Took Myself To The Orchestra

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Drew McManus over at Adaptistration anointed May as “Take a Friend to the Orchestra Month” He has devoted many of his blog entries this month to following people’s experiences.

Since he listed a concert by the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra as one to see, I thought I would try to take it in. I was coming down with a cold so I wasn’t sure if I was going to go so I didn’t try to get a friend to come along.

Since he provided the impetus, I will probably send my impressions along to him first before deciding to post any of them here. Also, I have gotten sicker since I attended and don’t have the stamina to write much today.

However, Drew took Jerry, brother of WNYC host John Schaefer, to Carniege Hall to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Jerry had never been to the symphony before and today they met with John to discuss the experience on air. Check it out here. There are a lot of great observations made by Drew and Jerry about the experience and about the larger topic of classical music attendance. (And John congratulated Drew on getting Jerry into the symphony where his 40 years of effort have failed.)

Check the radio show out and the entries that fall under the Take a Friend.. topic on Drew’s blog.

You Will Be Assimilated

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I know that there is a rumor that Tavis Smiley was not wanted at NPR because he didn’t have the “NPR Voice” – that low, sedate, even toned voice that follows one of a limited few cadences. The Voice was satirized for a long time on a recurring Saturday Night Live skit about the fictional show “Delicious Dish.” (My favorites were the ones with Alec Baldwin where double entendres were made especially funny by the deadpan, oblivious delivery of the cast members.)

I was a little alarmed though when I heard an entry to Earth & Sky’s Young Producers Contest where a fifth grader was using The Voice to narrate his piece.

I imagine kids that age are smart enough to recognize the common elements of all the NPR shows and will put together what they think adults want. While I am glad the kid is listening to the informative NPR program rather than music talking about sex and alcohol, conformity to that ideal is gonna make high school hard on him. Ironically, I have to say I hope it is a phase he grows out of and begins to embrace a little rebellion. (Certainly his parents won’t thank me for that sentiment.)

While contests rewarding creativity do have many unwritten expectations, they are about showing yourself off rather than mimicking what you have heard. Thus, I was rather pleased to see that the grand prize winners didn’t use The Voice. In fact, it was sort of hard to hear what they were saying because their enunciation was so poor.

Keep up the good work showing off yourselves kids!

Searching, Always Searching

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Despite not having fulfilled my pledge to add links to the few theatre blogs I have found to my blogroll, I have gone in search of more theatre blogs tonight.

For the most part I was disappointed. Of the blogs I found, most had started with good intentions, but hadn’t been maintained on a regular basis.

This is too bad because Sharpe’s Theatre Blog has elements of what I envisioned when I suggested blogs be used for reflective exercises in learning. The initial entries make some observations about texts and what acting is. Later there is some feedback to other people in the project group which frankly, having been in theatre for a long time, seems to be heavily self-edited so as not to offend. Not that people need to tear into others or air their dirty laundry publicly. It is just conspicous by its santitation.

Similarly, the Applied & Interactive Theatre Blog starts out with a couple promising entries and then fizzles. (On the other hand, the Applied & Interactive Theatre Website proper has many resources of interest to Theatre folk)

Handcart Ensemble in NYC uses their blog to essentially post press releases online. However, there were a few interesting articles interspersed like this one on how to find a rehearsal/audition/performance space in NYC, (none of the stages may be in the same place) what questions to ask, horror stories and how much it may cost.

On the whole, blogs I have found seem to be predominantly focused on providing space for people to post their events- Ohio Theatre, Culturebot
(it does have news and opinion links, but majority are promotional), and the Washington Post’s chic Going out Gurus (actually pretty much newspaper calendar editors posting on line rather than a blog.)

One unrelated, but interesting link I came across was Eric James Stone’s blog on the progress he is making writing his first novel. A therometer bar currently indicates that he has 139,641 out of 150,000 words written. There is actually more reflection on short stories he has written while writing the novel than the novel itself. Some interesting stuff though, including some simple reflections on theatre attendance.

You Must Be This Smart to See This Show

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I don’t know if you have been reading about this new book that is out, Everything Bad Is Good for You in which author Steven Johnson proposes that pop culture, TV and video games are actually making us smarter.

I had an idea that either might be an empty marketing ploy or a subversive, yet effective way to get people to attend shows depending on the degree of subtlety in the execution.

One of the barriers to attendance often cited by people is that they don’t know how to act and don’t know if they will comprehend what is going on. However, these people are getting an unstated, perhaps implied message from an arts organization that this might be the case. This is based on being unfamiliar with the method of delivery and the inscrutable traditions surrounding the viewing of the work. All the attempts at outreach and advertising lower ticket prices fail because of an unspoken, perhaps implicit message that people aren’t up to handling the experience.

It may be counterintuitive, but I was wondering if explicitly delivering that message might be the answer. (Bear with me.) I wonder if it might be effective to program a show that is intellectually challenging, but readily accessible to most audiences and then promote it in this unorthodox manner.

The arts organization, perhaps in collusion with the media might put out the word that the work is somewhat intellectually challenging and that only people who are smarter than average might enjoy it. Underscore the fact that one definitely need not know anything about the arts or how to act to enjoy it, in fact it is being held in an less formal alternate space, but an attendee should be fairly intelligent.

In recognition that intelligent people come in all shapes, sizes and economic backgrounds, you are keeping the price low so that these folks can enjoy this performance.

If not presented in a condescending a manner or laid on too thick (you don’t want to be too obvious about employing reverse psychology nor do you want to imply your regular audience is stupid), people might rise to the challenge. People tend to think of themselves as at least slightly smarter than the next guy and might feel motivated to test out this theory by attending. It is one thing to have someone use body language to imply you are unworthy–it is difficult to figure out how to combat a non-verbal statement. However if someone states you might be unworthy if you can’t meet a specific measure, there is a clear course of action to prove otherwise.

Creating a series of such events for smart people can serve as an entree (and a channel for empowerment) for new patrons to the more sophisticated world of your “mainstream” programming. I have already suggested a “garage band” approach in a posting in an Artsjournal.com discussion (mirror on my site here because I couldn’t include the links in my commentary.) I think this might be the way to promote that type of program.