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Great Idea!

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Today the person with whom I had been discussing the state of arts education a week or so ago, sent me a great article about how some local schools were exposing kids to art while meeting the “No Child Left Behind” requirements for science. (For those of you wondering what Yu Gi Oh is, go here)

At Nanaikapono, Peralta’s class is focusing on two-dimensional art, drawing and painting fanciful creatures in various habitats where they face threats from man or nature. Each student researched the science of three different animals, studying their physical characteristics and habitats, before melding those traits to come up with a new animal.

Last week, they wrestled with how their creatures would overcome threats.

“This is when you guys can tell the story, instead of having the television tell them to you,” Enos told them, with his irrepressible smile. “This is when you can use your ideas. Who needs TV anyway?”

Ultimately, the class will create a game together, featuring the 28 creatures they have designed on cards.

“How many of you have played Yu-Go-Ih?” asked Enos, prompting peals of laughter.

“Yu-Gi-Oh!” the students corrected him in chorus.

“Usually you have a winner and a loser,” he went on, with a wink. “We’re going to change that whole dynamic. Everyone who sits down to play this game needs to work together to stop the threat.”

The goal of the game, Ali explained, is to create a balanced ecosystem. The rules will be up to the kids.

….Halfway through the six-week program, the class has learned how both artists and scientists rely on observation, prediction and trial-and-error, and how they must have a deep knowledge of their materials and their settings.

The program is a pilot project that will be expanded to other schools in the spring and mostly incorporate the efforts of visual artists who might work in anything from bronze to clay or fibre arts. I have to say, this really sounds like a great program. I am always at a loss to think of ways to integrate arts and subjects like science and math, so I really applaud the creativity of whomever came up with this.

Misc Thoughts

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So just a few thoughts since visions of Nutcracker dancers and Mall Santas are prancing through my head too much to have any real significant ideas these days.

If the median age of the population is getting older as the mass of baby boomers enter retirement age, what does this mean for the senior citizen discount at theatres? When the average income for a show starts to drop below the median price because there are more seniors than “adults” in your audience, do you reduce the difference between the regular and discount rate, eliminate the discount altogether since your regularly paid price is the discount price, really revise your budget projections?

My other thought has to do with the other end of the spectrum. Is there an age that is just too young to put kids on stage? We have a pre-school that has rented the theatre since the beginning of time to have their 2-5 year old students in a Christmas pageant. After hearing many of these kids scream with terror about going on stage, I wonder if this is really a health activity for them. Another unsafe element is that until this year, members of the theatre staff had to stand at the front of the stage and run back and forth catching kids who saw their parents and started walking toward the four foot drop at the edge of the stage. (This year, the pre-school finally got a group of people together to catch the kids.)

Although I would lose the rental income, I can’t help but feel that these kids would be better served by being part of smaller events in less formal and intimidating surroundings (where the floor didn’t suddenly fall away). As much as I am for exposing kids to the arts, this seems too much too soon.

Block Heads

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So I didn’t post often last week because I was engaged in a time consuming, sensitive decision making process–Christmas shopping!

However, today I met with my compatriots in the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii to continue our block booking process. When last we left our heroes, we choose a slate of performers we felt we wanted to present. At the time, we had sketchy information about how much the artist fees might be and how many people we might end up transporting to the islands. Since we more or less knew who we wanted to present, different members went off to gather more information which bring us to today…

Today we met to discuss our selected slate and try to fit them in to a rough schedule. Some highly desired artists could only come at certain times, others had more open schedules or were not as desired. There was a lot wrangling of schedules to find a series of dates to proposed to each performance group.

Among some of the impediments were the fact that three of us were college presenters with student productions of our own to work around. Some of the other presenters had already contracted other performers that they knew would not be appealing to the whole group and set dates with them. There were also considerations of Hawaiian holidays or community events that entire islands geared up for during which times the public wouldn’t be interested in attending shows.

Also, since snowbirds (people who lived in Hawaii during cold winter months on the mainland) comprised larger audiences on some islands than others, it was tough to schedule some performers in the early fall when there would be a smaller potential audience base.

And of course, we worked against ourselves thinking we had found the perfect date only to have someone pipe up, but that is the weekend we already agreed to host Group X.

In the end though, we hammered out what will translate into 80% of my season. There were still some performers that members had to talk to either by phone or at the annual APAP convention next month (which was also one of those scheduling impediments for 05-06 seasons) and more perfomers may be added for future consideration. However, I can now look at perhaps putting a slate of people with smaller financial requirements together myself to flesh out my schedule too.

A couple interesting observations I made:

1) The person I was asked to research came in with a higher rate than other members expected, even with a reduction for block booking and one person had wanted to defer them in for 06-07 any way.

2) On the whole, the slate of acts we were putting together this year had much smaller fees than the current year which is somewhat reflective of the fact that we aren’t getting the size audiences we want despite the good economic climate on the islands.

3) With all the research and discussion we have done about some of the acts, there was a little bit of competition amongst people on the same island to be the one to present some of the perfomers. However, when I showed the list of those we would probably be presenting next year to the office staff, they were underwhelmed. It just goes to show the job I must do to communicate what is exciting about some of these performers to my audience.

When I mention the idea of “what is exciting” I don’t mean in some esoteric sense like the work communicates the mythical archetypes common to all cultures through music. (Which, as a fan of Joseph Campbell could be interesting to me). Some of these groups are not my cup o’ tea at all, but by doing research on them, I found I would be interested to see more of what it was all about.

Now considering most audience members don’t engage in the depth of research I did, how to communicate all of this in a radio or newspaper ad is another thing altogether.

A Piano in Every Parlor

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A recent article by Drew McManus in The Partial Observer awakened some old contemplations. He wondered how classical music in the US fell so far out of favor and traces history for a possible answer.

I have often wondered along the same lines. At one point in our history, (only 70-80 or so years ago) almost every house had a piano in the parlor and people collected sheet music like they run out to get the newly released DVD. One would think this would be fertile ground for music, if not arts appreciation to grow. Instead, it has all fallen by the wayside.

One might blame technological advances and a shift to other forms of entertainment, but Europe has the same diversions available to them and they have maintained a fair ethic of interest in the arts in general. In looking back at some of my earlier entries on the history of the arts in the US like How Did We Get In To This Mess?, there are some answers, but nothing to clearly explain why we differ from our European cousins.

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that people in the US work longer hours than their European counterparts and therefore don’t have the time to cultivate our abilities to process (or even attend) live performances. Instead we gravitate toward the more accessible forms of entertainment like television and the corner video store.

An interesting related note–(my thanks to Vinod’s Blog for bringing the above link and the following link, both from MSN to my attention) according to economist Peter Kuhn at the University of California:

�It used to be that when you got a college degree you could get a white-collar job and take it easy.It�s just the opposite now. It�s blue-collar folks who have more time for leisure.�

(Quote is about 1/2 of the way down in this article)

It makes me wonder if the arts should be restructing programs and pitching to the blue collar sector. They may not have as much disposable income as their managers, but if they have the time and inclination to expand their horizons a little, they could prove to be a good potential audience.

Arts Educatin’

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I was having a conversation about arts outreach programs with the outreach coordinator of a dance group I had contracted to do a lecture/demo. With some synchronicity, the Artful Manager has also posted today about arts education.

Since I come from an organization that had a strong arts outreach program, I wanted to establish one here in conjunction with local artists and those I brought in from the Mainland and other countries. The outreach program coordinator also has a strong ethic in this regard as well.

In fact, her ideas were so ambitious, I had to rein her in a little. She wanted to have a week long series of events culminating in a performance that we bused kids in to. Since I am new here, I wanted to use the outreach to begin to establish relationships with local schools that I could eventually cultivate into something larger.

Following my philosophy of making it easy for people to say yes to attending performances, I want to take the performers in to the schools. This can be great or problematic. I have had cases where I have set up a program months out, reminded people two weeks, one week and the day before we arrived and still showed up to find out rooms weren’t set aside, teachers/principals weren’t told about the program and we ended up doing a lecture/demo in the hallways.

On the other hand, there have been schools that did everything but toss rose petals before us and were so enthusiastic about our presence, we had to remind them that we really needed to spend time in schools other than theirs.

But if you take performers to schools, there isn’t a need for the school to get buses, send home permission slips and take travel time out of the day. When I brought this up to the outreach coordinator, she wholeheartedly agreed. With the No Child Left Behind law, the schools she has dealt with are really eliminating any room for creativity and are mandating X number of hours each day for reading, math, etc and specifying rigid standards for how it should be taught and when.

The real problem then is that the schools who have the least amount of arts exposure and would benefit most are those in districts that have the most pressure to raise their scores and therefore have little time for frivolous programs like ours. The districts that do have the time tend to also be those who have allocated time for arts exposure. Still many of them could probably do with more.

The dance company’s coordinator was talking about how the focus used to be on underserved schools whereas now things have moved to drug diversion and family preservation (not surprising since the State Foundation for Culture and the Arts is now funded by federal drug money) Now granted, this new focus pretty much encompasses the underserved/at-risk population as well.

The message I had hoped to communicate with this outreach was really appropriate for this goal though. The dance piece was created as a cooperative effort by a very traditional Hawaiian hālau and a modern dance company. There were a lot of things that the modern dance company wanted to do that was not within the acceptable limits of the hula tradition and the modern company did not want to be restricted by the traditional aspects of hula or to hula at all in the creation of the piece.

Ultimately though, they created this incredible work of art which heralds the arrival of Lo’ihi, a new island off the southeast edge of Hawai’i. (In 30-50,000 years). The underlying message to kids today is that traditional (parents) ways and the new (children) are not mutually exclusive and both outlooks have significance to each other.

Hopefully I can get this into the schools!

Work That Lobby

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A recent article that appeared on Artsjournal about the value or lack thereof of intermissions, and how they might be more pleasant in Pittsburgh than in NYC, got me to thinking about some recent observations.

For some reason I don’t understand (though perhaps it was simply related to the number of ushers available at the time) the woman who was the house manager of my theatre before I arrived wouldn’t open the exterior doors of the theatre until it was time to allow the audience in to the theatre.

Because I had so many things on my mind and had come from a theatre with a lobby so small that we essentially had to keep the audience outside until the house opens time, I maintained this policy for the first few show. Then I realized how silly this was. I had a lobby with a gorgeous 23′ x 104′ mural by Jean Charlot and an extensive lobby display commemorating the 30th anniversary of the theatre. I wanted people to look around!

For the last few performances, I have started letting people in as soon as enough ushers have arrived to rip tickets and prevent folks from entering the theatre before we are ready. I am almost glad I had kept people out because I would have never noticed the difference in audience behavior. Before people would rush straight in to the theatre, come out for intermission and then leave at the end of the show.

Now people walk around, admire the mural and peruse the display, discuss all the great performances they attended over the past 30 years and continue when they come out at intermission. The number of requests for brochures and additional information has increased. More people approach me with comments and suggestions (I do a curtain speech so I am easily identified.)

At this stage, I would say the lobby is really a valuable venue in the development of a relationship with your audience and communicating what you are all about as an organization. Now that I have seen the impact of having audiences linger in the lobby, I am starting to think about what I can do for next year when the 30 year anniversary material comes down so I can continue to educate my them about the organization.

Insuring a Quality Product

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Well I must say I am quite surprised. I usually don’t get comments on my blog entries with the exception of Drew McManus over at Adaptistration. But after my last entry outlining how my anti-social tendencies are in conflict with my public professional life, I actually got a handful of responses. I guess I need to share personal quirks more often.

I didn’t make an entry last night because I was overseeing a performance. The experience seemed well suited for tonight’s entry. I talk a lot about insuring that you are providing audiences with a quality experience when they attend shows. From time to time, I talk about performers who really offer a quality product. But I don’t think I have ever spoken about quality control performers exert over their product as it were.

Last night was an example of a artist who brought a sense of craftmanship to his music, but also to his show. The group was Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano. The group is lead by Nati Cano who has been performing mariachi for nearly 45 years now. He is recognized as one of the most influential figures in mariachi, shifting it from being perceived as the province of street musicians, to something worthy of international concert halls. About 10 years ago, he was recognized by the National Endowment of the Arts with a National Heritage Fellowship.

Now all this is well and good, but as anyone can tell you, accolades don’t guarantee a pleasant working relationship with a person. He was determined to make the show the highest quality it could be. He asked me questions about the audience, would it be made up of older audiences or younger, mostly Latins or a large contingent of Hawaiians? He wanted to make sure he didn’t perform songs that were only familiar to Latin families who grew up on the music if there was a sizable contingent of people from other backgrounds.

The truth was, a large percentage of the audience had Japanese surnames. When I mentioned this, he told me that yes, that was about right, when he was last in Hawaii (30 years ago) they had comprised a very large and very appreciative portion of the audience. Then he went back and talked to the band about a set list that reflected this.

It was like that all day. Before the show he and other band members inquired if I was happy with the size of the audience they had attracted for presale. (Indeed!) After the show–did I approve of the performance energy and song selection, was the audience an acceptable size, did I approve of the state in which they left the dressing rooms?

I have had performers ask me if they show and audience size was good before, but the detail to which Nati and his group went to in order to fashion the show and then solicit feedback is one I have rarely experienced. This is probably why he has been performing for 45 years. He is dedicated to good customer service that encompasses both his audience and his employer de jour.

I don’t normally listen to mariachi and I don’t speak Spanish either. I was listening to the group’s CDs to set the tone for their arrival. You forget though the power of a good live event. When you have energy, musical prowess and showmanship in a performance, you end up saying “Wow, I don’t know what they said, but I sure know it was good.”

You might think that artists and presenters are motivated simply by the best monetary situation they can position themselves in to. Certainly that keeps the doors open and people fed so it is important. But I know for a fact that both artists and presenters talk about their encounters with each other and that can absolutely influence a decision to book a performance and can tip the scales when the money isn’t quite what one would want to pay/be paid.

I Hate You. Welcome!

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I have been thinking lately about the contradictory nature of some artist’s relationships with their own performance. Mainly how you would think aspects they possess would pretty much remove performing as an option in their lives. For instance, there are many performers out there who have had terrible stage fright but go out and perform. Donny Osmond comes to mind as the most extreme example. And everyone knows the story about how James Earl Jones overcame his stutter to become the Voice of everything from Darth Vader. Verizon, CNN and cartoon characters.

I got to thinking this because my own quirk is that I hate being around crowds of people and yet, I try my damnedest to attract them to shows and make them comfortable. I just spent a Thanksgiving where, after calling my family, I didn’t utter a sound for three whole days except to speak to a librarian. It wasn’t the first time I have done it, nor is it the longest I have gone without speaking or human contact.

When I went to the Smithsonian for a summer vacation, I would be there when the doors opened and then would have to leave by 2 pm because the press of the crowd just annoyed me. I wanted to punch out the school kids running unsupervised through the place heedless of the fact I almost stepped on them. (Not the mention the fact they hogged all the interactive exhibits!) I would hop back on the Metro and go back to my camping spot in rural Virginia. Then I would go back in and continue the next day.

When I go shopping I park out near the edges of the lot and walk back in because I don’t want to deal with the lot sharks who circle and circle looking for a spot up close. Worst of all, they stop, blocking traffic out to the road while they wait for someone to back out when they can drive 3 car lengths and have their choice of 5 empty spots.

The thing is, I have worked at and even organized outdoor festivals where tens of thousands of people show up. I have worked hard to insure there is sufficient parking, a variety of food, enough trash barrels and smooth process for admitting the audience. I don’t mind this at all. Perhaps it is a control issue because subconsciously I know that I have the power to throw ’em all out.

Lest one think I didn’t mind because I had hundreds of acres to spread my crowd out over and avoid bumping in to them, I point out that I have turned the same planning to indoor shows seating thousands of people as well.

I can’t say that it is because I enjoy organizing and throwing big parties because despite being a pretty good cook, I have never had anyone outside my family over to my house for any sort of party. I usually end up picking up the trash after any event I do so it isn’t like I enjoy organizing these big events because I have someone else around to do the clean up.

So there you go, I have no idea why an anti-social person like myself would ever invest himself so much into attending to the details of organizing events for the enjoyment of large crowds of people–and then work hard to rectify their complaints.

Anyone else feel they or a friend are in a similiarly strange arrangement? Let me know!

Procrastination

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So I was a little premature in some of my recent declarations. My bemoaning the fact that no one applied to be my assistant was a couple hours premature. Three people actually applied for the position on the very last day, though two of them didn’t have a complete application packet and so may end up disqualified if they don’t move their butts. (Given that I suspect one of the incompletes was submitted by a person we alerted to the requirements two weeks before it was advertised, this does not bode well.)

My other premature gripe was in regard to low ticket sales for the show. It seems word of mouth trumps two 6pm newscasts and thousands of dollars in advertising.

The second week of the show was a little better than the first–Thursday performance had 40 tickets presale, we sold about 100 at the door. Friday performance had 50 tickets presale Thursday night, 80 sold by the time the box office closed for the afternoon–then we were swamped by an unexpected 250 people at the door. We hadn’t brought staffing on for those numbers so we had a very long line and ended up holding the show for a bit. Saturday night we were smarter–we had 100 sold in advance and about 300 people showed up at the door. We had the right staffing so there was no line.

This brings up the fairly recent question about how performing arts organizations can get people to purchase a little earlier. Many theatres hate the fact that no one is buying subscriptions. At this point, I would be okay with that if they would only buy a week or so ahead of time.

It makes it extremely difficult to balance good customer service with economy. If you cut back on staffing for a night and you get swamped, then people have a negative impression of you because the service suffers. However, if you are paying a full staff and few people show up, then there is negative impression left on your bank account.

The box office manager suggested having one price in advance and another at the door. In my experience, saving $2-$3 in advance hasn’t been an incentive to buy in advance. However, she clarified and suggested we have a higher flat rate price at the door for everyone. Instead of $22 adults, $15 students, and then $25/$18 at the door, she is suggesting we charge $25 for everyone at the door. Given that most people claim a student/senior/military discount when they purchase tickets, saving $10 might be an incredible incentive to buy early.

On the other hand, if people aren’t thinking about what they are going to do until the last minute, they won’t know they missed the opportunity until they pick up the paper/go on line and suddenly discover they have to pay $10 more, the pricing structure becomes a huge disincentive to attend.

What I and all the other theatre managers want to know is–when are most people making their decisions? If it is on Wednesday, then this is a strong incentive to buy early. If it is 5pm on Friday, then this is a strong incentive to go rent a movie.

The Star Will Not Appear…

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Okay, here is a good dilemma for all you arts manager types out there. So good that I have been encouraged to post it on my blog by my faithful readers (and you know who you are)

Since things resolved to my satisfaction in the end, I may just name names if it gets too tough to refer to the principals in oblique generic terms. (Also given that people can look on my theatre’s website and figure things out very quickly.)

Last week, I got a call from a performer’s agent saying that principal performer in a group of 11 would not be able to perform in Hawaii due to his doctor giving him an ultimatium. Now ignoring the money already paid out for non-refundable airline tickets and hotel rooms, this presented a number of problems. The group was named after the gentleman in question and I was just about to send out print ads with his picture on it. Conferring with some other people, they suggested putting a tiny disclaimer in the ad saying he wouldn’t be performing in Hawaii.

I wasn’t sure if this was really the correct tactic for two reasons-1) I would essentially be paying a couple thousand dollars for an ad that was saying “Come see the show! (by the way, there is teensy flaw in the show) and 2) I wasn’t sure how much of my potential audience really knew who he was and identified strongly with him. There were also some aestetic concerns as well. The best picture I had was of him, the other two images were not only of poorer quality, but also very wide horizontally and wouldn’t really work unless I changed the orientation of the ad. I had the option of calling the newspapers and inquiring if I could change my space reservation after the deadline had passed, but the redesign and university approval process would probably put me past the deadline for when the art was due.

Other members of my booking consortium were concerned as well. One of the other theatre managers had seen the group perform and felt that even though the front man had been phasing out actually playing with the group, he was still the charismatic showman whose absence would make the group just another really good set of musicians in their particular genre. She sent an email to the agent asking if anyone else in the group could rise to the occasion and exude the same magnetism. Ever practical, I sent a follow up one asking if they were going to replace him with another person who could play the instrument or should I cancel the hotel and plane reservations.

I also noticed that the force majeure clause in the contract actually implied that if one of the musicans couldn’t perform due to illness, a pro rated portion of deposit would be refunded. I asked the other members of the consortium if we were going to pursue this avenue and suggested that his absence constituted more than 1/11th the value of the entire group.

I also noted that on Broadway (though it may be an urban legend) if the actor listed above the play title in the playbill and marquee doesn’t appear that night, you are guaranteed a refund if you ask for it. I wondered if there was a similar common law precedent where we might have the right to break our contract if the person who the group is named after doesn’t perform.

So there is the case–as an arts manager, what do you do when the person everyone is potentially coming to see ain’t coming?

Well here is what I did. I let the ads go as is without inserting a disclaimer. I did it for the reasons I mentioned above–I didn’t know that too many identified strongly with him, the image was the best one to attract people and from our box office surveying, I wasn’t sure anyone actually saw our newspaper ads anyway.

I did however, come clean to the radio DJs who were promoting the show for me because 1) They serve a niche audience who are likely to identify strongly with him and I expect that I will be programming to that niche in the future and it would be a big breach of trust if they learned I knew he wasn’t coming 10 days prior to the concert. Better to lose the ticket sales and fight the battle for their hearts another day. 2) One of the DJs wanted to do a phone interview with a member of the band so there was a 98% possibility that they would mention the big guy wasn’t coming. Although I could shrug and say I didn’t know much earlier than she did (which would have been absolutely true) one of the first rules of damage control is to make sure that you control how a story breaks.

Now 12 hours later, I get a message saying the gentleman is coming. It is a little bit of pie in the face for me to turn to the DJs and sheepishly tell them to forget I said anything, now he is coming. Had I been less ethical, things would have actually turned out okay and no one else would have been the wiser so I suffer a little loss of face for being honest. Ultimately it is a gamble though. Had I waited and tried to figure out how I could manipulate events so that the bad news wouldn’t be discovered until later, the situation could have turned around and bit me on the butt.

Hopefully, I won’t have to face that situation again or one where I find out the star isn’t coming as the rest of the band deplanes at the airport. However, these events have made me aware of the need to plan for just such a contingency.

No Help for the Wicked

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So, if you have been reading my recent blog entries, you will know that I am working my butt off at my new job. I could really use an assistant!

The problem is, no one will apply.

Today ended the second time I have advertised for an assistant. The first time we had one applicant, but we couldn’t hire her because she didn’t meet the minimum qualifications (BA or equivalent, spreadsheet and desktop publishing knowledge.) We reduced the qualifications so that many things were desirable rather than required and now no one has applied.

Part of the problem may be due to the fact that Hawaii’s economy is BOOMING. People feel fairly safe from terrorism here (the interstates actually connect armed forces bases to each other, we just get to use them). Tourism from Pacific Rim countries is high and available hotel rooms are low–mostly because they are being converted to condos for repeat visitors. A lot of service industry jobs are going unfilled because of the low unemployment on the islands.

What this means for me is that I will be handling the hospitality, graphic design and front of house arrangements along with budgeting, marketing, season planning, contracting, personnel issues, facilities management, fundraising, outreach, long range goal planning–essentially everything I railed against in my Executives without Direction Entry—just a wee bit longer.

Converting the Faithful?

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Way back in my second entry I pointed out that I had a letter posted on Artsjournal.com’s letter section and in the Artful Manager blog. One of my suggestions was that arts audiences and church audiences share some commonalities–faithfully joining a communal activity on a regular basis being one.

Well, I actually have a church doing services in my theatre which you would think would combine the best of both worlds. I have a large group of people coming to my theatre, moving my display about our 30th anniversary and staring at our large set filled with water during their services. (Yes, they wanted to do baptisms, but we wouldn’t let them.)

Thus far when we ask people how they heard about the show, no one has mentioned that they attend services there. Somewhat disappointing, but we still have a lot of time to seduce them.

One thing they have been doing is providing us with volunteers to clean up our backstage and usher during the shows. They have been really dependable and efficient. One thing that is sort of disquieting to me though is that many of them are doing it as part of their service to the church and not because they enjoy live events.

I love having the resource of volunteers, but I guess as a person who has his own “religious” experience in the arts, I would really like to have people coming who are doing it because they enjoy an arts experience. I don’t want to convert them into subscribers or arts lovers. This is certainly an opportunity to expose people to the arts who never thought of it as an experience to be included in their lives and maybe they will ultimately benefit from it.

It is just a strange experience for me telling the church volunteer coordinator that I appreciate the help and don’t want to put anyone out so she should only include people who have a genuine interest in participating. She talks about how volunteering is important for rounding out their spiritual lives. The people who do help out may very well be curious and interested in the arts, but that doesn’t seem to be an important criteria in their selection when I talk to the volunteer coordinator.

On the other hand, they aren’t compelled into service either. Apparently, people aren’t allowed to commit themselves to volunteering unless their personal lives are in shape (and there is a support network that helps them get to that point.) I am sort of envious that they have such an organized volunteer network.

That is another problem for me. I really want to build a corps of volunteers so I don’t have to ask the church for help. Since the church has the contact information for their volunteers and I don’t, this makes it hard for me to solicit their services on my own behalf. I don’t aim to poach volunteers, but it would be great if some were interested in the arts because it would increase the likelihood they would approach me independently of their church association to volunteer.

Guess I am going to have to do it the old fashion way and build the volunteer group one person at a time.

Ladder Against the Wrong Wall?

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So if you have read my recent entries (and lets face it, there haven’t been many) you will know that my theatre is currently working on a production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses.

The director has been trying to assuage my concerns about the money we are spending to keep the water separate from the wood floor and the electrical lines by confidently telling me that if we can’t sell a show with a 30’x25′ pool of water, we can’t sell anything.

Problem is, I fear he is right.

We certainly have “a gimmick” that the musical Gypsy informs you that you must have. Two separate news stations have come out to film the show and the entertainment writer from the largest newspaper on the islands wrote a feature story. When one of the news anchors was editing the story, women were looking over his shoulder with interest because the clips featured very good looking bare chested men engaging in a spectacular water battle. The anchor of the most watched 6 o’clock news commented on air at the end of the segment that ticket sales would probably skyrocket after that clip.

Unfortunately, they didn’t. First performance we didn’t even fill half the house, the second performance we filled fewer seats and the third performance we slightly out sold the second. The next three performances have less than 40 seats sold between them. I expect sales will pick up as we approach the dates, but I don’t foresee any problem getting tickets.

It is difficult to blame the small audiences on lack of exposure. I did quite a bit of paid advertising along with the free coverage we got. My thoughts turn to three tough questions Ben Cameron (Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group) posed that the Artful Manager reprinted
“-What is the value of having my organization in my community?

-Harder: What is the value my group alone offers, or that my group offers better than anyone else? Duplicative or second-rate value will not stand in this economy.

-Hardest: How will my community be damaged if we close our doors and move away tomorrow? ”

I am in a position to do a lot of good in the community and a new window of opportunity opened just today. However, there seems to be a bit of mounting evidence that paying a lot of money to fly and house people from the Mainland and other countries is not providing value for the community.

By the same token, for the last three years, there hasn’t been anyone really concentrating on educating people about the value of the theatre in the community. I am not talking about convincing people they ought to love us because we are illuminating them in their ignorance. Rather, I mean giving us the same value in the community as the corner store, the firehouse and the Little League field. Become a place were people gather and look back at it as a cornerstone of their lives.

I am already seeing the possibilities as members of niche communities are coming forward offering their assistance to spread the word about upcoming performances.

Like everything else I write about in this blog that is a work in progress…we shall see.

Art 21

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I just came across a PBS program I was briefly introduced to when I was interviewing around for my current job. Art:21 Art in the 21st Century is a PBS program that, as you might imagine, looks at art in the 21st century.

I have actually not seen the program. Unfortunately, as Drew McManus learned in regard to the Keeping Score program featuring the San Francisco Symphony, the program doesn’t get much air time. It seems like another of those great gems that gets hidden under a rock.

The website however does have a lot of resources and allows you to see snippets of the programs. It offers lesson plans and other educational resources for teachers. It also presents student art projects that were created in conjuction with the program themes.

This is sort of a nice guide for teachers I think because it gives concrete examples of projects that have emerged from the lesson plans PBS provided. Even if the lesson plans were generated after the fact by the teachers who lead classes to create the projects, I know that teachers often like to have concrete examples to go along with their lesson plans. It is interesting to see the directions different schools went with different projects.

Although PBS doesn’t play the show that often, the website does offer the opportunity for people to have screenings and residencies and even provides materials to publicize the event. If an organization is interested, they can use these materials to support/complement projects of their own.

Water, Water Everywhere

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So my next production is an in-house show, Metamorphoses, by Mary Zimmerman. She adapts Ovid, not Kafka so there are no giant cockroaches on stage. There is, however, a giant pool of water. Water being a great metaphor for change is really appropriate for the production.

The technical worries on the other hand…

The set is essentially a 30′ wide by 25′ long pool of water on two levels. The depth ranges anywhere between 6″-9″ to 24″ in one spot. Water is interesting to work with for a number of reasons, the fact that it is pretty damned heavy, being one of them. The weight bearing capacity of the stage was a real concern.

Of course, another concern is that water will find any opening it can and leak out. The pool liner is one continuous piece which prevents that problem. However, since the change of depth of the pool is fairly extreme and localized to a small area, the aesthetics of a heavily creased liner is a little bit of a concern design wise.

Another discovery we made was that despite our best guesses about how far water would fly during the fight scenes and how much would be displaced when people entered, the water flew farther and ran over the edges and splash guards we had in place. Fortunately, because it was designed to overflow on to the lower level anyway, there wasn’t a big flood. Unfortunately, because the pump hadn’t been installed, the rehearsals had to stop while the water was bucketed up to the top level again.

Needless to say, the show really lends itself to exciting press releases given that there are Greek gods and heroes as well as the Greeks’ very definition of spectacle in the form of the big ole pool of water.

I am just dreading 2-3 years from now when things start warping and rusting…

Some people will say that this retreading of stories is an indicator of how desperate Broadway is to stay alive.

But from my point of view, this is what was always exciting about Greek myths when I first discovered them as a boy. And it also seems better to retread the classics which have the potential of being rediscovered whereas a successful retread of a Disney movie just encourages that company to push for extensions of copyright. (And a really creative adaptation of an out of copyright work like Ovid’s just goes to show how extensive copyright protection may indeed stifle creativity!)

I will let folks know how it all ends up.

Presenting Plus

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Wow! Four entries in a week! It is amazing how much more ambitious I feel when I only work 10 hours a day instead of 11.

Anyhow, I thought I might do a reflective entry on some recent experiences. I think I wrote it somewhere in my blog, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment, that one of my biggest priorities for visiting performers is to make them feel comfortable. They are many miles from home, you may be stop 18 on a 30 stop tour. They are tired and perhaps grumpy. The best thing you can do is have everything they need available when they arrive to set their minds at ease.

This seemed even more true now that I am here on Hawai’i. We just had the Flying Karamazov Brothers perform at the theatre and they were really great. However, they were trying to bring a show they did on the Mainland to Hawaii. This had to have caused some angst because they had a great show with fabulous props and now they were faced with having to scale it down and take it with them to keep the costs practical for their island hosts. On the mainland it is a simple matter of tossing things in car trunks or the back of large trucks or buses. But that ain’t gonna happen with 2500 miles of water between you and Hawai’i.

To their credit, they did a great job of bringing their gear and clothes in the same bags and then shuffling it all around on departure so each piece of luggage would be under the 70 lbs limit of the airlines. (Which underscores our need to have scales it seems). There were a couple simply things they forgot which we replaced and a couple things we had they decided they liked so much, they integrated into their show. (Watch for a little mop–that is ours!)

Despite my less than total knowledge of my resources and abilities of my crew, I think I did a fairly credible job of keeping them happy throughout their visit. Hopefully, I will be able to hire an assistant soon so I don’t have to do the credible job alone. It just taught me that I have to anticipate needs even more than usual because the circumstances of people’s arrival may vary and imagination might have to be employed to replace things not readily available on our island kingdom.

I did get an unintential opportunity to be part of the show. I waited in the wings to give them leis during the curtain call and got the cue to go out from their company manager. Only they started running off stage away from me. I break into a run saying “Wait, wait…” holding the leis outstretched. By that point, one of the brothers shouted back that they were coming back out, which they did for another curtain call. The audience loved it though as did most of the crew because it was one of those things you just couldn’t have made look as good if you planned it.

Civic Reflection

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An interesting website came to my attention today regarding a practice called Civic Reflection. According to the website, it is “is reading, thinking and talking with each other about our life in community and three fundamental human activities that nourish that life: giving, serving, and leading.”

Looking over the website, I am not quite sure how this practice will help nonprofits and other civic groups more effectively than some other sort of meeting or retreat. The group claims it does. I have a suspicion that its value is in the fact that the practice addresses problems obliquely and doesn’t allow people to set an agenda where blame is handed out and solutions sought.

The website addresses this:

Initially, out of habit, people often think of a problem they want to fix. How can we diversify our boards? How can we get people to give more? These are good questions, but civic reflection is not intended to answer them. It will not tell people “how to” do anything. What civic reflection can do is help participants explore the “what” and “why” -the assumptions, struggles and hopes underneath their questions-deepening their own imaginations and mutual understanding in the process. When people pose “how to” questions (How can we lead the community through change?), listen for the “what” and “why” questions underneath (What leads us to change? Why do we fear change?).

I was initially a bit skeptical about how valuable this process might be to a non-profit given that time constraints don’t normally allow for conversations whose purpose is not to find solutions. In thinking about it, I wondered though if some of the problems non-profits face spring from an Us and Them anxiety– Will they fund us, will they ask me for a donation, will they like our show, will I like/understand this show.

The purpose of this practice seems to be to make everyone Us by removing these barriers and making everyone talk about something else like the human condition in hopes of people developing an empathy and understanding of one another.

The importance of removing these barriers to understanding are found in their FAQ section.

Should there be separate discussions for donors and fundraisers to keep the conversation from getting “awkward”?

No, as long as the ground rules for the conversation are clear. It is imperative to state at the outset that -This is a fundraising-free zone: There will be no solicitations-and no pledge card at the end! With that rule in place, civic reflection can allow a rare and needed conversation to take place across the funding divide. It can help donors and fundraisers to talk with one another about the profound complexities of giving and receiving and to develop greater understanding of their shared work.

Should there be separate discussions for trustees and staff? Executive and other staff?

Again, this is a rare opportunity to build conversation across dividing lines about the purposes of an organization-and to help staff and trustees come to know each other in a fuller way as persons. Therefore, staff should be included if possible. At the same time, it is unwise to allow the executive director of an organization to handpick participants among senior staff. All staff at the same level of responsibility should be invited. (But be neither surprised nor dismayed if not everyone accepts.)

It all sounds great in theory, but I would think it would be difficult for a non-profit to find the time and energy to devote to something like this on a regular basis. People tend to want to walk into and out of a meeting/retreat with answers and a plan of action.

In business like relationships, people’s desire to understand the other guy tends to start and end at the point they do or don’t get what they want. People tend to only want to know things that they think will help them do their jobs and discard/ignore those things that typically won’t help. (The website implies though that knowing these other facts can enhance a business relationship.)

Perhaps we are conditioned into this behavior by TV programs that wrap up problems within the confines of a time period and by technology which allows us to access information and goods round the clock. Opened ended contemplation can seem to be more of an amusing luxury than immediate value.

The website says that the fear that the practice is a waste of time is one of the 3 main impediments to participation. The other two are “They fear that they are not ‘smart’ enough, especially if they did not enjoy literature classes in school. They fear that they will be manipulated emotionally for the purposes of the group.” The implication being, don’t knock it til you sincerely try it.

I would be interested to learn if anyone has tried Civic Reflection in any forum, be it non-profit or other, and what your impressions were. Let me know.

More Built to Fail

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It occurs to me that my suggestions in my entry yesterday didn’t really solve the problem of arts organizations feeling forced in to professionalizing their organization. My suggestions really were only applicable for organizations who had just started out and didn’t have their own theatre space.

What happens if you are a member of a theatre group that was started back in the early part of the 20th century as part of the Little Theatre movement? Even if your only ambition is to be a resource for the community and the kids in the neighborhood and provide them with a place they can express themselves artisitical on weekends and after school, you face some problems.

Back when your theatre was formed, the community was more focussed on itself. Businesses were run by people you knew and they could be easily approached about supporting you. Now it is all corporate owned. Chances are you don’t know the community giving officer when you approach a company and probably won’t have much contact with them outside of your project. Chances are also about even that they may not be the community giving officer next year when you go back for an annual appeal.

Banks used to be owned locally and focussed locally as well. Now your bank can easily change names 3 times in five years as they merge and get bought out. Instead of dealing with a local person, you end up sending grant donations in to a corporate office in Delaware or perhaps a regional headquarters.

Instead of talking to someone about giving you a donation and having them stop back to see the results, now you have to fill out all sorts of paper work and are judged heavily on your persuasive writing skills. If you are given a grant, you then have to follow up with more forms typically backed up with survey data to show how you served X number of people or improved the lives of folks in the community.

All these things require you to be organized to such a degree that the move to having a professional staff take care of it rather than shuffling paperwork between committee members homes seems like a logical step.

Only now you find that the people funding you are interested in doing a lot of bragging about how many school children they serve and they want to get as much bang for thier buck so the place that says they can serve 4000 kids for a 10,000 donation is a better investment than a place that does a really great job serving 400.

Then you discover you need to have matching funds. So for the $10,000 you want, you need to raise $10-20,000 from another source, be it donations or earned income. So then there is more effort to expend organizing, tracking and reporting for other grants/donations or ticket income.

It is all a pain in the ass, but you are really dedicated to providing support to the community, so much so that you will start doing things you never initially envisioned in order to make yourself attractive to granting organizations. Some of it is really great and rewarding, but you are getting tired so you bring on more people to help you out.

Now you see how easy it is get into a situation where your organization is overbuilt as the Artful Manager referred to. You get into a position where you are focussing on preserving funding to things you aren’t interested in doing simply so you can divert some resources to the things you are. But you aren’t fulfilling your original purpose well because you are distracted by the effort of keeping all the other balls in the air. (And by the way, by this point you are talking about every arts organization.)

I can really see how expectations in today’s environment can really put a lot of pressure on organizations to professionalize. I can’t see any viable solutions. In an age where governments are dissolving arts councils, I can’t see foundations and businesses tasking more employees to going out and getting to know their communities to the point where donations can be made on a handshake.

I absolutely think there is a need for accountability and recordkeeping so that businesses know where their money is going and how it is being spent. Unless a company or foundation is going to have their employees travel around collecting support materials, pictures, etc from small arts organizations and then fill out the paperwork themselves to take the burden off the arts, I have a tough time imagining an alternative at this time.

Built to Fail?

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Some real interesting reading over at Artful Manager these days. I am especially interested in the feedback he is getting regarding his statement that the arts are overbuilt.

Today’s entry has comments from one of his readers about how community arts organizations might be feeling pressure to professionalize their operations.

“More generally, it seems to me, anecdotally, that our industry has pushed professionalism (by which I mean professionally structured non-profit orgs) as an indicator of quality and sustainability, leading amateur (some community theatres for example) organizations to professionalize without need, causing undo strain on the organizations, and diverting and spreading thin available arts and culture funding that feels compelled to support professional level organizations. ”

In the past I have mentioned that all arts organizations don’t have a god given right to exist, nor should they automatically expect to be funded. (Which admittedly is hard to accept when you are going through hours of grant writing.) I never really thought about the fact that these folks might be affected by subtle pressure to professionalize.

There are “rewards” as it were, for professionalizing an operation. You can get larger grants and donations (and the burden of tracking and reporting), you get the prestige of being recognized as professional, including willingness of newspapers to cover your events (though that happens with less frequency these days). Of course, there are increased expectations as the writer mentions that put a great deal of pressure on the organization.

The thing is, you can be really successful doing amateur work. Groups rent out my theatre all the time and present absolutely awful shows. But much to my chagrin, they have larger audiences than my regular season shows do because of word of mouth to friends and family. People don’t see great theatre, but they leave with a sense of joy having seen a loved one.

The group just has to be organized enough to organize a show, get themselves to the theatre and open the show on time, not oversell the house and then take their belongings with them when they leave. As long as they pay me, they have no further worries. I have to handle the water and power, maintain instruments, gather supplies, clean the theatre, worry about budgets, bugs, equipment failure. We supply the technical knowledge for running a show and processing an audience.

The theatre is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and we have had 4-5 groups who have been doing annual events like this at the theatre for at least 25 of those years.

The problem might be as alluded to in The Cluetrain Manifesto that Artful Manager listed earlier last week–businesses take themselves too seriously. People who started out doing art to have fun suddenly decide they need to organize and get some respect for the work they do.

This, of course, is bad for everyone involved because audiences don’t need to have their introduction to an art form be at the hands of really awful performers looking for strangers to repeat the sentiments of friends and family that they have talent. If you admit you are not that good but have fun doing it, that is one thing, but if you believe that everyone shares your mother’s opinion about how talented you are and should fund you, that is another.

Now, to be fair, the professionals in a given performance field suffer the same malady. If you have read my blog on a regular basis, you will see that much is true. They can have a tendency to get too serious and believe that everyone ought to pay a premium for what they are offering because it is good for them.

Therefore, it is difficult for me to say this with any absolute certainty, but…running arts organizations by and large should be left to the professionals. If anyone should be making a mess of the arts, it should be people who have the resources and training to do it full time. Botching things up is not an appropriate activity for people who can only devote themselves to it part time.

But seriously, as many poor decisions are made by arts administrators, they are still better equip in many instances to do thing in a quality manner. When they endeavor to do something with the patina of professionalism, they have the experience and knowledge to anticipate the implications of decisions in ways amateurs don’t.

The comparison has been made to death, I know, but in many ways arts and sports are similar in this respect. People go to a Little League or soccer game with their kids and forget its all about the fun and socializing, drinking lemonade and enjoying the weather. There is such an expectation that their kids perform like professional players and that the volunteer referees be infallible, that the game get forced into pretending to be something it can never become.

This isn’t completely analogous of course. There is a better chance of a theatre evolving into a successful professional house than there is of a kid becoming a professional athlete. (Freddy Adu notwithstanding) In many cases, it is probably better to just let kids be kids and amateur arts organizations just have fun doing what they founded to do.

Beware the Agent!

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So, a little cautionary tale to relate here about agents, artists and presenters. I had the experience where an agent didn’t return an executed contract after having it for 4 months. I made a couple calls to prod them to send the contract which was for a performance 2 months hence telling them I couldn’t process a check request without it.

A few weeks go by and I start advancing the show with the performers and mention the same thing. Turns out the performer had recently left the agent because of poor service like this, but unfortunately, since we started the contract with them, we had to continue. (And by the way, when I first called to bug them about sending the contract, the agent directed me to the new agency who then took a while to realize I didn’t have a contract through them.)
I explain how my ability to pay them will be hampered by not having the contract.

Five- six weeks out the agent calls and tells me they don’t have a piece of the contract so I rush the material to them hoping to expedite the process of getting the contract back. (In the meantime, they are calling for ticket counts three times a week) A month out, I speak with the performers again extending my dire warning. They give me another number to call and bug about the contract which I do.

Two and half weeks out, the performer calls in frantically because the agent who has had the stupid contract for 6 months now apparently hasn’t read it in all this time and makes a mistake about the agreed upon fee. I call the agent to clarify matters and she encourages me to send the deposit in (I have started intoning my warning about not being able to pay them now because I have said it so frequently of late.) A week or so out, the performers finally get the contract rush through signing it and filling out the required materials and though they aren’t supposed to, send a copy of the contract to me and return a copy to the agent.

Unfortunately, it is really too late to send the paperwork through in the normal manner. However, the performers’ rep threatens that they won’t show up if I can’t guarantee I can have the check for them. I don’t blame the performers for not wanting to risk their cash flow by having to wait for a check to come a week or so after they perform, but all the same, we sent the contract in nearly 7 months before at this point.

To make matters worse, the agent has pretty much crossed out half the contract, including the Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity clauses which tend to be something that state governments are sensitive about. They didn’t technically apply to this situation, but still at the time, I didn’t know if it would go through the system swiftly or not. It would be tough enough to push it through without those potential stumbling blocks.

I spent a day chasing people around campus, calling secretaries and assistants asking to be alerted when people got out of meetings and requesting that the person in question not be allowed to leave their own office. (These folks are the ones that really run an institution as everyone knows!)

Somehow I managed to get all the approvals I needed and get the checks processed. However, it is a cautionary tale about the performing arts. Here was a situation that wasn’t my fault in the least and that I warned about in many instances, yet it was made my problem nonetheless.

There is little recourse for either me or the performer against the big agency. The performers can’t threaten to take their business elsewhere, they already have, and the agency is so big, they really don’t care if I never do business with them again.

We actually had a letter of warning that we sent back with the contracts 7 months prior warning about this as well. There doesn’t seem to really be a solution to this for the future other than to become the greasy wheel and call the agent everyday starting a month or so out if the contract hasn’t been received.

I know that I said nice things about agents that I met at the WAA conference. They were mostly folks who were in small to medium size agencies and were interested in keeping good relations with everyone involved. This wasn’t my first dealings with the behemoth agencies, but it was the worst indeed.

Marketing’s Fault

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So I once again lived a situation I described in an earlier entry about how if a show sells out, it is due to the artistic decisions, but if it goes poorly, it is marketing’s fault for not pushing it hard enough.

I thought perhaps I had escaped that situation given that I am the one making the artistic decisions and overseeing the marketing. Ah, but I discovered you don’t need to officially answer to someone for them to expect to answer for yourself.

For our 30th Anniversary, we had put together a really good slate of famous Hawaiian performers that I could never have gotten on my own, but thanks to the connections of an alum, was able to pull together very cheaply.

In the last week or so, I had come to the conclusion that people just simply weren’t interested in seeing the show. We had promoted it every which way including a powerful concentration of radio spots. However, ticket sales for a show at the end of November by a middlingly famous group which we hadn’t promoted at all outside of in our brochure was easily outstripping those for the 30th.

Though it wasn’t originally planned as such, the university foundation decided to make it in to a donor cultivation event. When the event planner from the university called to ask how it was selling, I told her not well and she began to grill me on my techniques. (Did you do…, how about….) Then I got a call from the college fundraising officer with the same questions. Then came someone from the university department of external relations who absolved me of blame by confirming that they couldn’t help me because I had done everything they would have suggested and more.

However, then word got to the vice-chancellor who emailed the marketing director for the college from the middle of a meeting (the vice chancellor later got me in his office during another meeting, though to his credit took my word for it that I did everything I could. This was good because it was getting hard to contain my resentment).

The marketing director of the college actually held my job at one time so if anyone had the ability to tell me “ya shoulda done this…” it was her. However, having done the job, she knew what it was like and said exactly what I said in the entry I refer to above–“when it sells out, it is the choice, when it don’t, it is marketing’s fault.”

I really appreciate her role in getting me acclimated which to this point has meant answering my questions and then butting out. Now granted, this is probably due to the fact she is just too dang busy to pay attention to how much I am screwing up her baby, but is also due to the fact she can empathize.

Now I will admit, some of the grilling I got was a result of people wanting to help. But the problem is that their concept and understanding of publicizing an event is as a numbers game rather than as a process of identifying who you serve and want to serve and making your plans from there.

They mailed out stuff on my behalf willy-nilly to every name on their email list. There were people I was sure never heard of my theatre and people who were affliated with groups I didn’t even know existed.

Although I couldn’t track where people who bought tickets at the door that night heard about the show, I feel I can say based on the phone and internet orders I got through out the week, it wasn’t from any of the lists they emailed to.

Marketing and press relations are something that has to be planned and worked at. I will readily admit that my efforts in these areas have suffered from lack of available time. I can say that I am making an honest effort to adhere to and pursue the values I have espoused in this weblog.

Time to Pick Shows

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So I haven’t even had the first performance of this season occur and I have already started on the process of picking performers for the next. The Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii (of which I am now a board member!) had a meeting on Monday to discuss what we saw when we were in Spokane, WA at the Western Arts Alliance conference. I was expecting it would take 12 hours from the way people spoke, but it really ended up taking about 6. (Which I think was actually due to the president limiting presentations and moving things along.)

About 10 of us sat in a theatre watching DVDs and tapes projected on a screen and listening to CDs. We went through the list of potential artists people were considering by category (and there was strangely a bit of debate about grouping Latin and Jazz into the same category–mainly because many of the artists up for consideration seemed to be Latin influenced Jazz or vice versa. After listening and watching said offerings, there was considerable discussion about artists mislabeling their genre in an attempt to repackage themselves.)

In any case, people in the consortium were only interested in about 20% of the artists I suggested alone (as opposed to ones I was asked to pick up information for prior to the meeting and thus knew there was interest in). I would have felt a little slighted that they weren’t taking the suggestions of the new guy seriously if it weren’t for the fact that about an equal number of proposals by one of the more senior members also met with a lack of interest.

In the end though it might be a good thing since I will only have to take the lead on two or three artists if a number of members of the consortium are ultimately interested in presenting them next season. I will probably approach many of the performers I alone was interested in because I chose them in part for for their small company size and lower fees and so can likely afford them on my own.

Those that many people are interested in I will have to take the lead and negotiate on behalf of the others, collect feedback and information, plan the routing from one island to another on a series of dates (and since the dates for at least one theatre will inevitably fall on a week night rather than a weekend, see how things can be shifted beneficially.) It is probably better for me being new to the scene to avoid too many instances where I have to be answerable to people outside of my own organization and patron base.

One last observation, I don’t know if it was coincidental timing or a shift in the Force, but the day after I returned from this meeting, I suddenly had 4 calls from agents asking me if I had considered their material. I hadn’t told any of them about the meeting, yet something inspired them to call.

And of course, as luck would have it, none of them represented people we wanted to present so I ended up talking to people I really had no interest in speaking with.

Secure those Tickets

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Well I have been really busy the last couple days and have met with some limited success in my objectives. One of my projects for the last few months has been to get secure online for patrons that didn’t require paying a large service fee for the luxury like Ticketmaster charges. Despite being a part of a university, the many IT offices I contacted all said they couldn’t support my modest needs.

I have been exploring many options from outside vendors. Many of them were dead ends and those that weren’t, were rather expensive solutions. Finally I found a local provider that had a store front as part of their offerings and the monthly fee was really quite reasonable.

Of course, it was too good to be true. The storefront they had was not really customizable at all. I would have had to list all my shows with no way to differentiate between them or link directly to specific listings. And what was worse, I couldn’t have 2 prices for the same product, in this case a show.

So, I upgraded to the next package which was essentially double the price, but did allow a bit more control. The solution was equally disappointing though. I still couldn’t have two prices for the same product, even if I had separate sizes or colors (two aspects I could customize with my own terms)

I worked around this by having separate catalogs, each with 2 “products” for each event–in this case, adult and student tickets. This works a little better, but is still unwieldly since people have to add adult tickets and then click the back button to add student tickets.

Another good thing is that I can link directly to the event in my online store from my website so patrons only have to deal with navigating the show they are interested in.

But as I said, the utility is limited. I can’t redirect people back to my webpage or to my thank you page. I can’t change font sizes so the titles of the shows are really tiny and in the left hand corner. If anyone has a suggestion for a provider with good storefront packages or good software I might get my provider to load on my account for me, I would love to hear about it.

The interface was unwieldy and frustrating to use properly so the whole process was extremely time consuming.

However, I definitely think this is something people want. Even without really promoting the fact we offer this service to our audience base, we have already started doing a fair bit of business averaging about 20-30 ticket sales a day the last three business days.

If you are interested in seeing how I set it up, you can go to here

Believe me, it is incredibly rough and basic. If I wasn’t desperate to offer the service, I was really tempted to keep looking. Obviously, I am not satisfied and will continue to seek alternatives, even given the fact I may only need the service for less than a year while I wait for the university to integrate me in their centralized ticketing.

Planning for Next Season

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So I haven’t started my current season yet and I am already deeply involved in planning the next one. Given that I am new to the position and don’t even know how people will react to the upcoming shows, I am going to be making a lot of assumptions about what people like.

Having looked over the materials from my visit to Spokane, I have to submit a list of names of people I would like to present to the president of the booking consortium tomorrow.

Tonight I went over the house of one of my co-workers and I showed them the DVDs and publicity materials for the performers I am thinking of booking. The reason for this was two-fold- One, they have a better sense of what sells than I do. Even though they may be unfamiliar with some of the genres I am looking at introducing to the theatre, they do provide educated viewpoints in a number of areas.

Another reasons is an attempt at the open book management that I mentioned way back in February. I hope to involve/inform the staff about the elements that go into the decisionmaking and budgeting processes in the hopes that they will become invested in improving matters and controlling costs.

It occurs to me though that open book management may not work too well in organizations where people don’t have anything to gain or lose. Being part of a state institution, there is no opportunity for profit sharing, bonuses, extra vacation, etc. Turning a profit could result in the ability to buy new equipment or perhaps hiring more people to help out. Or those things could occur if we don’t.

Because of collective bargaining agreements, I am reminded that it would take one of them killing someone in broad daylight in front of 10 unimpugniable witnesses and a guy with a camera and yelling “At last my 6 months of meticiously planning has come to fruition” to actually cause them to be fired. So there is nothing much too lose either.

On still another hand, the folks I work with do have pride in their work and are glad I am here with a vision so there is plenty of opportunity to rally their support to cut costs and work more effectively and effect improvements. So I am optimistic.

Art, by Mob

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I came across and article from Slate I was reading way back when I started my move–Art Mobs. The author, Clive Thompson explores the power mobs have had recently, especially in relation to the arts.

While many artists draw influences from many sources, the common wisdom is that art created by committee, rather than by a unified single vision (albeit sometimes shared by 2-3 collaborators) is usually crap. Thompson’s article shows that in some cases, that isn’t necessarily so.

Witness Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written by grace of contributions of the masses, which in three years has exceeded the size of the venerable Encyclopedia Brittanica. (It has nearly triple the number of articles and double the number of words)

Thompson also cites the generally successful mob creation of letters via voting whether a pixel should be white or black. On the other hand, when faced with less concrete concepts like creating a face or a goat, by voting pixels black or white, the mob had a hard time creating anything that resembled..well..anything.

Likewise, the person who intitiated Wikipedia has tried to get mobs to write textbooks. Some projects are doing okay, but most are not because of the lack of a unified vision and voice.

These are really intriguing experiments and results. But the application for the arts manager can be fairly simple in some respects. You can solicit all the feedback about programming a season you want from as many sources as you want, but in the end, one central vision must make the determination regarding what will appear on stage. If you try to please everyone or as many people as possible, you end up with an utter mess.

Andrew Taylor said something similar in his Simple Truth 1 posting and a follow up when he says of a presenter who put out a call for programming ideas that would work in his performance space.

“Given the simple truth that audiences buy expectation rather than performances, and given that consumers can’t really say what they want until they have it, and often not even after that, Law is looking in the wrong place for inspiration.”

Eek! Cancelled!

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Okay, by now folks are probably tired of me evoking what I learned at the WAA conference in every entry. However, I forgot this one last bit until I sorted through my papers last week. I had attended a forum on cancellations sponsored by NAPAMA (North American Performing Arts Managers and Presenters) on cancellations.

I hadn’t known cancellations was such a hot topic until I attended this forum. NAPAMA has a whole section in their code of ethics devoted to avoiding cancellations and attempting to preserve a good will relationship between agent and presenter if a cancellation has to occur.

There are a number of reasons why cancellations occur according to Patty Milch who lead the discussion,–Force Majeure, tours or funding fall through, directors of presenting organizations change and the next person doesn’t honor the contract, less experienced presenting organizations think it is acceptable for them to cancel.

It was actually these last two points that caused the most discussion and relation of anecdotes. Apparently amateur presenters don’t know if they ask for a contract, they have essentially orally said they have every intent of presenting this person, save some minor alterations to allow the presenter to accomodate the performer.

According to some stories, people are asking for contracts so they can pass them around a committee table and contract 2 of the twenty they asked for. The agent on the other hand is already preparing an artist’s itinerary and working out routing with other presenters based on the issuance of that contract.

These instances turn out badly for all involved because the agent stands to lose face and money, but he will enforce the contract. The presenter gets a bad rep and has the agent/manager glaring and threatening him with legal action.

The other instance is again due to inexperienced people who believe that the decisions of predecessors doesn’t bind the organization if the leadership simply changes. If only it were that simple, eh?

The point of the forum was to discuss how the rancor could be avoided and how a better operating environment might be created. Not surprisingly, we didn’t really get past the discussion of the problem and no one really had any suggestions for a solution.

Lying-Double Time

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So yesterday I attended a grants workshop held by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. It was an interesting experience on many fronts. For one thing, they are on a biennium grant schedule which means you apply this year for money for the next two years. Now for a laid back place like Hawaii, it seems strange that you have to get so organized you know what you are going to do for the next two years!

I can’t but think that they are essentially encouraging people to lie their butts off. Arts organizations make things up for annual grant writing, but it pretty much goes without saying a two year cycle essentially encourages people to try to fund their wildest dreams.

Now all this could be moot because of the (big surprise) arts funding problems in the state. When the arts foundation submitted their proposed budget in April/May, all their funds were frozen and remain so. There was a big uproar and the governor allocated money from health and human services earmarked for drug prevention for the arts foundation. (One of the criteria now for getting money is serving at risk youth)

Back in June or so I read a report that said Hawaii had the most per capita spending on the arts. (Which isn’t a heck of a lot given that there are only 1.2 million people living here, but still, a good proportion.) Ah how quickly they fall.

In any case, the people leading the workshop essentially said to live this year as if it were the last we were being funded because it probably is.

Last of My Notes

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Okay, I retrieved the last of the notes I made while at the WAA conference. They are short, but sour I am afraid. The conference was doing a session on trends in government funding and had the NEA representative for presenters and a woman from the Western Arts Federation (WESTAF) there as well. Because the conference was in Spokane, they invited the head of the Spokane Arts Council to sit on the panel.

Unfortunately, between the time she was invited and the time the conference occured, the arts council was pretty much reduced to one person. Apparently in deciding where funds should be allocated, the city asked each division to talk about their accomplishments. The divisions with lots of people who could make concrete claims like paving hundreds of miles of road or fixing so many miles of water mains faired well. The arts council got dissolved.

Now this isn’t any surprising news if you have been watching the trends around the country this last few years. What was really interesting was the assumptions the head of the arts council had made.

She thought based on the small portion the arts council received in the budget, it would be more trouble than it was worth to dissolve it. Wrong.

She thought the loss of political capital the mayor and city council would face would dissuade them. Nope.

She thought the outcry from businesses and individuals whose partnerships with the arts council intertwined their fates with it would provide an impediment. Didn’t really emerge.

Now someone at the conference said that she said the irony of dissolving it as a major arts conference was bringing lots of money to town kept them from destroying it completely. I didn’t hear her say that when I was around. Given that the other situations she had mentioned didn’t give them pause, I doubt the disappointment of a group that was only in town for a week was a real consideration.

Now the head of the arts council is trying to keep many of the initiatives she started going by farming them out to other organizations. For instance, she hopes another company will take on the responsibility of maintaining the arts calendar which is a major source of arts information for the entire region and not just the city.

I know that that according to the rules of writing I learned in school, this is the place I should insert a summation statement for my entry. But I gotta say, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound trite and stupid.

Some Guerilla Marketing

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I forgot some notes I had made for today’s entry at work and since I spend far too much time there already, I ain’t going back. If you really wanna know what I had to say, come on back tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, this is the 101st entry since I started. Who knew I could talk so much?

I did want to make an observation about a couple guerilla marketing tactics I observed at the conference to which I have made reference this week. The first instance was with “Phoenix’s hippest dance troupe” Nebellen. The kids who were part of the troupe accosted me as I exited the resource room to encourage me to see one of their showcases. Technically, they weren’t supposed to do that of course. As I moved past them to the cyber cafe to check my email, I noticed they had also changed all the home pages on the computers to go to theirs. Obviously, they weren’t supposed to displace the conference home page, but I had to admire their creativity. (Of course, if everyone got into the act, it would have been annoying.)

The other group was The Carpetbag Brigade which had a showcase one evening at Gonzaga University. I really felt for them because they had stiltwalking as part of their current show so apparently couldn’t do their show at any of the indoor venues. Unfortunately, they were the only showcase at the university and so the likelihood of people going to an unfamiliar locale in an unfamiliar city in the dark of night probably placed many strikes against them.

They may have sensed this so they staged a portion of their piece in a field across the river from the convention center. They hooked up a guitar and keyboard to a speaker and went to town. The music caught the attention of pretty much everyone in the park and those of us sitting at the tables outside the convention center so they had quite an audience. The piece was visually very interesting, especially given their costuming and full body make up. What was particularly impressive was their skill and body control. They were playing on the side of a hill and doing all sorts of flips and acrobatics while on stilts all of which couldn’t have been easy.

I have to say in the interest of full disclosure that I didn’t end up seeing either of their showcases because of conflicts with ones I thought I would be more likely to book. One could argue then that their efforts were not successful, but on the other hand, they have earned potentially greater exposure to all those who read this entry. (And as I think about it, the stilt show in particular might be very interesting to do a few years down the road in one of my quads.)

Some Good Experiences

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Continuing to talk about my time at the Western Arts Alliance Conference last week. There were a few things that the membership seemed to enjoy. Or at least those who spoke up at the annual meeting did.

The first was how things were scheduled. The Resource Room where all the agents and artist reps were wasn’t opened when there were showcases or seminars occuring. When the Resource Room was open, it was only for 3-4 hours at a time.

There were a number of benefits people cited. The first was that the agents only had to stand for 3 hours at a time. Another was that it helped being able to attend the seminars and showcases so they could discuss trends and see what sort of talent was out there. With the break for seminars and showcases, the people who were booking acts felt energized and were ready to talk business again. Also, watching performances provided some inspiration about what they might like to present. The bookers returned with fresh ideas and were prepared to approach people they hadn’t thought about presenting before.

The other thing I really appreciated was that there was a code of ethics published about how, where and when an agent could approach a presenter about the acts they represented. Well, actually, a lot of places have that code, I should say rather I appreciated that most people adhered to it.

I was button holed a couple times, but for the most part, agents left business at the resource room door. I ended up having lunch and dinner with a few agents and it was nice not worrying about being pressured to present their clients while my mouth was full.

In fact, the conference sponsored a dine around where someone volunteered to choose a restaurant and organize the logistics of getting a group of folks to dinner. People signed up on sheets when they arrived so the host could get a head count and then off we went. So that night I actually ended up eating with about 5-6 agents and another 5-6 presenters. The conversation was so general that I didn’t know any of them were agents except for the host and I only knew he was because the sign up sheet identified him as such.

So just some tips for you conference planners and attenders out there to make your experience a little more pleasant.

More Tax Treaties!

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Okay as promised, I took notes at the international tax session at the WAA conference. It was actually a hot topic. The session was scheduled for about 1.5 hours but at the end of the time it ended up moving to another room and continuing. (I moved on to a grants session because I had notes on 90% of what I wanted to know.) Then the discussion apparently infiltrated an Arts Presenter’s session as well.

The speaker at the session was Stanley E. Majors: Attorney, Fettmann, Tolchin & Majors, P.C.. (CPA and Tax Attorney licensed to practice in DC, MD and VA)

Among the things I learned was:

-Tax treaty is determined by place of residence. A French national residing in Switzerland falls under Swiss treaty.

-Everyone in the payment chain-presenter, agent, manager, etc can act as the collection agent of the 30%. The IRS typically starts at the end of the chain with the last person to handle the money before the artist gets it when researching if the money was collected. Mr. Major’s suggestion was to put something in the contract that stipulates who will be the party responsible for withholding. Obviously, many of the presenters’ preference would be for the agent or manager to be the responsible one.

Though empowering everyone in the chain to collect the tax looks like the IRS is just increasing the number of people they can blame, Mr. Major assured us that it wasn’t the case. Nor is it so they can collect the tax multiple times.

-The Alien has to fill out a certificate 8233 to claim exemption if they feel they are entitled to keeping their 30% The IRS has 10 days to agree with the exemption or not. A presenter can not make a decision to withhold or not unless they file. (For example, if you have someone coming in for 1 day and they are making $1000 to speak and then leaving the country and you know they fall below the exemption threshold, you still can’t exempt them unless they file.)

-If you know that a person has falsely filed an exemption, you have to withhold. You don’t necessarily have to research their entire tour schedule, but if you know that they are performing in a city south of you one night and a city to the north of you the night after for the same rate they are charging you and it exceeds the exemption amount and they file an exemption, you can’t accept it.

-Article 16 or 17 of the tax treaty is where the pertinent info is usually found. (For tax treaties, a good place to start is this IRS webpage. It contains links to more specific information, including the treaties, as you find you need it.

-This restrictive clause in the treaties only applies to performers and athletes. Their managers, lighting people, make up people, etc fall under a more liberal portion of the treaties. Apparently, the US actually wants people to come to the country and do business and the more liberal portions reflect that. The restrictive portions are to prevent people like the Rolling Stones from coming in, making millions of dollars and leaving. Unfortunately, since the Rolling Stones are making millions of dollars, they aren’t hurt too much by it, but the smaller folks are.

-Just like US citizens, the alien can get a refund by itemizing their operational expenses on a 1040NR at the end of the year.

-I spoke to Mr. Major specifically about a South African group with incorporation
and Fed. tax number in the US and his opinion was that the taxes didn’t need to be withheld since they are 1) obligated to file corporate tax returns every year 2) the IRS can exert enforcement powers if they lie, especially since so much of their income is derived in the US. (Which is probably why they incorporated in the US in the first place–to avoid the bite) Of course, to get him to issue an opinion the IRS would care about, I assume we would have to pay lots of money.

-If a foreign group claims to be a non-profit organization similiar to 501 (c) (3) in the US, you can request that the IRS make a determination if the organization meets the same criteria as a US non-profit.

That is about everything I learned. The one thing I didn’t note was whether you treat a group as 1 entity earning 10,000 or 10 people earning 1,000. I am told he covered that in a later session on the same topic so I am inquiring if a colleague took notes specifically on that since that was an area of concern for her.

Back from WAA

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Well I have returned from Spokane, WA a bit older and wiser for the experience. There was plenty that happened so I will have ample fodder for posting. Unfortunately, the amount of work left undone while I was away may keep me from my posting. We shall see.

Let me first start by saying Spokane is a lovely city is walk around, especially near the convention center which is right on the edge of a park where Expo 1974 occurred. The conference itself was well organized and there were some procedures that had been adopted that went over very well with the membership–but more about that in a later entry.

I ended up learning quite a bit, but I was concerned that wouldn’t be so when the conference first started (and not just because of my articles on useless meetings, part 2 here). The keynote speaker was Gunther Schuller who has had a long career as a musician and has certainly shown his love and stamina for his craft (he apparently would play in an orchestra for an opera and then walk into a jazz club to continue playing into the night.) However, in my estimation, he really has no concept about what it takes to run an arts organization.

I was really rather angry at the conference coordinators for picking him and had to resist an outburst at various times during the week when I came in contact with them. (I will avail myself of the feedback forms they provided, however, and probably won’t be any more diplomatic than I will be here.)
It was probably the worst example of many of the things I have railed against the arts community over in prior posts.

His whole speech was about how great the good old days were. He didn’t say anything I didn’t know 20 years ago. He cited the miniscule proportion the NEA budget has to the entire federal budget. He spoke of low listenership and programming of classic music on radio stations and lauded NPR for having the courage to play the music. Pop music and network television are the enemies leading to illiteracy and the destruction of culture. It is a terrible thing, he says that Hootie and the Blowfish get to be on the talk shows and Beethoven is no where to be seen. It was all doom and gloom and really just very old news.

It all may be absolutely true, but nothing he said acknowledged the fact that this was the environment in which arts organizations operate today and then try to offer practical solutions that reflect this fact. His suggested solution was sandwich booking where you put a lesser known show between two popular shows. Again, this is a really old strategy that doesn’t reflect how people currently make decisions to buy tickets.

I momentarily thought I might be wrong about this being an old strategy when he started lauding the great success the Boston and Philadelphia symphonies had with this strategy–until he got around to mentioning that he was talking about men who were running the organizations in 1939! His criteria for what constituted good popular music with which to sandwich the new stuff was even more telling when he discounted the value of most of Vivaldi in an aside. In my mind, if someone isn’t comfortable or familiar with classical music, that composer’s “Four Seasons” is probably a good introduction.

The only suggestion he made that I felt had merit was that the creators of a work (composers/playwrights), the purchasers and presenters, and the performers of works communicate with each other more effectively about how to combat the apathy about the arts. He didn’t give any examples other than those I mentioned, but as a general concept it seems to have merit.

On the whole though, I was really annoyed by the talk. I am going to suggest some alternative speakers for next year (Douglas McLennan would have been perfect this year given that he is about a 45 minute flight away from Spokane). In my mind, a keynote speaker should set the stage for discussion throughout the conference–even if it is arguments. The only discussion that came out of this session was akin to churchgoers musing about why sinners didn’t see the light and come to church and congratulating one another for taking their children to Sunday school. As much as I may dislike most organized religions, to properly employ this metaphor I have to say–there wasn’t any discussion about effectively witnessing and converting the great unwashed. (The problem being that the speaker essentially derided the great unwashed for their entertainment habits.)

I’m Off…

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As mentioned before, I am off to the WAA conference this week. I am pleased to note that there will be a session on income taxes and international artists. Given my crash course in tax treaties lately, I will be attending that with some interest. Maybe I will find out some new things to pass on to my liasion here at the university.

I went into work today despite the holiday because I will be out of town for a week and really don’t want to have my work pile up too much. The vice-chancellor had been taking about starting an arts administration certificate program so I emailed him expressing my interest in contributing to its development.

Given my *cough* strong feelings about how such a program should be structured, there is a fair chance I could eventually disassociate myself from the program I help develop. Exploring the decisions that go in to developing it, whether I agree with them or not, would be really fascinating for me though so I don’t really mind that I could end up muttering curses under my breath one day.

Stay tuned to find out how it all comes out–the tax stuff and the AA certificate program.

Little Polish on the Skills

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So it has been a busy week already. I have had so many meetings that I got that feeling that I ain’t getting anything done and considering I have a lot to do before going to the WAA Conference next week, that ain’t good.

But I have been learning some new things…

Monday I had a meeting with the head of Human Resources. I am on a committee to hire an assistant for myself. The Human Resource department has to look over the questions we are going to ask and approve of them. This is partially to make sure that we aren’t asking any questions connected with the forbidden topics like race, martial status, creed, political affiliation, religion, etc. We didn’t have any of those type of questions, but the head of HR wouldn’t sign off on them because he didn’t feel they would elicit effective answers.

I have to admit, he did have a point. Some of the questions other committee members had submitted dealt with how a person felt about certain situations like meeting new people or their philosophy on customer service. Part of the problem he had was that none of these things were part of the KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities) of the job description. He encouraged us to rephrase the questions as situationals–what have you done in such a situation or what would you do?

He said that it doesn’t matter how people feel about a certain job as much as how they would act in a situation. His point was that people often hate to do certain aspects of their jobs, but they recognize the value of doing it and doing it well so dismissing them for how they feel might result in you discarding a valuable person.

On the other hand, if they mention they ignored a customer’s complaint because they were incessant whiners when you ask about their experiences, you know how they feel and how they would act.

I never thought of these issues before. So even though it was rather annoying to have to rewrite the questions and couch them in a manner that would satisfy the head of HR and still serve to get the information about the candidate’s personality, I have to admit his way can prove to be more valuable.

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawai’i (earlier mention of what they are all about here). We were discussing what our plans were when we attended the Western Arts Alliance Conference in Spokane next week. Not everyone was going so we were making a list of the groups everyone might be interested in presenting so we could check them out and approach agents, etc.

I had been warned to bring an extra suitcase so I could carry presskits and other materials back from the conference. A few weeks after I return, we will all meet again for a marathon review of videos, etc of likely prospects.

Then today I met with a representative of a local hotel chain with whom I am hoping to house most of my visiting performers. I was really reminded of the power of good customer service. I had contacted representatives of a number of chains, but she was the only one that decided that she could better serve me by having me come out and see her properties and treat me to lunch. Of all the others I contacted, only one other has even responded with the information I requested.

The thing is, none of them need my business, especially the woman who took me out. Right now tourism is excellent and there are hardly any rooms to be had on O’ahu. Even though I am bringing a fair bit of business, the hotels can make better use of their time wooing tour operators and travel agents than me. This is especially true because I am asking for kama aina rates (discounts for locals) in order to help me stay on budget.

This woman spoke to me, assessed my needs and then picked the mix of properties of the 20 or so her company manages on my island that would best suit my needs. She stayed away from the really economical places that might prevent jet lagged artists getting off a 5+ hour flight from getting rest and also avoided the ones that were too upscale. My time wasn’t wasted looking at the wrong places.

Every hotel we went to, the general manager came out and met me like I was an important account. They showed me around the rooms personally, offered me water and wet towels to refresh myself. The woman showing me around took me out to lunch at their flagship property where my car was valet parked and returned to me swiftly with my A/C and radio set to create a welcoming environment in my own vehicle. Now perhaps they do much more for travel agents, but they could have done far less for me.

I still have to be conscious of price, but if they end up being a few bucks more a night than another quote I get, they will certainly be getting my business. They know that good customer service means good service to everyone and they know that it is the little touches like the way the valet delivers your car that matters. They also probably know that good word of mouth is the best advertising. Not only will I speak well of them on my island, but because they have properties on the other islands, I will be saying great things about them to the other members of the consortium.

It just verifies my feelings about the importance of customer service and underscores how important it will be for me to rectify all the impediments to customer service at my theatre.

Tax Treaties

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So I am learning about something I have never come in contact with before in my career–international tax treaties. Apparently the IRS is joining the INS and making it difficult for international acts to decide to perform in the US. I am told since 9/11 occurred, the IRS has really been cracking down on enforcing taxes on international performers. I guess they feel since they caught Al Capone on taxes, maybe they will get lucky and uncover some plots.

On the other hand this seems like a great topic for the blog so I have to grudgingly give an iota of appreciation for coming in contact with it.

In any case, what this means is that if a performer exceeds a certain level of income in the US in a year, as a presenter you are obligated to deduct 30% from the fees you are paying them. They can file to get it back but that can get annoying as you might easily imagine.

The federal government has apparently gone after a number of universities who haven’t done this for back taxes so my school is taking it very seriously and so are a lot of other places. One of the first things the guy who advised me told me is not to believe folks when they complained we were the only ones doing it. He forwarded me some emails from a Listserv group (definition of Listserv here if you aren’t familiar with the term) that had members from all over the country asking questions related to the tax situation.

Here is what I know so far–Any international performer who makes over a certain amount (the amount differs accord to the treaty the US has with the country of origin) has to have 30% deducted from their fees. Apparently under certain circumstances, this can apply to the value of accomodations and transportation the host organization provides as well. So if you are paying them $10,000 and then provide $10,000 worth of services in airfare, hotels, rental cars, etc you could potentially end up having to deduct $6,000 for taxes. The bit about how much of airfare and accomodations qualifies is a bit more convoluted and apparently doesn’t apply to our situation. Perhaps because they are paying their airfare out of their own fee.

It doesn’t matter if you are paying an agent, it is to be handled as if you are paying the artist directly. (So the performer hates you cause they get paid less, the agent hates you because their cut is smaller.)

The thing that really surprised me is that a we have a group from a foreign country that has incorporated in the US and has its own federal ID number. I assumed that since they would have to file corporate income tax, we would be off the hook with the percentage since the onus would be on them to tell the truth or lie about how much they made. Nope, my guy says. They will be exceeding the $7500/yr threshold set by treaty with their country so unless they show rules to the contrary, they get a bit taken out too.

So the question I have before my people right now–When do we make the performers and their agents aware of the fact they won’t be getting all of their fee, at least not up front.

I am going to a booking conference next week is this going to essentially end my ability to present really good international acts? Are people going to refuse to perform or bump their fees to make up the difference (which is a range I can’t afford). Yeah, there are plenty of great domestic acts and I am looking forward to seeing some at the conference next week.

But I am also living at a crossroads of the world where no racial background is dominant. People are interested in seeing things from their own cultural backgrounds and that of the next person. I don’t think the hyphenated American version of culture is going to cut it here where many people are hardly 1 generation removed from the real thing, if that. And there is far less pressure to move toward a homogenized culture than there is on the mainland so even after a couple generations, an awareness of the real McCoy may not fade.

I will keep folks apprised of what develops and how many people throw things at me out of frustration. I mean I get taxed by my own government all the time, I am used to it. It is just not a part of the American experience I would choose to share with visitors.

Fine, Spend Lots of Money

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One of the many things I am doing these days is trying to arrange for hotel rooms for the many performers who will be appearing on stage over the course of the next year. I figured, since I have 100 people needing about 60 rooms over the course of about 30 dates, I might be able to get a good rate. Wrong. This is partly because the economies of Japan and the US are improving enough that people are traveling and there aren’t enough rooms to be had.

However, I also can’t get a good rate because of the hoops I have to jump through to get it. I could actually get some very excellent rates via a hotel broker (a savings of $30 a night per room and considering I need 10-11 rooms on average…)–the only problem is I need a credit card to do it, but the university system isn’t set up with coorporate credit accounts, etc.

I know this is essentially the trade off in working for a university–you don’t have to fear going bankrupt as much, but the fastest you can make a decision is 3 weeks. I also know there are good reasons not to give state employees access to easy credit. However, given that so many transactions are taking place on the internet, state institutions are going to be left behind and left out of the savings. (And god knows, the state could really do with watching what they spend.)

There is a thinly veiled metaphor in there somewhere about how any organization has to keep their policies and procedures fresh and reflective of the current business climate to avoid missing out on easy opportunities to save.

The situation places me in a tough position because I want to cut costs, but the best I can do is the lowest possible price I can get for a purchase order–not the lowest possible price.

The other lesson I am reminded of is the importance of internal communication and networking. Because I am new to the area and haven’t made a lot of contacts, I don’t know the decision makers to call to get a good rate for my substantial needs. Even when I try to get in a back door and talk to people in marketing and sales, I get intercepted by receptionists who direct me to reservations and those folks aren’t interested or empowered to talk about sponsorship opportunities, etc. which might reduce my costs.

Maybe I would be too much of a small fry for the hotel anyway. However, no one is directing me to a person who would make that decision. This is something of a cautionary tale that reminds me to empower my staff to make decisions without consulting me, but that I also must encourage them to bring proposals for interesting opportunities to my attention as well. 80% will probably be people who haven’t really thought through their proposal and have nothing to offer, but 10% might have something of potential to offer (even if they too haven’t though through their proposal.)

Then of course, there is the other 10% who are out and out crazy and are looking of a whole lot for nothing. Those are the folks you hope your staff sorts out before they get to you…(heh heh)

Musta Been Saving It Up

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I was looking over some of my old entries and realized I actually never wrote down some good ideas I had connected with my earlier ideas on Drew McManus’ docent program. I have a vague recollection that I was going to mention my ideas in an interview so perhaps that is why I never wrote it here–I didn’t want provide other interviewees with my good ideas. (Hey, given that one place had 300 applicants for the same job, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility someone who read my blog had applied.)

In any case, it is actually a simple extension of my earlier thoughts and philosophies. I think it would be great to train art/drama/music, etc students in a docent program so they learn how to talk about what they do in an manner that doesn’t alienate audience. You don’t want a student standing in your lobby talking to an audience member saying “Well, clearly the dance was inspired by pointillism.” The implication being–if you don’t know what I am talking about, you are an idiot.

Instead, you might want them to say. “Well, the dance was inspired by pointillism. Are you familiar with that term?” And if the person says they aren’t, perhaps the student whips out the Sunday comics and a magnifying glass to show how the print process and the post-impressionism school of painting are similar. Then they point out how the concept was executed in the dance the person just saw or perhaps will see.

The audience sees your venue as a place they can feel comfortable attending and asking questions and your student base learns how to use language that doesn’t require specialized knowledge or make people uncomfortable.

Trying to establish a program like this is going to be one of my long term goals in my current position. It may be difficult because the campus is 100% commuter and clears out about 4-5 hours before performances begin. But there is a strong continuing ed program on the campus too and this type of examination of the arts might hold an appeal for them.

Outreach to Schools

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Looking back to Artsmarketing.com today, I noticed they had a link to a FAQ about marketing outreach programs to schools. It is pretty informative for folks who want to do such things. It talks about who the decision makers and gatekeepers for schools are, what times of the year are bad to contact schools to set up outreach, how high school is different from elementary school.

The FAQ also discusses how to position your outreach so it will be more likely to be viewed as valuable to the educational process. It also directs groups to resources if they want to synch their offerings with teacher’s lesson plans, how to create good study guides and generally strengthen a relationship with the schools.

One of the things I was most impressed about was that the FAQ also addressed the perception by the students that the outreach was a free period where they didn’t have to learn or behave. Having gone on a number of school outreaches, I am familiar with this situation. The article encourages outreach groups to establish a protocol with the teacher prior to their arrival and also suggests finding a way to engage and involve the teacher in the process so they don’t give the impression it is an opportunity for escape themselves.

It Really Works!

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I realized I had neglected to remove the line in “About The Blog” that refered to me being unemployed. That has, of course, been changed. I also changed the About the Author section because that too was essentially gauged to advertise my qualifications and help me find a job.

The blog actually worked to help me find a job. Some of the folks on the search committee commented on the blog during the interview and even now that I have started work. Some of them continued to read it even after they hired me so I have to watch what I write.

I had asked a career counselor if she suggested people list their blogs on their resumes (the entry is somewhere back in time, I will have to dig it out). She said since I was looking for an employer who would value my innovative ideas, etc, I should absolutely list it. Sort of the idea that I will attract the employers that deserve me. Well, I have to say, 10 days or so in the process. I am really feeling like I am working for a place that deserves me. (Lucky them!) I think I even wrote at one point that I started getting interviewed by places that deserved me/whose ideals and philosophies were aligned with mine.

We will see how far this impression bears out now as time goes on.

Stock Phrases

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In my last entry, I mentioned how I was trying to resist using quotes from newspaper critics because it made me feel lazy to borrow someone else’s thoughts. I also doubted the power of such quotes to sway people because the phrases they employ seem over used.

I came across an article in the London Telegraph that refers to a list that the editors compile of over used phrases they felt they could do without seeing. The list applies to book reviews, but if you look at them, you will see quite a few that make an appearance in regard to live performances and art shows.

What It Means to Be Human

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Okay, so I am in the middle of writing calendar listings and season brochure material trying to avoid falling into a boring writing style as pointed out by Greg Sandow and which I later commented on

I think I am doing fairly well, but time will tell and I may be too close to my own stuff. One of my other rules besides trying to avoid being boring is to also keep from quoting reviewers. I have seen so many people quoted saying “Fantastic”, “A must see”, “Best show of the season”, etc, etc, that I doubt the persuasive power of such quotes. Besides, it seems like inserting such quotes means you can’t think of enough interesting things to say about it on your own. Since I am trying to get into the practice of generating interesting things out of my own feeble brain, that is just another reason to avoid quoting folks.

On the other hand I was tempted to include a quote from a Pittsburgh paper that called a Dayton Dance Company’s performance “rollicking, lyrical, athletic and emotionally generous quartet of African-American dances” It was the emotionally generous part that caught my eye. I don’t frequently see that applied to people in reviews.

One thing I want to know though–when did being human become a selling point for a show? I constantly see (and I was guilty of it many times myself) people describe shows in terms of things that make us human or remind us of the human condition or celebrate what it is to be human. Andrew Taylor recently commented that people seldom go to the theatre simply because it will raise the SAT scores of kids in the neighborhood. Considering some pregnant women put headphones on their stomachs so that their forming child can be exposed to Mozart, I think there is a greater likelihood of folks deciding to support the arts for that reason than because they have lost touch with what it means to be human.

Now granted there are plenty of people out there who probably need to be reminded what it means to be human. However, I doubt anyone admits they need to be exposed to such stuff.

Again, I think this is a nebulous catch-all term people use out of laziness. It sounds impressive, but it really doesn’t mean much. I have seen it applied to some shows to refer to poignant moments, applied to others in connection with joy and familal bonds of love, and I have seen it applied to shows with incredible violence, hatred, pain and sorrow. You never know what you are going to get if you go to a “what it means to be human” show.

Yes, all these things are part of human existence, but it is much better to say poignant or violent. The problem is, using the term doesn’t help audiences understand art any better than they did when they arrived. It strikes me that this phrase is part of the alienating language the arts tend to use. I am not saying that language should be dumbed down–I am a big believer in people picking up dictionaries and teaching themselves. I am using phrases like “transient state” in my season brochure. Except in this case, the phrase very specifically describes a transformation which is occuring. (and I didn’t want to repeat the word transformation in the description.)

I won’t lie. This is hard. Even with all the practice I have writing about different issues, it is difficult to write something that accurately depicts a performance without falling back on newspaper quotes and important sounding, but empty phrases. This being my first weeks at a new job, there are plenty of other things I could really be spending my time on. But trying to do this well, even if I am not entirely successful, is important to developing my ability to communicate well with audiences.

Is it only my 3rd day?

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It should come as no surprise to any of my readers that the first week of a new job at an arts organization doesn’t leave much time for actually writing blog entries. To say that I have spent my last three days writing up a calendar listing for local media makes me sound like a lazy bastard. In reality, I have been doing more than meeting new people and been becoming familiar with the details of my job.

In the pursuit of trying to write up calendar listings, I have essentially been developing my budget for the year. The budget had been set up to a certain point, but there have been additions and substitutions. To simply advertise a ticket price in a newspaper calendar, I have had to develop (read: make educated guesses) a fair part of the budget from incomplete information. And of course, since the info is incomplete, I spend most of my time asking a lot of questions that lead to answers which lead me to ask a lot of other questions about things not actually related to my original purpose for asking, but simply flesh out my knowledge of what the heck I am actually doing here.

I don’t have much new wisdom to impart today except to point people in the direction of some really exciting groups that I will be presenting over the coming year. Some are more familiar to me than others, but all seem pretty interesting.

First you have world renowned folks like The Flying Karamazov Brothers (http://www.fkb.com/) and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (http://www.mambazo.com/).

Really high energy international musicians — New Zealand’s Te Vaka (http://www.tevaka.com) who surround the traditional pate (log drums) with acoustic and electric guitar and toss in high energy and dance which makes it tough to sit still. I also think it will be hard to sit still during Les Yeux Noir’s (http://www.lesyeuxnoirs.net/) visit as well since their part gypsy, part klezmer, part swing jazz music is described as infusing the audience with their frenetic energy.

My theatre is known for the dance performances it puts on so we will be hosting the Dayton Contemporary Dance company (http://www.dcdc.org) and Rennie Harris Puremovement (http://www.rhpm.org/). All that time I lived near Philadelphia and I had to travel to Hawai`i to hear about them!

This isn’t everyone we are presenting–I will link to my website once I finish building it–but these are among those which look exciting enough to spread the word about.

Working Together

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So today was my first day of work. I had already gone through the introductions and the paperwork filling out phase of the job over the course of the last week or so when I wandered on to campus to use the computers to search for housing, etc.

Today was taken up looking over the piles of papers and handbooks on my desk to find out what sort of job I actually agreed to do. Then there was the long discussions on what the heck it all meant. Fortunately, the interim director was available to discuss some of the more confusing parts.

One of the more confusing sections which was worth learning about was the way the various arts organizations on the islands work out block booking arrangements. The formed an organizations called the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii (PAPH) When they go to the booking conferences, one person concentrates on theatre offerings, another on dance, another on jazz, etc and reports back to the group on what they saw.

Later the members decide what acts they are interested in presenting and discuss who will approach the agents with the offer from the interested members of PAPH. They have worked out a whole system of how airfare, hotels, car rentals, etc and even assess a fee that is paid to the member who books the act on behalf of the others.

Not all members of the group participate equally or coordinate closely with the others and will in fact, make their own arrangements. However, the way the members coordinate to reduce their costs can provide a good example for others. The PAPH people do it out of necessity given that airfare adds so much more to the asking cost than someone driving through the region on the way to another gig might. So just think how much more mainland arts organizations could save if they coordinated so an artist was guaranteed work and had the hotels secured as she drove from Boston to NY to Philly to DC to Raleigh, etc.

One thing that surprised me too was that the PAPH members block booked within close proximity to each other. It stands to reason that an organization on Maui wouldn’t share the same audience as one on O’ahu. However, some of the acts my predecessor booked are performing one night for me and then on the other side of the island the next night. Now granted, it is a 45 minute to hour drive to the other venue even without traffic, but that was something that was really never done when I was on the mainland—and there are far more people in a 45 minute geographic radius on the mainland than on my island.

Somehow it works and it works well which again makes me suggest that other locales consider it too.

Back at the Keyboard

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Okay faithful readers, I am back at the keyboard after my move to Hawaii. I haven’t offically started my job yet, but thanks to the help and support of the theatre staff, I have been able to use the office to store my shipped stuff and call around for apartments. I am in an apartment and making the usual arrangements to get phone, cable and electric hooked up.

One interesting observation I have made already is that the theatre is organized under the Office of Continuing Education rather than fine or liberal arts. This shows the orientation and focus of the theatre right off. The building is a tool for community outreach first and then a place where performances occur. From talking informally with the director of continuing education (he actually put me up in his apartment for a week while I was searching for a place to live) I have found him to be incredibly supportive of the people in his department and eager to empower them to do interesting things. He absolutely wants financial accountability, but he also wants to provide his charges with a great experience and the freedom to do a little experimentation. A lot of administrators say that, but are really more conservative in practice. I honestly think I may end up being too reserved for his vision.

It will be interesting to see how things develop. I hope not to end up working so hard I can’t write at all. I do expect I won’t be able to write as extensively as I did while unemployed. Some of the research and writing I did involved 3-5 hours of my time. On the other hand, I will be able to offer advice from a more practical stand point now.

Gainfully Employed!

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Okay, I feel fairly confident in announcing that I am actually employed now! I will be flying out on July 28 to find an apartment and a car in Hawaii where I will be running a theatre for the University of Hawaii at the Leeward Community College campus.

Monday, the old computer will be a guest of UPS and on its way to Hawaii in advance of me. The blog may not be updated for a little while depending on how long it takes me to find a place to live and get internet service.

Finally, I will be able to put my mad theories into practice and sythesize more–all of which I will be reporting to you here. The 2004-2005 season is already pretty much selected, however I will be attending the Western Arts Alliance Conference in Spokane, WA this September to start booking for 2005-06 so look for me there!

Development or Destruction

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USA Today featured an article about a performing arts center being constructed on the site of Woodstock in Bethel, NY.

I have been following the story for awhile now since I grew up near the site and my mother currently lives within 10 miles of the location. (In fact, I mentioned the arts center in an earlier entry) Artists rendition of the site may be found here.

As you might imagine, there are quite a few people who are not happy that the historic land is being torn up for an arts center. One such group is the Woodstock Preservation Alliance. Although they tend to paint Allan Geery as an evil developer, he and his foundation have been somewhat responsive to the desires of the group and eliminated 90% of the planned construction. (Noted in coverage of the hearings here and here) For their own part, the Alliance isn’t opposed to the performing arts center. They realize its economic value to the area. They just don’t want it on the historic portion of the fields.

If you read the articles and look at the website, it is clear that Woodstock really touched a great number of people. Many of those opposed to the development are from Canada and many parts of the US. In fact, some of those opposed didn’t even attend Woodstock which goes to show how the power of the event has captured people’s hearts and imaginations.

On the other hand, a lot of locals support the site. This may not be unexpected. They live in a section of the Catskill mountains that has been economically depressed since people from NYC stopped flocking to the local resorts in the summer. People are heading back to the mountains again, but it is to attend newly built casinos which is a mixed blessing at best.

The one glimmer of hope has come from Allan Gerry and his Sullivan Renaissance program. He has taken the money he got from selling his cable company to Time Warner and has the local communities competing with each other to get improvement grants. Stories about how communities have mobilized to meet this challenge can be found here, here, here.

So when the man who has helped bring some pride back to the county says he is going to use his money build a performing arts center that will feature the NY Philharmonic, it is hard not to be grateful. Even his opponents admit it will be beneficial to the community.

It is tough to identify the bad guy in this case. There are too many elements to address in this small space, but briefly– Yes, Woodstock is a potent and pivotal part of our history and should be preserved and treasured. On the other hand the developer has eliminated a huge part of his plans for the site. His plans will bring thousands of visitors to the historical site which he intends to preserve a large portion of and do homage to in a museum. The Gerry Foundation has shown itself to be reverent of the local communities so the project probably won’t be cheesy or Disneyfy the locale or Woodstock ’69.

Personally, I think I would prefer the amibiance his project will bring to the local community rather than the one the casinos are going to.

Get Found

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I know, I know, I have been neglecting my blog of late. However, there is very good news on the job front which I have had to begin preparing for. I haven’t received a contract/letter of appointment yet and I am superstitious about posting the news until I actually have it in hand. (On the other hand, I have started moving arrangements very much in earnest.)

But I wanted to keep up my practice of giving good advice by directing readers to an Inc magazine article on cheap ways to get yourself noticed on the internet. The article talks about making sure your company is listed intelligently on search engines.

If you are thinking that people can easily find you on the internet by checking out the entertainment section of the local newspaper’s website, remember that I mentioned a couple months ago that people are turning to newspapers less and less frequently for information. They might be looking at the online newspaper site, but don’t count on it.

Your best bet according to the article can be to make sure the keyword section of your webpage includes the right words and phrases that identify your organization, but also that shows where you are geographically. If someone who recently moved to town types “Entertainment St. Paul, MN” you want to make sure you are listed in that search.

The article also mentions how you can get your organization to appear toward the top of the results list without too much effort.

This is what arts organizations are looking for–cheap, quick, easy way to gain exposure so read it and implement it!

When Free Ain’t Exactly Free

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If you are like me, you often wondered how the Public Theatre could afford to do Shakespeare in Central Park for free for so many years. Well, it turns out it hasn’t been easy, nor has it been entirely free. An article appeared yesterday in the New York Times on this exact subject.

It turns out you can purchase tickets for reserved seating to the shows and this is not a new development. Founder Joe Papp started an audience sponsor program in 1960. The program was essentially a subscription plan where $7.50 got you reserved seats to 3 of the summer shows. According to the article, Papp felt this pricing scheme was essential for the theatre to survive.

Until recently, the theatre has downplayed the availability of the ticket program for fear of appearing too commerical. Executive Director Mara Manus has really made a push to promote the program this year. $100 gets you a reserved seat. Since the seating is free to all, the money is actually a tax deductible donation according to the website. The benefit you get is not having to stand on line and a preferred seating location.

The Public is capping the number of seats that can be reserved in this manner each night and the rest will be available for free. According to the article, “up to 19,950 of the total 79,800 seats to be occupied this summer will not be available.” The ticket program only covers 19% of the $1.9 million budget for the production this summer. “The remainder derives from foundations (24 percent), corporate donations (21 percent, which includes cash or in-kind giving by companies like J. P. Morgan and The New York Times) and the blocks of Delacorte tickets sold to businesses (16 percent). There is still a 20 percent shortfall.”

So obviously, it hasn’t been the easiest thing to do free Shakespeare all these years. Even the lofty goal of making theatre free to all has entailed selling tickets to those who will pay. I thought perhaps the Public’s other activities generated enough revenue to cover the loss of doing free Shakespeare. But it turns out it hasn’t been entirely free. Publicizing the availability of reserved tickets is a financial necessity. Ms. Mara projects that the Public will be in the black for the first time since 1998. (The Public has a $12 million budget so presumably other measures are being taken in addition to the sale of tickets at the Central Park event.)

This situation holds some interesting lessons for other theatres who try to financially support their free events. Not only will people pay for the privilege of a reserved seat at a free event, they will pay $100 for it. Essentially, people are paying as much as they would for some Broadway shows and they are doing so for a seat exposed to the elements.

I assume all the closest seating locations are taken by those who pay for their tickets no matter how long the first non-donating person has been standing on line. The theatre has 1,900 seats and up to 475 may be sold on any one night. Even though the first non-donating person will have a good seat, there could be some anger on their part if they can’t sit closer after standing on line for hours. The logic that they are getting it for free so they don’t have cause to complain about a donor getting better treatment is usually lost on people–and you have to remember, you are dealing with New Yorkers who can be a little less laid back than other folks. (Edit: Please read comment below where a reader corrects this impression.)

Even though they have been running the program for over 40 years, the fact they are heavily promoting it now means that the first non-donor in line will end up much further back than in the past. (Perhaps 400 people back vs. 100 people back in recent years.) As confounding as it may seem, the theatre could end up with a negative image for more strongly promoting a long time program so they can continue offering a show for free.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Political Activity

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While poking around the web today, I came across the Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy Initiative. It appears the project ended in March 2003, but the website still serves as a resource for research on “exemplary arts-based civic dialogue projects”

The initiative was a joint project of the Amercians for the Arts supported by the Ford Foundation based, in part, on the premise that:

“In the workings of democracy, civic dialogue plays an essential role, giving voice to multiple perspectives and enabling people to develop more multifaceted, humane, and realistic views of issues and each other. Yet there is growing concern that opportunities for civic dialogue in this country have diminished in recent years. In the renewal of civic dialogue, the arts can play a pivotal role in many ways.”

They worked with 32 organizations in their Animating Democracy Initiative Lab, giving them support to develop a number of projects. Those projects can be found listed here.

The website also provides links to case studies and profiles that Americans for the Arts weren’t necessarily involved in and reference materials in the resource section.

Amen, Brother!

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Andrew Taylor has a great entry today on The Artful Manager. He lists generalizations about non-profits vs. for profits that have annoyed me for ages. I am not as concerned about the negative light with which for profits are cast as I am with the pure motives and results attributed to non-profits.

From my own experience with organizations I have had contact (and a handful for which I have worked) I can easily attest that many non-profits have forgotten what their mission is, produce their share of the crass and pandering and have hardly cornered the market on community building. Non profits’ existence hinges so much on casting themselves as benevolent and beneficial in order to receive grant money that the positive image pervades.

To be clear, I am not just talking about arts and cultural non-profits, but health and human service sector organizations like Big Brother’s/Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs, the United Way and a host of less recognizable social service agencies as well. Though certainly there are plenty of instances where arts and cultural organizations act poorly as well. (Witness Drew McManus’ frequently entries on how orchestra management bullox up the works here and here among others.)

The part of Mr. Taylor’s argument that really interested me was his thoughts about why one would seek non-profit status:

“The cause would be my choice of creative expression and the context of a consumer market’s willingness to buy it. When there wasn’t adequate volume or density of consumers to cover the cost of my work, the effect would be a drift toward nonprofit status. When there was a sufficient group of individuals that wanted to buy the work at a price that covered its costs, the effect would be a drift toward for-profit status.”

and a little later…

“Tax status is not a cause. It is not a source of nobility or honor or excellence or any other foundation-friendly word you care to utter. Tax status is a tool, a step, a way, an option. To boldly paraphrase a favorite quote of the gun lobby: ‘nonprofits don’t make art, people do.’ They just happen to choose that tax status sometimes along the way. But they can also choose another if it serves their vision, their purpose, or their art.”

In the course of all the interviewing I have done for jobs, I have spoken to boards of directors who are just starting an arts organization and are looking for a person to run it for them. Because they sincerely want to create an organization that benefits the community, and because they have found government and private entities that will give them the money to do it, they inevitably have formed a non-profit to reach this end.

Even as a person in the profession, I haven’t really questioned this because I don’t really know of any alternatives. If I was starting a for profit business I could go to a bank for loans or find investors but I can’t really think of any place outside of a city like NY or LA that a person could do either and be taken seriously. Unless you are all already wealthy, how can a group of people get together to build a performing arts center without going the non-profit route?

But I agree with Mr. Taylor’s idea–if you think there is enough interest in what you are doing that you could pack the house, why not try to make a profit first and then move to non-profit status if you discover that plenty of people have the interest to pack the house, but not the means to support the organization by themselves.

This is something I will be contemplating. I will be keeping my eyes open for articles that might show that such an idea is viable. If anyone sees one, please direct me to it!

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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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