Regionalitis

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A very interesting discussion is transpiring across three theatre blogs in the last two weeks that really starts to give a peek at the potential blogs have for people in the arts to participate in an exchange and development of great ideas outside of a collegiate setting. There has been a lot of theoretic talk about the potential, but this is a good illustration.

Actually, I should qualify this further by saying an exchange on original topics. A couple of these blogs have a raging debate over whether Shakespeare really wrote his stuff, but that debate predates the internet.

Anyhow, the postings are on the topic of “Regionalitis,” a term coined by YS at Mirror Up To Nature in a recent entry referring to:

Regionalitis is the peculiar malady suffered by mediocre efforts of excellent playwrights. Usually regionalitis is caused by the continued and incessant performing of a play by regional and smaller theatres, having the interesting effect of perpetuating a undeserved reputation of greatness while at the same time building up an incredible expectation of the casts and directors

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He makes this comment after seeing Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, in Boston essentially saying it was good, but not great enough to deserve all the performances it is getting across the country accompanied by the hype that surrounds a show that gets produced so much.

Spearbearer Down Left comments on his blog that when he saw The Real Thing at A.C.T. in San Francisco, it was “pitch perfect.” He does conceed that there may be a lot of “me-too-ism” in theatre’s and expand upon it further in a later entry saying:

…but sometimes I get the sneaking suspicion that some plays are done because they’re terrific, but sometimes they’re done because all the cool kids are doing them. I noticed a long time ago that no one really wants to discover new voices. Some do, but to truly discover one involves too big a risk. Better to almost, sort-of discover someone who’s a really hot property but not quite a theatrical household name yet.

A third blogger, Scott Walters, on Theatre Ideas throws his own hat in the ring but expands on the idea a bit himself. He feels that the repeated performances of the same plays across the country deprives people of the opportunity to see shows that speak to their place in the world.

He says that mass media has created the illusion that we are a homogeneous culture watching the same TV show and movies and reading the same books. However, he offers some observations that this might not be the case. He notes that while he lives in Asheville, NC and knows he is the same person who once lived in the middle of NYC,

I have appreciated totally different things depending on where I have lived. For instance, in NYC, rap music “made sense,” it reflected my surroundings; here in Asheville, a small city of 100,000 surrounded by the incredible natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it seems jarring and incongruous. It seems to me that NYC people are focused much more on their inner life — their aesthetic responses, their intellectual and emotional lives; Asheville people are more tuned into the environment that surrounds them, and their souls resonate to the things they see and hear around them. A novel like The Hours drove me crazy when I read it a few months ago; in NYC, I may have thought it absolutely brilliant.

Regionalitis treats every part of the country the same ignoring this differences in life focus. (Perhaps this is why the guy in San Francisco thought the Stoppard play was great but it didn’t resonate with the guy in Boston.) He points out as another example that The Kentucky Cycle was well received regionally all over the country and won a Pultizer Prize, but did poorly in NYC. He posits that it was due to the pacing and subject did not synch with the urban vibe.

He expounds upon this idea in a later entry and later clarifies his ideas after some criticism of them.

The whole process this went through really fires up my idealism gene. One guy coins a phrase, another expands upon his idea looking at it from the vantage of artistic integrity and choices, a third guy looks at it with an eye toward tuning works to regional nuances and I summarize and regurgitate it all.

I didn’t just pull this all together simply because actually watching an idea develop over blogs excited me. It was the whole discussion that got me thinking.

It is no surprise to me that different genres of performances appeal to regions and locales in varying degrees. The idea that mass media is shaping what we do and don’t watch and listen to is nothing new to me either, especially in these days of media consolidation into the hands of a few corporations.

It never occurred to me though that what they were promoting might not, as Scott Walters puts it, make sense for all regions of the country. I always just accepted, (probably due to the media) that the new stuff was just a logical evolution from what came before. New Wave of the 80s gave way to grunge of the 90s gave way to hiphop of the 00s.

Even though I should have known better, it always seemed like popular entertainment companies were reacting to trends rather than shaping them. To a greater degree pop entertainment does. However, once a trend reaches a certain saturation point, companies jump on it and promote it to everyone. They count on a desire to be part of the in crowd to overwhelm any sense that it was incongruous to one’s lifestyle.

That is what this whole regionalitis thread is all about. Arts organizations jumping on a bandwagon and urging audiences to join all the rest of the smart people across the country in enjoying the show.

Arts organizations aren’t as successful as the major media because they don’t have as much money to throw around to convince people to join their fellow citizens. They also can’t guarantee the same experience as everyone else in the country. The AMC movie theatres in Philadelphia offer screen sizes and surround sound systems pretty comparable to those in other cities around the country.

However, the talents of actors and musicians at the theatres and symphonies in Philly aren’t the same as those in theatres elsewhere, nor are the spaces they perform in. Seeing Dali in the Philadelphia Museum of Art isn’t the same as seeing the same works in the Dali Museum in St. Petersburgh, FL.

Nor is there the sense of a collective experience when a book, CD, movie is released on the same day for everyone present when performances transpire in different seasons, months or even years.

And then there are differences in ticket prices, economic conditions, education level and a half dozen other demographic elements.

This makes something of an argument for resisting regionalitis and taking an honest look at what programming and vibe is right for your community instead of trying to ride the coattails of the successes experienced by other people in other places at other times.

Heck with a man not being able to jump into the same river twice. Regionalitis can be like trying to jump into the same river from 1,500 miles away while in the middle of a drought.

Stay A Little Bit Longer

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Perhaps a positive result of the arts having to justify their value in terms of education, economic benefits, etc., apparently some colleges and universities are contracting artists using availability to do residencies as a primary criteria.

In the article “Campus Precedents” found in APAP’s September/October Inside Arts (alas, the article is not available online) Jenna Russell cites a number of schools like Ohio University and Dartmouth where residencies are scheduled before performances. She quotes Clarice Smith PAC’s (at U. of MD) Marketing Director, Charles Helm, “We won’t have [artists] here if they can’t stay longer to work with students. It is absolutely imperative.”

The residencies aren’t just in topics directly associated with performing arts either. According to the article, a residency at Dartmouth had performers rappelling down the walls of the science center lobby while a physics professor talked about the elements of momentum and gravity in the performance.

But even classes in arts subject areas are getting a more enhanced experience than they have in the past. The residencies allow students to become involved in master classes and open rehearsals essentially gaining insights and skills they won’t get in their normal classes.

Unfortunately, while the residencies have been educationally valuable to students, it hasn’t increased student attendance at performances significantly. There has been some growth, but students still comprise a minority of the audiences at these residential campuses where students can walk to the arts center and student tickets are under $10.

This is all very interesting to me since some faculty on campus have started thinking about how the events in the season can tie into their classes. I have also been thinking that perhaps my ticket prices could be a little lower for students, but that doesn’t seem to be any great incentive according to this article. I have also been following Andrew Taylor and Drew McManus’ recent entries on ticket pricing as an element in deciding to purchase.

Let He Who Has Not Sinned

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Couple weeks ago I mentioned that the Western Arts Alliance wanted to change their conference layout in part because they felt the current one created an atmosphere that commodified the artists.

When the session presenters mentioned this I was thinking that wasn’t my approach at all to the conference. While this is absolutely true, I soon realized that it isn’t hard to fall into that mindset and that I had indeed committed the selfsame sin.

Before attending the conference, one of the presenters on the other islands said she would be looking for a country music act because there was a new country radio station going on air to serve a demand for that genre.

Since I had worked with country music acts before, I suggested a few people. I personally don’t like the music, but like her, I once worked for an arts organization committed to serving the local community’s interests and that was an interest they had.

A few days later I suggested a group to her whose music and videos are played on country music stations but really couldn’t be classified as such. At best, some of their music approaches bluegrass, but even that classification only describes their straight instrumental pieces.

The band would probably attract a country audience since that was where they got the majority of their airplay plus be appealing to a wider audience so they seemed perfect for her purposes. Since I am a fan of this group’s music, I told her I would be like to present them as well if she was interested in them.

So I went to the conference and talked to the group’s agent. He sent their CDs to me. I really enjoyed listening to their latest album (it is still in my car CD player) but I realized that they are even further away from sounding like bluegrass much less country. I started to think that maybe we would have to ask them to play their earlier stuff.

Now this goes on for a few minutes before I realize what an idiot I am. I am the one who is suggesting them because they don’t sound country and here I am thinking we might ask them to play the stuff that sounds closer to country so we can appeal to a certain audience.

And yes, even worse, I was thinking about them as a commodity. They weren’t offering the color and flavor I was looking for so I was thinking of asking them if they would mix some of the old stuff up for my audiences even though I really like their new stuff.

And yes, I wasn’t crediting country music fans with the intelligence and taste to appreciate their new stuff since I think most country music is trite, formulaic and full of pretensions. (I have since checked the band’s listing out on the Country Music Television website and they are getting a fair bit of due recognition. Though people are commenting on their deviation from their roots.)

So as I look back I have to think that maybe there is a danger in viewing artists as commodities. Organizations obviously want to balance their offerings with variety and appeal to the widest audience possible over the course of a season.

Even if one didn’t engage in temporary delusional consideration of dictating a group’s artistic choices, I can see how it would be easy to think about a season as a collection of slots fill rather than being on the look out for excellence that reaches out and grabs you. In such a case, walking down the aisles in the resource room at a WAA conference wouldn’t be that much different than walking down a supermarket aisle. Perhaps you pass by a flamenco group because you already have a packet from another group with a much more attractive booth. Or maybe you compare two groups based on price per performer.

Producing organizations can fall into the same trap when they look to program 1 period comedy, 1 Shakespeare, 1 Fall Musical, 1 Spring Musical and 1 Avant Garde piece every year.

I submit that this approach does not appropriately fulfill a mission of serving ones community.

When you are keeping your eyes open for something that grabs you artistically, you aren’t thinking about what slots to fill but rather how you can get them or something similarly exciting in your theatre.

Maybe you can’t afford the group next year or maybe your audience isn’t ready for that sort of show. But if you go back home thinking about how you can work the budget so that in a few years you can afford to present the exciting work or prepare your audiences to accept that sort of show, then your are contributing to the active growth of your organization and community.

I am not suggesting discarding the traditional pattern whole cloth. In fact, presenting those shows that excited you might not necessarily constitute a success. It is the journey that is valuable in this case, not the destination.

The changes enacted in the pursuit of a single, simple exciting different thing can make the difference between artistic appreciation and commodification. It can be the difference between truly offering something to the community and offering the status quo under new names.

Where You Place Your Butt Is Important Too

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An article in the September/October issue of APAP‘s Inside Arts caught my eye (alas, the article is one of the few not available online) because it began with those immortal words–Butts In Seats.

The article wasn’t about getting butts in the seats, but rather the seats in which the butts would be placed. While seating is an area that faces cost cutting when renovations or construction goes over budget, there is still plenty of demand for added accoutrement.

Among the options for seating these days are built in headphones and speakers, lumbar support, infrared data transmission capabilities. The only thing the top and bottom of the line seats have in common are that they are ADA accessibility compliant and are generally larger than previous versions given that members of the public are also generally larger than previous versions.

I was somewhat intrigued by the possibilities these options would offer a venue. Obviously, one would want to limit the internet access the dataports had during a concert so that people weren’t using laptops, PDAs, etc to surf or watch movies during a concert.

But if you were looking to feed information to audience members a la Concert Companion this type of seat might facilitate such a program. If the facility would be used for conferences groups might use the dataports to beam sales figures and other information to attendees.

Built in headphones could support everything from helping those hard of hearing to carrying audio descriptions for the sight impaired to audio commentary on an orchestra piece. (On channel 2, Michael Tilson Thomas discusses the influences on this piece.)

Of course, after I get over being intrigued, I think about the upkeep and support costs of the computer server for the dataports, the perils of food and liquids falling into data and headphone ports and the normal wear and tear on you have on seating. Any place with enough seating to generate income to cover this sort of stuff will have enough work to keep at least one guy busy fixing the seats year round.

The one thing I wish the article discussed a little more was the way seating contributed to a planned mood for a space. The project manager at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center was briefly quoted discussing how he chose seating with “pew-like back trim…designed ‘to increase the sense of a collective experience.”

I took a look at the image of the space and it appears that each person has an individual seat (unlike pews which are much more communal.) When I think of pews, I think of straight backed wooden, uncomfortable seatings. It is hard to see the seats up close, but from the coloration the seatbacks could be wood. (By the same standard, the seats look wooden as well. I can’t imagine that they aren’t cushioned though.)

While I can see where the space would lend itself to an ambiance of collective experience, I would attribute it more to the openness of the performance space than the seating.

Most new theatres promote how plush and comfortable audiences will find their seats. Since it tough to determine if these seats are cozy, I don’t know if the project manager, faced with a tight seating budget, was simply rationalizing why a stark, pew like seating arrangement was a good choice in the face of thrift.

I am sure there were inexpensive traditional looking cushioned seats since that is what audiences expect. So I go back to my earlier wish to have gotten a little more information on seat design theory.

But you know, I am kinda a geek so it may just be me.