, and he’s got hope. I can recommend him to these schools with great confidence in his ability to do the work required of him. He will emerge an even more capable journalist than he already is. Any magazine or newspaper would be lucky to have this guy working for them. If only potential paid the bills! Sigh.”

Ha ha! Finally we get our revenge on those two bit critics who panned our shows! Now they shall be brought low and learn how it feels to ply your craft out of pure love of doing it and have people who have little understanding of their work tell everyone it stinks!

Actually, that sounds a lot like what playwrights and novelists go through. In reality, journalists are really just talented writers who found a format for expression that would pay them regularly for exercising their art. Unfortunately, it seems that time has passed and what was an exception looks to join the rule of the arts and humanities where there are a lot of hard working and talented practitioners and few notable successes that everyone believes they can become.

Continuing Mystery Gets Me Chocolate

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Okay, some updates on recent posts!

I posted about the state furloughing teachers 17 Fridays over the next year. I was happy to see a local theatre immediately jumped on the opportunity to offer a Furlough Fridays program teaching kids about musical theatre. One of the things I liked was that they require you to attend all the classes emphasizing that student commitment to their classes was just as important as commitment to the classes they were missing.

Parents have actually started a movement to pay the teachers themselves on the furlough days. This raises a number of issues about the use of the school facilities, workman’s comp coverage and insurance. It also raises the question about why people are resistant to having their taxes raised a little bit to support the schools for the whole year but okay with paying a lot more to have their children taught on a few days out of the year. Is this going to reveal the gap between the haves and the have nots if parents in more affluent neighborhoods are able to pay to have their kids taught while the schools in poorer neighborhoods stay empty on those days for lack of the same funds?

One of the biggest impediments actually is a decade old ethics rule that prevents teachers from being paid privately to teach their students. The rule was enacted to prevent basic concerns like whether a teacher skimped on the instruction during the day in order to guarantee the need for additional instruction after hours.

The other update I have is to the situation I covered in my entry titled The No Sell Sales Pitch. Recent events, I am afraid, have done nothing but renew my curiosity about the approach being employed by the two dancers who visited in late August. Today I received a package with a 1 lb bar of Trader Joe’s Belgian Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds, a bag of Trader Joe’s Trek Mix and a tea candle in a blue holder. There was a card thanking me for meeting with them, praising the work we are doing and hoping our paths will cross again. Still no material about their company which I am assured by others does indeed exist.

Maybe they just aren’t that into my theatre.

Assorted Arts Candy

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Okay, some fun links from around the web today-

First off, you can have your big performing arts centers and arts organizations with multi-million dollar endowments and budgets, I would wake up happy every morning if I could say I worked here. (I wonder if they have 24 hour security to keep people from eating the building.)

Second, I wanted to point out an article on the always helpful Non-Profit Law Blog about common problems with organizational by laws. I passed the link on to an organization of which I am a member because we spotted some of the same issues with our bylaws and I figured there might be more still to examine.

The entry also includes potential problems when using another organization’s bylaws as a template for ones own.

Last, I wanted to direct people to an entry on Ken Davenport’s The Producer’s Perspective about a Hungarian immigrant who created a theatre ticket discounting organization in NYC that preceded the TKTS booth in Times Square by nearly a century.

Joseph Leblang received free tickets to shows in exchange for allowing posters to be put up in his shop. What he did was turn around and sold his tickets as well as those received by the neighboring shop owners for less than full price. The theatre owners weren’t happy but ended up turning their unsold stock over to Leblang because he did such a high volume business.

Davenport ends with an observation about keeping ones eye open for opportunity. There were many shopkeepers receiving tickets who could have started the same sort of endeavor but none did. Or at least none emerged to significantly challenge Leblang.

Wrong Words Can’t Describe This Film

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Since I am always looking for a situation that provides something of value for arts administration, I take my lessons where I find them. The latest was an illustration of how what you say about an experience matters. Intellectually, we know that if we want to convince people to attend an event, we need to employ compelling word choices. Execution often fails.

Around mid-July a friend told me he and his girlfriend had gone to see a movie called Departures. The way he talked about it, it sounded like Night Shift without the call girls. He describe it as a movie about a guy who loses his job and ends up working for an undertaker. He talked about it being funny at times and sad, but never used very strong terms. As a result, my image was of a guy who spent the night in the morgue reading, making some awkward mistakes in relation to dead bodies and perhaps learning something of the way these people lived to inspire him about his future. A nice story, but it didn’t make me want to see the movie.

About two times since then he mentioned it was a good movie, but didn’t really inject any particular enthusiasm above saying he and his girlfriend liked it. The thought that went through my mind was that he wasn’t certain enough about his own tastes to speak more confidently about the film. He thought it was a good movie, but he wasn’t sure if was actually a good movie.

I can’t necessarily blame him. The movie is only playing on one screen out of 115 in the county. Can’t be that good if it is only playing at one theatre, right? But the whole issue of feeling comfortable with your encounters with art is a topic for another entry.

Last week I ran into another guy who raved about the movie encouraging me to go see it. The image he painted for me was nowhere near what the first guy had. So I went to see the movie this past weekend.

Yes, it is only playing at one theatre in the county, but it has been playing there for about 80 days. I was near that one theatre Saturday morning so I went to the 10:45 am show. The word of mouth must be good because there were about 40 people ahead of me online and nearly all of them bought tickets to the film. I know this, because the people in front of me kept remarking when someone bought tickets to our showing. I think there were only about 75 people in the theatre, but that is pretty good for a morning show nearly 80 days after it opened.

I absolutely loved the movie. Arts people should especially take note given that the lead character loses his job when his orchestra goes under. There may be another career waiting out there for you! I am told you can watch the movie on line but it would be a shame to do that. It surprisingly hasn’t opened in some parts of the country so there is still an opportunity to see it. Hopefully it is experiencing a prolonged run in those places it has opened so others can go see it if they haven’t.

Watching it online, you would also miss the communal nature of film going. The audience for this sort of movie are not as likely to talk on their cell phones throughout the show as with many films so you can be reasonably assured of a good experience. This movie is about death so there are some heart wrenching moments. It is at these times that you are reminded you aren’t experiencing these emotions alone. I think you would also lose the impact of some absolutely beautifully composed shots, including the deft grace with which the lead character performs his new job.

The movie left me wondering if they still prepare the dead in Japan in this manner. I suspect it isn’t the standard practice, but perhaps it is still common enough. The lead actor learns how to prepare a dead body to be placed in a coffin. There is a ritual cleansing of the body which is executed before the family. The entire body is disrobed, cleaned and redressed in view of the family. It is all done under a cloth draped over the body so that the family does not see the unclothed form of their loved ones. The precision and artistry with which the ceremony is performed is beautiful and entrancing.

The movie makes the point that funerals are for the sake of the living when one of the characters points out the three coffin models they sell with widely varying prices and mentions they all burn the same in the incinerator. Still, I think you would have an entirely different view of death and funerals if you knew your loved one received such attentive care before they were placed in the coffin.

So anyway, that is my attempt to sell you on the movie by telling you why I liked it while avoiding press release language. It lacks the umph of vocal expression, (OMIGOD, THE MOVIE WAS AWESOME — which is close to how I have expressed myself in person), but hopefully people are at least intrigued. I have intentionally avoided linking to the trailer because I think it does a poor job of portraying the movie. Even after seeing the movie, my excitement is dulled by the trailer. If you need to watch something, visit this page and immediately click on the picture to the right of the actor playing the cello. The little bit that plays best represents what makes the movie so good.

Breaking Ground On A New Building

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I went to the ground breaking for the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center being built here. I had written about my experiences on the advisory committee for the theatre portion of the center a couple times in the past.

This is where the community center will be built.

Site of Kroc Center

The theatre portion will be named for Jack Lord who bequeathed $4.5 million to the project.

Theatre Plans

Here is a picture of the blessing of the grounds. Unfortunately, my camera shut down while I thought I was taking pictures of the actual ground breaking. That’s what I get for holding the camera above my head instead of looking through the view finder where I would have noticed the problem.

The women are holding a triple strand maile lei which is untied  indicating an opening which is more propitious in Hawaiian tradition. Cutting it as is practiced with ribbons  inaugurating new buildings is seen as negative gesture due to the severing that occurs.

Blessing of the Ground

Rewarding Any Bit Of Intiative

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I have been thinking about performance awards for employees a fair bit lately in the context of our cleaning staff. Our building has three different people assigned to clean it. One guy is responsible for my office, another is responsible for the basement and another takes care of the lobby and seating area. The shop area we have to clean ourselves since there is just too much potential for the wrong thing to get tossed out.

What seems to reinforce the low status of theatre in the Great Chain of Being is that the newest person hired is assigned to clean the lobby and seating area. Yes, that’s right, the person with the least experience is assigned to clean the area in which my organization interacts with the community. I have no idea why this is but I have been cautioned against pushing too hard in getting it changed.

The technical director’s theory about why we are a training ground is that perhaps each person is expected to clean X square feet a day and it is easier to gain experience cleaning the wide open space of the lobby and aisle versus the same square footage across individual offices.

Whatever the case may be, the results are inconsistent cleaning job except in one unerring activity. I haven’t been able to get any of them to regularly dust even the most obvious spots like the tops of the banisters and the 100 foot ledge in front of the mural. I know they are instructed to keep the area clean. It just never happens as it should.

In the last few months, the building supervisor told me that the guy newly assigned to clean the basement is excellent. Given our past experience, that didn’t seem like it would be hard to achieve in comparison so I was pretty skeptical.

But I happened downstairs just before I went on vacation and saw the guy was cleaning the dirty fingerprints off all the doors. In all my time here, that has never been done by the cleaning staff. Since my return I have wandered around the basement and noticed that nooks and corners are now looking neater and spiffed up.

Finally we have a guy who sees things that need to be done and is doing it. He is also making note of things that are broken and suggesting they be fixed. This proactive approach is no small matter because the basement contains our green room, dressing rooms and dance studios. These areas get the heaviest daily use and are the fastest to become soiled. So having these rooms look good when guest artists and renters use the facilities goes some distance in creating a good impression.

I know that there are awards given out to buildings and grounds people. While I can’t submit a nomination, I am resolved to talk to someone who can about putting his name in. As I have been thinking about doing this, it occurred to me that saying someone got the award for excellence in janitorial service at the ceremony doesn’t really provide an example for others to emulate. I’ll admit, getting an award for wiping the finger prints off doors doesn’t sound like a behavior you would strive to model either.

I am discovering that taking that sort of initiative is a rarer thing than I imagined among people at large. Janitorial staffs are hardly deserving of being singled out in this regard. When I was growing up, I thought only people who performed extraordinarily and heroically got awards. Now I realize there is a great deal of worth in doing the mundane very well.

In fact, I think this is one of the lies our educational system perpetuates along with the destiny altering power of your permanent record. Throughout your childhood and higher education, those who have made the most extraordinary achievement receive awards. Certainly, there is value in this because you don’t get to the moon by mediocrity. But generally once you graduate and are in the real world, the grades you got in school are an invisible factor in relation to how valuable you are to your company, family and friends.

There is certainly no substitute for brilliance, but making the choice to take the initiative is within the power of pretty much everyone. In school, it is often the people who added hard work to a special quality who get rewarded. The vast majority were never in the running despite hard work because they lacked that special quality.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me in the professional setting, it is extremely important to reward those who make the choice to go beyond the minimum expectation because this is a reward the vast majority can obtain on their own merit. I am not referring to a feel good reward for everyone, I am talking about providing incentive in order to receive a higher standard of service that everyone can provide.

I will say, there is a part of me that is disappointed that I even have to suggest this. I mentioned earlier that I am recognizing that doing the mundane well is commendable. That is because I have been coming from a place where I expected a certain standard of behavior as a norm only to realize that standard was actually abnormal. Frankly, I wonder if I am not making this suggestion out of a mild sense of desperation to raise thing to a place I consider normal before it sinks any further.

Prior to visiting China I remember reading that saying thank you when receiving some service or polite gesture might be seen as insulting because good service is expected and expressing appreciation implies otherwise. So I wonder in contrast about the United States. Are ubiquitous statements of thanks and tip jars on every counter creating an environment in which expectation of more than the minimum requires some sort of recognition?

Irish Vacation

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So I am back from my Ireland trip. I really had a wonderful time. The natural beauty was stupendous. The food was great. It rained more than I would have liked, but sunbeams through the clouds made for some dramatic pictures.

As promised, I visited a number of theatres and arts centers while in Ireland. Because of our travel schedule, I didn’t get to go to everywhere I had originally planned. Though I did go to a number of places I hadn’t.

Something I noticed was that many theatres were in buildings that placed them as a center of activity for the community. The Carnegie Arts Centre in Kenmare is in a building with a library and art gallery.

kenmare ext

Likewise, The Source Arts Centre is also attached to a library.

source sign

The Tipperary Excel has 3 movie theatres, one of which is also the live performance space, a gallery and a desk to do heritage research.

excel desk

You walk into any of these buildings and there is a bustle of activity all around you which I would guess helps raise the level of awareness about the events in the theatre. Looking around, these were certainly organizations that were serving their communities.  I had to wonder why performance facilities in the U.S. were so often divorced from other community resources. Granted, none of these facilities were very large. You could never dream of presenting some of the shows you can in the U.S. The buildings would have had to be a bit bigger to fit a larger theatre plus these services.  I didn’t get a chance to speak with anyone about the ratio of earned vs. unearned revenue in the theatre budgets so I don’t know how self-supporting the theatres and the other services under the same respective roofs are.

At least one place was realistic about the needs and interests of the community they served.

source sorry

This sign at The Source box office announces the cancellation of an event due to the regional hurling finals occurring in town the same day.

I arrived in Galway just as the Galway Arts Festival was getting underway. In fact, the festival proper hadn’t begun. They were still erecting the big top tent.

tent up

I did get a chance to swing by the Galway Arts Centre to see some of the video exhibitions and walked by the Druid Theatre, which wasn’t open at the time. I went looking for Nuns Island Theatre, which is a program of the Galway Arts Centre, but apparently walked right by it. Sorry I didn’t get a picture in here.  I did get to see a performance by a New Orleans Brass Band taking part in the Galway Arts Festival. They made a bit of a faux pas referring to Ireland as part of the UK which elicited some grumbling in the audience.

galway artsdruid

Galway is a very walkable city, especially in terms of being able to access many of the arts venues. I would recommend taking advantage of that fact if ever you find yourself in Galway.

As a little aside. As I mentioned, the food was really great in Ireland. While I did see quite a number of American food products on the supermarket shelves and advertised all around, I was somewhat pleased that I didn’t see too many McDonalds making in roads in Ireland. One that I peaked into in Galway seemed to reflect the need for greater effort to attract the Irish consumer. It was a lot nicer than the ones we have around here.

mc donaldsmcdonald2

New Efforts, Briefly

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There have been a couple nice developments among the blogs I regularly read.

-Neill Archer Roan has begun blogging again. Unfortunately, the wonderful old material I linked to was retired when he moved to this new format.

-Scott Walters has semi-retired Theatre Ideas in favor of discussing trends and developments in the context of his <100k Project

–Poor Player Tom Loughlin has started a new site, Acting in America, where actors of every stripe can tell their stories.

I see these latter two additions as a sign that arts blogging is maturing. Both men have taken subjects they spoke of passionately over the course of many blog entries and spun them off into projects aimed at serving the arts community as a whole. There may be others whom I haven’t been following who have done this already (and by all means, point me to them.) The fact the numbers are growing only supports my assertion about emerging maturity.

I also don’t mean to imply that their earlier work, or than of bloggers like myself, did not contribute to the arts community. These new efforts look to examine and develop opportunities in ways that haven’t really been tried before.

Tell Me Where To Go (in Ireland)

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All right arts folks of Ireland, the time of my arrival draws ever near. As I posted earlier, I am going to make an attempt to visit a number of arts organizations during my vacation. I would love to chat with folks and maybe get a backstage tour. At the very least, I am going to be taking photos of the building exterior.

Over the course of my research, I have found a number of places to visit but am open to other suggestions. My intention is to drop an email in about a week or so to the places I think I will most likely have the time to visit to ask about tours. But I would be happy to be lure off my plan if readers contact me. I’ll go for the best offer of craic.

Here is where I am looking at:

The Hunt Museum
Belltable Arts Centre
LIT Millenium Theatre

Siamsa Tíre Theatre -Their building looks very interesting. Click on View Premises from this page.

Tipperary Excel (You folks have no choice about me visiting. My mother wants to do genealogy research with your resources.)

The Source Arts Centre

Galway Arts Festival–looking at the line up, I am sorry I will only be around for the first day or so. I hope to swing by the Galway Arts Centre and Druid Theatre (if the renovations are completed) and any place else that might catch my fancy as I walk around.

Anyhow, click the contact link at the top of the screen or email me at buttsintheseats@mindspring.com if you have an opportunity or place I shouldn’t miss in early July.

From The No Good Deed Goes Unpunished File

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We have been discussing raising our facility rental rates this week. We haven’t raised them in awhile and our expenses are increasing. Also, we wanted to bring our rates more into line with our competitors who charge a lot more and provide a lot less in relation to services.

But the staff doesn’t want me to raise the prices and I am flabbergasted to learn why.

First some background–

The staff works their butts off for our renters. Even though I occasionally have to work when someone is sick, you shouldn’t make the mistake of envisioning me when I tell you how hard they work. Their work ethic preceded my arrival by decades. I did nothing to inspire it.

At many of our non-union competitors, renters are paying for supervisors who are present but don’t do much more and are charged for every microphone, table, chair, etc that is used. My staff likes to be hands on so we either charge a blanket amount for resources or nothing at all because the staff doesn’t want to have to stop to tick off numbers of chairs and tables being set up.

Even though we say we don’t offer design services, the technical director doesn’t want anything on stage to look bad so he and his crew will stay after a rehearsal and work until 4 am to make the show look good.

So I am completely astounded when they ask me not to bring our prices closer to being in line with the norm because they are afraid people will demand more of them. Other than meeting increasing expenses, one of my motivations for raising the prices is to prevent these hard working people from being taken for granted. It amazes me that our competitors can get away with providing less at greater expense and my staff will suffer for providing greater value for the dollar.

Unfortunately, they aren’t entirely imagining that our renters have this outlook, there are quite a few examples historically and in the recent past where people have demanded what they decided they should be getting for what they are paying. My hope is that raising our prices will also provide those looking to get water from a stone a greater disincentive to rent from us. The staff’s fear is that they will expect a corresponding increase in the water yield.

We understand that for a lot of people, our facility serves as a bridge between doing it entirely yourself and needing a full union production crew. Many come to us wanting to increase the production values of their annual event and don’t quite realize what a labor intensive prospect it is. We provide a lot of guidance to people about how to help us help them. They arrive assuring us their show is extremely simple until we start asking questions about their plans. Even though they have a new awareness of what is involved, they still don’t see the staff plugging away at 4 am on their behalf.

We have a lot of very gracious groups that rent from us. Some of which, having dealt with the blank indifference of our competitors, are afraid to offend us lest their only option is to return to them. (I swear we never even suggest they won’t be allowed to return. These are the guys we want to continue renting.) There are even a few that have become so organized over the years, we give the informational literature they send their members to new renters as an example of how to effectively organize one’s group for a production.

Then there are those who tell us they have been producing an event for 25 years, question every expense we estimate in an attempt to save money and then ask us how much they should be charging for tickets. Makes us wonder if they have ever created a budget for their event over the previous 25 years.

Clearly, as we revise our rental application, we in the administrative offices need to think about how we can support the rental staff in keeping renters’ expectations reasonable. Confronting people and telling them they don’t realize what a deal they are getting isn’t likely to be very convincing or productive. Nothing increases the paranoia of people who are anxious they are being ripped off like telling them you are honest as the day is long and aren’t ripping them off. And accusing people of being cheapskates doesn’t help matters much either. As the first line of contact with renters, we in the administrative offices can do a better job of discussing people’s expectations of their rental experience with them early on in the process.

Connecting To Your Community

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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.

Put My Partially Irish Butt In Your Seats

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This coming July I will be vacationing in Ireland. When I visited China last year, Drew McManus suggested I take pictures of performing arts spaces and do entries on the arts in China. My travels kept me mostly in the countryside and with a big group so there wasn’t any opportunity.

This year, however, there will be more time to see the sights and take small side trips. I have already started scouting out places but tourism websites don’t necessarily give the most complete picture about available opportunities. I have also noticed that scheduled events end before my arrival so I might need to make special arrangements to tour buildings.

So if you are associated with some great performance and visual arts spaces and I can stop by this summer, let me know! If I can get a tour, participate in one of your events, chat about the state of the arts in Ireland over drinks or a meal, it would only add to the experience.

Now the bad news. Our plans, alas, don’t take us to Dublin much to my sorrow. So much exciting stuff to see that I will miss! More’s the pity since I am pretty sure I have some periodic readers from Dublin and that is where an invitation is likely to come.

I am pleased that I will be in Galway on the opening day of the Galway Arts Festival. (But alas, not any more than that.) I will be visiting County Limerick, County Tipperary, Dingle Peninsula, Ring of Kerry, County Offaly and County Galway.

So if something is possible, let me know- Buttsintheseats@mindspring.com Otherwise, keep your eyes open for a strange American pressing his nose against your windows.

When Artists Go To War…They Bring Their Accordions?

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Last month, the Tyler Art School declared war on their fellow Philadelphia area art schools, University of the Arts, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Moore College of Art and Design and the Art Institute of Philadelphia. The Tyler Art School was relocating to the Temple University campus and apparently decided to incite some dialog among their art school brethren by offering the ancient gift of belligerents, the Trojan Horse.

The Tyler students constructed 12 foot high Trojan horses out of cardboard and snuck them on to the other campus with a note announcing their arrival in Philadelphia. (Photos and the note may be found here.. Video of the construction here.) I am thinking the only way they were able to do this on four campuses without being stopped by security is that the security folks were all too familiar with arts students moving strange things around campus.

The University of the Arts retaliation has been documented on YouTube. (Does anyone know what is with the accordion? The folks on Philebrity mentioned it as well. Some inside joke?)

A Moore College response, wherein they critique craftsmanship of the letter and horse, is likewise found on YouTube.

According to a story on the Temple University website, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art also responded. They returned the Trojan horse altering it to resemble a chariot and placing a statue of Helen of Troy atop it stating, “We have added a cast of Helen of Troy to illustrate how once again beauty defeated the beast.”

As far as the tradition of mascot stealing and college pranks goes, this seems a lot of fun. Hopefully it doesn’t escalate into a situation where the schools have to use paint thinner to undo the last foray onto their campuses.

This might be the sort of thing arts organizations in different places could engage in to draw attention and pique the interest of their communities. When the public is watching and wondering what the friendly rivals are going to do to each other next, they end up taking greater note of what each is currently doing on their stages and galleries.

The most engaging form of cooperation may be feigned discord. Imagine a group of chamber musicians who publicly call out a museum or gallery saying they have had enough tolerating their smug attitude throughout the winter and it is time to have it out. The musicians challenge the visual artists to a showdown at high noon in front of city hall in two weeks. They will be playing a certain composer and dare the artists to put their money where their mouth is and show up with a visual interpretation of the musical piece.

For the next two weeks, each group talks smack about the other on their blogs and signs in front of their buildings. Then at high noon they “face off” with the audience getting the opportunity for a free concert and mini art walk during their lunch break. Only downside of this particular scenario is that people may believe performances and visual art pieces can be thrown together in two weeks. Having the rivalry play out over months might lose its draw. Hopefully the edge to the attention the groups call to themselves would raise interest among people in the community. This sort of thing might help erode subconscious impressions that arts interaction is a passive experience and lend a sense of action and vibrancy.

Organic Arts, Taste The Difference

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My cousin is a farmer. But he isn’t just any old farmer. About five years ago he started working his farms with two massive Belgian draft horses rather than using gas powered equipment. When fuel prices started climbing last year, I figured I might end up taking lessons from him some day. He hasn’t turned his back on technology by any means and calls upon neighbors to do some of the tasks that are either too much for his horses or can’t be done with his team. But he is really committed to sustainable farming with out chemicals and the like.

I have been trying to discern what lessons his way of life might have for my way of life. My cousin’s farm contributes goods to a community supported agriculture cooperative where people subscribe to receive a share of his produce throughout the year. He would probably farm like this anyway, but his timing is fairly good in that he is doing this at a time where value is being placed on organic and free range farming. His website outlines how his crops and livestock are employed to support each other which adds value to the sides of free range beef, sheep, poultry and eggs you can purchase from him online.

So I am trying to figure out what is the back to basics approach the arts can take? Other than the piano and sheet music in the parlor, I can’t really of an archetypal image in American arts life with which to appeal to people. What ideals would you invoke to remind people of value that has been lost in present times? How are they diminished by cell phones and the Internet?

And really, it is a lot of idealism that people are buying with their free range organic food these days. It can’t diminish what my cousin is doing to say so because he is obviously a true believer. I grew up surrounded by farms, (God help me, but the smell of manure still makes me nostalgic), but most consumers have no direct experience with process by which food is produced. The basics they are trying to get back to isn’t likely something they or even their parents once had and yearn for again.

So the success of a campaign on behalf of the arts wouldn’t necessarily depend on people having experienced the arts. It would just need to evoke some value people feel is missing from their lives. One of the images we want to avoid is that of the elite, white audience. Unfortunately that is a real historical image. Not only do most arts organizations want to avoid that as they strive to be more multicultural and inclusive, but likely would prefer people not imagine audiences comprised of rich bankers.

It may sound manipulative to say success depends on using the right turns of phrase. As we are all aware though, the reality is that we start from zero with vast number of people. If more people had interaction and experience upon which to appeal, it would certainly be more effective to connect with real experience rather than a nebulous ideal. The problem people like my cousins have is that there are a lot of companies out there playing fast and loose with what constitutes what organic and free range means. It is obvious that my cousin’s operation is sustainable but the other guys can undercut his price by employing less rigorous standards and calling it the same thing. If more consumers possessed the discernment which comes from direct experience with the food production process, fewer would be fooled.

In terms of producing a sustainable arts product that has resonance with a community, Scott Walters’ Theatre Tribe appears to be a viable option. (Albeit the only considered plan of which I am aware.)

Having a good product still doesn’t solve the question of messaging. Though certainly real quality lends itself to convincing arguments about value. The simple truth is, evoking the idea that arts attendance fills a gap created by modern life may not be the most effective option. You don’t need me to tell you quality doesn’t equal success. As big a trend organic is these days, there are still far fewer farmers than there were when I was a kid.

Perhaps the only lesson to take from my cousin’s example is one we already know as arts people. First, do what fulfills you and if people are interested in paying you for it great. As I said, his decision to farm with draft animals was not motivated by the credibility he would get with consumers of organic food and hopes of income as a result. He may not even make much selling to that segment of people. (In fact, he teaches agriculture at a local high school.) He just likes working his farm.

Ignore The Title, Come For The Exuberance

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I usually don’t speak specifically about the performers we present for a number of reasons. Among them is my concern that inclusion or omission will make a tacit statement about the quality of the performance or my interactions with the group. The last event we had was so superlative and the positive feedback so strong that I feel the need to single it out by name for what I believe is the first time in my blog’s history.

The performance in question is the India Jazz Suites. The baggage that name brings with it is part of the reason I felt the need to wax rhapsodic about the performance. It needs all the help it can get to overcome the assumptions people make based on the name. While it does have Indian and Jazz elements, the show’s focus is really on the joyful exuberance exhibited by Indian kathak exponent Pandit Chitresh Das and tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith. The problems people seemed to have with the show name is akin to if you had never experienced opera. You would have just as much insight into the nature of Loony Tunes’ “What’s Opera, Doc?” were it billed “Animated Opera Short.”

In promoting the piece, I kept emphasizing the idea of a partnership infused with “joyful exuberance.” Even if people didn’t know anything about kathak and weren’t too big on jazz, I hoped the concept of dancers from two different traditions having fun would make them curious enough to get more information. Jason and Chitresh met backstage at the American Dance Festival in 2004 and became interested in working with one another. Kathak is similar to tap in that it is a percussive dance form performed barefoot with about 10 lbs of bells attached to the ankles. Like tap it lends itself to dramatic flourishes. Pandit Das speaks in interviews of his long desire to work with Gregory Hines, lost upon Hines death, was renewed upon meeting Jason Samuels Smith. The two perform with two trios of musicians. One trio on tabla, sitar and sarangi; the other on piano, drums and bass. The musicians challenge each dancer to match different riffs and the dancers engage in a dance battle to match each other.

But as you can see, unless you already had a sense of the show’s content, it takes a bit of explanation to get people to a place where they understand what the performance will be about. We worked hard on press releases, radio interviews and in media ad buys to communicate all this. I don’t use a lot of unwarranted hyperbole in my ads and releases so I hoped when I emailed our subscription list in earnest that this was the show I had was most excited about and had waited all season to see, they would trust that I sincerely meant it. It was absolutely true. As soon as one of my consortium partners proposed the show, I jumped on it afraid that one of the others in the city would first.

One of my reasons for wanting to host the show was that there was little chance of seeing a collaboration like this, much less with artists of this caliber. Unfortunately, this being absolutely true, people had few frames of references to help them comprehend the performance in advance. People with whom we discussed the performance at length on multiple occasions were having “ah-ha” moments just days before the show about details we mentioned many times before.

What I think explained the show best is this YouTube video of excerpts from the performance:

As you might surmise, the audience wasn’t that large but the show superb. It was easily in the top three performances of the past five years. I can’t help but wonder if the entertainment sector as a whole has poisoned its relations with audiences by diluting language by over promising. I place a lot of the blame on movie ads but pretty much every discipline and area is guilty of employing hyperbolic language. Now when we have an offering which is challenging to understand on the surface but easily enjoyable by the layman without benefit of specialized knowledge, we can’t simply say trust me, you will enjoy it immensely and have people believe you. Even with lengthy explanations, interviews and multimedia support, people are risk averse partially because they have been disappointed by previous promises.

I have no experience with jazz or Indian dance. I jumped on the opportunity because I knew by reputation alone that Chitresh Das was worth seeing. It wasn’t until I watched the YouTube video weeks later that I realized not only did I want to see it, it was intellectually accessible to a very broad audience.

The show started with Smith and Das doing separate solos. One of the points they make is that neither is scaling back his art to accommodate the other. They are both highly accomplished artists. In the first half of the show they make that abundantly clear. To be fair, the musicians make that clear about themselves before the dancers step on the stage. Given that jazz, tap, classical Indian music and dance are all heavily improvised forms, the musicians have to be extremely skilled to operate at the level of the dancers.

As I stood watching, I started thinking that the audience was paying far too little to see this performance. I know that had we charged more we would have likely had fewer people so it was good that a greater number of people were able to experience the performance. Still they were getting a hell of a lot of value for their money.

People realized this. Well, perhaps not the money part, though someone did ask how they could donate. The atmosphere in the lobby at intermission was completely energized. We were half way through the show and people were responding at the same level they did at the end of a performance after a big finale. I was engaged in conversations by multiple people who were somewhat at a loss to express their excitement. I had to keep excusing myself as I was continually intercepted on my way backstage to make sure the second half would be starting shortly.

The second half absolutely delivered on the promise made in the first half that the talents of both men together would be greater than the sum of the parts. The interactions between the two dancers and the way they engaged the musicians was exceptional. Everything intertwined so well I forgot that it wasn’t all choreographed in advance.

Lest you imagine that the show had fallen into rote after repeated performances constituting a de facto choreography , it was only supposed to run 1.5 hours and ran 2.5. And no one cared to complain. I hadn’t realized things had expanded until I noticed intermission was getting over when the show was scheduled to end. I think part of it was due to Pandit Das, considers himself as an educator as much a dancer. He did some demonstrations and discussion of the principles behind his art during his solo. I assume seeing people were entranced, he was happy to keep dancing for them.

This week has seen me copied on emails people are sending their friends raving about the performance they attended. When I am stopped on the sidewalk by people, the conversation runs longer than usual about what a wonderful show we brought the previous weekend. I will openly admit that I am contributing much more to the exchange myself.

Again, none of this is meant to detract from any of the other artists we have presented. I think the last two shows of the season went a very long way in creating very positive impressions about our theatre in the community. I suspect that will be worth a lot to us as economic times become more difficult.

So, you know, I can’t help wishing there were more people participating in the experience.

Perhaps some reading this account won’t quite understand my excitement having seen the like often enough. It isn’t all that frequent that someone operating in my budget range gets to present performances of this caliber. So I guess it would only go to prove my point that people weren’t paying enough to see the performance which makes me all the more grateful that we had the opportunity. But even for those accustomed to experiencing exceptional performances, there is always a show that transcends your past experiences to a great degree and provides a “Wow” moment.

Looking For Shows In All The Close Places

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Last Friday I went to First Friday downtown. My main motivation was that my assistant theatre manager and his wife were performing at an outdoor stage. The theme was Asian performance so there were performances of gamelan, kulintang music, Balinese, Cambodian and Thai dance and a couple of fusion pieces.

While I came to support a friend, I was soon evaluating performances for suitability in upcoming seasons. We have been told to expect that we are all but guaranteed to lose $20,000 from a regular source so I need to identify generally inexpensive quality performances. Ultimately, I didn’t think any I saw that night were quite right and a couple, pretty awful. Before I made this determination I started to ponder how I might structure future seasons.

I started to wonder if it might be possible to follow Numa Saisselin’s example and announce a shorter season in my brochure next Fall with the intent of adding two or three performances as the opportunity presents itself. There are always a few shows that do well and a few shows that attract a third of what the best shows do. My expenses are generally the same for all of them so if I can reduce my costs a little, I will be doing better. What contributes either directly or indirectly to my costs is distance people have to travel so I can realize some significant savings if I can control those expenses. Since people are making their attendance decisions extremely close to the performance dates, I don’t think I would lose anything by having some events absent from the season brochure.

I often have a general idea of which shows will have a lower appeal but pay the price knowing that the work is worth seeing and if I don’t bring them, then no one else will. The smaller audience appreciates the opportunity no less than the larger one. Unfortunately, that idealism may have to be indulged slightly less often in favor of discerning whether there are local/regional performers who have the quality but haven’t had the opportunity to be seen.

Outside of my uncertainty about such groups existing, one concern I have is that if I don’t set my schedule early, I will have to really control what dates I rent out. We have a fairly strong facility rental program and can have most of the year rented out almost immediately after releasing the dates we don’t intend to use.

I would most certainly make more money renting instead of presenting on those same dates but I don’t want to reduce our offerings even in these financially tenuous times. I believe we would lose momentum with our community. While precious few seem to have any loyalty to us, I suspect their numbers are greater than we imagine. There is also the issue of slipping out of the collective consciousness if there are fewer mentions of us in the media.

So for the next few months I am going to be doing a lot of pondering, talking and consulting with people on our direction. There is no option before me that I want to fully commit to –fully a rental house, fully produce local performers–but the fiscal realities before me are likely to mean exploring these options to some degree.

Math, Science, Reading, Writing, Thinking– It’s In There

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My assistant theatre manager and I went to speak at an elementary school career day today. This is the first time we have been invited although the school has apparently been doing career days for nearly 20 years. They often have the same groups year after year so wanted to change the line up a little this year.

Now if you are thinking a theatre manager talking about his job for 30 minutes is about 27 minutes too long for your average fifth grader, I am way ahead of you. Some of the students had been to the theatre for an outreach performance last week so that gave us an opening to talk very briefly about what went in to getting the performers to the theatre. I squeezed in a stay in school pitch by noting the necessity for good reading, writing and artistic skills in putting a brochure together but then we moved on to the exciting part of theatre–performance and technology.

The sounds and faces actors make when they are doing vocal warm ups is pure gold for getting elementary age kids to participate. I also did a bit about how performers communicate non verbally with body, props and facial features. It was a big hit with the kids and provided the assistant theatre manager photos with which to blackmail me. My consolation was that I got asked for my autograph.

Then I broke out the lighting equipment my technical director gave me for the demo. This really lent itself to our message about the value of education. I used the equipment to illustrate the importance of lighting people from all sides. Then I talked about the importance of math in figuring out how many instruments you could attach to a circuit. We had one bright light that used the limit of 1,000 watts but didn’t cover me from all angles vs. four instruments of 250 watts each that covered my whole body but wasn’t as bright. Which did they like better?

I pulled out some gels and talked very basically about additive vs subtractive color just to introduce the concept of color we perceive directly vs. what is reflected. Gotta know your science. At the student’s suggestion, we experimented using multiple gels to see what the result of mixing them together was. The big finale was putting the portable dimmer we had into demonstration mode to create a chase sequence of our gels.

I take the time to recount some of what we did because of a conversation we had with the Vice Principal at lunch. He volunteered, without anyone mentioning it, that he really wanted more art in the school but No Child Left Behind requirements were inhibiting him. He started citing studies that showed that the arts improve scores in the areas NCLB was requiring improvement.

Boy, it is great when you can eat your lunch and have people make the case you would normally deliver to them for you.

Catching up on my blog subscriptions, I came across this entry by Adam Huttler over at Fractured Atlas

I’m always skeptical of arts advocacy arguments that emphasize the importance of arts as a hobby in support of other (presumably more serious or important) endeavors. You know, like when people claim arts education is important because it helps kids do better at math. That’s great and all, but what’s wrong with the fact that it helps kids do better at art? Why isn’t that enough? Even setting aside the intrinsic value of the arts, the direct benefits to society from arts and culture activities are well documented (economic development, urban renewal, etc.) We shouldn’t have to justify our existence on the idea that, by supporting and practicing the arts, some totally unrelated but positive thing might happen by accident.

I agree wholly with him but would just like to add that people getting better at math, science and reading when they experience the arts doesn’t happen by accident either. The arts don’t existing in a vacuum and magically bestow their benefits. People become better at math, science, reading, writing, critical and creative thinking etc through the arts because the arts require you to use math, science, reading, writing, creative and critical thinking. We know that people have a more positive relationship with the arts if they have had active interactions vs. experiences where they simply watched. I feel pretty confident in claiming, without any statistical backing whatsoever, that students also gain greater benefits in the aforementioned subject areas if they have actively participated in the arts.

Cost Is More Than Pocket Change

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We had a meeting today with some renters to discuss an event they will be presenting in about a month. It is going to be a performance by a youth orchestra and choral group. One of the organizers told us his method of figuring out how to arrange his musicians given the space constraints. He uses pocket change.

Pennies do for most musicians but nickels are necessary for those like the flautists who need a little more room. Much of the percussion section is represented by quarters.

This low tech approach brought some “kids today” thoughts to mind. Many industries complain that recent graduates from all levels don’t possess the basic skills to perform the task at hand. It is frequently mentioned that the performing arts are so expensive because production costs can’t be circumvented/minimized by advancements in technology and efficiencies (aka Baumol’s cost disease).

However, there have been instances when technology seems to have indeed left people lacking in the ability to perform basic tasks. A few years ago, there was a problem with fitting a visiting designer’s design in the facility at which I was working. He was asked to quickly revise the problem portion and hand it off to the technicians to execute. Unfortunately, since his design software wasn’t available, it had to be done by hand and the designer didn’t have the requisite skill to effectively execute it. The project was delayed a bit longer than expected when one of the technicians had to draw what the designer dictated.

In this last year we had a similar problem with another designer who insisted the show couldn’t be done without a specific type of computer controlled lighting equipment which we didn’t have. We were somewhat incredulous when it turned out that all the special equipment for was going to be used for was backlighting. Using the special equipment would reduce the number of instruments needed by 1/3. However, we had plenty of lighting instruments and circuits to produce the effect. But it took the better part of a week to convince the guy to add the other instruments to the design rather than insisting we rent expensive equipment for a half hour piece.

Alas, technology may have advanced, but the ability for our budgets to acquire technology for our house stock hasn’t. Nor had it for three of our partners so resistance to change in the face of such dearth was also puzzling and frustrating.

I can’t say for sure if the designer wasn’t just busy with other projects and really did not want to revise plans. From my vantage and from the responses we received, it appeared to be lack of imagination and problem solving skills to conceive of alternatives.

I don’t want to leave the youngest set out so I will also roll my virtual eyes at some of our students who don’t know how to use a ruler. I am not talking about scale rulers which I will admit make my eyes glaze over. I am referring to a standard 1 foot ruler. Guys, 1/4 scale means 1 inch equals 4 feet. Shave something off that chair you made out of foamcore–it is 8 feet high on your set model!!!!

I understand that technology does actually contribute to greater efficiency. It is quicker to hang one instrument instead of three. You can also do much more with the same number of circuits. You can design much faster if the computer does it for you and automatically includes all the pertinent information people need to execute the plan. But I think there is a greater cost when people don’t possess the basic skills of their profession for which technology provides a shortcut.

I really do comprehend the desire to move beyond the basic rules to the place where we get to express ourselves. I still have a paper from college with a comment that the content of my writing was simply excellent and insightful–but the grammatical errors were legion. At the time, all I cared about was the recognition of my brilliance. My grammatical skills were obviously sufficient to allow my brilliance to shine through after all. No need to shackle myself with tedious rules which only professors valued.

Now if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you have probably come across instances where my fingers act independently of my brain. Those times notwithstanding, there came a moment when I realized if I was to advance in nearly any career, I needed to embrace basic grammatical discipline. I know now that paying attention to how others employ those picayune details has enhanced the sheer magnificence my literature professor acknowledged so long ago.

New Place, New Look

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As you can see, the blog has a new look. It may not be as apparent that the blog is in a new place as well. After five years on my old Movable Type platform, I accepted Inside the Arts founder, Drew McManus’ invitation to move my blog entirely to the Inside the Arts website. I still own the Buttsseats.com domain name and have it directed here so you can keep your bookmarks. Those who subscribe by newsfeed are probably going to have to reset them. I know that some people liked a verbose feed and others preferred a more compact feed and I plan to feature both.

I apologize to those who had difficulties reaching the blog these last couple days. I was having some difficulty getting my domain name to redirect here properly. I appreciate Drew’s patience with my emails urging him to try various settings in an attempt to make things work. There are still a couple things that probably need to be worked out but my intention is to limit such flailing to times of low traffic to the blog.

My primary motivation for moving is difficulties I had getting Movable Type to do what I wanted. It is a very flexible platform for blogging and as such has a lot of settings that can be adjusted. I believe that despite my best efforts in emulating standard settings, there was something set somewhere that precluded the execution of my changes.

Had it just been a matter of cosmetics, I wouldn’t have had a problem but there were problems with comment posting where you would be scolded for not entering the spam prevention password—only you were never given the opportunity to do so unless you previewed your post first. I spent the better part of three weeks playing with various settings to no avail. I believe this new location will provide readers with a much better experience.

My second motivation was based somewhat in envy. Drew McManus is an attentive shepherd for our merry little band of bloggers here. Evey week he sends out tips on how to improve blog posts. Often these tips include information on new plugins and programs available for the WordPress platform Inside the Arts uses. Given I was faced with so much frustration, the proposition of accomplishing my goals at a click of a button was rather seductive. There are also little nifty tools that seek out broken links within entries which will enable me to keep my old entries either up to date or at least bereft of dead links. Months of coveting such luxuries inspired me to move my blog.

I am pleased thus far with the new blogging accommodations and look forward to being able to provide a more informative experience for my readers given the new tools at my disposal.

Wherein I Become Interested In Eskimos

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Busy, busy, busy day today. I had a lot of meetings, some of which I enjoyed more than others. One that gave me cause for optimism was a planning meeting for a show we will be developing and co-producing to be staged in September 2010. As part of this partnership we provide rehearsal and performance space as well as design services and facilities. The other organization is creating the performance. One of the things that encouraged me was that they held an intimate fund raising event with only 20 invited and raised a fairly respectable amount toward development costs. (I was also happy that we had the meeting because I was able to remind him about an impending grant deadline.) This is a good sign that in these financially troubled times, people are still willing to provide support for a project.

Most of the conversation revolved around set design. Since we are hoping the show will do a little touring, trying to get a preliminary idea of how to create something that was light enough to travel, strong enough to bear weight and durable enough to be reconstructed frequently monopolized a bit of time. This is one of the aspects of my job from which I gain satisfaction. I may be the administrator guy but the dynamics are such that I feel I can run around making suggestions about materials and design and not have the designers and artists look at me with disdain for treading upon their territory. It won’t be long before the project progresses to the point my insights have little value, but I enjoy the fact that I have enough expertise to have my suggestions valued.

The guy with whom we are partnering is doing some amazing cultural exchanges via his company with Japanese groups and has started making contacts in Korea. In addition, he is often asked to participate in cultural exchanges and projects with the Inupiat and Yupik people of Alaska. His interactions with these two latter groups are going to inform the content of the show we are developing. So I am sitting there thinking, why the heck isn’t more funding going his way? He is developing some really vibrant new works that are culturally respectful and have a fairly wide general appeal. I know we will sell out so I need to make sure we don’t limit the number of performances we can do like we did on the last project we produced.

He isn’t reticent about promoting his projects and he sits on a lot of grant panels so he has a pretty good idea how to make a persuasive case. I mean, until today I had no familiarity with the Inupiat and Yupik. I have to say, I want to learn a little more about them because this guy got me excited about the cultural elements he intends to integrate into the work. The tech director and musical director are pretty excited about these elements too. As I am writing this, it strikes me that maybe he isn’t getting more funding because no one is writing letters in support of his grant that say he has made them excited to learn a little more about Eskimo cultural practices–and this is for a show that has nothing to do with Eskimos.

I am already pointing him to some of the grants I listed last week. Maybe I need to offer to write a letter talking about how impressed with his cross-cultural work I am and how it makes me want to learn. This guy is worth funding.

Creativity Now

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Sort of busy as the holidays approach but a thought came up in recent conversations.

They say the next phase of the economy will emphasize creativity and so people need to acquire the appropriate skills.

I wonder if the recent financial problems originating from Wall Street compounded by the billions lost to the massive Ponzi scheme perpetuated by Bernard Madoff might actually help usher a higher valuation of creative backgrounds along. After all that has happened, and in light of what is yet to come, perhaps an MFA might have less of a stigma than an MBA.

Theatre of the Future Gives Me Ulcers

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I happened upon the YouTube video below by Imagination Stage. I surmised that it was part of a contest of sorts held by Theatre Communications Group for organizations to make a video about the future because it is organized in the TCG YouTube account and most of the videos seem to deal with the future of theatre. Also, I have a vague recollection about the contest being listed somewhere.

At first I was a little depressed by the world they portrayed. Then I realized they probably have a pretty accurate view of how things will be. The opening where the girl is getting poor grades, most likely because she is involved in theatre, is actually pretty comforting because it show that some things won’t change.

At first I was a little put off by the idea that she was learning acting from a hologram, especially given that the hologram was pretty over the top. Of course, I figured holograms and virtual reality would be part of the future of theatre back when I started the blog. On the whole, I thought the video was well done and the details of the user interface they portrayed was spot on.

For a moment I was also a little turned off by the idea that acting instruction was structured as a video game with levels to advance through that people would try to gain shortcut cheats through.

Then I thought, we should be so lucky to have people that invested!

I was also heartened by the fact the young woman in the video wouldn’t even consider giving her friend a shortcut hint. There are no shortcuts to hard work, after all.

What disturbed me the most though was the concept that a production would be subject to the caprice of whether talented people chose to log in or not and doing so at the last minute. The video shows the young woman manifesting in a theatre and the director saying they hoped she would log on, tossing out an auditioner who was less qualified for some reason. I assumed she hadn’t obtained enough points/levels. Then the young woman rehearses as a hologram opposite live people and performs as Juliet at the opening the next night.

As I acknowledged though, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility. If audiences are waiting until the last moment to buy tickets, could not artists delay the decision about which production they wanted to be involved with until the last minute? If performers have the ability to manifest themselves as holograms in 2028, opportunities become available across the entire country and perhaps the world.

As long as there are more actors than roles, then there will always be competition. But then competition for elite performers also becomes extreme. Get great reviews for your performance as King Lear in Madison, WI one night, you could receive an offer to play Lear in Hong Kong the next night and actually be able to do it. What worries me is the ulcer inducing environment this will create for arts managers.

But damn, wouldn’t bring a real sense of excitement and unpredictability to the arts. The most notable companies won’t be those who can maintain a stable cast, it will be those who can produce a consistently high quality product regardless of the vagaries of the cast.

Rare Relaxing Residencies for Arts and Culture Managers

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Always on the look out for programs that benefit arts managers, I came across the following listing offering residencies to arts and cultural managers at a location in Key West. For some reason, they don’t promote the opportunity on their website. You need a subscription to reach the website on which it was listed. But such is my desire to make people aware of the opportunity, I am reproducing selected portions of the listing here. If you are interested, you can contact them and they can regale you with all the benefits of their facility.

Artists and Managers in Their Natural Environment!
I am aware of numerous organizations that provide residency to artists but this is the first I have encountered that offers them to leaders and administrators. Since you would theoretically go alone, it wouldn’t be a staff retreat where you engage in group strategizing or team building activities. It might be beneficial for administrators to mix with creative artists for whom they would have no responsibility. There would be no pressure to rein in, budget money for or contract the services of the creative artists. It is not often arts managers have an extended time in an arts environment free of these considerations. It might actually help managers and artists develop healthier attitudes toward each other. From my experiences in performing arts and from what I have read on blogs and articles, I don’t think there is an arts discipline where the relationships aren’t at least guarded.

Anyhow, here is the listing. Hopefully one of my intrepid readers or their friends will have the opportunity to engage in a constructive stay.

Mull Management in Mango Tree House

IT’S NOT A JOB, IT’S A CREATIVE ISLAND ADVENTURE The Studios of Key West, an emerging creative community at America’s Southernmost Point, seeks cultural managers and innovative arts administrators for 1 to 2 week residencies in our Mango Tree House. This residency requires no work, no problem solving, no meetings or presentations, and no reporting of any kind. Directors, program officers, and Alliance of Artists Communities’ leaders: Tell us your dates, plan your travel, and think Zen.

A SHORT TROPICAL RETREAT FOR ARTS ADMINISTRATORS As a companion to our longer-term Artist-in-Residence program, this short-term stay in Key West’s Old Town can include project research, program planning, networking and collaborating; or it can simply be a retreat-like hermitage on a warm and libertarian island, away from the usual workaday environment. TSKW is currently considering the short-term residency needs of academics, cultural managers, critics, instituional officers, museum professionals, and other professional people involved in forging high, low, popular, and obscure culture. Time and space in Key West will provide new influences and fresh experiences, and an appreciation for life here in the Conch Republic, 30 leagues North of Havana, America’s Mile Marker 0, Cayo Hueso

[…]

The Studios of Key West is proud to offer a handful of 1 to 2 week residencies for America’s Cultural Managers and Arts Administrators each year. If you have time off to travel to the Southernmost Point, and are interested in a singular retreat opportunity, please contact us for details on how to proceed.

IS THIS A VACATION? Yes, but it’s also a new form of professional development, in a place that will welcome and honor your presence, at a new kind of creative community. Learn about us here www.tskw.org, then contact Eric Vaughn Holowacz Executive Director at eric@tskw.org

THE FINE PRINT Cultural managers, arts administrators, artistic directors and producers, program officers and curators who can get away from their busy roles for a week or two are welcome to express interest in the TSKW Cultural Manager Residency. Participants must be able to cover travel to and from Key West, as well as some living expenses while on the island. […]

Fake Violence Can Still Be Traumatic

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Via Artsjournal.com is an interesting article on how actors deal with inflicting violence on one another. Even though it is simulated, the very personal, brutal actions the performers replicate can have a psychological impact on them.

Acting Comes Between Us
I have been involved with two productions of Extremities, a play in which a woman is attacked in her home by a man intent on raping her. She gains control of the situation and takes her revenge on him. The actors get physically close to enacting the rape and when the tables are turned, the would be rapist is half blinded, tied up in a fireplace with his intended victim threatening to burn him. In both productions I have been associated with the two primary actors had to take showers afterward to cleanse themselves of the psychic and emotional baggage of the show. People who were close friends found an uneasiness crept into their relationships during the production. They had to reassure and reconnect with each other after every performance to essentially ground themselves.

I know much of this because rape as a subject matter lent itself to many outreach and audience talk back sessions. On one production one of my responsibilities was to make extra sure that family and friends didn’t make their way backstage before the actors had an opportunity to reoriented themselves.

Hopefully No Wrong Ideas About Method Acting
As far as I know, no one went out and engaged in violent behavior in order to prepare for the performance. I think what disturbed each person so much wasn’t that they had so much simulated violence directed at them as that they found something to tap into within themselves to fabricate a credible portrayal. Knowing that the potential for that sort of thing exists within you and your friends can be pretty unsettling.

Coping Mechanisms for Violent Acting
As I read the NY Times article about how the how London actors insulated themselves from their actions, I wondered if that sort of strategy was widely used by actors. It certainly didn’t seem that way with the highly charged productions I have been involved in. I also wondered if theatres who produce these types of shows make alterations to their normal practices and give the performers extra time and dedicated spaces to wind down after performances.

I would be interested in hearing about other people’s experiences either in the comments section or by email.

Finally, We Can Walk Tall And Funky

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

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

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

They Took My Beautiful Coke Machine!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theory Crashes Into Practice

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Over on Fractured Atlas, Kamal Sinclair posted some of the responses they have been getting while researching the professional development needs for artists. The focus of the comments in this particular entry revolve around the frustration BFA and MFA students feel when they realize their formal education taught them how to be creative but not necessarily how to exist as a practicing artist and navigate their respective industries.

The entry contains about 10-15 quotes from graduates reflecting on how well or poorly their training program prepared them for careers in their fields. Hoping to provide incentive to read the entire entry, I will resist quoting some of the ones that resonate strongest with me here.

I will note that according to Sinclair, in the course of their research Fractured Atlas found that the problem may be that the training programs are slow to recognize the pressing need. “…sources imply that universities and colleges have a long history of resistance around educating artists in “the business.” The philosophy is that art should be taught for art’s sake.”

Sinclair lists some of the suggestions the respondents had about how to improve the situation. Again, you should read the entry to learn more. Fractured Atlas’ blogs contain a lot of great material on a daily basis and if I lose readership to them by pointing you there, I will still feel victory has been achieved.

I can’t help but cite one of the suggestions that leaped out and smashed me over the head with a frying pan– “Eliminate the myth of “getting discovered.” I tell you, that is just replete with all sorts of complexities. As much as training programs may perpetuate this, it is inherent in society at large. It manifests in shows like American Idol which allows people to believe they have a reasonable chance at becoming famous–the odds of which are only slightly better than winning the Powerball lottery.

Hopefully implicit in that comment was the idea that success can be defined as more than just a Broadway role, recording contract or big gallery show. Those that decide they are just biding their time in their current job until they are discovered are closing off other potential avenues for success. The current president of Valparaiso University went to grad school for acting and directing, for example. Seventeen years and three colleges ago when he was teaching me acting, I would never have figured he would end up as a university president. While a number of doors doubtless opened for him, I am sure he worked hard to position himself near those doorways.

Turning Our Professions Off

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I don’t usually talk about specific actors on the blog but I heard some amazing things in an interview with Terrance Howard on NPR this weekend. I heard the 12 minute version that aired but went and listened to the 40 minute uncut version via the NPR website. (The broadcast version is there as well.) I haven’t been following Howard’s career with any devotion but I may just do so now to see what he is thinking. He seems to have a real sense of his place in the world acknowledging the bonds that run back to his actor/musician great-grandmother, Minnie Gentry, to his mother through him and down to his son. Despite his success, he does a lot of carpentry work professionally and pro bono. His greatest hope seems to be that his son will become the scientist that he wanted to be before acting deflected him from that path.

I am not quite sure if his explanations of scientific matters are completely accurate but I am impressed by his intellectual curiosity and rigorous pursuit of knowledge much the same as I was in Danica McKellar.

What grabbed my attention most was his observations on one consequence of acting being that you insulate yourself from life and begin to observe. In the interview he reflects on this in relation to his mother’s death just two weeks ago.

Starting at about 24:00 full version of the interview-

“As an actor, the saddest thing. You stop experiencing moments. You start watching them as if you are storing them for future reference. … It’s like when I was sitting there with my mother for the last two weeks. There were moments when I couldn’t turn that actor off where I was watching her. You know. And wondering what was going through her mind…And trying to stop myself…”
[…]
The actor sometimes takes over in places that you don’t want it there. Maybe I was just afraid to face the emotion that was happening so then I began to watch.”

This state is difficult for people to deal with, he says, and as a result, “And I think that’s what happens to a lot of actors, and therefore they get hooked on drugs because they’re desperate to get away from not feeling. They want to be excited or something.”

I can empathize because I have had similar experiences. I have difficulty enjoying performances because I analyze how effects are being accomplished or I wonder what is happening backstage. The technical director at work often thinks about how he could improve the lighting for shows or events like weddings. But even outside of performances in real life, I some times realize I am watching myself experience an event. I can’t recall doing so during a something as highly emotional as watching someone die. Certainly, I haven’t filed it away for future use the way Howard suggests he does.

I don’t know whether to pity him for not being able to feel or envy him for being able to insulate himself from negative events. I suppose if he is equally unable to fully experience joyful events, then it is a net detriment.

But I wonder if every vocation doesn’t hold a similar threat. Had he become a famous scientist as he planned isn’t there a chance that he would instead be talking about how science removes the wonder from his life. That he can’t enjoy the rainbows, blowing bubbles and sunsets without analyzing the forces that went into creating them. Perhaps he might talk about how science has isolated him from those he loves because he can’t experience the world with the same joy and wonder they do. As interested as he is in science, he still looks to explain events and occurrences in terms of grandness and wonder. He talks about a soap bubble existing because the universe is finite. Commenters to the NPR piece talk about surface tension.

Even as he looks upon the road not traveled with some bittersweetness, perhaps the lesson he and all of us should take away is that engaging in other interests in the manner of professional-amateurs, we can avoid those aspects which might remove the joy from the pursuit. By pursuing acting as a career, Terrence Howard may have taken on an obligation to examine and distill life in order to advance. By pursuing science out of love, he is not necessarily responsible for defining his relationship with it in a specific way.

Monkeys to the Left of Me, Monkeys to the Right

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I usually talk about the activities of my theatre in vague terms but I am really getting excited about the way an event is unfolding for us. This November, the drama department will be performing a version of Journey to the West adapted for the stage by Mary Zimmerman. If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you will know that the drama director is quite enamored of Zimmerman’s plays. This will be the fourth we have done in five years.

Journey has been a play he has wanted to do for a while now. A few years ago he was accidentally (we assume) put through directly to her agent who gave the director the impression that Journey was his favorite of all Zimmerman’s plays. Whether the agent said that or not, the director resolved to do the show. The problem was, the play was not in print so an appeal to Zimmerman directly was needed and much to our delight, she granted permission.

If you aren’t familiar with Journey to the West, it is essentially as much a cornerstone of Asian culture as the Odyssey is for Western cultures. Nearly every Asian country has their own name for the central figure of the Monkey King. The influence on popular culture is vast. This year’s Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li and Jackie Chan is based on it. In 2010 a direct interpretation of the book is due out. Countless anime and manga stories draw from it. At the Charleston Spoleto Festival this year, a stage version was presented with music by Blur/Gorillaz member Damon Albarn. There have been numerous television series based on the story. Just go to YouTube and type in Journey to the West. There are so many options, it is pretty difficult to discern between them if you try to watch contiguous episodes of one series.

What makes the story so appealing is that it is both a tale of rollicking high adventure involving the heroic slaying of fantastic beasts and demons and a medium for discussing Buddhist philosophy. Since we did the Odyssey last year one of the parallels I saw immediately was between Odysseus taking 10 years to get home and the abnormally long time it takes the Monkey King and his party to make it to India. When the monk, Tripitaka, who the Monkey King is accompanying comments on this, the Monkey King points out that their progress is tied to Tripitaka’s ability to cast off his hang ups and approach enlightenment. It occurred to me that Odysseus probably had much the same problem.

In any case, there was a fair bit of excitement brewing about this production. One of the contributing factors was the decision that the show would involve tissue work–essentially the fabric climbing that you often see in Cirque de Soleil shows. One the hope of being cast, people were taking tissue workshops this summer on their own dime. Once people were cast, they were required to complete a minimum amount of training if they hadn’t already.

This is pretty serious work so people are training and working out every day for the next two months to strengthen themselves and refine their technique. The great thing is, this is adding to the excitement and energy backstage. It was too appealing to pass up so I asked someone to start taking candid pictures of the process so I could put them up on the website and in email messages to subscribers.

Here’s a little of what we got-

goofy.jpg

swing round.jpg

monkey hang.jpg

All photos, Julia Dunnigan

Make Those Wall Street Bums Work For Us!

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Fractured Atlas’ Adam Huttler posted about the disincentives inherent to the traditional non-profit model partially in relation to the fall of so many financial institutions over the last few weeks.

I’ve often argued that the traditional non-profit model discourages necessary risk-taking. It does this for a few reasons:

1) Employees can’t own stock, so they don’t benefit from financial success. Yet they’re still vulnerable to financial failures (i.e. they can lose their jobs or suffer career setbacks). To a lesser extent, the same is true for non-profit Board members. When someone’s got no stake in the upside but is still exposed on the downside, the rational response is extreme conservatism.

2) The culture of the non-profit sector is such that managers go to absurd, herculean efforts to avoid admitting failure, mostly in an effort not to embarrass themselves in front of funders.

3) Non-profit organizations are chronically under-capitalized. By failing to build reserves or hoard surpluses, we end up in a situation where each budget is a tightrope. A single serious misstep is enough to pose an existential threat to the organization.

He goes on to talk about how free market enterprise incentivizes excessive risk taking in the for-profit industry and lists the form this takes. Huttler notes that while regulation can help keep the activities of for-profits from becoming too risky, you can’t make for profits engage in riskier behavior. However, he feels that if the relationship with funders could be changed, risk aversion can be mitigated to a degree.

His observations paint behavior of for and not-for profits as two sides of the same coin. For profits have a short term view because they are trying to burnish their quarterly reports for the sake of enhancing earnings. Not for profits take a short term view because their funding only covers a limited period. Given the necessity to continue to seek funding, the organization has to frequently reinvent parts of itself to conform with grant opportunities.

What Huttler suggest as a solution seems very close to what the Independent Sector proposed a few years ago. The Independent Sector suggested that foundations engage in long term core support of organizations rather than program support. They also suggested foundations develop a uniform application and reporting procedure so that organizations weren’t devoting so much time and energy on applications and reporting. (The entry I link to is one I am particularly proud of so take a look! Not to mention that the issue is more complicated than I have presented here.)

Huttler notes that it is difficult to provide performance incentives on par with the for profit world given IRS rules preventing revenue sharing. He mentions that Fractured Atlas provides performance based group bonuses which are apparently legal and I am sure sound like a good idea to most non-profit employees.

One of my initial thoughts upon reading Huttler’s first point about how non-profit employees face all the risk and none of the profit-sharing reward that for profit employees do, was that this group was motivated by factors other than financial. I am glad he acknowledged that near the end of the entry though I assumed he understood this even if he never mentioned it. But as I read the entry I reached the same conclusion he did–it can be tough to translate this non-monetary motivation into risk taking.

One of the first things that popped into my mind was that attempting this could actually lead to the pursuit of grants that didn’t really align with the organizational mission. A person is enthusiastic about serving X community and comes to the leadership with a grant supporting that very thing. But is it really in the organization’s best interest? Do they really want to continue the program past the grant period? Will there be anyone to continue it after the person leaves? It is easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm of a person for a clearly worthy cause when your organization is fueled more by coffee and enthusiasm than money. Engaging an employee’s interests can reward them for all their hard work when there isn’t much else with which to reward them. But you have to weight that against the long term interests of the company.

Yet it is easy to dismiss the suggestion of a really risky venture that would be in the long term best interest of the organization based on the risk alone. A fantastic failure as a result of risk taking won’t be in the interests of the company if it closes or most everyone gets laid off. Engaging an employee’s passion when there is money readily available from a foundation looks like the sane choice even if the program it funds probably won’t exist in 3 years–at least the organization itself will.

Not all risks are directly related to finances, of course. Just as every passion doesn’t necessarily require grant funding. An employee might be interested in cultivating an online community on behalf of the organization employing software that is available for free. All you have to do is allow them a couple hours a week to work on it. But if an incident arises that causes your organization to become an object of derision online and spills over to the local print and broadcast media, that can be a huge problem for you. But if your employee manages to tap into the interests of a bunch of influential 20 or 30somethings, the effort could be rewarding for you, your employee and your new supporters. (Though this win-win-win situation could be detrimental if the established supporters feel the organizational character has changed for the worse. That is the risk you have hopefully anticipated and prepared for.)

Ultimately though this whole issue leaves me wondering if there isn’t a better way than the non-profit model. Is there someway that allows employees to share in the success of the organization and have their non-monetary motivations engaged as well? Given the complex financial instruments constructed by the investment firms that got the country into its current financial crisis, I guarantee the brain power to design a way to finance such an organization exists (both constructively and legally, of course). There is simply has been no motivation for them to turn their minds to constructing such an opportunity. Perhaps the non-profit world at large should push to have these people prosecuted for criminal malfeasance and negligence and then advocate that they be sentenced to community service creating a proposal for such a funding scheme.

Activity Breeds Excitement

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We had a thank you luncheon/orientation for our volunteers this past weekend. In the past we have had it in the Spring but the schedule last spring was replete with conflicts so we chose this Fall to hold the event. In some respects, it was a better choice. Because we held the thank you lunch on the same day as the orientation, new volunteers got to meet experienced people prior to an event giving them an introduction to a person who can provide guidance during performances. Also, it can’t hurt to feed your volunteers before they actually do something for you.

A rule we have set for ourselves with our volunteer luncheons is to make sure there is something going on in the building when we are having it. Even though the volunteers see the building in action all the time, we want to make sure there is a sense of vibrancy and purpose, albeit subdued, while they are around. What is tricky about scheduling things this way is that most of the time we have something going on, we need the volunteers there to work. In previous years we have held the luncheon before events that only required a few volunteers like the annual classical and folk guitar concert. Some of the volunteers would have to leave a half hour early to prepare for the event but most could continue to hang out or go see the concert for free.

This year we did things differently and held the event prior to auditions for the Fall drama. There is nothing like the nervous energy of auditioners to fill a building with a sense of excitement. We scheduled our event to end just as the staff was setting up the theatre for the second day of auditions. There wasn’t any overlap on space since the actors entered through the backstage door and we held our lunch in the front lobby. (Another little hook for the event. Since we don’t allow food or drink in the lobby and have the volunteers enforce that rule, we billed the lunch “as the only time you will ever be able to eat in the lobby.”)

An hour and a half before auditions began, there were already people pacing around doing vocal warm-ups, practicing dance and movement routines and acrobatics. For many of our volunteers walking among this activity on our building tour this was almost an entirely new experience for them. Not only had many of them not been backstage in a theatre, but they had little familiarity with the preparation involved to try out for a play. (I wasn’t even going to attempt to address the differences between a cold reading and prepared monologue audition.)

Overall, I was pretty pleased. Based on criteria from the quality of preparation to interactions and relationship building we see in our volunteers over the next year, we may consider a Fall event better suited for our volunteer recruitment, training and retention needs. Even if we decide to go back to the Spring, I am pretty sure choices we make will be heavily informed by our experiences last weekend.

Inciting Incidents

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I have recently been reminded that it is often a small incident rather than a major one that coalesces people into action. There is often no way to plan and maneuver these events into happening. Rosa Parks sits on a bus. Surely there were other people who did the same thing and met with consequences. Why then? Why that day?

When our new assistant theatre manager started a year ago, he preferred to work at a desk I hadn’t anticipated him wanting. Because we stored often used files and binders in and around the desk, I have often had to ask him to move while I retrieved it. We didn’t have time to reconfigure things until this summer which is when I suggested alternative layouts a number of times. But he never really seemed motivated to do anything. Then Wednesday I asked for his help in running an internet cable through a hole in the wall. Thursday morning I came into work and the whole office was reconfigured. I have gone into work in jeans the last two days to continue with the clean up and rearranging.

Why was the running of that cable the spark that got things going? I have no idea. I would have preferred this all to happen over the summer when I had more time. On the other hand, it provides a welcome break from reviewing last month’s expense and payroll reports.

I had the same thing happen in an online game in which I help create scenarios for players. My attempts to spark interest with subtle and blatant promises of lurking menace and untold riches have gained limited involvement at times. However a group of organizations decided to talk about setting minimum pricing for their wares and the whole game went up in arms with battle lines being drawn between erstwhile allies. I was flabbergasted at the retributive activities and threats that emerged almost immediately between people who had been friends for years and years.

It is pretty clear to people in the arts world at large that a change in the way we do business is both necessary and imminent. The problem is that no one knows what form the change will take or how to bring it to fruition. This is not to say that people aren’t trying. Arts professionals are thinking, talking and doing all sorts of little things that are hopefully greasing the skids for what is to come. But if the change is going to come from an unexpected quarter, by definition there isn’t a lot anyone can do to control its emergence. Despite the best intentions and efforts to facilitate a transition, it could be a rather bumpy ride if people are concentrating their efforts in the wrong areas.

Core Narratives

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I try to avoid any mention of politics if it isn’t directly related to the arts but I have to say that the Republican National Convention going on right now is a great illustration of how marketing is the function of everyone in an organization. Members of political parties do this sort of thing almost as second nature but that seems even more reason why a smaller group working at an arts organization can’t mobilize themselves in the same way. It should be easier for the latter group to get themselves on message.

I think the convention activities also reveal the importance of knowing what elements comprise their core identity. Let’s face it, Gov. Palin’s daughter being pregnant out of wedlock diverges from the party’s usual narrative. Let’s not kids ourselves about how it would be exploited by proxies were the shoe on the other foot. However, the party has employed other elements of their traditional narrative to fend off criticism and show how it aligns with other things the party values. How effective it is depends on the listener I suppose.

I have talked about the value of consistently and perhaps somewhat subliminally disseminating a narrative about the arts and ones organization. It is probably no mistake that the last time I discussed this, it was also in connection with a presidential candidate. In cases of obscenity, you probably can’t deflect anger no matter how well you have developed the myriad elements of your identity. Performing artists have been identified with depravity and immorality since before the United States was born (at least from the European perspective). You may be able to blunt the strength of the ire by referencing your core narrative, however.

People being a diverse bunch, members of any group are not going to be able to conform to every ideal the whole espouses. There is always going to be one person who is less committed to recycling than everyone else. There are going to be people who are just a little too rabid about Led Zeppelin for the comfort of the rest of the fan club. And lets not even get into which Star Trek series/movie was the best. But as a whole, the group reinforces all they have accomplished on behalf of the environment and wildlife as outweighing the fact one of their members doesn’t redeem the five cent deposit on their Coke cans.

Never doubt the potency of a single/handful defining image for cementing your entity in people’s minds. When I was in 4th grade a kid who was generally a bully and gadfly was harassing me. I had enough and tossed him 5-6 feet across recess yard aided somewhat by muddy ground. Now it just so happened that my mother was substitute teaching that day and saw what happened on the playground and came running out saying, “Don’t pick on Joey.”

Somehow everyone forgot that my mother came out to defend me and focused on my “victory.” I never got in another fight or did anything to reinforce the idea of my being a brawler except that I was particularly tough to take down when we played Kill The Keeper. Yet in my first week in high school a guy who didn’t start at my elementary school until 6th grade warned people not to mess with me because I threw a guy 100 feet once.

While entertaining, perhaps the heroic tales of a 10 year old aren’t entirely applicable. I don’t really sit around wondering how much my reputation would have grown had I punched a few more people out in elementary school. We all have moments in our lives, where a pivotal moment defines our childhood, high school, college, volunteer, job experiences in our minds. The same can happen for organizations. You can get a lot of mileage out of the reputation garnered as the place Bruce Springsteen did a surprise show 20 years ago leaving dozens of people convinced they can die happy having been there.

You can’t always been lucky enough to have superstars secretly appear at your theatre but you can string lesser events together into a narrative you consistently repeat and reinforce at every opportunity through various media.

What Can NCLB Do For The Arts?

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It occurs to me that there is a lot of talk about how No Child Left Behind is eroding the arts in schools. Field trips and outreach programs are curtailed or eliminated. Arts classes disappear in favor of more instruction in test subjects. Recess time is likewise dwindling. (If you are wondering about the connection, I got my first black eye in 5th grade when we recreated the rumble scene from West Side Story. Kids still recreate cool scenes from musical theatre during recess don’t they?)

But it got me thinking, to be fair do the arts gain anything from NCLB? Lets face it, the arts were getting the short shrift in schools for a long time before NCLB. We claim that music classes help kids with math. Does math in turn help kids with music. Does a good foundation in math help visual artists understand scale, ratio and proportion better?

In terms of reading and writing, obviously the arts can benefit from people who have a high level of comprehension and ability to express themselves well. We can hope these things provide basis to transition from reading well to being well read and possessed of critical and analytical thinking skills. Trading out social and hard sciences to make room for more math, reading and writing may make these skills harder to acquire. If NCLB does cultivate higher quality students then it would certainly be a pleasure to see students enter college without the need for remediation.

There are a lot of people who don’t feel NCLB is going to produce a generally higher quality student which bodes poorly for every industry in the future. If you were going to fight to get the law changed, how would it be improved to benefit the arts? More arts exposure is a given, but what else do you fight for? An excellent artist really can’t develop in a vacuum only experiencing arts classes. And what if you are told arts classes are definitely off the table in this new law? How do you salvage things and make sure students gain the knowledge and discernment they need to be artists via other avenues? What’s more, artists shouldn’t have to operate in a vacuum either, what do you advocate for that will help students become appreciators and consumers of art as they proceed through life?

Illuminating the Vision

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When I was reading the Presenting Dance report I referenced a couple weeks ago there was a section of the work where idealism was crashing against realities. One of the suggestions dance companies made was that artistic directors travel to view a work before deciding to contract it given that the artistic fee was a significant portion of a presenter’s budget. The report’s author observed that dance companies apparently think presenting organizations have significantly greater resources than they do. I am guessing a lot of these groups interact with organizations like the Kennedy Center.

That was actually about the most unrealistic expectation anyone had. Some of the other suggestions had to do with removing adversarial relationships and dance companies and presenters working together over long periods to craft a performance and outreach program that best suits the community’s character. The viability of these suggestions seemed to depend more an individual situations than anything else. There are some agents I have comfortable relationships with who don’t seem to take a “No” personally whom I touch base with year after year. There are others who seem like they are only interested in reciting a list of artists they are promoting with whom I am less comfortable about approaching.

Then there are some that seem to regard me as small potatoes and I am lucky they are talking to me. I can only name the people I have a good relationship with off the top of my head so I guess it is probably healthy I dwell only on the positives.

Ability to interact over a long period of time to craft a program isn’t always possible. Often the available information isn’t enough for either the dance company or I to have an informed conversation about how the other operates.

There was an encounter I had which made me very anxious at the beginning but ended with me impressed by the artistic director’s investment in his work. One year a dance company’s agent told us the artistic director required the use of some very expensive lighting equipment for one of the repertory pieces the company would perform. There had been no mention of this in the contract or rider we had been sent. I can’t remember if we had signed and returned the contracts at the time, but this equipment was definitely an unmentioned addendum to the text we had in hand.

Only one of three presenters in my booking consortium had the equipment. The inclusion of the equipment would make an already expensive event more so for the rest of us. We considered canceling the piece except that it was the one dance which would have the most resonance for our audiences. So we suggested less expensive versions of the equipment as an alternative. The artistic director came back and said it definitely had to be the equipment specified.

Now at this point I was starting to think the artistic director was being a prima donna and would suffer no alterations to his vision. People were coming to see the dance, not the lighting instruments. The show may look cooler with the lights but people wouldn’t think less of the work if they don’t know what they are missing. About the same time while doing research for a press release, I came across a review that said one segment of the piece really fell flat and dragged the rest down. This served to add to my anxiety a bit more.

Then we get an email from the agent saying the artistic director felt so strongly that the equipment be present in the piece, he would split the cost with us.

Well whatta ya gonna do about that? 1/3 of the cost was still pretty significant for us but it certainly wasn’t small potatoes for the dance company either. With the help of our local light rental company which started shifting things around months in advance so the correct equipment would end up in the right place at the right time, we ended up with a more affordable option for presenting the artistic director’s vision.

I was still a little concerned that when the company arrived, the artistic director would be running around fretting that everything was wrong and trying to refine picayune details about the production. When they arrived I was somewhat surprised to find that the artistic director was pretty mellow, spent most of the time chatting with my staff and pretty much let his company conduct their own business and stayed out of their way. The segment of the piece which had received criticism in a review was cut which made me think he wasn’t terminally devoted to his work and was open to altering it.

That in mind, I began to believe maybe the special lighting equipment was crucial to the piece if he was willing to pay for a share of it. When I saw the piece, I wasn’t really convinced the effect was worth the expense. If I wasn’t watching for it, I probably wouldn’t have made note of it. The audience really seemed to enjoy the piece which was good. There was actually another piece they enjoyed more. The applause was so long for it I panicked thinking it was the curtain call.

The dance company probably can’t afford to dicker like that with every presenter, nor could we afford to do so with every company. Going the extra mile in this case probably enhanced the experience for both of us. I would have loved to have saved the expense. In the face of the artistic director’s commitment to sharing the cost, it was hard to refuse the piece. Money may not build relationships but the gesture surely did make me feel like we were more like partners in bringing the work to my community. That combined with the audience’s enjoyment and the enthusiastic response to the master class the company conducted made me feel more comfortable about taking on the extra expense.

Will You Love Me If I’m Cheap?

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While I have been encouraging arts organizations to create opportunities for local citizens who have decided fuel costs are too high to travel this summer, it has only been because I don’t have a direct line of appeal to the local citizens. One of the things I am wondering is if people will look for entertainment closer to home if they have decided not to travel or if they will simply look for entertainment at home on the 72 inch television they wisely purchased when times were better.

I have been wondering if I should promote the fact that knowing costs were on the rise, we are keeping our ticket prices the same as last year. This is absolutely true. I figured we could probably weather another season at the same prices if it made our shows more accessible to our community. But I wonder if people would care that we were trying to strengthen our relationship with them. Given that people no longer subscribe and wait until a few days before an event to buy tickets, will our attempt to stay affordable even register?

I am pretty sure I know the answer. I have read a number of studies on customer service and retention which I have cited in talks that show price does not develop relationships. This is mostly in terms of customer loyalty in situations where you and a competitor offer a comparable product. If someone defects to your competitor and says it is price, chances are the reasons run much deeper and price is the easiest excuse to use. With that in mind, it seems price should be a minor player in a campaign to win loyalty.

Another complicating factor– with the rise in fuel prices my partners and I are beginning to get requests to re-negotiate performance fees. So now I wonder if I can keep the prices the same or not and whether we will be able to afford to present as many artists come next year. I sense the developments over the next year or so will instigate a sea change in the way we do business in the future (as well as if.)

Going off on a little tangent from the topic of booking, one of the artists I was excited to be presenting decided they wanted to change the time frame that they toured. This will put them outside our planned season. We hadn’t gone to contract but thought we did have an understanding with their agent. This wasn’t related at all to fuel costs but rather the timing of other projects the artists were involved in. My partner presenters decided not to replace the group. I have a smaller schedule than they so I have been seeking a replacement and hoping I can do so before it is time for the brochure to go to press.

A substitute was suggested by some staff people and their friends. YouTube videos were reviewed and the artist judged to be of good quality. The sole booking contact channel turns out to essentially be the artist’s email address. An email is sent inquiring about availability and bounces back because the artist hasn’t been reading their email and is over quota. We may go back to them to inquire, but probably only if others don’t pan out.

Word to the wise all ye starving artists. Keep your lines of communication open and your email boxes clear! Rising fuel costs and declining attendance ain’t gonna be increasing opportunities to perform, there is no need to provide impediments to the process.

Shall I Not Be On A Pedestal, Worshipped And Competed For?

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There are times during the year where I find myself singing “Where Are The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” from Camelot. Now if you have seen my picture on Inside the Arts, you know Julie Andrews I ain’t. Part of the reason I start singing the song is because I spent half a summer in my younger days running spot light for a production. Another reason is that the image of me singing this song amuses me so. But really I can often identify with the raw romantic innocence Guenevere exhibits singing lines like

“Are those sweet, gentle pleasures gone for good?
Shall a feud not begin for me?
Shall kith not kill their kin for me?
Oh where are the trivial joys?
Harmless, convivial joys?
Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?”

Now given those lines fall at the end of the song, I rarely get to them for all the laughing going on by that point — mostly mine.

When people hear what my job is they view it with the same romantic innocence. Surely such a cool job is not susceptible to mundane concerns like bugging agents for contracts and images so you can put a website and brochure together. Or if the mundane does intrude, it must be over shadowed by the joy of working with such amazing artists. Actually, the last bit is true except for the “mundane” concern about why people who praise the artists aren’t buying tickets to see them. So yeah, when I am singing songs like that one, I am trying to get back in touch with the idealism that made me pursuit this path to begin with.

Fortunately, people are familiar enough with the basic functions I fulfill that they don’t assume I should do my job for fun.

And there is the tricky part. Last week, Artful Manager Andrew Taylor cited a comment from the Americans for the Arts conference that, “‘We need to stop making the arts so special.” It occurs to me that the arts community needs to be in control of the way the arts are demystified. With auditioning for American Idol essentially a rite of passage being a good performer appears to be a matter of hard work, luck and getting enough people to vote for you. Anyone can do it if the stars align correctly. The necessity of talent and hard work over decades to hone one’s skill rather than a few weeks doesn’t seem to register.

The scenario shows like “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” promote is that amateurs thrown into a crash course in a subject can compete and be winners. Even Bravo’s “Step It Up And Dance” where the contestants were trained and danced professionally had episodes where a choreographer would say they usually worked on rehearsing a piece for 5 days and the show gave the contestants 2 hours. This isn’t just limited to performing arts. MTV has/had a show called “Made” where high school kids wanting to be basketball players, cheerleaders, stars of the Spring musical, beauty queens, lose weight, promo queen or whatever worked toward their goal for a couple months. Usually the video shot during the first 3-4 weeks consisted of the person resisting the discipline of their coach. This left 3-4 weeks at most to cram the rest of the effort in. Most had some credible results probably helped by the fact that television cameras were following them around for so long.

So what is the narrative the arts world can offer?- “You can cram a lot of training in a short time and win prizes and recognition but honestly only be mediocre or you can devote your life to excellence and barely make a living.” You thought practicing scales was boring for students before? What about now that you can become a virtuoso in six weeks? Sure eliminating one kid from your school/lesson roster a week will add drama and tension and may motivate to practice harder but it will subtract from your earnings.

I agree that we have to stop making the arts so special in regard to putting it on a pedestal. But the message that accompanies it always has to be that you can absolutely participate, have fun, find fulfillment and recognition with a little training in a short period of time so come join in. However, even given great talent to start with there is a certain level you can only attain with long study and practice.

This isn’t just true of stodgy classical music and ballet. There was an article on Salon last week about the emergence of South Korea as a power in the world of hip hop dance. The South Korean dance crews practice 5 hours a day, seven days a week because they know someone is always trying to catch up. Yet the article notes, long hours of hard work on the flashiest moves aren’t enough if you don’t truly understand your art.

“When Koreans first emerged, Americans praised them for their power moves — the highflying crowd-pleasing spins, freezes and gymnastics moves — but criticized the Seoul b-boys for lacking soul. They were thought to be mechanical, unable to rock with the beat, and lacking in “foundation skills,” such as the top-rock and footwork moves that form the historical roots of the dance.”

Even in the idealistic world of Camelot, Guenevere comes to realize it takes hard work to bring dreams to fruition. (She also realizes the hazards of youthful folly, indiscretion and why bitter half sisters of the king shouldn’t be taught magic, but at least some of that can be avoided.)

Joshua Bell, Innovator or Heir To A Tradition?

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From the “Nothing New Under the Sun” file comes the news that Gene Weingarten is pondering whether to return his Pulitzer Prize. Weigarten is the Washington Post columnist who won the Pulitizer for arranging and writing about Joshua Bell’s anonymous performance in a Washington D.C. subway station. Weingarten says he is pondering giving the prize up based on the fact it was awarded for originality and he has since learned someone beat him to it.

It seems that back in May 1930, a Chicago Evening Post reporter arranged for violin virtuoso Jacques Gordon to play incognito outside a Chicago subway station. Though he eventually drew a crowd, as with Bell, by and large no one stopped to listen and only one person recognized him. It also turned out that Bell played many of the same pieces Gordon did. I guess Schubert lends itself to outdoor concerts. Though he hasn’t played it in about seven years, for nearly a decade, Bell actually played the very violin Gordon used for the stunt.

While I have been critical of the experiment, I am not about to suggest he give the Pulitzer back. My beef is that the experiment seemed designed to maximize the opportunity to point out what philistines people are. We see enough evidence that people don’t value the arts every day without concocting situations to prove it. Just a year ago some students at Stanford University were miffed that NEA Chair, Dana Gioia, was speaking at graduation because they felt they deserved someone more famous.

The basic experiment is a valid one in my mind. It could have been used to measure when the best times for performing in myriad unorthodox locations might be as part of an outreach effort — or even a longer term change of venue. As far as I am concerned, the Bell and Gordon results just prove that subway stations are not the best place to reach people. So even if he had known about the event seven decades earlier, Weingarten would have been wise to verify the earlier results.

An additional reason why the more constructive approach would have been preferable. Weingarten notes that unlike the original which faded into obscurity after a day, his story gained feet thanks to the Internet. I honestly don’t think he knew it would become so widely disseminated. However, given it has it would have been much better if people were reading about a secret experiment aimed at serving them better rather than a secret experiment that proves what rubes people are.

Suffering Your Own Penalties

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Via Arts and Letters Daily, there is an intriguing article in Reason Magazine about how penalties for undesirable behavior can actually result in more poor behavior if people perceived paying the penalty as license to continue.

Citing a study in Science, Ronald Bailey gives the example of six Israel day cares who instituted a fee to penalize people who pick their children up late. Instead of solving the problem, this made it worse.

According to Bowles: “The fine seems to have undermined the parents’ sense of ethical obligation to avoid inconveniencing the teachers and led them to think of lateness as just another commodity they could purchase.”

The same thing happened in an experiment in Columbia. Researchers were conducting a game where people were involved with divvying up forest resources. The results of many scenarios reflected concern for the resources and other users until a situation that simulated government control fined those who overused their alloted share. People felt paying the fine justified pursuing their short term interests rather than the interests of the whole.

I tried to think of ways the arts might be providing disincentives for their audiences to act in the interests of the organization, audience or community through what they perceive to be penalties. I haven’t really thought of anything but maybe something will occur to you readers.

First thing that came to mind were the ticket fees we charge for buying tickets online or over the phone but might not charge if people come to the window. Or that we charge a lower price for subscriptions and buying single tickets before a certain date.

But neither of these things seem to create an incentive for people to buy early. I don’t think it creates a disincentive either. I think people are just busy and have changed their buying practices.

Next I wondered if holding people in the lobby for late seating hoping they, (and those they annoy when they are seated), are discomforted enough that they arrive promptly next time might have some unintended consequences. It is easy to foresee that both late comers and those seated are likely to be annoyed by the timing of the late seating interval even if it has reduced 14 potential interruptions to one. No surprise there.

It is likewise easy to anticipate reactions to policies like; No food in theatre, no exchanges or refunds, no video taping and no cell phones. Perhaps no cell phone policies and signal jammers may have caused a rise in texting, (I seem to remember jammers don’t impact texting frequencies, just voice) but even that is not unforeseen. As annoying as the glowing screens can be, it isn’t as bad as having someone pull out their cell phone and say, “Yeah, I am in the theatre. No, no, I can talk,” in the middle of a performance.

So does anyone know of a policy that was meant to control undesirable behavior that has essentially reinforced it? Drop me an email or comment below.

Art for the Obsessive Cleaner

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The technical director in my theatre has been talking on and off about putting together a photo show of all the attempts to paint over graffiti around the city. The paint the city/county/state has been using doesn’t match the color of the concrete, of course. But it often doesn’t match the paint color they used to cover the graffiti the last time around either. The result is a patchwork that sort of looks like someone took the Army’s desert camouflage pattern and blew it up on a photocopy machine. Who knew there were so many shades of institutional gray, beige and tan?

So when I saw this video with a caption of Reverse Graffiti Project on Artsjournal.com earlier this week, I thought someone had the same idea. It is actually a lot cooler. Take a look.

For those of you who don’t have the time and inclination to take a look, the artist Moose Curtis, makes stencils (in this case of plants indigenous to California) and then uses a power washer and natural cleansers to clean dirt away from concrete walls. The result is a reverse “graffiti” image that is temporary by the nature of its placement in a dirty location.

One of the first ideas I had upon taking my current position was to have a contest with local schools to create a mural on the two ugly concrete walls at our theatre entryway. The location has been likened to a freeway underpass by some. (Although people love it for the shelter the covered area affords them when it is raining.) Many dismissed the idea saying it would attract graffiti even though the blank walls have been fairly graffiti free. I am intrigued by this project and am wondering if those walls are dirty enough to allow the technique to work. Though according to Curtis, it is probably dirtier than I think.

Given that a number of arts organizations are located in or adjacent to dirt producing/attracting locations like freeways and industrial districts since the rents are cheaper thereabouts, I wonder if this might be the basis of some inexpensive decoration for unattractive exteriors.

Of course, now this this technique is being widely promoted. someone will want to make an “artistic” statement and create dirty pictures by cleaning. Yes, even clean art can be lewd.

They Shoot Dancers Don’t They?

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In one of my first blog entries I noted a speech by Chris Lavin promoting the idea that the arts be covered like sports. I still get a kick out of his suggestion that:

When compared to the open access a sports franchise allows, most arts organizations look like a cross between the Kremlin and the Vatican. Casting is closed. Practices closed. Interviews with actors and actresses limited and guarded. An athlete who refuses to do interviews can get fined. An actor or actress or director or composer who can’t find time for the media is not uncommon. How would a director take to a theater critic watching practice and asking for his/her early analysis of the challenges this cast faces with the material — the relatively strengths and weaknesses of the lead actor, the tendencies of the play write to resist rewriting?

Over in the UK, The Guardian has taken up that idea a little. They had their arts writers review sporting events and their sports writers review arts events.

Since the critics approached the events they attended from their own point of view, some of their observations were rather fun. Writing about a horse race, dance critic Judith Mackrell notes that unlike the race ballet attendees have no desire to see a dancer fall to the benefit of another ballerina.

“And if, by some horrible chance, she gets injured, she isn’t going to be put down after the show.”

Visual arts critic Jonathan Jones went to a football/soccer game and noticed that:

“Wembley is a thrill, for all sorts of reasons. There’s the architecture – the raised external ramps are like walking on a north London Acropolis, and the roof leaves a small space over the pitch, generating powerful contrasts of light and shadow.”

Being an arts person, I was more interested in what the sports writers said about their experiences. In some cases, their comments echoed those of many first time arts attendees. Rugby columnist Thomas Castaignède noted, ”

I’ve passed Covent Garden so many times, but I had no idea it was so beautiful inside. As a social phenomenon it surprised me as well – the champagne, the way the audience had dressed up, the feeling that people were there to be seen, as well as to see.”

Golf writer Lawrence Donegan went to see the San Francisco Symphony perform and exclaimed,

“…when this concert ended the audience went (and I use the following word advisedly) bonkers. This reaction shocked me, because I had no idea that people who were into classical music were also into going bonkers at the end of a performance.”

Two of the sports writers were ultimately disappointed in their experiences because the unpredictability and high stakes inherent to sports was missing. Two others stated their appreciation for the parallels of mastery and passion common to both athletes and performers. Steve Bierley, a tennis writer who went to a gallery was greatly affected by what he saw.

“It should have carried a warning: This woman is deeply dangerous. I go back to the comfort of Roland Garros, though Bourgeois remained a haunting and disturbing presence. I’m still spooked.”

I thought that was great. What I really appreciated was Castaignède’s observations about seeing Tosca. I think he states the case for the value of arts attendance best. Perhaps it is because he was a top notch rugby player he was best of all the sports writers to appreciate the mastery possessed.

“I came to the conclusion that there is a parallel between what you feel during a top-class rugby match and what an artist feels on stage – and it’s not just the roar of the crowd. The people who are watching influence how you behave: they were viewing Kaufmann and driving him forward, just as they used to inspire me. I could empathise with Kaufmann’s total concentration on the performance, and the way he had to become one with the orchestra, who gave him the power to go beyond the norm. There is a physical aspect to opera, certainly; but more than that, on stage you see what in rugby we call “automatisms” – where you become conditioned to move and act by pure instinct. I had a sense of two completely different worlds coming together.”

As I noted, it is fun reading how each person filters their experience through the lens of their particular expertise so take a gander the both full articles.

The Planes Are Alive With The Sound of Music!

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I don’t want my blog to get into a running travelogue about my trip to China so this will probably be the last entry where that subject is the main focus. I just wanted to comment on what is usually the most onerous part of my travels but turned out to be rather delightful this time around–air travel. I have to say that Japan Airlines has ruined me for all U.S. domestic flights. The food, service and entertainment even in economy class was great. I am not going to wax philosophical wondering why U.S. carriers can’t replicate it. I will just assume they have costs that Japan Airlines doesn’t and leave it at that.

The thing I will pose the “why don’t we have that” question about is the entertainment. I watched a great Kabuki piece while on the plane, the Noda version of Togitatsu no Utare performed in 2005. I had no idea kabuki could be that funny and irreverent. I was getting some glances from my neighbors because I was laughing so loudly. There was a lot of self-referential stuff, what looked to be the kabuki version of the West Side Story opening number and a Rube Goldberg contraption. To be sure, according to this article, kabuki may not have been quite so funny until recently. (Though it also sounds like it originally might have been.)

Purists probably considered the show I saw to be a dumbing down of the art form. Maybe it is. But it was a fun introduction to kabuki for an international visitor like myself who is only generally familiar with the art form. This type of pride in a national art form is what I wish there was more of on airplanes. Some might argue that given Hollywood is the center of the film world, all the films shown are, in fact, a statement of national pride.

As an arts person I am not, of course, going to be satisfied with that line of reasoning. While I am not the biggest fan of musicals, they would probably end up being the most natural choice in terms of how accessible they would be to domestic and international audiences. Given all the performers and writers contracts that have/are entering negotiation, it would be the perfect time to broach the subject of renumeration for the airborne broadcasts. If a rule bound, insular art form like Kabuki can begin to exhibit sweeping changes in their performance style, arranging to have Spring Awakening shown on a plane should be easy in comparison.

Heck, given that most people in the United States haven’t been to the theatre it would be as much an entrée to the form for the domestic audience as the Kabuki was to me as a visitor to Japan.

Back From China

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Well, I am back from China. It was my first trip to the country and I had a great time. The experience also gave me a lot to think about. There is one topic I will probably cover tomorrow if I can find where in my bags I secreted my notes. While my entry today won’t directly deal with arts management, it does cover some of the larger societal concerns arts managers face like traffic, public transportation, communal gatherings, cultural values and energy conservation/green buildings. Based on my experiences, I feel safe in claiming there will be a much greater cultural interchange between the United States and China in the near future so there might be something to learn or at least cautionary tales for those who tread the streets of the cities.

A few notes for those going to Beijing for the Olympics. There seems to be a dichotomy between traffic laws and enforcement. There are signs everywhere warning drivers about driving while drunk, on cell phones or while overly tired. However, I didn’t see a lot of police cars patrolling. (Shanghai seemed to have a stronger police presence.) All over China a honked horn signals to the pedestrian means either get out of the way or stop and I will drive around you. The greatest sin basically seems to be hitting someone. Otherwise, all bets are off. Our bus made left turns across oncoming traffic and from the right lane and we mysteriously never got hit.

The most exhilarating/nerve racking time was on a freeway in Beijing when the bus driver started up the exit ramp, then veered left off it, then decided he was right to begin with and started backing up to the ramp again. What was most amazing was that after the first 4-5 cars behind us honked and went around us, everyone else behind us moved to the left lane long before they reached us and allowed us to back up to the ramp again.

In a number of the cities we visited there was a lot of poor living conditions with dingy housing cramped together. The parks in these cities were absolutely gorgeous though. There were large spaces with a lot of gathering areas, ponds, fountains, amphitheaters with hills and structures to climb. I am guessing the local governments realized the importance of community gathering places and invested a lot of resources in them. The parks were packed even at 6-6:30 am on weekday mornings. I wondered if the parks will be abandoned as televisions and computers become more prevalent or at least how many generations it would be before the people stopped valuing communal relationships.

Television was interesting to watch in China. There was only one English language station carried at any of the hotels at which we stayed. However, given that the state owns the cable system, it was always channel 9 no matter where we were. There was more pro-US programming than I expected including U.S. Air Marshal which seemed to have a heavy Eastern European cast and crew, and movies about the Flying Tigers. For the first 4-5 days of my trip there seemed to always be a dramatization about Mao’s rise to power.

There was also always either a Chinese opera or classical music concert on one or two stations. I can’t say if people were watching the show but the government seems to be strongly promoting these art forms. I even caught what looked to be the Chinese Opera version of American Idol with young girls competing.

Unfortunately, Chinese television seems to be quickly inheriting some of the United States’ less desirable programming like ads for breast enhancements and bra inserts. There also seemed to be a lot of snake oil being sold. From what a could tell from one series of graphics, there is a pill that will (no joking) fix your ovaries, dissolve fat and give you energy. Where American television ads make claims about the inclusion of Chinese herbs, the Chinese ads show official looking documents with the United States of America emblazoned across the top and the American flag waving in the background.

There were some areas we drove through where the town was drying their wheat on the road. A tractor dropped huge piles of wheat on the street and people manually separated the wheat from the chaff. Our bus drove around and sometimes through these piles which went on for miles upon miles and were spread out on to side streets and roofs. The people seemed happy and healthy enough at their work. I just wondered how they resolved their lives against the images of breast enhancement surgery. These dynamics are complicated enough in the U.S. When you start talking about the haves and have nots in a Communist country which is embracing some capitalist practices, I can only begin to imagine what all the implications might be.

A couple last reflections on my visit. We often hear how China is going to become a more voracious consumer of energy. From what I observed and discussed with others in my tour, China appears to be taking steps to minimize their impact. We would go into shops whose lights would be out until we walked in. In hotels, you have to put your room key card in a wall slot to get the lights to work. We only got one card even though there were two of us in the room. When we left with the card, the lights and A/C went off.

There are a lot of new roads but few cars at all traveling the freeways. (Don’t quite know why.) There is a system of diesel rationing in effect. The miles of new highways and roads are lined 5-10 rows wide with newly planted trees for thousands of miles. (All of which is desperately needed in the heavily deforested country.) While the housing is dull and blocky in a lot of places, the newer street lamps are quite whimsical. In Xingtai, the lamps looked like gracefully curved flowers with butterfly shaped solar panels.

On the whole, my impression of China is that the idea of conservation and safety is a somewhat new for them. It seems like haven’t quite developed a holistic approach yet. In some areas they have progressed past the United States and are hyper aware of safety concerns. In other areas it doesn’t seem like anyone mentioned the concept at all.

One of my favorite experiences was meeting the Chinese people. There were places we traveled where Caucasian faces were obvious rare to unknown. For some reason though a lot of people (happily mostly young females) wanted to have their picture taken with me. There were three of us out of 10-15 men who people frequently asked to have their picture taken with. (Or they thrust their kids into my lap or beside me.) It didn’t matter if I was alone or in a group. I am hardly the best looking guy in the group so I don’t quite know why. My best guess is that I closely represent Budai, the Laughing Buddah (except I have more hair and kept my shirt closed) so people felt I was good luck.

One theory, given most of us didn’t understand Mandarian, is that I may have agreed to marry some of them and they were taking my photo home to mom and dad. *Gulp*

Hopping On The Big Jet Plane Again

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Yes, I am going on vacation again. I have lost scads of vacation time for not using it the last two years so this time I am using it up.

Drew McManus won’t let me off that easy. Ever since I joined Inside the Arts, he has been holding me to all sorts of ridiculous quotas. He probably won’t even let me count this entry toward it! And then he shows favoritism lets Holly Mulcahy off with an easy schedule! 😉

I have had to promise him some inspiring entries upon my return in order to get him to let me go. Hopefully I will have some inspiring experiences while I am gone.

In the meantime devoted readers, be well!

Dancin With Myself

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Well here is one from the “Hope This Doesn’t Catch On” file. I got an email from the Orlando Fringe Festival last week promoting a Silent Rave. Essentially you show up with your iPod and dance while listening to the music you brought while other people do the same. You are literally dancing to your own drummer–at least if the music to which you are listening has drums.

They claim it is hot in Europe but the most information I can find is a Silent Rave this past April in NYC’s Union Square.

Here is some video from the event.

Interestingly enough, here is a video taken around the same time which the person decided to set to his own music. I understand that re-editing video is common practice but in this context it sort of comes off as being dissatisfied with the lack of audible music.

How prescient Billy Idol was when he made his “Dancing With Myself” video. I know the attraction of the gathering was more about the flashmob element than the actual promotion of isolating yourself in a crowd. Since NYC has really been cracking down on actual raves, driving up and deploying a sound system on the fly would have probably gotten the event shut down a lot faster because it more closely met the legal definition of a prohibited rave.

These things aside, it is a little disturbing that people are choosing to replicate an event where one insulates oneself from others. It seems something of an oxymoron that this communal event is possible because these isolating devices are ubiquitous. The fringe festival is probably sponsoring this to seem edgy and hip. Indeed, there is a lot of novelty inherent to the idea. This can be especially true if some strange synchronicity emerges between what you are listening to and how you see people around you are dancing.

But it is really in their best interests to promote the idea that you can enjoy yourself alone. Or even worse, that while at a public event you have license to act as the spirit moves you. The latter might be acceptable at a fringe festival more than a concert hall, but if people decide they will enjoy staying home more, all organizations potentially suffer.

People have a right to do what they will with their free time and aren’t responsible for keeping arts organizations in business. There is also nothing necessarily wrong with introversion. The concept may make you laugh, but I wonder if what we are seeing isn’t a sort of synthetic introversion. It just seems to me that in the past, real introverts have filled their time alone thinking and doing things. I won’t claim they have been any more productive than anyone else in advancing civilization. I am just concerned with the direction of things when people who are not nature introverts start to take on the behavior and fill the silence with iPods and text messaging.

The world needs its extroverts to conduct the interactions and exchanges of the world. While they may be real extroverted across these devices, it is as if they have hobbled themselves by removing the option of unmediated interactions. Instead of empowering the introverts by removing some of the opportunities to be socially inept, it looks like technologies are depowering extroverts.

Granted, I am not a social scientist with the training to observe and interpret these things. But I have admitted introverted tendencies. While my shopping experiences would be so much better if people would stay home, the fact that I am concerned that they are may be cause to worry. I see people doing what I did as a geeky teenager. Except I was doing it with books so I was at least getting smarter and growing my vocabulary. I don’t know if the same can be said of the situation today.

Sometimes I Feel Like A Fatherless Color

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I don’t know how it found its way to my backstage, but I came across a booklet from Apollo Design that really show the company has a sense of their customer’s needs and seek to add value to their products. They have what they term Playbooks which provide a scene by scene break down with gel and pattern suggestions of some of the most popular plays high schools and community theatres perform.

They admit that the options they offer are among the safest choices a lighting designer can make. They also can’t offer guidance about placement of instruments and intensity of light since they can’t know the needs of every theatre. But for the high school teacher who has volunteered to direct the fall play and knows nothing about choosing gel colors, the booklets can remove quite a bit of anxiety. Even if you aren’t directing any of the plays they cover, you can get a sense of how the design theory you might read in a text book has been put into practice in specific instances.

You can download pdf versions of specific Playbook sections here. As an example of the general guidance they offer, for The Glass Menagerie, the notes state:

“Smoky, red glow” – mentioned in the Amanda and Tom argument scene. The colors should not be malevolent or suggest violence. It should be a subtle indication of frustration and tension”

Another example is in scene 3 the booklet provides guidance for different colors on the fire escape, living room, bedrooms and dance hall.

Although their skills far outstrip those of the people who would use these booklets, my technical crew thought the booklets were a great idea and have been thumbing through them for the last week.

We did get a little chuckle though from their political correct renaming of Bastard Amber, one of the most often used gel colors around. It was created by mistake when a guy was trying to create a batch of regular amber. Bastard Amber ended up being generally a better color choice and more widely used than regular Amber. The two leading gel manufacturers, Rosco and Lee both have the color in their swatch books.

Apollo on the other hand calls the color Fatherless Amber. Given that they have a Dominant and Submissive Lavender, we can’t imagine they are complete prudes.

If you want to have a bit of fun, ask your tech director if you can see their gel swatch books. You can find some amusing names for colors in there. Given that Rosco and Lee have created proprietary colors that the other hasn’t been able to reproduce, you can have fun looking through both. Like some famous painters who have created their own paint shades, lighting designers have asked that unique colors be created for them and so you will find some colors named after notable theatrical folks. Be warned that there are also a lot of mundane boring colors in there as well though you will probably wonder at the contradiction of shades like No Color Blue.

Brother May I?

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Okay another cautionary tale. I swear that I am not trying to emulate Jason Heath’s wild gig stories. This stuff is just falling into my lap. The drama director, tech director and motley band of collaborators have been meeting recently and having exciting discussions about our Fall drama production. It has gotten easy to get caught up in the energy so I keep forgetting a crucial point. We don’t have the rights to do the show yet.

The show isn’t currently in print but the playwright has said we can perform it. It will be something of a coup for us–but only if this permission is communicated to the playwright’s literary agent. I have asked my assistant theatre manager to keep an eye on me to make sure I don’t forget this crucial fact and list the show in our brochure or something. He then related this great story on that topic to me.

It seems he was in rehearsals for an off-Broadway play and the producer invited the playwright’s brother to view the final dress. As the playwright was deceased, the brother administered all of the rights. After the show the brother was very critical of the directing and the casting decisions. He may have been within his rights to complain about the issues if the performance license stipulated details about how the show should be presented. But we will never know because the brother finished by pointing out that the producer never requested the rights for the show.

The producer essentially told the brother that she assumed since the brother and she were of the same race and the play dealt with issues facing their shared race, the rights would naturally have been granted. The brother refused to grant the rights and the results of many weeks of rehearsal was never seen by an outside audience.

Even with the concepts of intellectual property blurring, there were a lot of mistakes made here. Not the least of which was that you shouldn’t try performing anything in the heart of Manhattan without securing the rights even if you are smart enough not to invite the executor of said rights to your show. This is not to say you are safer flaunting licenses the further you are from NYC. There are plenty of stories of vacationing playwrights and agents gasping in horror at the liberties taken with scripts in both sanctioned and unsanctioned productions.

The assumption that blood is thicker than money or least permission was also probably ill-advised.

It is likely that the playwright wasn’t terribly specific about how his play was to be directed and cast. The brother’s problem most likely started with the fact the rights hadn’t be granted and every other little dislike became enlarged as fuel for the complaint. The guy who taught me about the presenting business talked about the same thing in reference to horror stories we heard about performers who were absolutely sweet to us. The bizarre comments we heard about probably wasn’t the root complaint but merely one of many expressions of dissatisfaction about the absence of things their riders specified should be present.

Hopefully we will be granted the rights to perform the show we want to do in the Fall so I can relate the interesting way the script fell into our hands. Not to mention how our excited, creative madmen and women manage to execute the show.

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

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During a meeting I had today I was reminded of a series of problems I had with a group of traveling artists some time ago. I think enough time has passed that I can talk about it without revealing the identity of the group to any but the most ingenious of researchers.

One of the things I am often most anxious about when a performing group arrives is that they won’t find the arrangements we have made suitable to their needs. Following the advice of the man who trained me in the business, I am pretty meticulous about advancing a show with a road manager. I double check the details of a rider just in case personnel changes result in different dietary or technical needs. It isn’t foolproof but generally the worst that happens is the group arrives and says, “Oh, you must have the old rider,” and accommodates what is usually the lack of something minor.

I am also upfront about anything we can’t provide as soon as the topic comes up. If I suspect there might be a problem brewing with something, I send off an email confirming conversations so that I have it in writing and time stamped. In one case, I reiterated a fact in three different emails because it didn’t seem to be sinking in to the guy’s brain. Fortunately, it did before he arrived.

There was an instance where despite a lengthy conversation with the road manager the group had issues with the food, hotel and transportation after they arrived. The only thing that didn’t emerge as a problem was the technical equipment we provided. What contributed to the problem was that the agent and the road manager apparently did not communicate the information to the artists. The artists did not communicate their needs with the road manager or have them written into the contract. What seemed strangest to me was that they had been touring for years upon years and hadn’t ironed these details out. There were plenty of “you must haves” listed in the contract but a lot of basic details omitted, too.

The night before the group arrived the road manager called and said that the group would like to exercise the option I had mentioned (and expected them to exercise) a month earlier and have their rooms upgraded to suites. They would pick up the cost difference. So I scramble and as luck would have it, there are enough suites available. I am also asked to make a dentist appointment for the first business day after the concert for a group member who is having a problem with a tooth. Even more amazingly, I find someone at a dentist office near the hotel that late at night and make the arrangements during the specific time frame the performer requested.

When the group arrives, we go to the venue and I am asked to go grab food for the group because they hadn’t gotten to eat before their flight and their technical director doesn’t want them leaving the theatre. (Come to find out, they went swimming instead of eating earlier that day.) Later when dinner arrives, we discover the caterer has decided to embellish a little and stuffed the entree with crab. One of the group won’t eat it because of the crab.

Now my mother is deathly allergic to shellfish and has almost died on a number of occasions. The two questions about food I specifically address is seafood allergies because of her and vegetarian requirements because the term means different things to different people. There were no allergies of any sort mentioned. So off I go for two more meals because one of the other people decides that since I am going anyway they would rather have something else.

An hour before curtain the road manager comes and asks if I can move them to another hotel. Now note that at this point, they haven’t checked in to the rooms I upgraded for them the day before. The reason is due to a minor feature, the lack of which I revealed to the road manager a month prior. Since I had made the reservations month earlier to secure good rates during high season and a purchase order had been issued to cover the estimated cost at that hotel, there was nothing I could do.

I think they secretly wanted to stay at a specific hotel because they ended up staying there on their own dime which equaled four times the amount they would have paid for the upgraded rooms I arranged. Unfortunately, due to the fact I had canceled the rooms hours before they were to be occupied, I ended up paying for them. Fortunately, the hotel took pity on me and only charged me the regular room rate rather than the suite rate.

After the show, I discovered that instead of one trip to the airport, they had changed their plans and would now be leaving at four different times. The next day was a non-travel day for the company and all seemed well. No messages at all from the group. Still, after I went home I checked my voice mail and email regularlly for problems. Then at 11 pm I got a call at home (a number I didn’t give them) from the road manager saying the group wanted to alter their pick up times.

That was about the end of the troubles, fortunately. If I recall, the performance was great. The audience loved it and had no clue what was happening behind the scenes. The one thing I appreciated was that they let the road manager do all the talking. Maybe it was because they didn’t like confrontational situations. But I was glad that as I drove them to the hotel I didn’t book, they didn’t try to explain themselves. They kept thanking me and my staff for all we did and talked about how grateful they were. I grinned and bore it while looking forward to their departure thinking all the while that if they were really grateful, they would stop making my life a living hell. Revisiting a frustrating topic while driving would probably not have been a good idea so I was just as happy to have them ignore that elephant in the room.

Were I to offer any advice to people starting out and those who have been lucky enough not to have a couple days like these. This was one of those fluke occurrences that transpire despite your diligent efforts to address issues well in advance. In fact, good advance planning allowed the situation not to get worse. The night of the performance everything that I would usually wander around checking on was completed by staff and volunteers doing their jobs. That left me the time to address these problems without overtly freaking out. Following this incident, I am sure I annoyed the next few road managers coming through on tour to no end double and triple checking their requirements. But I guarantee you that everyone has been happier that I have wanted to be better safe than sorry.

Goin to the Chapel

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People are getting married and I will be attending. Posting shall resume upon my return.

Perhaps I will have some great insight about arts administration while doing the chicken dance at the reception.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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