I am not a fan of professional sports. I have nothing against them (for that, you have to get me started on college sports and the ethical and educational issues involved), I just don’t connect with them the way so many do. For the record, I enjoy the occasional baseball or hockey game or tennis match (live and in-person, of course), but I don’t live and die by the fortunes of any team. And yet I feel that the arts could learn a lot from sports.

Sports certainly command much greater attention overall than the arts. Even the smallest newspaper, in these embattled times for the print media, have a daily sports section; not so for the arts. Local TV stations all have their nightly sports report, while arts related stories (outside of accidents or scandals) are lucky to occasionally turn up as the “kicker” just before the segue to national news, Leno or Letterman. Countless colleges (and here’s where I get riled again) offer various sports scholarships to lure top athletes, while I’m unfamiliar with performance scholarships outside of schools with major performing arts courses of study, and even those are relatively scarce. Broadcasts of sporting events blanket the airwaves week in and week out, while the arts are relegated to PBS, Ovation and twice annually (The Tonys and The Kennedy Center Honors) to CBS.

So what can we learn?

Surely frequency is not the issue, since there are countless “major league” arts performances around the country every night. The audience for live arts performances is (at least according to figures I heard once upon a time) comparable to the live audience for sporting events (and let’s not forget that the trend in stadium building is to go smaller, not bigger). While arts fundraising is at a particularly challenging juncture, sports fans don’t buy tickets and make contributions to support their teams, and in fact plenty make no financial commitment beyond a TV set and cable or satellite service.

It is not too outlandish to think that perhaps sports and the arts have comparable audiences (when you factor in school performances, amateur productions and the like). So perhaps the issue is one of perception and not necessarily participation. Herewith, a few thoughts on the matter.

1. We are not well organized. Despite the best efforts of national organizations like (using theatre examples) TCG and local organizations ranging from ART/NY to Theatre Bay Area, the arts remain a patchwork quilt of activity at the professional level. While artists would surely resist the oversight of anything akin to the sports leagues, the marketing and promotional benefits of such associations provide a highly professional means of advertising each sporting discipline. And while we now have the NFL as a Broadway producer, with the NBA not far behind, you won’t see the League of American Orchestras sponsoring a team at NASCAR.

2. We don’t offer enough variety. Sit down, sit down, listen before you shout. While there is in fact a vast array of arts on offer, each show, each exhibition is, ideally, a fixed event (or that’s our goal, consistency). Whether a production has four performances or forty, the event itself is relatively unchanging from night to night, while every sporting event promises a different outcome. Consequently, a play, a concert, a dance piece, once reported upon, doesn’t necessarily warrant (in the eyes of the media) a second or third write up. Opera seems to have an advantage here, since the major companies rotate casts in the same productions regularly, and as a result, where there is comprehensive arts coverage, a single production can be reviewed many times. Can we do more to change things up, such as Ayckbourn’s infinitely tricky Intimate Exchanges, eight plays with 16 endings, or the various courses one can follow through Sleep No More?

3. We employ a veil of secrecy. Many years ago, I read a provocative essay (which I deeply regret not being able to credit properly or provide a link to), in which the author suggested that sports get more attention that the arts because they invite the press in at every step in the process. There are reporters at spring training, at pre-season games, conducting interviews in locker rooms before and after games. In contrast, the arts tightly control access to artists and perhaps even more so, to process. Can we be more open at every step of creation?

4. Parental guidance is delegated. Far be it from me to denigrate arts education programs, but there’s something a bit curious about them, in that they essentially allow others to take the primary responsibility for educating our children about the arts. While I realize that many parents may not have knowledge of or inclination towards the arts, isn’t it peculiar that I learned the rules of sports from my dad (who is no buff either) from a very young age, while my arts education was all by people to whom I had no particular emotional connection, namely my teachers. Especially at a time when arts education is threatened, doesn’t it make sense to advocate and support efforts in which the arts are a family activity, rather than a school-based one?

To paraphrase a line from playwright Bill Cain, I don’t have all the answers, I just want to ask better questions. And so I am fascinated by fan engagement with sports and I constantly ponder it, examine it for solutions which might afford the same level of attention and enthusiasm for the arts. I don’t mean to minimize the extraordinary efforts made by so many – umbrella organizations, dedicated arts educators, passionate and evangelical fans – but I keep hoping that we can do better, especially when I am deluged by conversations about basketball brackets, world championships (that are, egocentrically, only U.S. championships), and spectacular television ratings. After all, we’re well behaved, why can’t we have nice things?

And maybe that’s it – we’re too well-behaved. The arts have to not merely break out of the box (and indeed, we perform our work in boxes for the most part) but smash the box altogether. If we can be truly unpredictable, infinite in our variety, assiduous in our lobbying for attention and creating our own avenues for that attention, then maybe we’ll get more than we get today, in eyeballs, in funding and in understanding.

A final word, about the title of this piece. One of my former bosses, who shall go nameless, often troops out a timeworn metaphor when talking to Rotary Clubs or government officials about the work of theatre, comparing it to baseball while also acknowledging that everything we do will not succeed. He has honed this particular elevator speech and employed it so often that any staff member can “sing along” with him every time he lapses into it (much to his consternation). But after many years of teasing him about this odd, all-occasion St. Crispin’s Day speech for the theatre, I have come to realize that while it may need some refreshing, there is something very smart at its core: not unlike a politician, he has adopted the language of the competition in order give others some insight into our world, since that language is the lingua francaof the American public, while ours is esoteric and mysterious. Perhaps trying to level the playing field (a phrase surely derived from some sporting event) isn’t the worst idea in the world.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

Among a small subset of the theatre community in New York, this is The Whiny Season. I have named it thus because every April, as the crush of Broadway shows rush to open before the Tony eligibility deadline, as the not-for-profits rush to open the final show of their seasons, a small group of professionals find themselves compelled to attend the theatre almost nightly for two or three weeks – and on their Sunday or Monday evenings they meet up once again at the plethora of fundraising events that support both artistic and social service causes, all of which clamor to feature our best known musical performers as their entertainment.

As these professionals encounter each other, their first conversational gambit is invariably about the volume of theatre to be seen, usually accompanied by the phrase, “Wow, it’s never been like this before.” I find that phrase pretty amusing, because I hear it annually – each year is always the busiest, the craziest, the most demanding. The evidence, when examined, would quickly prove that most years are about the same, give or take two or three shows, but as they say, the memory can play tricks.

I have not set out to chastise those who bemoan the loss of their evenings for a few weeks due to a preponderance of theatrical riches (and some cubic zirconia as well). I am one of their number, the recipient of these kvetchings, though not a contributor to them. I consider myself fortunate to have access to all of this work, and if I harbor any resentment at the commandeering of my schedule, it is only because I must see a proscribed set of plays in a certain time period, and that often results in my being unable to see other work of value. Most recently, I was disappointed to discover thatKin had closed at Playwrights Horizons, and I had not managed to get to it; I have a list of shows to be seen immediately after April 28, when my theatergoing becomes a matter of choice once again. The whining may cease around me, but my calendar won’t free up for weeks.

So why do I bring up an affliction that besets perhaps a few hundred people each spring, if not to sympathize or ridicule? I do so because I have begun to look at it as a curious social experiment: what happens when the act of doing something we love – seeing theatre – becomes compulsory, becomes work? It can quickly become a chore, especially if you factor in such minor distractions as late season flus, remaining connected with your family, keeping up with your magazine subscriptions, or getting your daily work completed. The very act that has led you to your chosen profession is transformed into a checklist of commitments to be met, rather than entertainments to be enjoyed or intellectual challenges to be considered. And that, I have to say, is indeed unfortunate.

For some time, I have divided my theatergoing into three types: compulsory (anything that is Tony eligible, to be seen in close proximity to its opening), essential (the work of anyone who may be a guest on one of the Wing’s media programs soon or in the future), and the rarest of the three, shows I simply want to see (some of which certainly fall into the prior two categories). I like to think I go to everything with the same sense of anticipation that accompanied my forays to the TKTS booth while a college student, I hope my mind remains open to the experience the artists want me to have, rather than facing the work with a head filled with gossip, news accounts, last week’s grosses and the like.

But I must say that compulsory theatergoing is anathema to the true experience of theatergoing, precisely because we might fight the desensitization to the very thing we love. Perhaps, as in romance, it is impossible to retain the flush of first love, of passion, that marks each new beginning. At middle age, I enjoy having evenings at home, and as I’ve written in various quarters before, I think we actually become better theatergoers if our world is not proscribed by that of the stage; we can appreciate theatre more completely if we follow the news and consume a variety of other culture, high and low, live or digital. Our appreciation may in fact grow from not spending too much time in theatre, because we bring that other knowledge and those other sensibilities with us when we do encounter new creative works for the stage.

I was, in my youth, a voracious theatergoer and I think any young person pursuing a career in this business or any affiliated field should adopt a similar approach. My motto in those days was, “If it’s free, it’s for me,” and I saw work I would never have ventured into under other circumstances. The irony, of course, is that it is only at my age that one has developed the professional and personal relationships which remove the burdensome cost of theatergoing from the equation; those who would most benefit from an onslaught of theatre in their formative years (and I mean their 20s, and perhaps their late teens), have the hardest time seeing it. We all focus our energies on getting schoolchildren to experience the wonder of theatre in order to plant the seed, but we fail to water that young plant (to torture a metaphor) in the time closest to when it will begin to bear fruit.

I am often asked, enviously, about how one becomes a Tony voter; I have nieces who believe I have the world’s greatest job; I have friends who still don’t quite get that for the past eight years, I have had to see – and have indeed seen – every show that has opened on Broadway, along with a variety of Off-Broadway and regional work, and they marvel anew each time I remind them. That is why I face The Whiny Season with equal parts bemusement and annoyance at those who editorialize so freely about the great chore that faces them. After all, isn’t a key factor behind our work in the theatre the fact that we loved seeing theatre and wanted to be a part of it? While it is as regular as typhoon season, or tornado season, The Whiny Season is not a natural occurrence, but a product of our own making and our own desires, I cannot evangelize against it for fear of becoming a boor and a bore, I can say that I hope that the whiners will look beyond their busy calendar and some minor sleep deprivation and remember why it is that they go to the theatre. If it proves to much, if you have become too jaded, too cynical or simply too overwhelmed, know that there are ranks of theatergoers, the people we work to serve, who would happily step into your shoes and, I hope, be forever inoculated from the debilitating scourge of compulsory theatergoing, since it is in fact a privilege, not a burden.

In an era where Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and the like make it easy to apprise thousands of people at once as to my theatergoing, I want to say (although I was taunted for doing so over the weekend on Facebook) that after 30 some years of avid theatergoing, I still go to the theatre with an open mind and high expectations, and there is no greater joy than seeing something I might have otherwise avoided, and finding it not just good, but great. Indeed, I recently recounted for the actress Laurie Metcalf my story of seeing Balm in Gilead some 25 years ago only in order to help a friend lay off the expense of an extra ticket he held, and emerging having seen an exceptional and still vividly remembered piece of theatre.

I end our podcast “Downstage Center” every week with the phrase, “No matter where you live, I hope we’ll see you at the theatre.” After saying it for almost 100 programs, it remains utterly true. And I hope we’re both there, even if we have to be, because we want to be.

*   *   *

As a final note, let me say that the aggregation of openings in April, and sometimes in November as well, is the result of many factors, both economic and strategic. To tease apart the many strands behind this agglomeration of theatrical activity in compressed periods is a separate topic altogether, more suited for a graduate course in arts management and producing than for this blog. Its foundation is both practical and perceptual, but I have chosen to opine only on its effects, not its causes.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

Having written only last week about the elements that I believe will sustain theatre over the long haul, I was intrigued to open yesterday’s New York Times and find that film critic Manohla Darghis was lamenting the loss of communal attendance at movies. The coming-together of audience is an intrinsic part of theatre, now and forever, but is no longer an essential part of seeing movies precisely because movies can be replicated and shown on an ever-expanding variety of platforms, which increasingly insure that you can watch whatever you want whenever you want, without leaving the comfort of your sofa.

I happen to remain dedicated to seeing movies in movie theatres, however challenging and dispiriting that can be in so many venues. Well, I hear you say, you’re conditioned to going to theatres to see theatre, so you like the same experience for movies.

Actually, no.

Except when I’m seeing a comedy, when I do enjoy being a part of group merriment, I am not seeking a communal experience at the movies. In fact, I’m delighted when I manage to catch an under-attended showing: I can throw my coat on an extra seat, chomp on Raisinets to my heart’s content and my arteries’ dismay, and be blissfully unbothered by someone behind me kicking my seat every time they cross or uncross their legs. It doesn’t even matter when I’m at the movies with someone else, since I am always so intent on a film that I will accept no conversation around me or including me for the duration of the film.

I know that regardless of others surrounding me or a vast sea of empty seats, the movie will be unchanged, since the audience acts upon a projected image no differently than it does upon the printed page. That is to say, not at all. What surprised me about Darghis’ paean to the lost movie audience (and she seemed so bereft I feel I should invite her to the theatre so she can experience a live audience once again) was that it failed to hit upon the single element that makes movies in a theatre such a distinctive experience that cannot achieve equivalence at home, their unique selling proposition, if you will. That element is scale.

Movies are a visual medium and the best of them were and are conceived, shot and meant to be shown on a large canvas, figuratively and literally. I’m not talking about 60”-diagonal-plasma-wow-those-insects-look-cool large, I mean stand-in-line-at-New-York’s-Ziegfeld-for-hours-to-see-Star–Wars large. Theatre can offer any story with grand imagination and scope, but only the movies can magnify the players, so that a twitch of an eyebrow can be seen in the very last row of any theatre, so that an embrace is viewed from a distance so close it’s almost as if you’re in it, so that human fury can seem the size of battling redwoods.

Let me seemingly digress for a moment. My college roommate Steve, who used to travel on a lot on business, saw a number of movies on airplanes over the years, and came to develop what we call The Inverse Proportion Theory of movie quality. The theorem, which is pretty infallible, is this: A great movie is great on a movie theatre screen, and a bad movie on the same screen is quite bad. But if you change the scale, watching those movies instead, say, on your home TV, or even further reduced on an airplane or your iPod, a funny thing happens. The good movie loses its impact, while the bad movie suddenly becomes, though not good, passable. Think about it: Lawrence of Arabia on a three-inch screen has sequences that would be interminable or impenetrable writ small, and the same goes for 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Happy Madison on the same screen isn’t quite as grating or overbearing as any Adam Sandler film can be at greater than life size. I developed a corollary movie rating system, which folds in the cost-value equation: See in a theatre; in-theatre at the bargain matinee; second-run theatre (where those still exist); rental (now obsolete); cable or Netflix; cable or Netflix if you’re sick; better to sleep.

I wrote last week that theatre’s key point of distinction from the other narrative dramatic forms is that it is performed live; in the case of movies, the distinguishing feature is that they can be so big. Audience presence is not in a defining attribute of film, and the diminution of its in-theatre audience is shared with so many formerly public activities as to be endemic to society; the prevalence of “Bowling Alone” came about even before we could bowl with a Wii, as the personal schedule took precedence over the desire to congregate and share most experiences. But since there is no live theatre when you have an empty venue, the stage has been forced to adopt a contrarian, Luddite and life-saving stance against the prevailing sentiment.

Had it not been for Ms. Darghis’ essay, it had been my intent to avoid any manner of follow-up to last week’s blog, which incited a variety of interesting comment, both pro and con (among them from Chris Wilkinson; Rob Weinert-Kendt; and 99 Seats). And my point here is not to rehash my prior message, but to brashly offer my prescription for the motion picture industry and particularly their exhibitors, even as the studios themselves seem so resigned to the loss of theatre revenue that they keep shortening the window between theatrical release and home viewing availability.

For god’s sake, embrace size and scale. I don’t mean that you should make big, loud movies; I mean that if the movies are conceived and executed in a way that demands they been seen on screens no home theatre can approximate, then people will go to see them in the theatres, where visionary films have triumphed even with the advent of radio, TV and home video, if only you’ll let them. They’re more than commodities to be exploited on multiple platforms, they’re creative enterprises in a commercial setting, and the movie theatre is filmdom’s Broadway, with the added benefit of existing in markets large and small. Home video, regardless of BluRay, SurroundSound, and streaming on demand, is still the bus and truck version of the real thing.

I love the movies in a different way than I love theatre, but dare I say it, I love them each in their own way equally. When I see a play that has rapid-fire, short scenes with a literal and linear construction, I wonder why it wasn’t a movie; when I see a great film like The Hurt Locker I know it could have never been realized as well on stage.

But just as I feared that theatre was shrinking even more and forcing its creative artists to write to fit a more constrained model, I am flabbergasted that movies may be doing the same, accepting that the paradigm has changed, instead of fighting to sustain its most distinctive features. Don’t let movies get smaller, folks. There’s no need. We’ve already got that. It’s called television.

And if someone wants to sit by me at the movie theatre, I’ll move my coat.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

A few times in the past week, I have encountered several people who, unprompted, expressed to me their concern for the future of theatre. I am not sure what prompted this confluence of empathy, but I chose primarily to listen to their dissertations on why theatre was in trouble and why they were worried.

It immediately bears mentioning that these were well educated, culturally aware people, who no matter where they were from (and I’ve been on both coasts in the past seven days), seemed well informed on the newest theatrical works, although they were perhaps disproportionately basing their information on The New York Times, rather than a range of media outlets, regardless of their location.

Because it has been a hectic week, I simply wasn’t up for a sustained debate about the undying nature of the fabulous invalid; cross-country travel has a funny way of putting me into an altered state: anticipatory anxiety over the rigors of travel, the charming experiences that characterize our modern airports, the unfamiliarity of my accommodations, and so my rhetorical engagement was superseded by the specifics of the tasks I had to accomplish.

As I return to New York (I am currently 35,000 feet over the Mississippi, I imagine, but a blanket of clouds prevents better geo-location), I realize that I missed opportunities to evangelize for theatre and so, to avoid this problem in the future, even when torpor besets me, I have decided to enumerate the talking points I should have at the ready any time the vitality or validity of theatre in our present day, or future days, presents itself. Perhaps this may prove useful to others as well.

1. Theatre hasn’t always been for everyone, and it’s not reasonable to expect that it should be. There is this unspoken theory that in the days before electronic media, everyone flocked to the theatre constantly. But for every audience member at Shakespeare’s Globe, there were probably five others else where enjoying a good bear-baiting somewhere. That is to say, even when today’s high culture was somewhat less high flown, there was always an even lower common denominator form of entertainment outselling it, but the latter has never seemed to eradicate the former. In fact, we’ve outlasted bear-baiting, so there.
2. The desire to make theatre seems innate. While it has taken different forms and styles across cultures, languages and eras, theatre has always been there, from the Greeks up to today. We hear about the dismal opportunities for playwrights to make a living from their craft (and it is worthy of concern), but the poor economic model doesn’t seem to be a deterrent. I have no figures, but in America at least, I suspect we have an ever growing number of playwrights, fighting to get their work produced in a wide range of venues. Logic may dictate that they apply their efforts to other forms of writing – even other dramatic forms – but something about the stage calls to them.
3. You don’t need a theatre to make theatre. This applies to adventurous, site specific ventures by trailblazing companies just as easily as it applies to living rooms and basements of imaginative youths. You can actually make theatre with nothing but people, meaning that theatre is stunningly accessible to anyone who wants to be a part of it, and there are no rules, no requirements beyond imagination. Yes, money can enhance the experience, but as we know all too well, money can also overwhelm the art. “A poor theatre” is not necessarily “poor theatre.” And when children invent their own dramatic scenarios for their parents, I’ve never heard of one saying that they’re making their own movie or TV program – they somehow know they’re putting on a play.
4. Yes, it’s expensive to attend in most cases, but when was the last time you bought a ticket to a sporting event or rock concert. Inexplicably, people endlessly discuss how expensive theatre is, but they’re not as quick to say the same of some other forms of live entertainment. I think this is rooted in the idea that theatre is elitist and so this argument is trooped out to reinforce the stereotype, when other entertainments are at least as expensive or even more so. Ironically, sports and rock are priced high in order to pay outrageous sums to a relative handful of people who are often distant figures rarely making a personal connection with their audiences. Theatre is expensive in order to support a distinctly human interaction that is incredibly labor intensive at every level, but if you want to have a moment with your heroes, just take a quick survey of any venue where it’s performed and find the stage door. You’ll see your heroes, maybe even speak with them and get an autograph or a photo, instead of discovering that, say, they’re already on the way to their airport so they can fly home and sleep in their own bed, while you’re still trying to get out of the parking lot.
5. Theatre is outnumbered by the electronic media, but so what. Yes, the advent of the printing press reduced the job prospects for those skilled in producing illuminated manuscripts, but presumably monks found other pursuits for the solitary devotions (I believe one order in Europe produces a great beer – no kidding and no disrespect). Every advancement in technology from Gutenberg to Steve Jobs has offered new ways of distributing forms of entertainment to more people in ever more creative ways, but isn’t it funny how theatre has remained in practice throughout? Movies may be more popular than radio, television may reach more people than go to the movies, and the computer may be more prevalent in our homes (and pockets) than TVs. But each of those forms have found their place and their level, while theatre has perhaps grown as well, since it is less and less the province of singular patrons and increasingly embraced by its own communities not only as a form of entertainment, but as an economic engine as well.
6. The very thing that challenges theatre is also what keeps it alive. Oxymoronic as that may be, it’s absolutely true. Individual productions will rarely ever reach the number of people who see a single episode of a mediocre TV series, but it is the fact that theatre is live and unable to be electronically duplicated and distributed ad nauseum that makes it entirely unique each and every time there is a performance. That may not be meaningful to everyone, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that the recording, film and television industries are scrambling to cope with the havoc wrought by digital piracy while theatre only has to concern itself with cell phones going off during shows and taking poor video recordings of snippets of shows. And only a few years after the music industry discovered that live concerts are the only hedge against piracy, fewer rock tours are able to hit their economic marks, while theatre, while challenged in this wavering economy, goes on.
7. Even after civilization as we know it has been destroyed by the madness of war and politics, theatre will still be made. I realize I’m taking a leap here, but I refer you to the final scenes of the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, after the gladiatorial arena has been upended, in which a small group of young people who hold the hope of restoring society in their hands gather nightly to “tell the tale” of the man called Max, and while one youngster holds a frame of sticks suggesting the confines of a movie screen, they are performing a nightly play, as we’ve seen earlier, for a captive audience, in which they come together by firelight to enact their own, new history – acting the tale, not simply telling it.

We’ve been asked to stow our electronics and fold up our tray tables in preparation for landing, so I’ll leave my list – albeit incomplete and perhaps a bit irreverent – incomplete. That’s actually not so terrible; after all, our “elevator speeches” are often cut short when we reach our destination.

I should acknowledge once again that we face economic struggles in our efforts to make theatre, and the realities of a complicated and ever more technologically wondrous society are not necessarily enhancements that will improve the lot of live theatre in the world. I do not believe simply that “if we build it they will come,” nor do I believe that if we applaud at theatre it will, like Tinker Bell, be perpetually brought back to life.

But I do believe that in its simplicity, its foundation in the human connection of people telling, of people enacting stories for other groups of people, live and alive, theatre will go on precisely because we cannot be reduced to a series of zeroes and ones, packed for sale at the local warehouse superstore, or streamed into homes. The very things that make theatre hard to sustain are what insure its survival.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.