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All That’s Gold Does Not Glitter

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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.)

Return To Amazing Things

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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.

What The Future Brings

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I have been pondering the implications of my post yesterday on the status of arts organizations.

It seems clear that larger arts facilities may find themselves either owned by large media conglomerates or closely associated with artistic offerings over which these large corporations exercise influence. Large facilities may end up affliated with companies like Clear Channel and Comcast just as television stations are with networks and be guaranteed the exclusive right to present specific tours/exhibits in the region.

Smaller arts groups may lose access to these artists altogether, but gain other advantages by exhibiting flexibility. The limited niche appeal of the Professional Amateurs mentioned in yesterday’s entry may be a boon for smaller organizations and provide opportunities that hadn’t be available in the past. Museums for example, may not have large performance spaces but can certainly host a steady stream of mildly famous people each weekend while attracting attention to their collection. Perhaps a noted online director will screen his film to 100 interested people in the community this weekend and then a singer-songer writer next weekend.

Granted, some museums already do these things. But as the definition of concepts like the process by which one becomes an authority on a subject becomes blurred, so too perhaps will the idea that museums offer one type of recreational activity and film houses and theatres another.

Other than investing in technology appropriate for presenting art whose genesis is virtual, probably the most important element for success will be to include opportunities and floorplans that are conducive to socialization. If I want the experience of staring straight on at a performance framed by the square of a proscenium, I could watch the film or concert on my computer.

The impulse of organizations to add opportunities for socialization to attract younger groups is probably a good one. These initiatives might not currently be jibing easily with the performances with which they are associated. I have a feeling the socialization opportunities are here to stay and the format of the performances are what will begin to change.

Until technology is able to virtually replicate biological responses to environmental stimuli, exploiting the advantages of being physically present will increase in importance as the motivating factor for event attendance. Since the advent of broadcast media and film this has been true. It is just that the increased ability to direct one’s experience has started shifting the definition of what these advantages are. Right now I think we are in a transitional period where the validity of the current motivating elements is waning but the emerging elements haven’t become defined enough to identify.

New Cultural Divide

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Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper had an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education last week (subscription, alas, required) in which they offered two opposing views of what the cultural state of the US will be in the future. Regrettably in their opinion, both visions of the future are not mutually exclusive and will define the new cultural divide.

The first vision of the future is rather optimistic. As the cost of technology decreases and becomes widely accessible, the ability of people to express and educate themselves has been increasing. The authors cite British social critic Charles Leadbeater who feels the 21st century will be shaped by amateur professionals-“ProAms.”

Those pro-ams are people who have acquired high-level skills at particular crafts, hobbies, sports, or art forms; they are not professionals but are often good enough to present their work publicly or to contribute seriously to a community of like-minded artists or creators. Pro-ams typically make their livings in other work but are sufficiently committed to their creative pursuits to view them as a possible second career later in life.

A well-educated populace of amateurs who can converse intelligently with authorities of a field and perhaps even parlay their pursuits into a second career. Not only does technology make it possible for them to indulge their interests, but it enables them to cheaply disseminate their work to others providing for the development of ideas on a scale never before possible. What’s not to love about that scenario?

Well, actually, there isn’t a lot not to love about that scenario–if you are able to be a part of it. Like all incidents of cultural divide, the separation is mainly a function of the gatekeepers. The new optimistic trend they describe does away with the old gatekeepers for the most part because it allows people to make their own choice about what they want to experience, how long they want to invest processing the experience and in what environment they want to encounter it. The concepts of high and low art have less influence in this situation as do the arbiters of such things.

According to an article in the American Sociological Review by Richard A. Peterson, an emeritus professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, hierarchical markers of taste have eroded. Today people define their status by consuming as omnivores rather than as snobs. A new kind of cosmopolitanism underlies the mixing and matching of different cultural forms.

As an illustration, imagine an encounter between two people on the street: a classical-music lover and a lover of rock music. If you are asked to predict which of them is likely to listen to Latin music, ethnic music, jazz, and blues, who would it be? It turns out that the classical-music fan is much more likely to enjoy those nonelite art forms, according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts’ national survey of public participation in the arts. If fact, when you analyze the NEA statistics, the classical-music fan is more likely to listen to just about every genre of music. Today’s cosmopolitan consumer culture is not bound by old hierarchies.

The more pessimistic view of the future is all about gatekeepers. Noting the ever increasing consolidation of the media in the hands of fewer and fewer people, many are forecasting a future where the variety of voices one can encounter becomes increasingly narrow. The authors point out that this is not only true in retail stores where only CDs of a limited number of artists might be available, but also in the arts where “small and medium-size organizations are facing competitive pressures from the growing number of big performing-arts centers – cathedrals of cultural consumption that might bolster a city’s image, but that bring with them some of the same constraints endemic in the consolidated media industries”

The authors also point out that things are moving from a world where we are no longer purchasing but renting culture.

“A few decades ago, cultural consumption required a small number of pieces of equipment – a television set and antenna, an AM/FM radio, and a record turntable. Now cable television, high-speed Internet connections, DVD-rental services, satellite radio, and streaming-audio services all require hefty monthly fees. Even consumption that feels like a purchase, like an iTune download, is often really a rental…”

According to the authors the new cultural divide will be comprised of those who have the time, resources and knowledge to “navigate the sea of cultural choice” to inform, cultivate and share their cultural lives on one side. Those who lack these things will obviously be on the other side of the divide receiving their culture via tightly controlled media channels.

The authors don’t quite know how the developing gap will impact political, cultural, social and communal life in the future. They do ask the question: “Can America prosper if its citizens experience such different and unequal cultural lives?”

I personally don’t see that this question has any more validity being applied to the chasm they anticipate than to the divide that already exists. It might involve different segments of the population than the current one does, but perhaps through lack of imagination, I don’t see the emerging one being markedly larger or destructive to society than if the old gap endured.

Art. MMM..MMM..Good

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I have finally finished Joli Jensen’s Is Art Good For Us? The book isn’t really that long. The fact the library let me borrow it for 12 weeks sort of contributed to some procrastination though.

The short answer to the question posed by the title is, yes, art is good for us. However, it is not going to cure the ills of the world any more than studying karate, studying history and going to church is guaranteed to make us better citizens and people. Art is good for us in the same ways all these things, along with sunny days, picnics in the park and puppies licking our faces are good for us. They all have a hand in influencing us in positive directions, but none are guaranteed–alone or together–to make the world a better place.

Reading the book was somewhat like learning the stages of human cognitive and emotional development. As I read I felt as if I were reviewing the evolution of my own philosophy about why people should be attending the theatre. I could see that my own views were moving in the direction Jensen espouses.

One of the things I had never thought about was how much how we view art is tied to democracy. Jensen compares the views of Tocqueville, Walt Whitman, Lewis Mumford and John Dewey in this context. I won’t go into how art and democracy are connected in each one’s mind, but I will say that it was fascinating having never considered it and leave it at that.

There were four general philosophical view Jensen has identified artists as having between 1910s and 1940s. The first was Renewal-“new art is necessary for a social renaissance.” Second is radical view –art as a revolutionary weapon for social change influenced by the rise of Marxist thought. The third was the conservation view of the New Humanists-“art is a repository for higher values to be sustained, protected and judged by standards other than immediate personal or social effect.”

The fourth view Jensen identifies rolls the other three into itself. Respectively, the subversion view of the avant-garde movement saw art as “making things better by restoring the world, changing the world, or maintaining the truth of the world” by challenging the status quo.

While she identifies these views as arising at the beginning of the last century, we still see people cleave to them today. This seems especially true of the renewal view where art will provide a refuge from evil commercialism, make babies smarter and remove violence from our schools. Neill Archer Roan had a great blog entry on this subject back in March that I have been waiting until I did this entry to cite.

The book is fairly easy to read but if you only have time or desire to read parts of it, I would suggest the introduction where Jensen lays out her argument, Chapter 3 Art As An Antidote: The Mass Culture Debates and Chapter 4: Art As Elixir: Contemporary Arts Discourse. It is in Chapter 3 that she tackles the ideas that there is high art and low art, art that illuminates and art (commercial/movies/television) devoid of benefit and which validates the mundane.

I have always had a nagging feeling that positioning art as a cure for evils and enhancement of intelligence, etc did it a disservice. I had similar feelings about trying to define where the line between valuable and valueless art was. I could just never figure out how to logically argue my position. Or at least I didn’t feel confident enough to do so. Reading this chapter I have a better idea of how.

Part of my position I have already stated–art is like cereal. It provide nutrition for your body, mind and soul as part of a balanced breakfast that includes exercise, good schools, good healthcare, health relationships with family, friends and neighbors. When you go before a governmental body to ask for funds perhaps your position should be that you need funding as an integral part of the healthy mix rather than alone as a better, more powerful cure for what ails you. I blogged on this idea before. Check out the Ben Cameron quote. He says it best.

Another element of my position is no surprise. Adopting a view that art is uplifting and mass media is an opiate of the masses that deceives people into believing their shallow existence is infused with rich experiences is just plain bad public relations. Your disdain for people who place high value on mass media can’t help but be apparent in your interactions, atmosphere and advertising.

Of course, you can never completely eliminate a disdainful attitude from your dealings. You just need to minimize the negative vibe you give off. Everyone is incredulous about the absence of something in someone else’s life be it lack of: a cellphone, interest in Lost, addiction to Starbucks coffee, a MySpace account, et. al. A sense of exclusivity whets the appetite to belong. The maddening logic comes in that the environment must be inclusive enough to allow everyone to share in the exclusivity.

Yes I am poking a little fun at the current atmosphere. I guess it is my nervous anticipation that I will soon be labeled a freak for my conspicious lack of piercings and tattoos. It doesn’t make it any less true that people want to feel this way.

In Chapter 4 Joli Jensen points out some of the downsides to positioning art as a medicine for societal ills. One aspect plays into the medicine metaphor quite well in the form of the old adage that it has to taste bad to be good for you. The value of avant garde art has always been in its power to shock and challenge. Just as consumers are always looking for a more pleasant tasting cough formula, a good portion of the public doesn’t want to pay for art that is foul to their senses. Nor do they want to be told that they will be better for it. In a way, like Mother trying to force big spoon of cod liver oil into the mouth, it treats people like children.

There will always be an audience for avant garde art. Like the pain of tattoos and piercings, its benefit is best realized by those who come to it willingly. I was about to say that the audience for avant garde art will probably regrettably be small. As people come to appreciate tattoo art more there might just be renewed interest in avant garde works. Especially if someone can make a connection between being tattooed and an exhibit.

This blog entry, though not much longer than previous entries, has taken me a couple days to write. This is mostly because while I have suggested people read some select chapters, there is value in reading just about all of it. My copy of the book is bristling with Post-It notes marking paragraphs to discuss. I have been attempting to distill concepts and avoid summarizing chapter by chapter which would probably lead to multiple days of lengthy, boring entries devoted to the book. There are a lot of great things to think about so the task of informative compression hasn’t been easy.

In the interests of relative brevity, (relative to how much I just threatened to write), I will attempt to tell you why you should read this book. Or at least the intro and chapters 3, 4, and 5.

The purpose of Is Art Good For Us is essentially to tackle the logical fallacies, unsubstantiated claims and ill-serving reasoning employed in the pursuit of arts audiences and funding. In addition to the aspects I have already mentioned, Jensen tackles the whole idea of selling out and how commercial success demotes good art to trash. It is somewhat akin to the idea that it is the journey, not the destination that is important. Art is good as long as you are in constant pursuit of funding. Once you there is a surfeit, you have lost your soul. She quotes from a conference “The Arts and Public Purpose” that noted “audiences did not know or care if a play or opera was fiananced by nonprofit or commercial sources, although that distinction remains important to artists” (her emphasis).

In terms of changing the way the conversation about the arts is conducted, Jensen address the reprecussions and pretty much summarizes what is wrong with the current approach.

“If we gave up notions of art as social medicine, the logic of American cultural and social criticism would become unraveled. The arts must maintain their conceptual distinctiveness so that they can still be invoked as a fudge factor in criticism…”

“Invoking the arts as a fudge factor also allows us to avoid the hard work of directly defining what we value and what should be done…Current arts discourse allows us to be for all good things, and against all bad things by invoking the presumed good of the arts in opposition to the presumed bad of media, commerce and the marketplace.”

“Such a discourse has significant costs. It guarantees that our social criticism is vague, overblown, insulting and impotent. When we discuss our common life, what is wrong with it and what can be done to improve it, we need all the directness, specificity, clarity and compassion we can muster.”

The alternative path is encompassed by Dewey’s expressive view. It is an approach that includes many of the things I have already mentioned-viewing “arts as forms of social practice; as such the arts share the possibility of all human practice to solve problems and make the world better.” Jensen says “Dewey asks us to consider a work of art as something that ‘develops and accentuates what is characteristically valuable in things of everyday enjoyment.'”

If you are thinking that this view sounds a cop out that defines everything as art so that it doesn’t have to take responsibility for categorizing anything as art or not, I have to agree that I felt the same way. I can see the validity of the argument since I can envision how it can apply even to performing and visual art pieces that seem to invest the least effort necessary to make money. Personally the proliferation of lazily made art ultimately doesn’t bother me since it takes little effort on my part to turn my attention elsewhere.

Professionally is another matter. I am not quite sure yet how to shift my perspective and apply it effectively. When I am booking artists should I be selecting performances that I believe contain elements that the greatest number of people will deem “characteristically valuable?” I am pretty sure that it isn’t completely constructive if I program artists because I believe people ought to see them and despair that I am surrounded by ignorant louts when no one shows up.

If I invite a group that I am not sure will have wide appeal because I would like to offer people an opportunity to see something from the other side of the world, am I elitist because I readily acknowledge it might not be everyone’s cup of tea? If I figure there are enough people interested that I will be able to pay a band, provide my local population and the band an opportunity to interact and don’t damn those who didn’t buy tickets, it seems like a good thing. But would I have been a better guy if I engaged a different band with the potential of interacting with a larger audience?

When you choose one path you are inevitably discarding at least one other. I can’t say the expressive approach helps me judge if I am doing a good job any better than the other one did. Unfortunately, no matter what approach I take, my bosses’ judgements of the job I am doing does revolve around numbers.

Like most philosophies, Dewey’s sounds good on paper. Practical application is a little more tricky. In truth, I certainly need more time to digest and ponder all the implications of what he says. By most measures, he suggests a healthier approach simply based on the less antagonistic relationship with the public he espouses. It is a little dysfunctional to simultaneously despair that people aren’t attending arts events and disdain performances that enjoy the large audiences associated with commercial success.

If there is any criteria by which to measure success in Dewey’s view, it is the potency of the relationship that is developed. Art, Jensen says quoting Dewey, “needs to be acknowledged as a form of social relationship, not ‘treated as the pleasure of an idle moment or as a means of ostentatious display.'” It seems then the audience member has an equal responsibility to take the experience seriously and contribute to the cultivation of the relationship.

That about does it for the observations I have. As expected the book does a more thorough job explaining how Dewey’s position applies to the arts. Lacking the time to read it all, I suggest reading the intro, chapters 3-5 and the conclusion. 😉

Just Say No to Form Letters

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A plea to folks who might be tempted since I can’t say I know anyone doing this.

Many times granting organizations ask that recipients write to their Congressional delegates to make them aware of how National Endowment funds are being used. Often the granting organization provides a template in order to make it easy for busy arts administrators to get a letter off.

My plea to people is not to use those form letters. Even if you don’t think your senator or rep is ever going to read it, there are good reasons to send an original composition. My entry today is actually inspired by a form letter I received in response to my “NEA funding at work” letter. It was signed by an aide who said he would speak to his boss about my missive but the generic tone made me think he says that to all the boys. I could see why it might be tempting to send a template based letter if that is all you could expect in return. With that in mind, I thought it important to say Don’t Do It!

First, you shouldn’t do it because the granting organization put some effort into securing those funds to pass along to you so you owe them a little effort to help get the money next year. (Even if you just spent hair pulling hours filling out interminable final report forms.) It doesn’t take too many people in one district sending in letters before even a lowly intern recognizes that there is a template involved. The effort appears insincere and weakens the case for funding in the future.

Secondly, even if people aren’t reading your letters, investing the time writing something real helps you hone your advocating skills on behalf of your organization. This practice is doubly important for people who feel they don’t write well. It is good practice communicating in a serious situation and if you can’t express what is important about your organization to your senator, you probably aren’t doing a good job telling your story in press releases.

The truth is, even if you are getting form letters from your congressman, you never know who is reading them. If you tell a compelling story about why a performance was important to members of the community, you are often telling your delegate why the funding is important to them. A year ago I did an entry on advocacy after seeing Jonathan Katz from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies speak.

One of the ideas he communicated that I paraphrased was:

“…telling decision makers how helping you will help them. It will come as no surprise that public figures welcome any opportunity to maintain their position by helping their constituencies and increasing their visibility. Everyone essentially wants to be seen as doing good. If their help will help you to empower kids, then show them how it can be done.

People want to be loved so if they care about you or if you affect someone who they care about, then chances are they want to do something to sustain that affection.”

I know writing a good letter can divert one from the thousand other details demanding one’s time. The value in making you a sharper communicator in your advocacy and showing your delegates concrete benefits of the funding may ultimately be more worth your while than spending the same time pouring over balance sheets.

I’m So Very Special

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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.

Cool As Hell Actors

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I don’t have a lot of time for the entry I had in mind for today so I in the interests of doing something shorter, I point once again over to Michael Rice at Cool As Hell Theatre. He recently made a podcast about the 10 Laws of Being A Good Actor. They are certainly his personal laws and not always something your acting teacher will tell you. That is what makes them so great. You aren’t going to learn how to be a great actor from his 15 minute podcast. He makes some observations I have never heard anyone make and does it from the point of view of a seasoned actor smacking novices upside the head for being silly and self-absorbed.

This is not to say everything he says is equally good. His suggestion about breaking the 4th wall during an audition might backfire on an actor depending on how someone interprets his advice and how the casting people envision the proper way to audition.

His advice about preparing for and executing an audition is fairly sound–especially his point about not sabotaging yourself by apologizing or sighing about your performance. He does a good job of scolding of actors who aren’t flexible enough to briefly entertain other approaches and those who can’t graciously accept criticism.

The biggest thing Michael has going for him is the way he expounds upon his rules. He is fun, engaging and entertaining. Frankly, the biggest reason I keep coming back is to listen is his cool as hell standard intro to each podcast. (Though be warned his podcasts may contain language some might find offensive.)

Discerning Your Critics

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Ron Spigelman left a comment about a remark made in a story I linked to in my last entry. I was going to respond in a comment of my own, but the more I thought, the more my thoughts were turning into an entry.

The remark he took exception to was made by an opera student performing for elementary school kids who said “Hopefully, by performing for children, it will be a learning experience and I can take that away to perform for discerning critics.”

When I first read the story, I thought it was an unfortunate thing to say because of what it implied about children and their ability to make judgements about opera. And it played into the sterotype (perhaps deserved) that opera people are snobs. Children are discerning. They just use different criteria than adults. (See telling an important story vs. tattling, 3rd para. last week entry.)

The remark also reminded me immediately of an episode of the Bravo channel’s Top Chef show. One episode the chefs were told that they were going to prepare food for some of the most discerning eaters around–kids at a Boys and Girls Club. (The host used essentially those terms which is why I immediately made the connection with the CNN article.) The chefs were split into two teams and told they would be preparing competing dishes using monkfish.

Monkfish is not the most attractive looking fish as you can see from the preceding link. The producers of the show played on that by bringing one out, showing the kids and telling them this was what they were about to eat. As you might imagine, there was a resounding “EWWWWWWWWWW.”

The chefs thought about what presentation might be most appealing to the children. One team came up with “monkey dogs,” pureed monkfish given hot dog shapes and the other turned the fish into nuggets. As I recall, one of the teams colored their applesauce purple to make it appealing to the kids.

What put one team over the top was that they went out and interacted with the kids while they were eating. Only one member of the other team did while his teammates hung back viewing the interaction as pandering to the kids. One of them even commented something to the effect that she wouldn’t do the monkfish interpretive dance.

I admit there might have been a little pandering and politicking for the votes they needed for the win on the part of the one team. But chatting with the kids also served to help them get past the fact they were eating an ugly looking fish. In the same manner, arts organizations can help patrons get past awkward situations via interactions that answer questions and allay concerns.

Heck, as much as I don’t know about opera, I would rather attend a performance than to be asked to pick out an appropriate wine for a meal. A restaurant with an empathetic and patient sommelier is gonna see a lot of me.

Arts opportunities for school kids isn’t just important because it may create a situation where 30 years down the road they may walk in our doors. Kids are willing to talk a whole lot more about what their experience and what they do and don’t understand than adults are. In 30 years they will not only be comfortable going to events, they will be comfortable asking questions about things they don’t understand–If someone talked to them when they were young and encouraged them to do so.

I don’t remember exactly who the group was, but I once had a touring childrens’ theatre company come through a place I worked that did a great job with the Q & A session after the show. Performers like these folks get the same questions every show they do: “How come he was so mean?,” “I liked the feathers on your costume,” “What’s Your Name?” “How old are you?” “How do you remember all those lines?”

I stepped in during the last performance they were doing and a 10-12 year old girl mentioned she liked that one of the characters showed signs of turning over a new leaf at the end of the show. The company could have thanked her for the comment and moved on. Instead, one of the actors asked her why it was important to her that he looked like he might change after all the terrible things he had done. The discussion between them started to move into the topics of redemption and forgiveness.

The play was about bullying so I can see why the message that bullies can change their behavior and their victims should be forgiving might be important. What really impressed me was that the girl was asked why that bit of the plot was important to her and that she was given the power to direct the dialogue and state her views on how the world should be rather than the actors coming out with a blanket statement that it is important to forgive and bullies should try to change.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize why I was impressed by the interaction until afer they left so I never got a chance to ask if they always lead discussions in that manner or if it was a happy coincidence. I prefer to think it was planned, of course, and that they would have tackled whatever topic the girl felt was important.

Granted, it takes a skilled person to interact well with young people. While they are willing to discuss their views readily enough, getting them to do so without sounding condescending can be difficult. Just as the chefs had to find a way to prepare monkfish differently for kids than adults, artists have to figure out the best way to approach kids. Revising your approach doesn’t necessarily mean you are pandering or dumbing down your product. You can color applesauce purple and it isn’t any less nutritious and if you leave the cinnamon and sugar out, coloring it purple isn’t going to make it taste any better.

On the flip side, the questions kids and teenagers ask and the comments they make can provide insight into the general areas adults may have difficulty understanding but aren’t asking about.

Sing Out Danger

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Via CNN today was a story about how a cooperative effort between opera students at Southern Methodist University and Dallas Opera to bring opera and life lessons to elementary school kids.

The partnership goes into the schools with an opera called Red Carnations which deals with the dangers stranger pose as the story unfolds. The teachers are provided with study guides prior to the visit so they can prepare the students for the experience.

Obviously the point is to introduce opera to kids at a young age but I imagine there is also a hope that teachers will see the relevance of opera and the arts as teaching tools.

Though I suppose opera was the downfall of a teacher in Bennett, CO

What’s Your Story?

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I read an interesting article from The New Yorker this weekend courtesy of Arts and Letters Daily. At the time it was only of personal interest to me, but as it banged around my brain I realized it obviously had an application to customer and personnel relations as well.

Malcolm Gladwell writes a review of Why? by Charles Tilly which “sets out to make sense of our reasons for giving reasons.” According to the book, much of what we say to others depends on our relationship with them and the intent behind our statement. Many times what harms our relationships with others is the use of formula responses rather than telling our story.

An example Gladwell uses is a child telling his mother that his brother has taken a toy. The mother uses the formula response “Don’t Be A Tattletale.” However, Gladwell points out, mom doesn’t hesitate to “tattle” to dad about their son’s behavior. Nor would she tell her husband not to tattle if he complained about someone at the office. If the son tells his story to a friend, it is accepted and indeed might strengthen his relationship with his friend in their continuing dislike of the evil brother.

Gladwell also cites an example Charles Tilly gives in relation to marriages.

The husband who uses a story to explain his unhappiness to his wife-“Ever since I got my new job, I feel like I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had time for us”-is attempting to salvage the relationship. But when he wants out of the marriage, he’ll say, “It’s not you, it’s me.” He switches to a convention.

Like the mother who doesn’t deny that her son has been wronged but just wants to bring an end to the interaction, use of convention can erode a relationship with patrons and organization personnel. A box office clerk who tells a ticketholder that they can’t exchange or refund the ticket because “it is policy” is an example of harmful use of rote. Of course an expansive explanation might not be constructive either if your reason for the policy is “if we let you do it, everyone else will want to do it too.” Trying to elicit sympathy by explaining that your poor venue doesn’t have the resources to process both sales and exchanges for everyone will probably just result in a conspiratorial “don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone” or a plea to make a singular exception.

There probably isn’t a generally useful and constructive story to tell customers when refusing to exchange tickets. Tilly’s book points out though that you won’t use the same story or social convention with everyone. We all know the no refunds or exchanges rule isn’t absolute when it comes to long time subscribers or big donors and other people with whom we have established a relationship. In fact, when it comes to ticket refunds, it is the ticket holder, not the organization that is most often using stories to gain empathy from a shared experience– death in the family, mechanical failure or perhaps weather related complications.

The workplace offers even more opportunities for employing harmful conventions. Mantras of there being no budget for a project (often belied by senior people having things implemented), implication that you are a prole and aren’t smart enough to understand and use of buzzwords/phrases like “paradigm,” “synergy” and “work smarter, not harder” can have an alienating effect. These are pretty obvious examples so the challenge is to be aware of what subtler things are creeping into your everyday use.

Though it sounds like it, I am not specifically championing political correctness and being nicer to your audience members. There are plenty of other books and articles you can read on those subjects. In fact, if you read the article, you will note that telling your story can be far more manipulative than spouting stock phrases.

What I am attempting to be a proponent of, (along with using your story powers for good), is showing the sincere attempt to maintain/repair your relationships with your constituents. Practice open book management. Involve staff in decisions and in helping to create the organizational story. Instead of trying to get funding by mentioning how the arts improve math and science scores, find stories that illustrate this fact or other improvements to one’s life that the arts bring. Someone once told me “people don’t give money to organizations, they give money to people.” Yeah, its a rote convention, but it is applicable in this case because donors are more apt to give to people they trust and can believe will use their money well.

Until this moment I failed to make the connection, but a great example of the potency of stories can be found today on Adaptistration. Drew points out that there has been a lot of conversation on some of his recent entries well past the posting date. Two of the entries he cites (and an earlier one here with a long discussion that he didn’t) are all from his Take A Friend to the Orchestra series. I have been reading his blog for a long time and have never seen so many comments on entries, much less on such a concentration of entries as on the TAFTO ones. I really think this is simply because the entries told stories with which people could identify and then spurred discussion and debate. The conversations would have probably been longer if the entry appeared on a discussion board rather than a blog, the format of which is not terribly conducive to prolonged debate.

The third entry Drew cited today was not related to TAFTO but rather executive compensation. Normally, it might not be the topic of lengthy discussion except that it revisited the fairly well-known (among orchestra people and Adaptistration readers), long discussed topic of former Philadelphia Orchestra Executive Director Joe Kluger and his slightly controversial salary along with some contemplation of what his successor will/should be paid. Kluger’s resignation was announced a year ago. Yet, the story is apparently fresh and powerful in people’s minds and will provide a lens through which to view the Philadelphia Orchestra under the tenure of his replacement.

Long Distance Radio

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I had a meeting with my radio account rep today. We were just talking over how the past season went, what promotions were effective, what type of tie-ins we might do next year, that sort of thing.

One of the things I hadn’t been happy about was a web campaign I had tried out. I spent considerable sums each month to have a special page on their website listing my season events. I also had banner and skyscraper ads that popped up on the radio station’s homepage which lead to this events listings page.

However, there were a couple problems. First, every time a radio ad ran it told people to go to the radio station page. This was good because their site address is easier to remember for regular station listeners than is my theatre’s. Unfortunately, unless they got there at the right time in the rotation, they wouldn’t see the banner ads and thus couldn’t go to the special page.

They could always see the event listed on the Best Bets section of the website which was prominently positioned. Clicking on the Best Bets link would take them to my website though, not the more expensive page the station was hosting.

The other problem was that the special page and the banner/skyscraper ads were handled by the corporate office 5,000 miles away in Atlanta. When there were problems, and there were quite a few frustrating incidents, it could take days to fix. The worst part was that the problem would repeat itself the next month or next show. I suspected a different person in Atlanta was handling it each time. The Best Bets portion of the site was handled locally and I had few problems with it.

I mention this as something of a cautionary tale for others who may consider similar arrangements. On the whole, I think the special page was a poor use of my money. I had little control of when people would see the page and no guarantee they could find it when the call to action to visit the radio site for more info went out over the air.

People were guaranteed to find the Best Bets link to my webpage on a fairly consistent basis when the call went out. Because that option was more dependable and because I know I can control what people see on my website, I am going to stick with radio ads and Best Bet listing for next year.

I think the banner ad set up does have its uses. There were probably people who visited the radio station’s site for some other purpose, saw the banner ads and viewed the information about the theatre and upcoming shows. If I was leaving the same ad up with minor monthly changes or wanted a separate place designed specifically for the radio station’s demographic, it would have had some more value.

Because I needed to have it changed on a weekly basis at the height of my season and wanted people to always see my information when they visited with the intent to find it, the special page didn’t meet my needs. In the future, I might consider generic (rather than show specific) banner ads that lead back to my website as a tool to generate general awareness of my theatre as people visit the radio homepage.

In many respects, these issues solidified my belief that local control of information is much better than distant control when it comes to customer service. This isn’t even just a matter of the local vs. corporate office. There were a number of times this past season that I made changes to our website when I noticed mistakes or wanted to clarify an issue that was generating confused phone calls. I was often thankful that I could effect the changes myself rather than call a web designer to implement them as I had to in the ancient days of the web (1997).

Because you often had to pay a web designer, you might not make small changes or might delay the fixes until you had accumulated enough problems to make contacting her/him cost effective. The ability to improve ones public face numerous times a day is a small blessing with potentially big rewards in my eyes. (Though you may still want to limit your request for updates to once a day lest your web designer strangle you.)

Babes In Arms

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Came across an article today reporting the Rhode Island legislature is considering a bill requiring that breast feeding infants be admitted to theatres for free. The impetus for the bill was a mother who told her representative that “she was required to pay an additional $75 to take her child to a show.”

I found the link to the story when I came across a debate of the story on Broadsheet. The debate is interesting to read simply because the commenters aren’t necessarily those who visit arts sites and thus offer insight into the minds of potential patrons.

And it turns out that…most of the responses are pretty much what you would find on an arts related site. Generally the responses fall into a handful of categories. Some feel that if you are going to an event costing $75, you should know that audience members will insist on having no potential disturbances at all. There is also the view that exposing babies to loud noises, foul language and adult subject matter is inappropriate.

Some feel that mothers need to escape from home from time to time and should be trusted to handle interruptions are they arise. In opposition to this view were people who said they had never considered even tempting fate and did not ever attempt to bring their children to shows. And there were a couple people who pointed out that parents increasingly seem to show bad/lack of judgement about reining in their children’s behavior.

A couple people suggested that theatres build little baby rooms like churches have. The first thing that came to mind was that I didn’t know too many venues with the flexibility to knock out seats in a place appropriate for new mothers (not up a lot of stairs). They would have to be non-prime seats with fair sightlines where the room wouldn’t obstruct other seats (and was soundproofed like nobody’s business). The second thing that occurred to me was that if you have to watch a show through a window frame with the audio piped in, you might as well be watching television for all the experience of live performance you are getting. Of course, that is a matter of an individual’s perception.

A related thought that came to mind- I was wondering if there were any venues out there that charged people for bringing “babes in arms” for any reason other than to provide an incentive to leave the child home. Other than that and insuring the child that was supposed to occupy a lap doesn’t end up in a seat you sold to someone else, I can’t think of any other reason. I imagine that there might be other reasons so I am curious to hear some.

Finally, for those who hate cell phones going off during performances, Marc-Andre Hamelin has created the “Irritation Waltz” which you can hear here courtesy of NPR. (I believe it requires RealPlayer to play.)

I Know I Should, But How?

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As you read my blog and others out there that touch upon arts and technology, you will notice that there are a lot of suggestions about why you shold integrate technology into marketing, community building, transaction processing, etc., operations. The thing is, you might be left asking how? If you don’t have a tech savvy person on staff, you may never get an answer.

Unless you are reading Extension 311. I don’t suggest you innundate Greg Beuthin with requests to advise you on all your technology needs. Unless, of course, you are willing to pay him for his time. He doesn’t offer step by step instructions about integrating technology. (Well, at least not always.) He is the only person I have found at this point who offers some concrete advice about things to consider and pursue when attempting to use technology in non-profit settings.

Yesterday he provided some thoughts on what type of people should be given responsibility for certain tasks when a non-profit tries to establish an online community. He feels that organizations are apt to incorrectly assume that with donated equipment and volunteers the project can run itself inexpensively. People fail to accurately project the resources and oversight necessary for the endeavor. He lists a number of roles necessary for running such a community and notes which should be handled by an in-house person and which might be trusted to a volunteer.

Via his website, I came across Net2Learn offers resources like Blogging For Non-Profits a helpful page that includes, among other things links to articles like Top Blogging Tools for Non-Profits, How Can Blogging Help Your Non-profit and Top Ten Reasons Why Non-profits Should Consider Blogging.

Hmm, I see I am getting back to the topic of Why you should use technology rather than the How.

But before I end, I wanted to toss one last slightly unrelated link out there that I found on Extension 311– Theatre Without Borders. Granted, it isn’t too original a name given all the other Without Borders organizations . I do like the purpose statement on the mainpage quoting Michael Fields from Dell’arte International- “Theatre Without Borders is like a dating service for international collaboration. I think it is becoming an essential connective tissue in the global theatre workplace.”

Talking In Chicago

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It is only a coincidence that this entry like the one last week is about a theatre podcast. I only recently noticed that the Talk Theatre blog/podcast page had merged with Theatre in Chicago to become Talk Theatre In Chicago and wanted to explore it.

Not living in Chicago, I don’t know what other resources exist, but I have to think this site is set to become the premiere source of info on theatre in and around Chicago. There are listings of current shows, what is coming soon, a separate link for kids shows, news about theatre around town and the collected reviews for each show from the papers around town.

And there are the podcasts. What I like about the podcasts are the way they are presented to visitors. There is a brief description of each show and then when you follow the link for a particular show you have the choice of listening to the complete show or going directly to the news, reviews or interviews segment.

One thing that became apparent though was that it may take a little while for people to become accustomed to formatting their programs for the podcasting medium. The first podcast I chose to listen to was an interview with Goodman Theatre Executive Director Roche Schulfer.

Unfortunately, the start of the interview was reminscient of the conferring of an honorary doctorate by a university. The interviewer went on and on for nearly three and a half minutes reciting Schulfer’s bio. I actually haven’t listened to the interview yet because after a 1:30 or so, my only interest was seeing how much longer the dry recitation was going to continue.

I am happy to report that after sampling a handful of other interviews and reviews, the host reached the point of the program much quicker. My first impression as a theatre person though was that this l-o-n-g intro was not wise on a medium mostly utilized by people with expectations of more immediate gratification and shorter attention spans.

Podcasts in general and the Talk Theatre in Chicago website in particular, provide super opportunities for introducing and educating people with little experience all about theatre. You can visit, find a performance near you, read the reviews for it and listen to a podcast so that you can at least start to become familiar with theatre vocabulary and the way people discuss it.

But first they have to be interested enough not to skip over an interview because it starts out so damned boring!

I can understand why folks would want to give people their due and I concede that I often ramble a bit in my writing from time to time before getting to the juicy interesting stuff. I too have sinned! On the other hand, theatre people should know that exposition should be played out across the length of the play rather than clumping it all at the beginning. (Again, I too have sinned.)

The endeavor looks like a promising resource for the Chicago theatre community which has always had a great reputation to begin with. It would be super if other cities could adapt/expand on what they have done for the culture of their communities.

News for Presenters

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Just a bit of news for presenters if you have missed it. A few news items Association of Performing Arts Presenters has been involved in.

The first is the testimony that Yo-Yo Ma and APAP President Sandra Gibson have given to the U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform Committee about the deleterious effect visa restrictions have had on the efforts of U.S. presenters to bring international performers to the country.

The APAP site has copies of both speakers’ testimony as well as a Powerpoint presentation Gibson made and 14 pages of media coverage of their testimony.

There is some good news/bad news about visa processing on the APAP site as well. The good news is that as of April 1 all O and P visas for performers will be processed at the Vermont Citizenship and Immigration office. This is good news because Vermont has the reputation of being the quickest processing office–or did before all the applications got dumped on them.

It is important that you send your applications directly there because sending them to any of the other three offices means they will have to be forwarded on to Vermont which will only delay your processing. The Vermont station address is on the APAP site.

The bad news is that Vermont has been instructed to send part of their load to the California office which has the reputation of being the slowest office. Because you must send your application to Vermont, if you live in Los Angeles, there is a good chance your paperwork will be coming back for a visit quite soon.

It only add insult to injury if you lived in L.A. and mailed it to the California office only to have them mail it to Vermont who then turn around and send it back to California for processing.

The entire visa situation is a real big deal for APAP. (And for full disclosure, I had to cancel a show myself because of visa complications. So I am making a big deal about it, too.) They are actively soliciting feedback about any problems people have with visa processing asking people to email Jim Doumas, Government Affairs Director at jdoumas@artspresenters.org

Paula Vogel–Cool As Hell

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As much as I enjoy James Lipton Inside the Actor’s Studio, his respectful posture and meticulous research just isn’t as fun as the host of Cool As Hell podcast’s energy and fearless interview style.

Last month Michael interviewed playwriting icon Paula Vogel and got her talking about the state of the arts in the U.S. Her ideas about getting kids doing art at the same age they are learning to kick a soccer ball and getting the arts back in schools might not be new.

She does say some interesting things about the messages artists are getting these days. Among them are her feelings that “Darwin and captialism are very bad models for art” (3:15) and art begets art.

I was also intrigued by her idea that even though she was a klutz, she had to learn to play sports and as a result, all athletes today, artists of the flesh she calls them, speak for her inner athlete. She hopes for the day that every creative artist speaks for the inner artist housed in everyone.

The thing I like about Michael is that he is respectful but he starts his interview right off saying he disagrees with some of her views. After he lets her explain, he then challenges her idealism and asks for practical ways for her vision to manifest in a country that isn’t likely to throw off the captialist model she says is unhealthy for the arts.

I don’t know that she really provides any new answers since she talks about going back to the 60s arts environment, calls for more money to fund the arts and art in schools. She does present some quotable moments like “art is a dog that you feed that bites you” (7:05) when arguing that art should challenge society but the agenda of arts funders is to make art palatable and devoid of challenge.

On the other hand, I give her credit for doing the interview. Podcasting being so new, I imagine it would be difficult to gauge how substantive a discussion she would be expected to have.

Phooey With Flaws

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As a counterpoint to my entry yesterday, I offer this article from the Gotham Gazette.It was suggested to the editor Artsjournal.com by a reader. While the article is about being an artist in NYC, it obviously has lessons for any place in the country.

What really caught my eye was #7

7. Be Perfect
A composer who teaches on the faculty of the Juilliard School observed in a television documentary marking its centennial celebration that an average graduate of law school or medical school can still have a decent career. But it is not possible, he said, for a successful artist to be only average.

Here I am saying you shouldn’t be afraid to be flawed and I come across this article which I have to agree with that says only the perfect and sublime can ever expect to make enough to eat.

Going back to the Power of Flaws entry I cited yesterday, I wonder if it is the fault of the people who promote visual and performing arts (movies included). As Andrew Taylor says-

…read through most arts marketing materials or grant applications and what will you find? Perfection, triumph, success, and positive spin. Their performances are always exceptional. Their audiences are always ecstatic. Their reviews are always resounding (or mysteriously missing from the packet). Their communities are always connected and enthralled. In short, they are superhuman, disconnected, and insincere.

Is it any wonder then that people expect perfection from artists?

It is a viscious circle. You have to say you are wonderful because people expect you to be wonderful because you have been telling them how uniquely wonderful everything you do is.

Pure Genius!

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The last two days I have been reading some of the most inspiring works of genius I have ever seen outside of my own website. You should really take a look.

Monday I read this and was astounded.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, today brought even more delight.

I hear the writer is single. With a mind like that, I can’t imagine how that could be.

Regular readers of this blog will understand what I mean immediately.

I apologize to everyone else.

Edit: Drew McManus points out this comment on MyAuditions.com. Apparently, as good as I am, he is brilliant. Damn Him!

Mea Culpa

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I do a lot of talking about what arts organizations should do and what policies they should adopt. People probably correctly assume the truth of the matter but I want to make it clear that if you were to walk into my theatre after reading my entries, you won’t see half of what I suggest being implemented.

Some of my ideas aren’t appropriate in this situation and others we lack the resources to effect. A few are gradually being developed. This year I managed to grow the volunteer corps large enough that I didn’t have to worry if enough would show up for the performances. Our first volunteer thank you event is this weekend. Next year I start my plan to arm them with info about the performances and instill the confidence to employ the material to answer patron questions.

I am not trying to fool myself or anyone else that I am completely walking the walk that I talk. I was clearly reminded of that this past Friday. As I noted earlier, the weekend before last essentially ended the presenting phase of our season. We spent last week changing the website and box office voicemail to reflect our current state. In the process, I had forgotten to mention the student production in the lab theatre on the ticket line voicemail.

A gentleman called my office to complain that if we had performances in the lab, we should have information about it and not have a message saying the season is over. While I know better, there was something about his tone that put me on the defensive and before I knew it, I was saying “But that show isn’t part of the season.”

While this is technically true, I obviously should have listed the performance and would have had I remembered to. The guy on the other end gave a grunt and was silent. I thought he hung up and as I started to hang up myself, I said damn if he isn’t right and I am a stubborn idiot.

Fortunately this was an inner dialogue because I suddenly heard a voice from the receiver. I raised it to my ear and beg his pardon and the gentleman says he will see us the next night and then actually does hang up.

I know it sounds like a 12 step program to say it is okay to make mistakes and try to do better one day at time, but you know it is true. Better to recognize it, develop a thicker skin and give the right answer the next time.

To give credit where credit is due, I thought that the inspiration for this mea culpa entry came from within as I drove home Friday night. I believe, rather, that it was planted subconsciously in my mind. As I made my daily visit to read The Artful Manager, I noticed last week’s entry on The Power of Flaws staring right at me. I didn’t remember reading it, but apparently something sunk in.

I guess I try to do a little practicing of some of the smart thing other people preach, too.

Good Service, Not So Common

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I had one of those random acts of kindness experiences today that don’t happen often enough to keep people from becoming cynical and depressed, but obviously should.

I was having lunch with representatives of the rental car company I use to provide transportation for my performers. (Like I said yesterday, I ain’t letting any moss grow on my planning for next year.) I had some complaints about the service we had received last year and these folks wanted to make sure they had a handle on them since the corporate accounts rep was moving on to another job.

The young woman who was serving us was right on top of everything and really charismatic. I commented to my companions that today was the fastest I had ever been served in that restaurant. We told the server that we were impressed with her and she confessed that she actually thought she wasn’t doing as well as she should because she had been working 10 days straight and was on call for tomorrow. She had the classic story. Pre-med taking a semester off to save enough money for next year when she wouldn’t have time to work.

When we finished our meal, one of the rental car folks walked up to the kitchen door, waited for the young woman to emerge, gave her the tip directly and offered her a job.

I guess the act of kindness wasn’t so random since the young woman certainly earned the recognition. I thought it was a great thing to do as a compliment to the woman for her hard work. Also, if you see someone providing the type of service you have just spent an hour assuring a client they will receive, it is a smart move to try to grab the person.

As the years have gone by since I started in the performing arts I have come to realize that the level of professionalism and conscientiousness I once assumed everyone was devoting to their jobs isn’t as common as I thought. Part of the discussion I had with my assistant theatre manager yesterday skirted the edge of groveling with gratitude for the job she has been doing. Ten/fifteen years ago, I would have taken her attentiveness for granted as something all people in her position would naturally do.

Now I know better. So too, I imagine, do you my loyal readers. It will be with some regret that I remove her name from our website tomorrow morning. She deserves the recognition of working here. But if laboring in obscurity is the price she has to pay so I can keep you all from stealing her away from me, I am willing to have her pay it.

The End Is Just The Beginning

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Saturday was the end of our season for all intents and purposes. We have a couple inhouse events and scads of rentals, but the days of meeting people at the airport and seeing them safely to the hotel are over for awhile.

I planned on diving in to final grant reports and catching up on paperwork pushed aside when the office manager broke her hip. Amidst doing all that though I ended up in conversations planning for next year.

The last two days have been, despite my earlier intentions, a series of discussions about the next season. I have been in contact with the new development person stating my desire to form a unified plan for fundraising over the year to be reflected in speeches and publications.

I suggested that next month’s meeting of my booking consortium include proposals of performers for the next two years in preparation for the state foundation’s biennium grant proposal process.

I got into a long conversation with the assistant theatre manager enjoining her to think how we can improve customer service, volunteerism, our publications and website. We have made some good progress in customer service, but given people’s expectations, we have some areas of improvement.

I also discussed how I envisioned how the integration of information sources we have been slowly effecting in our database will hopefully serve to increase our attendance next season (and therefore, is what we needed to work on the next few months.)

As I have gone through the last two days, all the memories of all the small corrective actions I took over the past year came back to me. They were accompanied by recollections of all the mental notes I made to formulate policies to turn the small actions and comments into documented instructions for practices.

One thing I gotta solve and maybe some of the readers can help with some advice. One of the recurring events that I think I need to address is that people often call, hear we charge $2 handling fee on advance sales (vs the fees of many names Ticketmaster levies) and say they rather come the night of the performance.

Part of the problem is our performances don’t approach capacity in advance so there is no perceived downside for our audience. If they show up early enough for a general admission show, they can get tickets and good seats.

The fee itself is mainly to cover the credit card charge and to help pay for the clerk who seems to be sitting around doing less and less as time goes on. We can either raise the price across the board so everyone pays for the person covering the advance sales for the dwindling group of folks who want to talk to someone when they order tickets vs. buy them online or we can just cut the ticket office hours to the week before the performance which is when most people who are calling in advance or walking up are contacting us.

The question we need to answer is if it is returning ticket buyer who is purchasing in advance and will we alienate them if we cut our hours back to reflect the period when demand exists. We actually forward the phones to our office and staff them fairly consistently throughout the year until two weeks, and now perhaps one week, prior to a show when the increase in calls becomes too much of an interruption.

To add a complication, if we are only employing a ticket office clerk a week prior to a performance, it becomes more difficult to find someone willing to work so infrequently. I suspect we are simply caught in an awkward transition of technology period where there are just enough people who haven’t adopted a new technology to make discounting the old system unwise from a relationship standpoint, but so few it makes continuing unwise from a financial standpoint.

U2 Fans Can Love Ballet

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Just as a follow up to my Does Bono Like Ballet entry. I did indeed take the plunge and use that approach in my ads (see below) and press releases.

I actually antagonized over that approach in my print ads because someone suggested that it might alienate U2 fans. You can be the judge, of course. I figured since it essentially complimented the fans for their good taste and didn’t automatically assume liking U2 and ballet were mutually exclusive, it wouldn’t raise too many hackles.

Still, I showed the ad around to people and asked their opinion. Most people though it was cool. The most extreme reaction was “What the F@%^?” from a guy who misread the ad, followed by a chuckle and a comment that it was a cool idea.

The guy who suggested the approach might alienate fans said I should run it by the people at the alternative weekly paper since they would be most plugged in. I didn’t actually run it by them, but did send the ad and press release well in advance and waited for a reaction.

Imagine my glee when I saw that they ran with the angle I cooked up in today’s edition. The writer sort of took off with the general ideas I introduced in my press release. Hopefully it will attract the paper’s readership to the show because right now sales are pretty much contained to the ballet audience.

My ad, however, didn’t appear in the paper. The publisher apologized and said it was in the first proof but accidentally got bumped on the second for a free ad. I was somewhat happy at not having to pay for the publicity until I remembered my friend’s suggestion that the staff of the paper would be a good judge of whether the approach was a good one or not. Suddenly I began to wonder if it was an accident after all…

Hmm, my attempt to set this as an image did not work too well. You can now view the ad here

The Great Pretenders

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One of the entertaining activities the artistic director at a job I once held and I used to engage in was reading the solicitation faxes that came in. Some times the entertainment came from imagining the reactions our audience members would have if they ever saw some of these groups on stage. Other times the entertainment came when we saw that someone was trying to pass a group off as an iconic band.

As they say about spam emailing and telemarketing, these agents wouldn’t advertise if it didn’t work. After hearing a story on NPR today, I figured a caveat emptor entry might be a good idea. If you don’t follow the music world closely, you can end up thinking you are buying a performance by legends at bargain prices only to learn that you are getting what you paid for (if not less).

The NPR story was about “truth in music” laws popping up in some states saying people can’t use the name of iconic music groups unless there is an original member in the group. The story mentions The Platters prominently because in addition to some of the original members using the name, the impressario who developed them owns the rights to the name and sold it all over the place to people without any relation to the group at all.

Some groups it is fairly easy to know you aren’t getting the original group. The Glenn Miller Orchestra is one example. It doesn’t take much effort to realize the originals ain’t performing. There is a group performing under the same name in the UK and Germany, but again, it is tough to confuse which group you are about to see.

Other groups it is a little more difficult. For instance, WAR still tours. There were 8 original band members and about 35 other members throughout the years. Currently, keyboardist Lonnie Jordan is the only original member of the band still touring under the WAR name. Under the existing state laws, he is welcome to do so.

The question is, what constitutes an original member? Pete Best was the original drummer for The Beatles for two years, but outside of a Trivial Pursuit game, few would name him as such. Had the band been any less famous, he might have a case for touring with a band called The Beatles under the state laws. (Of course, this also assumes they retained ownership of their songs.)

The biggest impediment to anyone touring under a band name is someone with claim to the name complaining that they are misrepresenting themselves. Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, both very identifiable as members of The Doors have been forbidden to tour under The Doors name or even as The Doors of the 21st Century as a result of a suit by the third remaining member, John Densmore.

Ultimately, if you are thinking about presenting a famous act. It might behoove you to check the names of the people who performed on the best albums against the current list to determine just how famous the band remains.

As The Drill Spins

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I have come to the conclusion that tartar control toothpaste does not operate as advertised. There is no other explanation for the inordinate amount of time the dental hygenist spent on my teeth today after all the dedicated brushing and flossing I do.

Reclining as I was gave me some time to ponder however.

One of the things I was pondering was The Artful Manager calling attention to a book excerpt by Guy Kawasaki. I especially liked Kawasaki’s concept of replacing mission statements with mantras. He is right on the money, I think, with all the reasons he gives for this.

I went to Kawasaki’s website intending to read the chapter Andrew Taylor was citing from. Instead, I got a little sidetracked and ended up reading a high school commencement speech Kawasaki gave a decade ago. It too has some interesting points, but the one I pondered whilst my teeth and gums were tortured was the anecdote about the ice harvesters. (#8 on his list of things for grads to do)

I actually cited this story about ice harvesters putting put out of business by ice makers who were put out of business by refrigerators back in August. While the guy who told the story to me came to less dire conclusions, he also delivered a message close to the one Kawasaki does.

You would think that the ice harvesters would see the advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they could think about was the known: better saws, better storage, better transportation.

Then you would think that the ice makers would see the advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is that the ice harvesters couldn’t embrace the unknown and jump their curve to the next curve.

Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you’ll be like the ice harvester and ice makers.

I tell you, this is one of the core concerns of my career. If this blog is a stool, the pursuit of how to successfully take what my readers and I are doing to the next stage is a leg. I am convinced I won’t really know the right steps to take until I look back on my life and identify what they were. Heck, the correct tactic might end up being something I write but don’t do that ends up inspiring someone else who pioneers the next phase.

Heck, this guy might represent that new place. He does a video blog on his commute to work and interviews people on his drive. According to a Boston Globe article he is absolutely dedicated to remaining within the constraints of his commute. He picks up interviewees on his normal route and the interview only lasts the duration of his drive.

It might be emulating and drawing inspiration from this sort of project which will form the building blocks of the next direction of things. Creators of art are always talking about communicating Truth with their work. These interviews during a drive in greater Boston get closer to reality TV than the edited to make it interesting versions we have on television today.

Will people grow disillusioned by the manipulated version of reality and flock to the theatre in droves? Probably not. Will the disillusioned defect in a large enough number to revitalize a reconfigured arts? Maybe.

Kawasaki says there is value in making an educated, well planned attempt.

Oh, by the way. I don’t have any cavities.

Playwriting and Tulips

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It seemed to be so close to being added as an afterthought that I almost skipped over it, but in his Field Letter this month, Theatre Communication Group Executive Director Ben Cameron touches on the fact that people are staging readings of plays without negotiating royalties.

“Please understand that this represents a grave misunderstanding of legal obligations – any public reading of a play, whether admission is charged or not, requires negotiated rights and payments of royalties to writers.”

I worked for a play publisher once upon a time so I know the details of this requirement. Often I had to point out to people that it was their decision not to charge people and that had no bearing on the cost of producing the play. You paid the hardware store for wood and paint and the theatrical supply place for costumes and gels even though you aren’t charging admission. With a little creativity you can do the play without any of these things and yet the person you don’t want to pay is the person whose vision provided the outline for what to build, paint and light.

Intellectual property theft is really big in the news and I can’t help but wonder if in 20 years or less we will have an entirely different view of intellectual property rights. Despite all the high profile cases about music piracy, I don’t know if stricter laws and aggressive prosecution will ultimately prevail. I suspect this will become even truer as the media and formats in which property stored becomes less and less tangible.

Around the same time I read Cameron’s letter, I read an article about tulips on Slate. Before you ask what tulips have to do with IP rights, let me assure you, quite a lot in both a literal and allegorical way. The article mentioned a memoir by a professor at Wesleyan University who saw a student picking tulips from her flower garden. She chased after the student and challenged the act.

You don’t own them,” one student said to her, “they’re nature. God made them.”

“God made them?” said Rose. “You think God made them? Did God call White Flower Farm and order the bulbs? Did God put it on his credit card? Did God dig holes for the bulbs in the fall and mix bone meal in the dirt to feed them and cover them with mulch in the winter? If you think God did that, you’re an idiot!”

The student told Rose to “chill.” Then, she writes, they spent “several vivacious minutes, engaging in what the Wesleyan Bulletin calls education outside the classroom.”

(And just as an aside, if you read the article you will realize God never intended tulips to be in North America. The lengths to which the Dutch go to simulate the conditions of eastern Turkey’s mountains where the flower originates are astounding.)

If this is the attitude of some about tangible objects, just imagine how they might view material that exists digitally and is easily transferred to other people or copied. It is much more difficult to conceive of the effort that went into creating a book these days than it was when monks painstakenly copied tomes.

This is not to say that people have no concept of the value of labor invested to create digital media. There is a multi-user game called Medievia that has long been the target of derision by members of the online gaming community for using a widely available code base called DIKU to create their game and then removing the credits required by the license. Medievia made the claim that the game was completely re-written but an investigation showed the changes were superficial. The length of debate on the legality and enforceability of the DIKU license is quite amazing and mind boggling. But it goes to show that there is some healthy respect for the effort people put in to creating works.

It should be noted that the creators of DIKU didn’t make much, if any, money on their creation. People are allowed to use the software for free if they don’t charge for the product either. The esteem people have for the rights of intellectual property creators may be indirectly proportional to the amount of money they make off the product. If Microsoft had created DIKU, you probably wouldn’t hear a peep.

The whole subject of IP rights is so fraught with complex issues it is impossible to try to address in one night’s entry. My purpose in posting tonight is to posit this idea–If we assume that in future years protection of artistic expression as we know it today will be nonexistent in practice if not in fact, what can artists do to shape the new situation?

Since the creations of people who don’t profit from their work seems to enjoy some protection among online society, artists seem to already be in a position to take advantage of the new world order.
Though between an opportunity to reap millions off your creation and having people jump to your defense online, I figure artists will still dream of money.

In a world where the open source model is creating operating systems like Linux and reference “books” like Wikipedia and popular music is often comprised of borrowed bits of other people’s music, can an artist hope to be much more than first and most honored among many contributors?

I surely don’t know. If anyone comes across a person or group who seem to be providing a model for the future on how to assert your identity and retain credit for your labor without resorting to ultimately futile stopgap measures, I would love to hear about it.

Leading From the Top

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As many of you know, I live in Hawaii. Yesterday was a state holiday celebrating the birthday of Prince Jonah Kuhio who was an heir to the Hawaiian throne when Queen Lili`uokalani was overthrown by American businessmen.

It got me to thinking about Liliuokalani and her predecessor, King Kalakaua and their relationship with the arts. Even in captivity Lili`uokalani, who was an accomplished songwriter and writer, had a profound effect on Hawaiian culture. Many of her compositions, including Aloha `Oe, are still sung or used today.

King Kalakaua had an even greater impact on the arts. He is known as the “Merrie Monarch” for his patronage of the arts. He is especially known for his revival of many Hawaiian cultural traditions, including hula which had been banned because missionaries viewed it as obscene. Today, the Merrie Monarch Festival is an annual hula event held in his honor.

As I think about these things, I can’t help but wonder if the United States has lost something by not having the example of monarchy that patronized the arts as a strong element of its cultural heritage.

Certainly foundations spread funding around to more organizations than any noble patron could ever do. There is also no arguing that the Medici, Vatican and Elizabethean support of the arts was predicated on the works matching their agendas and validating their power. As I read the historical influences of the arts in the United States in Joli Jensen’s Is Art Good For Us?, I can see some benefits to the way things developed here.

However, the example of a national leader supporting the arts can go a long way. The proud anti-intellectualism of the current administration aside, with a few exceptions, it is difficult for me to think of any time a president attended an arts event or sponsored one in the White House. This is not to say that they didn’t, it is only that there wasn’t much ado made of it in the media. On the other hand, I can easily recall stories about trips to Camp David and Crawford, Texas and what the places generally looked it.

The few exceptions I mentioned earlier don’t bode well for presidents. The first examples that pop in to my mind when I think of presidential support for the arts are Lincoln at the Ford Theatre and Kennedy’s tribute to Robert Frost at Amherst College which is viewed as the impeteus for the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. (Though it was President Johnson who signed the act creating the NEA.) President Clinton also comes to mind with his sax. He might have been a good proponent for arts funding if he had a better relationship with Congress. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out well for any of these gentlemen.

The presidency has many traditions that it engages in from tree lighting, egg hunts and turkey pardoning. It would be great if someone could influence a president to begin the precendent of making an annual donation to some arts fund or foundation (to prevent the appearance of favoritism to any group or genre) with great fanfare. Actually, it would be great to see the president attending an event with great fanfare as well. However, as busy as the president can tend to be, it might not be a good message to send if some crisis continually leads to cancelling attendance.

When Artists Get Old

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By way of a weekly newsletter from NYFA, I learned about the start of a continuing study by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia University that looks at the needs of aging artists. They had conducted earlier research on New York artists (along with those in other cities) in 1988 and 1997. According to the executive summary, there is an urgency to this study based on the impeding retirement of baby boomer artists.

While foundations and other funders have long directed their largesse to emerging and even mid-career artists, notably few have concerned themselves with the artist as s/he matures into old age- artistically, emotionally, financially and chronologically. Special attention to aging artists is important for material support and policy-making and is made more urgent in a time of scarce resources when the baby boomer generation is about to enter the ranks of the retired.

Among the problems faced by the Research Center is actually finding artists. “Past evidence shows that as people age, they often become more isolated from each other, making it difficult for organizations to serve them as a group as well as posing many individual problems.” The Research Center uses a methodology developed by sociologist Douglas Heckathorn previous employed to conduct a survey for the NEA that required them to seek aged jazz musicians.

I heard a series of interviews on NPR last year about the jazz survey which really underscored the plight of these jazz musicians now that they had retired. It was the recollection of these stories that made me notice the call for study participants on the NYFA newsletter.

If you read this blog and are an aging artist (62+) living in the five boroughs or know someone who is, contact the Research Center for Arts and Culture at 212.678.8184 or email rcac@columbia.edu. There is also a meeting on March 27, 2006 from 6-8 pm about the study.

Are You Worth Your Age?

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Last week Slate had a short article about how young people are underpaid in relation to their productivity whereas older folks are overpaid in proportion to what they produce.

At the same time, Adaptistration cited an article in San Francisco Classical Voice that revealed the salaries of musicians and administrators in the Bay area.

As I look at the fact that the SF Opera’s Musical Director makes $600,000 and the concert master makes $126,000, I first have to wonder if he is really about five times more productive each year than she is. I don’t know their respective ages or education and experience levels, but I can’t believe that the difference is in direct proportion to the gap in their salaries.

It leads to the question of what it is that is valued in the arts. I know Drew McManus has bemoaned the disparity between executive compensation and musician salaries so I won’t tread upon that ground.

It is easy as a person not earning that much to cast aspersions upon those who do. I can’t say that by some strange twist of fate I won’t end up making a large amount of money before the end of my career. I can honestly say that I have a hard time believing I will ever be worth that much to an organization.

I certainly feel that my value will grow as I become wiser about addressing challenges and planning prudently, but I don’t know that I will become so adept I will be worth $600,000. (This is coming back to haunt me at some future salary negotiation. I can feel it.)

Now in comparison with some corporate CEO salaries and benefit packages, this sort of pay scale is downright parsimonious. Those guys may be brokering billion dollar deals, but it is the masses who are responsible for that sort of valuation. In this context, it seems only right that the leadership of a large non-profit be well-compensated.

But what about the mission of a non-profit? Is the community well served by a senior person making that much money? If the opera had hired someone as music director who would accept $200,000, would the quality suffered significantly? Perhaps the fundraising would be more difficult with a lesser name at the helm and instead of saving $400,000, there would only be a $100-$200,000 surplus. But if that money could be sunk into the productions, outreach programs or low cost ticketing, wouldn’t the organization mission be better served?

It is very easy to spend other people’s money to be sure. The opera’s business is its own and it seems to be doing fairly well. If the board and the community is happy and feels the opera is fulfilling its role, more power to them and more money to their administrators. (Don’t want to burn any potential bridges 😉 )

This isn’t really about the opera, but about the industry at large. I just want to send a question or two rattling around people’s minds about whether there is a point where people are too well compensated to the detriment of the organization’s mission.

And harkening back to the Slate article, are they being paid out of proportion to what they produce for the organization. It could be argued that if someone attracts $1 million in donations to the organization, they are worth a percentage of that. In theory, the money was solicited to benefit the mission of the organization so the percentage granted as a bonus in one form or another really needs to be scrutinized.

It is the high percentage of a donation that goes to administrative costs that tends to be the main point of criticism for charities like the United Way. Arts groups don’t need that to become the story for them.

B.i.t.S Shaping/Warping Young Minds

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It has recently come to my attention that there is a college course called Audience Connections at Drury University in which my blog is required weekly reading.

After considering the grave danger inherent in my ramblings being used to shape the nascent minds of artists, I was rather pleased and honored.

Ron Spigelman who teaches the class and is also the music director of the Springfield (MO) Symphony, has graciously granted me permission to post some of his thoughts from correspondence we had following his comments on my blog entry.

The purpose and goals of the Audience Connections Class are:

The Audience Connection:
Music, the organic art form that can give a life purpose and fulfillment for the performer and the listener. Right now, little more than about 1 in 10 people in America listens to Classical music, and even less attend live Classical Music performances. This class is an attempt to address this problem directly.

COURSE GOALS:
1. For students to begin to be able to reach out to audiences of all ages with music in a way that makes the art form accessible, fulfilling, visceral, and most importantly, relevant.

2. To understand and implement advocacy and activism through performance and explanation, to audiences who are on the whole without musical training.

3. To learn skills by which to encourage individuals or groups to attend a fine arts performance who have rarely or never done so.

So how does my blog come in? As you might imagine, it is because blogs like mine deal with current events and influences. (They also apparently read Adaptistration and Greg Sandow’s blogs, but I am sure mine is their favorite since it deals with something more than just classical music. And I am sure this little shout out to them won’t hurt either.)

I heartily approve of his integration of blogs and news from Artsjournal.com into class discussions. Of course, it is easy to admire his technique because it is exactly what I would be doing if I were teaching right now.

The way he is conducting class sounds really productive, if only to get students thinking issues inherent to their art and trying to apply it in a manner that will facilitate a relationship with the audience.

We range from arts funding, politics, the argument over the intrinsic versus the instrumental and thanks to the internet our examples are global and most importantly …are happening now!

The students each perform to the class and are coached on connecting. They have to justify their favorite works of art whether they be Pop songs or Paintings and do it from an audience perspective focusing on the personal rather than the analytical.

After Spring break one of them is actually going to cold call some elementary schools and play to the students and interact before he does his jury performance. I am of the firm belief that if all music students did this…then they would appreciate and learn the art of true communication instead of playing 4 years of juries to professors…

The next big challenge for his students is to practice what they have learned in the real world. It is one thing to discuss these subjects among people with whom you have a shared vocabulary and set of values and another to do it with anxious patrons who may loudly declare that classical music sucks because they resent mom for dragging them along.

Ron didn’t mention it, but I would imagine with all my references to Drew McManus’ docent program, (I mean, I mention it so much do I even have to provide a link anymore?), he may decide to have students gain some real life experience and fill a similar role at some Springfield Symphony or the Springfield-Drury Civic Orchestra performances.

Bonding Over Brisket

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One thing I have observed during my career in the performing arts is that while working in performing arts is that while the pay isn’t always too good, there are always some good bonding moments you don’t usually get in for-profit companies. (Unless you work for a cool internet start up that provides all sorts of fringe activities in the office.)

I was just wondering if anyone had some good stories. Sharing this sort of information can help other organizations with some good morale boosting activities. I am looking for things outside of the annual Christmas party.

What got me thinking about this subject is that somehow tomorrow became chocolate chip pancake day. It is strange that I don’t know how that came about given that I am the one making the pancakes. If it turns out well, perhaps it will be a fairly regular thing. We just had a long string of performances so it is a kind of celebration/thank you for all the hard work.

Food seems be a common theme in some of the events with which I have been associated. One summer theatre I worked at had barbeque Wednesdays. The theatre provided the grills, you provided the meat and veggies. Since we were a bunch of poor theatre people, the cuts of meat tended to be a little on the cheap side. But I have to say that people were pretty creative about what they used for marinades. Some pretty good taste combinations that year.

There have also been some afternoon teas for staff during tense times. Strike dinners at midnight where a volunteer corps provided the food–was good for getting the volunteers and staff to bond.

I think there is some unspoken rule bumping around the collective unconscious of many performing arts theatres about the tech director buying pizza for the crew at significant stages in the building process. It is never at the same stage on every show–sometimes it was tech week, sometimes it was earlier in the process. I have always instinctively known what night it was going to happen without being told. I have also done it at what seemed to be the proper confluence of events.

My current job is the third one I have held where I have secretly hidden candy filled eggs around the building for staff and students to find (and when the plastic eggs are returned, I refill them.) It never loses its appeal for me since the people who figure out I am the Easter bunny don’t tell the new people. Actually, last year one staff member didn’t even make an attempt to puzzle out my identity. He said nice things happen around the theatre so infrequently, he wasn’t going to question it lest the benefactor decide to stop.

A couple places I worked at held all night scavenger hunts. One place did it at the end of the season to close things out. The other did it at the beginning of the season to rally energy (though in the short term, they all ended up sleeping through the next day.)

The element that contributes most to the success of any bonding/morale building event seems to be either that it originates from the workers instead of the management or the workers have really bought into the idea. It seems that if management decides everyone needs to do a teambuilding activity like a Ropes challenge course, the effort either meets a lot of resentment and falls flat or is only marginally effective.

Events like the ones I have mentioned tend not to cost as much as team building exercises either. So if anyone has some good ideas that have formed the basis of solid staff relationships, type up a comment or email me!

To Affinity and Beyond!

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My thanks to Brendan Glynn Marketing and Communication Director of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for his comments on my affinity entry from last week.

I had emailed a list of questions to the communications coordinator at the center last week. I don’t know if he passed them on to Brendan or if Brendan just happened upon the entry since he says he is jumping in to the conversation. In any case, he answered all my questions an more. His outline of the plans for the new position in affinity marketing are very interesting.

What was really unexpected were his plans to adopt the approach Santa presented Macys in Miracle on 34th Street and send patrons to his competitors.

“If they are lovers of modern dance, traditional thinking would say not to let our patrons know about something going on at another venue. I disagree. We cannot stand in the way of an enthusiast finding out about a performance in another venue, so why don’t we take the high road and be the first to deliver that message to them. If there is a way we can bring value by offering up their interests to the table, it just helps to build our relationship with those patrons even further. Eventually, some can look to us as the source of information for their theater and entertainment interests.”

Is this sort of idealism foolish or is it going to work like it did in the movie and endear the center to the public? If I am a philanthropist living in Miami, I don’t know if I couldn’t help but be impressed by their boldness.

Also, if other performing groups start sending their seasons to the center for dissemination, it gives the center a better sense of what is out there so they can plan their offerings accordingly.

I will try to remember to check back in a year once they have an affinity person in place and see how things turned out and what changes they are planning to effect. It’ll be interesting to see.

All You Need Is A Good SWOT

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My college is going through a SWOT analysis process at the moment and each division and department is supposed to fill out a 29 page form detailing where things stand.

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. Wikipedia has a good primer article on it, including a few warnings about how not to use it. I also found a web page that performs some SWOT analyses on familiar corporations.

Essentially, the analysis serves as a tool to get organizations talking about the internal factors (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external factors (Opportunities and Threats) in relation to a project or venture. It doesn’t have to be applied to an entire organization, but perhaps to a sub-area like ticket office operations. Small groups within an organization can employ this process in order to make recommendations to management.

I just thought I would toss this information out there as an FYI. While it does have its weaknesses, the process is fairly easy to use and doesn’t require participation by everyone in the organization to be effective.

Does Bono Like Ballet?

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Earlier this year U2 scheduled a concert on the same day as we had scheduled a ballet company. I had two concerns about this 1- The publicity and stories in the media were going to totally eclipse anything I managed to get written/broadcast about my performance. 2- I really wanted to go to the U2 concert and failing that, wanted it to sell out so they would add a show.

Last week brought an announcement that the U2 show had to be postpone bringing welcome relief to both my concerns. (Except now I have to join the competition for tickets!)

Back when the two shows were postioned on the same night, every time I mentioned the fact, people told me not to worry because U2 and ballet don’t share audiences.

Really?

U2 started getting airplay in the US around 1983. I figure conservatively that the ages of people who became interested in them ranged from 13 to 30. Today that 13 year old is 36 and the 30 year old is 56. True, a lot of those 56 year old probably retired from the whole concert scene and weren’t planning on going to see U2. A lot of them probably weren’t planning to come to the ballet that night either.

I can’t believe that there aren’t U2 fans who don’t go to the ballet though. I don’t know if Bono is one of those guys who won’t go to the ballet if his wife doesn’t push him or not. But I think I am on pretty firm ground claiming that he would appreciate the mastery and artistry he saw on stage.

I am seriously considering adopting this approach as a way to promote the performance. At this point, I don’t expect much more than our usual dance crowd to turn out.

I was thinking of something along the lines of:

“U2 is Postponed so come to the ballet!
What? U2 fans don’t go to ballet? How do you know?

The founders are former NY City Ballet dancers and their aim is to make ballet about the fun instead of the perfection of technique. If there is one thing U2 fans know, it is artistry and that is what this company offers.”

I wrote this in my head on the drive home so it is still rough, but you get the thrust. This is the stated aim of the ballet company so I am not misrepresenting difficult material as accessible to sell tickets. I will have to ponder it some more, but I don’t think this approach will alienate my usual audience, (such as it is), either.

In addition, I am pondering taking some inspiration from Drew McManus’ “Take A Friend To the Orchestra,” and offering a special rate if people mention they are taking a friend to the ballet–“So You Can Talk About What You Saw Afterward.”

The whole idea of ticket pricing and discounting is always a hot topic rife for debate. I am in a particularly tough spot since Neill Archer Roan just responded to a comment I made on his blog that he applauded my decision to avoid rush discounting. Now here I am saying I might do that. (Though the discount will be available prior, I predict most people will wait until performance night to invoke it.)

However, last week I also invoked Neill’s entry, “How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.”

I think proposing you bring a friend along so you can talk about the experience can cause a mental shift from “who the heck do I know would want to go with me?” to “hey, X is a smart person, maybe (s)he would be interested in trying something new.” Even though the situation hasn’t changed, suggesting that you will be inviting a friend to share a new experience rather than trying to convince someone to come along so you don’t enter an alien experience alone is less intimidating.

It’s also easier to convince said other person that you are inviting them along to enjoyable experience if you aren’t giving off a vibe that you desperately feel the need to have a familiar presence to anchor you in an alien environment.

Anyway. Some things to still ponder before I start writing press releases and ad copy. If nothing else, the idea is a good jumping off point since it is more interesting than my typical campaigns. Not much to lose. And while the potential gain might not ultimately be all that much either, if I do get a positive response, maybe I learn how to reach the community a little better next time.

I’ll let you know what happens.

Searching for Your Affinity

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A job description came to my attention thanks to one of my old professors passing on some job listings from graduates of my program. The job is for an affinity marketer at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Florida.

Affinity marketing is generally the approach to marketing that focuses finding customers interested in a certain product or topic, then offering that customer related products and services. It has been around since at least the late 90s and has been mostly related to ecommerce. This is the first time I have ever seen the position advertised in an arts setting.

I found an <em>Inc magazine article that talked about affinity groups in business. While the article isn’t exactly about affinity marketing, it does point out that shared affinity doesn’t mean living in the same town, driving the same cars, working in the same industry and going to the same churches. One of the groups it profiles is comprised of those “who are all under 40 and managing companies of a certain size, operate from a similar frame of reference, even though they may have vastly different businesses and experiences.”

Andrew Taylor made a few posts in recent months that points out a few ways shared affinity can be addressed in the arts.

The Broward job description has some interesting duties listed which appear to be part of these affinity marketing efforts.

– append the current database with lifestyle and psychographic info

– identify potential niches, clusters or anomalies within the database and append consumer profiles in order to target audiences and create marketing strategies.

– coordinate the marketing message to specific individuals or cluster.

– analyze and utilize data to identify opportunities and implement tactics

– manage subscription communication for affinity program patrons

It might be a sign of just how new an effort affinity marketing is to the arts that the job description doesn’t even list prior experience in affinity marketing as a desirable plus. Actually, I wonder if it is an entirely new position for the organization. I didn’t find anything on the website that collected information that might indicate the sort of connections for which they might be looking.

I am going to drop a line to the person who forwarded the info to my old professor and see what the story is. Let you all know what I turn up.

Why Didn’t You Advertise This?

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As I continue to ponder and decipher what people are really telling me on their audience surveys, I came across this entry on Neill Archer Roan’s blog, How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.

In his entry, Neill says:

An effective info-mediary must anticipate the informational needs their customers require, then provide it: on-demand. Effectiveness in this role requires not only substantive and informational expertise, but also a clear understanding of the form in which consumers want the information delivered and the channels through which the information feels most accessible and credible.

(He also makes a lot of other valuable observations so go read it. I am just focussing on this idea though.)

Neill’s point here cuts right to the heart of a comment I am trying to figure the answer to-“Why Didn’t You Advertise This?” Now given I get this comment most from people who have attended the event for which they are bemoaning the lack of advertising, obviously something worked to get them in the door.

Often they did see/hear an ad or a story or heard about the show from a friend. The problem they have is that they learned about the show close to performance time and had such a great experience, they are concerned that having almost missed it, they will lose out on something equally great in the future.

I usually try to find out what communication channels are best for reaching them. I ask it on the survey and of course also interview the commenter in my lobby. Many times I discover they read the newspaper/listen to the radio station where the ad ran but they missed it amidst all the other ads and stories in the paper or because they were concentrating on driving or talking on their cellphone when the radio spots ran.

What the patron wants is to have known about the show earlier. The problem is, most of my audience doesn’t make a decision until the last minute so it doesn’t make sense to spend money to promote it earlier. (I often suspect that is the method the worried patron uses as well, but if giving the benefit of the doubt will sell tickets earlier, I am all for it!)

The free publicity opportunities, like calendar websites, I take advantage of in July and list my whole season. The information has been available there and in my brochure since then. The newspapers have also had my calendar listings since around then too, but they don’t list the events until closer to the date when it is actually news. Because the information is categorized so well, people often get information there first even if they missed the ad on the page before.

So how do I communicate effectively with the highly interested person who is not on my mailing list? I have no definitive answers.

It appears my efforts at using opinion leaders in the community as word of mouth advertising has been slightly effective since attendance has been nudging up slightly. But I admit, it is a precarious situation. It is the method I can exert the least control over (which means it probably has the highest level of credibility with the public) so I can’t direct who is reached.

My marketing campaign for my last show was almost entirely word of mouth supported by ticket giveaways on radio shows that played the genre of music of the group I was presenting. I figured I would sell it out so I didn’t plan any print advertising.

We were doing a pretty steady business based on the brochure and word of mouth from August to January. Nothing big, but a steady trickle. Things got better in mid-January when the radio giveaways started. Based on this surge, I expected the show to sell out a week or so before the show. A week out we were only half sold and there were days where almost no one was buying.

Now what I think happened was all the folks who planned ahead had gotten their tickets and the procrastinators were holding true to form. I panicked a little and took out a print ad in the free alternative weekly.

As you might imagine, I need not have bothered. In the last couple days we were deluged and then had people turn up early the night of the performance in hopes some seats would open up.

Just as the word of mouth method was precarious, but ultimately rewarding for me, it probably seems even more so for the person who hears about it at the last minute and fears missing out in the future.

It is upon such fears large mailing lists are built. I still don’t have a dependable channel to reach the other heretofore unreached people to let them know what they might be missing. I am pretty sure no one does or they would be trying to sell it to me. I suspect each community is different so the best solution is cobbled together from existing technologies and methods.

Giving In To The Inevitable

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Though I have railed against the screening of blog entries in the past, I have activated the requirement that commenters register today. I had 600 comments this weekend, most of which were advertisements for any number of services both mundane and erotic.

In the course of deleting them, I accidentally erased a new comment (I don’t know from whom it was, sorry about that.) So in order to save my readers from my blunders, I instigated this measure which I hope will cut down on the garbage.

Struck Down By Artist Visa Problems

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I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened. You hear about it happening to someone else–and you hope it stays that way. Yesterday I received confirmation that because of problems getting travel visas, one of the foreign performance groups for my season won’t be making it this year.

My partners and I are scrambling to figure out if we can reschedule them for next year since we have already paid hefty airline ticket prices and hope to use them. We are also looking into whether the fees and other paperwork we have completed can be applicable to a trip next year.

I have spent the last two days implementing contingency plans–namely figuring out how I will refund all the ticket purchases and publicize the cancellation in a way that doesn’t alienate my audience for next season.

One semi-fortunate element of the timing is that the news came just a day or two before the ticket purchases would have really picked up due to our promotional efforts (which had to be cancelled as well, of course). Had we found out a week or so from now we would have quite a few more tickets to refund. (An order did sneak in over the internet just as we were changing the web page and disabling the order functions though.)

It is amazing how many people have to be contacted when something is cancel even in addition to the audience members. I had to inform my staff, caterer, the car rental place, the hotel (we almost got hit with a penalty for cancelling because it was less than 30 days out), the print, radio and television advertising reps, the print, radio and television media who were going to do stories and calendar listings.

One of the people I forgot initially was the company providing the sound equipment and backline. Thankfully my tech director remembered to ask. I also had to break the disappointing news to a student group who were preparing a big welcome for the performers.

It is too early to determine what problems, if any, will come of this since so few people know about the cancelation. One of the things I am watching with interest is the way my partners announce the change. Currently, the alteration in their seasons hasn’t appeared on their websites. They are telling customers it is cancelled because a woman called to see if the show was cancelled at my theatre upon learning that the group wouldn’t be appearing near her.

It Helps Them Too

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I had an experience this weekend that showed me a value to arts funding I had never come across before. It isn’t going to convince foundations, arts councils and the federal government to necessarily pour more money into the arts and humanities, but it does go to show just how much good the money is doing.

This weekend we hosted a performance of Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, a traditional dance group from India. They are really a remarkable group based on their process alone. Every 6 years 6 women are chosen to enter the world’s only dance village. For these six women, every cost is taken care of. There are day students and week long seminars that are periodically conducted. Those people have to pay, but those chosen for the residential program have all their needs attended to..sort of.

The life they lead is somewhat akin to monstastic. There is no vow of silence and there are days off to go into town. However, the day runs something like: wake up, dance, help make breakfast, dance, help garden, study Sanskrit, have lunch, dance, etc.

The thing I found out this weekend though is that there is almost no written record of the classical dance forms. Everything was passed by word of mouth. One of the group’s projects is to assemble a library of material because right now they have to consult materials in the New York Public Library on their annual trips to the U.S. All the photos and other records of performance in India are held by families who are very resistance to sharing.

There is a classical text on Indian dance that is rather complete. An Indian woman has apparently made it her life’s work to translate and annotate it but almost no one uses it. One of the dancers commented on the irony of meeting a white, male Asian Studies student here that was more familiar with the book than most of the dancers in her country.

Another thing that surprised me was that there is apparently no tradition of dancing as a group in India. If there are 4 women dancing somewhere they are essentially each doing solo performances. The road manager told me that one of the biggest hurdles they have had to overcome is instilling a sense of performance discipline in the members of the group so they work in unison and ignore things like a flower falling from another dancer’s hair. Everything the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble has learned about spacing, coordinated complementary movement and interaction with other dancers they have learned from Western choreographers.

One of the group leaders was overjoyed to learn that a respected dance teacher from the local university was attending the show and had come backstage to visit. The professor in question had recorded Indian dance before in one of the dance notation forms and the dancer wanted to consult with her on how it was accomplished and the suitability of the notation style to traditional Indian dance.

Now one might argue, perhaps correctly, that if you are codifying a form that has not been and adding group choreography where none ever existed, you are no longer performing the dance traditionally. Honestly, I think that is a discussion for another entry and perhaps another blog.

It seems to me that if a group is trying to record and preserve cultural traditions which have nearly been lost a number of times due to sickness and disasters killing off gurus, that is a laudable goal. Indeed, some of their measures are actually doing more to preserve elements of performance. They periodically video tape themselves so that when they notice they have somehow started doing something differently, they can go back and see where the change started creeping in.

What seems incredible to me is that arts and humanities funding in the US is providing the references, resources and trained expertise to aid this group in the discovery and preservation their culture. It is common to hear about foreign entities consulting with our scientists, corporations and government in order to make their lives better and solve problems. It is easy to forget that our artists have some useful advice to provide too.

What Are You Really Asking Me For?

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One of the primary rules of surveying people is that you shouldn’t ask a question if you have no intention of acting upon the results. With that in mind, one of the questions on our audience survey asks patrons to make suggestions specifically on areas that are within our power to change.

The specificity of the question doesn’t seem to impede suggestions wholly outside the scope of our abilities to address. A recent suggestion in that space was to have an off-ramp added to the interstate near our building.

Another woman commented that she would have liked to have the opportunity to purchase materials from the performers. I am 98% sure this was written by the woman to whom I explained prior to the show that unlike most of our performers, the group had not brought materials to sell.

While my initial reaction is usually exasperation, I try to figure out what the audience member is really trying to tell me. In some cases, the artists people suggest reveal the fact that people don’t quite understand our mission or that we would have to charge $1000/seat to afford performers and their technical requirements in our small theatre.

The interstate off-ramp is understandable because the theatre is 300 yards from the interstate but the exit is a mile away. You would think an institution of higher education would warrant its own exit, but the campus wasn’t set up with one, alas. (What’s worse, because the interstate is lower than the campus, you can’t see the theatre from it. So while 80% of the population is stuck in traffic in front of the theatre every morning, few could tell you where it is.)

I can also understand the impulse of the woman who wanted some merchandise. She had just seen something she had never seen before, (Indian dance-Nrityagram Dance Ensemble- They are really quite above the level of other Indian dance performers), and felt the need to have something to help her continue processing the experience when she went home.

For all the notes in the program book and the research on the dance form that had gone into our informational lobby display, there was probably a great deal she did not know or understand about what she just saw. I had read all that information and more and many of my assumptions about traditional Indian dance were destroyed in a 20 minute conversation with one of the group members.

This woman didn’t have the benefit of any of that so I can understand that she may have felt a little lost at sea and asked for the only thing she could imagine we could provide that might help her out.

I didn’t get to speak with her as she left though. Maybe she was just an idiot and obstinately refused to accept the fact she couldn’t by a souvenir. Making assumptions like that doesn’t drive me to provide a better experience though.

Painting Your Pension

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Thanks to a newsletter from NYFA I became aware of an innovative pension plan for artists.

The Artist Pension Trust provides pension services to artists “a group whose career trajectories and employment patterns make existing pension programs inaccessible.”

They do this by essentially having artists invest their talent instead of money. Each artist makes annual contributions of work over the course of 20 years. The pension funds come from the sale of the art work. The proceeds of the sales are distributed as follows:

“40% is directed to the pool and distributed pro rata among all the artists…and 40% is directed to the account of the artist whose work was sold. Each artist receives an equal share of the pooled funds generated by the sale of the works held in the Artist Pension Trust, thereby benefiting from the collective success of all of the artists in his/her Trust. Each artist is additionally rewarded according to his/her own individual market success, since 40% of the proceeds of the sale of his/her work can be invested in the artist’s individual account.”

The thing I like about this arrangement is that not only is each individual rewarded for his/her own success, but it also encourages all the contributing artists to promote their fellows. Instead of viewing each other entirely as competitors for art buyers’ money, there is a benefit to openly advocating another’s work.

The remaining 20% of the proceeds will go to the pension fund administration fees. This may seem like an excessive amount until note that the fund has to store the pieces and promises museum quality care and presentation.

This Is What I Am Doing With Your Money

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I was reading a comment to a recent entry on Boards over at Artful Manager where the writer pointed out that but for a dissenting voice, the public may never have learned about some of the biggest recent scandals involving non-profit mismanagement of funds (San Francisco, Capitol Area United Way)

After thinking about how a few jerks made the difficult task of fund raising more difficult, I started thinking about how arts organizations can show good faith with their donors and illustrate where the money went.

The big donors have concrete symbols like seats, lobbys and halls with their names emblazons which they can associate their donations. But for the people who give substantial portions of their disposable income but don’t quite rate architectural features, the physical connection becomes more difficult.

Sure, their name is in the program book, but it cost a couple cents to print and most folks will toss it away at the end of the night. If the donor has paid for admission to a performance or exhibit, it becomes difficult to grasp the abstract concept that the admission fee is only paying for the first 45 minutes of the evening and their donation combined with those of others is paying for the rest.

I was just curious to know if anyone has come across a novel approach to giving donors a better sense of what their money is doing. Something that just came to mind was borrowing on the whole adopt a child from the third world idea and having school kids that benefited from an outreach project write to specific donors.

Another alternative is to have an open books approach and mail home an annual report similar to the ones mutual funds send out outlining how the past season went with revenue statements and balance sheets. Actually, it would probably be even more impressive if you presented plan for the future season with the percentage of earned and unearned revenue you intended to devote to each show.

I imagine one might have to exercise some care if you were planning risker fare and had a chart showing that you were devoting a larger percentage of unearned revenue than earned based on the assumption fewer people would want to see it or would pay as much as other shows to see it. Donors may feel that most of their donation was going to a smut filled show and complain. Might be good to break out unearned into foundation, private, government and show it mostly as foundation.

Anyhow, as I said, if anyone has come across a good program that gives donors a real sense of the value of their contribution to the organization, let me know!

Seeing Ideas Implemented

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I was looking at Ben Cameron’s Field Letter over on the Theatre Communication Group’s website today. (It may be replaced by a new letter soon so you may have to click on the Archives link, search for field letter and find the one dated Jan 15, 2006). As I read I began to recognize some ideas that have been bandied about blogs recently appearing in practice.

A couple of examples he cited reminded me of Drew McManus’ docent idea.

“Geva Theatre Center’s (Rochester, NY) pre-talk sessions with actors. An actor is paid a stipend to do this before every performance, as I recall, inviting the audience into the creative ideas of production before they see the play, even giving them ‘teaser’ moments to look for in the play.”

I know that I often come back to Drew’s docent program in my posts, but it really seems like good audience relations to offer guidestones to patrons who may might be experimenting with attendance for the first time.

Another good related example Cameron cites had a couple points that really caught my attention. (My emphasis)

Associate artistic director Sean Daniels of California Shakespeare Theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area writes, “I had at one point thought that marketing Shakespeare to 22-year-olds was nearly impossible, but we went from 1,000 to 3,000 ‘under 30’ tickets in our first season.” This was made possible through a multi-tiered strategy:

–the creation of a group of ambassadors, empowering them to speak for the theatre;
-organizing events marketed towards and created for younger people (‘shindigs’), featuring drinks before and dancing afterwards, but with the play always being the centerpiece of the evening, “not a great evening with a play smushed in the middle”;
-using marketing muscle, through blogs for all artists, so people could have personal conversations with them;
-creating a comprehensive intern program to train 18- to 35-year-old administrators;
-recruitment of under-35-year-olds to the board; and finally, and most importantly,
–making sure “that bringing in young people was not a marketing initiative, but an artistic one'”a shift of the conversation from what young people want to ‘how do we create more points of access to the work we’re doing'”a viewpoint that informs the strategic plan, the board work and more

I included the whole quote because many organizations are desperate to attract younger audiences. There are a couple good strategies here for doing so. I wasn’t sure many people were going to click through to Cameron’s letter so I wanted to present them here.

My first emphasis of course links back to Drew’s docent program.

The second emphasis locked right into Andrew Taylor’s entry yesterday where he cites Neill Archer Roan whose study of audience trends shows that nearly half of an organization’s audience is lost every year replaced by new people drawn to performances by good marketing.

Andrew quotes Neill

“the course of our work, our client organizations have discovered that their marketing departments have effectively acquired new accounts (some in the range of 60% to 70% of audiences as new or re-acquired) while the rest of the organization — most of which has held itself harmless in this dynamic — has failed to retain the audience that marketing has acquired.”

It is great that California Shakespeare Theatre gets the concept that everyone has to work to retain the audience because the turnover numbers were a surprise for me. Though as a point of focus for organizational committment, it does make sense to adopt this approach.

One last note from Ben Cameron
“But these articles raised for me an additional question-are we connecting artists and potential audiences outside of the performance event itself? I’d love to know more about what people are doing in this way. If your theatre is undertaking new strategies, please let me know I’ll report back about what folks are doing.”

If you got something to share, let him know-his email is bcameron@tcg.org.

If you aren’t sure you want to bother a man as busy was Ben Cameron must be with your strategies, email me and I will share here. You are actually likely to see your good ideas posted online more quickly with me after all 😉

How Shall I Educate Thee

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I’ve touched lightly upon the problems with the training of theatre professionals a couple times in entries. I never really got into it in the depth that Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas did in a recent entry.

It is an interesting read just for the simple fact that how artists are trained should be a periennial topic of discussion. I agree with Walters that offering BAs and BFAs in the arts is a disservice to students because the programs have too narrow a focus at a point in a student’s career when they need to have a wide variety of experiences with which to inform their art later.

Walters quotes at some length Tony Kushner’s keynote address to the 1997 Association of Theatre in Higher Education conference (reprinted in Jan 1998 American Theatre) which borrowed Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” title.

Among the sentiments Kushner stated were

“we should abolish all undergraduate art majors…any college or university worth its salt tell its undergraduate students that henceforth they cannot major in theatre, the visual arts, writing, filmmaking, photography or musical composition….[and instead] must prepare to spend the next four years of their lives in the Purgatory of the Liberal Arts.”

There are a few bits of knowledge Kushner feels students should know with which I don’t quite agree. I don’t know that people come across alexandrines enough in their careers that they would remember what it was much less need to memorize the definition in the first place. And I don’t know that my hormone laden brain could have really absorbed the Poetics when I was in college. I came to a greater understanding when I looked back upon it later in life.

I do think that if you are going to get into the arts as a career you are probably better served by someone telling you to get familiar with history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, political science and literature and then come back and you’ll talk.

Even BA programs that theoretically don’t have the conservatory focus and are supposed to provide a well-rounded education tends to have an organizational culture, if not an overt policy, that the Art and all related activites are to receive first priority. Certainly the discipline to rehearse, be prepare for performances, sculpt, paint, photograph, etc are important habits for artists to cultivate. But if the degree calls for a well rounded education, the program focus should be equally distributed.

Just as a disclaimer, I will say I think this is more possible to realize for visual arts, dance and theatre. I don’t know as much about music but I get the sense that you pretty much have to be focussed on your instrument all day, every day or you are doomed. I am not saying this is the way it should be. It just seems to be the way it is. Even dance where a woman’s career is over by the time she is 30 seems to allow a little more leeway when it comes to exploring the forces that might influence the formation and expression of dance.

In fact, Walters quotes an article by a Juillard faculty member saying something quite similar.

The longer students stay in a conservatory the narrower their definition of life in the arts becomes. Julliard’s president, Joseph William Polisi, noticed, as he traveled around, that many graduates were not leading full, juicy lives. He began to feel responsible for too many graduates who were thinking that a life in the arts is only about technique and gigs. Faculty members weren’t be encouraged to send graduates out there to explore other art forms or ask big questions. We weren’t modeling the very life we wanted them to lead.”

“…Ninety percent will be piecing it together in some different way: working in other fields, originating work, collaborating with artists of other fields, starting theatre companies and launching business endeavors. We need to model the way for students and young artists to think and be joyful and make meaning of this hodgepodge that is a contemporary career. [emphasis mine.-Joe]We’re good at rehearsing Shakespeare scenes and improvising the hell out of awkward situations. But we’re not so sensitive to training inner skills that will make a sustainable creative life in the theatre.”

The obstacles to creating a program where a student is prepared to be an artist in all these ways isn’t just in the difficulties related to changing the teaching methods and prevailing culture of a training program. There is also the expectations of the students that need to be surmounted.

There seems to be a real focus on only learning what is necessary these days. In part it is a function of the internet society where you can learn all you want to know about something whenever the need may arise. Students are looking for the minimum training they will need to get a job. With the cost of college these days, it is hard to blame them. My theory about the disparity between male and female enrollment in college these days is not that fewer men are able to get into college, it is that the requisite training/experience for the careers the men want can be found in other places.

If you tell a student that if they want to be an actor, they need to spend four years pondering philosophy, history, literature and all the rest and then they can go on to get a masters in acting and then go get a job, the student is going to take their tuition money to your competitors, independent acting classes, or use it to move to NYC to try their luck.

Mailing Your Stamp of Approval

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I had a “what a great idea” moment this evening which turned to “good idea with reservations” a few minutes later. I will share the idea with you in hopes that someone out there will have the influence with the right people to make this happen (or start up a company to do so).

I got a Valentine’s Day card from my nephew today mailed with a stamp with his picture on it. Apparently, Stamps.com has a service that allows you to place photos on a stamp template and produce legal to use first class mail stamps. The drawbacks are that you pay about $10 for the privilege ($17.99 for 20 vs. 7.80 of the regular kind) and you have to wait for them to be mailed to you.

What popped into my mind was that it would be great if arts organizations could create stamps with images/logos connected with the organization. Not only could the organization use the stamps, but they could make the images available to supporters to use for their own stamps. Given that a lot of greeting cards get mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the stamps could help support end of the year donation drive with a slew of stamps saying “We Support X Theatre” or some such.

One of the pesky additional problems I mentioned before is that unlike Kodak’s Ofoto.com, Stamps.com doesn’t allow you to store your images online and then allow your friends to access them. You could get around this by emailing images to interested supporters, but then they would have to place the image and format the stamps. It isn’t hard to do, but if you aren’t comfortable with technology, it could be a disincentive.

I wonder if Kodak could get in on this less expensively than Stamps.com. They offer a dozen stickers for $3.00 so 24 would be $6.00, toss on $7.80 for postage and $13.80 is cheaper than Stamps.com with four more stamps. It would just be a matter of arranging for the Post Office’s sanction. Still because you have to wait for the stamps in the mail, it might not be cheap or immediate enough to garner widespread patron support.

It would be really great if people could print out the stamps from their home computers. You can already print out postage without images from your home computer and printer. Probably the only thing holding this back is the fact most people don’t have high enough quality printers at home to produce a decent looking image. Once they do, you will probably see homemade postage become more widespread. It would actually be a little more secure than the current black and white print at home postage which has to be monitored for photocopying.

Of course, will we still be mailing things then?

Keeping the Name You Got

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Back in September Drew McManus wrote about the importance of buying all important variations of your internet domain name address.

I just want to mention the importance of keeping the domain name you got. Within the last month, I visited the site of an agent and a performance group and both had let their name registration lapse.

As a result, no one could make an offer on any of the agent’s performers (especially given that he was on the road) or check out any of the other acts he represents. Nor could he receive any email because his address was his domain name which was now defunct.

For the artist, neither I nor anyone else interested in getting background information on the group could do so. All the information that would support press releases, all the video and music clips and all the pictures that will get audiences excited that the performance is coming to their town–it is all inaccessible. They too were on the road with their manager so getting support materials sent was difficult. Like it or not, the internet is the way prospective clients and patrons research performers and venues.

I contacted both entities pointing out that their internet presence was gone. I discovered in one case, the answer to why it lapsed was fairly simple but it is a cautionary tale for others.

The main reason why domain renewal gets overlooked is because no one is getting the reminders. The people who handle the registry of names are pretty organized and are eager to remind you to renew as far as 90 days before it is due. Because renewal is fairly cheap a lot of people pay for multiple years up front. The problem is, if the person handling those arrangements for your organization leaves and you delete his/her email address, you might never receive the reminders.

The lesson here is insist that the contact person email address be set to something generic like webmaster@yourdomain.org that passes to each new person in that position.

The registry companies will also try to reach you by regular mail too. However, if that address is incorrect or you moved or got a new PO Box and your forwarding has expired, you miss out again. Even if you do get the piece of mail okay, the companies have lot of services they want to offer you so the mail tends to look like junk mail. Especially if it is addressed to a person who worked there a year ago or is addressed generically to Webmaster.

Heck, if you aren’t a tech saavy person, even registering online is confusing. Check out GoDaddy.com . How quickly can you figure out how to register a domain name for the first time? How about renewing it?

Also, another reason to have email go to a generic address that can be passed around. It is two years after the old tech guy left, you don’t know the password for the account associated with your domain name. You can have your password sent of course–but it is going to the old tech guy’s email address which was deleted. (Of course, you could just recreate his email address with your own password, but the example wouldn’t be as scary.)

The worst case scenario is that the domain name is allowed to lapse for so long it goes up for auction and is purchased by someone else who then offers to sell it back to you for $10,000 or more. Though if you go that long before someone points out your website isn’t working, it probably wasn’t helping your organization’s public image and relations to begin with. Or people don’t think enough of your company to point it out.

Information Wants to Be Free–But The Internet Won’t

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Came across something a little disturbing yesterday. I don’t remember where exactly. It took me awhile to track it down via Google.

According to the Center for Digital Democracy, phone and cable companies are moving to make every action we make on the internet billable. There is also the possibility that competitors and people espousing views they don’t agree with might be marginalized. Apparently all the money I am paying for my connection isn’t enough for them.

My first thought was that this will probably backfire on them the same way trying to restrict file trading hasn’t really been beneficial for record companies. Yes, they control the methods of communication and that is a lot of leverage. But if there is one thing you can depend on American ingenuity for, it is finding away to circumvent the Man. Some college kid or a municipality or a competitor will see a need to be filled by an alternative.

And if people are faced with the choice of spending a Friday night running the meter on their cable modem or spending some of the same money on a live performance, maybe they choose the live performance, eh?

But assuming that the companies are sneaky and gradually introduce fees so that people will come to accept them, this could also represent a threat to arts organizations. It could become more difficult and expensive to promote your shows via email and digital media than it is now. And what happens if the president of the local cable company is on your competitor’s board and decides to curtail your bandwidth and exposure on the internet ever so slightly?

This isn’t something you want to think about, but probably should keep your eyes on.

American Contribution to The Arts

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I have been reading along in Joli Jensen’s Are The Arts Good For Us? I haven’t gotten too far because some tough weeks have made me long for escapist literature rather than material that I need to take notes on.

She is discussing Alexis de Tocqueville’s view of the arts from his famous Democracy in America. She notes that he felt America’s ties to European arts would keep the young democracy from devolving into barbarism until it developed art of its own.

I got to thinking, what uniquely American things as the country contributed? Blues? Jazz? Television? Movies? Rap? One might cringe at the idea of some of these things representing our contributions. Remember though that none of these things are bad in and of themselves. It is just the expressions via these media that have been lacking at times. Just as sometimes, the expressions have been breathtaking.

The idea that it is the expression, not the art form that is good or bad come upon me while listening to NPR on the ride home today. They were profiling Daniel Bernard Roumain, a classically trained violinist (for as much as that term might mean) who refers to his style as “dred violin.” He is a Haitian-American with dreadlocks and a silver nose ring who likes to experiment with all the sounds he can get out of his violin. His compositions are infused with rock, jazz, hip-hop and classical inspirations.

I don’t know much about classical music, but as I listen I get the feeling that there might be some real worth in what he is doing. Some of his work really sounds interesting. He could be contributing something to the whole music scene, regardless of genre.

But what is it about his pop-inspired music that is so compelling that isn’t in the music of Bond with whom I am not really impressed? To me it seems as if he is concentrating on exploring how different musical elements fit together well rather than if it sounds marketable. There is also some real there there.

Which isn’t to say he isn’t concerned about being marketable. The fact that his look is a marketable commodity is discussed in the interview. But so is the fact that his look will only be cool for so long and will only take him so far.

For all the bombast in the image they are trying to create for him and his group, there is a real humility. He wishes his mastery of classical music was better. He is relieved that a sightreading of a piece he composed for the Lark Quartet integrated as well as it did.

While he has plenty to keep him busy with his group and ten commissions lined up, it remains to be seen if his talent and approach are of a quality (and timing) that will have lasting appeal.

Revisiting Recent and Old

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A little revisiting of former topics to check on how things are going.

Back in May I covered the troubled times the Honolulu Symphony was having. I had actually started out exploring what appeared to be an attempt at a new organizational structure. However, that just ended up being a preamble to developing tensions.

Recent reports show the orchestra is starting on the way back. Donations and ticket revenue are up though attendance is down and their is still a $370,000 deficit.

The good news is that this is down from a near $2 million deficit a few years ago. There are new people on their board of directors and the organization is taking steps to improve their service to the community. The symphony is looking at revisiting their pricing structure for the seats.

And they are pursuing that elusive question of how to make the symphony interesting for regular folks.

Which brings us to the second retrospective, the ever popular, “But Do You Really Think It is Good For You” By way of Artsjournal.com is this book review in the Washington Post. What Good Are the Arts? is a book that examines, according to reviewer Michael Dirda “an intensely argued polemic against the intellectually supercilious, the snooty rich and the worship of high culture as a secular religion for the spiritually refined and socially heartless. Anyone seriously interested in the arts should read it.”

Many of the concepts Dirda quotes sound a lot like those suggested by Joli Jensen in “Is Art Good For Us?” Five years ago I probably wouldn’t have thought long upon it, but in days where non-fiction is peppered with fiction and plagiarism, I have to say I found myself wondering if her work (or those she cites) are in his bibliography.

Alas, my life has been busy and I haven’t gotten too far into Jensen’s book. Hope to soon. Keep watching this space 😉

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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