You occasionally will read a story about organizations going through Founder’s Syndrome where the continued involvement of an original founder or group of founders of an organization are inhibiting growth and evolution.

What I had never heard about, until fairly recently, was a case* where the decision to form a non-profit corporation resulted in the formation of a board that acted the shrink the organization rather than work to expand it. I was wondering if anyone has come across similar instances.

What I chalk it up to is poor board recruitment. Even though the board is apparently comprised of many successful business people with excellent social connections, I have wondered if they weren’t properly briefed as to their role as board members.

The back story is this. A guy I have been acquainted with for a number of years had a little performance troupe that was modestly successful with the infusion of a lot of love and energy and money, but he wasn’t reaping what he sowed. When last I saw him, things were growing to a point where he needed more help and funding to continue and he eventually made the decision to incorporate as a not-for profit.

To some extent, his decision was a good one. He had no desire to micromanage and turned over many responsibilities to his board. The board’s connections brought greater recognition and funding to the organization. He is still working his butt off, but at least the burden he bears is somewhat less.

What is rather perplexing though is that the board is urging him to roll back his activities to approximately the place it was before they were recruited. My friend seems pretty much resigned to the fact that it was his decision to subsume his will to that of the board. Indeed, it seems the board is of the same general mind and there is little chance an opposing faction sharing his sentiments will emerge. The good news, I suppose, is that there is great stability and little rancor.

What also seems strange is that the board seems to be acting unusually conservative so early in its organizational life cycle.

I almost wonder if the board members fully comprehend the whole funding concept for non-profits. From what I can tell, they seem rather risk averse to the necessity of looking to unpredictable sources like grants and donations to make up for earned income shortfalls. I think they may proprose limiting activities as a way of limiting deficits.

My friend talks about how young and energetic the group is in administrative, advocacy and event planning roles. I wonder if the group suffers from not having older heads who have experienced fiscially tight times on non-profit boards. From what I can tell, the organization hasn’t experienced any significant losses at the end of their fiscial years.

I think my friend is caught in a bit of a quandry. He has essentially given up control of a brand he established to other people who had no hand in creating it. He is frustrated that the organization hasn’t grown to reach as many people as much as he dreamt it would when he decided to incorporate. However, I think he finding it easier sleeping at night now that someone else is worrying about finances and his own savings are no longer vulnerable.

I was curious to know if anyone had come across a similar situation or had some advice on how to productively effect change. Patience may see the board grow more comfortable or transition favorably as terms expire but there is no guarantee a passive approach will be successful.

*Some non-critical details have been changed to obscure identities.

In response to a postscript I made yesterday on the entry from the day before, Michael Clark asks:

Copyrights are such an “interesting” problem. For community theatre, would still photos of the final set and performers be subject to the whims of the copyright holder of the playwright? Or of the designers for that show? Do you know of a good (or bad) web site that details some of the copyright issues for live theatre?

It is a good set of questions. While I did work for a play publisher and filled out tons of copyright forms, I don’t know of any website that specifically deals with the copyright issues of live theatre. There are a few good ones that deal with copyright in general. The one here deals with visual, audio and digital topics in an easy to understand manner.

In answer to Michael’s specific questions: The playwright really doesn’t have a lot of interests vested in the use of still photos provided you have paid for the performance rights. It might actually be more accurate to say while there are some instances a playwright might have cause for complaint, you are more than likely going to come up against costume and set design issues first. Audio and visual recordings on the other hand, because the action is driven by the playwright’s work will usually require additional permission from the playwright or agent.

In the example Michael gave, the set design is protected by copyright. Costume design is a little tougher according to the United Scenic Artist’s website on copyright. (The link talks about the famous case that established that set design is copyrightable, along with some other design related cases, if you are interested.)

In the case of a photograph, you may need permission of all the people in it to use the photo. Actors’ Equity has guidelines about the use of their member’s images for publicity and at what point additional permission (and payment) needs to be sought. With the advent of viral video like YouTube as a common way to promote shows, I have no idea if the restrictions have or will become looser or stricter. Don’t make the mistake of thinking just because people aren’t members of a union they don’t enjoy protections.

Be aware that with a photo, you need the permission of the photographer to reproduce it. Many photo labs including your local Walmart and Costco will often ask for a signed form if photos look like they are professionally done or if the group in the picture appears to be professionals.

The same is true with video recordings. You not only need clearance from the performers, the designers, the show director and whomever wrote the material being performed, you also need permission from whomever filmed it in order to have it broadcast and reproduced. This is less a factor if you are filming with the intent of broadcasting and everyone involved knows and has signed off on it. But if you decide you want to do something with the footage shot by the kid who has been fooling around with his video camera for the last week, you’re going to need his permission.

With photos and video the choices for lighting, composition, angles, etc all contitute unique artistic decisions which are copyrightable. And every work, once completed is considered copyrighted even if one hasn’t formally filed for it. However, it is easier to defend your copyright if you have filed and created a notice.

Now if you decide to edit raw footage into a commercial, you need the editor’s permission too, because his/her decisions about cuts, transitions, ordering, etc all belong to him/her. You go to have your tape transferred to a format your local television station can use and the lab will definitely ask for clearance forms.

Now if you are organized, you will have let your actors and designers know that at some point during the rehearsal and performance process their work will be used in X formats to promote the show through Y channels and get their permission to do so. You will also get agreements with the folks who are recording, filming and editing that makes it clear what they produce is going to be transmitted by Y channels as well.

You should note, though, that unless the person is an employee of your company, you must have a contract with the creator of a work that specifically says it is a work for hire, else you do not have copyright on the material.

So if you hired someone to shoot footage for a commerical and then later decided to make a retrospective video with snippets from shows over the last 25 years, the person who shot the footage could deny you permission to use it even though you paid him to do the job.

If it is starting to seem like it is not worth trying to promote a show with any work you don’t produce yourself, you begin to see why lawyers get paid a lot to navigate these topics and sue you if you run afoul them. This is EXTREMELY general and not meant to spare the cost of hiring a lawyer. There are a lot of exceptions and nuances. I have seen visual artists specify how their works will be displayed and cared for in a work for hire contract. Such contracts shouldn’t be seen as a way to secure carte blanche to do was you wish with someone’s work.

That said, what really allows the world to keep turning freely is that despite the high profile cases about copyright and intellectual property offenses, most people readily give tacit permission for reasonable use of their image and performance. Of course, this is more true in community theaters where a person’s image, performance or designs aren’t necessarily their livelihood.

I have been rather busy lately and I fear the quality of my blog entries has been suffering. I am helping to produce a world premiere piece that will debut in 3 weeks so right now I am embroiled in program book layouts, marketing and donor reception planning. Since I won’t make a cent from any subsequent touring it might do, I don’t feel any conflict promoting it a bit here.

I do feel a little conflicted though about the fact the show is based on a Hawaiian legend after I have bemoaned the lack of originality in new shows these days. On the other hand, there aren’t any major works outside of Children’s Theater shows based on Hawaiian myths so the stories are due a little recognition. Second, the style of the performance pretty much requires it be a traditional story.

Also I am damned proud to be associated with it. We filmed a commercial two weeks ago and I was astounded at how far along the show was at 5 weeks out.

The story itself is pretty recognizable. Two lovers of different classes are transformed into flowers for engaging in a forbidden relationship. These particular plants, the Naupaka, only bloom in semi-circle flowers so the tradition is to get a flower from the mountains and a flower from the seaside and bring them together to form a full bloom.

The execution of the show is the interesting part. We are billing it as a contemporary Hawaiian opera because it has that feel and scope and will be rendered entirely in Hawaiian with English supertitles. There is a lot more dance and movement than you will find in opera. The dance encompasses modern, ballet and pōhuli.

Pōhuli refers to hula inspired dance. Because of the great respect the company has for the traditional Hawaiian dance form, they are very clear about the fact that they do not do hula. An eminent Hawaiian scholar chose the word pōhuli, which actually refers to a new shoot on a banana plant, as the term to use for hula inspired off shoots.

The musical elements are a mix of traditional and contemporary as well and includes Hawaiian slack key guitar, flamenco guitar, violins, bass alongside the traditional ‘ipu heke and chanters.

I will tell you right now. Hawaiian chant will give any other language a run for its money in opera when it comes to creating a powerful mood or atmosphere. The hair on your arms will stand up when some of the adepts perform. If anyone was at Wolf Trap this past weekend to see Halau o Kekuhi, you can probably attest to this fact.

The set will be very contemporary with flowing fabrics and projected images creating time and place to make the set easily tourable.

If you are interested in learning more you can check out our website which includes set sketches. Wait about a day and we will have an informational guide available for download about the Hawaiian cultural elements present in the show.

Via Salon today is a review of a book by Daniel Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music. It is an interesting sounding book about how music is essentially hard wired into humans.

Among the interesting observations Levitin makes is that:

“When a song begins, Levitin says, the cerebellum, which keeps time in the brain, “synchronizes” itself to the beat. Part of the pleasure we find in music is the result of something like a guessing game that the brain then plays with itself as the beat continues. The cerebellum attempts to predict where beats will occur. Music sounds exciting when our brains guess the right beat, but a song becomes really interesting when it violates the expectation in some surprising way.”

But the part that may be most interesting to arts folks in the music field deals with the vogue trend of getting kids to listen to Mozart in the womb. The music is actually recognized, though it doesn’t make the child smarter. The impulse to have kids listen to music if you want to imprint an appreciation for a certain type throughout their lives isn’t far off the mark.

“Studies suggest that we start listening to and remembering music in the womb…Humans prefer music of their own culture when they’re toddlers, but it’s in our teens that we choose the specific sort of music that we’ll love forever. These years, Levitin explains, are emotional times, “and we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to ‘tag’ the memories as something important.”… Consequently it’s in our teens that we’re most receptive to new kinds of music (in much the same way it’s easier to learn a new language when you’re young than when you’re old).”

So there you have it. Symphony outreach programs should be structured to allow teenagers to make out to classical music or engage in some other activity rife with emotional opportunities and they will be well disposed toward the music for life. Though if we have learned anything from A Clockwork Orange, it is that a teen’s love of classical music doesn’t guarantee a well-adjusted member of society.

While I don’t expect symphonies would ever sanction “Make Out to Mahler” sessions, having outreaches in a comfortable environment might go some distance toward engendering positive feelings for classical music. Unfortunately, this probably rules out school auditoria and intimidating symphony halls. The concert hall lobby next to the coffee bar might be nice though.

I vaguely remember hearing about this program some time ago, but thanks to NYFA’s Current news letter, I have been reminded about the artist reality show, ArtStar. NYFA features an article by one of the contestants of the show which never got picked up by any network. So unless you had the Voom satellite service, you probably never saw it.

The article implies the episodes might be web and podcast so I figured I would promote it a little in the hopes of generating some inertia in that direction. From what I have read, there have been a number of blogs who have covered the show. But if you are like me, you haven’t read those blogs so I figure I am helping reach a larger audience. Despite some criticism about the show, I would imagine it would still be interesting to watch and perhaps use as inspiration for bigger and better programs in the some vein.

What makes the show worthy of being view rather than the multitude of other reality shows out there? Well for one thing, the show apparently takes the novel approach of not generating conflict and tossing people off each week. Although the original intent was apparently to identify a single artist who would have a solo show, Zachary Drucker writes in the Current article that the entire group was granted a show.

A review of the show I found on Slate felt that the lack of competition and in many instances, lack of clear goals for each task, tended to make the show muddled and a little boring. A Wikipedia entry on the show mentions that some feel the show “should have been billed instead (and produced) as an art documentary.”

I guess the show doesn’t exactly qualify as a reality show anyway since the artists don’t have to compete tooth and nail with each other as they do in real life. But to my mind, the whole project is a worthy one, whether it was ever filmed or not, because it provided artists with an opportunity to work collaboratively and receive critiques from established artists without the anxieties the real world entails.

Recently I have come across a situation which really underscores why it is so important to be sensitive about how the way you talk about your art is perceived by people who are not familiar with it.

For the first time in a long time, a couple sections of the Acting I courses are really under enrolled. One theory attributes it to the extremely low unemployment in the state. In an attempt to attract more students to the classes, the drama department put signs up all over the campus, some of them saying “Give Your Brain a Break, Take Acting.”

Now I understand the point of the posters. The class has you getting up and moving around. One of the key steps to acting well is not to over analyze or allow your ego to edit what you do. On the other hand, preparation involves a lot of hard work. There are so many intangibles involved, studying harder doesn’t necessarily improve you.

What the students see on the poster is–easy class. I know this is already the case thanks to an online professor rating site which had comments about the course being too hard for fine arts elective.

I am glad that the course does have rigor. I have stated my concern though that while the students who do enroll will be disabused of the notion that the class is easy, the students who don’t enroll but see the flyers will have a false impression about acting.

Of course, a lot of people have an incomplete idea about the arts anyway. Acting, you just get up and pretend something, right? Yell when you are saying something important. Dance you just do like you see on MTV, right? Doing old style painting is tough. Can’t do a Michaelangelo. Jackson Pollack’s style is simple though!

Part of the problem is, if you are good at your art, you make it look effortless. Other part of the problem is that familiarity breeds contempt, as it were. Used to be circuses could sell themselves on the thrill of high wire and trapeze acts alone. These days it takes no less skill and discipline than it did to swing around 70 feet off the ground, but people are blase and want something more.

Most times when I talk about learning to speak to the uninitiated about ones art, I refer to language that might alienate. I suppose being too simplistic and lowering expectations is just as bad in the course of arts advocacy.

Appropos to yesterday’s entry I came across this article in Arts Presenter’s Inside Arts Magazine today. (minor registration of email address required)

Steven Tepper discusses the Creative Campus trend which includes the type of activities my campus has been involved with in the past and was trying to encourage more faculty to become involved with in the future. (While I mentioned that none of the faculty approached me yesterday, I should note that I had already gotten the ball rolling with faculty on 3-4 projects last spring and over the summer.)

University leaders are also beginning to recognize that fostering a lively creative campus is essential to attract and retain the best students and to prepare those students to thrive in an economy increasingly reliant on intellectual property and creative content. Moreover, there is evidence that students are looking for more “creative experiences,” opportunities to explore their own expressive capacities….

“…Today’s students are no longer content to experience education and culture in a top-down, passive way. Instead, growing up with a “do-it-yourself” ethos, students want to create their own culture, whether through blogs, writing and recording songs, amateur films, podcasts and other forms of art, entertainment and media.”

There is actually some money out there in support of these efforts. Arts Presenters with the Doris Duke Foundation is going to be funding a handful of programs with an eye to using the results as a template for other campuses across the country to emulate. My school actually applied for one of the grants. We had already started down the road to expanding past efforts so I was quite pleased to see there was some money in support of these types of things.

As Tepper (and Richard Florida in his books) points out, the creativity does not necessarily equal fine arts.

“It is also entrepreneurship and innovation in science, business and media. Within the arts, it includes the activity of architects, campus radio stations, multi-media designers and filmmakers. A lively artistic scene is critical to creative work in these other domains. But we must pay attention to how the arts connect to other areas of campus and to the broader conditions for stimulating creativity across the curriculum in multiple domains.”

I daresay, there is nothing to say that these efforts can only occur on campuses with fine art programs. Similar programs with local arts organizations, while more difficult to achieve than with on campus departments, can only serve to strengthen the perceived value of both entities in the community.

I took advantage of the college convocation scheduled in the theatre today to address the professors and suggest ways in which performances in the theatre might be used as anchors for classroom instruction and other activities. My unit is not organized under any academic division so I don’t get a lot of group interaction with faculty. But there they were all gathered in my lair. What more could I ask for?

Last year I worked with two literature professors on a series of events connected to the 400th anniversary of the performance of MacBeth. We presented MacHomer, a really fun show where one man channels the voices and personalities of the Simpsons performing the Shakespeare play. Then we followed with screenings of Orson Welles’ MacBeth and Akira Kurasawa’s Throne of Blood. Finally, we had an evening where student presented projects in the courtyard and students and faculty performed scenes from MacBeth and music from Elizabethean times.

I made suggestions of similar connections with shows this season. Some of the performances have clear associations with botany, astronomy, literature, language arts, music, cultural heritage so it was fairly easy to suggest. I reinforced the point that instruction topic and the performance don’t necessarily have to coincide but that the faculty could use it as an anchor for discussion throughout the semester.

Alas, no one approached me with any ideas for connections during the breaks. I did get to do some additional evangelizing about some other arts organizations during those periods though. I promised to send some additional information out with pictures to the campus faculty email list so they haven’t escaped me yet!!!

One of the other things I specifically mentioned (and do so again here so you can go out and make the same point) was that theatres are essentially big illustrations of practical applications of physics. We deal in properties of light, additive and subtractive color, focal lengths of lenses, calculation of wattage on circuits, rigging of pulleys and counterweights.

If ever a student asked, what will I ever need this for. It is easy enough to point out that even if you never have ambitions to work in theatre, film/tv and dance clubs where theatrical equipment is used, there is always careers such as commercial electricians, engineers, construction et. al. where the skills learned in physics and performance tech classes can be employed.

In the course of allowing people to rent our facility, my staff and I come across groups who have varying concepts of what successfully producing their event will entail. We have meetings with all our renters a month or so out from their event to assess their needs and often make suggestions even before the meeting about having a stage manager and production designer.

We very specifically qualify what we mean by these terms. More often than not, even people who claim to have produced events for nigh on two decades don’t seem to understand how important organization is to the success of their event. Today at a staff meeting we were discussing a recent event where a guy was introduced to us as the production stage manager at the advance meeting, asked the questions a person in that position would ask, showed up on the load-in day and provided some direction as to how items should be assembled.

The day of the event he came in to prepare things—then left to do his regular Saturday night gig somewhere else and another gentleman we had never met before was suddenly running things. Though honestly, I think he just thought he was advising people of what would happen next. People were making what he said should occur take place when they thought it looked dramatic.

I tell this story not to belittle the folks who rent from me but to illustrate how valuable it can be to teach people the skillsets related to live events. I had suggested to my technical director that we look into occasionally offering seminars in live event planning. He opined that those we would most like to throttle would probably not avail themselves of the opportunity because they thought they knew it all already. I pointed out that if some likely candidates took our classes, we would at least be in the position of suggesting qualified people for our renters to hire.

The larger picture I wanted to touch upon was that there is a group of folks out there who would appreciate the opportunity to learn how to produce events well. It might behoove an arts organization with the resources to show additional value to the community by periodically conducting classes and seminars.

I have talked about theatres providing inservice opportunities to high school teachers who have been appointed drama advisor but don’t know the first thing about putting on a production. Since so many schools have eliminated drama programs, it is almost a moral imperiative for arts organizations to ensure the programs that remain get all the support they can handle.

In addition to teachers, other folks who might be interested are those organizing street fairs, festivals, beauty pageants, churches and dance schools with annual recitals. Even smaller performing arts organizations that subsist on volunteer help might be interested. Their lighting designer might a commerical electrician by day and got the job because he is least likely to trip the breakers but has little idea how to avoid making everyone look sallow.

Sure there are plenty of books out there they can pick up that cover the theory well. It can’t replace the expertise of those who design lights, organize and order the execution of cues, construct inexpensive illusions and know how to get everyone and everything (from audiences, to sets to performers) moving to where they need to be quickly and accurately.

In some cases, as the instructor can learn something new yourself. We just taught some fundementals to a guy who knew nothing about lighting design. Essentially, we gave him a series of looks that could be achieved with the house plot we set up. He then spent two night writing up nearly 600 cues which we programmed into our lighting board. Since he was doing all the music playback from his computer, he set up flags in the audio design software he was using to alert him to call warnings and executes for those light cues. Prior to this, the group would employ the less accurate method of calling cues based on the progress of the digital counter on the CD player.

We had never even thought of using sound design software in this manner. Now we are suggesting that other groups do the same with their audio design software. In some ways, technology is making it easier for novices to organize their own events but it has yet to substitute for experience.

So next time you hear someone say they are putting together a real simple show with 20 people, perhaps take them aside, ask them to tell you more and intone some good advice in the voice of experience.

I was perusing over at SmArts & Culture blog and read an entry Mary Ann posted about a well-intentioned, but not entirely successful attempt to “introduce young professionals…to arts patronage.”

It reminded me of another group of young professionals who have successfully raised money to send kids from NYC to arts and music summer camp. Giving Opportunities to Others (GOTO) raises money by essentially having a lot of great parties to support their commitment to send kids to arts camp for at least 3 years. They started in 2001 and not only have expanded the number of kids they send each year, but have also apparently expanded to Boston so they can send kids from that city to camp. (Judging from some of the costumes, it is probably best that the Boston people have their own parties. 😉 )

The organization is entirely volunteer run. That’s pretty impressive given the size and complexity of the events they are organizing. The other thing I thought was interesting is that while some of the GOTO members went to summer camp when they were younger, none of the NYC group went to the camp they picked to send the NYC campers to.

Bit of disclosure, I worked at the organization that ran the camp when GOTO started sending kids there. It is pretty hard for me to feel guilty about promoting a group that sends kids to arts camp by throwing fun parties. And while the organization acknowledges that many people are motivated to volunteer by the networking opportunities, there many more ways to establish a network without similar time commitments. Even if someone is entirely motivated to participate by a desire to land new business, I will bet that at least some of them having never thought to volunteer their time before will end up doing so for more altruistic reasons throughout their lives.

Drew McManus, the brains behind the Take A Friend To the Orchestra project, has compiled the contributions, (including yours truly’s) for the 2006 version into a book.

To purchase it, click on the button below:

I will be adding the button to the sidebar of my blog soon.

On a related note, as long time readers may know I have been occasionally checking in on the Honolulu Symphony since attending a concert as part of my participation in Take A Friend to the Orchestra Month. I am happy to say they have noted the new executive director hire as well as the new board membership on their web page. I have been somewhat critical of them on this blog before so it is only fair that I recognize positive steps as well.

I often read about how restrictive copyright law is stifling creativity, but recently I have begun wondering if people are stifling themselves. We have all heard or read the arguments against Top 40 music artists who sample the work of predecessors and about how Broadway and Hollywood are reviving, remaking or adapting works.

In a way you can understand how these people are slaves to whatever will have wide appeal so they can make money. Lately though, I have been seeing a similar trend in shows that don’t have that concern because the primary audience is family and friends and will show up and pay any price no matter what the quality. There is almost free license to trump predecessors with ones originality. Instead, they are borrowing heavily from them.

The trend is starting to worry me because it is beginning to look something akin to everyone expressing their individuality by getting a tattoo. (In many cases, employing the same motif they were impressed by inked on someone else.)

In the past year, we have had three beauty pagaents by three different organizations. Two of them serve as qualifiers for the same national pagaent so you would think there might be some competition between them to be viewed as the more prestigious or attracting women who go on to earn the most titles.

Instead the organizer of the second one (who has been in the business 14 years) asked the organizer of the first one for help which included all the choreography. The third organizer (also a long time in the field) asked us to keep the entire set and props from the second pagaent. Except for different draping fabrics, it will look pretty much the same as pagaent number two.

It is the same situation with a hip-hop dance group coming in soon. We had a taiko drum group use our orchestra lift to make a grand entrance emerging from the pit during a closed recital six weeks ago. This dance group is doing the exact same thing. The fact they are using the same taiko group is something of a mixed blessing in my eyes. They might be copying someone else’s idea, but at least the originator is getting credit for the performance.

In the month after this dance group performs, two of their rivals will be renting my theatre. In the past they have often asked or expected the same things their rivals had. (Including moving light effects which the rival groups rent since we have none in stock.) This is rather ironic since one of the groups splintered off from one of the others. There are some hard feelings, but not so much that they can’t be derivative.

I have been considering booking some touring hip-hop dance groups in because I know there is definite interest in the genre and I would get a good turn out. In one part of my mind, I am pretty sure I will also be influencing the next wave of choreographic choices being made by bringing fresh ideas in despite the available material on cable, internet, etc.

I just wonder what the base cause of this trend might be. Are people so afraid of failure, even in the face of a guaranteed sell out audience that they feel it necessary to mine another’s ideas? If anyone has some insight I would certainly love an explanation.

I am just finishing up Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. As we all know, he should pretty much be a patron saint to non-profit organizations for his lessons in frugality and thrift in Poor Richard’s Almanack.

One thing you may not be aware of is that after founding what was to become the University of Pennsylvania in 1751, he decided it was important to build a hospital. Since he was having trouble raising money, according to Isaacson he “got the [PA] Assembly to agree that if ‘2,000 could be raised privately, it would be matched by ‘2,000 from the public purse.”

According to Isaacson, he was the person who introduced the concept of matching grants to what was to become the United States. (Which by the way is one of the situations the studies I mentioned two days ago noted males are likely to be more generous.)

Why you ask, with a gentleman with such standing and influence in the policy as to have a hand in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution and the peace accord with Britain, supporting the idea of matching grants did it take nearly 200 years for organizations like the Ford Foundation to employ it as a funding scheme?

Well for one, political opponents felt the move was too conniving. I suppose it was because they didn’t believe he could raise the money and had tricked the Assembly. Franklin noted that knowing that their money would essentially doubled, they gave more.

Franklin himself referred to his innovative idea as a political maneuver so he might have felt a little uneasy about it himself. The success of his plan eased any troubled thoughts he might have had. “…after thinking about it I more easily excused myself for having made use of cunning.”

Like so many of the institutions, inventions and concepts Franklin had a hand in creating or developing, we regard the matching grant arrangement as a common tool for accomplishing our work. It is hard to conceive of it as being controversial.

I was frankly quite surprised as I drove around this past Sunday to hear a radio program on the business end of the arts. The program is a pretty new one for the local public radio station.

Called, appropriately enough, The Business of the Arts, the show’s goal is to shed a little light on the concerns organizations face that are mostly invisible to the public until there is trouble.

Financing of the arts is a mystery to most people. People complain that the cost of tickets keeps going up, whether it’s for the Opera, the Symphony, or the Academy of Arts. But if you tell someone that the cost of that ticket does not come close to paying for the event or exhibition, they are surprised.

Host Bob Sandla talks to representatives of arts organizations on Oahu that are attempting to be fiscally prudent and responsible while providing high quality services to their audiences. Bob and his guests discuss individual companies to pinpoint their specific challenges and achievements and explore the misunderstandings and difficulties they face.

I don’t know what the listenership is on Sundays at 6 pm, but I figure they may not be educating their largest audience segment. Still, it is really gratifying to see the program is on at all and their episodes are available online.

In the segment I heard, the host made sure the guest discussed where every percentage of the budget went, what things were and were not covered, what the goals of the organization were, how things were planned, what the dream situation for the organization would be.

I found it interesting. But then I am in the business, am familiar with the terminology and wasn’t really thinking critically about the effectiveness of the format and presentation because I was so grateful to have the subject tackled at all.

So if you think it is a good idea, go bug your local public radio station. If they are smart, they can turn it into a case for supporting the station as well. In an intro to the program I was listening to the station’s president talked about how the challenges the organization being interviewed faced were the same ones the station dealt with.

It has long been a custom to have music accompany fireworks displays. The 1812 Overture is probably the song most often pressed into this service.

However, I came across this bit on Slate noting that famed fireworks expert Takeo Shimizu used musical notation to plan his luminous displays.

The pyrotechnics expert Takeo Shimizu used a musical score to represent his designs: Each stave corresponded to a different firing location, and each note represented a particular kind of shell fired at a particular time.

A symphony of sight and sound indeed!

I set out to answer the comment made to my last entry with a comment of my own. But as I am wont to do, a short response morphed into bloviation and by the third or fourth paragraph I decided it was better as an entry.

If you haven’t already catch up with the preceding entry and join me in my answer to Heidi. (I promise, there is some wheat to sift from the chaff.)

Heidi-
Interesting comment and probably one that would take multiple entries to answer. The main concern I had when I wrote the entry you prove somewhat by being a UH Theatre grad living on the mainland. UH graduates students and they have no option to ply their craft but to leave or find a job in another industry and rehearse for Diamond Head and Manoa Valley at night.

That might be why the quality is so good–a large pool of well trained actors who didn’t leave when they graduated. I just feel bad that there isn’t even one company in the state with which dancers and actors can aspire to perform and be forced to go elsewhere because it is so difficult to break in to the company. Classically trained musicians at least have the symphony to gaze longingly at.

As for combating local perceptions. I think the solution differs from community to community. For example, what is the real scale by which shows are measured in Hawaii?– Las Vegas. For those who have always wondered where people in paradise go on vacation, it is Vegas. Before the recent inter-island airfare wars, it was often cheaper to vacation in Vegas than on a Neighbor Island. So many Hawaiians visit and live there that local cable shows are rebroadcast in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas definitely sets a standard much the same as Broadway sets the standard in other places. One of the tourist focused shows in Waikiki is Cirque Hawaii unabashedly modeled after Cirque de Soleil. I neglected to mention it in my post because honestly, I didn’t know it was an on going concern. I thought it was just an event that happened this past winter because I have heard no mention if it since. (I am guessing they focusing marketing on tourists.) On Maui there is a Cirque inspired show as well, ‘Ulalena. It has more of a local feel though because it employs Hawaiian dress and chant. (Don’t know if you were around when it started.)

But getting back to the question of how does one combat local perceptions that such fine work is par for the course. Ultimately, I am not sure you can or if is imperative to do so. If people are lucky enough to get good quality stuff cheaply and the volunteers are willing to invest the time and energy to maintain the high quality over the years, then the folks in that community are damned lucky. That is the power of the arts made manifest right there.

While I have certainly seen better than what Diamond Head, Manoa Valley and Army Community Theatre have produced, I don’t necessarily think there needs to be an Equity acting company or full time professional dance company (other than the hula hālau) for the sole purpose of bringing a higher quality product to the state. I am just really surprised that nothing has sprung up given the available opportunities. Though, as I mentioned I think the lack means the state exports creative minds and provides no incentive for such people to migrate in.

Ultimately I think it comes down to the value a community places on the experience. One of two episodes of Little House on the Prairie I remember from when I was a kid featured Pa making furniture by hand for the shop in town. The problem was, the shop owner could sell factory made furniture cheaper and the factory could make them fast enough to keep up with demand. He acknowledged that Pa’s chairs were much better than the factory ones but customers found the factory ones suitable for their needs and didn’t need such well-made chairs.

If people find the community theatre performances suitable to their needs because they lack the experience to discern between the quality of that performance and one at the local regional theatre, (or don’t think the disparity is great enough to pay more for the difference if they do perceive it), then the only option is to appeal to them with other criteria than performance quality.

In some respects, we should be happy that people are attending and participating in community theatre at all. My Little House example could as easily be applied to community theatre vs. DVD/Internet/movie/cable. This is not to say we should content ourselves with the successes of community theatres and count our blessings. We should always be raising the bar of expectations in every endeavor be it entertainment or education, (and if I may wax a little political, fuel efficiency and energy production.)

So I was sort of hedging my bets when I made the vague statement a couple days ago that the Honolulu Symphony was the largest professional performing arts organization in the state. Turns out my suspicions were correct and the symphony is, with a minor exception, the only professional performing arts organization in the state in terms of paid artists.

The one exception is Honolulu Theatre for Youth whose small company of actors heroicly stagger along supplementing little pay with night jobs. (Since most of the performances are school matinees.)

As poorly paid as the symphony musicians are, it is even worse for actors and dancers. In truth, it may be easier to make a living wage as a non-classical musician, visual artist (depending on medium), or luau performer than any other type of artist.

It may come as a suprise to people to think that Hawaii which has enjoyed record numbers of tourists (7.6 million last year, 7.5 year before) doesn’t have a strong entertainment industry. People can’t spend ALL their time on the beach and shopping after all, right?

It is true though. In terms of theatres you have the university based student theatres and amateur groups. A couple theatres have full time administration and production staffs but I don’t even know if there are any guest artists even performing under Actors Equity letters of agreement. (There has been a spate of news personalities performing in lead roles lately though.) The actors getting the most work are the ones on Lost and most of the regulars aren’t local performers.

The operas and ballets are the same. They bring in paid guest artists, but the chorus and corps are comprised of volunteers or students. A couple modern dance companies pay dancers a token on a show by show basis to acknowledge their talent and contribution but don’t maintain any sort of paid company.

There are a handful of presenting houses and bar/club venues of note and that is about it for live performance in the state.

There are certainly a fair number of things to do for people to be sure. But now that I have started to settle in to my position and have an opportunity to assess my surroundings, I have begun to wonder why there are no other professional performance entities other than the luaus organized to take advantage of the tourism and employing local performers full time.

The IATSE unions employ a fair number of people in some of the presenting houses (and on the Lost series) and there seems to be money to pay us evil administrators. Why aren’t the performers getting their due I wonder.

I am going to have to look into this a bit while I am not terribly busy this summer.

I am going on vacation for a bit in order to shower my nephew with adulation.

Those who wish to ponder my occasional brilliance can seek it in the blog archives.

With nearly 350 entries to peruse you can survey the changes in my thinking and writing style from the very beginning!

I will be checking my blog on occasion to thin out the spam of advertising in the comments section.
If you are moved to make observations they will appear on the blog within a few days when I have time to approve them and perhaps say something in return.

Starting a performance company/gallery of ones own seems to be a common dream of most students in the arts. Since it is graduation time I thought I would offer up this article on keeping the proper perspective from the May issue of Inc.

I enjoy reading Norm Brodsky’s column in the magazine because he is adept at employing interesting ancedotes to illustrate his point. He often offers advice to people seeking to start their own business. In this particular column he cautions against being so overly ambitious that you make your core desire unattainable.

One aspect of Brodsky’s article that interested me was his suggested conditions under which refusing to consider partnering was unwise versus those conditions when having a partner could restrict your success.

This is a subject I ponder upon often because I often see situations where people are letting their egos and desire for acclaim for their way of doing things limit their success by not partnering. So they labor hard while trying to leverage their limited resources and meet with limited results.

Some times this is a good thing because some concepts don’t warrant widespread recognition. Also, competition can keep people on their toes and striving harder. Sometimes it is just dumb.

Over the long weekend I watched the extended movie versions of the second and third Lord of the Ringsmovies. I also watched the “Making of” DVDs for the first movie which was actually twice as long as the first movie itself. Plenty of other folks have talked about the value of making of videos for the performing arts so that isn’t my purpose today–At least not directly. I am sure I will circuitously make the case for doing so somewhere along the way.

The thing that was most on my mind as I watched the “Making of” DVDs (other than the fact I want to move to New Zealand) was how speculative making a movie is. As I watched the producers, directors and designers discuss all the concept art, storyboarding, computer rendering, writing, modeling making, location excavation and manufacturing that went on for years before shooting even began all I could think about was the money that was being spent without any income being generated.

Not long afterward, I decided the movie could now probably single-handedly fund the arts in New Zealand by donating half the sketches and cast off paraphenalia to charity auctions and finance a new movie by selling the other half on E-Bay.

Coming from a world where making slightly more than you spend constitutes a successful season, it is difficult to empathize with an industry that measures their success as making three times as much as they spent. When you think that some of the money is going to finance movies like The Lord of the Rings years before the movie has a chance to make money, it is easiers to sympathize. (When drug companies make the same argument about developing medications to support why I am paying so much for a pill, I am pretty much unmoved though.)

Which is not to say that the chances movie studios take are bigger than performing arts institutions. In some regard it is a matter of scale. A $100,000 loss to a small theatre can be as devastating as a $100,000,000 loss to a movie studio. In a small organization the stakes can seem even larger because you have a more intimate relationship with the people you have to fire if you screw up.

If anything, for all their money and personnel analyzing costs, movie studios are just as apt at making stupendously poor decisions as an arts organization run by someone who has had no experience in the field. Miramax was going to produce the LoTR project originally and wanted it all in one movie. That would certainly have flopped in a HUGE way. Peter Jackson, the director, planned on doing it in two movies but fortunately some sainted man at New Line insisted it be done in three.

So yeah, if you haven’t surmised by now, I am a big fan of the books. I don’t usually watch the “Making of” portions of DVDs, nor do I in fact own too many DVDs. I don’t have much basis for comparison but one of the things that made it easy to like the production segment of the DVD was the fact that Weta Workshop where so many elements of the movie were created ran things economically. Two guys created all the chainmail for the movie linking and soldering something like 12 million links one at a time.

Obviously coming from a performance background I have a frame of reference that accords me a level of appreciation for the hours that were invested in creating items that appeared for 15 seconds on the making of the movie video and was unobtrusive in the movie proper. In some respects it is almost foolish for an arts organization to try to make a behind the scenes video to compete with the splendor of those connected with movies like the LoTR trilogy. (Although a 45 minute piece done by a theatre is probably going to be watched more often than the 5+ hours for the Fellowship of the Ring.)

The other thing I was thinking as I watched the movies is that if the trend of declining attendance at movies continues, within my lifetime I may be seeing campaigns advocating attendance of performing arts events that include movies. I’ll bet that just as people today argue that in Shakespeare and Mozart’s time live events were raucous affairs, people will point out that a similar environment existed in movie theatres in the early part of the 21st century and that the strictly regimented dress and behavior are unnatural and people should be able to wear whatever they want. (Granted, not a complete parallel with the current situation since many of the first movies in the 20th century had uniformed ushers handing out program books.)

Over a year ago I did an entry on recruited vs. elected board of directors profiling the interesting way Amazing Things Arts Center was approaching the governance of their organization.

I went back to their website to see how things were going and it looks promising. They have a good number of activities and a few classes going on. They have continued with their commitment to transparency by placing an application of a potential director in the governance section of their site.

One of the things I really appeciated when I visited this time was that they wrote to their membership about the possibility of moving in to a local firehouse as a new home. (I believe they are currently working out of a storefront.) I was impressed that they addressed the tough questions of safety in the downtown area. They followed by addressing the fact that the firehouse is in another community while the community they are currently in showed a lot of support in helping them renovate their location over the last year or so. The letter seemed pretty honest and devoid of much spinning of circumstances to conceal unpleasant facts.

At this point the only thing I would fault them on is not listing the names of the board members or administration online. It would help bolster the whole transparency goal if they did. Other than that, I will be coming back periodically to see how things are playing out.

As I drove around last evening pondering my entry on Cool As Hell Theatre podcast’s rules for actors, I began to see connections and implications associated with an article I recently read. Salon.com reporter Andrew O’Hehir did a book review of Hello, I’m Special by Hal Niedzviecki. (You have to either subscriber or watch a short ad to read the article.) The book essentially posits that there is a rising expectation by individuals that they are deserving and able to achieve far more than 15 minutes of fame.

“That’s his argument in a nutshell: Those of us who grew up in the post-industrial, pop-culture-saturated West (and a whole lot of people who didn’t) have been raised to believe that we are unique individuals with special destinies…

Stuffed with half-baked philosophies of self-actualization and self-fulfillment, we also believe that we are ourselves primarily or even solely responsible for reaching that destiny…”

Quoting auditioners at a Canadian Idol cattle-call:

“Anyone can become what they want to be,” says 16-year-old Brooke. “If you really want to make it there’s always a way,” says Billy, a 20-year-old house painter.

Even the 7,000 or so aspirants who don’t make the first cut refuse to act daunted. “This isn’t the last of me,” one rejected girl tells Niedzviecki. “I know I’m going to be a star. The only person who can make your dreams not come true is yourself.” To stop believing in your own specialness, no matter what the evidence, would be to violate the creed of the new conformism. Furthermore, if you fail to realize your dreams — the same “shared, colonized, implanted” dreams millions of other people are chasing — the fault must be yours…

The end product of the “new-conformist society steeped in pop,” he writes, is a solitary “citizen consumer” who is “passive, focused on the self, willing to work hard to buy the stuff that will make him stand out.” If his specialness continues to elude the rest of the world, he “blames himself and turns inward to therapy, image adjustment, altar consultation, yoga” and so on.

I actually read the exact same thing in regard to blaming oneself for not becoming famous in Time back in January in connection with the start of American Idol’s 5th season. (Subscription required)

The Salon review points out that people have worried about the issues Niedzviecki writes about for centuries already. I wonder what the impact the preception of easy fame might have on the performing arts and their associated training programs. I bet seeing a relatively untrained person go from audition to finals in the course of a few months has already seen a rise in people getting off the bus in NYC and LA with stars in their eyes.

There have always been a lot of people entering training programs with unrealistic expectations about their careers to follow. I imagine that there might be even more people entering programs thinking they are playing it smart getting trained. After all if the untrained can gain the support and adulation of the nation by making it into the top ten, imagine how much easier it will be for you when you plunk down $50,000 to get the best teaching, training and coaching.

I would be interested to know if anyone associated with a training program or even a performing arts organization has seen a rise in either numbers of students/auditioners/applicants, etc with completely unrealistic conception of how easily success will come to them. (I know educators on all levels have a variation of this problem with students and parents who believe unique specialness warrants everyone in class getting the same grade.)

I would extend the same question in regard to attitude/perception. Perhaps there aren’t significantly more people appearing on your door, but do the ones you are interacting with believe their route will be shorter with less dues to pay/shorter time performing for peanuts than they had in the past?

I wonder if high expectations and low tolerance for disappointment is going to rob the arts of some real great talent that doesn’t give itself time to develop and come into its own. On the other hand, if training programs can tap into the whole idea that failure is personal responsibility, they might be able to get people to apply themselves.

Though as the article implies, if they don’t succeed swiftly enough, they are apt to jump from remedy to remedy in an attempt to gain what seems to come so easily to the Everyman on television.