Working In The Arts

We Are Too Small To Get Caught…Right?

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It used to be that there were constantly stories about copyright owners going after kids who had downloaded music and video or sampled/excerpted parts of works and represented it as their own. We would hear about companies tracking stuff on computers and going after the owners.

You don’t hear these sort of stories as much any more. Since many of the copyright owners were big corporations, perhaps they figured there was a lot of bad P.R. associated with their efforts.

Or maybe they felt like there was too much of the activity going on that it was fruitless to try to catch everyone and try to stop it.

I know that a lot of performing arts companies have taken liberties with the shows they produce, assuming that the country is so big and their organization so small that no one will bother to check up on them.

Well thanks to technology, it is apparently getting easier for performance rights holders to monitor production activity. Or at least technology is making us more aware that the rights holders are checking on and catching people.

A recent You’ve Cott Mail brought attention to a couple cease and desist letters issued last week due to unauthorized script changes.

An article about a Milwaukee production of David Mamet’s Olenna implies they got caught making their unauthorized change when a review of the show appeared online.

As first reported by Howard Sherman, Hands on a Hardbody show creators actually attended a performance in Texas and noticed the show wasn’t the one they created. A number of actions were subsequently taken by the Dramatists Guild and Samuel French, Inc, which appear in updates on Sherman’s post.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Howard Sherman has been keeping an eye on these issues and addressing them on his blog. Back in January, he discussed the Asolo Repertory Theater having to postpone their opening when they got caught rewriting Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come! [Disclosure: I worked for the Florida State University side of the Asolo about 20 years ago.]

Sherman also covered a Long Island* high school making unauthorized alterations to the school edition of Rent

There are a lot of issues connected with artistic freedom, color blind casting, community standards and the comparative attitudes of material creators toward their works that factor into these stories. Most are addressed in the dozens of comments on Sherman’s posts. They are a good place to start if you aren’t familiar with the basic, but common, issues related to the stage.

While the performance licenses are pretty explicit about what you can and can’t do, the conversation about intellectual property is always evolving so it is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Not to mention that if you have been flaunting the conditions of your license assuming that you won’t get caught, it may be time to reassess that belief.

*I mistakenly misidentified the school involved with Rent as being in CT. Thanks to Howard Sherman for bringing the mistake to my attention

Could You Hurry Up And Get Delighted?

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Seth Godin had a post today reflecting on a woman he noticed in front row seats at a concert being given by jazz bassist Christian McBride. The woman was fidgeting, checking her watch and fiddling with stuff, entirely disengaged with the concert.

Says Godin:

McBride seemed to be too professional and too experienced to get brought down by her disrespect and disengagement. Here’s what he knew: It wasn’t about him, it wasn’t about the music, it wasn’t a response to what he was creating.
[…]
Do your work, your best work, the work that matters to you. For some people, you can say, “hey, it’s not for you.” That’s okay. If you try to delight the undelightable, you’ve made yourself miserable for no reason.

It’s sort of silly to make yourself miserable, but at least you ought to reserve it for times when you have a good reason.

We all know that ideally, this is the best philosophy to embrace. We know that the arts aren’t for everyone and that you have to allow people the time and space they need in order to eventually find that your work resonates with them. If it is going to resonate at all, that is.

But we don’t live in an ideal world and we receive a lot of messages that our audiences need to get it, and get it quick. This obviously manifests in ticket sales reports and the requirements of just plain old pride in wanting to have seats full of people enjoying themselves.

There is a lot of subtext that our funding depends on it as well. We are asked about the diversity of our audience. What are the numbers and percentages of racial groups, students and seniors?

Some times there is no subtext at all. I am currently working on a final grant report that asks what we did to engage the community to participate; what did or will we do to remove perceptual, practical and experiential barriers; what motivates patron, board members and volunteers; and to provide a first hand account of how the programming has made an impact on an individual or a group.

Faced with questions like that, you have a lot of motivation to start thinking your audience, board and volunteers need to experience something that moves them, and they need to have that moving experience during the current grant period.

Its no wonder we have ushers patrolling the aisles and glaring at people pulling out their iPhones. Not only can’t we afford to have the individual become disengaged from the performance, we need to make sure the glow of the phone isn’t constituting a perceptual or experiential barrier to a dozen other people around them. These are all black marks against us that our funders expect us to address.

Now as a practical matter, foundations aren’t infiltrating mystery shoppers into our audiences to make sure we are properly identifying these problems and proposing solutions in our final reports. Their questions are meant to inspire some self-examination in grant recipients about procedures and operations.

When heckling at a performance is unchallenged by house staff and results in the cancellation of the run as recently occurred in California, it signals the need for a review of procedures in event spaces across the country.

Questions like these on a grant report indicate the type of activity and outcomes that are valued in grant recipients. These expectations are somewhat in conflict with the long view non-profit arts organizations are enjoined to embrace in respect to cultivating their audiences.

When Christian McBride plays The Blue Note, the venue worries about whether they sold enough tickets, food and alcohol to cover costs. The Blue Note certainly wants all the patrons to have a good time and come back again, but they don’t concern themselves too much with whether people have attained a new level of personal growth.

When McBride plays at a non-profit arts center’s jazz series, the organization worries about all those things The Blue Note worries about, but also has to concern themselves about recognizing potential barriers to entry, the diversity of the audience and whether they have been inspired.

It can be something of a psychic burden to try to balance all the requirements of a non-profit existence. You have to be cool, put your best work out there and not worry about delighting the undelightable.

But at the same time, you wonder how you have failed that person. What barriers have you been complicit in maintaining? Is she really undelightable, or is that a convenient way for writing her off when you should be patient and try harder? How can you change your programming and outreach efforts so she feels engaged and included?

Finding The Cream of the Local Crop

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I attended an event at the local art museum which I thought was structured in an interesting way in terms of generating relationships between the museum, museum patrons and local artists— and making some money for the artists in the process.

The event was called “Cream of the Crop” and is run by the museum every other year. They invite artists within an 85 mile radius of the museum to submit works of art. Then, before the art is delivered, they ask people in the community to commit to spending a certain amount on purchasing a piece which they haven’t seen yet.

After the jury has decided what pieces get to be in the show and which won’t be included, those who have pledged to buy a piece are invited in to take a look and choose which pieces they wish to purchase.

The purchasers are allowed to peruse all the pieces that have been submitted, both those which have been chosen for the show and those which have not. So even if an artist’s piece doesn’t make it into the show, the experience can still be rewarding if their piece ends up selling.

I was one of those who committed to buy a piece this year and I can assure you, there were a number of pieces that didn’t make it in that were on my list of potential purchases. Inevitably, there were a number of pieces that were not included that I and others wondered at the reason why.

Last Friday was the opening of the show. People from the community, the artists who submitted and those who had purchased all gathered to review the works. There were ribbons by those pieces that were deemed the best of the show.

Different colored ribbons were placed next to the pieces that had been purchased which served to call some attention to those as well.

Unlike the conversations at openings for the work of one or two artists, most of the discussion at this opening revolved around the talent hidden in the local community. Given that most of the artists were present, the show held some surprises for people’s friends and neighbors.

On the whole, it was a good opportunity for local artists to showcase their work. Some of them were motivated to do only that. While it was required that every piece submitted be for sale, it was the artists that set the prices and it was clear from the amount being asked, there were some artists who had no intention of parting with their creation.

Unfortunately for some of the attendees, these were some of the more striking pieces. There were a couple works by one artist that people would stand before and mutter that they would buy it if it were priced at half of what it was.

This sort of event may be common at museums across the country and I just am not familiar with it. This isn’t the type of thing performing arts organizations can do because their product is ephemeral by design. Probably the closest parallel might be some form of fringe festival that restricted itself to performers residing in the region.

Though I guess there might be potential in having someone commit to buying a certain amount in tickets and then choose, via video, from among artists selected by a jury panel to perform. That might bump an artist to a larger venue than they might normally have performed in if they were selected by someone who committed enough to buy 200 seats.

Though hopefully the gracious patron could arrange to have them all filled. Few artists are satisfied with a lot of empty seats, regardless of how much they might be paid.

What I appreciated most about the museum event was that the structure got a different cross section of the community into the museum than normally attend the openings. The artists they were talking about reside locally rather than having been chosen from a distant place by curators. This reinforces the local connections as well as the concept that everyone as the potential to be an artist.

Secret Art In Minnesota

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The always cool people at Springboard for the Arts (and that isn’t a commentary on Minnesota weather) recently got to do a “TV Takeover” where they explained how they serve the artistic community in Minnesota. They chose the theme of “Your Secret Art” to emphasize the idea that a lot of people have artistic talent which may not immediately be apparent.

There were two parts of the show I liked, both dealing with “artists taking care of business.” At the 51 minute mark, artists talk about pricing their work and their initial reluctance to ask to be paid or to charge what they were really worth.

The artists that were interviewed note that it is natural to make the mistake of undervaluing your work, but that you need to quickly move past that. Pricing is not only based on your time and materials, but a result of doing market research and understanding how similar work is valued.

This was an important topic for artists and one that is rarely broached in interviews with artists about their careers.

The other part of the show I liked was at the 24 minute mark where artists talk about their work as a business. What really grabbed my attention was the statement made by Uri Sands of TU Dance in answer to the noisome assertion that art is not a profession because you love doing it. Sands says if you have a talent, you have a responsibility to your gift. It requires enormous work whether you are a mathematician, athlete or dancer.

Art requires more of him because he does love it. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have to think about it and could clock in/clock out. But because he loves it, thinking about dance inhabits all his free time as well.

I thought that was a fantastic answer because it is so absolutely true that artists often aren’t easily able to stop investing themselves in one part of their lives come 5:00 pm.

Visual artist Anna Metcalf talked about how valuable it was to refer to creating ceramics as her job. She spoke about having a business plan which helped her establish priorities and also legitimized her art practice as a business. It sounded to me as if this might provide her with a little self-discipline, but there also seemed to be a subtext that the frame work might help keep others from viewing her work as a hobby.

I couldn’t quite catch the name of the third artist interviewed in this segment. Even though she was surrounded by puppets, it sounded as if her practice encompassed many disciplines. Since I just wrote about mentors yesterday, her comment that when was was younger she assumed mentors would find her grabbed my attention.

She said that she now recognizes the need to seek out and cultivate people to be mentors. This made me realize that yesterday’s post really didn’t touch on the idea that you could have multiple mentors at anyone time and that it can be smart to cultivate relationships now with people who could potentially be a mentor in the future.

A corollary to the idea that not everyone is suited to be mentor is that not everyone is suited by knowledge or temperament to be a mentor at every stage of your career. You will outgrow some mentors and grow into others.

Springboard for the Arts and the people they serve are doing some pretty interesting things. I can be worth the time to watch the whole thing.