I keep reading articles about how people are getting excellent response to customer service complaints by starting websites, posting public Facebook messages and kvetching on Twitter. The reports say that major companies are monitoring the internet and proactively addressing issues with customers based on what they see online, lest public opinion take off in the wrong direction.

Consequently, when I saw two affronts to, well, everyone who works in or loves theatre, I decided to test this theory. Since I couldn’t start a website to save my life, and reserve Facebook solely for friends I’ve known since college or earlier, I turned to my social media tool of choice, Twitter.

The first affront, which I became aware of via pro-theatre agitator Leonard Jacobs (@clydefitch), came from the USA Network (@USA_Network). I happen to be a great fan of USA programming, in particular their In Plain Sight with Mary McCormack and Frederick Weller, both actors with solid stage credits. So when Leonard’s brief tweet, leading to his blog, pointed out that USA’s new “Character Blog” had launched in 10 categories, but without theatre as a topic, I was incensed. After all, theatre has had characters (and character) since long before TV was invented. Did USA Network really feel that theatrical characters weren’t worthy of their attention?

So I sent out a spate of tweets chastising USA for their shortsightedness, to accompany Leonard’s own drumbeat, and what do you know? By late afternoon that day, USA Network was tweeting directly back to us, saying they had enormous respect for theatre and saying that they planned to add theatre to their repertory of blogs soon, asking us to give them time. I didn’t know exactly what they needed time for, since there are countless passionate, well-informed theatre bloggers who would jump at the opportunity for the promotional platform of a cable-network blog. But I decided I had rattled their cage enough, and took them at their word.

The second affront was more recent. Ovation TV, an arts dedicated channel, also launched a quartet of blogs under the banner CulturePop (@CulturePOPcom), and incredibly theatre wasn’t among them — nor was dance, opera, music or independent film, all aspects of Ovation’s programming. Instead, they offered a Bravo-like selection of Style, Art & Design, Food and “deals.” Consequently, I began tweeting my dismay. I had already seen the Arts & Entertainment Network devolve into A&E and don’t even get me started on where Bravo began and where they stand today. I’m even concerned when I see doo-wop acts on PBS during pledge drives.

I will hand it to Ovation – their response to my tweets was almost immediate, and while they actually seemed a bit peeved when I suggested they were relegating theatre to second-class status, a few back and forth messages established that they plan to add theatre to their blog mix. I have to give credit to whoever does their tweeting for their rapid response and genuine human voice.

So, you may well ask, what has been the result of all of this “lobbying by tweet” to date? Zilch.

More than two months after USA Network promised they’d be adding theatre, their blog selections are unchanged. My recent tweets have gone unanswered. It’s been several weeks for Ovation TV, and while as I write I can get 20% off at something called Poketo, America’s only arts dedicated network is running a website and blog series that barely touches upon the arts.

I am not naive. I understand that, to most TV networks, theatre is a niche, though frankly there are an awful lot of people filling theatres around the country every night. It appears that television, by and large, wants theatre, and indeed the arts overall, to remain a niche. Save for our friends at CBS, who continue to provide broadcast platforms for the Tonys and the Kennedy Center Honors, the evidence of commitment to the performing and fine arts on the television spectrum, which has multiplied far beyond Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels,” is minimal. Television rarely uses its vast reach and influence to inform Americans of the remarkable artistic work that cannot be seen via co-ax cable or satellite.

While I am quite certain that the prior paragraph particularly incenses Ovation TV, which does in fact offer a broad array of arts programming, their sudden investment in CulturePop online suggests that they may yet go the way of prior arts networks. If indeed they want an audience of arts lovers tuning in to them, they have to stand up strong and in a loud voice (known as marketing and public relations) stand with the arts community and promote not just their own television programming, but the artistic work available in theatres, concert halls and museums.

As for USA Network, their mission is not arts-oriented, but when they create character oriented blogs and leave out the very art form which first invented dramatic characters, they insult everyone who loves theatre. And that’s a shame.

These particular examples are perhaps petty, but they can be solved with minimal expense and some HTML code. Maybe if the leaders in the entertainment community truly stood behind the arts at every possible turn, we’d make the headway that’s necessary with our city, state and federal governments to insure that the arts are seen and supported for what they should be: an essential part of education and daily life, not some vestigial form catering only to the elites.

So make yourself heard. Blog, Facebook, Tweet to USA Network and Ovation TV and tell them not to take you – and all of us – for granted. It’s a step. After all, there’s plenty of pop available, but never enough culture.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

When I was a senior in college, I was sent to meet some relatively recent alumni of my school who had already begun to forge careers in the theatre. I remember the day quite vividly, and can still quote from it freely, even though of the two people with whom I met, one doesn’t recall it at all and the other remembers the meeting, but not the gist of the conversation.

At a distance of 26 years, one of the more salient bits of advice I received that day was as follows: “You know, if you’re any good at what you do, and you stay in this business long enough, you’re going to do just fine – because so many people drop out along the way.” Not exactly inspiring, but practical, grounded and, as I have learned, true.

Now I could easily spend a number of paragraphs parsing this advice and the factors that contribute to it, but I’ll leave that to you, because I’m more interested in a corollary to that advice, which I learned for myself: “If you stay in this business long enough, you’re going to meet your idols.”

Much is written, and said, no matter where you work in theatre, about “the theatrical community.” In my experience, the theatrical community is neither singular nor exceptionally small, though I daresay the number of people working in the professional theatre in the U.S. is probably smaller than the number of people working in the legal profession, or the medical profession, and it’s certainly dwarfed by any number of categories of public service employees.

But the fact is that theatre is small enough, fluid enough and interconnected enough that, over time, one builds up an enormous network of friends, associates and acquaintances, all of which Facebook, LinkedIn and the like would be all too happy to track and chart for you, were everyone you’ve ever encountered to subscribe to any one such service. I strongly suspect that in the field where John Guare popularized the notion of “six degrees of separation,” everyone in the theatre is likely separated by not more than three degrees.

Obviously the effect is intensified by a number of factors: how many theatres you work at or productions you work on, whether you move among different cities as you pursue your career, whether you change your area(s) of expertise as your career develops. In my case, I have had eight employers and five job titles, working in only three states; I have had some association with approximately 121 full professional productions, not counting workshops and readings.

But this is all prologue to the knowledge I declared above. And I will now launch into a seeming non-sequitur.

Last Saturday afternoon, I went to see a movie that, at that moment, was playing on precisely one screen in the country. In fact, I have this sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t even a movie, but a DVD projected onto a movie screen. It was a documentary about a once popular, now largely forgotten pop singer and songwriter named Harry Nilsson. I expected to be the only person there, and was heartened when I walked into the theatre to see three other people.

After settling down, I was aware of other people trickling in and settling as well, and of a couple who took their places in aisle seats across from me, just one row back. I didn’t not turn to look at them, but merely registered their presence, as one does. Then they began to speak to each other.

‘Wait a minute,’ I thought, when I heard a man’s voice. ‘That voice is awfully familiar.’ And so I turned and found myself perhaps five feet from Harold Prince. I immediately got up, took two steps, and politely interrupted, saying, “Hi, Hal.”

“Well look who’s here,” responded the legendary director and producer, who then introduced me to his wife Judy. He then asked why I was there, saying that they, too, had expected to be the only ones in the theatre. The chat continued, on various subjects, including a close mutual friend, until I excused myself just before the film was to begin.

I sat there in the half-light of the theatre, overjoyed. Because more concretely than ever before, I understood that Hal Prince knew who I was, remembered who I was, and was perfectly happy to have me accost him and start a conversation. All based primarily on his having done the American Theatre Wing’s podcast “Downstage Center” some two and a half years earlier – and his admission at that time that he watched our “Working in the Theatre” TV program, too. (“I have no idea when it’s on,” I recall him telling me. “My wife finds it.”)

Now I can imagine your thoughts as you read this. ‘He runs the American Theatre Wing. They do the Tony Awards. So he knows Hal Prince. Not a surprise.’

But what you don’t know is that, Sweeney Todd is my favorite musical of all time. It was by seeing the original production of Evita that I began to understand what a director actually does. A key factor that had influenced my decision to attend the University of Pennsylvania was that Hal had gone there, that at Penn I allied myself with the same theatre group he had once been a part of, and I worked on shows in the Harold Prince Theatre. When I was graduating, I wrote to him asking for a meeting, and though I never got a reply, my hero-worship was undiminished. On a trip to Las Vegas only weeks ago, I saw his revised version of Phantom. We even share the same birthday.

But, I hear you say, it’s not like this was your first meeting. No, it wasn’t. But it was the first time we’d merely run into each other, and he treated me as a familiar, a peer. There in Theatre 1 of Cinema Village, by sheer coincidence and a shared, obscure interest, I felt I had truly arrived, at the age of 48.

Yes, I have met many famous people. But knowing them is what’s important to me. I think that all of us who work in theatre are fans and no matter how long we do it, we remain fans. My frisson of excitement at running into Hal Prince last Saturday was a reminder of how much of a fan I still am, even though I needn’t stand at a stage door.

And for those thinking about their career, I can think of no better encouragement: “Do theatre. You’ll get to meet your idols.”

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

As I write this on in the late afternoon of September 11, 2010, I am sitting on lower Sixth Avenue in New York City. Had I been sitting here nine years and one day ago, I assume I would have had a view of the upper floors of the World Trade Center towers. I would not have been sitting here nine years ago, because the towers would have already fallen that morning, and lower Manhattan was simply nowhere to be.

Nine years ago today, I was about 125 miles east northeast of Manhattan, on the grounds of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, where I was just about a year into my tenure as Executive Director. The O’Neill, for those who’ve never had the opportunity to work or visit there, is a bucolic spot on the Connecticut shoreline at the junction of Long Island Sound and the Thames River, quite close to all major amenities, but (at least then) still blessedly a seemingly isolated retreat. It was, supposedly, on that very plot of land that Josie Hogan attempted to soothe and perhaps save the tortured James Tyrone, Jr.

When news of the first plane striking a tower reached us, shortly after 9 am, it was not because we had a TV on. In fact, there wasn’t a working TV in the building. One of the staff either had read it on the internet or heard it on the radio; I don’t really recall. All that got to me was that a plane had hit one of the towers. I assumed it was an unfortunate accident and went about business as usual. When the news emerged about the second plane strike, it was clear that this was no accident. I have no memory of when I learned about the crash of the plane that we ultimately learned had been Pentagon bound.

When the towers fell, we received the news, as if in some earlier age, only via radio. It was for me, and I mean this in the literal sense, incomprehensible. I truly couldn’t imagine the towers burning and collapsing. I had no visuals to provide me with proof.

By this point, of course, staff was glued to the radio and it was quite apparent that no work would be done that day. Reports began to come in of school closings, of business closings, of the State of Connecticut closing all offices.

Since I didn’t need to gather the staff, who were huddled around the best radio, I then made a snap decision. I told them that unless they had children who were being released from school which they had to attend to, we were not closing, like seemingly everyplace else. Radios would be turned off, discussion of the tragedy needed to stop, and we would face the day as normally as possible. We needed to do this, I said, because of the kids. The kids had nowhere to go, and what message would we send if we fled the campus while they stayed, but for a skeletal staff?

‘The kids’ to which I referred were the students of The O’Neill’s National Theatre Institute (NTI), a semester long-theatre intensive which drew some thirty students from colleges around the country to live and learn on The O’Neill campus. The kids had arrived for the semester but two days earlier, and here they were in new territory, with peers and teachers they barely knew, as a national tragedy of untold proportion and impending threat unfolded. And I was scheduled, as I was each semester, to greet and speak with them at 11 am.

My primary goal was to make sure the kids felt safe. By the time we gathered, the news had spread, not through staff gossip, but because of parents calling kids to check on them and, in doing so, to tell them the news, and in turn, students calling parents to check on them. So when the kids, and the full staff, gathered in the cafeteria, I, not yet 40, with no spouse, partner or children of my own, had to be the wise and calm adult – indeed, the father.

Churning in my trivia-laden mind was a fact that I had learned in college: that southeastern Connecticut, home to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the defense contractor euphemistically named Electric Boat, which was in fact one of only two manufacturers of U.S. nuclear submarines, was strategically considered to be first strike territory in the event of a major foreign incursion. What horrible knowledge to have at such a time. For once in my life, I kept trivia to myself.

I can only paraphrase what I remember saying to the students that morning, since I had neither the time nor the concentration to commit thoughts to paper in advance. But I faced a room filled with anxious 20-year-olds, other people’s children, children who I did not know and who did not know me. There was no buzz, no boisterousness; there was no need to quiet them down.

David, the director of the NTI program, introduced me and I asked each staffer to introduce themselves with their name and their title, as we always did. Then it was my turn to say something.

I acknowledged that there had been a tragedy that morning in New York, and assured them that if they had not already spoken with their parents, we’d make sure they had time to do so very shortly. Then I said that they were probably sitting there thinking — that, in the face of massive tragedy, their pursuit of theatre study, or a theatre career, might now seem insignificant, or perhaps frivolous.

Then I told them why they should banish those thoughts. They needed to continue on with exactly what they were planning at that point in their lives. They should not be swayed by whatever had occurred that morning (since we knew only of the results of actions, not the source or human toll, as I spoke). If they already loved theatre enough to spend a semester away from home and from their school among strangers in order to learn more about it, then surely they could feel, as I did, that theatre was the only means we had to express our feelings about the world. I had committed my life to theatre 16 years earlier, upon college graduation, because I had no other choice. Theatre was what fascinated me, moved me, fulfilled me and challenged me. It was also the means through which I had come to understand life and other lives, cultures, even worlds.

I urged them not to see theatre as irrelevant, as expendable, in the face of horror, but instead as profoundly necessary. I believed, and hoped they would too, that theatre, and indeed all artistic expression, might be more essential now than ever, since perhaps through the arts we could come to express our own feelings about what had happened and help others to come to terms with it as well. I told them, using a phrase that I would later find many were using, that unquestionably the world had just changed. But I also said that the world had changed a lot since the days of Greek drama, and that theatre had survived and continued to be meaningful to many people. Then I told them to use the phones or send e-mails if they wished, to return in an hour for lunch, and go back to class.

I do not think my talk was revelatory in the grand scheme of words spoken that days or in the days, weeks and even years that followed by people wiser, better known and better spoken than I am. But apparently it served well enough for my small audience, because the staff stayed, pretending that this was just another work day, the kids returned to class, and the semester continued as planned, as, slowly, America returned to a new type of normal.

When I finally went home that night, and turned on the television, I was very grateful for the O’Neill’s lack of televisions in that too stingy for cable, pre-broadband internet-era, because as I saw the images of that morning’s tragedy, what had been inconceivable became all too real. Had I seen them, I wonder whether I would have had the strength to keep the staff on site (an unpopular decision with them at the time) or to give the talk I instinctively and perhaps impulsively gave. And that talk, while hardly the St. Crispin’s Day speech, had achieved its own theatrical goal, even as I had given vent to my truest feelings about theatre in my life, in the face of great tragedy.

* * *

A coda:
Two weeks after 9/11, NTI had booked a trip to New York, for a day of theatergoing with the students. David and I debated the wisdom of taking such a trip so soon, but, with no official caution given by the government, we decided to stick with our plan of business as usual. David did have to grapple with one parent, who had heard from a friend with a friend at the FBI that there was a new threat, and wanted his daughter to stay away from New York. David successfully convinced the concerned father that if his daughter was pulled from the trip, a domino effect would ensue, and that the trip would be ruined for all. I joined the group for the journey, since if I was actually advocating risk, I should share in it.

The day passed without incident. The NTI group saw some other matinee while I saw, with unintended irony, Strindberg’s Dance of Death. I accompanied the students to an evening performance of Mary Zimmerman’s transcendent vision of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. At 11 pm, we were on our bus headed back to Waterford. In the darkness of the bus, pierced here and there by an overhead reading light, we passed through Westchester, and David and I turned to each other almost simultaneously, confessing our mutual relief. Theatre has its power, but there’s nothing like heading, safely, home.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.