Due to an errant keystroke and my uncharacteristic failure to save periodically, my entry for yesterday was swallowed by the abyss. I am not sure if I have faithfully recreated my thought process but hopefully this will inspire some pondering just the same.
I was listening to the radio on Wednesday as they talked about the death of Hilly Kristal, the owner of the club CBGB and I was struck by how this man owed the success of the club to the flexibility of his expectations. For those of you who don’t know, CBGB stands for Country, Blue Grass, Blues, which were Kristal’s favorite music styles and what he expected to present in his club
Instead the club ended up as the launching pad for punk and new wave bands such as the Ramones and Talking Heads. One of Kristal’s main rules for performing at CBGB was that the bands had to play original material and not cover anyone. Part of the audio NPR played for their story included his advice that bands not seek success in copying another group’s sound.
Given that the average lifespan of a club is about 2-3 years, I wonder if CBGB owed it’s longevity to being on the leading edge of music styles (though the income from merchandising didn’t hurt.) If not for a disagreement last year with the landlord over a rent increase, the club would still be open.
I am hesitant, however, to advocate that arts organizations emulate nightclubs and change with the latest trends. Clubs are structured to take advantage of the latest trend, not to serve the community. When tastes change and business wanes, they fold up shop and often reopen after a renovation that positions them to conform to whatever is en vogue.
Even the iconic Studio 54, for all its popularity faded away as tastes changed. Though the case could be made that it owes its existence to flexibly changing with the times. The building used to be a theatre, then it was a television studio for CBS, then it was the famous nightclub and now it has come full circle as a venue for Roundabout Theatre (though it does have 2 full service bars, some things are too valuable to get rid of!)
Arts organizations trying to respond to the latest trends might change their programming from a classical focus to a contemporary one or vice versa. I can’t see too many closing their doors to renovate a black box theatre into a proscenium set up as tastes move in that direction. Or rather, those who can afford to do so probably have the resources to weather the shift until it moves back toward their configuration again.
The decision to change the focus of an organization to accommodate the latest tastes and thinking is certainly based in the environment and situation. Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre with its 56,000 subscribers (yes, that’s right) probably isn’t going to consider changing the way they do things any time soon.
There is growing sentiment in various discussions about the state of the arts that the current economic model the arts follow is no longer suitable and a change is needed. It may come to pass that arts organizations end up with a life span of a couple years and only those agile enough to reinvent and restructure their public manifestation will endure.
As cynical as it may sound, you can only serve a community as long as they value being served in the manner you offer. I honestly believe that people can tell when a company is catering to their latest whims and when the company is in it for the long haul. I believe they won’t give much thought to abandoning the first when they have grown bored and will show more loyalty to the second. However, I also believe that as life moves ever faster, that the effective lifespan of even the most sincere arts organization is going to shorten. Some companies like the Walnut Street may command intense loyalty forever but the dynamics of other communities may result in greater rates of change.
In closing, I will repeat the sentiment I have stated many times before--like Hilly says, play your own stuff and don't look for success being derivative of other groups. Yes, I linked to a seminar where the Walnut Street folks will tell you what they did to go from 0 to 56,000 subscribers in 25 years. More power to 'em, but they can't guarantee you can do the same in your community. Believe me, no one wishes they could more than me. It would simplify things a great deal. On the other hand, I am pretty sure a good portion of what they have to say would be of some value so I would be ducking in to check them out and figure what I could use and what I couldn't.
I went to visit the Memphis Manifesto website today to find it gone. Well, more accurately, that the account hosting the site had been suspended. You can click on that link if you don't believe me.
Does anyone know why the site has disappeared? The physical manifesto is easily found as an Acrobat document. But I wonder what the disappearance of the site might portend. Since the impetus for the Creative 100 who met and signed the Manifesto came from Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class, I wonder if this is a sign that the whole idea that cities must attract the creatives has fallen out of vogue.
The Manifesto it self doesn't seem to be dated in anyway (in these days of fast technological development, ideas can get stale after 4 years). There doesn't seem to be anything in there a community wouldn't want to strive for.
So what happened? Did the dream die or has it morphed into a bigger, better concept that was only held back by the ideas on the old website?
Anyone know?
January 2007 its coming was foretold and a great moan of despair did issue from the people while others cheered and hailed the arrival of the dread behemoth. Many tried to scurry from its path and have just now recognized their failure now as the shadow of the mighty beast falls upon them.
Now cometh the king....
Last week the Honolulu Advertiser ran a story about the impact The Lion King, which opens in two weeks, is having on the local arts community. Back when Phantom of the Opera came to town, the seats at many theatres were pretty much empty.
Having learned from the past, many organizations started scrambling as soon as the rumors started gained credence. Hearing the performance hall would be occupied, the symphony shifted to another venue and the local school which stages a two day holiday extravaganza started making other plans. The annual Nutcracker production lucked out by having the Broadway tour end just before their scheduled performance.
Many of the other performing arts organizations are experiencing ill effects already. Said one theatre manager "It's scary, terrible. We moved up our production (from an original October play date) hoping to avoid overlap with 'The Lion King.' In retrospect, it would have made little difference..."I keep hearing 'We bought our "Lion King" tickets and we're broke,...'"
One group has seen a rise in season subscriptions and other has seen a drop though they attribute that to getting their brochure out late. One group is hoping to fill the house by offering what the Lion King can't--alcohol during a performance. The group plans to perform two shows in cabaret style and offer a standard drink with the show.
A number of those quoted in the article thought their might be a trickle down effect with people getting excited enough by the show that they would buy ticket to the local performances some time in the next two years. There was no mention if theatres saw a surge in the years after Phantom.
I wonder then if it is wishful thinking as one of those optimistic about a trickle down is also quoted as saying most of those who attend the Broadway series aren't regular theatre goers. The intent of his sentence was to state what I am sure is his mistaken belief that those who enjoy musicals at his theatre won't join non-attendees in exhausting their discretionary income at The Lion King.
He also inadvertently points out the reason why his theatre probably won't enjoy a significant attendance increase from trickle down in the near future-- most of the people attending the Lion King aren't disposed to attend live performances. If people there were a trickle down effect from attending a Broadway show, the regional and local arts scene would be exploding as a result of all the bus tours motoring their way to Broadway and Las Vegas.
For most of those attending, The Lion King is an infrequent treat they give themselves and their family. Even though they could all attend a local performance for what a single ticket to the Broadway show costs, that isn't part of their regular practice and may never be unless they know someone in the cast.
So how do things stand for my theatre you wonder? Well we haven't gone on sale yet because we are just making last minute tweaks to a new ticket system. My first show doesn't open until a month after The Lion King does. This might not work in my favor since the buzz about the Disney show will probably reach its apex about that time and fuel additional ticket sales.
Unlike those who were interviewed for the newspaper article, my theatre doesn't produce Broadway musicals so we are at least offering an alternative to that. Our season is also weighted with more shows in the Spring. Now whether there is going to be a enough disposable income around after the Lion King and the holiday season are finished is anyone's guess.
As much as I criticize the trickle down view as naive, there really is no other way to approach the situation but to be optimistic. Doom and gloom isn't going to help. Finding the ways to pitch your strengths over your competition is standard business practice. In some ways, we local arts organizations aren't in much different a position than video game manufacturers who face a competitor rolling out a new console just in time for Christmas. Often they time the release of some new exciting game to show the value of the established game systems. We each have to figure out what our version of that practice will be.
Second Life is getting a lot of buzz these days as the medium through which people will interact and perhaps get their entertainment in the future. Political candidates have offices and give speeches there. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will give the opening concert of their season there next month motivated by the desire to be the first to do so.
But I heard something today that is motivating me to keep my eyes and ears open for some other alternatives. A student who has had a long association with the theatre came in today and announced she was going to move to Spokane, WA in January to work for Cyan Worlds, creators of the Myst games.
She has been playing Myst Online for sometime now and decided she was going to visit the company this summer. She apparently told them she was coming, when she got there she announced she was going to work for them. Judging from the number of pictures she got with the founder and other employees, they did nothing to dissuade her ambitions. (It also doesn't hurt that they are advertising for the job she wants.)
I was mostly amused as she talked about her visit. ("The woman in this picture doesn't know it yet, but she is going to hire me.") But my ears really perked up when she mentioned that the reason she liked the game was that it was like theatre and performance art. Every month a new chapter in the story is introduced by the game staff to drive the plot forward similar to a TV series. In the interim, the players work together to perform tasks and solve the puzzles for which the Myst games are famous.
I won't pretend to know much more about the game beyond what I have read online. A couple things I did come across got me thinking that the dynamics of the game might have some lessons for the future of performing arts.
First of all, while players will have the ability to influence the storyline and submit created content, the game administration still retains control of how things proceed. This is in contrast with games like World of Warcraft where there is almost no attention paid to the plot. Second Life allows people a great deal of control over the environment to the point where people are developing and selling real estate in the virtual world. However, that control also equates to the ability to vandalize and destroy property which has been purchased in real dollars at some point in the process.
User created content may be all the rage, but as Andrew Taylor pointed out back in May, there are a lot more people are watching the content rather than creating it. At this point there is still a large majority who want to see well made content (or at least videos of people making fools of themselves) and don't necessarily crave a high degree of control from the experience.
Live performance in the future may come to mean interacting with virtual avatars of performers. Acting may regress a little. Since appearance will be a function of good design and rendering, the most highly paid actors might be those who have good voices and improvisation/acting skills necessary to interact with people rather than those who look good.
It would be a sort of reversal of the emergence of talking films where people who looked good but had bad speaking voices found themselves out of a job. You have to look no further than Tony Jay who wasn't a bad looking guy but had a gorgeous voice. He got a lot more work as a voice over artist for cartoons and video games than for his physical presence so it is not tough to see that the real money for performance may soon be in having a good voice and a sense of drama.
Via Non-Profit Marketing Blog, are a couple links to Frogloop, a blog whose goal is to "catalyzing expertise in nonprofit online communication."
I haven't gotten a chance to really look at the site, but Katya at Non-Profit Marketing blog linked to an interesting piece on using social networking sites like Facebook to fundraise. The short story is, it is too early in the process to tell if it will be effective. But the guys at Frogloop do a super job analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the practice. They also offer tips on how to position your organization to be most successful.
To top it all off they even provide a Return on Investment calculator to figure out if it is worth tasking an employee or volunteer to work on developing fundraising efforts on social networks.
I plugged in a few different numbers and as near as I can figure it, you pretty much already have to have a powerful fundraising machine at your disposal (think Sierra Club) to make social networking worth the investment. It seems the type of thing that will complement efforts by providing people with an alternative way to give and encourage others to do the same. It doesn't appear that social network fundraising is going to provide leverage for small organization to raise big money unless the cause is already poised to take off.
I would be really interested to learn if someone (perhaps the good people at Frogloop) have created a similar calculator for direct mail, phone appeals and the other tools fund raisers use. I assume the tools are out there, I just haven't seen them.
On the other hand, ignorance might be bliss. I might discover I would save money if I stopped asking for it. Though as Andrew Taylor pointed out back in May, some times fund raising events aren't about making money.
For some reason the past two weeks have been chock full of site specific performances in my city. I don't know if this is a trend or a coincidence. I thought I would make mention of them in the hope that others might find inspiration in them. Considering one event sold out an extended run very quickly, I would imagine it earned a mention on butts in the seas.
Said event, which I was unable to get tickets for, took over a house that was set to be torn down for a performance of "The Living Tarot." The dance company repainted all the rooms to create an interpretation of different Tarot cards. When the audience arrived, small groups were given a tarot reading (with a very limited deck, of course) and were lead through the house in the order that their reading dictated. Company members were stationed in each room to perform the essence of that particular card.
The project was quite intriguing and I am sorry I was not quick enough with my credit card to secure tickets. This isn't the type of thing one sees often considering the dance group not only found someone willing to let them take over the house before it was torn down but also convinced businesses nearby to let the audience park in their lots.
The second performance I saw this past Friday in the rotunda at city hall. Since Friday was a state holiday, the group was able to set up their performance during the day and leave it up for a show on Saturday evening. The rotunda was set up with stages reminiscent of the old traveling carnival attractions (i.e. painted canvas hawking the strong man). I'm told the original intent was to have people walk around from station to station as the performances rotated but somehow most of the action ended up at the center stage and the audience mostly sat. I am not quite sure what caused the plan to be changed.
The performances were a mixed bag in terms of quality and some of the segues between pieces didn't quite work. On the whole, it was interesting. Even with the focus of the event being on the center stage, the setting and the social dynamics enabled them to use the space and interact with the audience to a degree that a proscenium stage would have allowed.
The final event I wanted to mention wasn't site specific per se, but it was in an unorthodox location. On Saturday I attended a fundraiser for a dance company at the furniture store cum bar, restaurant and theatre I wrote about earlier this year. It was the first time I had been to the facility, (first time I have ever been valet parked at a furniture store, too), and I have to say the juxtaposition works despite what I feel was some healthy skepticism on my part.
As impressed as I was by the architecture, I also appreciated the design of the event. Admission was $20 General, $100 VIP with various rewards, $250 for even better perqs, including dinner. While $20 didn't get you all the benefits, you could wander through various rooms including the restaurant and watch the entertainment in each location. The way the entertainment was programmed, most everyone would gravitate toward the bar and the theater. There was plenty of room for those who did wander into the restaurant section that they could stand apart from the diners without disturbing them but still enjoy the performances.
I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I thought it was cleverly done to make those who paid $20 feel as if they got more for their money by allowing them access everywhere while also insuring that those who paid $250 were not in a situation where they felt their experience was diluted by throngs hovering at their elbows.
I have a feeling that great dynamic was just dumb luck but I am going to ask the artistic director running the fund raiser if it were planned. It seems like a winning atmosphere to cultivate, especially given that I was coaxed into parting with a little more money that evening.
At some point in the process, every acting teacher tries to dissuade their students from pursuing the craft professionally with tales of the incredibly high unemployment rate in the Actors union and the dismal amount most of those who are working get paid.
Still, hope springs eternal and the warnings fall on generally deaf ears.
When you think about it, they have some reason for hope given that the status of actors has risen from the historical lows it once occupied. As those of Shakespeare's age reckoned, Aristotle's Great Chain of Being looked something like this:
God
Angels
Kings/Queens
Archbishops
Dukes/Duchesses
Bishops
Marquises/Marchionesses
Earls/Countesses
Viscounts/Viscountesses
Barons/Baronesses
Abbots/Deacons
Knights/Local Officials
Ladies-in-Waiting
Priests/Monks
Squires
Pages
Messengers
Merchants/Shopkeepers
Tradesmen
Yeomen Farmers
Soldiers/Town Watch
Household Servants
Tennant Farmers
Shephards/Herders
Beggars
Actors
Thieves/Pirates
Gypsies
Animals
Birds
Worms
Plants
Rocks
Thanks to the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival
Of course, these days actors rate a little higher. Though in light of the role executive directors must increasingly play these days, actors still rank below beggars.
I recently came across a theatre that had shirts, mugs, totes, etc available with this list on their Cafepress shop. The puzzling thing for me was that they have never been associated with an Elizabethean/Jacobean production as long as I can remember. Since they mostly have live music and dance, a smattering of musicals and nearly no dramas, I wondered if it might be sending the wrong message to donors who may not get the joke.
In any case, the parents of aspiring actors can take comfort today, as they did in ages past, that at the very least, their kids didn't want to become pirates.
I got an email from the Theatre in Chicago website about a new technology they are using. Because they have such a large archive of podcasts, they have partnered with EveryZing whose product turns audio into text allowing you to search for terms. From their FAQ page:
The text-based search results include snippets from the audio and video portion to help you figure out if the result is relevant. You can even click on the words to begin playing the media from that exact point.
I tested it out on Theatre in Chicago website by searching for shows and directors. True to its claim, it delivered just the portion of the podcasts in which I was interested.
I haven't figured out how it might be used for promoting arts organizations or adding value to a patron's experience yet. If someone reviewed you on television or radio, you would want to just include that portion of the audio and video on your website. You would also have separate links to individual promotional videos you made for each show rather than having people type in search terms to find specific footage in a larger video. Even if you were going to have voice directions to your space available to people who have web access on cell phones, you would want separate files for each direction of origin.
The use that did immediately occur to me was to enable understudies to hop around a video to learn the blocking of the person they are going to replace. Just type in the next spoken line and you can zip to that scene. One could also do research and related activities with the search tool.
Given that using the service appears to be free and EveryZing encourages people to use it to make money off their content, if other practical uses occur to someone out there, let me know. I know there are clever people out there and it would be great for arts organizations to be able to provide more value in what they do.
It's never too early to start planning for the next conference I always say. Well, at least I have been saying it recently as a way to encourage some members of the Emerging Leadership Institute alumni to put their heads together to see how we can address some of the concerns we had last year in the upcoming conference this January.
A few of us had a conference call yesterday on the topic and will be pursuing some initiatives, some of which will make the conference experience more enjoyable for ELI alumni and new participants alike. So if you were thinking of applying for the program, it will be even more worth it next year than it was this past year! Watch the Arts Presenters Website for the opening of the application period.
One of the biggest issues that emerged during our discussions last year was the issue of succession planning. Many people felt they were being overlooked for grooming, if there was any concern about grooming anyone to begin with. Something I have heard mentioned since then is that there seems to be an unwillingness for people to stay with an organization long enough to even be considered for a leadership position, not to mention those who leave non-profit altogether for better pay.
I think we could get into a chicken-egg argument about the situation. Are people leaving because they don't see any opportunity for advancement in the organization or are people not being given opportunities because the organization doesn't want to invest time cultivating skills in someone who is only going to leave?
I am not sure what the answer is and I imagine different people and organizations have a variety of factors that motivate staying or going most strongly. In a discussion/interview with Jim Undercofler, now President and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Drew McManus addresses the desire to pursue a fast track career ladder and the salary arms races in the orchestra world. (Segment 5 contains the pertinent dialogue.)
Drew talks about how there exists a fairly clear predetermined path one should take if they want to be on a fast track to advancement in the orchestra world. The focus for administrators and musicians isn't on what one has accomplished, but rather how prestigious the organization one is working for is and how to advance to the next stage.
At the same time, orchestras operate in constant fear of losing an administrator to a neighbor and end up paying salaries that may be out of proportion with the value they receive from the manager. Though he doesn't give any specific examples, Drew suggests that orchestras to provide reasons other than money to reward administrators for staying and "building something spectacular." I imagine these alternative rewards could be anything from additional training and education to use of timeshares.
The other thing that Drew and Mr. Undercofler allude to is the fact that not everyone thrives in every type of environment. Some people do better in smaller organizations or certain geographic locations and both the managers and boards of directors are ill served by chasing prestigious names over best fits.
Probably the bedrock upon which good succession planning is going to be based is managers learning what type of environments they best fit and boards of directors exploring what alternative benefits to money they can offer. Money has been the measure of value for jobs for so long, people really aren't in the practice of being creative about employing alternative assets nor are job seekers practiced at considering or even suggesting those options.
We are interviewing for a new staff position at work and have gotten a better batch of applicants than we have in the past. I think it might be in part due the fact that I rewrote the job description that was being printed up on some industry job sites to be easier to read than the 40 sentence sans paragraph breaks monstrosity that the computer software generates.
I still had to link to the monstrosity but I think my summary of the job and specific mention about what point in one's career the position was suited made the process more welcoming and easier to understand. Given that the official job title, recategorized for reasons of "efficiency" some years ago, bears no hint of the performing arts, I am guessing my alterations helped catch the eye of people who might actually be qualified for the job.
Participating in this search process has illuminated some unpleasant facts about being a person looking for a new job.
Since I work for a state institution there are hoops people have to jump through that it wouldn't occur to most search committees to erect. From the applications we received, I imagine that it didn't occur to most of the candidates that they were supposed to explicitly jump through them. For example, one of the minimum qualifications (MQ) for the job is willingness to work nights and weekends. Most people in the performing arts would take it as a given that if they listed working on 30 performances annually on their resume, they were showing that they were willing to work nights and weekends.
Unfortunately, Human Resource people having no experience in the performing arts and even some committee members who do have the background look for specific reference to a willingness to work at these times before crediting that MQ.
One of the rules about resumes and cover letters is that they should tell a story about your experience. Naturally, the story you tell about yourself should be one that matches the requirements of the position. If you are highly educated and are applying for a position where you will be working with highly educated people, you may try to talk about your experience in a sophisticated manner. By this, I mean that you might reference how you were personally involved in the logistical arrangements necessary to transport equipment to various venues throughout the community before and immediately at the completion of an event.
You might feel this answers whether you can drive and are willing to work evenings and weekends. From the last 4-5 search committees I have served on, I hate to say that making awkward but explicit statements that you have a license and will work evenings and weekends may be best. Some of the committees I have been on haven't be in my field or a state institution and I have spent more trying to convince people that all questions have been answered implicitly via the available information than I care to count.
In light of my experience on these search committees I wonder if I might have better served in my own job searches by writing, "I have a driver's license; I work nights and weekends; I am detail oriented enough to transport the correct equipment for performances to remote venue we don't own", instead of trying to signal these things with the sort of example I used two paragraphs ago.
This sort of thing sounds hackneyed and grates against my pride in my writing ability. I wonder how many jobs I might have lost refusing to sacrifice the flow of my prose. (Which is not to say it can't always use more work.)
I hate to say it, but search committees seem to use picayune points to disqualify applications because they don't want to do the work of evaluating all of them. The more applications there are, the pickier people seem to get about things like Ph.Ds not listing where they went to high school.
The high school itself never emerges as a criteria for job selection. The person is eliminated because "if they can't be bothered to fill in all the blanks, how good can they be?" Frankly, when faced with a form from an office supply store that asks what my high school major, minor and degree was and if I have a CDL license for a job that doesn't require driving, I have to wonder if an employer can't be bothered to create an application form that is pertinent to the position, how good a work environment can it be? (Happily, the form I had to fill out for my current job was both short and pertinent to the position.)
I should note again that I am not only referring to state institutions in these examples. There are a couple non-profit committees I have sat on that operated similarly. If a creative economy is indeed upon us, I have to think that the only way creativity is going to bloom in companies that use such rigid hiring criteria is going to emerge in spite of these practices. I understand that fear of lawsuits informs decisions to reduce subjectivity in the interview process. But it seems that some people use the structure to abdicate the responsibility to do a thorough job vetting the candidates and finding the best person to fill the position rather than the person best at filling out forms.