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Ushering — Destroyer of Souls!

September 5, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

I was listening to the latest entry from the Cool As Hell Theatre podcast while reviewing the financials from last month when both the host and the interviewee began talking about how ushering in return for admission was demeaning and soul killing (around 13:00). I actually backed the audio up and listened and then did so again when I got home.

I am not quite sure what Nick Olivero objection to the practice is, especially since the show his company is producing apparently is all about the whole labor for money for goods exchange.

Of course, this is the show the company is doing free of charge so their whole point about the labor-cash exchange might go in a different direction. However, since they praise Starbucks for giving everyone benefits and talk about how their company is paying performers more and more each year, I can’t think that they damn the process too much.

The lead in to the criticism of ushering is that Nick, being dirt poor, feels it is important to offer performances for free because the only way he has been able to see shows otherwise has been to usher. Then he and host, Michael Rice, start talking about how demeaning and soul killing it is.

I acknowledge that the situation of being so poor that you can’t afford a ticket to a show can be demeaning. So the fact that you have to split your attention between the show and seating patron, scowling at cell phone users and tracking down video tapers when you could be focusing entirely on the performance can be depressing. But the forces which shape this reality are external to the theatre’s see the show for free policy.

The alternatives are to ask people to usher and not see the show or pay people to usher in which case the management may have greater expectations of the ushers which would preclude the opportunity to see the show. One of my paid staff or I watch the lobby so our volunteer ushers can see the show. If I were paying them, I would expect them to be in the lobby far longer in order to serve late comers.

But in the interests of understanding this point of view, if anyone can offer some insight into where they are coming from, I would appreciate knowing.

Thinking about this issue got me reminiscing about a time early in my career when I learned that some of our core volunteers were actually working the arts organization circuit. I was crushed since we obviously offered a superior artistic product to the other guys and went to a lot of effort to treat our volunteers well. I felt the cuckold.

This was back in the days when I believed that all one had to do was produce good work and the public, as enthusiastic about the arts as I was, would flock to the door. Frankly, I think there may have been more truth to that sentiment then than now.

But those volunteers were having a wonderful time in their retirement being involved with a number of arts organizations and seeing lots of good stuff. I have a good group of those type of people volunteering for me right now as well as those who want to do the least they can for the greatest opportunity to see a show.

Except for a couple high school students, I don’t really have any passionate young artistic types who can’t afford to buy tickets to the performances. Perhaps I am still possessed of naivety, but sincerity counts a lot for me. In many respects, I would rather have an entranced student letting things fall through the cracks as the weakest member of the volunteer team than a person completing tasks with the least effort required to gain admittance.

Management Philosophy

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Arts, More Than Just Test Scores

September 4, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

By way of Arts and Letters Daily, The Boston Globe has a column by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland that addresses the apparent misapprehension that arts classes improve test scores for students. Their research found the absence of a causal relationship between arts classes and a rise in test scores.

They did, however, find “that arts programs teach a specific set of thinking skills rarely addressed elsewhere in the curriculum.” They feel arts advocates do their cause an injustice by focusing on the weak relationship with improved test scores.

Where the other classes emphasize and reward memorization and recall of facts, their year long study showed that arts classes cultivated “visual-spatial abilities, reflection, self-criticism, and the willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes.” The authors note that these skills, along with thinking processes like “observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, and reflective self-evaluation,” are valuable life long and among those needed for careers. The authors expand upon the value of each though process in the article.

One of the statements that struck me was “many people don’t think of art class as a place where reflection is central, but instead as a place where students take a break from thinking.” That was certainly my perception when I was in school. In fact, I eschewed visual art classes when I was in high school in favor of more serious subjects. (Though I was a member of the after school drama club.) Reading the study observations I realize I was learning more than I thought when I was younger.

The authors note that there are many possibilities for running classes in other subjects so that they cultivate the same thinking processes–and that many teachers already do so.

The big caveat I have for the article is essentially the one common to the entire education system these days. The schools which they studied to show how well the approach works are the type of schools where parents, students, teachers and administrators all contribute to a learning environment where the complex interactions necessary to implement this sort of curriculum can occur.

In a situation where there are antagonistic teacher-student and student-student relationships, great need for remediation and a host of negative external influences, it can be easier to look to standardized test scores as a of measure success.

Most likely the only way to prove that this view of arts education can be valid across the board is to sustain its presence right from the first grade when the fundamental relationships and expectations about what the educational process entails can be established with the students.

Easy to say and easy to start since all kids are pretty much sweeties in first grade. Much tougher to maintain 5th/6th grade onward when new realizations about Venus de Milo and Michaelangelo’s David and life in general begin to develop.

Terms and Ideas

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Be Flexible. Play Your Own Stuff

August 30, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

Due to an errant keystroke and my uncharacteristic failure to save periodically, my entry for yesterday was swallowed by the abyss. I am not sure if I have faithfully recreated my thought process but hopefully this will inspire some pondering just the same.

I was listening to the radio on Wednesday as they talked about the death of Hilly Kristal, the owner of the club CBGB and I was struck by how this man owed the success of the club to the flexibility of his expectations. For those of you who don’t know, CBGB stands for Country, Blue Grass, Blues, which were Kristal’s favorite music styles and what he expected to present in his club

Instead the club ended up as the launching pad for punk and new wave bands such as the Ramones and Talking Heads. One of Kristal’s main rules for performing at CBGB was that the bands had to play original material and not cover anyone. Part of the audio NPR played for their story included his advice that bands not seek success in copying another group’s sound.

Given that the average lifespan of a club is about 2-3 years, I wonder if CBGB owed it’s longevity to being on the leading edge of music styles (though the income from merchandising didn’t hurt.) If not for a disagreement last year with the landlord over a rent increase, the club would still be open.

I am hesitant, however, to advocate that arts organizations emulate nightclubs and change with the latest trends. Clubs are structured to take advantage of the latest trend, not to serve the community. When tastes change and business wanes, they fold up shop and often reopen after a renovation that positions them to conform to whatever is en vogue.

Even the iconic Studio 54, for all its popularity faded away as tastes changed. Though the case could be made that it owes its existence to flexibly changing with the times. The building used to be a theatre, then it was a television studio for CBS, then it was the famous nightclub and now it has come full circle as a venue for Roundabout Theatre (though it does have 2 full service bars, some things are too valuable to get rid of!)

Arts organizations trying to respond to the latest trends might change their programming from a classical focus to a contemporary one or vice versa. I can’t see too many closing their doors to renovate a black box theatre into a proscenium set up as tastes move in that direction. Or rather, those who can afford to do so probably have the resources to weather the shift until it moves back toward their configuration again.

The decision to change the focus of an organization to accommodate the latest tastes and thinking is certainly based in the environment and situation. Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre with its 56,000 subscribers (yes, that’s right) probably isn’t going to consider changing the way they do things any time soon.

There is growing sentiment in various discussions about the state of the arts that the current economic model the arts follow is no longer suitable and a change is needed. It may come to pass that arts organizations end up with a life span of a couple years and only those agile enough to reinvent and restructure their public manifestation will endure.

As cynical as it may sound, you can only serve a community as long as they value being served in the manner you offer. I honestly believe that people can tell when a company is catering to their latest whims and when the company is in it for the long haul. I believe they won’t give much thought to abandoning the first when they have grown bored and will show more loyalty to the second. However, I also believe that as life moves ever faster, that the effective lifespan of even the most sincere arts organization is going to shorten. Some companies like the Walnut Street may command intense loyalty forever but the dynamics of other communities may result in greater rates of change.

In closing, I will repeat the sentiment I have stated many times before–like Hilly says, play your own stuff and don’t look for success being derivative of other groups. Yes, I linked to a seminar where the Walnut Street folks will tell you what they did to go from 0 to 56,000 subscribers in 25 years. More power to ’em, but they can’t guarantee you can do the same in your community. Believe me, no one wishes they could more than me. It would simplify things a great deal. On the other hand, I am pretty sure a good portion of what they have to say would be of some value so I would be ducking in to check them out and figure what I could use and what I couldn’t.

Arts in an Age of Technology

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Wherefore Art Memphis Manifesto?

August 28, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

I went to visit the Memphis Manifesto website today to find it gone. Well, more accurately, that the account hosting the site had been suspended. You can click on that link if you don’t believe me.

Does anyone know why the site has disappeared? The physical manifesto is easily found as an Acrobat document. But I wonder what the disappearance of the site might portend. Since the impetus for the Creative 100 who met and signed the Manifesto came from Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, I wonder if this is a sign that the whole idea that cities must attract the creatives has fallen out of vogue.

The Manifesto it self doesn’t seem to be dated in anyway (in these days of fast technological development, ideas can get stale after 4 years). There doesn’t seem to be anything in there a community wouldn’t want to strive for.

So what happened? Did the dream die or has it morphed into a bigger, better concept that was only held back by the ideas on the old website?

Anyone know?

General Musings

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