So today, just a few days before Christmas, I end up interviewing 3 people for the position as my assistant. As you may or may not know from past entries. We had a little problem with the first round of the search and have had to reopen the position. There was some urgency connected with the search as I am told if we don't fill it, we will lose the position to another department. It got me to wondering how many unqualified people had been hired into a position just so that the position wouldn't be lost.
I am sure any reader who has had any interaction with state employees anywhere will answer with--pretty much all of them.
One thing that happened during the process caught my attention. At the end of the interview, during the "Do You Have Any Questions For Us" phase, an applicant asked us what areas of the job was she least qualified for. This pretty much took me aback since it not only put me in an awkward position, but also placed me in the role of emphasizing her unsuitable qualities in my mind rather than leaving me with a good impression. That being said, she was probably the strongest candidate and will receive our strong recommendation for hiring.
It did get me to wondering if surveying people right at a performance is premature. Typically you balance the questions asking what they liked and didn't like so that you aren't unscoring a particularly bad experience in their minds. Also, surveying immediately ensures a higher response rate than one done later.
I can't find it, but I could have sworn Terry Teachout had a column that talked about needing time after seeing a performance to digest ones feelings about what had just been seen rather than succumbing to the demands of one's companions to opine immediately once the lobby is reached.
It could be that people would give better feedback if they had time to mull over exactly why they did and didn't like a performance.
Ah, but how to reach them?
One way would be to send surveys to attendees after the fact inviting them to respond on paper or online. (The festival I once worked for actually approached a 50% response rate which is absolutely phenominal for surveys) Another option is to email a sample of the audience, (hope you don't hit a spam blocking shield) and direct them to a link on your web site where your survey resides. If you really have the money for it, there are actually sites online which will host your survey and do all the tabulation of results for you automatically. (Google online survey services)
I imagine that the response rate will fluctuate depending on how strongly people felt one way or the other about a show, but I bet the quality of the responses will be much greater and show more thought invested in them.
On the other hand, according to research, there is a perfect one question survey.
Today the person with whom I had been discussing the state of arts education a week or so ago, sent me a great article about how some local schools were exposing kids to art while meeting the "No Child Left Behind" requirements for science. (For those of you wondering what Yu Gi Oh is, go here)
At Nanaikapono, Peralta's class is focusing on two-dimensional art, drawing and painting fanciful creatures in various habitats where they face threats from man or nature. Each student researched the science of three different animals, studying their physical characteristics and habitats, before melding those traits to come up with a new animal.Last week, they wrestled with how their creatures would overcome threats.
"This is when you guys can tell the story, instead of having the television tell them to you," Enos told them, with his irrepressible smile. "This is when you can use your ideas. Who needs TV anyway?"
Ultimately, the class will create a game together, featuring the 28 creatures they have designed on cards.
"How many of you have played Yu-Go-Ih?" asked Enos, prompting peals of laughter.
"Yu-Gi-Oh!" the students corrected him in chorus.
"Usually you have a winner and a loser," he went on, with a wink. "We're going to change that whole dynamic. Everyone who sits down to play this game needs to work together to stop the threat."
The goal of the game, Ali explained, is to create a balanced ecosystem. The rules will be up to the kids.
....Halfway through the six-week program, the class has learned how both artists and scientists rely on observation, prediction and trial-and-error, and how they must have a deep knowledge of their materials and their settings.
The program is a pilot project that will be expanded to other schools in the spring and mostly incorporate the efforts of visual artists who might work in anything from bronze to clay or fibre arts. I have to say, this really sounds like a great program. I am always at a loss to think of ways to integrate arts and subjects like science and math, so I really applaud the creativity of whomever came up with this.
So just a few thoughts since visions of Nutcracker dancers and Mall Santas are prancing through my head too much to have any real significant ideas these days.
If the median age of the population is getting older as the mass of baby boomers enter retirement age, what does this mean for the senior citizen discount at theatres? When the average income for a show starts to drop below the median price because there are more seniors than "adults" in your audience, do you reduce the difference between the regular and discount rate, eliminate the discount altogether since your regularly paid price is the discount price, really revise your budget projections?
My other thought has to do with the other end of the spectrum. Is there an age that is just too young to put kids on stage? We have a pre-school that has rented the theatre since the beginning of time to have their 2-5 year old students in a Christmas pageant. After hearing many of these kids scream with terror about going on stage, I wonder if this is really a health activity for them. Another unsafe element is that until this year, members of the theatre staff had to stand at the front of the stage and run back and forth catching kids who saw their parents and started walking toward the four foot drop at the edge of the stage. (This year, the pre-school finally got a group of people together to catch the kids.)
Although I would lose the rental income, I can't help but feel that these kids would be better served by being part of smaller events in less formal and intimidating surroundings (where the floor didn't suddenly fall away). As much as I am for exposing kids to the arts, this seems too much too soon.
So I didn't post often last week because I was engaged in a time consuming, sensitive decision making process--Christmas shopping!
However, today I met with my compatriots in the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii to continue our block booking process. When last we left our heroes, we choose a slate of performers we felt we wanted to present. At the time, we had sketchy information about how much the artist fees might be and how many people we might end up transporting to the islands. Since we more or less knew who we wanted to present, different members went off to gather more information which bring us to today...
Today we met to discuss our selected slate and try to fit them in to a rough schedule. Some highly desired artists could only come at certain times, others had more open schedules or were not as desired. There was a lot wrangling of schedules to find a series of dates to proposed to each performance group.
Among some of the impediments were the fact that three of us were college presenters with student productions of our own to work around. Some of the other presenters had already contracted other performers that they knew would not be appealing to the whole group and set dates with them. There were also considerations of Hawaiian holidays or community events that entire islands geared up for during which times the public wouldn't be interested in attending shows.
Also, since snowbirds (people who lived in Hawaii during cold winter months on the mainland) comprised larger audiences on some islands than others, it was tough to schedule some performers in the early fall when there would be a smaller potential audience base.
And of course, we worked against ourselves thinking we had found the perfect date only to have someone pipe up, but that is the weekend we already agreed to host Group X.
In the end though, we hammered out what will translate into 80% of my season. There were still some performers that members had to talk to either by phone or at the annual APAP convention next month (which was also one of those scheduling impediments for 05-06 seasons) and more perfomers may be added for future consideration. However, I can now look at perhaps putting a slate of people with smaller financial requirements together myself to flesh out my schedule too.
A couple interesting observations I made:
1) The person I was asked to research came in with a higher rate than other members expected, even with a reduction for block booking and one person had wanted to defer them in for 06-07 any way.
2) On the whole, the slate of acts we were putting together this year had much smaller fees than the current year which is somewhat reflective of the fact that we aren't getting the size audiences we want despite the good economic climate on the islands.
3) With all the research and discussion we have done about some of the acts, there was a little bit of competition amongst people on the same island to be the one to present some of the perfomers. However, when I showed the list of those we would probably be presenting next year to the office staff, they were underwhelmed. It just goes to show the job I must do to communicate what is exciting about some of these performers to my audience.
When I mention the idea of "what is exciting" I don't mean in some esoteric sense like the work communicates the mythical archetypes common to all cultures through music. (Which, as a fan of Joseph Campbell could be interesting to me). Some of these groups are not my cup o' tea at all, but by doing research on them, I found I would be interested to see more of what it was all about.
Now considering most audience members don't engage in the depth of research I did, how to communicate all of this in a radio or newspaper ad is another thing altogether.
A recent article by Drew McManus in The Partial Observer awakened some old contemplations. He wondered how classical music in the US fell so far out of favor and traces history for a possible answer.
I have often wondered along the same lines. At one point in our history, (only 70-80 or so years ago) almost every house had a piano in the parlor and people collected sheet music like they run out to get the newly released DVD. One would think this would be fertile ground for music, if not arts appreciation to grow. Instead, it has all fallen by the wayside.
One might blame technological advances and a shift to other forms of entertainment, but Europe has the same diversions available to them and they have maintained a fair ethic of interest in the arts in general. In looking back at some of my earlier entries on the history of the arts in the US like How Did We Get In To This Mess?, there are some answers, but nothing to clearly explain why we differ from our European cousins.
Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that people in the US work longer hours than their European counterparts and therefore don't have the time to cultivate our abilities to process (or even attend) live performances. Instead we gravitate toward the more accessible forms of entertainment like television and the corner video store.
An interesting related note--(my thanks to Vinod's Blog for bringing the above link and the following link, both from MSN to my attention) according to economist Peter Kuhn at the University of California:
“It used to be that when you got a college degree you could get a white-collar job and take it easy.It’s just the opposite now. It’s blue-collar folks who have more time for leisure.”
(Quote is about 1/2 of the way down in this article)
It makes me wonder if the arts should be restructing programs and pitching to the blue collar sector. They may not have as much disposable income as their managers, but if they have the time and inclination to expand their horizons a little, they could prove to be a good potential audience.
I was having a conversation about arts outreach programs with the outreach coordinator of a dance group I had contracted to do a lecture/demo. With some synchronicity, the Artful Manager has also posted today about arts education.
Since I come from an organization that had a strong arts outreach program, I wanted to establish one here in conjunction with local artists and those I brought in from the Mainland and other countries. The outreach program coordinator also has a strong ethic in this regard as well.
In fact, her ideas were so ambitious, I had to rein her in a little. She wanted to have a week long series of events culiminating in a performance that we bused kids in to. Since I am new here, I wanted to use the outreach to begin to establish relationships with local schools that I could eventually cultivate into something larger.
Following my philosophy of making it easy for people to say yes to attending performances, I want to take the performers in to the schools. This can be great or problematic. I have had cases where I have set up a program months out, reminded people two weeks, one week and the day before we arrived and still showed up to find out rooms weren't set aside, teachers/principals weren't told about the program and we ended up doing a lecture/demo in the hallways.
On the other hand, there have been schools that did everything but toss rose petals before us and were so enthusiastic about our presence, we had to remind them that we really needed to spend time in schools other than theirs.
But if you take performers to schools, there isn't a need for the school to get buses, send home permission slips and take travel time out of the day. When I brought this up to the outreach coordinator, she wholeheartedly agreed. With the No Child Left Behind law, the schools she has dealt with are really eliminating any room for creativity and are mandating X number of hours each day for reading, math, etc and specifying rigid standards for how it should be taught and when.
The real problem then is that the schools who have the least amount of arts exposure and would benefit most are those in districts that have the most pressure to raise their scores and therefore have little time for frivolous programs like ours. The districts that do have the time tend to also be those who have allocated time for arts exposure. Still many of them could probably do with more.
The dance company's coordinator was talking about how the focus used to be on underserved schools whereas now things have moved to drug diversion and family preservation (not surprising since the State Foundation for Culture and the Arts is now funded by federal drug money) Now granted, this new focus pretty much encompasses the underserved/at-risk population as well.
The message I had hoped to communicate with this outreach was really appropriate for this goal though. The dance piece was created as a cooperative effort by a very traditional Hawaiian hālau and a modern dance company. There were a lot of things that the modern dance company wanted to do that was not within the acceptable limits of the hula tradition and the modern company did not want to be restricted by the traditional aspects of hula or to hula at all in the creation of the piece.
Ultimately though, they created this incredible work of art which heralds the arrival of Lo'ihi, a new island off the southeast edge of Hawai'i. (In 30-50,000 years). The underlying message to kids today is that traditional (parents) ways and the new (children) are not mutually exclusive and both outlooks have significance to each other.
Hopefully I can get this into the schools!
A recent article that appeared on Artsjournal about the value or lack thereof of intermissions, and how they might be more pleasant in Pittsburgh than in NYC, got me to thinking about some recent observations.
For some reason I don't understand (though perhaps it was simply related to the number of ushers available at the time) the woman who was the house manager of my theatre before I arrived wouldn't open the exterior doors of the theatre until it was time to allow the audience in to the theatre.
Because I had so many things on my mind and had come from a theatre with a lobby so small that we essentially had to keep the audience outside until the house opens time, I maintained this policy for the first few show. Then I realized how silly this was. I had a lobby with a gorgeous 23' x 104' mural by Jean Charlot and an extensive lobby display commemorating the 30th anniversary of the theatre. I wanted people to look around!
For the last few performances, I have started letting people in as soon as enough ushers have arrived to rip tickets and prevent folks from entering the theatre before we are ready. I am almost glad I had kept people out because I would have never noticed the difference in audience behavior. Before people would rush straight in to the theatre, come out for intermission and then leave at the end of the show.
Now people walk around, admire the mural and peruse the display, discuss all the great performances they attended over the past 30 years and continue when they come out at intermission. The number of requests for brochures and additional information has increased. More people approach me with comments and suggestions (I do a curtain speech so I am easily identified.)
At this stage, I would say the lobby is really a valuable venue in the development of a relationship with your audience and communicating what you are all about as an organization. Now that I have seen the impact of having audiences linger in the lobby, I am starting to think about what I can do for next year when the 30 year anniversary material comes down so I can continue to educate my them about the organization.
Well I must say I am quite surprised. I usually don't get comments on my blog entries with the exception of Drew McManus over at Adaptistration. But after my last entry outlining how my anti-social tendencies are in conflict with my public professional life, I actually got a handful of responses. I guess I need to share personal quirks more often.
I didn't make an entry last night because I was overseeing a performance. The experience seemed well suited for tonight's entry. I talk a lot about insuring that you are providing audiences with a quality experience when they attend shows. From time to time, I talk about performers who really offer a quality product. But I don't think I have ever spoken about quality control performers exert over their product as it were.
Last night was an example of a artist who brought a sense of craftmanship to his music, but also to his show. The group was Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano. The group is lead by Nati Cano who has been performing mariachi for nearly 45 years now. He is recognized as one of the most influential figures in mariachi, shifting it from being perceived as the province of street musicians, to something worthy of international concert halls. About 10 years ago, he was recognized by the National Endowment of the Arts with a National Heritage Fellowship.
Now all this is well and good, but as anyone can tell you, accolades don't guarantee a pleasant working relationship with a person. He was determined to make the show the highest quality it could be. He asked me questions about the audience, would it be made up of older audiences or younger, mostly Latins or a large contingent of Hawaiians? He wanted to make sure he didn't perform songs that were only familiar to Latin families who grew up on the music if there was a sizable contingent of people from other backgrounds.
The truth was, a large percentage of the audience had Japanese surnames. When I mentioned this, he told me that yes, that was about right, when he was last in Hawaii (30 years ago) they had comprised a very large and very appreciative portion of the audience. Then he went back and talked to the band about a set list that reflected this.
It was like that all day. Before the show he and other band members inquired if I was happy with the size of the audience they had attracted for presale. (Indeed!) After the show--did I approve of the performance energy and song selection, was the audience an acceptable size, did I approve of the state in which they left the dressing rooms?
I have had performers ask me if they show and audience size was good before, but the detail to which Nati and his group went to in order to fashion the show and then solicit feedback is one I have rarely experienced. This is probably why he has been performing for 45 years. He is dedicated to good customer service that encompasses both his audience and his employer de jour.
I don't normally listen to mariachi and I don't speak Spanish either. I was listening to the group's CDs to set the tone for their arrival. You forget though the power of a good live event. When you have energy, musical prowess and showmanship in a performance, you end up saying "Wow, I don't know what they said, but I sure know it was good."
You might think that artists and presenters are motivated simply by the best monetary situation they can position themselves in to. Certainly that keeps the doors open and people fed so it is important. But I know for a fact that both artists and presenters talk about their encounters with each other and that can absolutely influence a decision to book a performance and can tip the scales when the money isn't quite what one would want to pay/be paid.