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What Value The Compact Disc?

August 12, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

Occasionally it is healthy to revisit daily rituals and practices to evaluate if they are still pertinent. For example, every time I go on a trip I clean all my CDs out of car and leave the little door on the CD holder open to show that there are no CDs in my car. It recently struck me that in the time since I bought the car several years ago, the value of CD as a format has dropped so precipitously that no one really wants to break into my car to grab them. In fact, they probably didn’t want to when I bought the car either but the iPod has gone from competing to almost default format in that time.

Realizations like this make me re-examine stuff in my professional life including policies we have set for ticket purchases/exchanges, seating, volunteers, rentals and whatever else comes up. Because we have always done it can’t be the default excuse for continuing to do something. In many cases, because we did it last year might not be valid either as behaviors and values change so quickly.

On the other hand, just as there are still people desperate enough for the few bucks they might get for my CDs at the local record exchange, the cost of someone abusing the lack of a policy might still outweigh the benefit of eliminating it.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Management Philosophy

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No Lack of Power Had They Lacked Power

August 11, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

I hadn’t intended to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics but then I saw the footage of the rehearsals Korean television “leaked.” I was so intrigued, I got up at 2:00 am hoping to watch the ceremony streamed live. Unfortunately, NBC chose not to do so. I would have been happy to watch it with commercials inserted. Nor could I find any other source, including China’s CCTV that didn’t forbid me due to my geography. Instead I had to wait 18 hours.

I am glad I rushed home from work to watch it Friday night. I was flabbergasted at the scope and pageantry. What surprised and impressed me the most was the precision execution of things like the drums in the opening segment and the taiji players who formed perfect concentric circles without any spike marks on the floor. What left me agape was the movement of the printing blocks. I thought they were computerized hydraulics or some such until I noticed there were legs under there as the cubes rose. This was a good 2-3 minutes before they revealed that fact. There are some great still photos here.

I imagine that the London Olympic Committee was gulping at the thought of having to follow that. I have to admit the torch lighting was pretty anti-climatic in comparison with the rest of the opening ceremony. I was expecting a dragon or a phoenix to emerge to ignite it. (I have since read that the IOC requires an athlete to do the honors.)

What I liked most about the Opening Ceremony as an arts professional was that the focus was so much on the abilities of the performers. If the projections on the side of the building, the LED screen scroll on the floor and the computer enhancement of the fireworks had failed, it would have still been a superlative performance. If all the power went out so that they flying couldn’t happen, the fou drums were darkened and the globe couldn’t rise from the floor, it would have still been impressive.

I have worked in technical theatre where they are fond of pointing out that without them, the actors would be flailing around and speaking into the darkness. The truth is, if China decided to start at 8:00 am instead of 8:00 pm and planned on using natural light people would still have been wowed by the performance. (The sun was rising at 4:30 am when I was there so they would have had a fair bit to work with if the stadium walls were open in the right place.)

To my mind, China did the arts world a great service by emphasizing the power of live performance and exhibited what can be accomplished in that format. (Though granted thanks to a whole lot of money.) The reality was that even with all the rehearsals and training that made such precision possible, people still got injured. That too is a hazard of live performance and as much as we may like to sell the idea of the possibility of danger at our shows, it isn’t something we actually wish upon our performers. It is easy to blame China’s low safety standards. I might have done so except that I heard something similar nearly happened this weekend because someone neglected to secure unused equipment.

My blog is about the arts and though it might get me more readers, I stay away from politics and other matters. The controversies surrounding these Olympics loom too large not to at least acknowledge they exist. The optimist in me hopes for China it is just a matter of making up lost ground. Two days before the 1932 Summer Games in L.A. the U.S. Army conducted a bayonet charge on their own WW I veterans backed by tanks and didn’t have a very good record on the treatment of minorities. That same year, China was dealing with Mao in one part of the country and Japanese occupation in another. The US emerged from the Depression and gradually moved forward on social fronts. For China there were impediments to progress from within and without.

For the sake of all the wonderful people I met in China, my hope was that the opening ceremony was a grand declaration that the country had finished regrouping and was embarking on a campaign to be regarded once again as a giant of culture, learning and invention.

Arts in an Age of Technology, State of the Arts

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Never The Twain…

August 6, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

Like a parent that doesn’t like to see the kids fight, I get uneasy when I see arts groups competing with each other for limited resources when they could be collaborating at least partially with their efforts. What really makes me uncomfortable is getting caught in the politics between them. This afternoon I had a group call to inquire about renting the facility. After I sent them an application they apparently sent out an email blast adverting that they were doing the show. (They shouldn’t have until they got approval for their event but that is another matter.) I get a call a few minutes later from the leader of the group the applicants split off from asking if it was true we had a show going on that night. His group does a show here every year and from the subtext of his questions, I guess he sees his splinter rivals as a threat.

I have frequently mentioned differing opinions about interpretation or what subsection of a discipline to emphasize as a basis for creating a separate organization but I don’t know if I have ever addressed the motivation of raw drama. Unfortunately, there are plenty of instances where dislike for others has caused a schism in organizations.

I will concede that sometimes it is healthier to split off rather than continue in a bad situation and that it can result in a stronger organization. We do have a case where we deal with an original group and a group that split away because they felt the parent group was too disorganized. I can attest that the splinter group is indeed much more pleasant to work with because they are organized. (They also pay their bills on a timely manner!)

In the majority of cases I have come across, the separation dilutes the effectiveness of each entity. I was talking to a gentleman with a long institutional memory who told me that locally when Federal funding for a WPA-like arts program ran out those involved in a dance company split into smaller groups, many of which replicated the efforts of the others. Even though the fragmentation was generally amiable, the result is that every Christmas brings 4-5 competing versions of The Nutcracker. Some versions are more family friendly than others which serves as a good alternative to the one very formal production which appeals to the aficionados. That still leaves 3-4 groups competing for the family audience and it shows in some of the attendance numbers.

Passion and anger has been known to inspire works of art but more often it seems to spawn unimaginative polemics. There is nothing stopping either from filing for non-profit status and soliciting grants to support their work. As a funder or patron It is rather difficult to discern among those who are in conflict whose ideology is more pure and sincere. A friend gave me a tour of her town once and pointed out the homes of two theatre groups noting that the community wasn’t really big enough for both though they were rivals whose bitterness was sometimes played out publicly. One was slightly more successful but the other enjoyed the largess, and accompanying cachet, of a well known film actor. As a result, neither needed to make peace with the other though they and the community might be the better for it.

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Illuminating the Vision

August 5, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

When I was reading the Presenting Dance report I referenced a couple weeks ago there was a section of the work where idealism was crashing against realities. One of the suggestions dance companies made was that artistic directors travel to view a work before deciding to contract it given that the artistic fee was a significant portion of a presenter’s budget. The report’s author observed that dance companies apparently think presenting organizations have significantly greater resources than they do. I am guessing a lot of these groups interact with organizations like the Kennedy Center.

That was actually about the most unrealistic expectation anyone had. Some of the other suggestions had to do with removing adversarial relationships and dance companies and presenters working together over long periods to craft a performance and outreach program that best suits the community’s character. The viability of these suggestions seemed to depend more an individual situations than anything else. There are some agents I have comfortable relationships with who don’t seem to take a “No” personally whom I touch base with year after year. There are others who seem like they are only interested in reciting a list of artists they are promoting with whom I am less comfortable about approaching.

Then there are some that seem to regard me as small potatoes and I am lucky they are talking to me. I can only name the people I have a good relationship with off the top of my head so I guess it is probably healthy I dwell only on the positives.

Ability to interact over a long period of time to craft a program isn’t always possible. Often the available information isn’t enough for either the dance company or I to have an informed conversation about how the other operates.

There was an encounter I had which made me very anxious at the beginning but ended with me impressed by the artistic director’s investment in his work. One year a dance company’s agent told us the artistic director required the use of some very expensive lighting equipment for one of the repertory pieces the company would perform. There had been no mention of this in the contract or rider we had been sent. I can’t remember if we had signed and returned the contracts at the time, but this equipment was definitely an unmentioned addendum to the text we had in hand.

Only one of three presenters in my booking consortium had the equipment. The inclusion of the equipment would make an already expensive event more so for the rest of us. We considered canceling the piece except that it was the one dance which would have the most resonance for our audiences. So we suggested less expensive versions of the equipment as an alternative. The artistic director came back and said it definitely had to be the equipment specified.

Now at this point I was starting to think the artistic director was being a prima donna and would suffer no alterations to his vision. People were coming to see the dance, not the lighting instruments. The show may look cooler with the lights but people wouldn’t think less of the work if they don’t know what they are missing. About the same time while doing research for a press release, I came across a review that said one segment of the piece really fell flat and dragged the rest down. This served to add to my anxiety a bit more.

Then we get an email from the agent saying the artistic director felt so strongly that the equipment be present in the piece, he would split the cost with us.

Well whatta ya gonna do about that? 1/3 of the cost was still pretty significant for us but it certainly wasn’t small potatoes for the dance company either. With the help of our local light rental company which started shifting things around months in advance so the correct equipment would end up in the right place at the right time, we ended up with a more affordable option for presenting the artistic director’s vision.

I was still a little concerned that when the company arrived, the artistic director would be running around fretting that everything was wrong and trying to refine picayune details about the production. When they arrived I was somewhat surprised to find that the artistic director was pretty mellow, spent most of the time chatting with my staff and pretty much let his company conduct their own business and stayed out of their way. The segment of the piece which had received criticism in a review was cut which made me think he wasn’t terminally devoted to his work and was open to altering it.

That in mind, I began to believe maybe the special lighting equipment was crucial to the piece if he was willing to pay for a share of it. When I saw the piece, I wasn’t really convinced the effect was worth the expense. If I wasn’t watching for it, I probably wouldn’t have made note of it. The audience really seemed to enjoy the piece which was good. There was actually another piece they enjoyed more. The applause was so long for it I panicked thinking it was the curtain call.

The dance company probably can’t afford to dicker like that with every presenter, nor could we afford to do so with every company. Going the extra mile in this case probably enhanced the experience for both of us. I would have loved to have saved the expense. In the face of the artistic director’s commitment to sharing the cost, it was hard to refuse the piece. Money may not build relationships but the gesture surely did make me feel like we were more like partners in bringing the work to my community. That combined with the audience’s enjoyment and the enthusiastic response to the master class the company conducted made me feel more comfortable about taking on the extra expense.

General Musings, Management Philosophy

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