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Stuff To Ponder: Active Interpretation of Culture

January 24, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

Participating in the Lead or Follow discussion over at Artsjournal.com, Lynne Conner writes the following about audience participation/engagement in performances (my emphasis).

Inviting audiences to interpret the art works we present (make, produce, critique) is not pandering. I wish we would stop this disingenuous habit of conflating an audience member’s inherent desire and cultural right to interpret the meaning or value of a work of art with choosing the agenda for artists or arts organizations. Sports fans engage in some of the most active interpretation in our culture (and as a result experience real satisfaction and pleasure), but that doesn’t mean they choose the plays or create the roster. I mean, come on.

This got me to thinking in a slightly different direction. There are numerous television stations, radio shows and newspaper columns featuring people with high levels of expertise talking about sports, yet thousands of people feel no reservation about expressing a contrary opinion loudly in public places and in blog posts. They can hold opposite opinions about games and players from those of their close friends and still remain close. They are not intimidated by those with greater expertise or by the prospect of hurting their personal relationships.

But have you ever been afraid to express your opinion about an artist or arts experience you have had for fear of either appearing elitist to the people around you, even close friends? Or on the other side of the coin, been afraid of appearing insufficiently knowledgeable? Why is that? Feeling unable to discuss these topics, of course, creates a vicious cycle where people continue to feel they can’t discuss these things.

But can the image problem the arts have be fixed by having more people talking a lot more? Maybe, but it will require a lot of people doing a lot of talking.

It is interesting to me that when a person goes shopping, a large number of choices can paralyze someone and result in no choice being made. However, in the face of hundreds of different opinions to select from, sports fans don’t seem to have a problem sifting through them and generating their own view of things. They don’t worry if they don’t agree with the guys at ESPN despite all the computers, statisticians and analysts the network has in their employ.

When it comes to the arts, people get concerned if they don’t agree with the single person writing the review/preview. Either something is wrong with the reviewer or with them. Sports fans can dismiss a single writer as a bum and find another source of information that more closely agrees with them. It doesn’t matter if it is a wholly unsubstantiated view. The fact it confirms their view can make them more comfortable and confident with their ability to evaluate their favorite sport.

That isn’t so easy to achieve in relation to the arts and is becoming less so as media outlets cut back their coverage.

Its funny because it is so much easier to dismiss the opinion of a single poorly funded person over a corporate television station with the resources to analyze something to death based on a thousand different criteria. Yet in the absence of any other easily accessible information about the performance, people don’t feel they know enough to say the reviewer is wrong, even though they may be absolutely right. On the other hand, ESPN’s analysis may be as close to 100% correct as can be, but it doesn’t bother the sports fan in the least that they are completely wrong in disagreeing with the analysis.

Heck, there are sports fans who have been rooting for teams that haven’t been contenders for a championship in decades. They find some pleasure in being wrong year after year rooting for the wrong team.

How many arts organizations get that much slack after rendering a poor performance?

A lot of the devotion a sports fan feels has to do with a feeling of ownership and investment they have in the team, a sense of kinship they feel with other fans and myriad other factors. Many arts patrons feel the exact same things.

Of course, some elements of the sports experience won’t translate over to the arts. Dancers aren’t going to reminisce about how they were berated by audiences at the beginning of the season but won them over with their technique and heart the way a rookie athlete might. Though audiences for those few performing arts companies who retain the same ensemble from year to year can speak about watching artists develop over time.

There isn’t anything insurmountable standing in the way of people engaging in active interpretation of their arts or cultural experience in the same manner as they do with sports–except that they aren’t doing it. There isn’t an arts and culture police running around enforcing standards on conversations. The only impediments are those largely tacit ones we enforce upon ourselves and each other.

I am going to stop short of suggesting what we must do because I don’t think it is as simple as more arts coverage in the media, more arts in schools, more arts bloggers, more outreaches, more free performances. These may all help, but there are a lot chicken and egg factors to the arts environment in the United States. These things are useless of themselves if no one is receptive to them. How do you create that receptive environment?

At the Arts Presenters conference earlier this month, Braddock, PA Mayor John Fetterman quoted a lesson from Sen. Alan Simpson that any significant change takes seven years. I wonder how long it might take to change the culture of a community to the point where people felt free to engage in active interpretation of arts and culture.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts

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Stuff To Ponder: Curtain Speeches

January 23, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

I was reading an entry on the Creativity Post by Thomas Mark about how important audience attentiveness is in live performance. It was interesting, but I wasn’t intending to post on it…until I read the last paragraph.

A crucial moment for establishing the relationship of audience and performer is immediately before the performance begins. Let me explain. People arrive, find their seats, and begin to turn their thoughts from daily affairs to the performance ahead. At last, the house lights go down. Everyone falls silent. That is the magic moment, the short period of greatest attention and receptivity and anticipation,… At any rate, that’s what should happen. Unfortunately, what actually does happen far too often,… Instead of allowing the performance to begin, the chairman of the board or the executive director or someone appears with a microphone and makes a fatuous speech. “Welcome ladies and gentlemen . . . blah blah blah . . . [insert a lame joke here] . . .blah blah blah . . . CDs available in the lobby . . . blah blah blah . . . The annual patron’s reception . . . blah blah blah . . . Our gratitude to our sponsors . . . blah blah blah . . . Turn off your cell phones . . . blah blah blah . . . Thank you, and enjoy the performance.” Not so easy, any more. Anticipation, attention, and receptivity have given way to irritation and impatience. The magic moment has been irretrievably shattered, leaving performers and audience to pick up the pieces as best they can. This kind of disregard for the conditions of artistic performance by the very people who organize the event is unpardonable. When it happens audiences and performers are entitled to complain vigorously.

Now, as someone who does deliver a curtain speech, I felt the need to take up the subject. I will concede that the curtain speech, poorly done can add a sour note to an evening. In light of all the interruptions that occur during a performance, the incessant ringing at Avery Fischer Hall being the most publicized recent example, such announcements are certainly appropriate, if not always effective.

Many locales require fire and emergency announcements be made and doing these in person rather than by recording is usually most effective. I saw a performance in NYC earlier this month and the fire/cell phone/recording prohibition announcement was made via a recording. While the volume and clarity was excellent, people were still standing and chatting while it was going on.

Having someone make the announcement does help to transition the audience from the arrival phase of the experience to the performance experience. I would agree that delivering the announcement after lowering the lights does interrupt the audiences experience since the lights also signal a transition. I generally go out while the house lighting is still at full. Though some times we bring them down to 3/4 or 1/2 to signal my arrival.

Obviously, there are other ways to provide the same information. The artistic design of some shows precludes my appearance and the salient points are delivered by an audio or video recording or even a performer.

Overall, I think a personal welcome to the audience is helpful to the organization, especially if well-considered. I generally talk very briefly about the show and why we chose to present it as a way to prepare people for the experience.

A lot of work is invested in performances and performance venues have many guidelines for the behavior of the front of house staff in order to provide a good attendance experience for audiences. But often very little effort has gone into the preparation and delivery of the curtain speech. Given that the attention of everyone is on the speaker at the same moment, it is most assuredly contributes to the experience.

Content matters. I actually start thinking about what I am going to say the day before the show, make notes and pare it down to 2-3 minutes max. I am not always successful in making silky smooth transitions into the show, but I do keep it brief and get off the stage.

Very rarely do I mention the next show and only solicit donations obliquely by thanking the audience and expressing my hope that they will continue to support our programs. Maybe I would get more donations if I was more direct and I think I can still find some good phrases to use that will indicate our need for donations without being overtly pushy. Honestly though, I don’t really know that making a general appeal before a performance is terribly effective as a fundraising technique.

In the moments before a performance, I think the focus should be on the immediate experience and not on future concerns. I have posters and a television screen and ushers with brochures in my lobby to push my future shows. In the 2 minutes before the show starts, the audience should be guided toward why the experience will be enjoyable. I am sure I am not the only one who has found themselves slightly disappointed by the movie they are watching after seeing preview trailers for the exciting movies coming the next summer.

People certainly don’t want to be thinking about your financial woes just as they are about to see a performance (though the curtain speech may be a good time to address them if the situation is widely known by the public.)

Many audience members can’t discern between for-profit and non-profit organizations and their respective performances. It’s great that people don’t feel the quality of non-profits are lacking, but it also means they may not particularly feel their lives would be worse should the non-profit disappear. We certainly don’t want to have people identifying long boring, speeches and appeals for money as a distinguishing characteristic of non-profit events.

I would be interested to know what other people think. Is there a better way to do curtain speeches? What things should be left out or are better accomplished in some other manner? What things not typically found in curtain speeches should be included?

Audience Relations, Info You Can Use, Marketing/PR

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Info You Can Use: Forget Dynamic Pricing, Use Placebo Pricing

January 18, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

I got my sister a gift certificate at Restoration Hardware for Christmas. They sent along a catalog that weighed about as much as my 3 year old nephew so I chose not to carry it on the plane with me lest I be charged an overweight bag fee. I was thumbing idly through the catalog this weekend and I was struck by its design. You can view the catalog online to see what I am talking about. Some of it resembles a magazine with stories about the artisans who apparently produce some of the goods they sell.

Each page has notes with arrows with tidbits about each of the items like the fact that a $2500 dining room table is a “reproduction of a perfectly proportioned stone column in ancient Greece, built of solid reclaimed pine timbers from 100 year old buildings in Great Britain.” Obviously, they are selling to people who value and find satisfaction in their home furnishings having certain features and provenance.

One of my immediate thoughts was that arts audiences often want the type of experience illustrated in this catalog when they come to the theatre. Except that we would have to charge the type of prices Restoration Hardware does just to produce a season brochure that communicated in the fashion of the catalog, not to mention the cost of actually providing the experience. Of course, the whole image being conveyed would prove intimidating to large swaths of the population to whom we are trying to appear my accessible. As we are very much aware, there aren’t a lot of people willing to pay the type of price necessary to have that experience.

After awhile, I thought about the fact that a lot of retail stores are designed to appeal to the idea people have about themselves rather than to who they really are. For example, I read an article that pointed out that while some national clothing stores seem to be designed for 17 year olds and have pictures of people that age, the stores tend to be filled with 14 year olds because its fits the 14 year old’s desire to appear more mature. Whether that was the initial intent of the store or not, they knew who comprises their customer base and are sure to provide the appropriate range of sizes and styles.

So I have been thinking about how arts organizations, (and mine in particular), can identify what image audiences have of themselves when they attend performances and adjust the physical, social and customer service experience in that direction without incurring large expenses.

I was amused to find a possible answer linked to on the Marginal Revolution blog. His “about me” info is pretty sparse, but Peter Seebach suggests a Placebo restaurant where you list everything at twice the normal price but give everyone a 50% discount on the bill. (my emphasis)

There was some research a while back which found a possibly-surprising result. …if you serve the same wine to a lot of people, and tell some of them it’s $12 for a box and others it’s $400 for a bottle, the latter like it better. Better yet, they’re right — they really do enjoy it more. Thank you, MRI scans and the like.

…So say you have a steak roughly of the same quality as the $13 steaks at the Outback Steakhouse. The menu says $26, your bill when it arrives has a 50% discount. But everything you order feels expensive.

For extra credit, you could do interviews and arrange waiters to adopt personalities which suit the customers. Someone comes in who likes Good Wholesome Cooking? We can set you up with a waiter who thinks fancy food is ridiculous. Or, we can set you up with a waiter who is a total food snob, and you can have a wonderful meal knowing that the waiter is missing out on Good Wholesome Cooking. Your call.

The basic idea here is… people aren’t going out to eat for the food, they’re going out for the experience. Why not sell the experience as-such as the product? And thanks to some lovely research done on placebos in the 60s or so, we know that in some cases they work even if you know it’s a placebo — they’ve been shown to treat depression effectively even when explained.

Can it really be as easy as having a perpetual 50% off sale?

We are all aware on some level that when a store has a sale with deep discounts, the original price they are quoting was probably inflated. We may grouse and think it is a little dishonest, we are still out there buying from that store on a regular basis.

And this feeling of being in a dishonest situation can be ameliorated by providing sincerely good service (leavened, perhaps with a little bit of the personality that appeals to the specific customer). The other thing is, no one actually ever pays full price, even accidentally, and everyone knows it. That isn’t something you can know for certain when it comes to airplane tickets, a pricing model it is often suggested performing arts organizations adopt.

So the big question is, do you take advantage of customer psychology to provide audiences with a satisfying experience?

Oh, actually, you already do in a thousand different ways with your marketing, pricing and other practices. Question is, do you do something so blatant?

Given that in some cases the placebo effect works even in the face of full disclosure, it is tempting to try out such simple way to create an experience. Many ticketing systems, including my own, make it very easy to print one price on the ticket and set the actual price much lower.

Audience Relations, Info You Can Use, Marketing/PR

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Teachers Don’t Know From Creative

January 17, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

We all know that arts classes and opportunities have been disappearing from schools at varying rates for decades. It may or may not surprise you to learn that creativity is not encouraged in schools either. While you may have suspected it all along, Alex Tabarrok links to a number of studies from the Marginal Revolution blog.

He cites in one study,

“What the paper shows is that the characteristics that teachers use to describe their favorite student correlate negatively with the characteristics associated with creativity. In addition, although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are “sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable.” In other words, the teachers don’t know what creative students are actually like.”

As Tabarrok notes, the classroom process is not conducive to impulsive creative expression. Self control is valued in students in order to create an environment for a group to learn in. I would note though that this is not to equate self-control with smothering creativity. Even in self-directed learning environments where students are more in control of the pace and manner of their learning, a degree of self-control is still expected.

It occurs to me that part of the fight to restore arts education to schools needs to include advocating for a learning environment that encourages creativity. Arts people may hold certain assumptions about that arts in education involves cultivating creative expression, but it might not necessarily be so. Everyone probably has a story about a teacher who nearly killed their interest in an artistic discipline.

It may seem like incrementalism in the face of the size of the struggle to get arts education restored, but in the process, it will be important to try to preserve opportunities for creative expression still have left lest they slip away.

Think about it– outside the classroom the only place where a child is still permitted to indulge their screaming anarchist tendencies is on the playground and a lot of schools are doing away with recess. Without recess, there is another moment of a child’s life where they are expected to behave.

Now granted, for all I know kids today may stand around at recess playing on their Nintendo DSes and ignore their screaming anarchist tendencies without any help from their schools and such advocacy is for naught anyway.

My point is that while fighting for the restoration of arts, it is probably important to make teachers aware of what creative students are actually like and provide tools/guidance for dealing with them rather than requiring them to conform to expectations all the time.

Essentially the approach of “Arts offer X, Y, Z to your students. But since you may not provide opportunities in the coming academic year, we will happily help you to recognize the creativity of your students and engage it in your classroom to some degree since these kids are likely the ones you have pegged as disconnected.”

Advocacy, Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts

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