What Am I Promoting?

by

Mitch from McCallum Theatre made some comments on my entry yesterday and said something at the end which I thought would be the basis of a good entry.

I am a new reader of your blog. I read it because it was called “Butts in Seats.” I’m not sure that is really what you are promoting.

It is a good observation because while I have been writing about what it is I am doing in emails to people, it has been awhile since I stated it in the blog. Given that projects like this can evolve over time, I thought the start of a new calendar year might be a good time to state what it is I am trying to accomplish at this stage.

The blog isn’t simply about putting butts in the seats. The purpose is to talk about the environmental/financial/social challenges, debates, idealistic conflicts, emerging opportunities, solutions, what have you, inherent to running a not-for-profit arts organization.

For-profits are primarily concerned with putting butts in the seats. They aren’t challenged with the necessity of having to balance serving the community with financial stability. They may decide to make it a paramount concern, but it rarely is part of their founding mission statement and not a statutory requirement of their corporate status.

So what the blog is all about is filling the seats and trying to address all that too.

Mitch is absolutely right in his comments, it is the job of the organization to reflect the desire of the community. There have been shows of certain genres that I have been involved with that appealed to absolutely no one in my organization, from the executive director to the maintenance workers, but filled the house because we booked a high quality act in that genre and the community clearly expressed an interest in that genre. Most of the time your job as a performance booker isn�t to showcase your personal taste even though you are hired based on your good taste.

What I was mostly addressing in yesterday’s entry was the fact people can be convinced a mediocre violinist is talented because they look good in a slinky dress. They rush to buy tickets, but stick up their noses at the great violinist because Eastern Europe dentistry isn’t what it is in West.

As I mentioned earlier, there is an internal debate that typically goes on in a lot of non-profit arts managers minds and hearts as they try to figure a balance between these two violinists. What enhances the community life more–1000 people whose experience is broadened by exposure to a poppy rendition of classical music or 300 people who choose to attend a concert that requires more concentration to understand, performed by a person with great mastery of the subject.

Will any of those 1000 people become interested enough by this first exposure to classical music to try out more challenging fare? If so, then booking that performer is a wise choice as part of serving the community pursuit of personal growth.

If the answer is no and booking the performer actually diminishes people’s respect for classical music but fills the coffers and allows the organization to continue, then the decision to engage the performer is less clear cut.

When I talk about being cynical and elitist, I am actually just trying to show the internal dialogue going on so that readers can gain some insight into the process and perhaps not feel they are alone in these thoughts. It’s no crime to have elitist thoughts as long as you recognize they might unfairly narrow your view of things and seek a more equitable method of making booking decisions. (Consulting with community members whose judgment you trust, for example.)

In the arts there is always going to be the debate between idealism and practicality. You can lean against the stage door and groan “why do people like this crap” but the truth is, you booked the performance despite your personal taste because it isn’t about you, it is about the community you serve.

Many times the value to the show isn’t in whether it is good art. Sometimes you are teaching kids about dinosaurs, sometimes it is about diverting a community’s thoughts from a great tragedy that has struck them, other times it is to create community bonding by getting everyone to bring their awful voices together to sing Christmas Carols.

I won’t make the claim that I am not an elitist in some respects, but I am very much aware of my own pedestrian tastes in many areas including the arts. One of my mottos is “Customers are idiots. I should know, I am one.”

If you read back in the blog a bit you will see that I join other bloggers in acknowledging that many arts organizations take a condescending view of their patrons. Proposed solutions to this include trying to find ways to create an atmosphere in which more effective patron conversations transpire.

These programs aren’t aimed at making people smarter about factual information as much as knowledgeable about how and why choices are made and the relationships between things. Drew McManus’ docent program for example aims to foster discussions about things like the intention behind a particular mix of pieces chosen for a symphony concert. Why Haydn is an important composer is part of this conversation, but it isn’t the conversation.

Mostly why I write this blog is to help me clarify my position on things and give people something to think about to clarify theirs. I hope that someone is reading bits from time to time and it isn’t all just falling into the ether of the net.

Certainly I hope for constructive feedback and criticism because all this blog is really is a less anti-social way to publicize my internal thoughts and discussions than talking aloud in a public place. Talking to myself, no matter how impressed I am with what comes out of my mouth, will only get me so far in developing effective approaches to arts management.

But Do You REALLY Think Revisited

by

As promised, I am addressing some comments from my But Do You REALLY.. entry. Actually, it will be one of the comments today, but that should be enough.

Mitch from the McCallum Theatre makes some provocative statements in the comments section.

A couple of things about the business we are in: 1) 90% of everything that is offered at WAA or APAP, in other words, the arts “marketplace” is crap. 2) 90% of arts administrators can’t tell the difference between what is good and what is crap.

While I wouldn’t completely agree with the 90% figures in both cases, I would say that yes, some of the conference offerings are of a poorer quality than I might expect and there are a lot of presenters out there who aren’t as discerning as they should be.

However, I would say that the quality of performer at conferences is largely due to the fact that many big names don’t have to show up–you will solicit them and technology allows smaller names to make an effective pitch to you in your office. DVDs, faster internet connections, streaming audio and video, email, etc. can showcase performers far better than, well, a 20 minute conference showcase where they lack control of most elements.

While a DVD is no substitute for a good live performance, (otherwise, why book the live performance), it may make more sense to people to forego the expense and time of making a trip to a conference and invest in a quality electronic media package.

As for the arts people with poor eyes for talent, well the self-same technology that makes it easy for performers to solicit bookings from presenters also makes it much easier these days for people to set themselves up as presenters.

What is actually dangerous about this situation isn’t so much that they have bad taste as the fact they lack an understanding of the business and the costs involved. In the last few months I noticed that a group I had engaged last season was returning to appear at a place about 12 times the size of my venue with the expensive union crew to match. We easily sold out our performance, but I had my doubts about filling this new place. On the other hand, the concert was capping off a week of festivities so I figured these folks knew what they were doing.

Yeah, not really.

I found out this week that they were bigger on dreams and assumptions than experience. Some of the coordinators at the venue apparently made some attempts to ground the presenters but they went full steam ahead with the confidence born of ignorance and lost a lot of money.

Anyhow, back to the comment section there. What Mitch writes a little later is most interesting.

That said, it is entirely possible to engage the public in intellegently purchasing tickets to arts events they will enjoy and will be happy to pay for. Once you have the ability to determine what is good and what is crap (and remember only 10% of us can do that), then the rest of the job is just marketing.

Know your market and respond to the needs of your market, and you will be successful…Listen to your customers and you will learn what they want. Program the good (not the crap) from the artists your audience wants, and you will be successful.

Without getting into a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance type discussion of quality, I would argue that good and what your audience wants aren’t necessarily the same thing and many times are mutually exclusive. The aforementioned conferences don’t have to offer good stuff, just what people want to see or can be convinced they want to see.

Just look at Broadway. Most everything there is a retread of an existing story or a revival. Phantom of the Opera just passed Cats as the longest running show earlier this week. I really don’t think the show is all that good. It has its high points, but generally drags through the second act until the sewer scene. The sewer scene itself is only interesting for the spectacle of the fog and rising candles until you get to the confrontations at the end. Yet this is what people will pay to see so that is what is programmed.

I took a look over at the McCallum Theatre to see what constituted good stuff. Right on the home page was Lord of the Dance which has often been the butt of many a joke. Really the strength of that show is mostly the spectacle of seeing 40 people Irish step dance. Having grown up in a highly concentrated Irish community, I can tell you under normal circumstances, watching that sort of dance gets pretty old fast. Honestly, more power to Michael Flatley for finding a way to make it interesting.

It is clearly something people want to see, too. Lord of the Dance and performances of Broadway shows are the only shows scheduled to run five nights. (Correction, I see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme run longer.)

It may sound elitest and cynical, but I have sometimes despaired the fact that I have been involved with productions that are reinforcing the idea that a particular performer is talented rather than just easily marketable. All arts organizations go through that of course. They present the easily sold performances to help underwrite the better, less likely to be attended shows.

Often people know they are buying tickets to the happy, fluffy show with lots of wow and little substance. However, other times people may not be familiar with an artist but they know that the arts center has offered some truly great people in the past and trust that this performer is of that caliber.

This is the situation I hate because these trusting people come in and see a performer whose draw is more image than ability. They don’t quite like the show, but they figure if X arts center is presenting them, and the show was sold out, they are worthwhile and maybe they should buy the CD, etc. This sort of thing only reinforces the whole idea that mediocrity wears the same face as excellence.

In a couple weeks a beauty pageant is renting my facility. I got a call from a faculty member saying her friend wanted to see the stage. It turned out, the friend was the mother of a contestant who wanted to try out her talent piece on stage. The young woman is a figure skater but lacking ice is doing her routine on inline skates. Given that plastic wheels on wood is different than metal on ice she was wise to want to test the surface. (Especially since the stage is 30 years old, riddled with traps and not as smooth as it was in its youth.)

There are obviously some ice skating techniques you just can’t execute on a stage. However, it was interesting that the contestant’s mother was encouraging her to do certain showy things that she acknowledged would have disqualified her daughter in a skating competition. She then asked me if I knew who the judges would be in the hopes that none of them would know ice skating rules.

The question that came to my mind was–are you honestly exhibiting your skill if you would be disqualified in your arena of expertise for doing something simply as a crowd pleaser and not based on practical safety concerns?

It is a tough question to answer since in the arts breaking rules is known as mapping new ground, collapsing preconcieved notions and engaging in activities that will have people calling for your NEA grant to be revoked. Doing crowd pleasers is referred to as responsibly attending to the financial health of your organization.

Don’t you just hate it when your idealism recoils in revulsion at the same time your heating oil company fills up your tank for the winter?

Is This Any Way To Foster Appreciation?

by

I am getting some great comments on my But Do You Really Think It is Good For You entry. Better than I expected really.

I was going to do a response to some of the comments, but between wanting to wait for more comments to come in (since they seem to be doing so) and finding I wanted to ponder my responses a little more, I have decided to tackle something else.

When I was touching on how difficult it can be to be a blogger and professor and thinking about how people expressed their feelings about the arts, I couldn’t help but think back to my own experience teaching a theatre appreciation class.

I have really enjoyed most of the theatre classes I have taught, but the one class I have felt most intellectually and idealistically torn over was the appreciation class.

Part of the problem I think was the expectations everyone had for it. For most students, it was an easy way to get fine arts credit for their liberal arts degree. Some came to class with an honest desire to learn more about the theatre, most came or were advised to come to get their credit and get out.

For the school the class was a way to keep their dollar per student ratio down. Since most theatre classes are intensive and low student to teacher ratios are necessary, the professor’s salary divided by the number of students in class results in a rather high number. But take a department as a whole, if you offer two or three sections of a class with 400 people in each section, you offset that high salary ratio and make the department look productive.

As horrible as this may sound, remember this is essentially the same way many funding institutions assess the effectiveness of their grants–by number of people served by programs they underwrote. Non-profit arts organizations often take on programs that don’t serve their mission well so that they can get funding to support their core interests. In the same regard, theatre departments create really poor environments for cultivating appreciation in an attempt to justify and maintain their existence in order to pursue their main interests–educating theatre majors. (And one wonders if this is where the future arts leaders learn the lesson of supporting the mission by doing what is not in the best interests.)

Four hundred people in a room isn’t necessarily bad, of course. By many accounts you would call it a nice atmosphere in which to enjoy the arts. But if there are 300 people who don’t want to be there and would rather talk on their cell phones or to each other, you got a pretty crappy atmosphere for the 100 who are interested in the subject matter. One professor and one TA have a hard time competing with and controlling that sort of disinterest.

Asking people to leave ellicited the “I paid, I got a right to be here” response. Challenging people to defend why their dollar was more valuable than the dollar of the people who were interested and wanted to pay attention earned some uninterrupted time. Lack of regard returned in subsequent classes and different arguments for attention had to be used.

Lest people be tempted to look at my resume in an attempt to figure out where I am talking about. Let me simply state, it is like this all over. A similar situation existed where I did my graduate work and where my friends went to school. It probably exists where many readers go/went to school. Certainly it occurs more in large university settings than in smaller colleges just by stint of enrollment numbers.

The thing is, the existence of these classes is also harmful to students pursuing performance as a major. This is most dismally illustrated at college performances said students are required to attend. Because they don’t want to ruin their weekends, these students will buy tickets to the Wednesday or Thursday performance thereby providing the student performers with the harrowing experience of playing to the most unresponsive audience they will ever meet. (While I can’t speak for all fine arts appreciation classes, I have noticed the same trend in music appreciation audiences.)

The Intro students will attempt to arrive late or leave early and get their attendance slip validated. Since the house staff (mostly comprised of students) has been instructed to apply the attendance rules strictly, an antagonistic relationship often developes. The Intro students resents that they are being compelled to attend and the theatre major resents that it is necessary to compel attendance. (If the school doesn’t enjoy strong community attendance, the theatre major may grow to feel this is true for all audiences.)

The real question is a takes the form of a debate of sorts- Are schools failing students by not giving them a more conducive environments in which to cultivate an interest and appreciation of art. OR Are schools wisely only investing an appropriate portion of their resources because so few of the students enrolling in the class have a genuine interest in detailed explorations and discussions of theatre.

Of course, this begs the question, if so few students are interested, why are they required to take the course? The answer most likely is that some group of people somewhere argued that exposure to the fine arts would make students better, more well-rounded citizens.

Which all gets back to the original question–is there a better way that makes sense economically and from an education philosophy point of view and creates a positive experience for all?

Is there anyone out there in large schools doing it?

I Am Bachelor #3

by

Okay, I am outing myself. In the examples Drew McManus uses in his entry today, I am indeed the person mentioned in Example 3.

Of course, the only reason I am admitting it is because as Drew noted, things have turned out fairly well for me. Partially because there were a lot of people who were interested in new uses of technology on my hiring committee. It is also partially due to the fact there are enough things to write about that it is easy to exercise restraint when the temptation to gripe arises.

However, you might be surprised to learn how incorrect assumptions about the freedoms accorded those who work in higher education are. There have been a number of stories recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education (here and here for example) and in a recent series on education that appeared on Slate which have noted the very act of blogging, regardless of the tone or even subject matter, can ruin an academic’s chance for a job or tenure.

In some cases, even tenured professors were viewed as wasting time on blogging that could be better spent on publishing in academic journals.

It is all enough to give a job applicant pause as noted in a Chronicle column by a doctoral candidate and blogger who received dire warnings about blogging at a career counseling session. She ultimately felt that the act of blogging made her a better scholar (boosted by the fact that one of her entries received fairly honorable recognition.)

I certainly feel that it has made me a better manager since reading my old entries helps remind me of some good ideas and concepts I had.

Over time I think blogging will become a more accepted method of scholarly discussion, research and publishing. This will be especially true as those who frown on the practice retire and are replaced by bloggers and those who may have benefited from reading them.

There would certainly be an opportunity for a much wider, more extensive peer review of papers than there is currently. Of course, there would be much wider, louder, and public debate over these issues. Unfortuantely, perhaps without the investment of reflective time that the current system includes.

Still the speed of receiving such replies could be helpful in scientific research, even with all the concerns about industrial espionage and intellectual property rights, by allowing scientists to posit ideas, discuss conumdrums or ask if anyone had come across materials with certain properties.

Other than Andrew Taylor, I don’t know any other arts bloggers in higher education settings so it is difficult for me to gauge whether arts faculty are any more or less accepting of bloggers in their ranks.