Tread the Boards Online

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Have you ever visited a Renaissance Festival and wished you had the guts to dress up in those costumes and speaking in a faux cockney accent?

Well now can from the privacy of your own home! Sort of.

The MacArthur Foundation recently awarded a grant for the development of Arden: The World of Shakespeare. According to CNet “The idea behind the project is to produce a virtual world steeped in the rich lore and characters of the playwright’s work.”

The game will be a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft. Different parts will be devoted to different plays. According to the article, they are going to start with Richard III.

The grant was awarded to Edward Castronova who has famously studied the economics of online games. Arden will continue some of his work in this area and provide an arena for sociologists, political scientists and economists to study human behavior under changing situations.

But to the player these motivations shouldn’t be discernable during game play. They will be there for the fun.

The game universe will be generally limited to what could be found in Shakespeare’s universe. Magic will be limited to what might be found in The Tempest or MacBeth as will technology, professions, etc. Though finding Shakespearean text will empower you.

Though the intent is mostly to benefit social sciences, I wonder if playing the game might not provide good research for actors. Find out how a peasant might have really felt after spending hours of drudgery online. Want to discover real motivation for delivering Henry V’s St. Crispen’s Day speech? Get ye to the Battle of Agincourt. (Of course, you might be felled by dysentery on the way if the game keeps things realistic.)

IRS Gonna Getcha

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Apropos of my bonus ponder yesterday, I commented on Artful Manager that a flexible view of non-profit status might not be well received by the IRS.

Lo and behold, the Chronicle of Philanthrophy has an article about how the IRS is scrutinizing non-profits more closely these days. The unit handling non-profits is still fairly small, but it is getting more personnel. They are conducting more audits than before. They have started a new program of preliminary investigations and partial audits to help clarify matters. (Check out the charts at the bottom to see how these activities grown in recent years.)

To balance the scary spectre of an audit, they have also started offering training for charities as well to help them keep their books in good shape and their activities in compliance.

300 Million Reasons to Ponder

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Just something quick to think about. The US population reaching 300 million has had a lot of press of late. I don’t know if you noticed though that the US fertility rate is only 2.1 children per woman and has been for awhile now. At that rate, the US population will hold static. We would have never reached 300 million from birth rate alone.

The population growth has been and will be, due to immigrants. So the question to ponder is, what is your organizations long range plan for serving your community in recognition of this fact?

If you have the brain power to ponder many things at once, try this for a bonus- Andrew Taylor links to an article suggesting a hybrid corporate status for non-profits. Or rather, hybrid status for corporations performing non-profit like activities.

On the whole, I think Andrew is right about needing a more flexible approaching with the tools we got. It is absolutely worth reading the long version of the article though if you feel the need for change.

There’s A Rat In The Audience (And It’s Not the Critic)

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A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription required) may have implications for arts organizations if some lawsuits and other efforts are successful.

Colleges across the country are being faced with students demanding that they be allowed to bring cats, dogs, snakes, rats, ferrets and tarantulas into dorm rooms and classrooms with the idea that they are service animals. Rather than claiming a physical disability, they are saying the animals provide “psychiatric service.” (I wonder though if claiming an animal that causes anxeity in everyone around you can be considered a comfort aide.)

A few students who have had their requests denied have filed suits under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA “defines a service animal as ‘any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability.'”

Some animals are trained to provide comfort and direction to people with agoraphobia and schizophrenia by their very nature and presence. As such, they serve a passive role so it can be argued that the ADA encompasses animals that don’t do specific tasks. Some groups are doing just that asking the Department of Justice to revise regulations to include such activities.

For the most part, courts have ruled with the idea that an animal must provide active service. There is at least one court that has ruled that a person could keep a comfort animal despite the no-pets clause in a rental lease.

The idea of needing animals to help one cope with all situations is spreading. Apparently people have tried to board airplanes claiming goldfish as service animals. (At least they didn’t want to bring snakes on a plane!)

The instances of people needing comfort animals is not isolated either. Rutgers University “received five requests to accommodate a psychiatric-service animal in a single year – three cats, one dog, and a snake.”

This is just something of which to be aware. People may start to appear at your box office wanting to attend a show with an animal that helps them cope with being out in public or even the subject matter of the performance. And it may not be accompanied by a dog in a service cape.