While on a tear through London theatre in March 2012, I was invited by Nancy Groves, editor of Guardian Culture Professionals, to begin contributing pieces to the wealth of resources created and curated by that online community resource, operated under under the aegis of London’s Guardian newspaper. Since I am no expert in the British arts management scene, my focus for this (and subsequent pieces) is in where our practices may differ. First up was the issue of corporate sponsorship, at a time when the U.S. system was being held up by the British government as a paragon — just as major cuts were coming to bear on the Arts Council of England. Because the headline and sub-head were a bit broader than the piece itself, I’ve posted it here under my original title, but you can see the online version here.

As worldwide economic troubles continue to take their toll, it’s inevitable that the arts have become victims by afterthought. Expressions of support from our governments are undermined by cost-cutting measures that are often minimal in the grand scheme of national belt-tightening, but significant within our field (and indeed, that of other not-for-profit and charitable organisations).

Even as British arts groups are being told to look to the American system of sponsorship to make up for drastic cuts in funding from the Arts Council, both our governments are seeking to reduce tax incentives for charitable donations, a contradictory message – and tough times aren’t exactly the right time to initiate new sponsorships and new giving traditions where none may have existed before.

Corporate giving in the US was once primarily an altruistic act, which also yielded public relations goodwill for the donor. The recipient organisations benefited not only from new funds, but from the legitimising association with solid corporate citizens – companies like Mobil and AT&T, to name but two, saw the benefit of supporting cultural efforts on stages and subsidised television.

If you were fortunate enough to work in a community where a major corporation was based (I spent many years in Hartford, home to United Technologies), there was also enlightened corporate giving, and the question was rarely ‘if’ one would receive support, but only what initiative might be funded.

Corporations recognised that it was essential to contribute to their communities beyond just providing jobs; it was smart business for them to ensure quality of life issues as well.

As shareholder returns have become ever more paramount and as the economy has changed, so has a great deal of corporate thinking. While not absolute (and I’m no longer speaking of specific companies here), corporate giving has shifted, with many companies moving their philanthropic efforts away from enlightened giving and into the realm of marketing.

Once ensconced in marketing offices, the language of corporate “giving” has changed from one of charity to one of reciprocity. How many impressions will the company receive for each marketing dollar provided, what is the national (or even local) profile of the organisation, and what is the overall “bang for the buck”? The relationship has become, in so many cases, transactional.

I recall past generosity across the country from a major airline, which essentially sought to “own” the cultural sector through support to major arts organisations nationally, and I watched it descend into dollar-for-dollar trades of flight miles for “exposure.”

One major financial company supported the efforts of an organisation I worked at primarily to ensure that a competitor couldn’t do so, but as the competitor became less determined to dominate theatre, the support for my organisation became more difficult to secure, and ultimately vanished.

Apart from funds alone, modern sponsorship can be predicated on opportunities for corporate entertainment. In-demand, prestigious organisations benefit here, because the association is then markedly more desirable; access to hard-to-get tickets becomes part of the calculation. Once again, there are dollar figures attached, but if your organisation’s tickets are limited, corporations will place a premium value on those tickets as part of what they receive for their sponsorship.

Although it’s seemingly contrary, sheer volume of audience is also desirable, since that ensures the highest number of impressions from a visibly acknowledged sponsorship on and off-site (the more seats to sell, the more off-site advertising that may carry a corporate logo by way of “thanks” as well as more people walking by on-site branded banners acknowledging underwriting).

It’s worth noting, however, that seats provided under sponsorship, unless the volume is enormous (which is only possible for large organisations), rarely reach the company’s employees; they are in turn used for the entertainment of current or potential business associates, or even bartered away in other promotional deals.

Of course to some companies the arts continue to offer one thing that other marketing opportunities – and you’ll note I am no longer speaking of donations or sponsorship – do not, and that can be access to celebrities. If you are an organisation with high profile artists on stage, behind the scenes or in leadership positions, you have an asset that is much harder to quantify but much desired.

From “grip and grin” photo ops to intimate dinners where a celebrity will publicly thank a company for support, fame can provide an incentive that can make or break sponsorship efforts. Can you imagine anyone saying no to request for a meeting from, say, Dame Judi Dench? Does it become easier to recruit trustees with strong corporate credentials to your governance boards if they think they’ll be at meetings with Jude Law? You need only to look at the success of The Old Vic under Kevin Spacey, a master fundraiser (among his many skills), to see how the scales can be tipped.

Does this paint a pessimistic picture of sponsorship as a substitute for diminished Arts Council funding? Yes, especially for smaller groups outside of major metropolitan centres. That’s not to say that genuine corporate philanthropy has been extinguished or that a case cannot be made for the intangible value to a corporation of arts support.

Yet, when any but the largest arts organisations are competing with, say, the massive appeal of sporting events (the Olympics, anyone?) it is naive or even callous to suggest that corporations will simply step in to fill a precipitous funding gap.

Access, cultivation, negotiation – these all take time, and with few exceptions corporate arts funding in America doesn’t approach the percentage of support British groups have been receiving via ACE. Indeed, many British arts organisations may need to build up their fundraising staffs prospectively in order to exploit these specific avenues.

Like foundation and trust support (which remain truly charitable) the level of one-to-one corporate outreach is much greater than a broad-based annual appeal to your audience, although a single “yes” from a corporation can result in funds that might equal or exceed hundreds of individual donors in a sole success.

But the returns may be slow in coming, since it’s unlikely there are companies with unspent marketing funds just awaiting an entreaty from the arts – and the arts must make their voices heard among countless other charitable causes, all victims of the same climate of contraction.

It’s a word that is thrown about with abandon. “Flop.” It is synonymous with failure and it’s one of those words that sounds like what it means: short, blunt, unimpressive; the sound of a leaden landing or even the puncturing of expectation.

It is used profligately in the theatre, and indeed aficionados revel in tales of famed flops on Broadway: vampire musicals, Shogun, Carrie, Enron, On The Waterfront, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Even as you read this, you’re adding your own to the list. Theatrical dining spot Joe Allen reserves space on its walls for posters of famous flops (also accessible online); I have to imagine it has either driven away those who were involved in these shows, or at least induces a bit of indigestion as they dine.

There’s a certain grandeur and folly to the theatrical flop. There are countless shows that over the decades have opened, often with big stars and advance anticipation, only to sink quickly out of sight. But to be a truly legendary flop, there seems to be a unique and ever changing set of guidelines that lifts this show or that one into the pantheon; certainly hubris seems to play a role. The more godawful, the better they are for gossip and chatter, years after the fact. Even Shakespeare can flop on Broadway, despite the long-established reputation of the work; living down to its cursed reputation, separate Macbeths featuring Kelsey Grammer and Christopher Plummer come to mind.

Yet for some, notably journalists of a certain vintage, “flop” is not merely a pejorative, but an economic distinction, propagated by the much diminished show biz bible Variety. Any commercial production that does not recoup its initial investment during its Broadway run, even if only shy by five or ten per percent of the capitalization, is a flop. Any show which recoups or exceeds is a hit. This rigidly binary criteria permits no flexibility, so some of Stephen Sondheim’s most admired work takes its place alongside travesties in the Variety annals; flop is an economic distinction, not an artistic one.

I have no doubt that this terminology, part of the distinctive patois that made Variety such a pleasure to read (and commemorated by Animaniacs as “Variety Speak”) dates back many decades, to a time when all major new work debuted on Broadway and the not-for-profit theatre system in America was not yet formed (most agree it launched in earnest in the early 1960s). So does – and should – “flop” retain any power today? There’s certainly no eradicating the word (any more than the failure to nominate certain artists and works for awards will cease to be called “snubs”), but perhaps we can all agree that there’s a benefit to discussing the success or failure of theatre with something approaching nuance.

On a purely economic level, the failure of a show to return its entire investment during its Broadway run does not mean that the show is necessarily unprofitable. Yes, shows that lose their entire investment or return only 30% of the capitalization have a very long road, especially musicals produced for $10-15 million. But what of those shows that get to 85% or 90% recoupment? They are likely to tour; to be licensed to regional theatres, amateur companies and schools; to sell cast recordings even if they didn’t quite snatch the brass ring in the commercial incarnation. Maybe they’ll even be sold to the movies. As a result (and I’m not going to break down how investment income is returned to investors and producers in this post), they may enter profit a year or several years after they’ve shuttered on Broadway. But the public books have already been closed, the rubber stamp of flop already impressed upon their public file; no one issues press releases about recoupment on closed shows (though perhaps they might do well to start).

This isn’t as much of a problem for the not-for-profits that produce on Broadway, or for that matter, Off-Broadway. Since their expenses for any show are part of a larger institutional budget, the issue of recoupment isn’t germane; in their immediate wake, an unpopular show may be branded a flop, but over time that distinction seems to fade in a way it does not for commercial work. This doesn’t stop the media from trying to intimate the dreaded branding iron of flop when discussing not for profit work; witness The New York Times’ “autopsy” for MCC Theatre’s Carrie revival, which wishfully applies the paper’s own commercial expectations for the show in order to support its thesis.

“Flop” strikes me as particularly debilitating when it comes to work that is recognized as having artistic value, even if it fails in the marketplace. As far as I’m concerned, Sondheim’s score for Merrily We Roll Along is one of his finest and while the overall piece proves problematic in reworking after revival after resuscitation, I challenge anyone who would claim that it is an utter failure creatively, even if it is not an unqualified success. By Variety’s yardstick, the original Merrily was a flop, and it’s hard to argue given its brief run, but that fails to do the work justice. If one is allowed more than a single word in judgment, it is an ambitious, flawed work by one of the geniuses of musical theatre; it does not deserve dismissal in a column that codifies only hits and flops. Works of art shouldn’t be “guilty” or “not guilty.”

“Flop” is so associated with theatrical ventures that Dictionary.com goes so far as to help define its meaning by specifically linking it to works on the stage; I can’t compete with that. But perhaps in our conversations in the field, commercial or not for profit, we can bring shadings to assessments of productions. For economics, we must take the long view, and remember that a show’s life does not end the moment it closes in New York. For creativity, I recommend that The Scottsboro Boys, Caroline or Change and Passing Strange shouldn’t be lumped together on any extant list with In My Life and Metro. We would serve work better – even when money is lost, sometimes significant sums – if our collective focused on the succès d’estime, rather than the success of an accountant’s pen. It won’t necessarily cushion financial losses, however they’re calculated, but it will put emphasis back on the work, not just on its bottom line.

Having had a hand in The Tony Awards from 2004 through 2011, awards show-watching has been more than a pastime for me. But I’m a latecomer to The Olivier Awards. Two years ago I sat at home, watching the livestream in a window on my laptop. Last year, I finally accepted my annual invitation from the Society of London Theatres to attend in person. Earlier today, I spent four hours in the Jazz at Lincoln Center facility, where the livefeed of the Oliviers was shown on a large screen in Rose Hall, perhaps the city’s most unique venue, with views of Columbus Circle and Central Park behind the stage and, in this case, screen.  Today’s experience felt like an amalgam of my prior two: I was watching on a screen, but a big one which often brought the event to larger than life size; instead of calling out the winners to my wife in the other room, I was surrounded by several hundred theatre professionals and other guests.  This was the “NT Live” version of The Oliviers, so to speak.

I had expected the crowd to resemble “the usual suspects” seen at most opening nights, but it was an eclectic mix, with many folks I didn’t know. I spotted producers (Michael David of Jersey Boys, Sue Frost & Randy Adams of Memphis, Jed Bernstein of Driving Miss Daisy and Hal Luftig of Evita), some not-for-profit leaders (Teresa Eyring of the Theatre Communications Group and Victoria Bailey from the Theatre Development Fund), and a smattering of press (The New York Times, Playbill, Theatermania and AM New York). There was a large contingent from One Man, Two Guvnors there up through intermission (they had to depart for a 3 pm matinee), I don’t know how many from Ghost, Paulo Szot of South Pacific, and James Earl Jones.

It is impossible to know how many attendees had seen some, or any, of the nominated shows (I had seen only four), so an obvious question was whether one would feel any “rooting interest” in the room. Certainly the Guvnors crowd applauded heartily as their nominations were announced, but that was the only apparent partisanship in the room (and completely appropriate). What pleasantly surprised me was that the audience did respond as if at a live show, instead of a cinema; there was applause at the end of every musical number performed, all of which came off well on the big screen. If not the same as being there, there was the unifying effect that experiencing entertainment in a large group can bring; there was definitely a frisson of excitement when Matthew Warchus accepted his award live in New York – made even more exciting by it taking place just seconds after the briefly interrupted video feed came back online.

Andre Ptasyzynski’s opening remarks playfully hinted at rivalry between Broadway and the West End – he cited 14 million London admissions last year vs. Broadway’s 12.5, but also noted $1 billion in New York revenues against London’s $800 million, and also differentiated between voting rules for The Oliviers and The Tonys. But the prevailing spirit was of a carefree spring afternoon in London (even if it was nighttime there). The U.S. audience might have benefited from a few annotations by voice or on screen (Collaborators author John Hodge was never identified by name), and it was my sense that even with an introduction, the crowd neither understood who Ronan Keating and Kimberley Walsh were or why they were dropped into the middle of the event’s second act. Presenters from Downton Abbey needed no such identification.

Too often, in the press surrounding both The Oliviers and The Tonys, there’s an effort to stoke the fires of national competition. I’ve always thought it a false construct. This initial large scale opportunity for the New York theatre to join together for the Oliviers was a good first step and reinforced what I have always found to be true: the underlying unity of all theatre communities, wherever they may be and whoever wins their awards.

“I don’t care if I get paid at all. You don’t really do theater for money, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” – John Malkovich

I’m inclined to give John Malkovich a pass on the statement above, as it was a response to a question about how much he was getting paid for a stage engagement. I’d also like to think that, since the statement was made at a press conference in Mexico, maybe there’s some bad translating involved. After all, Malkovich was an early member of the once scruffy and still ambitious Steppenwolf Theatre Company, so he’s paid his dues. As someone who alternates stage projects with art films (and the occasional Bruckheimer or Bay spectacle), he’s a star who hasn’t sold his soul to Hollywood, even if he has leveraged his name for such projects as a clothing line.  But I have to take note of the quote, because it is emblematic of how theatre is discussed in relation to television and film, and makes theatre out to be something less than those fields, something that is done out of a mix of love and charity alone.

I would have been much happier if that statement was, “I don’t really do theatre for money now.” I wish all celebrities took that tack. Because by generalizing to all actors, they minimize the fact that actors need to make money to live, even if they work on stage out of love; it is only the independently wealthy or the highly successful actors who work in other fields who can do theatre indulgently. The fact is, for everyone working in, or trying to work in theatre, artist or administrator, theatre is a career choice, not a lark. Perhaps most recognize they’re unlikely to get rich, but we cannot (pardon the expression) afford to have it treated as a pastime. We need those who have succeeded to make the case for why it needs to be funded, for why people working in the theatre should be able to make a living at it if they choose, a living that can support them, a spouse or partner, a family; a career that provides health insurance, that allows for vacations, that doesn’t require a second job.

Does theatre pay like the movies or TV? No, it doesn’t (unless you’re Hugh Jackman or the authors of Wicked). But it can be a life, a fulfilling one. If every time a star takes to the stage they rhapsodize about love, and the press points out how extraordinary it is that they’re willing to take such a drastic pay cut to work on stage, the myth of theatre as avocation is perpetuated. Let’s also recognize that “no money” in theatre for celebrities is a relative term when they work commercially: they may not make as much as they do when working in those other fields, but trust me, we’d all be quite content with what I hear Ricky Martin is getting for appearing in Evita.

I have no doubt that when John Malkovich and the many celebrities spawned by or invited into Steppenwolf over the years return to that theatre, they make exactly what everyone else makes, and I applaud them for their commitment to that company and the many other theatres where they continue to work. That’s why I use the quote at the top of this piece as an object lesson, not a battering ram.

But let’s recognize it for hyperbole (I imagine if his fee were to go unpaid in Mexico, Malkovich’s agent or attorney would be getting on the phone right quick) and for unfortunate simplicity. Or perhaps everyone who can legitimately do so should immediately call his agent and offer him the greatest stage roles imaginable, the greatest directing projects he could desire. See what happens when you mention you’re asking him to donate his services.

O.K., so it’s not “This Is Your Pilot Freaking.”

Though I see journalism and criticism discussed and dissected six ways to Sunday in article upon article, blog after blog (and I’m often an avid participant), headlines tend not to be a significant part of the discussion of arts journalism. The “star rating” system gets a lot more attention, as of course do the reviews themselves. But headlines can have an enormous impact on your impression of a review, or a show; like stars, headlines may, for an enormous number of readers, be all they ever learn about a show.

Good headline writing is a talent, a craft, and that holds true in old-line print media or online. The Huffington Post seems to have made its fortune on headlines that promise more than they deliver, harking back to the best of true tabloid journalism, but dammit they make you look. None of us are immune to the lure of shrewd headline.

As someone who surveys the internet daily for news stories of theatrical interest, I marvel at the headlines I see, some clever, some mundane, some inadvertently hilarious. While there are fine editors of all stripes who contribute to headlines (the general public doesn’t realize that in many cases, the writer of the article has no participation in the process), there’s no question that at smaller outlets that still generate a lot of copy, the process of headline writing can become a bit rote. In the most absurd cases, I envision a lone editor, late at night in an empty newsroom, wracking their brain for copy that will fit both the story and the allotted space.

My imagined editor seems to work on a lot of theatre reviews but apparently doesn’t go to a lot of theatre, and so I muse upon headlines I suspect most of us would not want to see; endless alliteration, bad puns, inadvertently risqué or even offensive juxtapositions pouring from a sleep-deprived mind, one that may have only read the review cursorily. Consequently, here’s a selection of 25 headlines I created for a range of plays and musicals – all to accompany positive reviews, as going negative is too easy – with the hope that it will make its way to arts copy desks across the country as samples of what not to do.  But I can assure you that these are very close to the reality I see daily.

• Where’s the beef? Steer yourself to prime AMERICAN BUFFALO
• Don’t paws, run to (litter) box office: CAT on TIN ROOF will have you feline HOT
• Fine end to CORIOLANUS, but you may be bummed out
• Insane fun to be had at nutty CRAZY FOR YOU
• Miller spins tight-knit yarn about SALESMAN’s DEATH
• Piercing EQUUS quiets the neigh-sayers
• No woe at MOE show, so grab FIVE GUYS and go, shmoe
• Kernel of corporal punishment makes LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE generally great
• LITTLE WHOREHOUSE turns tricks into trade, hooks audiences to happy ending
• Compelling climax in THE ICEMAN COMETH
• You’ll want to preserve JELLY’S LAST JAM
• No need to hope for charity at LEAP OF FAITH
• NIGHT time is the right time for Sondheim’s MUSIC
• Oh, my: THE LYONS is a tiger, bears seeing
• Missed I and II? You’ll still enjoy MADNESS OF GEORGE III
• MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM is tops
• M. BUTTERFLY emerges in unexpected, satisfying ways
• Start spreading the NEWSIES
• NORMAN’s CONQUESTS make him Attila the Fun
• ONE MAN, TWO GUVS: three cheers four you — five stars
• Norris’ PAIN AND THE ITCH receives critical an-ointment
• Local troupe puts impressive PRIVATES ON PARADE
• Current RAISIN IN THE SUN prunes away time’s overgrown vines
• There’s no need to fear, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG is here
• Yes VIRGINIA, Albee’s foxy WOOLF blows the house in

I will close by quoting a long-remembered headline, 100% accurate, that accompanied a glowing review for a show I worked on once upon a time: “Crawl Over Ground Glass to See This Show.” Enticing, huh? Truth can be stranger than fiction.

Nonetheless, now it’s your turn. Can you craft some headlines that stumble on the fine line between clever and stupid?

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.