I get your e-mails constantly: “Look at the just-released video for our next world premiere.” “See our artistic director talk about our upcoming holiday show.” “Watch our cast of Marat/Sade lip sync to Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’.”

Aside from the last example, I need to understand why I want to watch your video. Frankly, unless you have a cast of LOLcats performing Cats, the novelty has worn off. I am sinking in the internet video glut.

Let’s be honest: you’re asking me to take time to watch your commercial. My usual practice, when watching television via my DVR, is to fast-forward through commercials. So if you’re going to ask me to take the time to willingly watch your advertisement – oh, I’m sorry, your “trailer” – it had better be pretty compelling.

May I interest you in Eau de Chatte Chaud?

But that’s no excuse for asking me to spend my time watching a series of still photos with voiceover narration. If I want to watch a slideshow, I can haul out my old Kodak carousel projector and narrate them myself.  Even Broadway shows are using still images on video to sell a live, active art, due to financial constraints, and they’ve got more to spend than you do. Yet inexplicably, some look like perfume ads — and I have yet to see one singing child or live dog this season.

Your audience doesn’t know your limitations, and competing forms of entertainment are likely outshining you. You have to do better.

Why is your video low-res, or in a single take? I realize that minimal quality may hold sway in home-made YouTube novelties and on “Americas Funniest Home Videos,” but the work on your stage is so sophisticated. Your videos should reflect that quality. And even your phone can shoot in HD.

But here’s the challenge. It stands to reason that your theatre is filled with people who know how to make great theatre, but do they necessarily know how to make compelling videos? Yes, programs like iMovie have given the average nine-year-old the ability to assemble footage with great ease. At that age, Spielberg was cutting Super 8 film on his mom’s kitchen table with an Exacto knife. But software is not enough.

“Inge, from Lancome…because life is no picnic.”

Let me digress for a corollary story. In the mid-1980s, when I started working professionally, every company heard that they needed to get into “desktop publishing,” a means by which they could create all kinds of printed materials without resorting to waxing machines, t-squares and razor blades to create print-ready mechanicals. All they needed was one of those snazzy new Macintosh computers (PCs were woefully behind in this area) and a piece of software called Pagemaker. The result was, for a few years, a rash of the worst-designed documents you’ve ever seen. What no one seemed to catch on to was that desktop publishing was simply a new set of tools – you still needed a designer to operate it.

That’s where I feel theatres, and other arts organizations, are with video. The price point for the necessary tools is quite low, but your filmic expertise may be too. Do you actually have someone in-house with the skill to represent what you do well? Is there someone inventive on your staff who can create, with a modest budget, a piece so compelling that we may not realize we haven’t seen a single moment of your show in action and, better still, want to share it with others? Don’t confuse web design with video production – the same person may not be skilled at both.

If you don’t have resources that rival commercial ad production, or images of the work itself, do what theatre has always done: turn your limitations into an asset. Brainstorm creative concepts throughout your building. Find out if someone on staff, but possibly outside the marketing office, has film or video training. Don’t be afraid of humor. Whatever you can use, keep it moving. Remember, as a generalization, the stage is a verbal medium, but film and video are visual. Oh yes, and remember that most people will watch what you create in a screen window of only a few inches in dimension. Don’t make Cinemascope video for smartphone screens.

It’s been years since arts groups got wise to the value of professional and often sophisticated graphic design. It’s time to apply that to video as well.

Oh yes, and if you manage to produce a video of LOLcats performing Marat/Sade Gangnam style, I predict you’re going to go viral.

In the past five Broadway seasons, there have been seven productions of plays by David Mamet, making him in all likelihood the single most produced playwright on Broadway in that period, and certainly the most produced living playwright. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement, especially when you consider that Mamet has only had 15 Broadway productions in his career. Three of those 15 were American Buffalo productions, while another three were Glengarry Glen Ross.

Patti LuPone and Debra Winger in “The Anarchist”

But the impending closing of his newest play, The Anarchist, only two weeks after its opening, gives Mamet another record: this marks the third Broadway season in which there have been two Mamet productions on Broadway, with one in each pair closing prematurely.  For the record: the autumn of 2008 saw both Speed-the-Plow and American Buffalo (the latter closing in a week, while the former saw three lead actors in a single role, though it completed its limited run); 2009 paired Oleanna and Race (the revival lasting less than two months, while the new play enjoyed a sustained run); and now we have The Anarchist closing while Glengarry Glen Ross is selling well during a limited run comprised equally of previews and regular performances.

Critical reaction  certainly hastened the demise of the fast closers, but shows – especially those with stars, as has been the case with all recent Mamet productions – can manage to outpace critical opinion. But stars haven’t been infallible insurance with Mamet; a production of A Life in the Theatre, with the estimable Patrick Stewart and TV star T.R. Knight was seen briefly in 2010, the sole Mamet entry that season.

Cedric the Entertainer, Haley Joel Osment & John Leguizamo in “American Buffalo”

We can argue the merits of David Mamet as a playwright, or the quality of the various productions, but this spate of openings (and closings) certainly suggests that Mr. Mamet has imposed on our hospitality a bit longer than might be advisable. When the typical Broadway season only sees 40 new productions a year, two a season from the same playwright is not an insignificant amount – and in the case of Glengarry, it has only been seven years since the last production.

It may well be that Mamet is overexposed, and familiarity is breeding contempt in some quarters. What’s unfortunate in this spate of commercial programming is that some of Mamet’s less produced work – say the nihilistic Edmond or the ribald Sexual Perversity in Chicago, neither ever seen on Broadway – have yet to surface in major New York revivals, and as someone who has never been fortunate enough to see either on stage, I’d welcome them.

Aaron Eckhart and Julia Stiles in “Oleanna”

When Edward Albee’s stock rose after a season at Signature Theatre and the Vineyard production of Three Tall Women in the mid-90s, it triggered a wave of Albee revivals, mixed with new work, on Broadway and Off, allowing a new generation to see virtually every major work by our most esteemed living playwright, after a period of disfavor. There’s nothing wrong with David Mamet getting the same treatment (though he never experienced the fallow period that Albee did in the 80s), and I even delight in the idea that such a retrospective can take place in the commercial arena. But the Albee “festival” was spread out over some 19 years by the time we got to The Lady From Dubuque (and we’re unlikely to ever see The Man Who Had Three Arms).

Maybe our Mamet feast likewise needs a bit more time to digest between courses, so that we might be inclined to savor them more when they come. Speaking with a marketing and sales agenda, rather than an aesthetic one, I must haul out a cliché: absence, as they say, does make the heart grow fonder.

The word “reboot” came into common usage as a term for restarting a computer, often after it had mysteriously seized up and ceased responding to you every whim. While one might simply be rebooting in order to allow software installation to complete its process, it’s the former definition that has stuck, and been adopted by Hollywood.

Now, reboot is used rather profligately to refer to any version of a previously told tale which varies in any way from the orthodoxy or iconography of the original version. It’s a restart, a new beginning. On TV, 1313 Mockingbird Lane was a reboot of The Munsters; Buffy the Vampire Slayer  was a reboot of the failed film of the same name. In film, we are awash in reboots, with one failed attempt to reboot the Chris Reeve Superman films  already forgotten and yet a new version in the works, while Batman has been rebooted twice: by Tim Burton and by Christopher Nolan. Burton wiped away the camp while indulging his own dark and flamboyant predilections; Nolan drained the stories of color and humor as he stripped them down to nihilistic, vengeful basics.

Reboot is a new marketing buzzword as well, swallowed whole by the entertainment press. In succession, the past few James Bonds  (Dalton, Brosnan, Craig) were rolled out as reboots of the venerable tentpole movie series. We were even sold the idea that Skyfall was a reboot, simply so the producers could distance themselves from the debacle that was Quantum of Solace, the disappointing follow-up to the bracing Casino Royale. Fittingly for the Bond films, “reboot” is code for “forget the old, this is new,” even when the changes aren’t always that radical.

Despite the penchant for the reboot, which implies a fresh take, Hollywood marketing seems to be a startlingly imitative practice, and we constantly see posters and even trailers that seem to mimic others. Romantic comedies all look a certain way, so it really doesn’t matter whether we know the difference between Jessica Alba or Jessica Biel; action movies typically fetishize outsized weapons for obvious and Freudian reasons.

Which brings me to today’s whirlwind of comment about how much the newly released Star Trek Into Darkness poster resembles the art of posters from the Dark Knight series. I will leave it to others to do the comparative breakdown (here’s The Atlantic), but this appropriation of iconography strikes me, at least for now, as seriously wrongheaded.

As I’ve said, and as anyone who has seen the films knows, the Nolan Batman is a tortured soul meting out harsh justice in a city gone to seed. He’s a lone wolf, violent and alone. Now while James T. Kirk may be a hothead and at times reckless, he’s also the leader of a familial team, and even though the Star Trek template began in the 1960s, it has remained essentially unchanged through five TV series and a spate of films (of varying quality). While both Kirk and Bruce Wayne may live by the motto, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” Wayne took that as a call to solitude and self-denial, while for Kirk and his successors (Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer) it’s a motto to instill in others, a higher calling.

So the new Star Trek poster is provoking massive cognitive dissonance, not just because it seems to be a copycat, but because it has substituted one set of values, that of the (wildly commercially successful) newest Batman, in place of an entirely different ethos, the deeply humane roots of Star Trek.

I don’t think anyone is particularly fooled about the craven marketing ploy, but for me at least, seems a misstep. The previous Star Trek film, which didn’t so much as reboot the story as provide the origin tale we’d been denied, managed to merge up-to-date pacing and techniques with the core messages that drove Gene Roddenberry a half century ago. I wouldn’t call it a reboot, but merely a refreshing, and it was superb entertainment that found favor with audiences old and new; I was certainly among them.

So the new poster, instead of starting the drumbeat of excitement for the next installment, raises only doubt; the film’s title is complicit in this as well. At best, I can hope that the poster is merely the work of imitative hacks who think art from one successful series can simply be pasted onto another; at worst, I worry that Star Trek, which I have embraced from its earliest days and love even when it’s at its cheesiest, has gone over to the dark side. If I want dark, I can watch The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad (I’ve never watched either).

When it comes to the Star Trek brand, I don’t mind innovation, but I don’t want it wholly reinvented. I can accept new actors. I welcome brave new worlds. But leave the characters and the spirit alone. They’re what keep me coming back for more, literally decade after decade.

And so I wait with trepidation. My shields are up.

Ha! Made you look!

Let’s face it, we click on tweets, or posts, with a headlines like this one all the time. Shrewd folks playing in the fields of social media know that to get your attention, they need a grabber. It’s what sold newspapers once upon a time and it lures you to all kinds of content on a daily basis, even if the content doesn’t always support the sensational come-on. As with every infomercial, we can’t help wonder if what’s promised isn’t actually as good as we’re told; as with every con game, we’re willing to be lulled by the belief that some people have a secret that has long eluded most of us. In an era when a highly trafficked source of news and information rigorously chronicles “side boob” photos, the title above is downright dull in its allure. Although not to the right readers.

Since you’re here, let’s take a few minutes and dissect that headline, and consider what makes it tick, o.k.?

1. Numbers: Apparently, people like to know what they’re getting into, so quantification helps them make a decision to explore. If I’d said 100, you might have thought that you didn’t have time. If I’d said three, you’d figure there’s nothing really there. 10 is a reasonable number —  high enough to avoid the appearance of simplicity, low enough to appeal to a generation that now calls in-depth reportage “longreads.”

This isn’t necessarily new. A number of popular religions subscribe to The Ten Commandments (the stone tablets, not the DeMille film), so Top Ten lists are fairly ingrained in the consciousness of many, reinforced by Letterman’s nightly humor by numbers. That’s right: I blame God, Moses and Dave for this redictive approach.

We also seem to be drawn to round numbers, even though I would argue they should make one suspect from the get-go. How can rules, guides, what have you, always manage to work out to multiples of five? Sure, if it’s choosing the 25 Best Side Boob Photos, you can impose an arbitrary limit, but neat numbers setting forth ideas suggest to me that there’s always been a stretch to make things align, so they’re padded, and not all equally of value.

2. Guaranteed: Nothing in life is guaranteed, and that’s abundantly true in social media. Don’t we all get a chuckle every time someone talks about just having shot a “viral video”? “Viral” videos happen, we don’t create them, they’re viral only in hindsight. If anyone knew the perfect formula for widespread attention in social media, we’d all be doing it, just as if there was a right way to put on shows every one would be a roaring success. There’s no question that if you claim to have nude pictures of Prince Harry, and actually do, you’re going to garner a lot of attention, but even a nude photo of your artistic director is going to have limited appeal in just about every case (exception: Spacey).

As someone who shares a great deal of content on Twitter and Facebook, I can tell you that my most popular content has proven the most surprising. The most retweeted items I’ve shared were a late 1960s music video of a singing Leonard Nimoy with Spock-eared go-go girls (554 RT’s) and a mock apology to England for Sherlock’s losses at The Emmys (429 RT’s). My most popular blog was about my wish for greater respect for community theatre; under the title “Theatre The Theatre Community Disdains,” it has been viewed 300% more than my next most popular post. Yet these are all small potatoes compared to what can be achieved by celebrities, or cute animals. They’re not viral; they’re the common cold.

3. Social Media: There is no singular, unified social media. Social media is now a pretty broad category of sites and apps that seek to connect people, known to each other and strangers alike, though some manner of electronic communication. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Pinterest, Myspace (heh, heh), Instagram and countless others can all be easily categorized as social media, along with plenty of up-and-comers and also-rans (Google+, cough cough). So, unless you are actively engaged on every significant social media platform (and as an individual or small arts group, I suspect you don’t have time for that), it’s quite possible that some or all of the vaunted advice doesn’t even pertain to something you use, even if it is on target.

4. Hacks: While this word can mean everything from cabs & their drivers to incompetent, in this instance it’s derived from “hackers,” those greasy-haired, t-shirt wearing, basement-dwelling computer geniuses* that do everything from foul up corporate websites to reprogram the Kobayashi Maru scenario, exerting their will precisely where no one wants them to be. So “hacks” promise some illicit secret that will give you a competitive advantage in the dog-eat-dog social media jungle.

There’s only one problem. If it’s in a headline on a publicly available site, it’s hardly a secret, and therefore not much of a hack. It surely doesn’t involve fiddling with code or hardware like a real hacker. Use a rule of thumb I was once told about investing: by the time a great stock tip is featured on the front of a magazine, you’re too late. It may not be a complete waste, but you’re way late to the party.

You can’t hack social media. It takes goals, strategy, and a good deal of time to build an effective online community. Can you buy “friends”? Can you give them incentive to “like” you?Apparently, yes. But as in life, it’s not about the number of friends, but the strength of relationships. That can’t be bought.

5. The Arts: Exactly what does “the arts” cover, anyway? If you follow the editorial leadership of Sunday’s New York Times, it could be movies, TV, theatre, dance, rock music, classical music, opera, painting, sculpture. Although on Friday, they make a point of breaking out “fine arts” from the rest of the pack, so it’s not a one size fits all term – just like social media. The generality draws you in, often to find specificity irrelevant to your needs and interests.

But let me now turn that around, and suggest that if you’re only drawn to posts and tweets about the arts, or sharing those same items, you’re probably being too narrow. The social media practices of in other fields might be perfectly adaptable for your purposes; while there are wonderfully innovative people in the arts, there are also great ideas in other professions, and if you only stop for items about the arts, you could be missing out on a lot of great thinking that hasn’t yet trickled into the arts sector.

*   *   *

Now that I’ve dissected this common come-hither construction, you have two choices. You can use it to save time by not reading every bit of ostensible wisdom you come across and looking at some things that may seem off-topic but intriguing. Or you can use its fiendishly clever ruses to draw more attention to your own work and ideas. It’s up to you.

* This is the stereotypical depiction of hackers as portrayed in works of popular fiction. My apologies to all fashion-conscious and hygienic hackers with elegant workspaces.

*   *   *

Update 11/5/12 2:30 pm  Just hours after posting this piece, I learned of a brilliant, deadpan, satirical video produced by the Canadian ad agency John St., promoting a mythical service called Buyral, which purports to allow you hire clickers to give your online video the appearance of going viral. It’s quite superb. I hope it never comes true.

Sanjay at Froghammer must be so proud. You remember Froghammer, the firm brought in by the New Burbage Festival to shake up its advertising and audiences, to cast off their stodgy image. So bold, so vibrant. Oh yes, and (spoiler alert) in that scenario, a fraud.

It’s hard not to recall this fictional scenario, from the ever-brilliant Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, as the venerable Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada drops the middle word from its name…again, having jettisoned it in the 1970s and restored it in 2007. In the words of Stratford’s new artistic director Antoni Cimolino, who assumed his new post officially today, the name “is simple and direct, it resonates with people and it carries our legacy of quality and success.” It also eradicates the name of Shakespeare in the general promotion of the festival. How that plays out on its stages, and its materials, will be seen in the seasons to come.

Stratford is hardly the first theatre to diminish The Bard’s name. Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival began to transition as its Lafayette Street home became prominent and rose to co-billing in the portmanteau Joseph Papp’s The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, which later gave way simply to The Public Theater (which still produces Shakespeare in the Park, a catch-all that has included Comden & Green and Bernstein, Sondheim, and Ragni, Rado & McDermott in more recent summers).

Even the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, as it drew its last breaths in the late 1980s, rebranded as the American Festival Theatre, as generic a company identity as one could ask for but hey, doesn’t everybody love a festival? It left in its wake an assortment of Shakespearean named businesses around it, which survived for years, despite the closure of the town’s major claim to the name.

Professionally, for these companies, the rebranding is rooted in solid marketing theory. In the case of the two going concerns, they have grown beyond being solely Shakespearean companies, though it’s worth noting that the Shaw Festival has not yet renounced old G.B., even as it has expanded its own repertoire. If Shakespeare is less prominent on the stage, perhaps it is best to not fly him as the company banner, especially since conventional wisdom holds that many people find the works of the playwright to be difficult and off-putting, a perception aided by years of dull literature teachers in secondary schools. If your name is a misrepresentation or worse a deterrent, business sense dictates that you remove the obstruction; when I was executive director of The O’Neill Theater Center, I quickly moved to rework the company’s logo after multiple people told me stories about its caricature of Eugene being frequently mistaken for Hitler.

While these demotions of old Will are extremely prominent, he’s not about to disappear from the North American consciousness. His works are omnipresent thanks to their eternal brilliance, as well as the added bonus of their being in the public domain, free from royalties or restrictive heirs. Every summer, Shakespeare in the Parks blossom as far as the eye can see, not only in New York’s Central Park, especially his most arboreal works like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. And of course we need only look to England where his works, and tributes to it, are a perpetual Shakespearean festival of which they are justly proud.

But there’s no missing the fact that the companies perhaps most credited with popularizing and sustaining Shakespeare in North America in the latter half of the 20^th century have shrugged off their inspiration and their mascot, in the interest of sustaining themselves as centers of theatrical creativity. It’s hard to argue with that latter goal.  After all, when theatre is restricted, or beholden to a limited, outdated artistic palette, it atrophies and dies.

But for all the business sense it makes, I can’t help feeling a pang of loss as Shakespeare’s name gets excised. Once a befuddled high schooler, who came to love Shakespeare as I saw ever-better productions following a dire Julius Caesar in 9^th or 10^th grade, it seems a small but significant chip away at Bill’s rep in The New World. For the theatres, it’s crucial re-branding. For The Shakespeare Brand, it’s a crucial loss.

Another round to Sanjay. Fortunately, after 400 years, I think Shakespeare’s still ahead. For now.

[Update 11/2/12: This post has been updated to reflect that the Stratford Festival has now dropped Shakespeare from its name twice in its history, which was not clearly reflected in the initial press reports that prompted this post.]

How the denizens of Times Square have changed.

This past Saturday morning, I willingly went into Times Square. Why did I go? Because I had decided I wanted to see One Man, Two Guvnors again before it closes at the end of this week, and to avail myself of the discount seats at the TKTS booth. Why do I use the word “willingly”? Because, to be honest, I do my best to avoid Times Square if at all possible.

This certainly hasn’t always been the case. As a child on our family’s annual day trip into New York, seeing Times Square was a part of the ritual, as much for my parents as it was for myself and my siblings. That trip involved theatre only once; we were mostly sightseers, gazing in windows of stores in which we would never shop.

As a teen, traveling via train to Grand Central Station, entering Times Square was a sign that my goal, the theatres that lay on its far side, were very close. I am old enough to remember a billboard that puffed smoke to simulate a steaming hot cup of coffee; I am old enough to have seen Blade Runner in its initial release and marveled at the impossible vision of a future in which video images several stories high covered the exterior of buildings. But as someone who never understood the allure of standing in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop in New Year’s Eve, for whom colored signs took a backseat to the colored marquees on the side streets, Times Square was an eternal guidepost, never a true destination. As an adult, who in my 40s worked one block south of Times Square and had to traverse it at all hours of the day and night, Times Square became an unpleasant, tourist-clogged obstacle for which I had increasingly less patience.

However, the TKTS booth, at the northern end of the area, has always been a gateway for me, as it was this weekend. Going back almost to its debut, the booth has been an essential part of my theatergoing and, this past Saturday, after acquiring tickets with exceptional speed, I decided to play tourist for a bit, trying to take in Times Square as I might have once upon a time.

The video screens everywhere still do amaze me, since, as a Blade Runner aficionado, I continue to feel that Times Square is the future come to life, ahead of schedule. That some of these screens have become interactive, which was initially enthralling, has lost its allure for me, especially since they mean pushing through or going around the gaggles of sightseers, standing still, who seem endlessly fascinated to be able to wave at themselves on a giant screen. Yet I imagine that seeing these screens for the first time, or as the parent of a child taking in this experience, they remain a marvel.

A vestige of the past, at the Times Square Visitors Center

I wandered into the Times Square Visitors Center, which has been in place for years, but seemingly uncertain of its purpose, except as an acceptable public restroom. Though it now serves as a souvenir shop and ticket vending location, it also features some theatrical displays (costumes “in the style” of ones worn in famous shows), and small dioramas and video screens with Broadway history. Since New York has no theatre museum, even these small displays appeal, less for myself to whom they are nothing new, but for those who may wander in and get a bit of insight into how theatre gets on stage. The Visitors Center more successfully turned me tourist with the opportunity to gaze, from only a few feet’s distance, at one of the Swarovski crystal-laden “balls” that descend annually to welcome the new year; TV has never conveyed its size or intricacy fully; it reminded me of a long-ago visit to see the Tournament of Roses floats from a similar distance. I particularly loved the Visitors Center tribute to the scuzzy Times Square I remembered, where walking from 7^th to 8^th Avenues on 42^nd Street was to be avoided at all costs. Its method: three peep show booths showing video loops of that bygone era, with a giant neon “Peep Show” glowing above them. I applaud whoever conceived of this reminder, insuring that amidst the retails outlets, the true past of Times Square was not completely whitewashed away.

Back into the light, I crossed back to the environs of the TKTS booth, curious about the blue-shirted, self-proclaimed “Your Broadway Genius”-es who hovered just off the curb of Duffy Square, in contrast to the red shirted TDF employees who helped those figuring out the intricacies of the booth. I sensed a color war.

I approached one of the geniuses to see what insight he was dispensing, with his iPad in hand. Learning that he too was selling theatre tickets, I noticed the telltale Square attachment on his iPad and asked whether he could actually sell theatre tickets right there, and was told he could; certainly wandering ticket outlets from any location is the wave of the future for those untethered to a computer. What Broadway shows did he have on offer? As it turned out, the answer was none. The Broadway Geniuses offered only three shows – Voca People, Rent and Avenue Q, Off-Broadway attractions all. The same shows were available only feet away at the booth, so it would appear that the Geniuses were attempting to siphon off business that might otherwise go through the long-established, not-for-profit official venue. As I am not a tourist, I was not fooled, but I do wonder how many people are taken in by these misleading, opportunistic off-brand vendors, who I later saw accosting people merely sightseeing, not unlike the ever-present touts asking, “Do you like comedy?,” in an effort to lure in new patrons for a nearby comedy show. While I admired the technology, their aggressive pitch and inaccurate branding put me off.

The blue-shirted geniuses are hardly the only commercial opportunists wandering Times Square. In less than an hour I saw the following characters ambling along, taking money in order to be photographed with and by visitors: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Elmo (red), Elmo (blue?), SpongeBob SquarePants, Toy Story’s Woody, The Naked Indian, a stumpy Elvis impersonator, Hello Kitty, Alvin the Chipmunk, a Smurf (I can’t tell them apart), the Statue of Liberty, and an elderly man in a psychedelic bikini. I know these figures to be entirely unauthorized and I frankly worry about who is inside them, freely embracing unsuspecting tourists for a price; I also worry about turf wars, since it wasn’t uncommon to see several Elmos of varying hues in a single block. To those who say Times Square now feels like a theme park, these plush figures add to the perception, ever if they are an infestation, rather than an enhancement.  Curiously, I did not see the now legendary, more “authentic” Naked Cowboy; perhaps he was on vacation.

Three-ball juggling has replaced three-card monte in today’s Times Square.

There were yet more characters traversing Times Square in endless loops, with a different and more official purposes: young men and women “flyering” for Broadway shows. Dressed in costumes appropriate to the productions they represent, I saw a cheerleading duo from Bring It On, a red-stockinged, exuberant faux Fosse dancer for Chicago, several very polite rock dudes for Rock of Ages, umbrella skirted jugglers for Zarkana and a sole lackadaisical pirate for Peter and the Starcatcher. The cheerleaders in particular were happily posing, and jumping, for pictures with tourists; I admired the energy that they and the Chicago chorine brought to their task and wondered whether Times Square might be even more engaging if the plushies were banished and motivated representatives from Broadway shows both present and past peopled the territory, as Broadway branding and show marketing. I must confess, I would love to see faux Marthas and fake Georges drunkenly accosting tourists to hand them flyers for the upcoming Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? revival, but that’s my own improbably fantasy.

Another loop up back to the TKTS booth revealed a claque of uncostumed flyer distributors, taking a rest, it seemed, but graciously offering to help visitors regardless of what they were apparently paid to promote. A young man holding a fan of flyers for Newsical was counseling a woman on the best show for a six-year-old while the other flyer guys were making up song titles for an imagined Brokeback Mountain musical. They were a scruffy but gentle lot, with a noticeably collegial spirit among them all; no doubt they saw each other often.

Just off Times Square, in Shubert Alley, a youthful marketing team was hawking the attractions of a Cadillac and offering a free Playbill t-shirt for anyone who filled out an information form (think of them as the Glengarry leads). On that day, placed between two theatres without tenants (the Shubert and the Booth), they seemed a bit overeager and undervisited; I was effusively urged to fill out a form and take a t-shirt even though I assured them I had no need of a car. Clearly they were trying to meet goals that their location didn’t appear to support.

As showtime approached, a small brass band set up at the corner of 45^th Street, launching into “When The Saints Go Marching In.” Moments later, a couple walked past me, the woman singing and bopping her head along to the tune, clearly talking on a party spirit that was at odds with my usual grumbling about a crowded Times Square.

By the end of my visit, I saw that hustlers had not been vanquished from Times Square, they had merely been transformed from three-card monte experts to ratty-looking comic figures, but I also saw genuine entertainment and the potential for so much more. While I may not rush to walk through, let alone spend time in, Times Square again so soon, I saw opportunity for true brand-building for theatre and for New York amidst the haphazard assemblage of diversions.

The Theatre Development Fund’s TKTS booth in Times Square.

But nothing impressed me so much as the very first thing I had seen that morning. As I waited in a very short line to acquire theatre tickets at TKTS, I began talking with one of the line attendants, a chatty man, maybe my age, named Daryl, who spoke enthusiastically of shows and asked me about ones I had seen. We were interrupted when a family of three – father, mother and son of perhaps 10 years of age – left the sales window and the son, who appeared to have been born with Down Syndrome, walked up to Daryl, threw his arms as far around him as possible, and squeezed him with a hug, which Daryl reciprocated. Then, the mother approached and kissed Daryl on the cheek, and finally the father shook Daryl’s hand, before the wandered off.

I do not know what interaction I had missed, I saw only the genuine and moving results. Can that happen for each and every person who passes through Times Square? Of course not. But as the businesses, the theatres and the city seek to attract ever more visitors, perhaps they need to learn more about what Daryl offered, sans costumes, sans flyers, sans displays, sans script. Because I feel quite certain that for that family, and for me, Daryl was the star attraction of Times Square that day.

A famous cover from the early days of The National Lampon — which did in fact sell magazines.

“Unless business improves,” potential audiences were told, “we will have to close.”  Let’s parse that for a moment, this phrase that has popped up in ads and press releases a couple of times lately.

“Unless business improves” means that business is lousy. A honest admission to be sure, but when used in connection with entertainment, it also can say, “No one is coming to our show.” And if no one is going to a show, isn’t that a self-perpetuating situation? After all, who wants to go to a show that no one is going to? There must be something wrong with it, or else people would be going.

“We will have to close” is a statement of simple fact, since in theatre, if no one is going, you can’t generate enough income to sustain the run by at least meeting your weekly operating expenses. This seems rather self evident, given the first half-of the phrase. It’s amazing that news stories actually carry this phrasing straight from the press release, since it’s not news.

Taken together, there’s a somewhat larger meaning, namely that if you (yes, I mean you) don’t do your part, some unnamed ‘we’ will suffer. The unnamed we, if you think about it with a sensitivity to the people who make theatre, can mean that actors, crew and house staff will be unemployed. No one likes putting people out of work. But the we can also refer to the people who make the decision to close, namely the show’s producer(s). Without meaning to imply anything, I suggest that there is probably more sympathy among the public for actors than producers.

But that’s what is being played on – our sympathy, or looked at another way, our guilt. This message says it’s up to us to keep the show in question going, and if the show closes, then its our fault. Now perhaps we already saw the show. Therefore, we’ve done our bit and can’t be reasonably expected to go again just to keep the show alive. Maybe we’ve always been curious to see the show, in which case we either have to get a move on, or come to the realization that we’re just not going to get there. Or maybe we were never interested in the first place, and this sort of please means we can start gloating early.

Guilt, in general, is not a good sales tool in the arts. Being forced to eat broccoli doesn’t make it taste any better, and guilt isn’t going to make us want to see a show we’ve chosen not to see.

There’s a new variant of this. “Final weeks? Book and keep the conversation going.” Again with the guilt. There’s hope, this ploy says, but only if you act now, to co-opt the words of a thousand infomercials. Coupled with an ongoing campaign in which this same show constantly tells us about the celebrities who’ve seen the show, we’re made to feel like we’re losing out and we’re the ones dropping the ball. We’re not cool.

I haven’t named specific shows because they’re hardly the first, although you may well know of the ones that have deployed this maneuver of late. It’s a tactic of longstanding, yet I’ve never even heard an apocryphal story about a show that pulled this particular arrow out of their quiver and provoked a change in fortune. Might they have managed an extra week or two? Perhaps. But I’m unfamiliar with a turnaround. (Yes, Dreamgirls ran for months while advertising “final weeks,” but at some point, that devolved into a claim that no one actually believed. As many know from raising children, threats are only effective if you’re prepared to follow through on them.) This is a tactic of last resort, used when you can’t think of anything new to say or show about your show in order to sustain flagging interest. It’s a creatively bankrupt marketing campaign and death knell all in one.

At this time of year, when Broadway and Off-Broadway shows are closing in the seasonal culling of the herd, most merely announce their final date and hope that those who have yet to attend, or those who wish to attend once again, will be motivated by finality, and do what they’re able to do. The productions march stolidly to their final day, sometimes building sales as the end draws nigh, sometimes finding they’re really already gone. But telling us it’s our fault, that we should, that we’ll miss out? To me, that’s like ordering me to eat my broccoli. And you know what? I never have.

Anton Chekhov

George Carlin

You needn’t be an English major to recognize that one of the words in my title is out of place. The second word is a verb, therefore unless theatrical texts have become anthropomorphized and begun getting it on with each other, the word is inappropriately used. You likely recognize that the word “fornicating” is a substitution for a common vulgarity, for which it is technically a synonym. Said vulgarity is fairly all-purpose, and is often used as a negative adjective. You will therefore accuse me of bowdlerizing my speech, perhaps to avoid offending some perceived notion of community or even professional standards. You would not be wrong. However, for the remainder of this post, I will abandon all euphemisms and employ, as appropriate, language from which I have heretofore abstained from in my internet and social media discourse. You are thusly warned. Those of delicate sensibilities may excuse themselves.

So…

This morning, Playbill wrote about Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s 2012-13 season of five plays, one of which is a world premiere adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, by Aaron Posner, evocatively titled Stupid Fucking Bird. I know nothing about this particular version, but the title gives me the sense that it will perhaps be updated, and use a more colloquial patois than that usually associated with the master dramatist. Certainly anyone making a decision about whether to see the show will be unable to claim, should the language of the script echo that of the title, that they were caught unawares.

Of course, that decision-making may be impaired by media coverage announcing, featuring or reviewing that play because, in all likelihood, a number of media outlets will refrain from ever using the actual title. Some may drop the second word entirely, others may opt to print only “F——,” as if they’re fooling anyone. The theatre will face challenges in advertising the play, resorting to their own euphemisms if they desire to promote the work in compliance with the standards and practices of print and electronic media. On the other hand, they’ll likely get other coverage precisely because of this conundrum, though it will likely speak more of Carlin (George) and less of Chekhov (Anton).

This is hardly the first title to break the profanity barrier. English playwright Mark Ravenhill confronted us with Shopping and Fucking a number of years ago; Stephen Adly Guirgis confounded copy editors everywhere with The Motherfucker with the Hat just a couple of seasons back on Broadway. Dashes and asterisks got a workout with each of them, as did an entire range of smirks and jokes from on-air personalities. In some cases, advertising campaigns were altered midstream in a capitulation to public mores.

So-called profanity isn’t the only category of language that creates challenges for theatres and for those that cover it. The website address “cockfightplay.com” takes you to the current Off-Broadway hit Cock, since the title alone would apparently evoke undesirable connotations for some, the presence of a rooster silhouette notwithstanding. A number of years ago, a play by the late African-American writer John Henry Redwood, No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs, caused an uproar for the Philadelphia Theatre Company, which premiered it. We may be a country founded on free speech, but our ongoing inability to define pornography and obscenity creates a grey area; inflammatory words employed knowingly for artistic and cultural reasons are verboten.

Now I’m not advocating that every play (or musical) should begin using (and advertising) titles that may run afoul of prevailing sensibilities. But I’m also not one to deny any artist the right to express themselves as they see fit, although they should be aware of the possible consequences that may befall them and their work, no matter how much a producer or theatre company may seek to support them.  We’ve seen the phenomenon of ever more outrageous titles and topics being deployed in fringe festivals, but in that case it’s to help stand out from a mass of work and attract attention for brief runs in small venues. I don’t think Ravenhill, Posner, Redwood, or Cock’s Mike Bartlett were naïve in their title choices, they may have wished to shock, but I sort of doubt that marketing was their primary motivation.

Last night, on basic cable, the reboot of Dallas deployed “asshole” as an epithet, and I feel certain that I’ve heard it on various cop shows over the years. While Cock cannot be a title, “vagina” has become a ready punchline on network comedies, as has “penis”; perhaps it is the slang which makes it dirty? South Park, famously, had its characters say “shit” some 175 times in a single episode. I’m not talking about premium channels here; I’m talking about basic cable and broadcast. Frankly, often tuning in for The Daily Show a few minutes early every night, I can’t even believe some of what’s said on Comedy Central’s scripted series.

If we are not quite at a double standard, we are on a collision course when broadly accessible entertainment can be, to use a quaint old term, potty-mouthed, while the relatively narrow field of the arts are precluded from using the names they deem appropriate. Apparently, many fear unsuspecting 6-year-olds will stumble upon a newly profane New York Times Arts section, provoking uncomfortable conversations.  Once upon a time, theatre was allowed greater latitude than movies and TV in what could be said or portrayed; the tables are now almost completely turned. Surely if children can be warned nightly about the dangers of a four-hour erection, “shocking” titles for plays aren’t going to do much harm.

When I first heard it, it sounded strange to my ear. I wondered whether Charlie Rose had just misread his teleprompter, whether some young segment producer had written an introduction without being sufficiently steeped in theatre terminology, or whether it was simply a typo. But as my initial surprise wore off, I found I rather liked the word, and wonder whether it could brought into common usage in the arts.

Allow me to set the scene before going forward.

Having a moderate degree of interest in this week’s barrage of stunts by television’s network morning programs, I was doing a bit of channel surfing to see how the Katie Couric (ABC) vs. Sarah Palin (NBC) counterprogramming might be working, and whether CBS had anything up its sleeve as well. At one precise point, to give you a picture of the ethos of the three programs, Good Morning America had a interview with Camille Grammer directly opposite The Today Show’s visit with Tori Spelling, while CBS This Morning had a feature on what the 1940 U.S. Census reveals. In this particular atmosphere, I didn’t expect to find anything that might make me think deeply about theatre.

So when Charlie Rose, on the CBS program, began introducing an interview with Candice Bergen in conjunction with her role in Broadway’s The Best Man, it was jarring to hear the production described as, “a renewal.” Not revival, not revisal, not reinvention, not revisitation, not refurbishment. Renewal.

I’ve decided I like it.

Now there’s an argument that could be made for avoiding any of these qualifiers about plays or musicals, but there seems to be a deep desire to distinguish new work from that which dates back over some period of time, so I’ll leave that alone for today. Revival is the default mode; musicals which have been altered, whether in part or substantially from their original texts may be called revisals. The other “re’s” I’ve cited above are used on occasion, but they’re not standard terminology, in conversation or in marketing.

Yet whenever I’ve spoken to a director about staging a work which previously received a substantial production or productions some time ago, be it a decade or a century or more, they all say some variation of the same thing when asked about their work with it: “I treat it like it’s new.” Whether the creator(s) are alive or long dead, directors talk about working with the authors, collaborating with them, be it Shepard or Shakespeare. Yet the word revival carries with it, to me, a whiff of the grave, more resurrection or resuscitation of something dead than reinvigoration of something awaiting only light and air.  Yes, I’m parsing these words closely, perhaps pedantically, and through my own associations, but in a field that trades in words, their meaning and their implied or inferred (if not intended) message is tremendously important; I’m quick to challenge obfuscation or misdirection.

So I find renewal a very optimistic word, because while acknowledging history, it seems very forward looking, and indeed may reflect precisely what theatre artists hope to achieve when they look to past work for today’s repertory. It may even be goal setting: that when such works are undertaken, they should be renewed for both the participating artists and audiences, so that they are more than mere replication of something from the past, but are instead made relevant.

Do I expect this to fall readily into common parlance among our peers? No, that optimistic I’m not; it would require endless repetition. But having inveighed against the “er vs re” debate regarding the very name of our field, here’s an “re” usage I’d like to think we can all get behind when the opportunity presents itself or necessity arises.

So whether this morning’s usage was intentional, ill-informed or simply a slip, I salute Charlie Rose and his team. Renewal is refreshing.

I should note that I have not yet seen The Best Man and that nothing in this post should be construed as any comment upon that production.

I had been planning to write about the pros and cons of “Tweet Seats,” weighing the potential of technology to complement live entertainment against its potential for intrusion and distraction. Whatever your opinion may be, I will no longer seek to address it, because such debates could become irrelevant. The reason for that worries me and I hope we will all find consensus as I explain.

Earlier this week, having seen some of my prior tweets and blogs on the topic of Tweet Seats, a regional theatre company (that has asked not to be named) shared with me a letter and supporting documents from the Global IP Law Group in Chicago, in which the firm, representing its client Inselberg Interactive, claims that said theatre has violated patents owned by Inselberg. What had the theatre done? They had a Tweet Seat night last year. The law firm asserted that U.S. Patent 6,975,878 covers the provision of “interactive audience participation at live spectator events,” and indeed that quote is from the patent document itself, which you may review here.

I am not a patent attorney or an expert in the field of intellectual property, but I can read, and I have reviewed this patent; I urge you to do so as well. It refers to a “method” which, among other things,  involves “querying the spectators,” “processing the spectator data into results,” “transmitting the answers to a central processor,” and “broadcasting the results of the processing of spectator data.” It includes two line drawings, one which shows a device not unlike a Motorola flip phone from the 90s, and the other which shows three people using such device at a football game, with scoreboards that read “Answer A, B, C.” Although Tweet Seat events of which I’m aware do not show results on a commonly viewed screen, they are shared with anyone who cares to look at their device, both at the event and elsewhere, which the firm asserts is covered. Interestingly, the patent abstract notes that, “The method includes providing spectators with an interactive device”; while Tweet Seat events require people to use their own phones, but this doesn’t seem to have derailed the claim of infringement. It does seem a bit of extrapolation has taken place.

Deeper into the patent document you can also find what is referred to as a “Detailed Description of the Invention,” but in this case the invention is neither the device nor the software which would make such interaction possible. No, “the invention” is the idea of doing so. Nowhere does the patent suggest that Inselberg invented the smartphone or any of its underlying technology, nor does it make any claim to having invented Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other program, website or application which easily and freely permits people to communicate with each other and with venues, presenters and producers on smartphones. They patented the concept of using such things at some point in the future when the technology became available, and now that it has, they seek to profit from it or restrict it.

So whether you like Tweet Seats or not at arts events, whether you think anything of their sort is entertaining at sporting events, the intent of Global IP Law Group is to either “license this patent portfolio,” or shut down such uses, theatre by theatre, stadium by stadium, on behalf of their client. Through this patent, they would seek to monetize methods of communication that have already swept the world, albeit they seek to do so in a particular set of locations. They would charge a toll for free speech in theatres.

In the blog post I planned to write, I was going to discuss the fact that social media is extremely new, and that while it has gained staggering traction in a very short span of time (Facebook was only opened to the public in 2006; Twitter debuted even later), it is still in its infancy. A few decades from now, its integration into our lives, our entertainment, and perhaps even our art will be vastly more sophisticated; interactive media 2012 will look like radio in the 1920s or television in the 1940s. It is possible that our current resistance to social media as part of the live entertainment experience will give way to something less intrusive and more organic (if such a word can be applied to the meshing of the innately human performing arts and the fundamentally technological nature of electronic communication). But should we pay in order to explore that possibility?

The performing arts, largely because of their budgetary constraints, tend to not be early adopters of new technology. However, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and so many other resources are available for free (although one still must acquire a computer or smartphone and pay for internet access). But we make an easy target for claims such as those made in the name of U.S. Patent 6,975,878 because the arts do not have the ready resources to fight them individually or even necessarily together, and we are likelier to cease and desist than to challenge and persist, yet avoidance or capitulation would be unfortunate. We are lucky that this incursion on our efforts at creative communication encompasses professional sports, since that field has vastly deeper pockets, and may help to confront the concerns I’m spelling out. However, the Global IP Law Group asserts in a cover letter to their claim that several stadiums and arenas, including the Target Center, Xcel Energy Center and the Hubert Humphrey Metrodome have in fact licensed the technology from Inselberg; if this is verified, then we are already on a slippery slope.

It is unfortunate that this comes to light through experimentation with Tweet Seats, which at this point are far from widespread or de rigeur, but do evoke great passion from their detractors; many would be delighted to see them ended, but again, now is not the time to argue their effects (though I ask you to recall, if you can, the vehement response once upon a time to supertitles at the opera). If Tweet Seats are what alert us all to this wide-ranging patent which could close off a means of communicating with our audiences, of connecting with them in our theatres – perhaps even pre- and post-show and during intermission, which perhaps many would find less offensive  – then I urge everyone to fly the flag of Tweet Seats as a right and a choice, rather than a service we must license.

I have kept the confidence of the theatre that shared this information with me because, sensibly, they do not wish to further draw the attention of the Global IP Law Group.  But I have been able to show you the patent which is public record and, if you are a venue which has already been contacted, I am willing to be the conduit through which you may find others. If you have already held a Tweet Seats event, I certainly understand why you would not wish to alert the Global IP Law Group of your efforts, but perhaps you might use an intermediary to query the firm about its claims, on the grounds of considering Tweet Seats or some other interactive venture. But remember, Google is available to everyone. For free. So these firms may well find you anyway.  They’ll probably find this post within minutes of my publishing it. However, I have spoken with another theatre which held a Tweet Seats event, and they had not been contacted with this claim.

Many people abhor when material that is considered offensive is defended under the principle of free speech, but certainly the arts have had to stand for their rights when they present material which some might find objectionable. In this case, the specificity of the usage to be defended, Tweet Seats, might be seen in and of itself as impinging upon creative work, or disrupting the experience of performance, and therefore an offense. However, commercially restricting the practice does raise issues of free speech using common modes of communication. Whether or not we employ Tweet Seats or something akin to them is a choice every organization should be allowed to experiment with and make on its own, as we work to use the very newest technology to connect with our audiences, in our own venues, and to maintain awareness and enthusiasm for our work when so many other options beckon and so many creative – and perhaps generally palatable – uses of technology have yet to be conceived.

Addendum: Late in the day that this post first appeared, the theatre that went unnamed as the recipient of the claim against their use of Tweet Seats reconsidered their request for anonymity and chose to waive it. The theatre in question is Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam CT, where I was general manager from 1994 to 1998, and intermittently serve as a consultant.