One of the things I really like about Hawaii is the opportunity (when I get it) to see a wide variety of culturally diverse performances. Since I have been hear, I have gone to a Gamelan concert (music from Bali and Java) and presented a show that melded traditional hula and modern dance to celebrate the arrival of a new Hawaiian island Loihi/Kama'ehu (in 30-50,000 years). (And just as an aside, there is hula that Hollywood portrays, the actual hula that Hawaiians dance and low postured, bombastic hula 'aiha'a that originates from the Big Island. Very awe inspiring and powerful. Only time I have imagined that a hula dancer could kick my ass.)
This weekend I went to see a Randai production (search for that term on Google and every English language book and article was written by the show's director.) Randai is a really amazing Sumatran theatre form that integrates the martial art of silak with song and dialogue. It also features wearing pants where one can stretch the fabric between the legs taut to create a booming drumming sound when struck. (And article from a production done 3 years ago can be found here.)
It is really fantastic stuff and easily accessible to Western audiences (the songs are sung in English in this production and the stories are pretty much universal) Where Western theatre is generally encompassed in 4 walls, Randai action occurs within a circle of performers (which is also how the martial art silak is taught rather than in the parallel rows you see in Japanese and Chinese martial arts)
Since the Randai form is so much a part of Sumatran life, children pretty much practice the martial arts moves from birth. The student actors at the University of Hawaii have actually been practicing the movement and drumming component 3 hours a day for 6 months in order to gain at least a rudimentary mastery of the techniques. I actually heard and audience member saying he would see the cast outside slapping their pants when he went to his morning class so they definitely were a dedicated group.
It made me a little sad though to think that it would be tough to translate this experience and dedication into an acting job on the Mainland. You look at a person's resume saying they were part of a Randai ensemble and unless it is in your personal experience, you group their experience in with wacky fringe performance art. Nevermind the students have better control of their bodies now than most musical theatre students pursuing the "triple threat" of sing/dance/act. Without the frame of reference of having seen Randai, most directors wouldn't know how to evaluate that experience though.
To be honest, faced with such a resume credit, I wouldn't either. I have been excited to see it since August when I read about it in the brochure. But you don't get show description on a resume.
Truth is, on the Mainland, Randai is wacky fringe performance art. (Actually some performance art I have seen is so derivative of other performance art, Randai would actually be on the fringe of the fringe.) On Hawaii it is actually pretty much mainstream. The university does it in a 3 year rotation with kabuki (which I really want to see!) and I believe Chinese opera.
When I say it Randai would be on the fringe of fringe, I don't mean to imply it is "out there." As I said, it is actually very easy to understand. I simply meant that people looking in the Friday arts listing would probably feel more comfortable going to something listed as performance art rather than taking a chance on something noted as coming from Sumatra.
Performing in the show sorta falls in that category of things that are great for you to have done as a person, but probably not perceived as having much value by others. Actors have a hard enough time making a go of it with regular performance credits to have to face someone looking at 6 months of their life as being without merit.
I certainly don't think that it was a mistake for the students to do. Physical shows like Stomp, Cirque de Soleil, The Blue Man Group, etc, that aren't formed around the framework of acting technique will certainly view the experience as valuable. But mainstream stage and television...maybe not so much. You can only sell to the masses (or the slim percentage of the masses that attend live performances) what the masses are prepared to consume. Casting sessions tend to be driven by this.
On the other hand, with something as visually interesting as martial arts on stage, all it takes is a rave revue of a Broadway or major regional theatre show. Suddenly Randai is en vogue and someone is developing a show for Vegas.
Back last April, I cited a paper by the Independent Sector supporting, among other things, a simplified, unified grant application process so that one application might be applied to many granting institutions.
I haven't found a unified process yet, but I have experienced a very simplified one recently. The National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts has a program where they give artists grants to develop a work in conjunction with a presenter partner. The paperwork for that looks about normal.
However, if the performance group wishes to take the work on tour, the National Dance Project will provide money to presenters to defray the artist fees. All the presenter has to do is send a very simple letter of intent (and NDP provides a sample template for the letter) to the tour coordinator which they pass on to the National Dance Project.
The NDP sends an evaluation form and a very easy to complete final report form which the presenter has to fill out (Took me about 30 minutes) in order to receive up to 25% of the artist fee back as a grant. Other than making sure print ads, press releases and program books have funding credits and writing letters to legislators telling them NEA money is well spent, that is it. NEFA makes it very easy to decide to present a work.
Actually, it seemed too easy. I was searching frantically for the grant application my predecessor did to make sure I was in compliance. The only back up I had was the letter to the tour manager declaring our interest to present it---surely that couldn't be all we did to apply for it!
To some extent it was good that the application process was so simple. The deadline for 2005-2006 was Jan 21. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference just got over on Jan 11. That only left 10 days for presenters and agents to finalize dates and prices and then get letters of intent written up and submitted to NEFA.
I got an email from the members of my booking consortium who attended the APAP conference essentially telling me arrangements had been finalized and I had one day to send off letters of intent to a couple agents. Ironically, this was at the exact time I was frantically running around trying to locate the aforementioned phantom grant application so I could do follow up for the NDP funded show we just did so my understanding of the whole application process suddenly coalesced resulting in me stammering "That's it?! That's all I have to do?!"
So my hat's off to ya New England Foundation for the Arts for making it easy on me!
I was reading my Time Magazine today while my computer booted up, hoping that my cable modem would behave today (that was why there was no entry yesterday. No problem yet today, perhaps the Time-Warner cable approves of me reading Time Magazine) In the magazine there was a small inset on Artie Shaw, a big band leader who died last month. (More info, the NY Times and Ken Burns' PBS Jazz website have interesting synopses of his life.)
I found the article somewhat amusing because it discussed how he was trying to expose his swing audiences to classical music, similiar to how arts organizations try to grab new audiences by offering popular pieces and hoping people will experiment with unfamiliar territory.
Shaw's experience went something like this:
"Bandleader Artie Shaw had tried feeding long-hair music to short hair audiences, [but] he had discovered that 'It is necessary to give an audience some familiar points of reference before you can expect it to go along on new things'...He thought...playing old Shaw specials...might lure strayed followers back into the tent. Once they were in, perhaps he could give them [classical works] in small doses. Last week...on the opening night of a nationwide tour, the first part of Artie's experiment worked. A record breaking crowd, including a good many of the jammy jitterbug type..was lured into Boston's huge Symphony Ballroom. The Shaw faithful, plus a few horn rimmed jazz intellectuals, clustered around the bandstand...Right there, any semblance of success stopped. When Artie's boys began unraveling Ravel's Piece en Forme de Habanera, the crowd around the bandstand applauded politely, but even the most ardent jitterers had to stop dancing. Cried one in petulant exasperation: 'Artie you suck'"
I don't know if arts managers will take heart in the fact that hurdles they face in widening the perspective of their audiences are nothing new. Or if they will see this article from 1949 as validation that their efforts are hopeless.
Okay, I have been having the dangest time with my cable modem keeping a connection so I am gonna make this quick and hope I can squeeze it in before things break down again.
Courtesy of Artsjournal.com I found a great article on arts education in the spirit of the one I found locally a month or so ago. This one is in Minneapolis/St.Paul where the program is using the arts to teach critical thinking skills. The article points out that in an age when schools need to meet standardized testing, the skills gained are hard to quantify, though certainly valuable in the job market if they are cultivated.
As I am trying to be brief, all I will say is please, read it. And maybe drop a line to the paper praising them for spending so much space in the Sunday paper to discuss this topic.
In a related story, a study by the University of York has found that teaching students grammar actually has very little beneficial effect on the quality of the students' writing. What does improve writing skills--getting the students to do a lot of writing.
Just like the first story--it is hard to objectively measure the benefits on a standardized test, though good writing skills are definitely marketable.
I talk about marketable skills because that seems to be the big gripe of job seekers and employers--college doesn't seem to be providing students with marketable skills (I can do a whole series of blogs expressing my thoughts on that topic). As much as I am leery about the whole No Child Left Behind thing, I have to admit, whatever the schools were doing before wasn't working too well. Students' abilities and habits were so ill suited to college, the only benefit I could see was that my own skills would be in higher demand as time progressed.
At this point, if I can convince students to cultivate their critical thinking and expressive powers by using money as an incentive, I will toss the phrase "marketable skills" around until it goes passe and comes back into vogue again.
I talk a lot about the power of blogs for theatre, but other than the ones at artsjournal.com, I haven't seen too many.
Well, thanks to the power of google, I found a handful. The first I found was an entry appropriately entitled "Where Are The Theatre Blogs?" People who made comments to the entry actually pointed out a few to look at which was lucky because I never saw them listed on Google.
One of the best examples of what I championed in earlier entries about artists blogging about the process they go through can be found on my London life. The blog is currently following Paul Miller, a London based director (and author) who is in the process of directing a play in Japan. He has been blogging since August and has been really regular in his writing about his process and artistic experiences. Clicking back to November, one finds he had flown out then to cast the show, flew back to the UK and then back to Japan in January to direct. Guy has to be exhausted!
One of the most surprising links I came across was a story on Elisa Camahort who is not only a professional blogger--paid to blog for a company--but she is being paid to blog for 3 theatre companies in the San Francisco Bay Area! I haven't really read the different blogs in their entireity. The recent focus seems to be on news about the theatres' current and upcoming seasons and theories about acting, marketing, etc. I will be reading a bit more as I have time. (One of the best things about writing a blog--you can follow your own links to do additional research!)
I also found a person with a blog connected to Shakespeare Magazine. The blog covers stories about Shakespeare productions and projects in the US and UK. It also lists stories about the Bard himself, including recent articles about the writer having syphilis (and stories refuting that theory)
There are some interesting discussions about art coming from Canadian sources as well on a website called The Flying Monkey. While the author admits that the discussion is dying down (though there is apparently more occuring on a message board), what was really interesting is the stated purpose of the blog--"An online discussion, from the point of view of the performing arts, about the audience: who they are, what they want and what we can give them. Excerpts from this discussion will be reprinted in Ruby Slippers Theatre's annual publication, The Flying Monkey, at the discretion of Guest Editor Adrienne Wong."
I thought it was really interesting that they would include the discussion in a print publication as well. As many people as there are reading blogs, etc online, it is good to remember that there are a lot of passionate supporters out there who aren't online and they deserve to be included in the dialogue in some fashion from time to time.
Last theatre blog I wanted to direct folks to is not for live performance, but actually a movie theatre. Some intrepid folks apparently quit their high paying corporate jobs right around Christmas and moved to Springfield, MO to renovate and open a small movie house. They basically discuss every step of the project from applying to get a Small Business Administration loan to deciding how what type of soda to serve and the size seats to put in the theatre. (You want a lesson in economics, check out the Jan 8 entry --unfortunately they don't have a way to link directly to the entry)
Even before I took my current position, I was familiar with the unique situations one might run into while working for a theatre in a university setting. There are the competitive bids you must solicit for everything, the triplicate forms, the purchase order process and four week wait for people to be paid.
Then there is the fact the state doesn't like to pay for services in advance of receiving them. If you are using Equity actors you often must post a bond and as I noted yesterday, when you present performances, you often have to pay deposits in advance. Many times you end up explaining that this is the usual way of doing business over and over to people.
Today there was a bit of a new twist. A person from the business office comes over and says I have to sign a statement on the purchase order saying that I will personally reimburse the university if it pays the deposit and the artist doesn't perform. Now given that the deposit is usually at least $5,000 or more, that isn't something I really want to be responsible for.
I have never had a performer fail to perform. However, I am sitting on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Just regular problems with airplanes can pose a problem much less other acts of God, war, strike and all the other variables found in a force majeure clause. Most force majeure clauses stipulate that an artist will return the deposit less any expenses. Given that purchasing airline tickets to Hawaii will probably eat up the deposit amount by itself, the chance of me retrieving the deposit in such a situation is probably slim to none.
I lodge a complaint to my division chair who is as incredulous as I. He says to check with my counterparts at other campuses to see if they face the same problem. I heard back from one of them before I left for the day and his answer left me even more flabbergasted. He does sign the reimbursement pledge when he pays deposits--however he often crosses that part of a contract out so he only pays when he really has to. Now this is the same guy who crosses out the catering portion of hospitality riders so I am wondering how the heck he manages to get anyone to perform for him at all.
I guess all my talk yesterday about the basic requirements one will have to meet for most presenting situation has quite a few more exceptions to the rule than I thought. I need to talk to some more people though. I really don't want to sign the thing, but I also don't want to eliminate a whole pool of potential performers too because the university won't pay a deposit.
I thought I would do a quick run through of common terminology, features and expectations of the presenting business for those folks who aren't familiar with them. I had done an article some time ago on how misunderstanding about common expectations can lead to uncomfortable cancelation situations. I thought it might be good to talk about some contractual features as well.
Deposit It is common for performers to require you to send a 50% deposit to them or their agent about a month or so before they are set to perform as a security. They usually require the balance in their hands right before or right after the performance.
Force Majeure-Better definition than I can give found here. Pretty much every contract has them. They are about as ubiquitous as a Miranda warning on a police/lawyer show. It doesn't take long before you can recite the clause in your sleep.
Insurance- One thing I see quite a bit is the expectation that the presenter carries about $1 million in insurance to protect performers and crew from any mishaps. If you are renting a space, it will most certainly be included as a requirement for space use. In many cases, it is included in the performers contract as well to protect them.
Advancing the Show - Usually the road manager or the artist does this a few weeks to a month before a performance to discuss details of the technical rider, transportation, sound check times, food, accomodations--basically anything they are concerned about.
Backline - Essentially any sound equipment and instruments that the performers aren't bringing with them that they expect the presenting venue to supply. It makes a tour a lot cheaper if they don't have to haul pianos, extra guitars, amps, drum kits, etc across the country. Pay very close attention to this because many performers are very particular about the name brand of the equipment that they use.
Tech Rider- List of technical equipment and services that a performer requires. It includes the backline, but will also encompass lighting, special effects, stage layout, power requirements for tour buses (as well as places to park said buses and trailers), size and composition of running crews.
Hospitality- Essentially what people want to eat and when they want to eat it. It can be very simple or very complicated. They say an army travels on its stomach and so does a tour so this is very important. I recently had a guy tell me he crosses catering off contracts immediately. I have no idea how he gets away with it.
I always double check this section when advancing a show. Many times vegetarians or people with food allergies join a group and they don't change the rider. I also order more than I need--girlfriends, best friends, surprise visitors, etc tend to show up in the dressing room unannounced and are invited to chow down. If you do your checking and pad the order in advance, it saves a lot of hassle on the performance day.
Hospitality will also encompass other aspects of how performers are treated. Some people will want irons and garment steamers and towels both backstage on on stage. This section might also specify that the performers want food served on real plates rather than paper or paper is okay, but styrofoam is not.
Transportation- Another big variable in the presenting calculation. Sometimes you have to pay airfare, sometimes cab (or limo) fare, other times the performer is driving themselves and absorbing all the costs. Sometimes you have to do the driving yourself. This is actually the reason I decided to do this entry. I had a slight disagreement with an artist's manager over this recently.
When I worked in New Jersey, we would drive people to and from the airport one time in 20 to 25 instances. Here in Hawaii, we generally arrange for cars for people to drive around. A contract I got recently specifies that we pay for their ground transportation and provide a map and directions to them. A similar contract for their opening act specifies having a sedan for him. My assumption then is that we are providing cars for them, especially since they are coming early with wives and girlfriends so they can see the sights.
The group manager tells me that he reads the contract to mean that we have to pay to have them driven around and haven't I ever done a concert before. Now I am thinking he means we are to pay to have them driving around the island sightseeing and shopping and I tell him we can't do that. He actually meant that he wanted a ride from the airport to hotel, hotel to venue and back and then to airport again. (My mistake was telling him we couldn't do it before I understood exactly what he was asking for. One of my prime rules is to never worry travelers to unknown places unnecessarily.) It was an easy mistake to make, but also illustrates why you should read over a contract carefully and discuss any gray areas during the advancing calls.
Security- This can be a sticky area. I have almost never had to use professional security people for backstage and front of stage security. Actually, it is never. The only professionals I have used were for gate security to screen for alcohol. On the other hand, the volunteers I have used were people I knew I could trust and looked as if they were keeping an eye on things and weren't going to let someone by unchallenged. Yes, some were big and tough looking, but most were just determined looking.
Because we had the right looking dependable people, no tour manager, etc ever really questioned our security measures whether they had asked for professional shirted security folks or not. We always made it clear that we had a volunteer security force back when we signed the contracts as well.
Whether you can get away with it is another thing altogether. My advice is, as it is for all things, cultivate a good group of volunteers and note which ones might be trusted for special positions for future events.
That is about all I can think of as a summary of the major points of a presenting contract. These are just basic generalizations. Your milage may vary.
So, as promised, a quick recap of my attendance of the event Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke at last evening. It was a big affair. The line to get in stretched around the block and limos bearing consuls from about six countries pulled up as we were all filing it.
I was sort of disappointed because I thought he was going to speak about the NEA. However, he said he had spoken about it at two other gatherings already and didn't feel like doing so again. Apparently I was not important enough to be invited to those meetings!
Actually, he didn't speak until about an hour into the meeting. There were a lot of speeches whose whole point seemed to be the gratutious mentioning of names over and over again to applaud and thank. Then there were exhibitions of performing talent to show the diversity of the arts in the state that ranged from the stinky to the sublime. It has been a long time since an NEA chair has been to the state so I understand why people wanted to show off as much as possible.
Mr Gioia was as good as speaker as I had hoped a poet would be. He spoke about the value of the arts, but didn't harp on it too much and actually spent much of the night reciting his own poetry, most of which was pretty good. The anecdotes and commentary surrounding them really made his presentation.
The one thing I really noted was a poem he said he originally wrote at the request of National Public Radio on the turning of the new year. It was originally 36 lines long. However, after he had recited it, he decided it needed some trimming so he removed two lines, then another two, another two, and more and more by twos (except he skipped 14 lines and went right to 12 according to his story.)
Ultimately, it ended up being 8 lines long and no longer about the new year at all, but rather about what goes on inside oneself.
This was the real gem that I took away from the night. When we learn about creating art, be it written, performed, composed, painted, etc, we are often told never to become so invested and married to something that you are afraid to cut away extraneous bits or make changes. The best sculptors often talk about freeing the shape within the material rather than imposing their vision upon it. The best writers are not afraid to edit. Actors are taught to react to whatever changes in energy and situation might be occuring on stage rather than delivering the performance that got the biggest applause last week.
Of course, it rarely happens that way. Taking the leap of faith to discard or change is easy to talk about, but hard to do. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Gioia for having the confidence in his talent to be able to do that.
Okay, an abbreviated entry today. I wrote a fairly long entry detailing why I was researching the Americans with Disabilities Act but my web browser decided to cut out leaving me to start all over again. I was going to wait another day, but tomorrow I am going to see Dana Gioia, Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, speak so I most likely won't be able to make an entry tomorrow.
So any, the resources I cited in my disppearing entry were the National Endowment's Design for Accessibility: A Cultural Administrator's Handbook which was extremely complete. It not only had information on the act, but had illustrations of dimenisions of theatre seating, ramps, placement and lighting of signers in signed performances. It discussed training of staff and volunteers and even included a suggested format of a meeting to discuss accessibility issues for facilities. As the title suggests, it also gives guidelines for planning for a facility to be accessible if you are building or renovating one.
Each chapter includes helpful links and references books one might want to read. I found this helpful because I didn't feel that their guidelines on interaction with persons with disabilities was complete enough. The ironic thing is, I judge it incomplete in comparison with a list of guidelines I once had that the NEA itself had put out.
The links, however, direct you to the San Antonio, TX city website that has a good list of terminology to use. A link to the United Cerebral Palsy Association had a good listing of basic etiquette. The Community Resources for Independence, while not listed in the NEA document, also has a good site for interaction guidelines.
Okay, that is about it right now. I will let you know what I think of Dana Gioia on Wednesday.
I was taking a gander over at Artsmarketing.org and found a link to an arts e-marketing study that was done in England. While buying and attending habits of people in the US may differ from our European cousins, I found the suggestions about how to employ email and websites to good effect and the findings of the study to be quite thought provoking. Also, one of the really valuable pieces of information they provided was how to interpret the data logs from your website to determine how many hits, return visits, etc you are getting (pg 59-60) if you don't have access to report software like Awstats. (And even if you do, it is tough to recognize what the heck you are looking at.)
Among their key findings were:
E-marketing can be seen to be cost-effective and valuable. However, there are many areas of potential development for participants and for the industry as a whole.The 'typical' arts organisation (i.e. benchmarks for an arts organisation) will:
· spend less than 3% of their direct marketing budget on e-marketing activity
· spend less than 1p (marketing costs only) to attract each visit and each unique (different)
visitor to their site
· spend less than 3p (total online spend e.g. including maintenance) to attract each visit and
each unique visitor to their site
· spend less than 40p (marketing costs only) to achieve one ticket sale
· spend less than 10 seconds of staff time working on e-marketing to attract each visit
· spend 30 seconds - 1 minute to attract each unique visitor to their site
· attract between 2,000 and 8,000 unique visitors each month to the web site
· attract 30 - 45% of the visits to their site from unique visitors - different people
· receive 2 - 3% of all bookings online
· receive £2 - £4 more per ticket bought online than per ticket bought offline
Of those who visit the 'typical' arts organisations website (benchmarks for visitor statistics):
· 15 - 25% will return within the month, making 55 - 77% of the total visits to the site (the
Pareto effect works online!)
· they will visit 3 - 6 pages on the site each visit and will stay for 2 - 6 minutes
· each unique visitor will view just under 20 pages over any one month
· less than 2% will 'convert' to live visitors i.e. make a booking online (this is just slightly lower
than results found by other industries)
· less than 2% of them will sign up for further communication
The Arts Marketing Association felt that their research was somewhat incomplete simply because a number of organizations declined to participate because they had no idea how to access the web data needed or felt uncomfortable doing so. (They survey actually did provide instructions about which numbers to refer to.)
This lead to a fairly easily made conclusion that arts organizations were under utilizing their websites as a marketing resource and that the number of conversions to ticket sales or involvement with an organization could be increased if more attention was paid to designing and maintaining an effective site.
As much as I have been harping on the power of blogs and the internet for spreading the word about issues and ideas, I am ashamed to admit that I am hardly any better than the respondents in the survey and haven't really taken a look at who is visiting my organization's webpage or ticketing site. (And even worse, I know how to do it. I check the report on the people visit my blog regularly.)
I came across a very interesting article on Artsjournal.com today. In "Hearing Voices", J. Mark Scearce essentially says that not only aren't students being exposed to enough music these days, the ones that are aren't being taught how to listen to it correctly. Now that may sound strange, but if you read the article, it makes sense. My favorite part of the article is his suggestion that a bumper sticker be created says "Listening: It's Not As Easy As It Sounds."
I could see what he meant a little from my own experience. As I have grown older, I have actually come to realize that when I was a teen and adults asked why I was listening to the "crap" I was, they were pretty much right. I go back and listen to the music and while I do feel a sense of nostalgia for those good old days, I have to admit the music is junk.
In fact, I have to admit, I may be responsible for the current state of popular music. I remember hearing an interview at one time about the group Depeche Mode's heavy use of synthesizers and I recall thinking that it would be great if people could become rich and famous musicians without having to spend the time learning to play an instrument or have much musical talent.
Be careful what you wish for indeed!
Now that I am older and wiser or whatever, I really have grown to appreciate the skill with which musicians create their work. I suddenly become aware of the subtle use of instruments beneath the other instruments to support them with a clever little bit of phrasing. I am not talking about classical music either. Some of the people I refer to are singer-songwriter types. Certainly some of their works are more complexly crafted than others.
I can't quite name of the quality, but there is something about some music that makes you aware of the investment of time in the song and possession of talent. In some cases, the difference between musicians is obvious in the extreme. But other times, there is just some intangible quality that is a result of the sum of 1000 elements from the length of pauses to personal charisma that determines the difference between good and great.
It isn't just in music of course. Dance, Drama and the Visual Arts are the same. In fact, if anything should have a bumper sticker, it should be "Acting is harder than it looks". If someone is a novice with a violin, everyone recognizes that fact pretty quickly. However, everyone thinks they can act because you simply do what you would do in real life.
Just as Scearce says composers have to learn to listen, so too do actors have to learn to listen and watch as a first step. Reality goes on all around us, but it is tricky to recreate it convincingly for an audience.
Certainly it is the same for dance and visual arts. Only through constant observation and exposure does one recognize how movement, texture, color, shape, etc all work together to a desired end.
To some extent, the arts community has become so fixiated on simply trying to get butts in the seats/through the door and perhaps into an outreach program, the fact that long term exposure is really necessary for comprehension to occur. A person may have been coming to performances for two years and that seems like sufficient time to acquire comprehension and appreciation. However, the person may have had only 12 exposures total in those 2 years.
Twelve consecutive days of class is hardly enough to make someone comfortable with art. Stretch that over two years and that is one day every 2 months which hardly affords any sense of continuity at all.
So I have been away from blogging for a little bit due in part to the holiday season, but also because the service that was hosting my blog has gone out of business. (Which reminds me, I have to take their link off the blog.) Unfortunately, I didn't find out they were shutting down until two weeks before they did. So not only was I doing some last minute shopping for gifts, I was looking around for a new hosting service.
This is essentially the reason for the new look. The entries came over intact from my old server, however the template settings didn't. I am going to reset things to a different template shortly, however, now that I have access to Photoshop and other goodies, I think I will take this opportunity to revamp my logo a little on a lunch break.
I have discovered I have a fair number of regular readers out there. I have been getting emails from people over the break telling me how much they appreciate my insights, etc., and mentioning that other people turned them on to my blog.
Thanks to you all for spreading the word --keep telling your friends! As far as I know, I am the only working theatre manager keeping a regular blog (and when I was unemployed, the only unemployed one too!) But if people know of any other performing arts bloggers outside of Artsjournal.com, let me know. I am always interested in reading other people's stuff.
I started out almost a year ago with the purpose of making this blog a resource for other people in regard to creating a central clearinghouse of links and tips. I really need to collect those I have cited into a running list on the side of the blog (note to self for revamp process) but a good number of people seem to appreciate my discussing the practical details of my job as well as my thoughts and readings on the general philosophy of arts management. (Which is good since I have had less time to read these days.) I will try to do a little more of both in the coming days.
EDIT: OK, apparently, all I needed to do was hit rebuild and the template I had set up engaged so there isn't a new look. Heh heh, sorry about any confusion.