I am happy to see some promising signs from Honolulu Symphony. Last May I made an entry on reports of infighting and tension in the symphony board and administration.
There may still be some simmering anger in the organization but it appears there are also some attempts to expand the reach and visibility of the symphony thanks to the generosity of a board member.
An email sent out to managers of theatres on all the Hawaiian Islands by an officer of the State Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism noting that a symphony board member "is the pilot of a small private airplane that may be available to fly small ensemble performance groups (i.e., Honolulu Symphony and others) between the Hawaiian islands at greatly reduced cost or possibly no cost. I thought you might find this of interest."
What is particularly interesting, if true, is the offer to fly groups other than the symphony's internal one to the other islands. Now granted, most of the chamber groups in Honolulu are comprised of symphony musicians. However, these folks are in business for themselves so the symphony doesn't realize any monetary benefit from their efforts.
It is pretty expensive to fly an entire orchestra and their instruments interisland so it isn't as if the symphony can realistically be looking to develop an audience on the other islands for their performances. (Although there is a high speed ferry in the works.) Perhaps some more people will fly in to Honolulu to see the symphony there, but it is hardly going to reverse any financial woes.
Even if it is an attempt to gain musicians more employment so they won't look to the symphony for their main source of income, the board is still showing a lot more concern for the artists than most have in recent years. (Examples from Adaptistration here, here, and here)
It will be interesting to see if anyone takes advantage of the offer and what developes from it.
Since I am transitioning out of holiday mode here, I am not ready to blog on topic and seriously, but instead am taking up the gauntlet Drew McManus threw down and am doing the Meme of Four thing.
Four jobs you've had in your life (not in chronological order):
-Census Taker
-Grocery Warehouse Quality Control Auditor
-Beverage Supervisor at a Rennaissance Faire (I was even in costume!)
-Computer Lab Assistant
(Yeah I have had a lot of theatre jobs, but that is what you expect me to list right?)
Four movies you could watch over and over:
-Lord of the Rings Trilogy (cause really, it is only one really long movie, right?)
-Ghandi
-The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai too, of course)
-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Four places you've lived:
-Cedar City, UT
-Sarasota, FL
-Potsdam, NY
-Honolulu, HI
(Alas, I find I could actually answer this question about three more times without repeating.)
Four TV shows you love to watch:
-The West Wing
-Fullmetal Alchemist
-Deadwood
-Mythbusters
Four places you've been on vacation:
-Portland, OR
-Washington, DC
-Zion National Park
-Panama City Beach, FL
Four websites you visit daily:
-Artsjournal.com
-Ucomics.com
-Salon.com
-Bullshido.com (10% for the education, the rest for the entertainment)
Four of your favorite foods:
-Open face everything bagel with veggie cream cheese, slice of tomato and salt and pepper
-NYC pizza
-Hot Dogs with grandmother's bizarrely appealing barbeque sauce
-Well made carrot cake (as much as I love chocolate, a good carrot cake will lure me away)
Four places you'd rather be:
-Hugging my 10 month old nephew
-Powell's City of Books
-Night sledding by a full moon
-Still living in the entire second floor of a Victorian house
Well, if I hadn't actually gone looking at the Cultural Commons website yesterday on my own initiative, I would think maybe I was set up. After talking about how many partnerships failed yesterday, I come across a success on Artsjournal.com today.
Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (NC) have embarked on a joint venture with both occupying same building. The result, called ImaginOn, is an organization that isn't quite a library or a theatre, but a little of both with museum qualities thrown in.
There are separate areas for children, tweens and teens. The whole project is quite innovative and exciting and might provide a possible template for libraries (and theatres) in the future. Especially given that big performing arts centers don't seem to be doing very well these days. Witness this story on Philadelphia's Kimmel Center and Andrew Taylor's coverage of the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts' decision to get out of the presenting business.
I have talked about how arts organziations desperate for their own survival have pooled resources to allow them to occupy the same building. But those organizations didn't integrate themselves as well as these folks in Charlotte.
Also, according to the article, the groups started to explore a partnership back in 1997 before the opportunity to have a joint facility ever emerged.
The article also doesn't hide the fact that the collaboration didn't come easy. "But for all the shared, there were still plenty of differences, such as funding sources, governance, management, and organizational culture."
My hat is off to these folks for overcoming these difficulties and recognizing what assets the other guys brought to the table.
Waaay back in June, I saw this piece on the Cultural Commons website on partnerships that I meant to write on and never did. So here I go.
Essentially, the Urban Institute did an evaluation of the Wallace Foundation’s Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation (CPCP) initiative. While some organizations involved in the initiative found the experience valuable, there were problems. The biggest being that none of those involved continued the partnerships after the grant funds ran out.
The Urban Institute found many reasons why there were problems. Some had to do with foundations expectations, including a belief that partnerships were the solution to all problems.
Although all of the foundations told us they wanted to support "genuine" partnerships and avoid ventures formed solely to obtain funds, it would appear that in some cases they were unwittingly encouraging precisely such behavior by providing incentives that ironically put creating partnerships before cultural participation.
Other difficulties emerged from friction between the partnering organizations. Some problems came from just the plain fact that there wasn't enough staffing with time, skills or opportunity to effectively execute the planned activities. And then there were the instances where the partnership just ran counter to the missions of the organizations.
The summary got me thinking about the whole subject of partnerships a bit more. When you talk about them as a concept, they sound great and like the solution to woes. Big companies collaborate with each other and with universities with regular success, why not non-profits? Is there too much ego and desperation to hold on to one's hard won turf to make it successful?
About two years ago a friend was giving me a tour of her town. Despite having a fairly affluent demographic and strong attendance at other arts events (in some instances HUGE attendance), there was no major theatre group in town. Instead, there were two or three small theatre groups trying hard to get a performance out. It's too bad they don't try merging instead of trying to do their own thing my friend said.
Reading this thing about partnerships brought this experience to mind. I am sitting here trying to imagine what compelling reasons there might be not to merge.
-Classical group vs. Contemporary group?
Nah, theatres regularly offer such mixed fare in their seasons
-Avant Garde works vs. Mainstream?
Have to wonder, if you are offering an alternative to another group that has a weak presence itself, are you really offering an alternative at all? Again, market the organization the right way and the varied offerings only make you look more interesting.
Really, the only reason I can see not to merge is fear of losing what ground you have gained and personality differences. (Pretenious guy from NYC vs. the authentic locals, for example.)
This isn't the same as partnerships where the participants expect to maintain their distinct identities. However, it goes to show if people with much more to gain and lose, (depending which way they go) can't come together, it is easy to understand why partnerships might have difficulties.
After writing my blog for nearly two years, I finally got around to doing something that seems like a blatantly obvious step--I engaged people at working in a discussion of the implications of an article I wrote on.
Up to this point, I have attempted to translate my theories into policy and practice at my job. People at work do read my blog so from time to time someone initiates a conversation about what a genius I am. Occasionally I refer to a situation that arises as being similar to something I have blogged about.
While I have come into work and asked for feedback on a change I was considering, I have never actively solicited a dialogue specifically about something I have read. A couple weeks ago, I did just that.
I told my assistant theatre manager that I would like her to read The Diversity of Cultural Participation report I wrote about at the end of November. I told her when she was done, she could let me know and we would discuss the implications to our operations when we had the time.
Despite my insistence that she not, my eager assistant manager went home and read it over Thanksgiving. We had our discussion last week. For the most part, our discussion reminded us about the importance of continuing to be hospitable to our audiences so they feel socially fulfilled. (One of the few areas where a negative experience does not get the benefit of the doubt.) We also came up with some promotional ideas to try out after the New Year.
The real value in my mind of the discussion wasn't in the brain storming and the policy making. The ideas may ultimately yield very little on time and money we may invest in them. The real value was found in process of discussing my vision, her perception of where she is fitting in to the organization, where she is proud about being effective (and where she feels ineffective)and her sharing some ideas she hasn't felt comfortable mentioning.
There is something about discussing theory that seems to remove some of the restraints on discourse. I guess conversations at weekly staff meetings on the need to repair the golf cart and buy new lighting instruments aren't conducive to topics like what activities are contributing to one's self-actualization. Who woulda thunk it?
I am starting to consider doing this sort of thing on a periodic basis with some alterations. (Some folks in the building wouldn't relish a reading assignment.)
I also got to wondering if any other organizations out there went through a similar process where articles were passed around with the intent of engaging in serious analysis. Actually, I should qualify this by saying passing around in the absence of a crisis. I have seen plenty of articles circulated with dire portents about funding. I am curious about when someone takes the initiative while in a fairly secure position.
I've seen boards do it in preparation for retreats. One organization I worked at passed a book around among the senior administration, (I wasn't one of them, alas), with the intent to discuss it. I don't know if it ever happened.
Anyone have any tales of conversations they have had on a fairly regular basis where a dialogue about vision and theory transpired? (Note I use the word dialogue-- pretty one-sided speeches by the executive director don't count.)
Email me or pop a comment in the old box below.
No applications to the arts world today. Just silly idle speculation. Hard to wrap my mind around writing on serious topics during the holiday season. (Mostly because I am so busy buying gifts!)
According to BuzzMachine, the Pulitzer Committee has decided to judge submissions of breaking news and photos that appeared online only separately from mainstream print and broadcast media.
As BuzzMachine notes, blogs like mine that don't report on breaking items are lumped in with mainstream stuff. But you know, in a few years they will come around. Perhaps by then I will be ready for my 15 minutes of fame.
They are singing my song over at the NY Times today. If you didn't catch it via Artsjournal.com, check it out here before it disappears into the paper's archives and you have to pay for access-So Many Acting B.A.'s, So Few Paying Gigs.
While I am not rabid about it, I have considered it my mission over the last twenty years or so to attempt to dissuade people from going into acting as a career. In my mind, people romanticize their ability to go to New York City and get an acting gig after a short period of suffering in a chic spacious warehouse loft. That's how television and the movies portray it after all.
The NYT article however echos some of my sentiments.
"It's just tragic how many people want to go into this business," said Alan Eisenberg, the executive director of Actors Equity. "These schools are just turning out so many grads for whom there is no work."
"We're producing too many people," Mr. Steele [executive director of the University/Resident Theater Association] said, "many of them poorly trained or moved into the field without the connections or relationships necessary to make their transition to a career possible. It's as if medical school were graduating people without giving them internships at a hospital."
"Twenty years ago, you didn't sense the kind of urgency these kids have now," said Mr. Schlegel, who represents many successful New York theater actors..."Now they think if they don't get signed by an agent right away, they've failed. They never think they've got to learn the ropes a bit, get seasoned. They want to know, 'Where's my TV series? Where's my film audition?' It's wrong, of course, but that's what they think, and in a business where we fall all over the young ones, you can't blame them."
As you might imagine since these acting programs need people taking instruction from them in order to justify their existence in the university, none of them are reducing the number of students they are graduating. Rather they are including classes in how to get jobs upon graduation as part of their training regimen. Students learn about auditioning effectively, networking, etc.
Just for the record, I don't know if I have ever dissuaded anyone from going to NY or LA to pursue their dream. Honestly, I never expect my dire pronouncements about how tough the market is, how there will be 10 other people with their level of talent who look just like them at every audition, some of them will have more experience and are a surer bet. Then there are the minimum 10 other people who are better looking, more talented and more experienced who are showing up too. I also go into the cost of living in New York City, the crime, the cold, the dingy apartments, etc.
Its hard to picture that your mind for the glow of stars in your eyes. My sole hope is that knowing what I have told them, they make semi-realistic contingency plans to deal with all potential problems I have mentioned.
One last quote from the article I want to feature in an admittedly snarky attempt to further comment on the American Idol entry I made yesterday.
Ms. Hoffman's auditioning seminar is one effort to iincrease the responses. Too much vibrato, Ms. Hoffman told a young man who sang the U2 song "With or Without You" and finished each line with a lovely tremulous quiver. Vibrato is more expressive than communicative, she said; in an audition, you want to communicate.He still had trouble. "It's really hard, I know, to stay on pitch when you're straight-toning," Ms. Hoffman said, this time adding, "So you can add the vibrato if you feel yourself sliding off."
That is one lesson I took away from observing auditions at a training program with which I was once associated. Vibrato might sound impressive and appeal to the crowds, but it can indicate a lack of mastery of ones vocal instrument.
I am not a big fan of American Idol for a number of reasons. Mostly because while it positions itself as picking the next big national star, it is essentially picking a palatable compromise performing in a narrow niche market.
However, as I have been a big proponent of performers blogging about the process they go through to prepare for a show, I feel compelled to present an article that recently appeared on the NY Foundation for the Arts site featuring one woman's blog about her attempt to become a contestant on American Idol.
She doesn't get accepted to be a contestant, however her blog is interesting because it shows the extent she went to to prepare--everything from high heels training, mishaps in a tanning booth to getting former MTV News anchor Tabitha Soren to practice interview her. She even had blog readers vote on what earrings, shoes and tshirt to wear to the auditions.
While I don't know I would ever encourage anyone to audition for the show other than for the practice, I do like appreciate that she took the time to write about the process so others could reference it and learn from it. (Even if it means they would draw encouragement from it to audition for the stupid show.)
Go check out Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog
I have been reading Greg Sandow's book in progress, The Future of Classical Music? over on Artsjournal.com. I haven't linked to him much, but I am always interested in what he has to say in his blog about arts communications--often how press releases and program notes are written well and poorly. Many times I go and scrutinize what I have written after reading his entries.
One thing in his book that really floored me was his report of the lack of passion in orchestra administration.
The people who work for major orchestras typically don’t go to concerts. Almost never in the office of the orchestra will people come to work and talk about the music. Isn’t there something wrong with this? I’ve talked to a consultant who’s worked both with orchestras and with theater companies, and he’s stunned by what he finds in orchestras. In a theater company, people come to the office the day after a new production opens, and the production is all that they can talk about (the play, the acting, the directing, the sets and costumes, everything). But at orchestras, after a concert, no one says a word. If this is great art, where’s the depth, the transcendence, or even the certainty, both audible and visible, that everybody’s giving everything they’ve got?
I guess I always assumed that people involved in an art organization had some passion for it. As a person who comes out of theatre, I pretty much pictured what Greg describes as the day after in a theatre as happening in ballets, orchestras, museums and galleries. I figured I wouldn't understand the conversations as people employed the jargon of their particular niche or used obscure terminology to inflate their sense of self-importance.
I never imagined that the conversations wouldn't take place. A career in the arts is a labor of love after all. Analyzing how well or poorly something when the next morning with equally impassioned people is one of the few rewards one gets for choosing this path in life.
If what Greg says is true, it puts a lot of things in a different context for me. When Drew McManus over at Adaptistration criticized orchestra administrators as heartless individuals who were out to enrich themselves at the expense of the musicians, (I am generalizing his sentiments a bit here, though not too far off), I figured they were perhaps people without the talent or discipline to be musicians but possessed still of a passion for the art.
Now I am starting to wonder if they aren't just heartless individuals out to enrich themselves on the labor of the musicians. Okay, may be it is a little hyperbolic to ascribe nefarious intent to orchestra administrators. There are certainly better ways to go about exploiting the labor of others.
I have to wonder if the whole orchestra system needs to be revamped. If people can't be moved to discuss the basic merits or disappointments of a performance, they don't deserve to benefit from the performance revenue. (Which isn't to imply that people who do talk about it should be permitted to exploit others either, of course!)
Another related bit of information comes from the entry just prior to the third chapter of Sandow's book in which he talks about quality control in orchestras.
"Who in an orchestra has the power to tell the musicians that they’re not playing well enough? Not the executive director. My partner in this discussion had gotten shot down by his musicians simply for bringing the question up. Not the chairman or president of the board. Can anyone imagine a board leader going out on stage after a rehearsal, or gathering the musicians in the green room after a concert, and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, that simply wasn’t good enough”? It doesn’t happen.So the job falls to the music director. But music directors absolutely don’t do this, to my knowledge, about concerts that they don’t conduct. Some people in the discussion even brought up names of music directors whom they thought were happy when their orchestras played badly for someone else."
This revelation didn't strain my incredulity as much because I understand that different industries have varying operating situations and standards.
I come from the theatre world where the stage manager is empowered to tell the actors the quality is falling and where actors can be fined under union rules for repeatedly straying too far from the vision of the play. In late 1996, Cameron McIntosh, the producer of Les Miserables, fired most of the Broadway cast because he felt the show had become stale.
I am not going to even consider claiming live theatre is at the zenith of quality and artistic excellence. They got problems for which I can't even begin to start to suggest solutions.
I will say that if there is any truth at all beyond these stories about lack of passion in the administration and apathy (and perhaps plain intentional antagonism) among musicians and musical directors in regard to quality, it is a clear starting point for turning the fortunes of orchestras around.
How can audiences have an appreciation for the experience if the orchestra itself doesn't value what they produce? As with live theatre, quality control and passion won't solve all problems and result in fiscal solvency.
But at least when you say "We have a great product, why won't anyone show up," you are speaking with certainity and with a unified voice top to bottom.