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Illuminating the Vision

August 5, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

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.

General Musings, Management Philosophy

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Did You Just Agree To Go To Abilene?

August 4, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

Because non-profit arts often lead a tenuous existence which depends so heavily on the commitment of a small, fairly close knit group, organizations are likely to practice a number of organizational behaviors. One of the least constructive of these is known as the Abilene Paradox. The Abilene Paradox takes its name from an anecdote told by Jerry B. Harvey to illustrate how everyone in a group can end up agreeing to do something none of them want to do.

Harvey tells a story about a visit to his in-laws that ended with the group of them traveling to Abilene, TX in a car without air conditioning to eat an awful meal because each person assumed the others wanted to go rather than stay home and continue enjoying their game of dominoes. The Abilene Paradox is widely used in organizational dynamics classes/seminars so I hope the reputation of Abilene’s cuisine hasn’t suffered.

If you think about it, you can probably recall a similar time when you agreed to a choice you didn’t believe was correct and felt vindicated in your judgment when it failed–except you had voiced your support. Perhaps you even voiced your reservations to another who agreed and discovered they felt as you did.

There is an article by Harvey that illustrates how the paradox can manifest itself in various situations and also contains suggestions on how to avoid taking a trip to Abilene. In what might appear to be the most extreme case, he suggests that the instigator of the misguided trip may need to step forward and declare their misgivings about their own project in order to break the fear which keeps the cycle of reinforcement intact.

“… we frequently fail to take action in an organizational setting because we fear that the actions we take may result in our separation from others, or, in the language of Mr. Porter, we are afraid of being tabbed as “disloyal” or are afraid of being ostracized as “non-team players.”

This is why I felt arts organizations might be especially vulnerable to trips to Abilene. Members aren’t simply employees/volunteers/board members but assumed to be true believers in the cause. There could be a fear, real or imagined that disagreement with the group equates to lack of commitment to the greater ideals rather than merely disloyalty to the company.

Management Philosophy, Terms and Ideas

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An End to Waiting Tables?

July 30, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

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

According to a press release on the SNAAP website,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Ninty Five Processes

July 28, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

Since my second blog entry ever was about parallels between arts management and religion, I was intrigued by a post Scott Walters made earlier this month suggesting that theatres be built along the same lines that Lutherans build theirs.

The process he outlines is thus:

1. Costs for the first few years are evenly split between the new congregation, the regional organization (synod), and the national organization (ELCA).

2. Money is provided primarily to cover salaries.

3. After the first couple years, the new congregation takes on a greater share of the financial burden until it is financially independent.

4. At that point, the congregation begins to make annual contributions back to the regional and national church, which continues as long as the church continues in existence.

5. The congregation is responsible for raising enough money to build a church, if it so desires, but a service organization provides a source of low-interest loans to help with that process.

He compares this with the process for theatres which is basically that you have to exist for three years before anyone will even take a look at your funding request.

The process the Lutherans use is not terribly unique. There are many immigrant groups who have done the same thing pooling their money to fund businesses which were expected to return money to the pot to fund the efforts of others. Upon such things banks were established. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the Lutheran’s practice traces its roots back to immigration.

Given that I have had interactions with people wishing to build a theatre that had no concept of what it actually takes to maintain and run one in the manner they plan, I would embrace the idea that nascent theatres would receive informed advice and guidance.

I have it on pretty good authority that there are performing arts organizations of a certain strata which already trade information and collaborate on planning. The problem is that they rarely attend conferences so few of us get to talk to them. Which is too bad because their expertise could provide a starting point for creating and funding this type of project. I am actually involved with a project which could possible provide a partial template for what Walters is suggesting.

I had a couple concerns about Walters’ suggestions. The first is that it would encourage conservative rather than innovative approaches that would move how the performing arts interact with their communities forward. This process is good for Lutherans because they are dealing with people who already subscribe to an orthodoxy and understand what the expected outcome is. This is not necessarily the case with theatre. You have a choice between different formats and genres to focus on or ignore. It would be disappointing to have groups nudged toward some form of what their advisers know or think would be appropriate. It is still their word that releases the money.

I would assume that once the group of artists had been operating for awhile, a team who specialized in the direction they wanted to pursue would shepherd their progress so everyone wouldn’t automatically be told they were going to be a 250 seat theatre or a three venue facility. Yet the best option might not be a fixed seat venue be it built, rented or borrowed from another but a partnership with a ballet and gymnastic school resulting in an organization focused as much on physical fitness for the community as performance.

My other concern is that the mechanism be able to financially and more importantly emotionally and mentally weather a lot of early failures before they get the technique refined to the point where there are enough successful organizations replenishing the funds. I believe it takes colleges 40-50 years before their alumni become sufficiently successful that they can make significant donations to the school. Granted, the theatres cultivated by this procedure would be required to give back whereas alumni aren’t. Still, it might take 15-20 years before the method is self supporting. Arts organizations and businesses alike fear the inability to show results whether it be to granting organizations or stockholders. This fear could contribute to advocating that new arts groups take a familiar, conservative approach in their activities. And short of someone like Warren Buffet, there aren’t too many funding sources that would be prepared to wait 15-20 years for positive results.

Still if the funders, organizers and participants went into the process resolved to be vigilant about their prejudices and fears and accepting the fact that it could be a long time before any return is ever seen, it could certainly work. Frankly, even if the fears and prejudices did come into play, the process would still be a vast improvement over the current system if it established the practice of arts professionals centralizing and sharing knowledge to avoid replication or re-development of procedures refined or discarded by others.

And how great would it be if causing a schism with the Catholic Church eventually resulted in the unification of the arts? (Finally, we take revenge for being placed below beggars by co-opting religion practice for our own purposes!!!)

Arts in an Age of Technology, Leadership, Terms and Ideas

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