I know that there is a rumor that Tavis Smiley was not wanted at NPR because he didn’t have the “NPR Voice” – that low, sedate, even toned voice that follows one of a limited few cadences. The Voice was satirized for a long time on a recurring Saturday Night Live skit about the fictional show “Delicious Dish.” (My favorites were the ones with Alec Baldwin where double entendres were made especially funny by the deadpan, oblivious delivery of the cast members.)

I was a little alarmed though when I heard an entry to Earth & Sky’s Young Producers Contest where a fifth grader was using The Voice to narrate his piece.

I imagine kids that age are smart enough to recognize the common elements of all the NPR shows and will put together what they think adults want. While I am glad the kid is listening to the informative NPR program rather than music talking about sex and alcohol, conformity to that ideal is gonna make high school hard on him. Ironically, I have to say I hope it is a phase he grows out of and begins to embrace a little rebellion. (Certainly his parents won’t thank me for that sentiment.)

While contests rewarding creativity do have many unwritten expectations, they are about showing yourself off rather than mimicking what you have heard. Thus, I was rather pleased to see that the grand prize winners didn’t use The Voice. In fact, it was sort of hard to hear what they were saying because their enunciation was so poor.

Keep up the good work showing off yourselves kids!

Despite not having fulfilled my pledge to add links to the few theatre blogs I have found to my blogroll, I have gone in search of more theatre blogs tonight.

For the most part I was disappointed. Of the blogs I found, most had started with good intentions, but hadn’t been maintained on a regular basis.

This is too bad because Sharpe’s Theatre Blog has elements of what I envisioned when I suggested blogs be used for reflective exercises in learning. The initial entries make some observations about texts and what acting is. Later there is some feedback to other people in the project group which frankly, having been in theatre for a long time, seems to be heavily self-edited so as not to offend. Not that people need to tear into others or air their dirty laundry publicly. It is just conspicous by its santitation.

Similarly, the Applied & Interactive Theatre Blog starts out with a couple promising entries and then fizzles. (On the other hand, the Applied & Interactive Theatre Website proper has many resources of interest to Theatre folk)

Handcart Ensemble in NYC uses their blog to essentially post press releases online. However, there were a few interesting articles interspersed like this one on how to find a rehearsal/audition/performance space in NYC, (none of the stages may be in the same place) what questions to ask, horror stories and how much it may cost.

On the whole, blogs I have found seem to be predominantly focused on providing space for people to post their events- Ohio Theatre, Culturebot
(it does have news and opinion links, but majority are promotional), and the Washington Post’s chic Going out Gurus (actually pretty much newspaper calendar editors posting on line rather than a blog.)

One unrelated, but interesting link I came across was Eric James Stone’s blog on the progress he is making writing his first novel. A therometer bar currently indicates that he has 139,641 out of 150,000 words written. There is actually more reflection on short stories he has written while writing the novel than the novel itself. Some interesting stuff though, including some simple reflections on theatre attendance.

Recent events have kept me from writing entries of late. Some have been tiring, but others rather energizing. I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I say that some times when arts folks talk about how much what they do/are planning on doing is going to deeply impact the lives of others, they feel a little dishonest.

You propose a group on a grant application or to your board of directors talking about how exposing audiences to X is going to influence the thinking of people. But when the artist(s) perform, the results aren’t too much different from the groups that came before or those that follow. Attendance might have been up a little, but comments aren’t any different than those you get for the shows that weren’t billed as being extra special. The whole experience could be interchanged with any other experience.

One can be fairly confident that at least one or more people were touched and perhaps inspired by the work in a significant way. But even the most idealistic among us needs a little concrete proof that efforts made were worthwhile.

Then you get that one show that removes all doubt and I had that experience this past week.

We had a band from New Zealand called Te Vaka perform this past week. The group presents Polynesian music and dance from Tokelau, Tuvalu and Samoa. They use traditional log drums along with electric, acoustic and bass guitars.

Given that there is a fair population on O’ahu from each of these island groups along with regular fans, we easily sold out the performance. (Which did not please those who procrastinated about buying tickets.) I could have set up extra seats, but I heard the audience liked to dance—and good lord did they–so I left some room.

Honestly, a performance where ex-patriots got to hear music from home and watch traditional dance and would have been enough. Especially since the rest of the audience got carried along with the enthusiasm and could recognize some value in a culture that was somewhat similar, but not entirely so to the one in Hawaii.

However, our co-producing partner arranged for a school lecture-demo this morning. There was no doubt in my mind that the event was what funders had in mind when they sought to provide arts opportunities for at-risk kids.

The program was well suited for the school groups we had. It was familiar enough to them that they had a frame of reference (unlike, say if we had a modern dance program which they might not know enough about to begin comprehending.) and yet different enough to hold their attention for an hour. One of the teachers was almost in tears from gratitude.

Apparently, the last time Te Vaka was in Hawaii back in 2002, they received an email from a kid saying he was inspired by the group and was going to devote more time to his music. Today they actually got a similar email from a friend of a woman who attended Saturday night saying much the same thing.

After the performance, Te Vaka was invited to lunch by the students in the college’s halau (a type of school of Hawaiian culture). The students did a welcoming ceremony in Hawaiian chant and then had a lot of great conversation over lunch comparing notes about the similarities in each other’s languages and culture. An ukelele was broken out and the students performed some music and hula for Te Vaka.

As I started to urge the group toward the door so we could make it to the airport, the kumu (teacher of Hawaiian culture) offered a fairwell chant which one member of the group returned. Native Hawaiian instruments and dictionaries were pressed into hands as parting gifts and pictures were taken (as I chanted “To the airport, to the airport.”)

These wonderful and poignant moments reminded me that art doesn’t have to be a one directional exchange (the portraits on money notwithstanding). There is so much emphasis on going somewhere to stand or sit passively absorbing what someone else has produced.

This might be why people are intimidated by what they hear or see. They aren’t quite sure if they are receiving what is being transmitted correctly and if they are getting their money’s worth. There have been frequently observations which theorize that people often give standing ovations to good, but not exception performances, out of a need to convince themselves they have received something worth the money they paid.

I wonder if it would help matters if young students, knowing they were going to see a performance in a week, were required to create something of their own to exchange. I wonder if people’s view of art would change if they found themselves empower to create art that had value in an exchange for a different type of art.

Obviously, you don’t want to have it happen every day lest it devolve into a ceremony of motions empty of meaning and significance. Say a student creates something and then presents it with a sort of understanding of “You are a master artist and I am merely a beginner, yet we share the same spark. I present this thing that has meaning to me unto you as a symbol of my respect for sharing your gift with us.”

I wonder if that action, only performed a handful of times in the formative years, could plant the seed of a greater respect and comprehension of the artistic exchange in the adult.