State of the Arts

From the “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” file.

Last week, Artsjournal.com linked to a Backstage story about a Republican proposal in the House of Representatives to get rid of funding for the NEA, NEH and PBS. Looking at donation rates from 2001, they concluded that “The funding could easily be funded by private donations.”

The proposal was part of the Republican Study Committee’s “Operation Offset” report which looks for ways cut the federal budget to pay for the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Now there are many arguements one may make against this certainly. But what inspired my entry today was the recollection of an entry on the Artful Manager a month ago about the delay in the Senate’s vote to repeal the estate tax.

The Artful Manager quotes an article by the American Arts Alliance that noted:

A 2004 Congressional Budget Office study reported that eliminating the estate tax would result in an estimated 22% decline in charitable bequests. A report issued by the Brookings Institution indicates that a repeal of the estate tax would result in a total loss of about $10 billion in charitable giving each year.

The amount the Republican Study Committee says the private sector contributed to non-profit arts in 2001–$11.5 billion. So that leaves 1.5 billion for everyone to fight over, eh?

Well actually, that is comparing apples and oranges. The 10 billion probably includes bequests to hospitals, churches, United Way, Red Cross along with arts organizations. The RSC’s $11.5 billion probably includes direct giving in fundraising campaigns as well as bequests.

The point is though, the House members are projecting private giving can make up for the loss of the NEA at the same time the Senate is considering a move which will remove the incentive for a segment of private giving. Even if the arts only get $2 billion of the annual bequests, that is still huge and there are some who will lose big.

If both efforts succeed, it will be a devestating blow from two directions for some organizations.

The vote to repeal was delayed according to Senate Finance Chair Charles Grassley, “It would appear “unseemly” for Congress to push through a repeal of the estate tax while also coping with the hurricane disaster in the Gulf” (nod to Artful Manager for the link)

What to do? Well again I must bow in deference to His Artfulness who links to the following discussion on the Western States Arts Federation website which examines it all better than I can.

I was just perusing some websites I hadn’t looked at in a bit and came across the Panel on the Non-Profit Sector website. The panel was convened by The Independent Sector, a coalition of about 500 charities, foundations and corporate giving programs.

Back in June, the Panel on the Non-Profit Sector submitted recommendations to Congress regarding issues facing non-profit organizations. On September 30, they finished soliciting comments on a draft of supplemental recommendations they will make to Congress in October.

Their recommendations should be of interest to anyone involved with a non-profit organization. They not only outline steps Congress and the IRS should and shouldn’t take, but those that organizations themselves should enact.

The document includes proposals on Federal and State oversight of non-profits (there should be more and better coordination between state and federal level); Better Standards for Reporting to the IRS; More Stringent and Frequent Reviews of Tax Exempt Status; and Abusive Tax Shelters and Charitable Organizations, Amended Rules for Non-Cash Contributions

There are a couple areas I haven’t mentioned and the standards for different size organizations vary so the report bears reading if you have concerns in any area related to these subjects.

The sections that seemed particularly pertinent to current events were those dealing with excessive travel expenditures and compensation for Board Members and Executive Officers. Essentially, they suggest stricter standards, tougher penalties and greater transparency on Form 990-

Compensation reports on the Forms should clearly distinguish between base salary, benefits, bonuses, long-term incentive compensation, deferred compensation, and other financial arrangements or transactions treated as compensation (for example, interest-free loans or payment of a spouse’s travelexpenses) to the individual

.

There are also suggestions on the size, structure and composition of Boards. The panel cites the problem of:

Failures by boards of directors in fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities may arise when a board leaves governing responsibility to a small number of people, some of whom may have conflicts of interest that can mar their judgment. Other problems emerge when a board disperses responsibility among many people, thereby lessening the obligations of each and by default, increasing the authority of the chief executive officer.

Many board members do not have the training or information necessary to understand adequately their fiduciary responsibilities or common practices for the boards of charitable organizations.

Other sections deal with the related issues of conflicts of interest and audit committees.

The Independent Sector has a statement of their commitment to accountability and transparency right on their main page so the nature of the suggestions, which essentially embrace these concepts, should come as no surprise to anyone.

Since this is also obviously an attempt to take a proactive stance and provide guidance to non-profits before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act starts to be applied to that sector, it will be interesting to see what steps Congress takes.

A very interesting discussion is transpiring across three theatre blogs in the last two weeks that really starts to give a peek at the potential blogs have for people in the arts to participate in an exchange and development of great ideas outside of a collegiate setting. There has been a lot of theoretic talk about the potential, but this is a good illustration.

Actually, I should qualify this further by saying an exchange on original topics. A couple of these blogs have a raging debate over whether Shakespeare really wrote his stuff, but that debate predates the internet.

Anyhow, the postings are on the topic of “Regionalitis,” a term coined by YS at Mirror Up To Nature in a recent entry referring to:

Regionalitis is the peculiar malady suffered by mediocre efforts of excellent playwrights. Usually regionalitis is caused by the continued and incessant performing of a play by regional and smaller theatres, having the interesting effect of perpetuating a undeserved reputation of greatness while at the same time building up an incredible expectation of the casts and directors

.

He makes this comment after seeing Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, in Boston essentially saying it was good, but not great enough to deserve all the performances it is getting across the country accompanied by the hype that surrounds a show that gets produced so much.

Spearbearer Down Left comments on his blog that when he saw The Real Thing at A.C.T. in San Francisco, it was “pitch perfect.” He does conceed that there may be a lot of “me-too-ism” in theatre’s and expand upon it further in a later entry saying:

…but sometimes I get the sneaking suspicion that some plays are done because they’re terrific, but sometimes they’re done because all the cool kids are doing them. I noticed a long time ago that no one really wants to discover new voices. Some do, but to truly discover one involves too big a risk. Better to almost, sort-of discover someone who’s a really hot property but not quite a theatrical household name yet.

A third blogger, Scott Walters, on Theatre Ideas throws his own hat in the ring but expands on the idea a bit himself. He feels that the repeated performances of the same plays across the country deprives people of the opportunity to see shows that speak to their place in the world.

He says that mass media has created the illusion that we are a homogeneous culture watching the same TV show and movies and reading the same books. However, he offers some observations that this might not be the case. He notes that while he lives in Asheville, NC and knows he is the same person who once lived in the middle of NYC,

I have appreciated totally different things depending on where I have lived. For instance, in NYC, rap music “made sense,” it reflected my surroundings; here in Asheville, a small city of 100,000 surrounded by the incredible natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it seems jarring and incongruous. It seems to me that NYC people are focused much more on their inner life — their aesthetic responses, their intellectual and emotional lives; Asheville people are more tuned into the environment that surrounds them, and their souls resonate to the things they see and hear around them. A novel like The Hours drove me crazy when I read it a few months ago; in NYC, I may have thought it absolutely brilliant.

Regionalitis treats every part of the country the same ignoring this differences in life focus. (Perhaps this is why the guy in San Francisco thought the Stoppard play was great but it didn’t resonate with the guy in Boston.) He points out as another example that The Kentucky Cycle was well received regionally all over the country and won a Pultizer Prize, but did poorly in NYC. He posits that it was due to the pacing and subject did not synch with the urban vibe.

He expounds upon this idea in a later entry and later clarifies his ideas after some criticism of them.

The whole process this went through really fires up my idealism gene. One guy coins a phrase, another expands upon his idea looking at it from the vantage of artistic integrity and choices, a third guy looks at it with an eye toward tuning works to regional nuances and I summarize and regurgitate it all.

I didn’t just pull this all together simply because actually watching an idea develop over blogs excited me. It was the whole discussion that got me thinking.

It is no surprise to me that different genres of performances appeal to regions and locales in varying degrees. The idea that mass media is shaping what we do and don’t watch and listen to is nothing new to me either, especially in these days of media consolidation into the hands of a few corporations.

It never occurred to me though that what they were promoting might not, as Scott Walters puts it, make sense for all regions of the country. I always just accepted, (probably due to the media) that the new stuff was just a logical evolution from what came before. New Wave of the 80s gave way to grunge of the 90s gave way to hiphop of the 00s.

Even though I should have known better, it always seemed like popular entertainment companies were reacting to trends rather than shaping them. To a greater degree pop entertainment does. However, once a trend reaches a certain saturation point, companies jump on it and promote it to everyone. They count on a desire to be part of the in crowd to overwhelm any sense that it was incongruous to one’s lifestyle.

That is what this whole regionalitis thread is all about. Arts organizations jumping on a bandwagon and urging audiences to join all the rest of the smart people across the country in enjoying the show.

Arts organizations aren’t as successful as the major media because they don’t have as much money to throw around to convince people to join their fellow citizens. They also can’t guarantee the same experience as everyone else in the country. The AMC movie theatres in Philadelphia offer screen sizes and surround sound systems pretty comparable to those in other cities around the country.

However, the talents of actors and musicians at the theatres and symphonies in Philly aren’t the same as those in theatres elsewhere, nor are the spaces they perform in. Seeing Dali in the Philadelphia Museum of Art isn’t the same as seeing the same works in the Dali Museum in St. Petersburgh, FL.

Nor is there the sense of a collective experience when a book, CD, movie is released on the same day for everyone present when performances transpire in different seasons, months or even years.

And then there are differences in ticket prices, economic conditions, education level and a half dozen other demographic elements.

This makes something of an argument for resisting regionalitis and taking an honest look at what programming and vibe is right for your community instead of trying to ride the coattails of the successes experienced by other people in other places at other times.

Heck with a man not being able to jump into the same river twice. Regionalitis can be like trying to jump into the same river from 1,500 miles away while in the middle of a drought.

So I had a bit of a problem while I was at the WAA conference last week–or as some might say, an “opportunity to learn.”

An agent pulls me aside and tells me–“You know that show you booked? The one you were smart enough to recognize the talent in while your compatriots on the other islands spurned it?”

“Well, to further validate your good taste–the show was a smash at the Edinburgh Fringe and a bunch of big name producers want to have the show on the West End.”

At the same time it is supposed to be in my theatre.

Well honestly, I have to say I am thrilled for the show. But at the same time, my brochures just went out and people are buying tickets at a nice clip right now. But the show isn’t until the Spring so it is good to find out now when I have the time to announce the change. It will be good PR to have to announce the show will have to be rescheduled because it burned up Edinburgh and is going to the West End.

But my theatre is also pretty much booked up until next August at the moment between my shows and rentals so I don’t know when I will reschedule. And before the college will send out a deposit check to an artist, I have to sign a statement saying I will personally reimburse them if a group doesn’t perform.

Guess what got mailed out the day I flew to Alburquerque.

So while the agent is trying to find out if this is a sure thing, I attend round table discussions. One I want to attend is being delayed so I stick my nose in on an session about ethics. I wasn’t going to attend because the same topic was covered last year, but it ended up the panel on this one did a better job.

One of the first questions was if anyone had ever faced an artist cancelling.

I raise my hand and say funny you should mention it and tell my story.

One of the panel members says that he takes that in stride because it happens often when performers in his cabaret series end up getting a contract for a Broadway show. He knows where he stands in the pecking order. He prints up an alteration, explains why the switch is occuring and offers refunds to those who might want it.

Be that as it may, my problem is that: 1- He is talking about a secondary series being affected, not his primary audience attracter. 2- His facility has enough prestige he can easily attract an equally talented performer who is eager to appear.

In many theatres in the region, the person appearing in his secondary series is often the primary attraction for that organization and are difficult to replace.

The roundtable discussion covered the fact that artists/agents/presenters who are new to the process (and some old hands who are just clueless) need to realize the reprecussions of cancellations.

For the presenter, a cancellation can mean upset ticket buyers, an upset board who mandated certain numbers and certain types of performances, loss of revenue and a loss of prestige and credibility with the community.

For the artists, a cancellation can mean loss of income; depending on the timing, mean they are stranded between points A & B with nowhere to sleep; result in a loss of credibility with the public and perhaps with the presenters before and after the cancelling venue because they need to ask those venues for more money in order to meet expenses that week.

For agents, it means a loss of credibility with the artists and/or presenters.

Since the arts community, even nationwide, is fairly small and members tend to meet each other often, an agent/presenter/artist can find themselves increasingly ostracized for problematic behavior.

But of course, this depends on the power and influence of any of these players. Sometimes you have to bite your tongue and do business with these folks in order to please your clients/patrons and just hope they don’t decide to screw you this time around.

The end of my story, fortunately, turned out well. A day after getting the potential bad news, I am told that the West End theatres the London producers wanted weren’t available during that time so they are looking for other dates.

So I get to have my performance AND claim it burned up Edinburgh and perhaps mention it will be going to London shortly after it appears here.