A little background. I have had a Facebook account since ~2011 but I only created it so I could access and control my organizational Facebook pages. There are a very small number of people I friended when created the account and I pretty much haven’t friended anyone since. I don’t have a Facebook connection with any of my siblings or my mother. I pretty much ignore anything Facebook suggests I might want to watch.
That is until about 3-4 months ago. There was a video of magician/puzzle enthusiast Chris Ramsay solving a three dimensional puzzle. I am not really into puzzles, but the time, effort and craftsmanship people have put into creating the puzzles Ramsay gets his hands on is worthy of admiration. After awhile I realized watching Ramsay disassemble and reassemble a puzzle in 40 minutes that I know would take me a couple days to solve has gotten me to pay attention to all the different perspectives one may have to take to solve a problem–though his default opening move is usually to spin the puzzle. (His videos are generally edited down to about 10 minutes, but he generally has a timer running next to him.)
Suffice to say, he is really, really good at solving puzzles. However, there was one he really couldn’t solve and subsequently took a circular saw to it to learn its secrets. Then he immediately felt regret at having done it.
He made a video where he admits he could present a number of reasonable explanations about why he cut it open, but that he would be lying. He expresses his regret for cutting it open and apologizes to his viewers for having done it.
It was all very heartfelt and honest. Even though he wasn’t reflecting on his own creative process directly, he dedicates so many of his videos to admiring the mastery of puzzle makers and magicians, I feel like there is something worthwhile in witnessing his apology. Actually, you could probably use this as a jumping off point for a discussion about the destructive ways in which a declared fervent love or admiration for something can manifest.
I found the video on YouTube and cued it up to the start of the apology. Feel free to start from the beginning to see how the puzzle was crafted.
I am guessing it isn’t any news that a lot of arts and cultural organizations are struggling financially and grappling with the challenges presented by Covid-19. I mean, there is a lobbying effort to have Congress provide relief specifically aimed at helping both for and not-for-profit arts and events organizations and spaces. A lot of service and trade organizations have partnered up to advocate in this area.
But you wouldn’t know it isn’t business as usual from the job postings out there. I am hardly the first to notice this. I saw someone tweet about it a couple weeks ago†. While I had noticed an increase in job listings over the last few months and took that as a positive sign, I didn’t read any of them because I am not currently seeking a position.
After that tweet, I started paying closer attention. I have to say, they are right. I have looked at about 40 listings that were posted since mid-July for everything from executive director for state arts councils and major cultural centers to part time jobs in rural communities. With one exception, none of them acknowledged that there was an epidemic going on and how that might impact job duties, or even more helpfully, how the board of directors had resolved to respond.
Honestly, it looks like people pulled out the job description file they used for their last search. The Opportunities & Challenges heading of one description listed delays due to jurisdictional issues between government entities, but apparently the epidemic won’t hinder anything.
By the way, the one group that did acknowledge the operating environment had changed was Children’s Theatre of Charlotte which wrote:
CTC is facing the current economic challenge with resiliency and innovation. In 2020-21, CTC will mount an entirely virtual season with four productions: The Velveteen Rabbit, GRIMMZ Fairy Tales, My Wonderful Birthday Suit and Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba. In addition, CTC will provide week-long mini-camps as a resource for families looking for creative solutions this school year, along with a combination of in-person and virtual theatre education classes in the evenings.
Nothing complicated about this. Hundreds of organizations have sent out this sort of messaging in press releases and social media posts the last few months. However, no one else seems to see the need to even awkwardly cut and paste out of a press release and into a job description.
I seems like right now, if you are looking to hire quality people, a job listing should implicitly, if not explicitly carry a message which acknowledges regardless of whether you are looking to get a job or transfer from another one, there is even more stress and anxiety associated with that process than usual. However, not only has our organization developed a plan which frankly acknowledges what is viable over the next two years, we are looking to add someone to a supportive team which will translate this plan into action.
Even if I were out of a job and extremely anxious to find another, I would question my potential career with an organization that failed to give a nod to overwhelming reality.
Likewise, the shifting expectations and activity associated with diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI) didn’t seem to be present other than generic statements about the applicant needing to be committed to DEI. These may be new additions to some of the descriptions, but they read as boilerplate from the past. There were a couple exceptions like Burlington, VT’s Flynn Center which included:
“Address systemic racism with thoughtful programmatic vision, embedded governance structures, dynamic staffing, equitable vendor interactions, and intentional audience experiences.”
and Dance/USA:
Recognize, acknowledge and address power imbalances and privilege within a membership that is diverse with regard to a role (e.g., dancer, choreographer, artistic director, arts administrator, presenter, agent) and locale, as well as broader diversity dimensions such as race, ethnicity, economic status, gender, disability status, gender expression, nationality, sexual orientation, and religion.
† N.B. – Nina Simon was the person who mentioned generic job descriptions in a Medium post she made. My recollection was that I saw it on Twitter and my gut told me Nina wrote it, but I couldn’t find the Twitter post–because I saw it elsewhere.
The researchers looked at influenza rates and sports activity from 1962 through 2016. They do a lot of work with their data taking into account geography (a number of New York teams that play(ed) in NJ), the entry of new sports franchises in that time period, the extent of public transit lines, impact of people gathering at bars to watch competitions, and the fact that some sports seasons occur outside of flu season, among many other factors.
What they found is:
The results show cities acquiring one new professional sports team experienced 4% to 24% increases in local influenza mortality across all age groups compared to cities without professional sports teams, suggesting that sports-related changes in social distancing patterns represent important influenza transmission mechanisms. These results are in line with Stoecker et al. (2016) who estimated an 18% increase in flu mortality among the local population age 65 or older in MSAs that sent an NFL team to the Super Bowl. In addition, local flu mortality fell in some years when work stoppages occurred in sports leagues, further buttressing the evidence that games played by professional sports teams make substantial contributions to local seasonal flu mortality.
My first thought was that we have been pretty blase about the potential impact of these large gathering on influenza mortality. Though I guess that was sort of clear back in March/April when people were saying Covid-19 wasn’t worse than the flu. There was already an acceptance that a number of people die every year. Perhaps that will happen one day with Covid-19 as we become acclimated to its impact.
One interesting thing to note – while there was an 18% increase in mortality among the 65+ population of MSAs that sent teams to the Super Bowl, in that earlier Stoecker et al. (2016) study they cite, there wasn’t an increase in mortality for the city that hosted the Super Bowl.
…suggesting that changes in travel patterns bringing large numbers of spectators to the host city play a small role in the process. This result does not completely rule out changes in travel patterns as a mechanism for transmission. It is possible that the mechanism works in the opposite direction: fans who travel to the host city for the Super Bowl become infected there and bring the virus back home with them..
One thing to keep in mind, and the study authors point this out, is that all large gatherings are not created equal. They suggest future research do a deeper dive into distinctions like size, age and amenities of facilities. Some sports are played in larger, younger facilities with better HVAC systems and more enclosed seating areas than others. All these things can impact the spread of disease. Likewise, some of these facilities also host concerts and other events with large attendance. Different activities spread disease at varying rates even if they are held in the same facilities with similar attendance.
Also, apparently not all work stoppages are created the same. Flu mortality fell during the 1982 NFL and 2011 NBA stoppage, but there was no impact from the 2004 NHL work stoppage. They theorize fans engaged in substitute activities which exposed them to the flu.
So overall this some clearer information verifying for arts organizations, who I suspect are already doing pretty well at proceeding with caution, the importance of paying attention to the attendance and spacing at your events.
This past weekend the Macon Film Festival held one of their few live screenings of this year in my theater. (The rest of the festival content is being streamed.) They showed The Sound of Identity, a documentary about the first opera performance by a trans person in the U.S. The singer, Lucia Lucas, is an American living in Germany who was invited to perform Don Giovanni for Tulsa Opera in their 2018-2019 season. The angle they were taking is that Don Giovanni is a master of disguise and uses that in the process of his seductions.
The movie is basically what you want a film on this subject to be. Despite the PR text about Oklahoma being one of the reddest parts of the United States and the artistic director, Tobias Picker’s line in the trailer about potentially needing to resign, the socio-political elements of Tulsa never factor in. (They do have some fantastic shots of the city.) The movie could have happened anywhere, it just so happens Tulsa invited Lucas first. Similarly, the general approach of the movie was that this was a production of Don Giovanni where the lead just happened to be a trans person.
Because in fact, the movie is really about us –the arts profession. I am not alone in feeling this. I had a conversation with my marketing director and she remarked, unprompted, how much the movie was about arts administration. The biggest conflicts arise from things we deal with every day regardless of what the show is and who is performing. Their bad dress rehearsal moment is when the singer playing Leporello, a major part, gets sick and the assistant director does the blocking while the guy playing Commendatore sings the part, all of which makes it difficult for Lucas to synch up properly.
This is actually a good movie to show people who aren’t familiar with mounting a production because there is a lot of detail, but very little technical jargon. Though certainly I may be assuming a lot of shared basic knowledge from my long career in the arts.
Pretty much everything we discuss about running an arts organization is in this movie. The whole opera is dying and tickets only cover a portion of the $500,000 cost it takes to mount a production conversation occurs. (Their revenue goal was $120,000. We never hear the final tally, but sales were at ~$70,000 a few weeks out.)
Lucas and the artistic director have a conversation about how a trans person in the lead will attract a new audience and some of those they talk to say that is the reason they are attending. (With one guy it seemed pretty clear he didn’t anticipate coming back for other productions.)
There is a discussion about the need for board diversity. A representative for Tulsa Opera touts the board diversity, but the interviewer actually says he has to push back on that statement because the board of 30-50 (per the movie) has only two people of color. The representative backpedals a little saying there are a large number of homosexuals on the board.
There is a fair portion of the movie associated with promoting the production which illustrates just how much time is involved and how difficult it can be to do it well.
Between the organization and Lucas’ own drive, the singer is shown doing a lot of social gatherings. That comes up as a potential problem in a conversation with the director when Lucas says she isn’t feeling the guidance the director is giving with a particular song. The director says Lucas needs to conserve her energy and not do so many public appearances that she feels drained during rehearsals.
Lucas also prints up promotional postcards on her own dime and goes out to a park to hand them out. The artistic director accompanies her, but isn’t happy with what is happening. When they interview him alone, he says something akin to “I don’t want to characterize it as a fiasco, but it was sort of a fiasco.”
There was a moment in a restaurant that made me cringe a little where Lucas and the artistic director are eating and strike up a conversation with one of the restaurant staff. They tell her they are doing Don Giovanni and ask her if she knows the show. The staff member says she hasn’t heard of it and then Lucas says, “well here is the score.” Then they end the conversation telling her to tell anyone who asks that they are doing the opera. I didn’t feel like that exchange advanced the staff person’s knowledge or incentive to attend much at all.
Which is not to say that Lucas wasn’t able to have constructive conversations about the opera or her career because she was shown chatting at least a half dozen social gatherings. Near the end of the movie, she says she wants people to leave the opera hating Giovanni, but also loving him, but hating themselves for loving him because he represents misogyny and sexual predation in an extreme. Something like that would get people wanting to know more.
Ultimately, there is a scene where Lucas says she has been told that it is not her job to worry about how well the show is selling and has been asked to scale back her activities.
You are probably getting the sense that there is very little sensationalism about the lead in this opera being a trans person. So much of the movie is pretty run of the mill as far as productions go, but also relatable for people who aren’t in the arts world. Lucas has been a huge video game fan since she was younger. We see her playing video games while rehearsing in her room as a way to disconnect her brain. She also draws a parallel between being able to play Magic: The Gathering online versus playing in person to the experience of watching arts online being no substitute for experiencing it live in person.
There is a section where Lucas and the artistic director, Tobias Picker, are playing a Mario Brothers game where Picker talks about the challenges of his career as a composer and being married in the Supreme Court by Ruth Bader Ginsberg who is a fan of his work. The conversations between Lucas and Picker are some of the best moments of the movie.
The director of the opera, Denni Sayers, has some good moments waxing philosophical about art and celebrity–kids today want to be famous, but can’t answer when you ask what they want to be famous for when there are so many things to be involved with from politics, racial justice, environment, science, arts, etc.
As I said, the movie is really about arts organizations and the environment in which they operate. If you have an opportunity to see the movie, I think you will enjoy it. Right now it is playing a few film festivals, but the producers alluded to an ability to stream it that will be announced soon.
"Though while the author wishes they could buy it in Walmart..." Who is "they"? The kids? The author? Something else?…