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Ritual And The Arts

August 25, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

So this weekend I am acting as a master of ceremonies for a wedding reception. The request was made based, I kid you not, my curtain speeches before performances. I guess that teaches me not to give discounted tickets to my friends. They also chose me for my sense of humor. I am supposed to make some humorous remarks about the bride because her sister doesn’t speak English fluently enough to tell everyone how the bride tortured her when they were younger and how devoted they are to one another.

Mostly I agreed because there wouldn’t be a DJ at the reception so I will be spared the two wedding reception songs I hate the most. Celebrate by Kool and the Gang and The Chicken Dance. Also, if I am up at the mic, I won’t have to participate in the catching of the garter!

As simple as this wedding is, there is still a fair bit of ceremony and protocol involved during the reception –more so than the actual wedding ceremony. It made me realize that people have a real need, despite protestations that they want to keep it simple, to have some propriety and procedure involved in order to validate the whole proceedings.

I got me wondering about all the complaints about the intimidating formality of attending arts events. Do people really want things to be as informal as they say they do? When you spend as much money as you do on a ticket, do people have a natural inclination to validate the experience with some sort of ritual to mark the occasion? The problem may not be that there is formality surrounding the arts event, it may simply be that the rules are unfamiliar.

You can easily spend more on tickets to a football game. If you have ever attended one of these events casually either not being a die hard fan or regular attendee, it is easy to feel intimidated by the fact that people have tail gate set ups that rival some restaurants with fiercely held opinions about barbeque.

Or just attend a comic book convention and try to follow the minutiae referenced by die hard fans.

I would mention attending a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time, but regrettably few theatres show the movie any more. I blame the VHS release of the movie for letting people watch it at home and therefore become disconnected from that particularly exhilarating audience participation ritual.

As a newcomer, any of these experiences can be intimidating to those who don’t know the rules. But aside from making fun of nerdy males for having poor social graces, no one says that the die hard fans need to make their area of interest more accessible as is done with the arts. If you want to join in, you have to learn the rules of football and how to hitch your grill to the back of your truck. If you want to hang out at the comics convention, you’ll need to know obscure facts like the first non-clone stormtroopers were recruited in the year 9 BBY. And you know you will need to bring props, learn when to use them and learn some of the common call backs for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Being a show virgin at Rocky Horror can have more public consequences than going to the theatre or symphony for the first time. So why are people so put off by the thought of going to the theatre? Best I can think of is that it may seem more possible to master the arcane details of these other pursuits, even though it is much easier to study up in advance of attending a performing arts event and fake your way along by keeping quiet and watching everyone else.

Also, knowledge of the arts can often be tied to a measure of your worth as a person. Are you educated and cultured enough? While the same can be true of some sports in many parts of the country, there are friends and family members around to teach you the rituals surrounding the sport in your daily life. This is often not the case with the arts.

So I guess we get back to the old nature and nurture situation. Desire for ritual may be a natural part of being human, but our comfort level in approaching and learning new rituals is a function of what areas of knowledge we receive nurturing in.

Audience Relations, General Musings, State of the Arts

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Concert And Brew

August 24, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

So something of a tangential post to my entry yesterday featuring churches whose design and technology rival performing arts venues. Today’s topic– performance spaces you want to work at based on superficial qualities like the name or appearance alone. This is an audience participation post so feel free to add your dreams and stories in the comments box.

I will start mine out with a little confession. I used to hear promotions on the radio for Live at the Concertgebouw. The Concertgebouw is one of the premiere music venues in the world located in Amsterdam.

Not knowing this, however, I thought they were saying Concertebrau which I imagined was a concert hall in which Germans enjoyed their two great passions, classical music and excellent beer. I pictured Germans reclining, great steins in hand and reveling in the music. Since it was pretty much accepted gospel that Europeans had a much greater appreciation of classical music than Americans, I figured attendance was a commonplace past time at which beer was present.

My second theory was that there wasn’t a lot of beer involved, but that the Germans envisioned the creation of great music much like the crafting of a great brew–involving a lot of investment of time and balanced elements but ultimately intoxicating. That was a little more wishful thinking.

Not that the crossing of a concert and beer hall was very realistic. I was almost disappointed to learn that the real place was in Amsterdam. Can’t tell from the website if they serve beer.

The other places that have caught my imagination just on the basis of outward appearances are the Chocolate Church in Bath, Maine; Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre with its cool interior featuring skulls with glowing eyes and swastika. Though I have never been there, I have mentioned my infatuation with the whole idea of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center a couple times in this blog. Same with Wolf Trap. I don’t know what they are like now, but long ago I got my hands on an American Players Theatre brochure and thought it had some pretty clever and enticing writing. Enough that I still think I need to get to Wisconsin one summer soon.

I am sure there are other deserving arts organizations who have been the beneficiaries of my lust at a distance, but I can’t think of them at the moment. There are a couple that have not requited my lust and thus must suffer not being mentioned.

Any places that have fired your imaginations, gentle readers, if only based on a cool name or well designed brochure?

General Musings

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Buildings That Say We Want You To Stay

August 23, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

A hat tip to the Stuff Christian Culture Likes blog for the link to the photostream of Jody Forehand, a regional director for Visioneering Studios which does a lot of church design. I don’t want to get into a discussion about the influence of mega-churchs or the morality of such conspicuous consumption in church buildings.

I just wanted to point out just how theatrical the settings are. Even excepting the toon town design of the children’s worship area of Central Christian Church, I am sure most of us would be envious of the design and technology of each of these gorgeous buildings. Then there is the staffing. There is a lot of work that goes into organizing and mobilizing the largely volunteer staffing for some of these buildings every week.

I know there is a sense of obligation which brings people to these churches and their satellite campuses that people don’t feel toward the arts. The notes on Elevation Church say it is the broadcast hub for three locations serving 7000 people at 10 services a weekend. But as I have often said on this blog, perhaps there is something to be learned from churches. This is a situation where people aren’t charged an admission fee, there is music, but much of the time is spent listening to a person reinterpret a classic text for today’s audience or talk about their experiences. While one of the speakers may have a lot of experience traveling around speaking on the same subject, much of what is said by the speakers has not been extensively workshopped or rehearsed over many weeks. And yet, there is enough investment in the church to construct multi-million dollar buildings.

Even if people aren’t there out of a sense of obligation, there are spiritual needs that are met at worship services, even if they are heavily theatricized, that a main stream play or musical can’t provide. For many it is preferable to hear a single person talk about the life of crime they lead than it is to watch a well rehearsed performance about a criminal that mended his ways. Honestly, I don’t think communities are well served by theatres that only do morally unambigious shows with happy endings. Though there is a price to be paid for that decision.

But one thing that is clear from looking at this buildings is that they were designed to serve the communities. Even though the main use of the facilities is in a large room with theater style seating for hundreds, there are large areas devoted to children and large lounge areas and lobbies to mingle and hang out in. Even though there are multiple services each day, the place isn’t designed to move one group out and bring another group in. They don’t care if people stick around, in fact they want people to stay because that provides an opportunity to get a person more invested in the organization.

That is something of an alien thought for most performing arts groups because their model is based on selling a seat to a different person each performance. If a person wants to buy a seat for the next show, that is great! But if they just want to stick around and take in the whole vibe and experience again, that can cut into the bottom line.

But maybe it is time to rethink this approach, especially with organizations that are focused on serving a specific community. Internet communities create value by having people stick around and interact–the longer the better. Granted, even with the largest internet companies, the question always arises as to how they end up making money providing these services for free. And it is relatively easier for an internet company to add more capacity by buying more server space vs. a performing arts organization trying to expand their physical space as more people decide to hang out and interact.

Finding a model that works for theatres will take some imagination and perhaps even some tact. I have been reading quite a few articles lately that talk about how coffee houses which had been offering free WiFi have started turning it off because people have been camping out at tables all day long while nursing a single cup of coffee. So it isn’t as if theatres would be out of touch idiots for recognizing the need to empty and refill seats in order to stay in business.

Really, when people are hanging around the churches, they probably aren’t returning to the seats in the worship center anyway. There are other areas for them interact with people and many of those people will ask if they are interested in increasing their involvement and commitment to the church. This might involve anything from volunteering in some capacity to joining an affinity group (young parents, young singles, female professionals, etc).

Implementing these sort of programs are within the abilities of many arts organizations. Much of it can be accomplished with the help of well directed volunteers. Though granted many are willing to invest more volunteer hours into their spiritual lives than into the local arts organization. Certainly many find spiritual fulfillment in the arts.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, State of the Arts

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100% Fundraising Expenses

August 18, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

Some what apropos of my post on mandatory salary caps for executives of non-profits is a post by Dan Pallotta on the Harvard Business Review blog in which he makes suggestions that would likely see government entities really start screaming.

Palotta advocates for salaries of non-profit staffs on par with those of for profit businesses. But the bulk of the post is spent on the premise that low fund raising expenditures are actually inhibiting charities from doing the most good. His argument is that instead of touting 10%-15% expenditures on fund raising and remaining too small to make a big impact on a problem, charities should be spending 50%-100% on fund raising.

“The less an organization invests in fundraising the less it can grow. The less it can grow the more human suffering persists. We have institutionalized a mechanism for insuring the persistence of human suffering and called it “charity.”

[…]

“If we are serious about the value of human life, then we have to start thinking about 50 to 100% fundraising rates for the organizations chartered to save human lives. Those organizations should take no pride in telling donors or anyone else how low their fundraising costs are. Quite the opposite. I want to support the organization that’s going for scale, not the one that’s stuck where it is. Why would I support a cancer organization promoting its low fundraising investment while cancer remains uncured? We have the whole reward system backwards.

(Qualification: I’m not sanctioning inefficiency. That’s a completely different conversation. Everything I’m advocating assumes maximum efficiency.)

What we are doing is not working. A world in which 10 to 15% fundraising ratios are the norm is a world in which our charities are woefully too small to confront social problems on any meaningful scale. It’s a world where growth occurs – if it occurs at all – at the pace of molasses — the pace of death — and where human suffering continues on an unimaginable scale with no end in sight.”

If you are like me and you are thinking if an organization is spending 100% of the money it raises on raising more money then no one is getting cured, then you are absolutely correct. That is exactly what he is proposing. Presumably, you would use all that money to find a new way to convince people to donate since you wouldn’t have any examples of those whom you have helped.

If you read down into the comments section where Pallotta responds to some of the questions, you get a little more detail. Addressing the idea that the fund raiser never gets around to doing anything, Pallota says,

“Think of it this way. Humanitarian organizations regularly engage in certain activities – a direct-mail campaign – designed to acquire new donors. Sometimes those campaigns can go for several years running 100% costs. But then comes the pay-off – huge fundraising databases with no new expense associated with them You turn that engine on and then you start producing revenues for programs and for the cause at volumes many, many times larger than you could have if you never made the investment and never tolerated the 100% cost ratios for a certain period of time. Understand? “

In response to the question posed by a commenter named Shaun, who asks “who wants to be the person who gives money just to solicit more money?” Pollota answers, “Think of it this way: if I told you your dollar could go directly to the needy, or that it could go to an ad campaign that would generate ten dollars for the needy, which would you choose?” To which another commenter, RachelAC, replies, “I might prefer that my $1 go to the needy now, rather than $10 going to the needy in five years.”

I think RachelAC’s response expresses the crux of the matter for me. In an ideal situation, Pallota’s approach works. But my concern is that the fund raising entity gets so enthralled by their success in raising money, that they never stop and fund the solution. As RachelAC implies, in many situations the dollar today can make a difference where the $10 comes too late. Though granted, whenever a solution to a massive problem comes, it arrives just moments too late for some.

My even bigger concern is that the officers will embezzle the money and run off as they have with so many charities in the past. The fact they are apparently not making as much as they could be according to Pallota only means the incentive to do so increases. I would prefer to know the thieves only absconded with the little I gave rather than what they parlayed it in to.

Big problems can require audacious approaches to solve them. I can see where the piecemeal approach isn’t getting people closer to a solution any faster. But will people continue to give if a theft on the same grand scale were to occur? I think the faith you lose in a charity when it betrays your trust cuts a lot deeper than when a company or person you have invested with misappropriates your money. You enter a relationship with the latter knowing there is a chance you will lose your money. With investments, we are told to diversify. Does it make sense to do the same with our philanthropy or are we just short changing an already under capitalized effort?

Fundraising, Management Philosophy, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts

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