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What It Means to Be Human

August 17, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

Okay, so I am in the middle of writing calendar listings and season brochure material trying to avoid falling into a boring writing style as pointed out by Greg Sandow and which I later commented on

I think I am doing fairly well, but time will tell and I may be too close to my own stuff. One of my other rules besides trying to avoid being boring is to also keep from quoting reviewers. I have seen so many people quoted saying “Fantastic”, “A must see”, “Best show of the season”, etc, etc, that I doubt the persuasive power of such quotes. Besides, it seems like inserting such quotes means you can’t think of enough interesting things to say about it on your own. Since I am trying to get into the practice of generating interesting things out of my own feeble brain, that is just another reason to avoid quoting folks.

On the other hand I was tempted to include a quote from a Pittsburgh paper that called a Dayton Dance Company’s performance “rollicking, lyrical, athletic and emotionally generous quartet of African-American dances” It was the emotionally generous part that caught my eye. I don’t frequently see that applied to people in reviews.

One thing I want to know though–when did being human become a selling point for a show? I constantly see (and I was guilty of it many times myself) people describe shows in terms of things that make us human or remind us of the human condition or celebrate what it is to be human. Andrew Taylor recently commented that people seldom go to the theatre simply because it will raise the SAT scores of kids in the neighborhood. Considering some pregnant women put headphones on their stomachs so that their forming child can be exposed to Mozart, I think there is a greater likelihood of folks deciding to support the arts for that reason than because they have lost touch with what it means to be human.

Now granted there are plenty of people out there who probably need to be reminded what it means to be human. However, I doubt anyone admits they need to be exposed to such stuff.

Again, I think this is a nebulous catch-all term people use out of laziness. It sounds impressive, but it really doesn’t mean much. I have seen it applied to some shows to refer to poignant moments, applied to others in connection with joy and familal bonds of love, and I have seen it applied to shows with incredible violence, hatred, pain and sorrow. You never know what you are going to get if you go to a “what it means to be human” show.

Yes, all these things are part of human existence, but it is much better to say poignant or violent. The problem is, using the term doesn’t help audiences understand art any better than they did when they arrived. It strikes me that this phrase is part of the alienating language the arts tend to use. I am not saying that language should be dumbed down–I am a big believer in people picking up dictionaries and teaching themselves. I am using phrases like “transient state” in my season brochure. Except in this case, the phrase very specifically describes a transformation which is occuring. (and I didn’t want to repeat the word transformation in the description.)

I won’t lie. This is hard. Even with all the practice I have writing about different issues, it is difficult to write something that accurately depicts a performance without falling back on newspaper quotes and important sounding, but empty phrases. This being my first weeks at a new job, there are plenty of other things I could really be spending my time on. But trying to do this well, even if I am not entirely successful, is important to developing my ability to communicate well with audiences.

Marketing/PR

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Is it only my 3rd day?

August 12, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

It should come as no surprise to any of my readers that the first week of a new job at an arts organization doesn’t leave much time for actually writing blog entries. To say that I have spent my last three days writing up a calendar listing for local media makes me sound like a lazy bastard. In reality, I have been doing more than meeting new people and been becoming familiar with the details of my job.

In the pursuit of trying to write up calendar listings, I have essentially been developing my budget for the year. The budget had been set up to a certain point, but there have been additions and substitutions. To simply advertise a ticket price in a newspaper calendar, I have had to develop (read: make educated guesses) a fair part of the budget from incomplete information. And of course, since the info is incomplete, I spend most of my time asking a lot of questions that lead to answers which lead me to ask a lot of other questions about things not actually related to my original purpose for asking, but simply flesh out my knowledge of what the heck I am actually doing here.

I don’t have much new wisdom to impart today except to point people in the direction of some really exciting groups that I will be presenting over the coming year. Some are more familiar to me than others, but all seem pretty interesting.

First you have world renowned folks like The Flying Karamazov Brothers (http://www.fkb.com/) and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (http://www.mambazo.com/).

Really high energy international musicians — New Zealand’s Te Vaka (http://www.tevaka.com) who surround the traditional pate (log drums) with acoustic and electric guitar and toss in high energy and dance which makes it tough to sit still. I also think it will be hard to sit still during Les Yeux Noir’s (http://www.lesyeuxnoirs.net/) visit as well since their part gypsy, part klezmer, part swing jazz music is described as infusing the audience with their frenetic energy.

My theatre is known for the dance performances it puts on so we will be hosting the Dayton Contemporary Dance company (http://www.dcdc.org) and Rennie Harris Puremovement (http://www.rhpm.org/). All that time I lived near Philadelphia and I had to travel to Hawai`i to hear about them!

This isn’t everyone we are presenting–I will link to my website once I finish building it–but these are among those which look exciting enough to spread the word about.

General Musings

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Working Together

August 10, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So today was my first day of work. I had already gone through the introductions and the paperwork filling out phase of the job over the course of the last week or so when I wandered on to campus to use the computers to search for housing, etc.

Today was taken up looking over the piles of papers and handbooks on my desk to find out what sort of job I actually agreed to do. Then there was the long discussions on what the heck it all meant. Fortunately, the interim director was available to discuss some of the more confusing parts.

One of the more confusing sections which was worth learning about was the way the various arts organizations on the islands work out block booking arrangements. The formed an organizations called the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii (PAPH) When they go to the booking conferences, one person concentrates on theatre offerings, another on dance, another on jazz, etc and reports back to the group on what they saw.

Later the members decide what acts they are interested in presenting and discuss who will approach the agents with the offer from the interested members of PAPH. They have worked out a whole system of how airfare, hotels, car rentals, etc and even assess a fee that is paid to the member who books the act on behalf of the others.

Not all members of the group participate equally or coordinate closely with the others and will in fact, make their own arrangements. However, the way the members coordinate to reduce their costs can provide a good example for others. The PAPH people do it out of necessity given that airfare adds so much more to the asking cost than someone driving through the region on the way to another gig might. So just think how much more mainland arts organizations could save if they coordinated so an artist was guaranteed work and had the hotels secured as she drove from Boston to NY to Philly to DC to Raleigh, etc.

One thing that surprised me too was that the PAPH members block booked within close proximity to each other. It stands to reason that an organization on Maui wouldn’t share the same audience as one on O’ahu. However, some of the acts my predecessor booked are performing one night for me and then on the other side of the island the next night. Now granted, it is a 45 minute to hour drive to the other venue even without traffic, but that was something that was really never done when I was on the mainland—and there are far more people in a 45 minute geographic radius on the mainland than on my island.

Somehow it works and it works well which again makes me suggest that other locales consider it too.

Management Philosophy

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Back at the Keyboard

August 5, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

Okay faithful readers, I am back at the keyboard after my move to Hawaii. I haven’t offically started my job yet, but thanks to the help and support of the theatre staff, I have been able to use the office to store my shipped stuff and call around for apartments. I am in an apartment and making the usual arrangements to get phone, cable and electric hooked up.

One interesting observation I have made already is that the theatre is organized under the Office of Continuing Education rather than fine or liberal arts. This shows the orientation and focus of the theatre right off. The building is a tool for community outreach first and then a place where performances occur. From talking informally with the director of continuing education (he actually put me up in his apartment for a week while I was searching for a place to live) I have found him to be incredibly supportive of the people in his department and eager to empower them to do interesting things. He absolutely wants financial accountability, but he also wants to provide his charges with a great experience and the freedom to do a little experimentation. A lot of administrators say that, but are really more conservative in practice. I honestly think I may end up being too reserved for his vision.

It will be interesting to see how things develop. I hope not to end up working so hard I can’t write at all. I do expect I won’t be able to write as extensively as I did while unemployed. Some of the research and writing I did involved 3-5 hours of my time. On the other hand, I will be able to offer advice from a more practical stand point now.

General Musings

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