If supply and demand is a fundamental tenet of economics, then the tweet offer last summer from New York’s Soho Rep, during its sold-out run of Uncle Vanya, made no sense – “99¢ Sunday performance tonight at 7.30pm”. Why would it undermine something so desired as a seat to this show? Why wasn’t the price for this heretofore unavailable cache of seats $299.99?

As explained on its website: “Soho Rep is thrilled to offer 99¢ Sundays on selected Sunday performances to make our shows accessible to the widest audiences possible.”

The catch was that one could only buy the tickets, in person, an hour before the show. While admiring the gesture, I had visions of hundreds of people showing up and most being disappointed, because Soho Rep seats only 75.

Certainly one could look at this offer and think it is great value. That is true for those who were able to buy a seat. For those who were turned away, it was a disappointment and loss of time. And time, to use another basic economic tenet, is money. These days, however, the cost-value equation in theatre is vastly more complicated than ever before. As price has become fluid, it is hard to determine where true value lies.

When people wait in line, sometimes overnight, for the Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in Central Park, the ticket they get is indeed gratis. But if seven or eight hours sleeping among strangers outdoors results in attendance at a disappointing show, which can happen, then there was a high cost for little value (or, with a great show, a cashless bargain), calculable only by a subjective assessment of the worth of each individual’s time (although the overnight experience is its own type of participatory theatre).

While the time commitment necessary for acquiring tickets for Shakespeare in the Park is likely much greater than that required for 99¢ Sunday at Soho Rep (unless one is lucky enough to secure a ticket through the ‘virtual line’ online), the odds are also more favourable, since the open-air Delacorte seats some 2,000 per performance and every single performance is free, although the commitment to acquire a ticket carries risk through the final curtain – should it begin to rain ten minutes into the performance, the show may have to stop and all value is lost.

To go to the opposite end of the spectrum, take Book of Mormon, arguably the hottest ticket on Broadway. The least expensive ticket is priced at $69, but if you can secure one, it may well be for a performance months away. If you do not want to wait so long, you can, if you can afford it, buy a VIP seat for up to $500. This is a pure case of supply and demand, but it is not new. Eleven years ago, The Producers began offering premium seating at $488 per ticket. There were, then as now, various expressions of dismay, but desire trumps thrift.

Some might argue that the scarcity and cost of Mormon serves to make the experience even more valuable, as price can be an expression of worth. Having seen the show becomes a status symbol. In a unique move, perhaps an effort to diffuse frustration on the part of thwarted or economically constrained would-be ticket buyers, Mormon periodically holds ‘fan appreciation day’ performances, distributing tickets for free, akin to the Shakespeare in the Park model.

What falls between these scenarios? Rush tickets, sold on the day of the show or shortly before curtain, have been common in regional theatre fordecades. Somewhat newer ‘pay what you can’ performances are offered by some companies at early previews. Broadway shows have adopted the ‘ticket lottery’ model, holding back front-row seats at young-skewing shows such as Wicked or American Idiot, available at low price through a raffle two hours prior to curtain. In most of these cases, access to the theatre itself is essential. Every instance carries risk (will you get a ticket?), personal cost (time and effort) and value (cheap tickets).

In the UK, the Barclays Front Row scheme at the Donmar Warehouse is a lottery-rush hybrid, guaranteeing 42 low-priced seats at each performance, sold Monday mornings for the coming week (with a website clock counting down to the moment of release).

Discounting is rife on Broadway. All but the biggest hits usually have discount offers, sometimes as much as 40% off the declared value, that can be uncovered with an internet search, or in your mailbox if you are a regular theatregoer. Discounts not only allow, but also encourage, advance sales, with no great time investment. Producers trade savings for guaranteed money in the till.

The TKTS booth in Times Square may yield a 50% off price, only day-ofshow and it requires your time and presence, as lines can be long and subject buyers to the vagaries of weather (in contrast to the Leicester Square booth in London, where I have never waited more than five minutes). Both the UK and US TKTS booths have partially reduced potential disappointment by listing available shows online or by mobile app. The actual discount can be variable.

In another iteration of price/value matrix for theatre tickets, dynamic pricing seems the most clear-cut exemplar of supply and demand. I say ‘seems’ because those who employ such systems, in which prices shift according to popularity, tend only to shift prices upward opportunistically, such as increases during holiday weeks, or as a limited run approaches capacity. Price reductions are not usually found at the box office. Price charts in Broadway theatres are now all displayed on video monitors, the easier to alter as needed. Dynamic pricing is not employed only by commercial productions – subsidized theatres use it as well, raising for some the question of whether not-for-profit theatres are now pursuing profits, or simply maximising their income to support ongoing artistic and community efforts.

There is one more model of the theatrical price-value challenge, seen in the £12 Travelex season at the National Theatre in London and the $25 price for all seats, thanks to Time Warner, at New York’s Signature Theatre. These both offer great value at a most reasonable cost, as both are exceptional companies. The sponsors that make such programmes possible, as well as the theatre staff who secure the funds, are to be applauded. But with the stated goal of making theatre accessible to everyone, it is interesting to consider what both the short-term and long-term implications will be. When top-notch theatre is offered at an artificially low price, does it make the challenge of selling tickets for every competing organization that much more difficult? Could these prices simply be providing those who can afford market price a discount they never sought? Will patrons forgo comparable theatre devoid of subsidy?

In the jungle of discounts and rising costs, we have to look at the National, Donmar and Signature efforts, and others like them, as the start of admirable and essential long-term experiments. Since low-priced tickets are not being offered simply to fill houses, but to make tickets more generally accessible, they are bellwethers that can tell us if price is indeed a barrier to theatre attendance, and if, by removing that impediment, theatre can draw in new and younger audiences.

Signature’s can only be studied at some point in the future, as every ticket is low-priced, flat rate and subsidised for years to come. The National reports that annually, 22% of the Travelex tickets are sold to first time attendees. The very early weeks of the Donmar plan shows some 40% of the Front Row seats going to patrons new to their customer rolls.

As the means of selling and acquiring tickets mirror conventional marketplace practices, while at the same time initiatives rise up to spur sales to more demographically and economically differentiated audiences, the matrix of price and value becomes ever more complex. For producers, there is flexibility to adapt as never before. For patrons, the price points can become advantageous or prohibitive. Hopefully, in this new and perpetually evolving world, theatregoing will not be predicated and expanded solely on the cheapest access possible, but on the fundamental and incalculable premise of the art of the theatre itself having meaning for those who seek to attend.

“What is the best that Broadway can be?” was the central question of the second TEDx Broadway conference, which continued to explore the query that fueled last year’s inaugural conference.

Presented, perhaps ironically, at off-Broadway’s New World Stages in Manhattan on Monday, the six-hour array of speakers struck similar notes: A better Broadway can be achieved through access for, engagement with and connection to the audience.

The conference mixed seasoned producers like Daryl Roth and Disney Theatrical Group’s Thomas Schumacher, artists such as playwright Kristoffer Diaz, actor George Takei and designer Christine Jones, and experts in other fields including Ellen Isaacs, the principal scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center; tech and media entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg, and Susan Salgado, the founder with restaurateur Danny Meyer of Hospitality Quotient, consultants on the customer’s experience.

A capacity audience of 450 turned out to hear 17 speakers, watch thematically related videos from official TED Talks, and hear a performance by the all-female cello-driven band Rasputina. (TEDx conferences are independently organized events sanctioned by the official TED organization.)

Mixing pragmatism with imagination, Wall Street Journal critic and columnist Terry Teachout, who made his debut as a playwright in 2012, cited the oft-repeated figure that 75% of all Broadway shows fail financially. Then “why do people produce on Broadway?” Teachout asked. “Because it’s fun.”

He urged the attendees to take a chance on Broadway, “to do something that’s never been done … let the fact that most Broadway shows fail liberate you.”

He advised, “Don’t start settling for safe, gamble on great. If you’re not going to make money, make something beautiful, something that makes you proud. Who knows, you may even get rich.”

Takei, who plans to make his Broadway debut next season in the musical “Allegiance,” (which was produced at the Old Globe in San Diego last fall)  talked up the power of social media. He acknowledged that he has a base of “geeks and nerds” thank to his “Star Trek” days, but he didn’t address how less famous figures, or shows, might achieve similar success.

Schumacher related his ideal vision of Broadway and how it ran counter to what he felt one night sitting at a show, responses that he believes many in the business must conquer.

“Who are these jackasses?” he wondered of his fellow patrons. “My loathing for the people I was surrounded with was insurmountable.” He then talked about countering such “pretentious” instincts, saying, “Populism has its own manifest destiny and we must embrace that.”

Jones, the designer, is also artistic director of Theatre for One, which creates intimate theatrical experiences between a single artist and a single audience member in a retooled peep-show booth. She spoke of her desire to “distill the space” between performer and artist. She then explained her efforts to connect every audience member in every seat with the work on a Broadway stage.

“I wish we all had the same ability to make choices about how the audience is seated as I do with what’s on stage,” she said.

Jones alluded to Lewis Hyde’s book “The Gift,” which was also taken up by Adam Thurman, marketing director of Chicago’s Court Theatre, who proposed, “Marketing, fully realized, is a gift. I am in the gift-giving business and so are all of you.”

But he cautioned about preaching only to the converted, those who already attend the arts, saying, “We need more people who love us.”

Diaz and Zuckerberg offered lists of ideas for Broadway. Diaz’s random yet passionate litany included a contrary notion to many.

“Having playwrights working in television is a good thing,” Diaz said. “But we need to get them back and bring with them everything they learned and evolve the stories we tell.”

He enthused over the works of Lynn Nottage, described the theater community as being made up of “nerds and misfits who didn’t fit in,” and declared, “We’re living in a post-“Book of Mormon” society.”

Zuckerberg spoke of her original plans to pursue a career in theater, then shifted to a list of “10 Ideas to Open Broadway to the World,” including open auditions on YouTube, crowd-sourcing costume designs, creating online viewing options and offering social media walk-on roles.

“Instead of having a small sliver of the world come to Broadway,” she asked, “why not bring Broadway to the entire world?”

Other speakers included “The Millionaire’s Magician,” Steve Cohen; David Sabel, head of digital media for the National Theatre of Great Britain, and Seth Pinsky, president of New York City’s Economic Development Corp.

The TEDx Broadway conference was organized by Damian Bazadona, president of Situation Interactive; theatrical producer Ken Davenport; and Jim McCarthy, CEO of Goldstar Events.

See the story as it appeared at the Los Angeles Times here.

As I write late in the evening prior to the second TEDx Broadway conference, I find myself wondering how much the presentations tomorrow will focus on plays, which have become the poor stepchild of The Great White Way.

Over the summer, I wrote about Narrow Chances For New Broadway Musicals and considered Do Revivals Inhibit Broadway Musicals? I counted the most produced playwrights in recent years in The Broadway Scorecard: Two Decades of Drama and, responding to what I saw at a glance as some misguided copy in the promotion of tomorrow’s event, I spoke out strongly with the declaration False Equivalency: Broadway Is Not The American Theatre.  Embedded in these posts were data, analysis — and my opinion — depicting Broadway as it is, not as some might perhaps wish it would be. As I noted in these posts, musicals dominate Broadway, both new and revivals, with roughly 80% of all Broadway grosses coming from musicals, even if the number of plays produced in most seasons outnumber new musical productions. Plays are admired, but when it comes to defining Broadway, the musicals by and large grab the lion’s share of money and attention.

That said, there’s one more, rather simple, data set that’s worth having in mind as tweets, blogs and news reports slice and dice tomorrow’s event (and I’ll be among those doing so). Here’s a listing of the Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the Tony Award winners for Best Play, from 1984 to the present. I’m not suggesting that these awards are the final word on plays of quality, and awards success hardly guarantees box office success, but the two prizes provide a manageable universe for study. Why 1984? It’s an arbitrary choice, to be sure; it’s also the year I graduated college and went to work in the professional theatre, a microcosm of the celebrated plays of my theatrical career.

The honored plays above, shorn of duplicates as well as the years the Pulitzers honored musicals, make up a total of 43 different works that were recognized for achievements in playwriting in 29 years. Only nine works appear on both lists and The Pulitzers are only for American plays, which helps to reduce duplication.

Now here’s the key question: how many of those works actually had their world premieres on Broadway? The answer: only five. Those plays were Rabbit Hole, Lost In Yonkers, The Goat, The Last Night Of Ballyhoo and M. Butterfly. The others all began in not for profit U.S. venues, as close as Off-Broadway or as far as Seattle, or in subsidized or commercial venues in Ireland, England, and Europe. That’s not to say that there weren’t worthy plays that weren’t recognized which may have been produced directly on Broadway, but the ones that reaped the conventionally accepted big awards didn’t begin there. In the Pulitzer list, there are many that never played Broadway, at least in their original incarnations, as I discussed in At Long Last Broadway.

So as the future of Broadway is a subject on many minds in the next 24 to 36 hours, it’s worth remembering that strikingly few new plays debut there, as they commonly did in the days before the resident theatre movement really bloomed. If plays are to make their marks in Broadway history under the existing models of production, they need to be discovered, birthed and nourished elsewhere. National and international recognition may still be New York-centric, but the most honored works start overwhelmingly just about everywhere other than Broadway. Could that ever change? Should it? And if the answer is yes, then how?

It is unfortunate that “zirkusschadenfreude” is not an actual German word, because there seemed to be a lot of it flying around last week, that is to say, “joy at the unhappiness of a circus.” Many news outlets and commentators were pulling out the wordplay a bit gleefully last week on the news that Canada’s famed Cirque du Soleil was laying off 400 employees after almost three decades of spectacular growth and acclaim. “Is the sun going down?” asked England’s The Independent.

The layoff announcement was the latest in a string of bad news emanating from Cirque, which has of late dealt with several shows closing much earlier than expected; Iris at the one-time Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles is the most recent casualty. A couple of years ago, New York witnessed the protracted birth and rapid death cycle of Banana Shpeel (which inexplicably went on national tour); Zarkana limped through two seasons at Radio City Musical Hall before being packed off to Nevada, where an Elvis-themed show had recently underwhelmed. There have been failures internationally as well.

Needless to say, the Canadian press followed the story most closely, given that this is a major employer and national treasure downsizing. On one newscast I watched, the anchor blithely asked Globe and Mail reporter J. Kelly Nestruck whether “greed” was a factor, seemingly misunderstanding or disliking the idea of commercial success that Cirque has enjoyed in spades. To his credit, Nestruck parried by saying it was perhaps a certain lack of attention and over-accelerated growth.

Now I should say that as an audience member, I’m wildly ambivalent about Cirque. I’ve seen them six times as I recall: their first U.S. tour, of Nouvelle Experiénce, in Seattle in 1990; Mystère at Treasure Island in Las Vegas circa 1998; the Dralion tour in Santa Monica in 1999; O and Love in Vegas in 2010, and Zarkana at Radio City Musical Hall in 2011. You’ll notice a 10 year hiatus, and that’s because after my enthusiasm for Nouvelle, my second and third experiences seemed diminishing returns; only years of emphatic recommendations brought me back two years ago, to my utter delight.

Then Zarkana brought me crashing back to dismay, and their 3-D movie this winter, Worlds Away, was a particular letdown. The movie, which hasn’t burned up U.S. box offices, was nothing more than a flimsy premise connecting pieces of their Vegas shows. I had been hoping that Cirque might reinvent film narrative the way they reinvented circuses, only to find myself watching a minimally conceived and eccentrically shot and edited greatest hits package.

I take no pleasure in the retrenchment of Cirque. But frankly, while I feel for those losing jobs, a company that has proven that live artistic undertakings can reach mass audiences can only be strengthened by reminders that they are not infallible, even when they’re working at such astronomically budgeted scales. I would dearly love to wield phrases like, “What clown was keeping their books,” but that fails to draw out what can be learned from the current troubles.

One has to applaud the entrepreneurship of co-founder and owner Guy Laliberté, who took the company from street performers to veritable rock stars, making it almost impossible for most circuses to survive unless they dropped “circus” for “cirque”; I am less sanguine about Soleil’s efforts to monopolize the word. As the world has grown more sensitive to the treatment of animals at circuses, their completely human entertainment carries no whiff of exploitation or cruelty, even as we may wonder how people learn the superhuman skills on display.

My own back and forth opinions on the shows themselves may be reflective of erratic quality control and perhaps overproduction (they recently began producing several new shows annually instead of one), but O and Love were so remarkable that I’m eager to see them again, even at $150 a ticket, and I’m regretting having skipped Ka, which I hear is also incredible. I’m not the first to suggest that Cirque is most successful when they’re in venues specifically built, or radically refurbished, for their sit-down shows; perhaps they have grown too big for the big top.

Producing to “fill slots” is often the bane of performing arts organizations; they have to put on something to give to their audiences, and perhaps they don’t always have sufficient brilliant ideas to fill the available holes. By creating more slots, surely Cirque has created the same problem for itself. The news reports also suggest that expenses weren’t carefully controlled, and that will fell any business; outside of real world arts, we can watch the same problem played out on Downton Abbey.

It’s very hard, when you’ve come so far, so fast, to stop and take a breath and reassess. But Cirque is no different than any performing arts organization, even if it no longer relies on public subsidy. It may need to get back to its core values. It can look to the simpler, grittier and altogether wonderful Les 7 doigts de la main (known in NYC for Traces), a mini-circus at the most human level. They succeed in no small part because the performers seem like people you might meet on the street, who go out of the way to personalize the performance and ingratiate themselves with the audience, making their feats that much more awesome. There is no wailing of indeterminately ethnicized pop music, no waddling oddballs spouting gibberish, just skill.

Stopping to remember that circus is in fact a form of theatre, and never more so than when it eschews animals, I’m eager to see Cirque’s Amaluna, directed by American Repertory Theatre’s artistic director Diane Paulus, to see how her theatrical sensibility infuses the Cirque formula. It’s interesting to note that Paulus is also coming to Broadway with a Cambridge-bred Pippin revival created in collaboration with 7 doits, further exploring theatre as circus and circus as theatre. The two may well be worthwhile case studies for Cirque (though Paulus is not the only theatre director to collaborate with them).

Despite avoiding them for 10 years, I remain hopeful for Cirque du Soleil, as performing arts wunderkind, as entrepreneurial model and, believe it or not, as “my” circus. I was never taken to a circus in my youth; my only “regular” circuses are the Big Apple Circus in 1984 when I was 22, Circus Vargas in about 1989 and Circus Flora (at the Spoleto Festival) in 2003. The only other experiences I’ve ever had at a circus have been with the Canadians — that’s right: no Ringling Brothers. That means that 66% of my lifetime circus-going has been with Cirque du Soleil (Traces was performed in a 499 seat theatre). Cirque has thrilled me and disappointed me, but for better or worse, it’s what I’ve known.  Unless they are overwhelmed by hubris, mismanagement or both, Cirque should to be around for a long time, and reports of their doom are not merely exaggerated but unfounded.

Yes, Cirque is a corporation now, with 14 million tickets sold a year and $1 billion in revenue; sympathy may be in short supply. It needs to ground itself before it flies again, econonomically and creatively. Cirque might look to the late 70s and early 80s, when people said Disney was on the ropes as well, and the company came back only stronger, proving that family entertainment can endure. Cirque du Soleil is not too big to fail, but the company is too inventive and successful to quickly start counting out, like so many clowns in a car.

I wanted to title this particular post, “Theatres: Hotbeds of Disease,” but that seemed, after due consideration, to be a bit alarmist and a potential deterrent to attendance. That is not my wish. However, it is extremely apt that just as I prepared to write this, I retrieved a message from my friend Mark, who referred to coming into New York as ‘entering a giant petri dish.’ Not a quote for the tourism posters, to say the least.

We are, as the news has been alerting us hourly, in the midst of a significant outbreak of the flu, which, when it was called influenza in the books we read as young adults, seemed more appropriately alarming. The contagion has blanketed the country and wherever you go, you hear people talking about feeling like they’re getting sick or how sick they were, accompanied by tweets and posts from people in the throes of illness.

Any place where people gather carries enormous risk for the uninfected and residual risk for the uninoculated: theatres certainly fit the bill, but so do schools, offices, mass transportation, stores and, worst of all, doctors’ waiting rooms and hospital ER’s. Anyone remember the rather horrifying scenes of microscopic droplets entering the noses and mouths of a movie theatre audience in the film Outbreak? Maybe it should be required viewing just about now.

We’re told, again and again, that the best deterrent is frequent hand-washing with soap and warm water. But while countless public places offer touchless Purell dispensers, I have been struck in the past couple of weeks by how many theatres, live and movie both, seem to have taken the Victorian workhouse approach to manual hygiene. Put more simply: why don’t they have, now or ever, warm water in rest room sinks?

In my highly unscientific study, not one venue restroom offers sink water above a temperature that might be politely called frigid. Dual faucets seem to simply mock us, each producing the same icy stream; the increasingly prevalent motion sensor faucets offer us no thermal options and dispense water somewhat arbitrarily.  This strikes me as a major break in the chain of public health and personal hygiene.

Mind you, I understand that people are unwilling to stay home when they have tickets for a live performance, especially when no exchange or refund is offered. I can’t hit the, “if you don’t feel well, stay home” note very strongly, as it falls on deaf ears (though we can dream). However, in my more controlling moments, I do wish we could require anyone who coughs or sneezes more than once during a performance or screening to wear a surgical mask; if we go masked at Sleep No More, why should there be any stigma about obscuring one’s nose and mouth in public for the benefit of others (I once saw a show which passed medical masks out to the audience, but for effect, not prophylaxis). And while we all wish the coughers in particular would stay home, as they disturb both the audience and performers in live theatres, I recall in years past Ricola sponsoring bins of cough drops at classical concert venues; perhaps that effort could be renewed or expanded in an effort to silence those around us.

But let’s start with the basics. Even though the production of hot water has a real expense, I think theatre owners and operators might push the thermostat on the hot water heater up to a minimally therapeutic level (whatever that may be) during a national epidemic, at least. Aside from helping to stem disease, which is no small matter, you’ll please your patrons and keep theatres busier because, as someone surely said at some point: warm hands, warm hearts. And I imagine we’d all rather be producing hits instead of illness.

“She nailed it! She nailed it! What a spectacular pirouette, Biff, wouldn’t you agree?”

While the idea of all-arts talk radio, modeled on sports talk radio, may strike one upon first thought as rather absurd, I think my friend Pia Catton is really on to something in her enthusiastic pitches for just such a thing both this week and last week in her “Culture City” column at The Wall Street Journal.

Frankly, whether it’s sports, politics or, for that matter, car repair, we’ve been shown time and time again that there are people who are drawn to listen to, and participate in, audio conversations for hours on end. NPR’s Car Talk managed to attract listeners who didn’t even own cars, because the program was simply so entertaining. Now, while the Magliozzi brothers weren’t on a 24-hour car talk network (they had to make room for things like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and All Things Considered), their 30 year run is a testament to the idea that good talk makes for compelling listening, no matter what the subject.

So even as yet another arts television network heads towards rocky shoals (Ovation just lost the significant access to the pool of Time Warner Cable subscribers), maybe it’s time to realize that arts TV may be too expensive to sustain. But talking is considerably cheaper to produce, even when done truly well, and if Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms and the like are any evidence, there’s an audience for talking about the arts.

Certainly one fear is that it would quickly devolve into debates about which recording of La Boheme is best, or whose Mama Rose was definitive. I wouldn’t have much patience with such circular argument. But shrewd hosts could prevent repetitive (and insoluble) contretemps in favor of variety, and daily topics and special guests could focus the discourse. This is a little trick known as producing, and while it seems invisible when it comes to talk radio, it’s essential. They’re rarely just turning on a mike and letting some personality do whatever they want, which explains why Keith Olbermann keeps getting fired – he doesn’t want to be produced, but let free to roam wherever he sees fit and get paid for it.

One hurdle to be conquered by arts talk radio is the hyperlocal nature of the performing arts. While the entire country can share movies, recorded music and books, even the most successful Broadway show might be seen by say 500,000 people in a year, meaning that if an arts show is national, you may have trouble finding enough people who have seen any given piece to fuel a great conversation. Though there may be original sports talk radio in many markets, I suspect it corresponds with those markets which have major league teams, even though thanks to broadcast, cable, satellite and the web, sports are accessible across the country as never before.

Because of Pia’s ambition, I’m not prepared to theorize about arts talk radio that only serves New York, Chicago and London even at the start; its greatest service to the arts would be if it was national or international, connecting often disparate arts communities into a single conversation. Where I would moderate her vision is length. A daily show or weekend programming block would be a good place to start and test things out, without round-the-clock pressure and expense.

Another staple of most talk radio is opinion, which can fall somewhere between loud argument over the holiday dinner table and outright character assassination. That worries me. I would have trouble listening to people, whether host or caller, tearing down any artist, even when I agree that their work is negligible. That, of course, is because I come from inside the field. Perhaps, just as with many people’s reactions to the Bros on Broadway on Theatremania, it’s the reflex of the dedicated arts aficionado, protecting the artists and the art, and if arts talk radio is to attract an audience beyond the already-converted, maybe some feelings will have to get hurt, beyond bad reviews.

A number of years ago, I read a fascinating speech given at an arts journalism conference in which the speaker/writer said that if the performing arts want more coverage, more attention and perhaps more acceptance, they need to – to use the sports analogy – let the arts media into the locker room. We are, as a rule, profoundly careful about access to artists and process, so we should be surprised if our coverage is limited to one feature story and one review per outlet. While post-game interviews and sports press conferences are remarkable for their ability to say very little, they create the veneer of connection; if they didn’t, they’d have been axed by editors and producers long ago.  Even in film, there are both prepackaged behind the scenes featurettes and set-visits for select outlets, whether high-brow (Vanity Fair) or low (Access Hollywood and the like). Maybe arts talk radio can open up those avenues.

Yes, social media has been used creatively by some celebrities to build the bond with their fans, but most theatre folk don’t manage to reach a critical mass or approach social media all that creatively (on Twitter, Lin-Manuel Miranda offers a great template for artist-fan interaction). They need a platform that goes beyond their own efforts.

Would I have called into arts talk radio when I was 20? Probably so often that I’d have gotten a nickname and become a recurring voice (or gag). Would I do it now? Probably only to play a similar role to that which I play on Twitter: fact-checker, conversation starter, and mild wit. Of course, at this stage, after seven years helming “Downstage Center,” I’d apply for a hosting job in a flash. Frankly, I think Pia and I would make a great duo. And with Car Talk off the air, maybe an arts talk call-in show is just what’s needed. Hmmm.

So I’ve gotta go. Need to find the number for the heads of programming for some radio outlets. NPR, WNYC, WBEZ and WGBH, you’re on the top of the list. Go arts, go arts, gooooo arts!

Yes, the eagle is missing and it’s drained of color. Intentionally.

Trustworthy? Loyal? Helpful? Friendly? Courteous? Kind? I don’t think so.

I think the leadership of the Boy Scouts of America has abandoned its right to claim these words that are part of their “law,” with their actions both today and in the past. The failure to protect boys from sexual predators in their midst, the dogged refusal to reveal information about those crimes until forced to do so, and the emphatic stand against gay scouts and leaders combine to make this an organization that has successfully managed, at its top levels, to destroy its honored traditions.

While those who know me as an adult find something incongruous in the fact that I was a Boy Scout, I was one for many years. I started in Cub Scouts, participated in the oft-forgotten Webelos, and then spent much of my junior high and high school years as a full-fledged Boy Scout, holding pretty much every leadership position at the youth level. I even spent several summers at Boy Scout camps, including a strange but rigorous stint in their leadership training course.

I began to drift away from active scouting beginning in 10th grade, when I fully discovered my love of performing, specifically theatre. Monthly camping trips came into conflict with drama club performances, as well as chorus concerts. Of course, I was not simply trading one activity for another. I was gravitating towards my true calling in life, equipped with some of the knowledge and experience I gained from Boy Scouts.

During my days in the Scouts, I have to confess to an almost complete lack of knowledge of homosexuality; “gay” wasn’t in my vocabulary when it came to sexual orientation, though it was a word of undefinable denigration. No one I knew was “out”; such a thing was invisible if not inconceivable in suburban life in the mid-1970s. In hindsight, surely there were young men in my scout troop struggling with their sexuality in those still deeply repressive days; meeting some of them later, as adults, has made clear that there had indeed been gay young men beside me.  Though I wasn’t an antagonist to them (at least I hope not), I wish I knew and understood then what I know now, so that I might have been a better leader for everyone, and a better friend.

But to be honest, sexuality was irrelevant to the activities of scouting. There was no merit badge for picking up women, no rank that required knowledge of strictly traditional sexual matters. We were there to learn about the outdoors – hiking, camping, orienteering – but there was recognition for writing, reading, music and drama as well. Only now, looking back at an oath I used to recite often do I spy the language of restriction and oppression. Obey? Morally straight? The seeds were always there, but I was too naive to understand.

As for sexual assaults by leaders on Scouts, revealed in files kept by national Scout organization, acts which took place during the time I was a scout? Of course we now know that such violations were sadly too common in both rigidly hierarchical structures and in family rec rooms. At the time, I never heard even a whisper of such things. The adult leadership of my troop, including my own dad, were role models, men I cared for deeply, all gone now. I believe they were there with the best of intentions, and nothing has ever suggested otherwise. But I shudder to think what was kept from view in the national “perversion files,” even if my troop was free of assault.

Early yesterday, there were news reports of a California Scout council going against the national prohibition on gay Scouts and gay adult leaders by recommending an openly gay former Scout for the vaunted rank of Eagle. It gave hope to many like me who revile the organization’s anti-gay stance. By last night, those hopes were dashed as the national council denied the award, destroying the brief chance of finding a chink in the armor of prejudice that has come to represent this organization that once meant so much to me.

Growing up, my parents largely let me find my own way in life, because I was so self-motivated in all things, and fairly immovable about the things for which I had no affinity or interest. However, I do recall my father lobbying me, without subtlety, in an effort to get me to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. “I know men who talk about being an Eagle Scout as being one of their proudest achievements in life,” he’d say. “You’re so close to getting it, How, don’t miss out. I don’t want you to regret it.”

In point of fact, I have never regretted not making Eagle Scout. That is, until now.

I wish I had that symbol of the ultimate achievement, that silver eagle hanging from a tiny banner of red white and blue. Because I would take it, put it in an envelope, and send it back to National Boy Scout Headquarters, in the most concrete rejection of the Boy Scouts that I can imagine. If I was unaware as a youth to the organization’s insensitivity, I can legitimately claim naïveté. But as an adult, I have only contempt for this profoundly blind group which had abdicated any claims to the words I once knew so well. As for learning that the national organization protected criminals? That effort was reprehensible, as was the ongoing coverup.

So I have nothing to throw back at the Boy Scouts of America but my disdain and my words, and that’s hardly enough. I know there are individual troops and councils that ignore the reactionary policies of the Scouts, standing first and foremost for each and every kid. I applaud them, but they must do more than dissent, they must actively reject, lobby against and if need be withdraw, to create a new world of scouting. They should not stand against hate while wearing its uniform. Those of us on the outside, alumnae or not, must act as well.

Scouting should stand for friendship, acceptance, inclusion, protection and support, not knot-tying and bigotry. Only then might I be proud of my history with them. But not a moment before.

Update 4:30 pm 1/9/13: A reader of this post shared with me information about the organization Scouts For Equality. If this essay motivates you to want to effect change in the Boy Scouts, this appears to be the perfect group through which to do so. There may well be others, and I hope to learn about them as well.

Over there, on my bookshelf, sits the biography of my friend Alan. In its index, you can find an entry, “infidelities and romantic liaisons,” which directs you to pages 97-98, as well as page 209. This is, for me, rather disconcerting.

It is perhaps inevitable that if you work in the entertainment field long enough, you will encounter people about whom books have been written, even books that people have written about themselves. Because we tend to know such people at a remove, we are onlookers, and we end up with the clamor of Entertainment Tonight and talk shows, or the ironic whimsy of Celebrity Autobiography, a stage show in which actors and celebrities read with profoundly satiric intent from the fulsome memoirs of other actors and celebrities, although the texts are typically drawn from such eminences as Joan Collins and David Hasselhoff.

But when a book, be it biography, autobiography or memoir, is about someone with whom you have some genuine connection, I can assure you that your reaction and perception of these works, whether ghost-written, scholarly or deeply personal, changes radically.

In the case of Alan’s biography, which was “authorized,” I found it very strange to be reading details about my friend’s (who is 23 years my senior) early marriage, his somewhat unorthodox childhood, and so on.  One the one hand, I suppose I could have just asked him these things, but our time together is usually spent genially discussing theatre and our present lives over meals; while I have interviewed him in formal settings, those occasions have been focused on his creative work, rather than the particulars of his personal life. Reading that biography, I felt as if I was crossing a line, since, even in our Google-saturated age, it’s sort of creepy to research one’s friends.

This is hardly the only time that biographies have held secrets about people I know and work with, and each and every time I dip into such books, I feel I’m going behind their backs. In several cases, the books haven’t been about my friends, but their parents. I learned of one’s early and brief marriage (disapproved of by her hugely famous mother); in another I learned of a sister, institutionalized since birth and never spoken of to me. I’ve never brought these topics up, and I feel that it’s somehow wrong for me to know them. We typically learn about friends’ lives from sharing moments with them, or from conversation where we each choose what to reveal.

Biography poses one type of social unease, but the memoir – not a formal autobiography, but recollections of one’s own past – is even thornier. A decade ago, Cynthia Kaplan, my college roommate’s sister, long a surrogate sibling of mine, published a book of personal essays, Why I’m Like This. While to most readers, the people in the book were characters, to me they were all-but-in-blood family; I knew most everyone whose photos adorned the inside covers. I laughed in recognition over the chapter about her father’s eternal quest for the perfect Thermos (I have owned several that he has designated superior); I puzzled over the near invisibility of her brother in her tales (prompting me to say to him, “Gee, I never realized your sister was an only child”). Of course I read the book the moment it appeared; I wanted to support Cindy. But I’m still not sure I should know quite so much about her romantic life as she revealed, just as I still feel it was wrong for me to have seen her naked in a bathtub in an independent film screened at MOMA, even if her grandmother was by my side. But she gave me, and thousand who don’t know her at all, leave to do so.

A just-published memoir, Chanel Bonfire, casts yet another light on my biographical quandary. In this case, it is a book by an actress named Wendy Lawless, who I knew causally for nine weeks in 1988 when she played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Hartford Stage, where I was the press rep. In her book, she details the somewhat harrowing story of her childhood with her glamorous, erratic, manipulative, alcoholic mother; the book concludes a couple of years before the time I met her. Because her father, who I also met years back, was an actor at The Guthrie Theatre, there are many peripheral characters in the book to whom I am also tangentially connected. There are very few degrees of separation here. On the one hand, as I read the book, my reaction was, “If I’d only known,” but on the other hand, what would I have done? She’d had a difficult life, and at times an exotic one, but would I have interacted with her differently? Would I have cultivated a friendship with Wendy, out of sympathy, instead of mere acquaintance? Did I ever say or do something that could have been construed as insensitive? This book forced a new perspective on a tiny bit of my life.

Perhaps due to the run-up to the book’s publication, Wendy and I became mutual Twitter followers. Unsurprisingly, when I reached out privately, she had not made any connection to our briefly shared past, and perhaps I am still, at best, a vague recollection (I remember every actor who worked at Hartford Stage during my tenure, a by-product of collecting and editing bios and headshots for the show programs).  I imagine we may meet once again, but we are essentially strangers, save for the fact that she has told me, and anyone else who chooses to read her revealing book, intimate details of her first 20 years. All she would know of me, should she care to look, are my biographical details, my opinions on theatre (via blog), and my social media meanderings. The relationship, should one be renewed, is unbalanced, and surely she’ll never solicit stories of my own childhood, which pale next to hers.

Social media has added yet another layer of complication to the issue of privacy and revelation, since we often know a great deal about some people without ever having met them. While I make an effort to meet in real life those with whom I correspond with some frequency, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever get to know all of these new friends.

Just last week, I was chatting back and forth with an actress whose name I know from assorted TV credits, and I’m aware we have some friends in common. She seems just like the sort of person I’d like to know; at least on Twitter, she comes across as smart and warm-hearted, as well as committed to theatre. But it was nagging at me whether I’d seen her on stage, so I did stoop to internet snooping. It turns out that my online friend, Christina Haag, published her own memoir, Come to the Edge, almost two years ago. Its focus: her five year relationship with John Kennedy Jr.

If Christina and I meet, that fact is just going to be sitting there in my frontal lobe and, while I have never been transfixed by the saga of the Kennedys, this connection would surely bring me closer to that family’s sad tragedies that we all know about. While I am to young to recall where I was when President Kennedy was shot, I recall precisely where I was when I heard that John Jr.’s plane was lost mid-flight. It’s one thing when memoir follows acquaintance or friendship, but it’s yet another twist when life details precede meeting.

Spending decades among artists, as well as journalists, it’s safe to assume that there will be more biographies and memoirs from which I am only one degree removed (in her second book, Leave The Building Quickly, Cindy Kaplan twice refers to her brother’s best friend, but I remain frustratingly unnamed). Indeed, as our information era makes personal data ever more accessible, perhaps my comparatively singular experiences will become commonplace for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do. If that comes to pass, then the dissonance I feel at having lives of those I know – or may soon meet – so readily available will dissipate. That’s when, to imbue a cliché with new meaning, everyone’s life becomes an open book.