As promised, I am addressing some comments from my But Do You REALLY.. entry. Actually, it will be one of the comments today, but that should be enough.

Mitch from the McCallum Theatre makes some provocative statements in the comments section.

A couple of things about the business we are in: 1) 90% of everything that is offered at WAA or APAP, in other words, the arts “marketplace” is crap. 2) 90% of arts administrators can’t tell the difference between what is good and what is crap.

While I wouldn’t completely agree with the 90% figures in both cases, I would say that yes, some of the conference offerings are of a poorer quality than I might expect and there are a lot of presenters out there who aren’t as discerning as they should be.

However, I would say that the quality of performer at conferences is largely due to the fact that many big names don’t have to show up–you will solicit them and technology allows smaller names to make an effective pitch to you in your office. DVDs, faster internet connections, streaming audio and video, email, etc. can showcase performers far better than, well, a 20 minute conference showcase where they lack control of most elements.

While a DVD is no substitute for a good live performance, (otherwise, why book the live performance), it may make more sense to people to forego the expense and time of making a trip to a conference and invest in a quality electronic media package.

As for the arts people with poor eyes for talent, well the self-same technology that makes it easy for performers to solicit bookings from presenters also makes it much easier these days for people to set themselves up as presenters.

What is actually dangerous about this situation isn’t so much that they have bad taste as the fact they lack an understanding of the business and the costs involved. In the last few months I noticed that a group I had engaged last season was returning to appear at a place about 12 times the size of my venue with the expensive union crew to match. We easily sold out our performance, but I had my doubts about filling this new place. On the other hand, the concert was capping off a week of festivities so I figured these folks knew what they were doing.

Yeah, not really.

I found out this week that they were bigger on dreams and assumptions than experience. Some of the coordinators at the venue apparently made some attempts to ground the presenters but they went full steam ahead with the confidence born of ignorance and lost a lot of money.

Anyhow, back to the comment section there. What Mitch writes a little later is most interesting.

That said, it is entirely possible to engage the public in intellegently purchasing tickets to arts events they will enjoy and will be happy to pay for. Once you have the ability to determine what is good and what is crap (and remember only 10% of us can do that), then the rest of the job is just marketing.

Know your market and respond to the needs of your market, and you will be successful…Listen to your customers and you will learn what they want. Program the good (not the crap) from the artists your audience wants, and you will be successful.

Without getting into a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance type discussion of quality, I would argue that good and what your audience wants aren’t necessarily the same thing and many times are mutually exclusive. The aforementioned conferences don’t have to offer good stuff, just what people want to see or can be convinced they want to see.

Just look at Broadway. Most everything there is a retread of an existing story or a revival. Phantom of the Opera just passed Cats as the longest running show earlier this week. I really don’t think the show is all that good. It has its high points, but generally drags through the second act until the sewer scene. The sewer scene itself is only interesting for the spectacle of the fog and rising candles until you get to the confrontations at the end. Yet this is what people will pay to see so that is what is programmed.

I took a look over at the McCallum Theatre to see what constituted good stuff. Right on the home page was Lord of the Dance which has often been the butt of many a joke. Really the strength of that show is mostly the spectacle of seeing 40 people Irish step dance. Having grown up in a highly concentrated Irish community, I can tell you under normal circumstances, watching that sort of dance gets pretty old fast. Honestly, more power to Michael Flatley for finding a way to make it interesting.

It is clearly something people want to see, too. Lord of the Dance and performances of Broadway shows are the only shows scheduled to run five nights. (Correction, I see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme run longer.)

It may sound elitest and cynical, but I have sometimes despaired the fact that I have been involved with productions that are reinforcing the idea that a particular performer is talented rather than just easily marketable. All arts organizations go through that of course. They present the easily sold performances to help underwrite the better, less likely to be attended shows.

Often people know they are buying tickets to the happy, fluffy show with lots of wow and little substance. However, other times people may not be familiar with an artist but they know that the arts center has offered some truly great people in the past and trust that this performer is of that caliber.

This is the situation I hate because these trusting people come in and see a performer whose draw is more image than ability. They don’t quite like the show, but they figure if X arts center is presenting them, and the show was sold out, they are worthwhile and maybe they should buy the CD, etc. This sort of thing only reinforces the whole idea that mediocrity wears the same face as excellence.

In a couple weeks a beauty pageant is renting my facility. I got a call from a faculty member saying her friend wanted to see the stage. It turned out, the friend was the mother of a contestant who wanted to try out her talent piece on stage. The young woman is a figure skater but lacking ice is doing her routine on inline skates. Given that plastic wheels on wood is different than metal on ice she was wise to want to test the surface. (Especially since the stage is 30 years old, riddled with traps and not as smooth as it was in its youth.)

There are obviously some ice skating techniques you just can’t execute on a stage. However, it was interesting that the contestant’s mother was encouraging her to do certain showy things that she acknowledged would have disqualified her daughter in a skating competition. She then asked me if I knew who the judges would be in the hopes that none of them would know ice skating rules.

The question that came to my mind was–are you honestly exhibiting your skill if you would be disqualified in your arena of expertise for doing something simply as a crowd pleaser and not based on practical safety concerns?

It is a tough question to answer since in the arts breaking rules is known as mapping new ground, collapsing preconcieved notions and engaging in activities that will have people calling for your NEA grant to be revoked. Doing crowd pleasers is referred to as responsibly attending to the financial health of your organization.

Don’t you just hate it when your idealism recoils in revulsion at the same time your heating oil company fills up your tank for the winter?