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Pro Am In Flower

February 26, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

I think I witnessed an honest to god significant Pro-Am occurrence last week. (I say significant because there are a lot of smaller examples all around me everyday.) One of the professors at my school, Paul Cravath, donated his book to the college library last Friday. Not a big thing in itself certainly, but it was how it got published that is interesting.

A gentleman with a passion for the Cambodian art around Angkor Wat was interested in the story behind the figures of dancers found in the area. Having read two sentences somewhere of the professor’s doctoral thesis on Cambodian Dance Drama, he asked the read the whole thesis. The gentleman decided the thesis should be published and set about making it so despite having never published a book before.

Now the professor has a gorgeous looking book published supported by a nifty website. This week, the book appears on the cover of Publisher’s Weekly. Okay, sure it shares the cover with 11 other books, but still it is pretty impressive. (Its the one on the bottom row in the middle.)

Granted, it wasn’t cheap to print even 800 copies but nothing says that Pro Ams are necessarily poor. The man who funded the project seems pretty canny and has a plan to recoup his nut in a manner that doesn’t depend on making college students spend a lot of money on it as a text book. The idea that one man’s passion for Cambodian art would inspire him to publish the work of another having no experience in doing so is mind boggling to me. I suspect that in a 5-10 years this sort of thing might not be so surprising.

In fact, the practice might prove a little dismaying. In the discussion of his book, Engaging Art, at the APAP conference, Steven Tepper mentioned that while people might be inspired by the technology facilitated Pro Am environment to write a book, their enthusiasm and hard work might not translate into something worth reading.

So you may ask, does the world need a book on Cambodian Dance Drama? Well I can attest that it is pretty comprehensive. It is also probably the definitive book on the subject since no similar text exists in English, French or Cambodian. Given that the author got out of Phnom Penh while the Khmer Rouge were shelling the airport, he may have been the last one to see some of the source materials.

If it does prove to be of some value, its availability to scholars and the public will be the result of one man’s passion. Otherwise, its sole existence would have been in a box under a bed and in a microfilm archive.

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Wow Neighbor, Your Grass Is So Green!

February 25, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

At a time when arts organizations are merging the executive and artistic director position into one, either as a cost saving measure or because they can’t identify suitable candidates to fill vacant roles,** comes praise of dual leadership as a model for non-profits in general to emulate.

Says the Nonprofiteer:

“…the Nonprofiteer wonders why all nonprofits don’t adopt the bifurcated leadership model common in the arts: an Artistic Director to lead program, a Managing Director to handle resource acquisition and allocation.

Wouldn’t social service agencies operate better with someone at the helm whose expertise was effective service to clients and someone at the rudder whose expertise was squeezing every dime til it shrieked? These are not identical skills–they’re not even complementary–and for charities to insist on combining them into a unitary Executive Director means one part of what they need done will almost inevitably be done badly.”

In all the performing arts organizations for which I have worked, the artistic director has always held a subordinate position to the executive director, if only a half-step below. I can’t really speak with authority about whether two equal leaders is effective. I have worked in a situation with an Executive Director and a subordinate Artistic Director and in situations with an Executive Director and a subordinate artistic and managing director. In the former situation, the two directors worked closely as partners, but it was clear where the final decision resided.

I don’t know if the Non-Profiteer is suggesting two people in equal roles necessarily. I am familiar with the structure of a number of non-profit social service organizations and short of a couple very large entities, I can think of none where there was a programs person with the scope of authority and responsibility comparable to an artistic director. Any change may not require an equitable relationship as much as less a lopsided one between the two areas.

What is interesting to me is that the Nonprofiteer’s comments have made me re-evaluate the dual leadership issue. Deciding to consolidate positions for economic reasons or because the board can’t/doesn’t want to find a replacement suggested problems about the organizations other than the implications of a changed leadership dynamic. It is certainly easy to see how both roles can get the short shrift with satisfaction for neither when they are invested in one person. My thoughts upon reading that the positions were being consolidated were generally that it was too bad for that company rather than the decision was bad for the performing arts world as a whole other than considering it an example of poor decision making. Some times it takes the observation of an outsider to make you reevaluate if something is valuable enough to fight to keep.

(**I wanted to cite the article I recently read supporting this fact in but for the life of me, I can’t find it.)

Leadership, Management Philosophy

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Professionals and Pro Ams

February 20, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

In her column in this month’s American Theatre, Theatre Communications group Executive Director, Teresa Eyring talks about the recognizing the growing number of Professional Amateurs in our society. Now this topic is nothing new. I have posted on the subject of Pro Ams. Andrew Taylor has done so on a number of occasions. His students did a research project on the topic. Charles Leadbetter and Paul Miller who coined the Pro Am term, wrote a book on the subject.

What makes Teresa Eyring’s comments special is that she leads a major service organization and therefore is in a position to exert greater influence when she says it is worthwhile to heed a trend. (Though she was certainly influenced by all this discussion of Pro Ams.) What she has to say hasn’t impacted my thoughts about Pro Ams in any direction. But it is good to see an arts leader like her encouraging people to explore the possibilities.

So if the words of all the aforementioned folks haven’t gotten you to ponder the concept, maybe Eyring’s will. She acknowledges that a transition that embraces Pro Ams can be difficult.

“If these shifts are irreversible and true, the question for professional arts organizations is how most effectively to embrace and respect audiences and potential audiences as they self-identify as creators, with a capacity for meaningful involvement in the artistic process that has often been closely held by professional theatre artists and organizations.”…

“…For theatres and theatre artists, this trend presents questions that are both practical and semantic, such as: What do we do with the word “professional”? In the 20th-century arts world, this word has often been used to instruct the public, critics and funders to expect an experience qualitatively superior to that which is non-professional or amateur…”

“…However, with the growth of a pro-am culture that goes beyond art into science, technology and other realms, the power of a professionals-only province continues to fade—or at the very least, the nomenclature is less effective and meaningful. Some of the teeth-gnashing over this development has to do with how the public will know the difference between what is excellent creative expression and what is merely average…”

“…if theatres can find ways to tap into the growing interest among individuals in participating in the actual creation of art and the arts experience, perhaps we can move this trend to a tipping point of sorts, bringing theatre into a new period of cultural ferocity and ascendancy.”

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Leadership, Terms and Ideas

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Is Dumb A Core Value?

February 19, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

There have been a number of books and articles that have come out recently bemoaning the lack of knowledge exhibited by people today. Whether it was Miss South Carolina’s flub at the Miss America contest, the woman on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader who thought Europe was a country and had never heard of Hungry (her pronunciation) or talk show stunts like Jay Leno’s where he asks people easy questions for which they provide embarrassing incorrect answers.

The latest chapter in this discussion making rounds of the talk shows and newspaper reviews is Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. You can read a review here or watch a pretty good interview with a transcript with Bill Moyers here. Much of her focus seems to be on how active anti-intellectualism is causing people to essentially renounce their roles as citizens of the US.

But while some of the examples Jacoby discusses are worthy of some consideration, what she says isn’t as important as the whole concept of people actively not caring that they aren’t familiar with basic knowledge about the world around them. It could have been any book or discussion on this topic that suddenly raised the question, do the arts have any idea how to deal with anti-intellectualism?

Most of the strategies suggested about how to build audiences seem to assume that mistakes were made but audiences can be regained. Perhaps the attendance won’t be as great as before, but it seems that arts organizations are coming to the conclusion that things changed and they weren’t agile or perceptive enough to recognize it. Proposals to bolster education and effect changes that reflect shifting audience expectations about the experience and social environment all seem to assume that the arts can reclaim some of the ground it lost to the Internet, high def plasma televisions and video on demand.

But does the arts world have any solutions to combat complete indifference or even worse, active attempts reinforced by social pressure, to distance oneself from anything that might indicate that one was more than just plain folks. You have probably heard that in some communities, showing signs of being educated could find one accused of putting on airs and having elitist notions. When I was discussing the general topic of this book with a person in my office, he said that in some of the communities that the college served, some males were resistant to attend for fear of becoming homosexuals. Not being labeled–becoming. This puts a survey the college did a couple years ago in an entirely different context. One of the top answers from men regarding what they liked about the school was the attractive women.

Frankly, I wonder if there is any solution the arts world can enact in its current position. Had the arts community more influence in society, it might work to make intellectual pursuits more of a core value. Perhaps it still can, though the road will certainly be slow and long. The truth might be that there are plenty of intellectually curious people out there to whom the arts wielding a new approach might appeal. It is easy enough for shows like Jay Leno’s to edit out all the correct answers in order to put a comedy bit together. And certainly the erudite answers of Miss America and game show contestants probably aren’t popular viewing on YouTube if they are posted at all.

Schadenfreude aside, even if things aren’t as bad as popular media makes it seem, there are genuine problems with lack of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills in the country. While handling all the other troubles that besets them, the arts community’s continued existence probably hinges in a large part on combating the idea that it is okay and perhaps even preferable not to know. People may claim that they can easily look up anything they need to know, but I often wonder if they ever bother doing it. The conditions constituting a need to know seem to be none existent.

I used to joke that I was glad people were so lazy about learning because that way employers would pay me more for being competent and knowledgeable. The truth is, that isn’t the type of world I really want to live in. Nor do I imagine the majority of people would. Not only would people lack the wit to laugh at my jokes, but the lack of intellectual and perhaps social and emotional engagement would be quite dispiriting. (Initially, I was also going to say it can be depressing to be surrounded by people who willingly choose not to live up to their potential but I realized I was starting to channel my mother.)

General Musings, State of the Arts, Terms and Ideas

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