I re-discovered an interesting story I had nearly forgotten about.

You may be grateful when you go around with posters for your event and businesses agree to display them for free. At one time in NYC, Broadway theaters would give merchants tickets in exchange for displaying posters. That practice contributed to a precursor of the famous TKTS booth in Times Square where one can purchase discounted tickets.

Apparently in 1894 tobacconist Joseph Leblang started taking tickets he got, as well as those he collected from other shopkeepers, and sold them at a steeply discounted rate.  While the shows may have initially been upset by him re-selling tickets he got for free, he was selling so much that the theaters began to send their surplus to him.

Today it’s known as The Broadway League, but in 1905 it was called the Producing Managers’ Association and Leblang’s relationship with them rotated between adoration and contempt. Most Broadway producers were personal friends of Leblang, but loathed his business model, which they charged lessened the value of their product. They made a number of attempts to run Leblang out of the business, but as Leblang went on to save a number of Broadway shows from closure he became an integral part of the Broadway show landscape.

Interestingly, both Leblang and the Producing Managers’ Association disliked ticket brokers because they contributed to ticket speculation which alienated audiences. It just goes to show how long the effort to stop ticket brokers from reselling tickets at sky high prices has been going on. Leblang was just beginning to see success with a plan to limit their impact when he died.

As Ken Davenport wrote in The Producer’s Perspective,

Joe took something that was handed to him, and turned it into a business. At the same time, he revolutionized an industry.

The irony is that a zillion other shop owners were given those free tickets. They all could have done the same thing. They all could have made that money . . . and more importantly . . . made that significant impact.

Opportunities are out there. You just have to keep your eyes open, and then act on them.

Does anyone know of a show, comic book, cartoon series, etc that is injecting classic literature/music/art, etc in a similar manner that Bugs Bunny cartoons had classical music soundtracks?

Every so often someone mentions how Carl Stalling injected classical music under the Warner Brothers cartoons. Or as in the case of classics like the Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera Doc, did their own interpretations of opera.

While people mention the cartoons frequently, I don’t recall anyone asking why there isn’t anyone clever enough to do something similar today.

Some years ago, I wrote about how Donald Duck comics sell 250,000 copies a week in Germany where the Disney icon is adored far more than in the US. Donald is much more erudite in Germany. According to the Wall Street Journal, thanks to translator Ericka Fuchs who references German culture,

He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”

When I was younger, I used to read Classics Illustrated which adapted literature into comic book form. More recently, I have read manga/manhua books and seen anime based on historic events and classical literature of Japan and China. While they aren’t completely true to the source material, (nor was Bugs Bunny, after all), they are relatively popular and introduce readers and viewers to the basic people and dynamics in an engaging way. Obviously it can be done and be well received.

Other than TNT’s loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s lift, I can’t think of any current attempt in this vein, but perhaps I am nothing thinking and looking broadly enough. To clarify, I am thinking more about ongoing, long term efforts to use content rather than attempts to revive and/or reinterpret a single piece of content on Broadway or in a movie.

I am off at the Arts Midwest conference this week, but as always have prepared some entries to cover my absence.

I thought it would be appropriate to revisit part of a report that was issued after the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention.  (I took a more extensive look at the report back in 2009. Some of the discussions are dated with the passage of time.)

The convention was attended by representatives of theatre, dance, choral and instrumental music disciplines, including those respective service organizations.  In assessing the opportunities for cross-disciplinary collective action, the report found that differences in language and culture were potential impediments.

Nearly 10 years later, I wonder if people still feel this is the case or have things developed to the point that the different disciplines can join in a more united front.

Were these really significant impediments to action at all and the will is simply lacking?

…our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals).

Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

[….]

Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “Being an executive director is an incredibly lonely job because you’re the only person in your community who has this set of challenges. You build your network. I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”