Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

During a meeting I had today I was reminded of a series of problems I had with a group of traveling artists some time ago. I think enough time has passed that I can talk about it without revealing the identity of the group to any but the most ingenious of researchers.

One of the things I am often most anxious about when a performing group arrives is that they won’t find the arrangements we have made suitable to their needs. Following the advice of the man who trained me in the business, I am pretty meticulous about advancing a show with a road manager. I double check the details of a rider just in case personnel changes result in different dietary or technical needs. It isn’t foolproof but generally the worst that happens is the group arrives and says, “Oh, you must have the old rider,” and accommodates what is usually the lack of something minor.

I am also upfront about anything we can’t provide as soon as the topic comes up. If I suspect there might be a problem brewing with something, I send off an email confirming conversations so that I have it in writing and time stamped. In one case, I reiterated a fact in three different emails because it didn’t seem to be sinking in to the guy’s brain. Fortunately, it did before he arrived.

There was an instance where despite a lengthy conversation with the road manager the group had issues with the food, hotel and transportation after they arrived. The only thing that didn’t emerge as a problem was the technical equipment we provided. What contributed to the problem was that the agent and the road manager apparently did not communicate the information to the artists. The artists did not communicate their needs with the road manager or have them written into the contract. What seemed strangest to me was that they had been touring for years upon years and hadn’t ironed these details out. There were plenty of “you must haves” listed in the contract but a lot of basic details omitted, too.

The night before the group arrived the road manager called and said that the group would like to exercise the option I had mentioned (and expected them to exercise) a month earlier and have their rooms upgraded to suites. They would pick up the cost difference. So I scramble and as luck would have it, there are enough suites available. I am also asked to make a dentist appointment for the first business day after the concert for a group member who is having a problem with a tooth. Even more amazingly, I find someone at a dentist office near the hotel that late at night and make the arrangements during the specific time frame the performer requested.

When the group arrives, we go to the venue and I am asked to go grab food for the group because they hadn’t gotten to eat before their flight and their technical director doesn’t want them leaving the theatre. (Come to find out, they went swimming instead of eating earlier that day.) Later when dinner arrives, we discover the caterer has decided to embellish a little and stuffed the entree with crab. One of the group won’t eat it because of the crab.

Now my mother is deathly allergic to shellfish and has almost died on a number of occasions. The two questions about food I specifically address is seafood allergies because of her and vegetarian requirements because the term means different things to different people. There were no allergies of any sort mentioned. So off I go for two more meals because one of the other people decides that since I am going anyway they would rather have something else.

An hour before curtain the road manager comes and asks if I can move them to another hotel. Now note that at this point, they haven’t checked in to the rooms I upgraded for them the day before. The reason is due to a minor feature, the lack of which I revealed to the road manager a month prior. Since I had made the reservations month earlier to secure good rates during high season and a purchase order had been issued to cover the estimated cost at that hotel, there was nothing I could do.

I think they secretly wanted to stay at a specific hotel because they ended up staying there on their own dime which equaled four times the amount they would have paid for the upgraded rooms I arranged. Unfortunately, due to the fact I had canceled the rooms hours before they were to be occupied, I ended up paying for them. Fortunately, the hotel took pity on me and only charged me the regular room rate rather than the suite rate.

After the show, I discovered that instead of one trip to the airport, they had changed their plans and would now be leaving at four different times. The next day was a non-travel day for the company and all seemed well. No messages at all from the group. Still, after I went home I checked my voice mail and email regularlly for problems. Then at 11 pm I got a call at home (a number I didn’t give them) from the road manager saying the group wanted to alter their pick up times.

That was about the end of the troubles, fortunately. If I recall, the performance was great. The audience loved it and had no clue what was happening behind the scenes. The one thing I appreciated was that they let the road manager do all the talking. Maybe it was because they didn’t like confrontational situations. But I was glad that as I drove them to the hotel I didn’t book, they didn’t try to explain themselves. They kept thanking me and my staff for all we did and talked about how grateful they were. I grinned and bore it while looking forward to their departure thinking all the while that if they were really grateful, they would stop making my life a living hell. Revisiting a frustrating topic while driving would probably not have been a good idea so I was just as happy to have them ignore that elephant in the room.

Were I to offer any advice to people starting out and those who have been lucky enough not to have a couple days like these. This was one of those fluke occurrences that transpire despite your diligent efforts to address issues well in advance. In fact, good advance planning allowed the situation not to get worse. The night of the performance everything that I would usually wander around checking on was completed by staff and volunteers doing their jobs. That left me the time to address these problems without overtly freaking out. Following this incident, I am sure I annoyed the next few road managers coming through on tour to no end double and triple checking their requirements. But I guarantee you that everyone has been happier that I have wanted to be better safe than sorry.

Not As Bad As Reported

For those who have been eagerly awaiting a post on the implications of the chicken dance at weddings on the greater culture as a whole, I am sorry to disappoint you, I didn’t gain any insights while at my sister’s wedding. I don’t even think they played the chicken dance, much to my relief.

I did have a brief conversation with my other sister’s mother-in-law who founded a social service non-profit and is approaching retirement in the next 18 months. I asked her about the succession planning she was doing since that has been on my mind of late. Pretty much every element mentioned in the reports from the Myer Foundation and Building Movement held true. It was interesting to actually speak to someone about these trends having read so much about them.

In her organization, the budget was about $200,000 too small to necessitate having the type of person on staff who would be groomed to take over. None of the other people in senior management positions want to take over so her board will have to look outside to replace her. She also commented that since most people only stay with an organization 5-7 years, there hadn’t been a lot of opportunity to cultivate someone to succeed her. I was grateful to learn that in general, she didn’t really question the commitment of emerging leaders in her field to the work.

She had taken a seminar on Founders Syndrome which she had found quite valuable. She talked about having that problem with her board when many of the original members left. (The organization is going on 25 years old now.) She admits that her agency will probably have to deal with at least an off-shoot of this problem when she leaves. Some of the staff have said they are too old to get used to working with a new boss and will leave when she retires. While this will leave one less person who will resist the inevitable change a new executive director will bring, it also removes some of the institutional memory from the agency.

As with many of those in the aforementioned reports, she wonders if she can afford to retire as planned on what she has saved given the recent changes in the economy.

I don’t often get the opportunity to speak with people in the non-profit field outside of the arts at any length so it was interesting to hear so much of what I had read verified. When I read reports, I often forget that the trends being reported are cumulative of many respondents and that every element doesn’t apply to every organization out there. While my sister’s mother-in-law faced many of the challenges outlined in the reports I have read, her agency hasn’t experienced them all. Those they have encountered haven’t been as big a cause of concern.

Goin to the Chapel

People are getting married and I will be attending. Posting shall resume upon my return.

Perhaps I will have some great insight about arts administration while doing the chicken dance at the reception.

Fitting Ass Ears On Another Bottom

I have been participating in some interesting exchanges lately. The drama production class produced a pretty dark adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Lab Classroom this semester. I wasn’t too keen on the show in principle because it was set in a dance club and an organization in town had just finished their 3rd revival of Romeo and Juliet set in a strip club. I was annoyed that it was so derivative when so many other options available.

Taken on its own, it was pretty good. There were some inventive moments. For example, since the playwright decided the rude mechanicals didn’t have enough time to rehearse and learn lines, he has them present a silent butoh version of Pyramis and Thisbe. The students did a good job creating the club atmosphere by having officious bouncers at the door, black lights in the stairwell and a half-hour pre-show of the characters dancing in the club. The pre-show lent itself especially well to establishing the Helena-Demetrius-Hermia characters and backstory.

In any case, the show sold out every night of the extended run. The director started thinking it would be great to do it on Mainstage setting up platform seating around a playing area on stage rather than having the audience sit in the permanent seats. The playwright and I are both against the idea because the dynamics of the show will be entirely different. Instead of the cramped quarters and low ceilings of the Lab classroom, audiences will be watching a show surrounded by the wide open spaces of the wing space on the sides and the 70 feet of air in the fly system overhead.

To create the same ambiance, we would have to have everyone come in through the loading dock roll up door at the back of the theatre, build a hallway through the shop into a room we constructed on stage. At a certain point it seems strange to build a theatre inside your theatre. Even still the relationship of the audience to the actors and to each other is going to change. The small basement space holds 75 people which translates to two rows of 12 chairs on three side of the playing area. The director is talking about serving an audience of 300. Even if the performance was done fully in the round, that is 75 people in each direction. This increase in both the width and the depth of the seating area changes the size of the playing area and reduces the sense of tension and conflict.

Of course, part of the endeavor would be to create an entirely new production that had its own character rather than to recreate the elements of a past success. Though as the playwright pointed out, each revival of the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet adaptation was worse than the one before. Granted, they didn’t have the benefit of our superb production team. The adage about not being able to enter the same river twice probably is a good caution when considering your motivation for reviving a show.

The date proposed for the revival is Fall 2010 and a lot can happen in the interim. Perhaps both the playwright and I will feel less strongly about the topic a year from now when the time comes to decide such things. I don’t talk a lot about the decision making process I go through here on the blog. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to record some of the considerations that have come into play. It will be interesting to me to see how I view things next year and 18 months hence if the decision to perform it on our mainstage is made.