People are getting married and I will be attending. Posting shall resume upon my return.
Perhaps I will have some great insight about arts administration while doing the chicken dance at the reception.
I have been participating in some interesting exchanges lately. The drama production class produced a pretty dark adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Lab Classroom this semester. I wasn't too keen on the show in principle because it was set in a dance club and an organization in town had just finished their 3rd revival of Romeo and Juliet set in a strip club. I was annoyed that it was so derivative when so many other options available.
Taken on its own, it was pretty good. There were some inventive moments. For example, since the playwright decided the rude mechanicals didn't have enough time to rehearse and learn lines, he has them present a silent butoh version of Pyramis and Thisbe. The students did a good job creating the club atmosphere by having officious bouncers at the door, black lights in the stairwell and a half-hour pre-show of the characters dancing in the club. The pre-show lent itself especially well to establishing the Helena-Demetrius-Hermia characters and backstory.
In any case, the show sold out every night of the extended run. The director started thinking it would be great to do it on Mainstage setting up platform seating around a playing area on stage rather than having the audience sit in the permanent seats. The playwright and I are both against the idea because the dynamics of the show will be entirely different. Instead of the cramped quarters and low ceilings of the Lab classroom, audiences will be watching a show surrounded by the wide open spaces of the wing space on the sides and the 70 feet of air in the fly system overhead.
To create the same ambiance, we would have to have everyone come in through the loading dock roll up door at the back of the theatre, build a hallway through the shop into a room we constructed on stage. At a certain point it seems strange to build a theatre inside your theatre. Even still the relationship of the audience to the actors and to each other is going to change. The small basement space holds 75 people which translates to two rows of 12 chairs on three side of the playing area. The director is talking about serving an audience of 300. Even if the performance was done fully in the round, that is 75 people in each direction. This increase in both the width and the depth of the seating area changes the size of the playing area and reduces the sense of tension and conflict.
Of course, part of the endeavor would be to create an entirely new production that had its own character rather than to recreate the elements of a past success. Though as the playwright pointed out, each revival of the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet adaptation was worse than the one before. Granted, they didn't have the benefit of our superb production team. The adage about not being able to enter the same river twice probably is a good caution when considering your motivation for reviving a show.
The date proposed for the revival is Fall 2010 and a lot can happen in the interim. Perhaps both the playwright and I will feel less strongly about the topic a year from now when the time comes to decide such things. I don't talk a lot about the decision making process I go through here on the blog. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to record some of the considerations that have come into play. It will be interesting to me to see how I view things next year and 18 months hence if the decision to perform it on our mainstage is made.
Given the dearth of conductors with the celebrity grade gravitas to attract audiences, the Detroit Symphony is trying out a replacement in the form of a robot made by Honda. Asimo, as the robot is known is said to be a strict task master and citing a perceived lack of discipline among the musicians, has ordered them fitted with electrodes in order to monitor when their focus is about to waver. When the brain waves associated with an imminent change in focus are detected, a mild shock will be automatically administered to the musician. Asimo will also have manual control of the system and has stated he hasn't ruled out its use as a general disciplinary tool.
Ah, it is a pity these stories didn't come out around April 1st!
While the robot is conducting and the technology to detect a loss of focus before it occurs does exist, they are independent of one another. Initially I was going to suggest the brainwave monitoring for orchestra/ballet/opera audiences to ensure their attention throughout. When I came across the robot story though, the idea of it torturing the musicians was much more fun. Frankly, given some of Jason Heath's gig stories, a sadistic robot conductor may not necessarily be far fetched.
Via the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required, I believe) is a story about a study of M.B.A. student perceptions that the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education conducted. Some of the results reveal some attitudes that non-profits, especially those focussed on social and environmental issues, might find heartening.
From the Chronicle article,
"Students seem to be saying that they really want to have careers with a positive impact on society, but they're feeling like they can't do that in mainstream business," said Nancy McGaw, deputy director of the institute's Business and Society Program. "There's a disconnect there."
Among those surveyed, "Only half of the 2007 respondents think that their personal integrity figures largely in corporate recruiters’ evaluation of them as a potential employee." About 80% believe they will be faced with a situation that would challenge their morals and values and about 90% said they expected they would look for work elsewhere if they encountered that situation. Less than half said they would voice their objections.
This report might be a wake up call for non-profits to become more involved in recruiting M.B.As. They can provide graduates with a situation that embraced their values, provided an opportunity to make a positive impact and made them feel they could speak up rather than quit when faced with moral quandaries. I had taken a little poke at a CareerBuilder.com article a couple weeks ago for implying the grass might be greener in non-profits. One of the motivations CareerBuilder mentioned that I didn't necessary find fault with was achieving ends by questionable means. Given that this is something MBAs imagine they would quit in order to avoid confronting, this could be one of the stronger selling points for non-profits.
Though the students are just as concerned about renumeration and work-life balance as anyone.
That factor will always need to be addressed.
I am making an assumption indirectly that non-profits are not actively recruiting MBAs given the fact that the students don't feel that sociopolitical knowledge is valued by recruiters and that good social and environmental practices aren't anything more than good public relations opportunities rather than integral to the value of the company and bottom line. Reading the survey results, much of this appears to be due to the way the training in their program is conducted. So it may take some lobbying of MBA programs to effect some changes in addition to showing up on career day.
There is a great illustration (in my mind as least) for why arts people need to value learning and be cognizant of what is happening elsewhere in a story out of Orlando. It seems the Orlando Opera Company and Orlando Ballet have decided to try to bump their subscribers out of the balcony and into the more expensive floor seats in an attempt to make that area look fuller and increase revenue.
The subscribers are none to happy and are resisting. Just like the subscribers at the Honolulu Symphony did when the balcony seating prices were both raised and that section closed until the floor section was filled. Just like the subscribers at the Boston Symphony Orchestra did when that organization increased balcony seating prices by 80% in one year. Both Honolulu and Boston backpedaled and admitted the increases were ill advised. I suspect the opera and ballet in Orlando may end up doing the same.
Fortunately, the Orlando Philharmonic hadn't received the advice the opera and ballet did about changing the pricing structure or this entry would make it seem like orchestras were the only ones making this poor decision. Or at the very least, weren't doing a good job presenting this new policy to their audiences. I am not sure there is a good way of making such a large change in one year's time palatable without investing a whole lot of time and money in the campaign.
The Orlando Sentinel article mentions that the opera and ballet had received the results of a study. I wonder who did the study and how they came to the conclusion that subscribers would tolerate this in acceptable numbers. I could believe a study that found people would tolerate a price increase of X amount over what they are paying now. Likewise, I could foresee people grumbling but generally acceding to moving their seats to the floor for the same price if they were told it was a cost saving measure. (Don't have to pay the ushers for the balconies, perhaps.) It would be a sneaky way to get people out of the seats and raise the prices the following season when you reopen the balcony due to demand. People would probably be rather angered at such a move when it emerged a couple years hence.
I would be rather incredulous at a study that found it would be productive to both displace subscribers and place them in a situation where they were paying more than the previous year. (If anyone knows of a case of the decision succeeding, I would love to know!) I would ask to see the research that back that up and if it didn't include a fair sampling of my ticket purchasing base, I would be rather skeptical. In other words, I am wondering if they even talked to anyone in those seats. (Or researched how similar decisions played out.) I don't expect any of them would have answered yes to a question that flat out asked if they would be willing to give up their seats so some extensive communication of the rationale would need to transpire. Which would be a pretty good opportunity to gauge the most effective way to communicate the rationale.
There are obviously too many factors of which I am unaware to make a real judgment about why the decision was made. I feel secure though in stating that their case doesn't appear to have been communicated well.
There is a piece on the online journal, Spiked from Frank Furedi decrying the English government's prescriptive use of music in their sponsorship of the Music Manifesto. My first thoughts were that this is what comes from positioning the arts as having all these benefits when asking for money. This is further evidence that the authors of Gifts of the Muse in saying the arts were ill served emphasizing these elements over the intrinsic value of the arts. I also thought that it should come as no surprise that governments would be employing music to advance an agenda. This has been happening for centuries from the Medicis to the current day where popular music is used to sell everything from cars to presidential candidates.
Perhaps I have been exposed too much to commercially motivated music, but I had a difficult time envisioning music as a vehicle for seeking and serving Truth. Perhaps it is the lack of this connection to Truth or my inability to see it that can be attributed to what he cites as "impersonal force of the market impinged on the development of art and culture."
My initial cynicism about his complaints aside, there were a number of observations he made that I hadn't really considered. For instance, he notes that by valuing who will be attracted by the experience over the art itself, "what really matters is the audience rather than the music that the audience listens to. The question of who sits in the audience, rather then what they hear, shapes official thinking on music today."
I have seen this myself. Every final grant report I fill out regardless of whether it is privately or publicly funded asks me how many K-12 students were served. Many ask about the racial make up of the audience and if my program was designed to serve specific races or K-12 students. Some ask how the programs reinforce family values and self-sufficiency. I am occasionally tempted to ask how a particular government policy is actually reinforcing these things. The arts shouldn't necessarily be looked to in order to patch what has been rent.
I do think that arts organizations should be paying attention to who is attending. I am happy not to have to break down my audience into all sorts of demographics for my grant reports. One should always be assessing who is attending and how they are receiving it. Though the identity and number of people attending shouldn't form the sole measure of success.
One of the toughest parts of Furedi's complaint to tackle is the idea of accessibility equating to dumbing down. He criticizes music classes.
"Instead of providing an opportunity for pupils to study and learn about music, ‘music-making opportunities’ are often about involving kids in playing around with digital media and pretending to be djs...But frequently the ‘music-making’ approach is praised because it allegedly removes the ‘barriers’ that prevent children from ‘making music’."
and suggests that the real elitists are,
"the educational and cultural establishment who have so little faith in the ability of children to appreciate and learn about classical music. Their anti-elitism is a populist gesture designed to flatter ordinary folk and reassure them that not much is expected of them."
The question that emerges in my mind is how to structure an introduction to theatre, music, dance and art to people whose experience with these disciplines has come from movies, television, MTV and Photoshop? Are the activities you intend as a bridge between these experiences and the creative/performing arts underestimating your audience or does it provide necessary context? A contributing factor to activities that do indeed dumb an experience down is the receipents may not view the relevance in the same manner you do. So the bridging activities become the whole program rather than just the initial steps of a larger plan.
For example, does all the art and literature about the transitory nature of life have the same poignancy for people who can create and destroy a visual representation with a touch of a button? How do you cultivate an appreciation for an artist's technique in mixing colors or composing music when there is software that will correct those flaws? How do you instill a desire for preservation in someone whose criteria for doing so is based on the amount of room left on a memory card rather than what ever quality of composition is apparent on the tiny digital camera or cell phone screen?
I don't doubt that you can cultivate appreciation and understanding of art in people amid all of these influences. But if they don't feel it to the same degree or manner as you and your contemporaries do, you may never move beyond a certain point and allow them to develop a more sophisticated understanding. On the other hand, if you don't take into account that people experience the world differently than when you were their age and proceed to present the discipline in the same manner it was presented to you, you risk alienating people with your insensitivity and general cluelessness.
What is the balance then between presenting an accessible context that is intellectually challenging? It is easy to say that is your goal and just as easy to be diverted from the plan by what seems to be a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism.
I came across a link last week to a study the League of American Orchestras did. The freshness of the referring page and the fact that my monitor resolution didn't require me to enlarge the pages too much initially hid the fact that the story came out in January 2004. Thinking it had been published in 2008, I was wondering why Drew McManus and the other bloggers at Inside the Arts hadn't picked up on it already. For awhile there, I was excited that I might actually be scooping them on their segment of the arts.
Even given the time that has actually transpired since the publication date, the article, Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender, is quite pertinent. One of the toughest groups to survey is the non-attender so the results of any survey of these people are highly valued. And they should be given that it is difficult to find people who don't attend who are willing to respond. It isn't as simple a matter as going out during a performance and asking why people aren't at the show. (Though that does seem like a good place to start now doesn't it?)
While the results of the survey the story covers are in relation to orchestras, the lessons learned can be applied universally. The median age of these smart, aware people tends to be lower than those actually attending which makes them valuable for that reason alone. They believe they would enjoy attending a concert, but never get around to doing so. Some of the reasons are advertising design which is intimidating to those not in the know (though theatre advertising gets higher points.) Though to be fair, some of the most accessible methods of communication suffered from perception. Said one person who didn't know orchestra's had websites, “I mean, they’re playing 18th-century music. I guess I never thought they’d need
a web site."
In addition to being uneasy about how to dress and act, the Non Attenders are also concerned about not understanding the performance. It isn't just a matter of not having the experience and vocabulary to comprehend what appears to be a dense, complex work, but also not being as enraptured by the work as everyone else seems to be.
I think this is an important distinction especially in relation to music. In most people's general experience, not understanding music is not an impediment to enjoyment. Getting lyrics wrong is practically a rite of passage. Listening to music in a foreign language is quite commonplace and the unfamiliarity of the tongue not terribly distressing. Perhaps it is the attendance format combined with lack of reference points, but it appears people tend to feel more at sea attending a symphony. I cite the format as a contributing factor because even if a contemporary foreign language music performance is in a concert hall, there is often an opportunity to groove along with the music and establish a connection that is pretty much not an option in the presence of an orchestra. Or at least the glares will be quick in coming if are feelin' it enough to roll your shoulders and wiggle a little in your seat.
The article notes that one of the most important groups to an orchestra are the people who initiate the excursion. Though the percentages may be different, this is true for all the arts disciplines. There are always a few who get the ball rolling and organize the outing for rest of their group, even if it is only one other. Making this task easy for that person can go a long way toward filling the seats.
A sidebar that appeared within the article directed me to a website the League has set up to make people more comfortable with the attendance experience. This is something I have been a proponent of so I was glad to see it. Meet the Music helps you find a League orchestra near you. It also offers advice about approaching your first attendance experience. Among the things I appreciated about the site was that while they instructed you not to clap between movements, they also tell you to ignore the people who shush you if you do and acknowledge it is only recently that the practice of not clapping at that point has emerged. I also liked their advice about how to listen to the activity while the musicians warmed up.
The biggest fault I would find with the website is that it's existence isn't widely promoted. It has been around 4 years and this is the first I have heard of it. I took a look around at the websites of the members in 15 states and few people include a link to it or anything like it in their education or ticket purchasing sections of the site. In some cases, it is the less prominent orchestras in a state which do a better job linking to the site or have a similar FAQ that is easy to find. The NY Phil and San Francisco Symphony though both have FAQs that were either modeled after or the models for the guide on the League site. (I am having a real hard time finding something on the Philly site though.)
I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures when working in theatres is giving tours. It is probably because I don't have to give them often and so don't become bored with the process. I am a bit of a history buff so I tend to learn all I can about the facility in which I am working.
The interior of the Asolo Theatre in Sarasota, FL was once the interior of the Dunfermline Opera House in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland and was built there by Andrew Carnegie. When I was working there many moons ago, I had the pleasure of giving a tour to the then current mayor of Dunfermline who was visiting the U.S.
Today we gave a tour to a school group that visits once a year as part of their tour of all the theatres in town. I have to confess, I look forward to their visit and actually called them about 6 weeks ago to find out when they would be coming. To make something of a double confession, in doing so I wasn't so much committing my time as my technical director's. He typically handles the bulk of the tour with some comments thrown in by myself. Mostly, I just follow along and listen.
Don't get me wrong. I can do an interesting tour too. I have been a big proponent of having science classes come through because a theatre is a great practical example of physics employing counterweight systems, electrical calculations, additive and subtractive light, lens, load bearing construction that has to move, etc. Whenever someone asks what they have to learn math or science for, the reason can often be found in the theatre. I have spoken to some classes on these topics.
But as for the theatre itself, the technical director has been with the theatre for over 30 years so he knows all the stories and nooks and crannies. He has all the great stories to tell as the budding arts students ride the pit elevator down 20 feet and climb to the grid 70 feet above the stage.
Technology wise, our theatre is woefully behind the times but some of the most exciting parts of our tour are not technology dependent. I think one of the reasons why this school keeps coming back here year after year is because we are taking them to places they usually don't see and telling them great stories about what it is they are looking at. Again, this springs from the TD's love for his job and his facility. The stage was completely bare and lit by work lights. When we got to our lab classroom space, the always ready to ham it up students ran the small lighting board and instrument hang through its special effect paces. But that was at the end of the tour after plenty of pictures had been taken and questions had been asked about our big, empty space.
The technical director's ability to keep a group engaged with few bells and whistles reminds us where the true source of theatre's appeal is. Perhaps some might say it follows that his job isn't really a necessary part of the transaction. I would counter that it is his mastery of this very concept that has allowed him to create minimal sets that evoke much more with the meager production budget he is allocated. (Well, that along with heroic recycling efforts.)
I am not waxing so sentimental as to claim the look in the kids' eyes are all the thanks I need. I am proud of the theatre and like to show it off, however. I have been in and out of theatres so much I forget what a novelty it is for most people to be able to climb around and place their hands on things. I talk about so many problems and challenges on the blog I wanted to celebrate the wonder people can experience in an empty theatre space.
I am working tonight (and tomorrow night for that matter) so I don't have much time to write. I do want to take this brief opportunity to direct you to Ken Davenport's blog, The Producer's Perspective. As a producer of off-Broadway shows he has some great insights into the business in NYC like how to get your show produced, how much a risk it is to produce on Broadway, what does a press agent do, and the importance of having those who sell your product believe in it (and why that is tough to accomplish on Broadway).
Since he also takes a look at the implications of policy issues like today's entry on what the universal health care program being touted by the presidential candidates may mean for Broadway.
I had actually gotten an email from one of his assistants a year or so ago inviting me to see Altar Boyz in New York, but I didn't know he had a blog (maybe he didn't at the time.) I have to give credit to TheatreForte for turning me on to his blog with their tireless efforts at indexing arts related blogs.
CNN.com had a piece from CareerBuilder.com about the top 10 job prospects for Non-Profits. The growth numbers they cite apply to "advocacy, grantmaking and civic organizations field and administration is still the place to be salary wise.
I was rather amused at the opening lines of the piece-
"Do you feel your contributions in the workplace are overlooked? Are you consistently swamped with work at the office, but still feel empty when the week ends? At the end of the day, are you ashamed of what you've accomplished and how you reached the end result?"
Except for the bit about how you reached the end result, I think I am safe in saying that even non-profit people feel this way about their jobs. Though for non-profit people, the shame at the end of the day is more over how little you have accomplished in relation to what needs to be done.
Working in non-profits bestows no special grace that eliminates these feelings but they certainly may be offset with a greater feeling of satisfaction than you had in your for-profit job.
Just in case you are curious to compare some salaries, CareerBuilder also did a list of the top jobs in 10 industries back in February.
Much to my disappointment, Gene Weingarten got a Pulitzer for his little "experiment" with Joshua Bell in a Metro Station. While the award is for the quality of writing rather than the subject, it does lend credibility to the premise of the story itself. But I have already expressed my feelings on that matter as well as the attempt to replicate it in London with Tasmin Little.
We (meaning bloggers and various and sundry arts writers) often talk about how the arts attendance experience was a lot less like the staid and proper process of sitting in a dark room facing a stage. However, other than a few generalizations, we didn't have much to offer in the way of concrete specifics.
Or at least that has been the case here at Butts In The Seats.
Fortunately, blogger and arts critic Terry Teachout comes to the rescue with an article about the good old days in Commentary this month. Since he addresses piano concerts people who perform or attend such concerts probably have a better idea about some of the things to which he refers. It is clear to the general audience that things were a little looser by today's standards. There was more embellishment and improvisation even from the composers themselves.
"...British composer Charles Villiers Stanford heard Johannes Brahms play his Second Piano Concerto, he observed that the composer 'took it for granted that the public knew he had written the right notes, and did not worry himself over such little trifles as hitting the wrong ones. . . . [T]hey did not disturb his hearers any more than himself.'"
Liszt apparently had a urn placed in lobbies and would sit at the piano reviewing the suggestions placed within by audience members and would chat with them between pieces. Audience members, for their part "...thought nothing of applauding not merely between movements, but in order to pay tribute to a particularly well-played passage in the middle of a piece."
It is dishonest in a sense to talk about "how things used to be" because the reality was that these gentlemen were the popular musicians of their time and everything Teachout cites is no different than attending a contemporary music concert today. Musicians improvise on their own work knowing that the audience is aware of the more perfect version produced in a studio but don't care that they aren't playing it exactly like the album. The audience will applaud during the opening notes of the song, after the solo and will sing along. Unless you are the only one singing and are out of tune and drunk, no one generally cares.
Teachout says he is not encouraging a raucous free for all, but a general loosening of some aspects of the experience. I am familiar enough with classical music to be certain, but I imagine I would agree with him. I wouldn't necessarily want people walking through the aisles hawking oranges while I am watching Shakespeare. The language is so complex and delicious that you need to devote a bit more attention than you would at a Mamet play which, truth be told, has a complexity and deliciousness of language of its own.
It doesn't take much effort to imagine someone associated with an orchestra would say the same thing about the product they offer. It may have been popular entertainment at one time, but it does require more attentiveness to appreciate these days.
My picture was in the paper this Friday for an extra-curricular activity I engage in. It had been taken a few weeks ago so when someone mentioned they had seen me, I discounted it. Since then I have been congratulated and razzed by everyone from co-workers to my dentist.
As I was leaving work this evening, the assistant theatre manager said I should put the photo up on our website to humanize the organization a little. I dismissed the idea because the organization isn't about me and the goofy poses I take while not at work.
As I drove home, I started having second thoughts. People don't support organizations, they support and donate to people. That is one of the reasons why I generally make a short curtain speech enjoining people to turn off their cellphones, pointing out the fire exits and telling them what a wonderful time they are about to have. I could record this stuff but the human element is eliminated. Certainly having someone in the lobby to congratulate, complain or petition that they can recognize helps with audience relations, too.
But do they really care about what I do in my off time? My supermarket was posting banners showing how different employees were working in the community as volunteers. Presumably this was to influence people to identify more closely and positively with the supermarket as a community entity. My staff and I are pretty much wrapped up in our jobs at the theatre and hardly have enough time to generate the same credibility.
Those banners struck me as a little manipulative anyway. As with everything, humanizing yourself has to be done correctly for the community. I don't know how well it did in Milwaukee, but I thought the video the Milwaukee Symphony did for the opening of their season worked well in this regard. They filmed concert master Frank Almond talking about the upcoming season as they follow him around his house. What really worked for me was that they had his daughter dancing and twirling around the living room and zipping across the back deck on a scooter. It made me comfortable listening to him talk about his violin and the music he was going to play. The video made me feel like I would be able to understand and feel something from the music being played during their season.
It would really be great if they would let me twirl around in the aisles like Frank's daughter.
I am not quite sure if the dynamic between my organization and community is one where learning about the hobbies of the staff will positively influence our audience's perception of us. More to the point, I am not sure if I want my audience having a relationship with my private life.