I have been thinking lately about the contradictory nature of some artist's relationships with their own performance. Mainly how you would think aspects they possess would pretty much remove performing as an option in their lives. For instance, there are many performers out there who have had terrible stage fright but go out and perform. Donny Osmond comes to mind as the most extreme example. And everyone knows the story about how James Earl Jones overcame his stutter to become the Voice of everything from Darth Vader. Verizon, CNN and cartoon characters.
I got to thinking this because my own quirk is that I hate being around crowds of people and yet, I try my damnedest to attract them to shows and make them comfortable. I just spent a Thanksgiving where, after calling my family, I didn't utter a sound for three whole days except to speak to a librarian. It wasn't the first time I have done it, nor is it the longest I have gone without speaking or human contact.
When I went to the Smithsonian for a summer vacation, I would be there when the doors opened and then would have to leave by 2 pm because the press of the crowd just annoyed me. I wanted to punch out the school kids running unsupervised through the place heedless of the fact I almost stepped on them. (Not the mention the fact they hogged all the interactive exhibits!) I would hop back on the Metro and go back to my camping spot in rural Virginia. Then I would go back in and continue the next day.
When I go shopping I park out near the edges of the lot and walk back in because I don't want to deal with the lot sharks who circle and circle looking for a spot up close. Worst of all, they stop, blocking traffic out to the road while they wait for someone to back out when they can drive 3 car lengths and have their choice of 5 empty spots.
The thing is, I have worked at and even organized outdoor festivals where tens of thousands of people show up. I have worked hard to insure there is sufficient parking, a variety of food, enough trash barrels and smooth process for admitting the audience. I don't mind this at all. Perhaps it is a control issue because subconsciously I know that I have the power to throw 'em all out.
Lest one think I didn't mind because I had hundreds of acres to spread my crowd out over and avoid bumping in to them, I point out that I have turned the same planning to indoor shows seating thousands of people as well.
I can't say that it is because I enjoy organizing and throwing big parties because despite being a pretty good cook, I have never had anyone outside my family over to my house for any sort of party. I usually end up picking up the trash after any event I do so it isn't like I enjoy organizing these big events because I have someone else around to do the clean up.
So there you go, I have no idea why an anti-social person like myself would ever invest himself so much into attending to the details of organizing events for the enjoyment of large crowds of people--and then work hard to rectify their complaints.
Anyone else feel they or a friend are in a similiarly strange arrangement? Let me know!
So I was a little premature in some of my recent declarations. My bemoaning the fact that no one applied to be my assistant was a couple hours premature. Three people actually applied for the position on the very last day, though two of them didn't have a complete application packet and so may end up disqualified if they don't move their butts. (Given that I suspect one of the incompletes was submitted by a person we alerted to the requirements two weeks before it was advertised, this does not bode well.)
My other premature gripe was in regard to low ticket sales for the show. It seems word of mouth trumps two 6pm newscasts and thousands of dollars in advertising.
The second week of the show was a little better than the first--Thursday performance had 40 tickets presale, we sold about 100 at the door. Friday performance had 50 tickets presale Thursday night, 80 sold by the time the box office closed for the afternoon--then we were swamped by an unexpected 250 people at the door. We hadn't brought staffing on for those numbers so we had a very long line and ended up holding the show for a bit. Saturday night we were smarter--we had 100 sold in advance and about 300 people showed up at the door. We had the right staffing so there was no line.
This brings up the fairly recent question about how performing arts organizations can get people to purchase a little earlier. Many theatres hate the fact that no one is buying subscriptions. At this point, I would be okay with that if they would only buy a week or so ahead of time.
It makes it extremely difficult to balance good customer service with economy. If you cut back on staffing for a night and you get swamped, then people have a negative impression of you because the service suffers. However, if you are paying a full staff and few people show up, then there is negative impression left on your bank account.
The box office manager suggested having one price in advance and another at the door. In my experience, saving $2-$3 in advance hasn't been an incentive to buy in advance. However, she clarified and suggested we have a higher flat rate price at the door for everyone. Instead of $22 adults, $15 students, and then $25/$18 at the door, she is suggesting we charge $25 for everyone at the door. Given that most people claim a student/senior/military discount when they purchase tickets, saving $10 might be an incredible incentive to buy early.
On the other hand, if people aren't thinking about what they are going to do until the last minute, they won't know they missed the opportunity until they pick up the paper/go on line and suddenly discover they have to pay $10 more, the pricing structure becomes a huge disincentive to attend.
What I and all the other theatre managers want to know is--when are most people making their decisions? If it is on Wednesday, then this is a strong incentive to buy early. If it is 5pm on Friday, then this is a strong incentive to go rent a movie.
Okay, here is a good dilemmia for all you arts manager types out there. So good that I have been encouraged to post it on my blog by my faithful readers (and you know who you are)
Since things resolved to my satisfaction in the end, I may just name names if it gets too tough to refer to the principals in oblique generic terms. (Also given that people can look on my theatre's website and figure things out very quickly.)
Last week, I got a call from a performer's agent saying that principal performer in a group of 11 would not be able to perform in Hawaii due to his doctor giving him an ultimatium. Now ignoring the money already paid out for non-refundable airline tickets and hotel rooms, this presented a number of problems. The group was named after the gentleman in question and I was just about to send out print ads with his picture on it. Conferring with some other people, they suggested putting a tiny disclaimer in the ad saying he wouldn't be performing in Hawaii.
I wasn't sure if this was really the correct tactic for two reasons-1) I would essentially be paying a couple thousand dollars for an ad that was saying "Come see the show! (by the way, there is teensy flaw in the show) and 2) I wasn't sure how much of my potential audience really knew who he was and identified strongly with him. There were also some aestetic concerns as well. The best picture I had was of him, the other two images were not only of poorer quality, but also very wide horizontally and wouldn't really work unless I changed the orientation of the ad. I had the option of calling the newspapers and inquiring if I could change my space reservation after the deadline had passed, but the redesign and university approval process would probably put me past the deadline for when the art was due.
Other members of my booking consortium were concerned as well. One of the other theatre managers had seen the group perform and felt that even though the front man had been phasing out actually playing with the group, he was still the charismatic showman whose absence would make the group just another really good set of musicians in their particular genre. She sent an email to the agent asking if anyone else in the group could rise to the occasion and exude the same magentism. Ever practical, I sent a follow up one asking if they were going to replace him with another person who could play the instrument or should I cancel the hotel and plane reservations.
I also noticed that the force majeure clause in the contract actually implied that if one of the musicans couldn't perform due to illness, a pro rated portion of deposit would be refunded. I asked the other members of the consortium if we were going to pursue this avenue and suggested that his absence constituted more than 1/11th the value of the entire group.
I also noted that on Broadway (though it may be an urban legend) if the actor listed above the play title in the playbill and marquee doesn't appear that night, you are guaranteed a refund if you ask for it. I wondered if there was a similar common law precedent where we might have the right to break our contract if the person who the group is named after doesn't perform.
So there is the case--as an arts manager, what do you do when the person everyone is potentially coming to see ain't coming?
Well here is what I did. I let the ads go as is without inserting a disclaimer. I did it for the reasons I mentioned above--I didn't know that too many identified strongly with him, the image was the best one to attract people and from our box office surveying, I wasn't sure anyone actually saw our newspaper ads anyway.
I did however, come clean to the radio DJs who were promoting the show for me because 1) They serve a niche audience who are likely to identify strongly with him and I expect that I will be programming to that niche in the future and it would be a big breach of trust if they learned I knew he wasn't coming 10 days prior to the concert. Better to lose the ticket sales and fight the battle for their hearts another day. 2) One of the DJs wanted to do a phone interview with a member of the band so there was a 98% possibility that they would mention the big guy wasn't coming. Although I could shrug and say I didn't know much earlier than she did (which would have been absolutely true) one of the first rules of damage control is to make sure that you control how a story breaks.
Now 12 hours later, I get a message saying the gentleman is coming. It is a little bit of pie in the face for me to turn to the DJs and sheepishly tell them to forget I said anything, now he is coming. Had I been less ethical, things would have actually turned out okay and no one else would have been the wiser so I suffer a little loss of face for being honest. Ultimately it is a gamble though. Had I waited and tried to figure out how I could manipulate events so that the bad news wouldn't be discovered until later, the situation could have turned around and bit me on the butt.
Hopefully, I won't have to face that situation again or one where I find out the star isn't coming as the rest of the band deplanes at the airport. However, these events have made me aware of the need to plan for just such a contingency.
So, if you have been reading my recent blog entries, you will know that I am working my butt off at my new job. I could really use an assistant!
The problem is, no one will apply.
Today ended the second time I have advertised for an assistant. The first time we had one applicant, but we couldn't hire her because she didn't meet the minimum qualifications (BA or equivalent, spreadsheet and desktop publishing knowledge.) We reduced the qualifications so that many things were desirable rather than required and now no one has applied.
Part of the problem may be due to the fact that Hawaii's economy is BOOMING. People feel fairly safe from terrorism here (the interstates actually connect armed forces bases to each other, we just get to use them). Tourism from Pacific Rim countries is high and available hotel rooms are low--mostly because they are being converted to condos for repeat visitors. A lot of service industry jobs are going unfilled because of the low unemployment on the islands.
What this means for me is that I will be handling the hospitality, graphic design and front of house arrangements along with budgeting, marketing, season planning, contracting, personnel issues, facilities management, fundraising, outreach, long range goal planning--essentially everything I railed against in my Executives without Direction Entry---just a wee bit longer.
Way back in my second entry I pointed out that I had a letter posted on Artsjournal.com's letter section and in the Artful Manager blog. One of my suggestions was that arts audiences and church audiences share some commonalities--faithfully joining a communal activity on a regular basis being one.
Well, I actually have a church doing services in my theatre which you would think would combine the best of both worlds. I have a large group of people coming to my theatre, moving my display about our 30th anniversary and staring at our large set filled with water during their services. (Yes, they wanted to do baptisms, but we wouldn't let them.)
Thus far when we ask people how they heard about the show, no one has mentioned that they attend services there. Somewhat disappointing, but we still have a lot of time to seduce them.
One thing they have been doing is providing us with volunteers to clean up our backstage and usher during the shows. They have been really dependable and efficient. One thing that is sort of disquieting to me though is that many of them are doing it as part of their service to the church and not because they enjoy live events.
I love having the resource of volunteers, but I guess as a person who has his own "religious" experience in the arts, I would really like to have people coming who are doing it because they enjoy an arts experience. I don't want to convert them into subscribers or arts lovers. This is certainly an opportunity to expose people to the arts who never thought of it as an experience to be included in their lives and maybe they will ultimately benefit from it.
It is just a strange experience for me telling the church volunteer coordinator that I appreciate the help and don't want to put anyone out so she should only include people who have a genuine interest in participating. She talks about how volunteering is important for rounding out their spiritual lives. The people who do help out may very well be curious and interested in the arts, but that doesn't seem to be an important criteria in their selection when I talk to the volunteer coordinator.
On the other hand, they aren't compelled into service either. Apparently, people aren't allowed to commit themselves to volunteering unless their personal lives are in shape (and there is a support network that helps them get to that point.) I am sort of envious that they have such an organized volunteer network.
That is another problem for me. I really want to build a corps of volunteers so I don't have to ask the church for help. Since the church has the contact information for their volunteers and I don't, this makes it hard for me to solicit their services on my own behalf. I don't aim to poach volunteers, but it would be great if some were interested in the arts because it would increase the likelihood they would approach me independently of their church association to volunteer.
Guess I am going to have to do it the old fashion way and build the volunteer group one person at a time.
So if you have read my recent entries (and lets face it, there haven't been many) you will know that my theatre is currently working on a production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses.
The director has been trying to assuage my concerns about the money we are spending to keep the water separate from the wood floor and the electrical lines by confidently telling me that if we can't sell a show with a 30'x25' pool of water, we can't sell anything.
Problem is, I fear he is right.
We certainly have "a gimmick" that the musical Gypsy informs you that you must have. Two separate news stations have come out to film the show and the entertainment writer from the largest newspaper on the islands wrote a feature story. When one of the news anchors was editing the story, women were looking over his shoulder with interest because the clips featured very good looking bare chested men engaging in a spectacular water battle. The anchor of the most watched 6 o'clock news commented on air at the end of the segment that ticket sales would probably skyrocket after that clip.
Unfortunately, they didn't. First performance we didn't even fill half the house, the second performance we filled fewer seats and the third performance we slightly out sold the second. The next three performances have less than 40 seats sold between them. I expect sales will pick up as we approach the dates, but I don't foresee any problem getting tickets.
It is difficult to blame the small audiences on lack of exposure. I did quite a bit of paid advertising along with the free coverage we got. My thoughts turn to three tough questions Ben Cameron (Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group) posed that the Artful Manager reprinted
"-What is the value of having my organization in my community?
-Harder: What is the value my group alone offers, or that my group offers better than anyone else? Duplicative or second-rate value will not stand in this economy.
-Hardest: How will my community be damaged if we close our doors and move away tomorrow? "
I am in a position to do a lot of good in the community and a new window of opportunity opened just today. However, there seems to be a bit of mounting evidence that paying a lot of money to fly and house people from the Mainland and other countries is not providing value for the community.
By the same token, for the last three years, there hasn't been anyone really concentrating on educating people about the value of the theatre in the community. I am not talking about convincing people they ought to love us because we are illuminating them in their ignorance. Rather, I mean giving us the same value in the community as the corner store, the firehouse and the Little League field. Become a place were people gather and look back at it as a cornerstone of their lives.
I am already seeing the possibilities as members of niche communities are coming forward offering their assistance to spread the word about upcoming performances.
Like everything else I write about in this blog that is a work in progress...we shall see.
I just came across a PBS program I was briefly introduced to when I was interviewing around for my current job. Art:21 Art in the 21st Century is a PBS program that, as you might imagine, looks at art in the 21st century.
I have actually not seen the program. Unfortunately, as Drew McManus learned in regard to the Keeping Score program featuring the San Francisco Symphony, the program doesn't get much air time. It seems like another of those great gems that gets hidden under a rock.
The website however does have a lot of resources and allows you to see snippets of the programs. It offers lesson plans and other educational resources for teachers. It also presents student art projects that were created in conjuction with the program themes.
This is sort of a nice guide for teachers I think because it gives concrete examples of projects that have emerged from the lesson plans PBS provided. Even if the lesson plans were generated after the fact by the teachers who lead classes to create the projects, I know that teachers often like to have concrete examples to go along with their lesson plans. It is interesting to see the directions different schools went with different projects.
Although PBS doesn't play the show that often, the website does offer the opportunity for people to have screenings and residencies and even provides materials to publicize the event. If an organization is interested, they can use these materials to support/complement projects of their own.
So my next production is an in-house show, Metamorphoses, by Mary Zimmerman. She adapts Ovid, not Kafka so there are no giant cockroaches on stage. There is, however, a giant pool of water. Water being a great metaphor for change is really appropriate for the production.
The technical worries on the other hand...
The set is essentially a 30' wide by 25' long pool of water on two levels. The depth ranges anywhere between 6"-9" to 24" in one spot. Water is interesting to work with for a number of reasons, the fact that it is pretty damned heavy, being one of them. The weight bearing capacity of the stage was a real concern.
Of course, another concern is that water will find any opening it can and leak out. The pool liner is one continuous piece which prevents that problem. However, since the change of depth of the pool is fairly extreme and localized to a small area, the aesthetics of a heavily creased liner is a little bit of a concern design wise.
Another discovery we made was that despite our best guesses about how far water would fly during the fight scenes and how much would be displaced when people entered, the water flew farther and ran over the edges and splash guards we had in place. Fortunately, because it was designed to overflow on to the lower level anyway, there wasn't a big flood. Unfortunately, because the pump hadn't been installed, the rehearsals had to stop while the water was bucketed up to the top level again.
Needless to say, the show really lends itself to exciting press releases given that there are Greek gods and heroes as well as the Greeks' very definition of spectacle in the form of the big ole pool of water.
I am just dreading 2-3 years from now when things start warping and rusting...
Some people will say that this retreading of stories is an indicator of how desperate Broadway is to stay alive.
But from my point of view, this is what was always exciting about Greek myths when I first discovered them as a boy. And it also seems better to retread the classics which have the potential of being rediscovered whereas a successful retread of a Disney movie just encourages that company to push for extensions of copyright. (And a really creative adaptation of an out of copyright work like Ovid's just goes to show how extensive copyright protection may indeed stifle creativity!)
I will let folks know how it all ends up.