Perhaps you were asleep. Or drowsy. Or buzzed from a drinking game.

Perhaps you were focused on the dress. You were comparing it to all of the evening’s other dresses.

Perhaps simply didn’t want to watch and stuck with your regular Sunday evening diet of zombies.

But the fact remains that a U.S. viewing audience second only to that of the Super Bowl (in most years) heard a clear, passionate and full-throated statement in support of the arts and arts education during the Oscar broadcast. The First Lady of the United States delivered it, as she does so much, flawlessly.

She said, as midnight drew close on the East Coast, “Every day, through engagement in the arts, our children learn to open their imaginations, to dream just a little bigger and to strive every day to reach those dreams.”

It’s pretty unbeatable, no?

Now we could debate whether it was appropriate for the First Lady to appear on the Oscars at all. I’ve seen arguments against bringing politics into the show (because now even the appearance of the President or First Lady must be political, and of course politics has no place in The Oscars, he said with a straight face) and in favor of her presence (the movies are one of America’s greatest international exports). I would prefer to leave those aside.

I am more concerned about the optics of the situation for the arts themselves. Coming after almost 3 and ½ hours that included jokes about President Lincoln’s assassination, a nine-year-old’s eligibility to date George Clooney, and especially a rousing musical number entitled “We Saw Your Boobs,” this terrific message was at the tag end of an evening that hadn’t made much of a case for children and art.

Mrs. Obama reminded me of Sister Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, who managed to fill her mission only as a result of a gambling bet, one of the many sins she inveighed against. It saved the mission, but through questionable means. I don’t know if anyone, or any arts program, was saved last night.

Maybe I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Mrs. Obama’s words were clear, unequivocal, passionate and elegant. I hope she keeps saying those words, and urging legislators to do something about them, at every opportunity. And since I am the first to say that we can’t speak only to the converted, talking endlessly among ourselves, that same message would mean much less on a program with a smaller audience, which spoke not to the fans of mass entertainment, but to existing arts aficionados.

At the same time, I can’t help but wonder whether by appearing on a show that is being pilloried for misogyny and racism (see The Atlantic, Salon and New York), Mrs. Obama made a devil’s bargain, appearing to lend her legitimacy to messages elsewhere in the evening that shouldn’t be condoned, in order to make a valiant statement on a cause I hold close to my heart.

I heard her words clearly, because I was primed to hear them. I pray they actually registered on millions of people in the U.S. and abroad who weren’t terribly interested. However, they’re not in headlines today, and there’s no apparent follow-up; there’s no website to visit, no initiative announced. I wonder if they featured in even a single news cycle.

If The First Lady genuinely sparked something last night, even in a miniscule portion of that vast audience, then it was worth it. But I worry it may have been a castaway in a sea of self-congratulation, marketing, offense and inconsequence. Which is a shame, because short of an arts message during the Super Bowl, which I suspect is not in the cards,  last night was the biggest chance to speak to America about the value of the arts that we get this year. And I fear it had no impact.

Does this ornate type treatment represent your view of “the arts”?

Art. The arts. Fine arts. Performing arts. Visual arts. The lively arts. Arts & entertainment. Arts & culture.  Culture. High culture. Pop culture.

The preceding phrases are all, on a very macro basis, variations on a theme. However, were you in a research study, and I showed you each of them, one at a time, I daresay they would provoke very distinct associations, very clear delineations of what each encompasses in your mind. Those responses would also likely change depending upon the order in which I showed these to you.

I could also take any two and combine them in a Venn diagram and the overlapping segment would be quite clear. But incorporate a third or fourth and you might find one of these categories the odd man out.

Why do I bring this up? Because as the “arts community” fights its valiant, essential and never-ending battle to convince the public at large of the value of “the arts,” I cannot help but wonder whether those on the receiving end of such messaging each hear very different things when these words are presented to them. I’m prompted to these thoughts by a variety of “real world” examples and experiences, some quite personal. I’m hoping that perhaps someone will want to test my assumptions.

Perhaps this modern treatment is how you like to think of “the arts”?

Visit the websites of a few newspapers. The New York Times “Arts” section is a big tent, where theatre, dance and opera fit in alongside movies, TV, books, and pop music; only on Fridays in the New York edition do they distinguish between performing arts and fine arts, by dividing them into two printed sections. The Huffington Post (to which I contribute) combined “Arts” and “Culture” not so long ago under the “vertical” of “Arts,” but you’ll find that “Entertainment” is something altogether different – and more prominent. In The Washington Post, there’s an “Entertainment” section, in which “Theater & Dance” is a subset. In The Philadelphia Inquirer, “Arts,” “Movies” and “Music” are separate sections of “Entertainment,” but music is really only “popular music,” while classical work is part of “arts.”  I won’t go on.

If you found the foregoing paragraph confusing, imagine what messages audiences are receiving, outlet by outlet, city by city. Even as “popular culture” and “high culture” have supposedly grown closer over the years, there’s labeling and categorization that seek to draw barriers between the various forms. Even if it’s for purely organizational reasons on a website, it carries forward potentially divisive messages about the various forms.

I’ll take The Ramones over Rachmaninoff any day. Gabba gabba hey!

Now, a different tack, rather more personal. On a macro basis, I would certainly self-identify, and those who know me would (I hope) concur, that I support “the arts,” not merely in venues, but in education, in our lives. But when it comes to being a consumer of “the arts,” I am rather more narrow, with theatre paramount. Although I can read music (haltingly, these days) thanks to a brief stint of cello lessons in elementary school and a year or so of formal guitar lessons in junior high, as well as my recollection of many a “young people’s concert” in my childhood, I rarely attend classical music concerts or listen to classical music at home, despite a small collection of some of the great works on CD. I don’t mind classical music, but I don’t retain it, I don’t connect with it; in contrast with my public persona, I’ll take The Ramones, Ben Folds or Elvis Costello any day of the week.

I’m even less attuned to opera, despite having had a college housemate who was a devotee and proselytizer. Recently, when I expressed this gap in my cultural appreciation on Twitter, Tom Godell, general manager of WUKY in Lexington, generously started suggesting works I should sample. When I replied with a list of operas I have seen (among them I Lombardi, The Turn of the Screw, The Magic Flute, Wozzeck, La Boheme and Tosca), he realized that I had indeed made a good faith effort on behalf of opera. It simply didn’t take.

My entire study of art history came in this box. As a result, when I visit museums, I try to guess the artist of each work from afar.

I am an avid consumer of movies (in theatres, as they’re meant to be seen) and TV, some high art, some lowbrow. I try to visit major museums (a vestige of a board game called “Masterpiece” that I owned as a child), but if there’s an aquarium nearby, that’ll top the list.  Whatever you do, please don’t ask me to draw anything, which triggers childhood traumas that are only one notch below gym and recess.

When we make the case for the arts, it is essential to understand that not everyone hears the same thing, or is stirred by the same discipline. Just because one supports “the arts” doesn’t mean that they therefore have an affinity for every form of art and we cannot judge those who don’t share our particular passion, nor can we necessarily convert them, as if all they need is simply more familiarity.

I perpetually warn of the dangers of “talking to ourselves” in the arts, by which I mean that we spend so much time with likeminded people – our co-workers, our friends, our existing audience members – that we assume that everyone shares our understanding and commitment to the arts as a whole. But the moment we step outside our self-created universe in order to draw in others – or to draw in their time or their money – our common language is not necessarily understood in the way we assume it to be.

My entertainment may be your high culture. Your art may be sculpture, while mine may be a script. One size does not fit all. So when we argue on behalf of the arts, we need to think more about customizing our arguments for each audience, for each affinity group. And even that, while increasingly a science, is unto itself an art.

If you are looking to read yet another blog post filled with snark for, or describing the “hate watching” of, the television series Smash, this is not the post you’re looking for. Move along.

With the second season of Smash now underway, to precipitously underwhelming ratings, I’d like to discuss for a moment how it has been received among the people I discuss it with most often, namely theatre professionals. There’s no shortage of criticism of the show from every angle , but I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone get at the overriding sentiment within the theatre community.

In a word: disappointment.

Just over a year ago, many theatre people were thrilled at the idea that a network television series would portray their lives on a weekly basis. Sure, it was loaded with the glitz and glamour that’s typically associated with commercial Broadway theatre, which is only a small portion of American theatrical production, but it was still theatre. Unlike cops, lawyers, private detectives, forensic analysts, doctors and many other professions, we don’t see shows focused the act of making theatre on American television. Maybe we’d finally get a chance for our stories to be told.

Yes, we’ve had a couple of “reality shows” about casting for actual theatre productions (Grease and Legally Blonde). There have been characters who work in theatre: Joey on Friends, Annie on Caroline in the City, Maxwell Sheffield on The Nanny. But Smash held the potential for being the U.S. counterpart to the Canadian series Slings and Arrows, little seen in its original U.S. airing but now a beloved touchstone for so many.

There are certainly many people in the business who are delighted to see Smash showcasing theatre talent and sharing it with the rest of the world (actors like Wesley Taylor, Krysta Rodriguez, Leslie Odom Jr., Jeremy Jordan and Savannah Wise; composers like Joe Iconis and Pasek & Paul) and people watch to cheer on friends and acquaintances. There’s also the frisson of recognition when real-life figures like Jordan Roth and Manny Azenberg turn up, in cameos meaningful to a very small number of potential viewers, but a treat for the insiders. Yet as the series has progressed, I’ve talked increasingly with the disaffected, who stopped watching, and the hopeful, who watch dubiously but religiously, with optimism that their dreamed of ideal may still appear.

There’s a recent corollary here, and that’s with the HBO series The Newsroom. When it debuted, I read scathing review after scathing review and one journalist friend even asked me if I had any idea why he hated it so much. “Because,” I explained, “You live the reality, and what’s on screen isn’t that.” I suspect that was the overriding sentiment behind so many of the Newsroom reviews, because  (of course) they were written by journalists. And that’s the same scenario for Smash among theatre people.

Let’s face it, scripted television programming isn’t documentary, and for that matter, neither is reality TV. It’s created, contrived, scripted, edited and so on in order to compress plots into rigid time constrictions, with the goal of entertaining as many people as possible. So it is with Smash.

I wonder what police officers make of, say, The Mentalist. Can they detach from reality and enjoy the fiction? Were doctors watching House for diagnostic refreshers? Was Sam Waterston giving a master class in prosecutorial technique all those years on Law and Order? I wouldn’t be surprised if professionals find something laughable every week, but those staples of TV drama have been around since the days of Dragnet, Ben Casey and Perry Mason, so they’re probably so much wallpaper by now.

Journalists at least had Lou Grant (the series) once upon a time, but to be fair, they’re most often seen on TV as plot devices, often portrayed as nuisances, or worse still amoral. Theatre people are typically portrayed as elitists or egotists for comic effect, so we don’t have TV icons they can point to very easily, outside of performances and great speeches on The Tony Awards. Anyone remember the laugh-fest when Law and Order: Criminal Intent did its version of Julie Taymor and Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark? That’s our usual lot.

However inaccurate TV series may be, there’s no denying the fact that a hit series can have profound real-world impact. Since the launch of the CSI franchise, forensic science programs have ballooned in popularity; it’s hard not to watch a series like Blue Bloods and feel that a sense of bravery, duty and honor pervades police work. In real life, Greg House would likely have been fired after episode two, but people were mesmerized by a talented diagnostician whose only solace in a screwed up life was to cure diseases, even if it usually meant making vast mistakes until the last 10 minutes – for the sake of drama. There’s no denying that the cops on Law and Order: SVU want to get justice for victims, or that the doctors on ER wanted to save lives; they may be flawed, but they have real commitment. What do the characters on Smash represent?

Smash has tantalized with the “show” part of show business, while the business part is startlingly underrepresented (I’ll never forget the first episode of Slings and Arrows, when a managing director had a meeting with a corporate sponsor and I saw my life’s work on screen for the very first time). More importantly, it hasn’t given us any heroes; I wonder whether the show will actually inspire anyone to go into the theatre.

And that, of course, is what I suspect we all hoped for, a mass media means of showing the world at large what an exciting, challenging, difficult, compelling, fulfilling life can be had in the theatre. Journalists surely long for a weekly platform that reinforces the necessity of properly funded investigative reporting, and I’d certainly like to see a show that reminds us why teachers are the cornerstone of this country’s future, a latter-day Room 222, in contrast to the way politicians now paint them.

We’re probably too emotionally invested in Smash. It was probably never going to be a recruiting tool for theatre or the arts, or finally explain to our families why we do what we do. That’s the stuff of public service announcements, not drama, not mass entertainment. But it’s in our nature to dream, isn’t it? And every so often in our line of work, we make dreams come true.

So, whatever comes of Smash this season, whether it runs or wraps up, whether you love it or loathe it, I leave you with this thought: here’s to season four of Slings and Arrows. May it come soon.

I was invited by the editors of the National Endowment for the Arts blog to contribute to their “blog salon” on the topic of tweeting during live performances, so this short piece was one of several that were posted by them in a week’s time. To see it in its original context, click here.

I’m not keen on “live-tweeting” at live performances. I’m not against tweeting at performances.

Equivocal enough for you?

The perpetual debate over live-tweeting, in play for at least a year, dredges up the same arguments. “When you live-tweet, you are not present.” “Can’t people put their phones down for even two hours?” “Why should I be disturbed by tapping or glowing screens?” I agree with all of these.

I am in middle-age, and remember the introduction of personal computers, portable computers, cell phones, digital music players, smart phones, and tablets, to name but a few. My patterns of consuming live entertainment were set in the era before most personal electronic communication was available, and in that, not so different from my parents, or audiences in preceding centuries.

Yet I am an avid tweeter, a moderate Facebooker, and, when there are live TV events, I often adopt the two-screen approach, shifting focus between TV and computer, looking up facts and tweeting commentary as I watch. I have live-tweeted talks and speeches in person, most recently TEDx Broadway this past week, yet I have no desire to do this during a play or concert. However, those raised in more recent years, with this technology commonplace, may find it perfectly natural. Who am I to say?

If arts groups can accommodate live tweeters in a manner where their actions in no way impinge upon other attendees or the performers, why not let these experiments play out? If we are Luddites, we risk losing future audiences, which we can ill afford, and hypocrites for saying we want to reach them, but only on our own rigid terms.

Over the years, I can recall disdainful and exclusionary complaints about the introduction of supertitles at operas, sign-language interpreted and open captioned performances, and other such “intrusions.” Thirty years ago, people were startled when I wore jeans to the theater; now shorts are not uncommon in warmer months. Times change.

I will always hold the performance paramount and I hope I will also welcome innovation. Technology will soon make the crude method of live-tweeting obsolete, with elegant, unobtrusive interactivity flawlessly executed, in ways we can’t yet imagine. So for now, as long it doesn’t affect others, I choose to support exploration.

I would rather have people at live performances dividing their attention if they must, instead of not being there at all.

I had never seen the play before. I had wanted to, quite literally for decades, since its Broadway debut in the 1970s. But I never had the opportunity. I avoided the film version, because by all accounts, it didn’t work.

And so, when it was revived on Broadway a few seasons ago, I was thrilled. On the night I had tickets, I arrived at the theatre early, and sat waiting, expectantly. Then, as the lights dimmed, a phrase popped into my head.

“With one particular horse, called Nugget, he embraces.”

Moments later, Richard Griffiths came onstage and spoke those very same lines, the first words of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. How did they come to me? I am not clairvoyant.

As a teen, before I began going to the theatre regularly, I was an avid buyer of scripts, which I read over and over again. They were my introduction to theatre, and, unwittingly, I had committed bits of some to memory. I had not read Equus in some 25 years, yet the words were on my lips, unbidden.

In fact, this is not such a rare phenomenon in my life. I often find myself “singing along with plays,” moving my mouth at the theatre as if lip syncing. This happens when I encounter passages that I was required to learn by rote in high school English (“Friends, Romans, countrymen…”), but it also happens in the presence of many of the plays that fed my earliest interest in theatre.

My repertoire is highly eclectic, as is my collection of plays. Growing up just outside New Haven, I had access to a selection of used book stores, which were filled with the castoff texts of many a Yale Drama student. Brecht, Synge, Pinter, Moliere; Miller, Williams, O’Neill: I owned them all before going off to college. They remain on my shelves today (many with cover prices under $2). I’m not even sure which of them I know intimately, and which I’ve merely read.

Yes, of course, I sing along with Shakespeare; I imagine many do. Richard Thomas once told me that when he played Hamlet, he never worried about going up on his lines, since surely at least a half-dozen audience members could instantly prompt him on (he knew, however, that he was on his own if he dried while playing Peer Gynt, since no one knew that). The conclusion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – “If we shadows have offended” – is a profound entreaty to me, and I cannot help but whisper along whenever it is spoken. It could, I think, be spoken at the curtain call of every play; it is the international anthem of theatre.

I find the same incantory power in George’s second act speech from Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, when he speaks of the young man ordering bergin and water to the amusement of surrounding gangsters. It is hypnotic and familiar, sad and funny, and speaks to the beauty of a play that most think of as entirely harrowing. I hope that I share nothing else with George, but I know that in some way, I share something with Edward Albee.

To be sure, repetition, whether in speech or reading, can enable one to recite familiar lines, but it goes much deeper for me. I often tear up when I recite or simply hear the Hebrew words of the Kaddish, be it in a synagogue or on TV, because while I have no comprehension of the language, the sound of it comforts and upsets me all at once, so imbued is it with the spirit of those I love who have died. But to make an absurd comparison, I am also moved, inspired, by the opening lines of the Star Trek TV series, which take me to my childhood before I discovered theatre – “To boldly go where no man has gone before” – and I say them aloud, quietly, whether they’re heard in film or in person, as I did last week when George Takei invoked them at the TEDx Broadway conference.

I am not suggesting that audiences should begin to commit passages of plays to memory so that they may join in when at the theatre; that would be as annoying as the patron who sings along with every song at a classic musical or the candy unwrapper who thinks that by going slowly, the noise is less apparent. But it does suggest that perhaps audiences might come to understand and appreciate plays on a deeper level if they had the opportunity to truly know snippets, so they could recognize them as old friends when they are spoken – and perhaps also begin to discern how different productions can reveal the words anew each time if those words are already deep within them.

Playwrights’ words are the fundamental reason I proselytize for the theatre. They live not just in books and on stage, but inside me. These are my text and my stories. They are my prayers.