Perils of Live Performance

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I have written about increasing the interactivity of performances at least twice before. While increasing interactivity is something that may be key to the continued survival of the performing arts, involving the audience more integrally in a show isn’t necessarily going to always be constructive and enjoyable.

Via Artsjournal.com comes the story of an incident that occurred while Mike Daisey was performing his one person show at American Repertory Theatre. The show had hardly begun when 86 people stood and exited the theatre with one man going up on stage and dumping water on Daisey’s outline for the performance. The whole thing was captured on tape. Daisey includes the video on his blog where he explains what happened.

What is so compelling about the video is that because the show is extemporaneous and has no set script, Daisey goes with the moment and gets up and asks why they are leaving. He mentions that he can regulate his language if that is what offends them and invites them to return so they can have a conversation. The only response he gets is one person saying they are Christian.

After the group has departed, Daisey engages in a conversation with the audience about what has happened and how the destruction of his outline, which he makes small alterations to everyday, means that he will have to spend the next day reconstructing his show.

According to his most recent blog entry he actually got in contact with the group and the man who destroyed his notes. His discussion of his interaction with the man shows sensitivity and empathy in a situation where anger and derision for those who offered insult might be expected. (Though on the night of the show he was quite angry and called those who were departing cowards.)

The quality of the writing and insight he offers is what I have envisioned when I suggested artists keep blogs about the creative process for audiences to access. It is just too bad an incident like this has to be the impetus of it.

Which is not to say that his other entries on the American Repertory Theatre blog don’t have value, he does a great job addressing why his extemporaneous performances may appear to be memorized for example. The entries and video on the walk out are just great examples of what the performance experience can be for artist and audience and superb lessons to artists about how to deal with people who are angered by your work in a constructive, non-dismissive manner.

You Must Be This Tall To Clap

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As I noted earlier, my involvement in Take A Friend to The Orchestra Month this year took little effort on my part since the Symphony came to me. For the first time in a long while, the Symphony came to perform a school outreach on my stage. Many of the musicians commented on that fact and hoped they would be returning for future events.

The program certainly had a greater reach than anyone anticipated as mothers showed up with infants in hand while accompanying the older siblings. We had ten strollers parked in the lobby during the first concert. Four people used our stage as a diaper changing area prior to the performance which left us concerned some of the babies would roll off.

I didn’t get to watch the whole thing, but the concert started with a short sample of John Williams’ “Theme from Superman“ and the ended with the full work.

What really stuck out from the whole experience was the audience’s reaction to the second piece they performed. Because they were trying to demonstrate varying tempo, they performed Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Before the piece was over the entire audience was clapping along in time with the music. I am guessing this isn’t a common response from the way the conductor commented on how the audience had really gotten into the piece. The symphony had sent CDs of the program to the schools in advance so they could prepare so the students could have been introduced to the idea of clapping along in the classroom. Though honestly, if you listen to the music, it doesn’t take much impetus to get you clapping.

Some of the volunteer ushers the symphony brought along commented how great it was that the kids enjoyed the music so much that they were getting involved with it.

I couldn’t help but wonder how old the kids would have to be before that sort of behavior was no longer tolerated from them. There is already a debate about aplause between movements, clapping during the performance would certainly be sacrilege. Certainly, social conventions require that you stifle such impulses to allow other people the opportunity to listen to the music.

On the other hand, symphonies often talk about how composers were the bad boy rock stars of their day so I suspect that people might have had a less restrained reaction to the music than they do these days. I came across a reference to children following Grieg around the streets of Bergen whistling tunes from his Peer Gynt Suites. If you followed the “In the Hall of the Mountain King”link earlier (or right here) you will see that the popular appeal of Grieg’s music lives on today. (Though in some cases, it seems to be a mutant life form.)

Resource: The Law and Arts

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I have no idea how I came across it, but I found The Law Portal-Law Primers for the Arts today. As the name implies, the site has links to other sources of information on various laws that apply to the arts. There is also a link to information about how to conduct legal research online.

Some of the topics covered you might expect-free speech, cyberspace law, non-profit law, copyright/fair use, setting up a business, contracts, taxes, visas, etc.

There are some issues covered with which I hadn’t anticipated when I visited the site like those surrounding the use of various materials in the creation of art. The site not only links to articles and laws dealing with this subject but a place to find the Material Safety Data Sheets and OSHA regulations surrounding their use.

Something else I hadn’t expected was an article on what to do if an artist starts performing in your gallery without permission.

The site is a good resource not only for law regarding many of these issues, but also policy discussions on the topics I have mentioned as well as things like network neutrality, privacy and media consolidation.

More Powerful Than Casual Fridays!

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Last week, Andrew Taylor linked to the draft of Charles Leadbetter’s upcoming book, We-Think. It has taken a week or so, but I have read the entire thing and found much of it thought provoking.

The general theme of the book is that some of the biggest innovations of the recent past have been a result of the cooperative effort of enthusiastic amatuers. Among the examples he cites are familiar like Wikipedia, Craigslist and Linux. But he also reveals that mountain bikes were actually developed by enthusiasts who assembled prototypes from scavenged parts so they could ride off road. Many recent astronomical observations have been made the same way, placing cobbled together telescopes alongside multi-million dollar observatories as contributors to discoveries.

Since I have been on pondering the nature of leadership in the arts of late, one of the dozens of things that caught my eye was the following (my emphasis):

Most important for innovation, leaders will have to be open to challenge and question: they will have to be curious and inquisitive.They cannot afford to be intellectually closed.They will have to be accessible to the people they lead, visible and part of the conversation at work, rather than cut off in the executive suite. Leadership will not longer be the preserve of the people at the top of the organisation: it needs to be exercised in large and small way by many people at all levels. If innovation is going to come from all over the organisation, then so too will leadership.

One of the issues Leadbetter addresses in the book is that so many companies say they want people to come up with creative solutions, but the sentiment is mostly lip service. To be sure, the whole problem of companies not supporting their assertion that they value out of the box thinking is a regular topic of business magazine articles. (And lets not even get into the whole fallacy of the “we’re like family here” claim.)

I have a suspicion though that there is a movement afoot that companies will find themselves unable to oppose. As more and more people find some self-actualization in contributing to these collaborative efforts, their desire to feel similar satisfaction at work could end up subverting the organizational culture of their companies. The subtle proliferation of Casual Fridays will be nothing next to this trend!

As people see that they have something of value to contribute to the team laboring on their out of work interest, they may feel that they have something to contribute at work as well. This may lead to some big conflicts as the employee expects things to be restructured to facilitate collaboration or perhaps their expertise doesn’t quite translate over to the function they serve at the company.

A smart company may look into giving employees the opportunity to fill the knowledge gaps needed to translate existing expertise or explore reorganizing things if there is some potential in the suggestion.

They may not have a choice. Employees already create informal networks to get things done in many companies. Get enough people together who have participated in highly effective self-organized groups in their private lives, and the company’s management may find themselves out of the loop.