I won't get in to why I came across this website. Suffice to say, some people in the office got sick over the Thanksgiving holidays. The anti-diarrhea medicine maker, Imodium A-D had a fun little feature on their website I hadn't expected to find-- a way to locate public restrooms in the U.S.
They are careful to assure you that you won't need the map while using their product, but it is always good to know where you find facilities while traveling. You don't want to depend on the map because it isn't comprehensive. Imodium grabs the information from a site called The Bathroom Diaries which allows people to rate restrooms across the world. People don't tend to share those experiences as much as say, hotel stays.
It wouldn't hurt if you were like the Portland (Oregon) Center for the Performing Arts and had people evaluate your restrooms and point out that there was a long bench that was handy as a changing room. Or perhaps you could write something yourself. In searching for a city that had an arts organization reviewed, I noticed that every Old Navy across the country was listed as "A great place to go" and every Starbucks included the observation that "The pleasant Starbucks barristas are cool. You should buy a drink but if you don't, they won't mind. Ask for a key if its locked." Apparently these corporations thought mention of their restroom situation was important enough for their business to have someone place a duplicate entry for every one of their locations. (Or at least up to a point. None of the branches of either company in my city are listed.)
There are many websites out there at aggregate obscure data into interesting data that clever arts organizations can use to their benefit. For example, this site answers the question it asks "If you dig straight down, where will you end up?" Fortunately, I never completed that hole in my backyard. I just discovered I would have ended up in the ocean about 3000 miles southwest of Perth, AUS. instead of China. It turns out, the most direct route to Beijing is through Argentina.
This handy "hole through the world" map can be employed during shows like Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing where a character begs to be sent on an errand to the Antipodes in order to avoid someone. It can be fun (and educational) to use the site to illustrate for audiences that if he had traveled to the literal antipodes of Messina (where the play is set) or London (where it was originally performed), he would have ended up in the ocean east of New Zealand.
Unfortunately, with two exceptions, there is no place in North America that corresponds with land at its antipodal point. It would be fun to point out the location opposite the theatre where the show was being performed. The antipodes of North America is the Indian Ocean. Only the State of Hawaii which corresponds to Botswana and a corner of Namibia and a point in the Alberta plains just north of Montana which corresponds to the French and Southern Antarctic Lands match up with any landmass.
Which isn't to say it isn't fun to learn that you can't reach China by digging in your backyard. It can just be interesting to have a connection with a people and land opposite you. Maybe you can research the best public restrooms in their city! (Though they don't flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.)
The real moral of this entry is that it can be useful to bookmark websites with goofy, but interesting information because you can never tell how it might be useful in creating a connection with your activities.
The cultivation of young, emerging arts leaders is a topic of growing importance these days. Two weeks ago, Andrew Taylor quoted as speech by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation in which Cameron noted
"....expectations from young people around higher compensation, shorter hours, in essence less patience for the sacrificed lives of dignity and the financial masochism that were the givens for so many in my own generation -- this conversation brought to my ears, at least, a new strand: the unwillingness of emerging leaders to be mere custodians of organizations they inherit."There are plenty of us eager to give ourselves to the arts." they said, "But unless we are given the same authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as you yourselves were given, we are not interested."
The current issue of Inside Arts magazine addresses the same topic. (free registration required) The article, Leading into the Future, starts out talking about a young woman who becomes involved with an arts organization, ends up working 90 hour weeks and finally quits and starts working for a finance firm because the pay and opportunities to pursue her musical interests are much better. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending as the woman ends up working for the Future of Music Coalition.
The general theme of the piece is that arts organizations need to recognize what the interests and goals of young people in the arts are. While the arts can't offer good pay, the industry can provide people with a means of expressing themselves. Only, they need to be allowed the time to do so.
The article quotes Andrew Taylor in his role as head of the Arts Management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"We have an astounding resource in terms of the value and power of the work, but we've created rigid structures that are not the kind of places young people want to work. My students are passionate, skilled and trained, but when they get into a place with an apprentice mindset, and they don't get meaningful work for the first three to five years, it's a waste on both sides."
and later is quoted as saying
"Some experienced leaders say there aren't people ready to step up, but that's because they don't see people exactly like them," Taylor said. "The perception is that the younger generation is not as committed . . . [but] there are young people all over the place who are passionate and ready to lead."
This is definitely an area to keep an eye on. As arts leadership approach retirement age, succession issues are going to come to the fore. Questions will emerge about not only who will take over but how these new leaders expect their organizations to operate in relation to employees.
I am not a big Oprah fan but I heard a story last week on All Things Considered that really impressed me as to how invested her show is in the success of their partners. The story focuses on a small company with 6 employees whose soaps were chosen to be given away on air as part of Oprah's Favorite Things.
One of the things the Oprah people did was send the company technical details for their web server to make sure their website didn't go down from all the visits they were likely to get. Apparently Oprah's website gets near 4 million hits alone when she does her favorite things shows. It just strikes me that the show could easily regard the show as throwing favor to the small company and let them fend as best they can. Some of the other favorite things were made by corporations like Samsung, Hasbro, United Artists and LG electronics who have to resources to maintain websites and fulfill orders and are more likely to be partners in the future.
Even though arts organizations feel like they are the ones seeking/begging favor, there are plenty of times when arts organizations have the opportunity to make a partner's experience more enjoyable. It might be the quality of advance materials for a school outreach or giving a sponsor a high quality of care even though they aren't one of your bigger donors.
A little audience participation activity in the spirit of the season---
I was looking up the story behind terming a Broadway flop a turkey and discovered I can't find anything definitive. The story I had originally heard was that any show that couldn't sustain itself past the holiday season was termed a turkey. Good for consumption only during the holiday season I suppose.
Searching the internet, I came up with this quiz about turkeys in general which claims the term originates "After a show called "Cage Me a Turkey" that was so bad it closed before intermission on opening night."
That story frankly doesn't ring true for me.
I found another explanation on a listserv archivepost by Gerald Cohen that literally employed a turkey or the egg argument that doesn't solve the mystery.
"Theatrical _turkey_ is traceable to burlesque theatre, but here a problem arises: we find reference both to _turkey shows_ and _turkey troupes_. Which one came first? Were the turkey shows so called because they were performed by turkey troupes? Or were the turkey troupes so called because they performed turkey shows? And whichever came first, why was _turkey_ used?"
Cohen later gives the best explanation I have found.
"In the mid-1920s _turkey (show)_ was extended from a strictly burlesque context to the legitimate theatre -- a development apparently due to an unusual streak of bad quality that hit the legitimate theatre in Syracuse at that time. The road shows were derided in Syracuse as 'turkeys,' with clear reference to the itinerant (fly-by-night, grossly incompetent) turkey troupes of burlesque vintage. From Syracuse the extended use of _turkey_ 'third rate production (in the legitimate theatre too)' spread to New YorkCity and hence into standard slang."
But that is merely the best explanation in terms of best research. I am interested in hearing what other stories are out there to back up the use of the turkey label. If you a story, I wanna hear it, so tell it in the comments section.
So the stagehands strike on Broadway is going so poorly, the producers canceled the entire next week of shows because they don't believe there will be a resolution any time soon. I read somewhere that the folks who own and manage the theatres had been building up a war chest for a number of years so they could weather the next big strike.
Unfortunately, none of that hoarded money will go toward paying off the investors in the shows that have shut down. As far as they are concerned, everything is going to hell.
But investing in Broadway shows has always been a risky proposition. The expectation is that you will lose all your money and it is a shock when you actually see some return whereas most investments operate on the opposite assumption. The only thing you are generally guaranteed as an investor are tickets to opening night and an invitation to the opening night party. (Unless things go south before the show opens.)
If you have ever wondered about the mechanics of investing in a Broadway show, the Franklin Weinrib Rudell & Vassallo law firm website has an article on the subject. While the law doesn't protect you from losing your shirt, it does limit losing ones shirt to those who won't be left destitute by the loss. New York State has very stringent laws regulating investments in Broadway shows. If the total investment being solicited is in excess of $5 million, which most are these days, the show is subject to Federal Securities law. Since compliance with NY State laws can be very expensive due to all the legal fees involved, it is preferable to be subject to the Federal statutes.
Even if the total investment sought is under $5 million, a production can avoid being subject to the stringent NY State laws if "potential investors must be furnished with a thorough disclosure document (unless all the investors are accredited, in which event no particular type of information is stipulated); and there may be no more than 35 unaccredited investors, all of whom must demonstrate that alone, or together with a purchaser representative, they have the financial knowledge and experience necessary to evaluate the merits and risks of the offering."
An accredited investor is "defined as an individual with a net worth in excess of $1 million, or who, in each of the last two years, has earned income in excess of $200,000 per year (or $300,000 with spouse), with a reasonable expectation of reaching that amount in the current year."
Investing in Broadway shows is not for the risk averse or financially insolvent. The article discusses many of the financing structures that are used when investing in productions. The more money one brings to the table, the better deal one can negotiate--including a percentage of the producers profits above the normal investor's cut. So if you are interested in the intricacies of funding a Broadway show, give the piece a read.
Today on NPR, commentator Frank Deford talked about the flak he got from listeners for a story he did a few weeks ago about Princeton Athletic Director, Gary Walters, belief that sports should be viewed with the same prestige as the arts.
What was interesting to me was that in his original piece a few weeks ago, Deford spoke of college sports in terms like "...dismissed as something lesser — even something rather more vulgar...", "Its corruption in college diminishes it so and makes it all seem so grubby." The title of the piece online even compares sports to Rodney Dangerfield.
He puts forth Walters' argument that "Is it time, for the educational-athletic experience on our playing fields be accorded the same ... academic respect as the arts?" and "Athletic competition nourishes our collective souls and contributes to the holistic education of the total person in the same manner as the arts."
He wonders if there isn't a double standard in that "a young musician major in music, a young actor major in drama, but a young football player can't major in football?"
However, in his piece today, sports don't seem to have it so bad in colleges and universities. "I'm afraid the game is over. In our American academia, the arts must be satisfied with the leftovers," Deford says. He goes on to quote John V. Lombardi, the president of the Louisiana State University System: "
"Mega college athletics ... prospers because for the most part we (our faculty, our staff, our alumni, our trustees) want it. We could easily change it, if most of us wanted to change it. All protestations to the contrary, we ... do not want to change it."
What sums the situation up for me is Deford's line that "sports in our schools and colleges are not only ascendant, but greedier and more invulnerable than ever." While it is true that his first piece is about academic prestige and the second is more about which programs get better funding and a comparison of the two is apples and oranges. It seems to me that athletics have prestige and funding and seeing that they lack only recognition as a worthy academic pursuit are greedy to acquire that as well.
I have never been terribly put out by the inequities in sports and arts funding in schools. I make grumbling noises about funding decisions that favor sports over arts and the hardwood flooring and office suites athletics officials have at my school. But after a few moments, I move on and don't dwell upon it.
I am a bit concerned though that people would be thinking that an activity that has always been adjunct to the academic experience should be an academic experience. There are already too many exceptions made for athletes academically as it is. When a dance or theatre major is failing history or missing classes because they were in rehearsal the night before, their academic career is in jeopardy. Not so with the college athlete.
Now people want to give them academic credit for playing sports? In the context of all the scandals that have emerged, how can a degree based on sports credits be viewed as credible? How can a big sports university that grants the degree maintain its credibility even? If anything, I would agree with the argument that often comes up that schools should drop the pretext that the students aren't there primarily to perform athletically rather than academically. Better to emulate the G.I. Bill and guarantee them an education at the end of 4 years of service.
I will admit that art and sport are joined in so many discussions that in some respects their existence seems intertwined like two planetary bodies orbiting each other. In terms of aspects of each that qualify as academic pursuits, they are quite different. While there are some like Tony Kushner who believe that undergraduate art majors should be abolished, there are elements to arts training which are more dependent upon instruction in other subjects than athletics are. An artist's understanding of their craft is enhanced far more by studying literature, history, physics, language, material sciences than for an athlete. That is, in fact, what Kushner suggests an artist study as an undergrad rather than majoring in the arts. At no time does he feel the arts are not worthy of academic study.
Which is not to say that arts majors are taking advantage of these opportunities to the extent they should any more than the athletes are. It would be great if artists were feted and recruited in the manner athletes are, but that isn't the world we live in. Perhaps athletes should be renumerated in accordance with the financial benefit their performance has for their school, but those activities should not be equated with academic achievement.
Back at the end of September a large meeting of people in the philanthropy world was held sponsored by Union Square Ventures which was recorded on their blog under the title Hacking Philanthropy. They posted the transcript of the meeting but given that there were about 40 people at this all day session, it is mighty long. Even after reformatting it so I could read and reference it a bit better, I haven't had the time to tackle it.
One of the principals at Union Square Ventures posted his reflections on the meeting last month. One of the interesting things he observed was is that the relationship between individual donors and recipients.
"Historically, philanthropy has been dominated by organizations that gather funds from donors based on mission statement and a prior track record and then distribute those funds to those in need. Once the check was written, the donor’s work was done....Recently we have seen the emergence of a new type of charity, one that radically changes the relationship between donors and recipients. Nonprofits like DonorsChoose and Kiva behave more like marketplaces than traditional charities. This new model allows people in need to post a request for a gift or a loan to the site, and donors to chose which of those needs they would like to fund....
....But information technology also makes it possible to have a much more immediate relationship with the person in need. The appeals to sponsor a child have always had a deep emotional resonance, but it was not possible to put every child’s picture in an ad in the NY Times magazine. Today, it is possible to host hundreds of thousands of pictures and stories on the web and to provide tools to for donors to quickly find the appeals that speak most directly to them.
Organizations like Kiva and DonorsChoose vet the recipients and certify there is no fraud involved and groups tools to promote their needs. DonorsChoose focuses on helping schools sends disposable cameras to teachers so they can document the good the donations are doing then passes the pictures and handwritten letters from students on to donors.
The next 10 years may see a growth in this model of fundraising. The core of an arts organization's annual campaign may be focused on maintaining the organizational profile on donation clearinghouses rather than direct (e-) mailings and phone banks. It would be interesting to see if larger foundations farm out fraud monitoring activities to companies like Kiva and DonorsChoose as these latter entities grow their proficiencies in this area.
I hope to post my thoughts on the full transcript of the meeting some time soon. The stout of heart might want to take a look themselves.
So, we have a new look here at Butts in the Seats. Things are still under construction as I work to figure out how to use this new version of Movable Type. My main motivation for upgrading was that I was getting nearly 1000 spam comments a day and I heard MT 4 had better spam filters.
Well, I haven't gotten any yet.
I was also thinking it was about time that I upgraded the look to take advantage of new features blogging software have these days.
I will be poking around improving the look over time. Today is my only day off until Thanksgiving so some of the changes will be slow in coming.
On the positive side, you can make your visits to the site a game and try to discover what changes I have made each day!
Over at Theatre Ideas, Scott Walters reposted a column he wrote for his local paper in Asheville, NC against the proposed construction of a performing arts center. Even though he is a theatre person and is generally not against government spending money on the arts, he felt that the construction was oriented too much toward bringing in Broadway shows and did little to help the local artists.
"Unlike other creatively vibrant local and regional arts organizations like, for instance, Handmade in America, the Southern Highlands Craft Guild and venues like Woolworth Walk, the proposed PAC is not focused on supporting local artists, but relies on touring shows to fill the 2,400-seat auditorium at its center."
In the blog entry that encompasses the text of his article, he discusses his feeling that the construction of the PAC is motivated by a desire to keep up with the Joneses by erecting a complex as grand as every other municipality rather than one that reflects the character and needs of the community.
"We are outsourcing our artistic life, and it is time for it to stop. There is no reason that local taxes should be used to import culture. If housing touring shows was the way to become an arts destination, Greenville-Spartanburg would be the NYC of the southeast. People come to a town because they can get something there that they can't get elsewhere. Nobody visits a town in order to hit the local multiplex, which is what this PAC resembles."
He suggests that the construction money be used to renovate an existing area into performances spaces that are appropriate for use by local musicians, theatre and dance groups and provides a communal gathering place.
My personal feeling is that arts spaces that are part of the daily life of a community or city (i.e galleries, band shells, cafes that can be part of a lunch hour as well as an evening out) are far more preferable than a grand facility with a more remote identity in communal life.
I must admit that in the last 5-10 years I have been a little uneasy about the construction of large performing arts centers because it does appear as if they are considered key to the prestige of city. It seems to me that the time when such structures are relevant is nearing its end and they will prove albatrosses for many cities. Unless such a facility is going to support a city's convention and conference business, I would generally be wary about their construction.
I agree with Walters that cities should be looking to support their local arts entities before thinking to woo Broadway tours. That is even before addressing concerns like spending tax dollars to import talent over their tax paying local talent.
This may sound a little inconsistent coming from a guy who receivesWa funding from his state arts council to import talent. I have been working to identify and include an increasing number of local performers in my season, though. I am often importing artists who are esteemed in their region and I am talking up the folks from my state in other places.
Walters is right that people don't visit places for their large PACs. Every time I visit my friends across the country we are going to the cool venues downtown, the band shells, the natural ampitheatres in the park. These are the local features they are proud of and want to show off, because they reflect the character of the community--something the big performance halls can't really do.
It is these types of places that will attract the creative class everybody is looking for to enhance their cities. These folks need places to express their creativity. If the city is cultivating large venues over their local creatives, they are going to gravitate to towns where local talent is valued.
There is a column on the Fast Company website, Ten Habits of Incompetent Managers that makes for an interesting read.
Some of the habits author Margaret Heffernan mentions are pretty common sense- afraid to make a mistake, keeping too many problems secret from employees, afraid confronting a problem will hurt people's feelings, focus on picayune details to hide general incompetence, heavy use of consultants and problem with deadlines.
There was one habit that never occurred to me and another that I wasn't sure could be true for the arts. The habit that never entered my mind was Inability to Hire Former Employees. "Every good manager has alumni, eager to join the team again; if they don’t, smell a rat." Heffernan believes if a person has spent a long time in the industry but hasn't mentored people who are interested in working for them when they move on, it might be time to be concerned.
There are some areas of the arts where following someone isn't practical, of course. But this criteria can provide a metric for some positions.
The bad habit I am not sure could be applied to the arts is Long hours. Says Heffernan-
"In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you’d better not let him manage anyone else."
Managers in the arts work long hours because the hours are often long and there is a lot of work to be done and few people to do it. I will concede, however, that a lot of arts people see working long hours as heroic. I have conflicting thoughts about this. Since I have engaged in long hours in the name of art, I acknowledge that putting in the hours is a necessary part of the job.
I also feel that those who work long hours over an extended period of time, perhaps secretly thriving on their martyrdom, they are masking serious deficiencies in an organization. If it is not clear that the work load is beyond the organizational capacity, changes to procedures can not be effected, staffing needs aren't addressed and additional programs are created in the belief there is a little wiggle room. It isn't until people leave or collapse in exhaustion that the extent of the problem is realized.
This weekend we had some pretty heavy rains which revealed leaks in places we didn't know we had them. And I am not using literary license when I say that. Two years ago we had 6 weeks of rain and there weren't leaks anywhere near where it was cascading down the walls yesterday.
As a result, I spent the day repositioning fans to blow the carpet dry. However, before I left this evening I had to unplug many of them and return them backstage because they were being used for our production of the Odyssey opening this weekend. Not a few people remarked how fortuitous it was that the production design required us to buy fans to replicate the winds in the story.
One of the things I like about working in a creative setting is that one has requisite tools for said creation at one's disposal for other purposes. You are able to respond better to problems when they tend to crop up. For example, we don't need to put in work orders to replace light bulbs because we have ladders and genie lifts. We can rewire broken lighting fixtures, solder wires back together and test for circuit continuity. We can tighten what is loose and patch what is leaking.
Well, up to a point anyway. This weekend, all my staff could do was mop up what was leaking. Our theory is that a cast iron drain pipe has cracked in a place we can't get to.
Of course, some times self sufficiency can be a curse as well. Since our facilities are used after normal work hours, we have the janitorial department provide us with extra stock for the restrooms in case we run out in the middle of a performance. Since the cast and crew often use the building directly behind us, we often end up restocking the restrooms there as well. Heck, about 8-10 years ago, I learned how to stop a urinals and toilets from constantly flushing and return them to service. I have been fixing the problem ever since saving lots of water. Some member of the custodial staff is getting off easy during our show runs!
Given that I have had to master a wide variety of financial, desktop publishing, database, image manipulation and word processing software in the course of my job, I figure I have picked up a goodly amount of skills in my life.
Last week I suggested that being in the arts hadn't really helped out my math scores as much as the arts education advocacy ads suggest. I can't deny that being involved with the arts has provided me with self confidence, self-reliance and the ability manipulate the world and address the challenges I encounter both physically and virtually.
Has participation in the creative arts prepared me for life in ways that other academic subjects, television, movies and video games never can?
You betcha.
Will it do the same for your kids? Like everything else, it depends on how long they are involved and how thoroughly they embrace it. The current stage craft class at my theatre has involved themselves with a gusto and in numbers I have never seen and the professor has rarely seen. If I knew what it was that was motivating this group, I would bottle it.
I know they are growing in knowledge and skill from the experience because they are coming in when there is no class and using what they have learned to create projects for other class---far in advance of deadlines! (Honestly, I think they are pod people or something, they are so atypical of the usual students in this class.)
So yes, working in the arts might be a thankless job with long hours, little pay and low prestige. It may not make the most convincing ad copy for the arts in education people, but I have always prized my experience in the arts for the self-reliance having such a wide variety of tools at ones disposal affords you.