Alan Ayckbourn in rehearsal at 59E59 Theaters

Since 2005, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, the British playwright and director, has been bringing plays – often two or even three at a time – to 59E59 Theaters in New York from his home base at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England, where he was artistic director for more than 30 years. On each of his six visits to the U.S. – save for one where he fell ill at the last moment – I’ve moderated a public conversation with him, prompted by our friendship dating back to 1996 and the U.S. premiere of By Jeeves at Goodspeed Musicals, where I was general manager at the time.

For the first time, this year I remembered to record our conversation on May 29. Because I always learn so much from discussing theatre with Alan – we’ve also done two lengthy audio interviews, the most recent (2011) of which can be found here – I thought I’d set down a bit of this year’s conversation, focusing entirely on what Alan had to say. These pieces of the conversation have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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Richard Stacey and Elizabeth Boag in Confusions

On Confusions, his 14th play, from 1974, which is only now having its U.S. premiere at 59E59 Theaters.

I hardly recognize the boy who wrote Confusions. He was very, very young. I never rewrite them, I just them be. I just don’t know the guy who wrote it and I don’t want to meddle with his work, in case he comes forward in time and beats me up….

It’s a great art form, one-act play writing. Just because you can write full-length plays doesn’t necessarily mean you can write one-acts. One of our great one-act writers was a guy called John Mortimer who wrote some wonderful one-act plays. But I think his full-length ones were slightly less certain or sure-footed than his one act plays, plays like The Dock Brief and What Should We Tell Caroline and all those were marvelous little examples.

It’s like the way Saki wrote a short story. It’s akin to short story writing because you just need a different set of muscles. Like an athlete, just because you’re a 100-metre sprinter doesn’t mean you can run a marathon, in fact you probably can’t. It just depends on the discipline.

The one-act is a fascinating discipline because everything has to be very concise, very quick By the time one of the Confusions plays is over, Hero’s Welcome [this year’s other Ayckbourn production in New York, his 79^th play], in time span, is just getting underway and you think that’s leisurely, you can establish the characters, you can establish the situation, you can plant questions in people’s minds.

On working in theatre.

One of my crusades is live theatre and keeping it alive. I’ve never worked extensively in movies, or television or radio. I’ve always concentrated in theatre.

About every five years, we need to stop and just ask ourselves, why are we staying in theatre? The depressing Sunday morning when nothing’s happening or the Wednesday afternoon when nobody’s coming in, you think “What the hell are we doing this for?” and I just have to list the things which I consider important with live theatre.

One of those things, and it sounds like a total cliché, is it’s live. It’s when you do something here in this space, we’re all in the same room and in this tiny space a group of people will perform something and hopefully you will interact with them and they will interact with you. It’s a live, living experience.

It’s the one facet of theatre that’s totally unique. You can forget all the other things: big flying pieces of scenery and spectacular lighting effects and the huge orchestras that swell up. In the end it’s just a group of human beings with a certain talent for acting getting together and doing something, trying to tell a story which somebody else who has a certain talent for writing has constructed, and allowing it to happen.

On his eight-hour narrative for voices, The Divide, performed only once to date.

I think one of the things that drives me, apart from live theatre, is the need to surprise myself, or indeed in the case of The Karaoke Theatre Company [his newest play, debuting this summer at the Stephen Joseph], to terrify myself.

I’m aware that when you get to my length of career, 80 plays and counting, the danger is to rely on the tried and tested. There’s nothing in new in theatre. Always when you do something you consider totally new someone will come up and say, ‘I saw in 1921 an identical play to this’ or it was just slightly different, so you don’t try to do that but do something different.

Because I’m a director and a writer and the two roles are simultaneous – as I’m writing a new play I’m directing it in my head, I’m solving the problems, at least to a certain extent. I’ve got no unsolved problems by the time I’ve got them onstage, because I know what I’m doing. That’s not conceited, it’s just practice really. So when I sat down for The Divide, I wrote something I knew I couldn’t stage.

On science fiction.

Sci-fi gives you common ground with the generations you are no longer part of. You can invent a world which hopefully they will accept which doesn’t depend on me knowing their jargon or their way of texting or anything like that. I invent the ground rules. You ask them please accept the ground rules of this….

When you try and do an Isaac Asimov, when you start prophesying the future, you try and think of the trends. I got quite a lot in Henceforward [his 1987 play being revived this summer at the Stephen Joseph] right. What I haven’t got right is the technology, which has leapt through. Who could anticipate that since 1987 digital technology would advance as far as it has?

On relationships between men and women in his plays.

Russell Dixon and Stephen Billington in Hero’s Welcome

I always felt that I’m probably very calm and I hope pleasant person, but whenever I’ve hurt people, they’re always people I love, because it’s a sort of defensive thing. Over the years, when I was very young, I got quite aggressive to some people with whom I should have known better.

Nevertheless, you must have perceived in some of my plays that when men and women cohabit, when they choose to live together, they proceed to destroy each other and do terrible things they never would dream of doing to a complete stranger – even if it’s non-physical, saying terrible things.

On whether he sees much theatre beyond his own work.

When I go into a theatre I go to work. I sit in the auditorium, and I sit and worry, quite often. I think about how can we make this better, how can we make this right? So I go to the movies. I don’t have to worry there.

If you’ve ever been to the movies with a film editor they are appalling people. They go “No, no, no. Cut, cut, cut. For god’s sake they’ve let that shot go far too long.” And I just sit there going, “Oh, that’s good.”

Responding to an audience member who asked how, since he works so much, he’s learned such a great deal about human nature.

I’ve worked with human beings. They are actors, admittedly, and they’re rather extraordinary human beings. Actors have a tendency to live very close to the surface and they tend to be very fluent about themselves because they use themselves so much. I learn a lot about human nature from actors, and the rest I observe, staring out of the window and walking around.

The deep and interesting things, the psychological things I learn by working as a director. The director is an interesting mix of facilitator and dictator really and a little bit of something else, a sort of counselor, who hopefully is helpful.

Once I asked Stephen Joseph, “What’s the secret of directing?” and he said, “The secret to directing is to create an atmosphere in which other people feel free to create.” That is the most extraordinarily easy answer and the most difficult thing to achieve. Because you get a group of actors who are different, they’re fairly centered a lot of them, and you can persuade them, cajole them, to work together and sometimes they do very willingly and sometimes with great reluctance. It’s most interesting and informative thing for a dramatist and also I think it brings me a lot closer to the psychology of what makes people tick.

On casting and creating an ensemble.

Like many directors I try not to always rely on the same team because there’s eventually something stupefying about that. You sit there thinking, ‘Aren’t we wonderful, aren’t we wonderful?’ No, we’re not wonderful. You have to bring new blood in. I have a sort of rolling system. Hopefully I have enough actors at any one time in the company who understand the ethic of the way I like to work and then you bring the new people in who provide the new spark. It is a growing thing.

I’ve always worked on the assumption, it’s an old show biz cliché really: Take the work seriously, but never yourself. A lot of the time we work from having fun, just enjoying each others’ company and I think that is very helpful in the process of creation, because it relaxes people, they feel confident, perhaps. If you’re going to act, you’ve got to try a role out, try to do something with it, chances are you’re going to make a bit of a fool of yourself in the early stages, because you’re going to go too far or just do something that’s totally wrong, but if you give the actor the feeling they can do that without you going “Ga-ah, stupid,” you just say “Well that hardly worked, but well done. Moving on. Shall we try another one?” So it’s that sort of trust. I hope the actors who work with me trust me to say the right thing.

Brandon Victor Dixon and Audra McDonald in Shuffle Along (Photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The act of making theatre is of endless fascination to those who make theatre, which accounts for the litany of backstage plays and musicals going back to, at least, the mechanicals’ scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By sheer coincidence, New York is home to two new entries in this genre, both focusing attention on actual productions from the 1920s, and in the process restoring currency to forgotten works.

The more elaborate of the two shows is the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, written and directed by George C Wolfe. This chronicles the history of Shuffle Along, America’s first all-black musical – both on stage and behind the scenes. It was a groundbreaking, bona fide smash in its debut, playing nearly 500 performances and making stars of many cast members. However, the show itself was very much of its time, and in the days before cast recordings, and no doubt as a result of failed revival attempts in 1932 and 1953, it faded from memory. Only thanks to Wolfe’s creative efforts has the show regained a foothold in theatrical history, beyond the realm of scholars.

By sheer coincidence of timing, Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichmann, with their Off-Broadway play Indecent, have performed a similar act of resurrection on God of Vengeance, a play with its roots in European Yiddish theatre, which played in two Off-Broadway theatres in 1922 before reaching Broadway, in an English language version, in 1923. Like Shuffle Along, God of Vengeance was largely lost to time, but not after a long successful run. God of Vengeance was effectively shut down when its cast and producer were charged and convicted with offering an immoral performance, and subsequent legal proceedings continued for the next three years, ultimately exonerating them long after the play had shuttered.

Adina Verson and Max Gordon Moore in Indecent (Photo by Carol Rosegg)

Reading press coverage from that era, any number of reasons were cited for exactly what it was that made God of Vengeance so offensive, ranging from depictions of prostitution to portrayals of the desecration of Jewish religious symbols. What the press accounts of the charges left out, like many of the reviews that preceded them, was that the play depicted a lesbian relationship. While that love story was judged harshly by other characters in the play, it was portrayed as liberating by the playwright, Sholom Asch, rather than as shameful, which might have placated the moralists of the time.

As a student of the theatre, I was not unaware of Shuffle Along or God of Vengeance, but these new works certainly made them more vivid for me by recounting their histories theatrically. Working against theatrical censorship 90 years after those plays were first seen in New York, I confess to having invested deeply in Indecent long before I saw it. I went in anticipating a work that might in some way inform my own work, that would show me parallels to the small-mindedness that fuels censorship then and now.

While that is certainly a strand in Indecent, I was surprised to find that it was not, as I’d imagined, a straightforward anti-censorship tract. In fact, it is a love letter to the people who struggle to make theatre against all odds, in this case against those who wish to police morality, just as the new Shuffle Along pays tribute to the men who broke through a theatrical colour barrier, through racism, even though there were (and are) many more societal challenges to face. Both works are about vision and tenacity, with the more mournful Indecent putting me in mind of yet another play about the making of theatre, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good.

While I don’t necessarily think those who forget theatrical history are doomed to repeat it, it’s impossible not to think about the histories of these plays in light of the discourse surrounding America’s endless presidential campaign, where racial bias and limits on free speech are discussed as if they are viable planks in a political platform. I don’t think theatre artists want to turn the clock back one bit – but it’s worrisome to think that the attitudes that artists faced in the 1920s might once again gain political currency, even if they have always been present in our society, both covertly and overtly.

The new Shuffle Along and Indecent are reminders, as they honour and celebrate achievements and travails of the past, of why barriers broken cannot be allowed to be rebuilt. It is why, like the ghostly troupe in Indecent that reanimates nightly to tell the story of God of Vengeance over and over again, we must utilise and support theatre, and all of the arts, in an effort to dispel the worst impulses that will shape not just our stories and our ability to tell them, but our lives.

Lin Manuel Miranda (photo by Howard Sherman)

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Lin-Manuel Miranda—bookwriter, lyricist, composer, and star of the Broadway hit musical Hamilton—has already given a matinee performance and served as master of ceremonies for a streetside #Ham4Ham show. He is optimistic there will still be time for a nap after talking with this writer and before a second performance of Hamilton in less than two hours.

“The sense of community I get from doing it is really why I’m here,” he says, sipping a cup of tea. “That’s joyous to me. That’s the thing that I loved most about doing high school theatre. I always try to stay connected to that same impulse. It’s the running joke that Jonathan Groff and I have: ‘We’re in the play.’ There’s nothing better than being in the play, of being chosen from everyone in your school and showing the world what you have.”

At thirty-five, with Hamilton, Miranda is at the top of the theatre world after only three Broadway musical credits, following his Tony Award-winning In the Heights and his contributions of music and lyrics to Bring It On. He’s already broken into film, writing cantina music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and writing the score for an upcoming Disney animated feature, Moana, to be released next fall. He has performed at the White House, and the president has come to see him in New York. He’s welcomed at events from the Kennedy Center Honors to gatherings of historians who seem to love Hamilton just as much as die-hard musical theatre buffs. In the midst of all this attention and activity he’s still very connected to his roots. Anyone who follows him on Twitter can find him relating stories about his parents, his wife, his young son, his relatives, and his countless friends, as well as chatting with as many fans as he can.

The experience of high school theatre never seems to be very far from Miranda’s mind. He speaks of it often, and his school theatre experiences are the explicit topic of our interview. He tells me his earliest artistic goal was to be in his sixth grade play.

“We had an extraordinary music teacher at my elementary school who started the tradition of the sixth grade play,” Miranda recalls. This was at Hunter College School, a public elementary and high school for gifted students. “I’m very lucky that she started it just when I got there. I think the first sixth grade musical they did was West Side Story when I was in kindergarten.

“The entire school would watch the sixth grade play. I remember as young as second or third grade already fantasizing, ‘What’s going to be the sixth grade play when we get to sixth grade?’ It’s funny in retrospect to think how much of my life was spent thinking, ‘What show are we going to get to do?’ which is not the usual elementary school concern.

“Then, the crazy thing that happened was we got to sixth grade and they said, ‘We’re going to do the previous six years’ shows. We’re going to do short versions of all of them.’ So we get this lethal dosage of musical theatre at age twelve. I was a cowhand and a son in this unwatchable four-hour show that our parents had to sit through. But for me, it was the greatest experience of my life.”

Miranda didn’t go out for theatre at all in seventh grade but returned as an eighth grader with the encouragement of his English teacher, Rembert Herbert, whom he thanked in his Tony acceptance speech.“He really got me engaged as a student first. He told me, ‘You’re writing all this stuff in the back of my class, but none of it is for class. So can you join us?” Pressed on what he was writing at the back of class, Miranda confesses, “Bad love songs to girls.”

“What caught Dr. Herbert’s attention,” he explains in more detail, “was that we had an assignment where we were put into groups and we had to teach three chapters of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, which was a book I really love. I decided we’re going to make a musical version. I wrote a song for each chapter, and I was such a control freak that I recorded them all a capella and the other kids lip-synced to my voice.”

Herbert encouraged Miranda to contribute to the annual student-written, student-directed Brick Prison show, and beginning in ninth grade, Miranda also began auditioning for shows.

“I was in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes and in You Can’t Take It with You. Those were my plays. In ninth grade, I got cast as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, which was huge, because I beat out the seniors. Then, Godspell in tenth grade. I started dating the assistant director and she became my high school girlfriend. Then she directed A Chorus Line junior year and I was her assistant director, so I kind of apprenticed into the directing track. Then I directed West Side Story my senior year.

“So I got too busy to [act in] the plays. But I was a president of Hunter Theatre, even though I didn’t participate. I would do their budgets. We all hung lights. We all did all the stuff.”

Directing West Side Story as a senior was an important time for Miranda.

“West Side Story is such a controversial show, because everyone’s unflattering in that show. The Puerto Ricans say, ‘That’s our only thing and we’re all gang members.’ I’m sensitive to that. At the same time, for me, it was an incredible teaching experience. I got to bring Puerto Rico to school. My dad came in and gave dialect lessons to my white and Asian Sharks. There was no brownface, nothing stupid like that.

“But I wanted to make sure that while they’re in America, they’re yelling Puerto Rican things like ‘Wepa!’ It was a way for me to actually engage the part of me that only existed at home and bring that into school. That was really lovely.”

Were there any parts Miranda wished he could play again or roles he missed out on?

“If I could do the Pirate King again,” he says, laughing, “having more than a reliable half-octave of range, I’d love another crack at it. That being said, I have no regrets. I had a wonderful time doing everything. Those are the shows that are just in your bloodstream forever—because you did that. It’s a totally different thing than loving a cast album or seeing a show and loving it.

“That’s why, for me, a show I write becomes real when a high school gets to do it. Because I know there are kids who had their first kisses as Benny and Nina [in In the Heights]. I know there are salon ladies who are going to be friends for life because they were Daniela and Carla together. I had that experience with my friends on the shows we worked on. That’s what I love most about being on this side of the process now, being the one who makes the musicals.”

Theatre wasn’t Miranda’s only interest in high school. In addition to writing some short musicals, he was making films as well, pulling his friends together from all of their other activities to work on them. But he relates that experience back to theatre.

“I think that one of the best things getting to be in a position of authority in theatre in high school gets you is that you have no power to hire or fire or replace anyone. So the only voice you have is your self-created authority. I learned to harness that: ‘All right, guys, this is the plan,’ knowing at any point that anyone could say, ‘I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.’”

Given the wide variety of skills Miranda displays as writer, composer, and lyricist, I ask him about his musical training.

“I took orchestration and composition, which was a class available in high school, but really just piano lessons and basic music theory. I actually have a couple of friends I would call up in the middle of the night and ask, ‘Hey, I’m playing an F#, an A and a C. I don’t know what this chord is called. What is it?’ And they’d say, ‘You’re playing an F# diminished.’ I kept thinking I was going to invent a new chord. And they’d say, ‘No, they all exist.’”

Miranda discovered the friendships he made while working on shows gave him shortcuts across the usual boundaries of the school’s social order.

“The saving grace of being a theatre kid,” he explains, “is that you get to make friends in every grade. So if your grade is kicking your butt, which was true for me some of the time, I had friends in other grades. The heartbreak that comes with that is sometimes your best friend will graduate because they’re two or three years older than you.

“And that’s something. I knew even then that was something my peers weren’t sharing. They were relentlessly involved with who is friends with who, and what clique is big, and who is in and who’s out in my grade. Being a theatre kid allows you to have this birds-eye view of it. I would spend my lunch period with at least four different groups. So I was always a little friends with everyone.”

Miranda went off to college planning on a dual major in film and theatre, and those interests narrowed the schools he applied to very quickly, since few offered both. He chose Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he eventually dropped his plans to also study film.

“I got to college thinking I knew everything. I got the rude awakening of, ‘Oh, I don’t know anything. I know how theatre at my high school worked. There’s still so much I have to learn.’ I was both humbled and empowered by this. We thought we were hanging lights right—we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. And that’s the fun of it. You learn the skill set you need to prepare you to work with lots of different kinds of people.”

Although we agreed the interview would focus on Miranda’s school experiences, it’s impossible to talk with him right now and not ask about Hamilton. Hip-hop, rap, and historical biography are not the usual ingredients of musical theatre. Had he always envisioned it on Broadway?

“I honestly thought of it like Jesus Christ Superstar,” he says. “I thought, ‘This will be a show, but I’m going to write it by writing the music first,’ which is exactly how Andrew Lloyd Webber did Superstar. It was a concept album. I had the good fortune to ask him about that. I peppered him with questions like ‘How did you get these for-real rock singers on that concept album?’ He said, ‘Because they were just around. We recorded the Jesus Christ Superstar concept album next door to where Led Zeppelin was recording album number III. You would just say, ‘Hey, do you want to come in and sing this part?’

“My vision for having rappers play the founding fathers started as ‘I’m going to get the artists first.’ Then we just started writing the show and I stopped worrying about landing the rapper and said, ‘Let me make the thing.’ Now we’re reverse-engineering it. We’ve got this mix tape coming out and hip-hop artists are going to be covering songs from the show.

“It worked out the way it was meant to work out. I was going to make a concept album that someone else was going to stage. It turns out I made a staged piece that someone’s going to turn into a concept album.”

Given the enormous demands on his time right now, one has to wonder, is Miranda having fun?

“What I’m enjoying so much about the success of Hamilton is it’s an opportunity to get together everyone who loves musicals. I know a lot of people who don’t love musicals like our show, but you can get them in because of history. You can get in because of politics. You can get in via hip hop.

“For me the fun is getting on Twitter and talking about Les Mis or Wicked for a little while, talking about the shows we all love, and reminding the pop culture world at large. Because you know what? We all do love shows. I know everyone likes to think of musical theatre as this niche genre. But a lot of us did the school play. A lot of us watched Glee. A lot of us, even if we never saw a Broadway show, could sing a few show tunes because of school and because of our parents. So it is this secret thing that we all know that we don’t all talk about together. That’s what I’m enjoying about this part of the process.”

What part of the creative process gives him the greatest pleasure?

“For me, it’s all about what I can bring, because musicals are such a hybrid art. They’re fourteen art forms mashed into one. So it becomes a simple calculus for me of ‘What can I bring into the room?’

“One of the things I love best about writing is being able to bring a song to my creative team—walking into a room with people you trust, showing them a new song, which is like being naked in front of them, to be honest. That’s why it’s important to get the right people in the room, and knowing you’re going to leave with a better song because of the people you’ve allowed. That’s an exhilarating process.

“Expand that to the whole show entirely. That’s a pretty great moment,” Miranda continues, enthusiastically. “Seeing a cast read your work for the very first time, that’s a really exciting part of the process.

“You know, it’s not lost on me that as someone who kind of felt like an outsider in my own community growing up, I’m just writing communities for myself. That’s what I get from being in the show, too.”

This interview originally appeared in Dramatics magazine, published by the Educational Theatre Association.

Christopher Jackson and company in Hamilton (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Of all the differences in arts marketing between America and the UK (and Europe), perhaps the most significant is our dearly held concept of the subscription. Under this plan, tickets for an entire season are sold essentially as one unit, yielding a discount over individual ticket prices and a year’s worth of cultural programming for the purchasing patron, and significant advance sales for the producing or presenting organisation. A fundamental tenet for arts sales here for many decades, albeit one that has softened some in recent years as buying habits have changed, the concept perseveres in theatre, ballet, opera and symphonies, with various alternative versions now found as well.

I once had occasion in the early 1990s to explain subscriptions, through a translator, to the artistic director of a Russian theatre company that performed in true, continuous repertory. The language barrier took a back seat to the cognitive befuddlement.

At the core of the classic subscription is the idea that one need not worry about the chore of buying tickets to events individually. While patrons may end up with seats to something that doesn’t particularly interest them, they are assured tickets to shows that may become highly successful and hard to get. The discount mitigates the acquisition of seats for events that aren’t desired. Subscription also usually carries the right to buy subsequent seasons before the general public, and often the right to retain the same seat locations each year.

As the musical Hamilton begins its march towards world domination through touring and major sit-down productions, it automatically becomes a huge draw for the venues where it will play, the enticing centrepiece of any subscription package. In Washington DC, where it will be seen as part of the Kennedy Center’s 2017-18 theatre season, some two years from now, there has been some blowback to the Center making clear in its marketing that subscribers to their 2016-17 season will have the first opportunity to the following year of programming, the season with Hamilton.

While consistent with their longtime sales practices and those of  many organisations like it, the degree to which Hamilton tickets are coveted is being translated by some into the charge that the Kennedy Center is requiring people to buy subscriptions for two years of theatre if they want to be sure to see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash. I have no doubt that this scenario will be repeated at presenting venues wherever Hamilton plays, and will be at issue for a number of years given the show’s still growing popularity.

Is this price gouging, or the arts equivalent of blackmail? The problem is a by-product of the escalation of ticket prices for theatre everywhere. The result is that it now costs many hundreds of dollars for a single subscription to a Broadway touring series, let alone a pair for those who don’t like to see theatre alone. Of course the demand for Hamilton is fuelling a booming resale market (aka scalpers or touts), driving up its perceived value even further, with tickets being offered at $1,000 each. In a stroke of timing and luck, just last night, I was able to snag a pair of newly released seats for the Broadway run at the original price of $199 each; I jokingly referred to them on Twitter as investment-grade.

The expansion of Hamilton into multiple markets is not creating a new sales paradigm of excess and expense. What it is doing is revealing the degree to which ticket markets have grown increasingly, often punishingly expensive, as producers and venues have discovered, rather later than many businesses, that supply and demand can yield greater profits on the most popular productions. Combine that with the ever increasing costs of producing and running theatre productions and the result is higher prices, higher grosses, and higher returns when a show hits it big. That also leads to a widening divide between those who can afford tickets to Broadway shows and national tours, and even Off-Broadway and regional productions as well, and those who can’t.

There have been massive hits before Hamilton and there will be massive hits in its wake, hard as that is to conceive right now. Just as our politicians debate economic inequality in every aspect of American life, Hamilton, while loved by countless people, many of whom who have yet to actually see it, has become the unwitting poster child for this societal issue when it comes to entertainment. It’s a cruel irony for a musical about the man who created the American financial system. If only he were here to solve it, and make theatregoing more democratic once again.

The statements, on their face, are utterly startling. “Blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills needed for this field.” “I don’t have to take this. Yes, my board is all white, and they are one of the most diverse boards of any organization – more than any arts organization at this table.” It was implied that musical theory is too difficult for black and Latinos as an area of study.

These remarks were attributed to Michael Butera, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for Music Education, as being made by him at a National Endowment for the Arts meeting for service organizations, at which equity, diversity and inclusion were the primary topic. Butera’s comments were reported by Keryl McCord, operations director of Alternate ROOTS, in a widely disseminated blog post dated May 4, entitled Why We Must Have Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity and in the Arts: A Response to the National Association for Music Education. It read, in part:

What most roiled my spirit was his belief that blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills and ability to grasp music theory needed for this field. If Mr. Butera had not left the room after making his remarks, this written response would not be necessary. But he did leave the room, depriving me and everyone else at the table a chance to respond, to try to engage in a dialog. What was said was said publicly, and was so deeply disturbing and has remained with me since our meeting, that I could not, not respond.

The late Dr. Maya Angelou tells us that when someone tells you who they are, you should believe them. I believe Mr. Butera said what he meant, and meant what he said. So I am not raising this issue publicly because I think he should apologize. No apology needed, not to me at least. The challenge is not that he said out loud what he believes to be true. But it is the substance of what he believes that is the central issue and that can’t be resolved with an apology. No. The more critical challenge is that Mr. Butera leads an organization dedicated to music education in our schools, to being “resources for teachers, parents, administrators” and providing “opportunities for students and teachers nationwide.”

An image circulating on Facebook, attributed to Deejay Robinson

In a phone interview with the Arts Integrity Initiative on May 8, Michael Butera flatly denied both of the statements about blacks and Latinos attributed to him. As to the issue of board diversity, Butera confirmed that the board of NAfME doesn’t current have any board members of color. He pointed out, in reference to his recollection of the meeting, “I did indicate that the board is elected from the membership and that we have in the past had members of minority and ethnic groups. But the statement is, in my personal judgment, a total misrepresentation of the dialogue.”

The situation was reported, based on McCord’s post and social media response to it, on the Education Week site on May 9. The social media response was extremely negative towards Butera and the statements attributed to him, questioning whether he should or could continue in his role with NAfME.

The conversation in question took place on April 26 at the NEA was during what was essentially a breakout session during the main meeting, in which the attendees were divided into eight groups of eight for smaller conversations regarding EDI within their organizations. McCord and Butera were at the same table, as was a member of the NEA staff. Only those eight people were fully party to what transpired.

As of midday today, May 10, another one of the eight people at McCord and Butera’s table has issued a statement about what happened and what was said. Jesse Rosen, President and CEO of the League of American Symphony Orchestras, wrote, in part:

I can attest to the accuracy of Keryl McCord’s account of what was said and what took place. Mr. Butera indeed said that he could not take action to diversify his board, and that African Americans and Latinos lacked keyboard skills needed to advance in the music education profession — two statements which many of us around the table challenged. The group was unable to further pursue the meaning of his comments as Mr. Butera abruptly and angrily walked out of the room, well in advance of the meeting’s scheduled end time.

One other person at the table, communicating to Arts Integrity through a third party, said that they did not wish to be publicly involved with the developing issue. The NEA staff member at the table, Jessamyn Sarmiento, Director of Public Affairs, told Arts Integrity that she would not share her recollection of the events, saying, in reference to the people at the table, “It is up to them. It is their conversation to be had.”

*   *   *

From the website of the National Association for Music Education:

National Association for Music Education (NAfME), among the world’s largest arts education organizations, is the only association that addresses all aspects of music education. NAfME advocates at the local, state, and national levels; provides resources for teachers, parents, and administrators; hosts professional development events; and offers a variety of opportunities for students and teachers. The Association orchestrates success for millions of students nationwide and has supported music educators at all teaching levels for more than a century.

From the website of Alternate ROOTS:

Alternate ROOTS is an organization based in the Southern USA whose mission is to support the creation and presentation of original art, in all its forms, which is rooted in a particular community of place, tradition or spirit. As a coalition of cultural workers we strive to be allies in the elimination of all forms of oppression. ROOTS is committed to social and economic justice and the protection of the natural world and addresses these concerns through its programs and services.

*   *   *

Keryl McCord

Speaking on May 6, Keryl McCord said that in the wake of her post, there has been no response to her or Alternate ROOTS regarding her assertions from Butera or NAfME. She said, “I haven’t seen an e-mail, I haven’t received a phone call, I haven’t seen anything on our Facebook page.”

Asked whether there was any additional conversation with Butera that took place at the NEA session which she had not reported, McCord said, “I remember him saying something about quotas when he was talking about his board being all white and I kind of raised my eyebrows. ‘Well what do quotas have to do with it? We’re not talking about quotas.’ But that’s the only other thing and I really don’t remember where that came, early in the conversation.”

Reiterating points made in her piece, McCord concluded by saying that among the things that really stood out for her was, “That the executive director and CEO of the National Association for Music Education literally got up and said, ‘I don’t have to take this,’ and literally stormed out of the meeting. I’m still floored. We were at the National Endowment for the Arts because the discussion was about inclusion, diversity and equity in the arts. Before he left I tried to say to him, ‘Michael, this is the work. It’s hard, but this is the work, don’t leave.’ I don’t know if he’ll remember that, but that’s what I said to him. As I said in my piece, it was as if he dropped this bomb on the table and then he left.”

McCord does acknowledge that Butera had said something about a prior appointment that required him to leave early, and Butera is emphatic on that, saying “I had another commitment and had to leave at maybe 3:30, which I had advised the organizers of the meeting that I had no time. I had to leave at 3:30 no matter what and I did. Clearly that caused some consternation.”

Asked whether she had any counsel for Butera or for NAfME in the wake of his statements, McCord said, “I’m not going to take a position that his board should let him go. I think it’s a come to Jesus moment for the board to figure out, ‘Does he represent them well at this point?’ They’re governance. It’s their job to do. If you were to say, ‘Keryl, what outcome would you like to see happen,’ I think that they need to do some serious, serious training around issues of equity, diversity and inclusion.”

Further, McCord said, “I think that bringing in an organization like The People’s Institute who did great training with Grantmakers in the Arts, to really make a commitment to not trying to do this on their own, not trying to sit around the table and figure it out, but to really understand, to get a deeper understanding of the issues and how to address them and get some language, and some framework and context and understanding of what the issues are. If they would do that, that would be huge. My sense is that they are operating in kind of a vacuum, maybe, and I don’t really know this organization. I responded as someone sitting at the table who was appalled at the behavior of this person. I think it’s a learning opportunity, a huge learning opportunity for the board and for Mr. Butera.”

*   *   *

Michael Butera (photo by Becky Spray)

Having directly denied the statements made by McCord, but prior to Rosen’s corroboration of her account, Michael Butera spoke about the conversation regarding board make-up as he recalled it.

Were there discussions about minorities, keyboard skills, theory and so forth in the broadest sense, not about minorities keyboard skills as a link? The answer to that is yes. Now let me follow up. What the conversation was about was whether or not minorities, particularly in the school systems of this nation, have sequential programs of music instruction that will enable them to have the same opportunity and the same chances that children who are not in those zip codes have. And the answer to that question is no, not currently.

Currently far too many of our urban centers do not have deep sequential programs of music instruction and where would it be more important to do that than in our urban centers. These are complicated and profoundly difficult conversations to have and we have to have them in an open, honest and direct manner. So when we talk about the skills that one needs to be admitted to a college or university in order to study to be a music educator, keyboard skills are important, as are theory skills. If you are in an educational system where it does not provide that opportunity then you are less likely to have the opportunity to be admitted.

It is not because of you or your ethnicity that that’s the case, but that it’s the direct problem that we face in multiple areas in American society. We have underfunded, under cared for, under thought through the ways in which multiple elements make it more difficult for minority people to have the same opportunities that majority people do. And they’re really difficult conversations. So there’s a big difference in terms of talking about the opportunities that people have and making a statement that is attributed to me that minorities do not have the skills. That’s simply not true.

So how does that comport with what two people say Butera said at the NEA convening? “Clearly, I have to admit,” said Butera, “I didn’t do a good job or I wouldn’t be seeing the blog. Obviously that’s true, you can’t be blind to what other people interpret. But it’s an interpretation and it’s not the fact. I am deeply and profoundly personally and organizationally committed to social justice in every way you can imagine.”

The NAfME’s five year strategic plan, slated to begin in 2017, shows efforts at equity, diversity and inclusion as one of its five core values (the subject was not part of the prior five year plan). In response to a question about any EDI initiatives or training to date, for staff, board or membership, Butera said:

This plan that you’re looking at, this plan was only adopted in the last few months I believe. So you can see that in the newer plan to make a significant effort to make a statement of our belief that this is an area we have to work on. So now we are in the process of developing initiatives that will move us in that direction. You know these things don’t happen – the plan passes and the next day you have 25 different plans. I’m not trying to be light about your question. So the answer is yes we’re trying to build a series of initiatives that would be appropriate to each of the planks in our strategic plan, and of course this is one of them.

Asked to clarify his statement on the diversity of the board, Butera once again disagreed with McCord’s portrayal, saying, “What I really said was not about my board at all, but a different part of the conversation saying the issue of diversity is not a matter of counting numbers and color and ethnicity on the board. The issue of diversity is whether or not there’s a firm, solid, meaningful commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion and in that context I believe our board is firmly committed or they would not have changed the strategic plan to move in that direction.”

Butera went on to say that while the board doesn’t have any members of color, he said that people of color were on subcomittees, task forces and research entities of the organization, and noted there would be a new board member of color come June. He remarked, “Yes, we would surely have a better conversation when minorities are sitting there, but you know it’s not true that there aren’t any minorities in the organization.”

Butera said he could not provide any statistics on the diversity of his board or committees, or the racial or ethnic make-up of NAfME’s members, saying the organization doesn’t collect that data. He also said that he had no influence whatsoever over the election of board members, not even the ability to make suggestions, and that only a by-laws amendment would permit his participation.

*   *   *

The board president of NAfME, Glenn Nierman, who is the Chair of Music (Music Education) at the University of Nebraska, responded to inquiries from Arts Integrity twice, briefly both times. In his first e-mailed response on May 6, he simply acknowledged that the board was aware of the situation and would be looking into it at an executive committee meeting on May 7. Following the meeting, he followed up on May 8, again by e-mail, writing, “The NAfME National Executive Board has been advised by legal counsel to proceed prudently and cautiously in gathering information about this matter.  That is what we are doing. We have been advised not to comment about the situation at this time.”

*   *   *

At one point in conversation with Arts Integrity, Butera commented,” The facilitator said we should consider this – and you’ve facilitated meetings yourself – see this as a safe environment. A safe environment to me means that we should all let our hair down and tell each other as best we can and as respectfully as we can that we think about, feel about, can do about these kind of issues.

On the subject of safe spaces, Sarmiento of the NEA noted, “We are a government agency. Every meeting, unless we were having a closed session with the National Council on the Arts, any time a government agency convenes a meeting, it’s always open. When we have our meetings, they are always open to the public.” That suggests that everything is ‘on the record.’

*   *   *

The irony in this situation is that all parties seem to agree on the necessity of music education and the lack of proper arts education in our schools. (A separate open letter about the state of music education, prompted by this situation at the NEA service organization meeting, has been jointly issued by Grantmakers in the Arts and The New School College for Performing Arts.) McCord, Rosen and Butera all speak to the need for equity, diversity and inclusion work as part of that effort. However, while Butera denies the specific statements attributed to him, two other professionals in the field directly contradict him, suggesting that his statements and behavior at the NEA convening are inconsistent with that mission.

Specifically in Butera’s case, the implications for his role as the head of NAfME are serious. Can he continue to lead the organization if indeed he harbors the beliefs that McCord and Rosen say he voiced? Can he effectively function to initiate and pursue EDI work if he fundamentally believes – although he said in an interview that he does not – that blacks and Latinos lack skills that are central to music study, a statement that is absurd to anyone with a knowledge of music nationally or internationally? If his communication around these issues results in accounts like those of McCord and Rosen, can Butera be an effective advocate for music education for all, regardless of race? Will investigation by the board of NAfME include conversations with the people who are currently unwilling to go on the record about what took place, or the three who are as of yet unidentified to Arts Integrity?

The board and perhaps membership of NAfME will make the final decision as to whether Butera is the person to lead them forward on their new strategic plan and the implementation of EDI work for the organization overall. In the wake of McCord’s post and Rosen’s affirmation, they have a lot to consider. But even if one accepts Butera’s assertion about that implementation requiring time and consideration before disseminating to their extensive membership, it seems there are two essential steps to be taken.

First, the staff of NAfME must go through its own EDI training immediately and must be held to account for it by the existing board, because even if Butera merely communicated poorly instead of actually making statements which can be construed as racist, he and the people working for him need to learn how to meaningfully discuss the issues of equity and diversity throughout the field of music education. Based on what has transpired, regardless of which account one accepts, there is essential, immediate work to be done.

Secondly, the board of NAfME and its executive staff cannot simply say that it would be helpful to have people of color in the room as decisions about diversity and inclusion are made. People of color must be present, they must be central to the planning, and one board member of color simply isn’t enough in this day and age.

Equity, diversity and inclusion aren’t, to use a loaded phrase from the days when these topics weren’t even discussed, the white man’s burden. They are the job of everyone and everyone has the capacity to do the work. But participants have to work towards believing in EDI as essential for music, for the arts, for society, if they do not already, and they have to give voice to it, truthfully and meaningfully, at every opportunity if that is truly part of their values.

Update, May 10, 2016, 8 pm: As of this evening, the following statement appears on the NAfME website, as “A Message From The National Executive Board”:

Last week, we were made aware of a situation involving remarks made by NAfME’s CEO, Michael Butera. We take this issue very seriously and, understandably, have heard from many in our community in recent days. Diversity, inclusion and equity in music and the arts are at the core of what we do at NAfME and we are committed to taking the appropriate actions to ensure that remains true. To that end, Mr. Butera has been placed on administrative leave while we conduct an objective investigation, which is nearing conclusion, into the matter. We have reached out to participants in last week’s discussion, including Keryl McCord of Alternate ROOTS, to fully understand what happened and assess the situation. We appreciate the dialogue that has taken place over the course of the last week and look forward to continuing this important conversation.

Update, May 11, 4:00 pm: Michael Butera is no longer the leader of NAfME. A statement on the organization’s website reads as follows:

After a thorough review process, the National Executive Board of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and Michael Butera have agreed that he will not be returning to the association. We wish him well and thank him for his service to our purpose and mission.

Additionally, we are announcing that Michael Blakeslee will serve as the new Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for NAfME, effective immediately. Mr. Blakeslee’s vast experience and knowledge of our organization, fostered over nearly 30 years of dedicated service to NAfME and the music education profession, best position us to move forward and advocate for and provide opportunities to students and teachers.

These last few days highlight the need for real, substantive conversation about what must be done to provide access and opportunity to all students no matter where they live. This is an ongoing journey and we are ready to play an increasingly important role in convening and facilitating a dialogue and prompting action around how all of us can increase diversity, inclusion, and equity in music and the arts.

This post will be updated as warranted.

*

Note: There is a growing conversation around the term ‘people of color,’ with some entities advocating for the use of ‘African, Arab and Native American (ALAANA),’ in addition to white, Asian and Latin@. Because the remarks in question herein speak of ‘black’ and ‘Latino,’ and attributed quotes include the term ‘minority,’ Arts Integrity has elected to utilize the broad term ‘people of color’ for the purpose of this essay and will be taking the new language under advisement for the future.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College for Performing Arts and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. This post originally appeared, under a different title, on the Arts Integrity website.

The statements, on their face, are utterly startling. “Blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills needed for this field.” “I don’t have to take this. Yes, my board is all white, and they are one of the most diverse boards of any organization – more than any arts organization at this table.” It was implied that musical theory is too difficult for black and Latinos as an area of study.

These remarks were attributed to Michael Butera, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for Music Education, as being made by him at a National Endowment for the Arts meeting for service organizations, at which equity, diversity and inclusion were the primary topic. Butera’s comments were reported by Keryl McCord, operations director of Alternate ROOTS, in a widely disseminated blog post dated May 4, entitled Why We Must Have Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity and in the Arts: A Response to the National Association for Music Education. It read, in part:

What most roiled my spirit was his belief that blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills and ability to grasp music theory needed for this field. If Mr. Butera had not left the room after making his remarks, this written response would not be necessary. But he did leave the room, depriving me and everyone else at the table a chance to respond, to try to engage in a dialog. What was said was said publicly, and was so deeply disturbing and has remained with me since our meeting, that I could not, not respond.

The late Dr. Maya Angelou tells us that when someone tells you who they are, you should believe them. I believe Mr. Butera said what he meant, and meant what he said. So I am not raising this issue publicly because I think he should apologize. No apology needed, not to me at least. The challenge is not that he said out loud what he believes to be true. But it is the substance of what he believes that is the central issue and that can’t be resolved with an apology. No. The more critical challenge is that Mr. Butera leads an organization dedicated to music education in our schools, to being “resources for teachers, parents, administrators” and providing “opportunities for students and teachers nationwide.”

An image circulating on Facebook, attributed to Deejay Robinson

In a phone interview with the Arts Integrity Initiative on May 8, Michael Butera flatly denied both of the statements about blacks and Latinos attributed to him. As to the issue of board diversity, Butera confirmed that the board of NAfME doesn’t current have any board members of color. He pointed out, in reference to his recollection of the meeting, “I did indicate that the board is elected from the membership and that we have in the past had members of minority and ethnic groups. But the statement is, in my personal judgment, a total misrepresentation of the dialogue.”

The situation was reported, based on McCord’s post and social media response to it, on the Education Week site on May 9. The social media response was extremely negative towards Butera and the statements attributed to him, questioning whether he should or could continue in his role with NAfME.

The conversation in question took place on April 26 at the NEA was during what was essentially a breakout session during the main meeting, in which the attendees were divided into eight groups of eight for smaller conversations regarding EDI within their organizations. McCord and Butera were at the same table, as was a member of the NEA staff. Only those eight people were fully party to what transpired.

As of midday today, May 10, another one of the eight people at McCord and Butera’s table has issued a statement about what happened and what was said. Jesse Rosen, President and CEO of the League of American Symphony Orchestras, wrote, in part:

I can attest to the accuracy of Keryl McCord’s account of what was said and what took place. Mr. Butera indeed said that he could not take action to diversify his board, and that African Americans and Latinos lacked keyboard skills needed to advance in the music education profession — two statements which many of us around the table challenged. The group was unable to further pursue the meaning of his comments as Mr. Butera abruptly and angrily walked out of the room, well in advance of the meeting’s scheduled end time.

One other person at the table, communicating to Arts Integrity through a third party, said that they did not wish to be publicly involved with the developing issue. The NEA staff member at the table, Jessamyn Sarmiento, Director of Public Affairs, told Arts Integrity that she would not share her recollection of the events, saying, in reference to the people at the table, “It is up to them. It is their conversation to be had.”

*   *   *

From the website of the National Association for Music Education:

National Association for Music Education (NAfME), among the world’s largest arts education organizations, is the only association that addresses all aspects of music education. NAfME advocates at the local, state, and national levels; provides resources for teachers, parents, and administrators; hosts professional development events; and offers a variety of opportunities for students and teachers. The Association orchestrates success for millions of students nationwide and has supported music educators at all teaching levels for more than a century.

From the website of Alternate ROOTS:

Alternate ROOTS is an organization based in the Southern USA whose mission is to support the creation and presentation of original art, in all its forms, which is rooted in a particular community of place, tradition or spirit. As a coalition of cultural workers we strive to be allies in the elimination of all forms of oppression. ROOTS is committed to social and economic justice and the protection of the natural world and addresses these concerns through its programs and services.

*   *   *

Keryl McCord

Speaking on May 6, Keryl McCord said that in the wake of her post, there has been no response to her or Alternate ROOTS regarding her assertions from Butera or NAfME. She said, “I haven’t seen an e-mail, I haven’t received a phone call, I haven’t seen anything on our Facebook page.”

Asked whether there was any additional conversation with Butera that took place at the NEA session which she had not reported, McCord said, “I remember him saying something about quotas when he was talking about his board being all white and I kind of raised my eyebrows. ‘Well what do quotas have to do with it? We’re not talking about quotas.’ But that’s the only other thing and I really don’t remember where that came, early in the conversation.”

Reiterating points made in her piece, McCord concluded by saying that among the things that really stood out for her was, “That the executive director and CEO of the National Association for Music Education literally got up and said, ‘I don’t have to take this,’ and literally stormed out of the meeting. I’m still floored. We were at the National Endowment for the Arts because the discussion was about inclusion, diversity and equity in the arts. Before he left I tried to say to him, ‘Michael, this is the work. It’s hard, but this is the work, don’t leave.’ I don’t know if he’ll remember that, but that’s what I said to him. As I said in my piece, it was as if he dropped this bomb on the table and then he left.”

McCord does acknowledge that Butera had said something about a prior appointment that required him to leave early, and Butera is emphatic on that, saying “I had another commitment and had to leave at maybe 3:30, which I had advised the organizers of the meeting that I had no time. I had to leave at 3:30 no matter what and I did. Clearly that caused some consternation.”

Asked whether she had any counsel for Butera or for NAfME in the wake of his statements, McCord said, “I’m not going to take a position that his board should let him go. I think it’s a come to Jesus moment for the board to figure out, ‘Does he represent them well at this point?’ They’re governance. It’s their job to do. If you were to say, ‘Keryl, what outcome would you like to see happen,’ I think that they need to do some serious, serious training around issues of equity, diversity and inclusion.”

Further, McCord said, “I think that bringing in an organization like The People’s Institute who did great training with Grantmakers in the Arts, to really make a commitment to not trying to do this on their own, not trying to sit around the table and figure it out, but to really understand, to get a deeper understanding of the issues and how to address them and get some language, and some framework and context and understanding of what the issues are. If they would do that, that would be huge. My sense is that they are operating in kind of a vacuum, maybe, and I don’t really know this organization. I responded as someone sitting at the table who was appalled at the behavior of this person. I think it’s a learning opportunity, a huge learning opportunity for the board and for Mr. Butera.”

*   *   *

Michael Butera (photo by Becky Spray)

Having directly denied the statements made by McCord, but prior to Rosen’s corroboration of her account, Michael Butera spoke about the conversation regarding board make-up as he recalled it.

Were there discussions about minorities, keyboard skills, theory and so forth in the broadest sense, not about minorities keyboard skills as a link? The answer to that is yes. Now let me follow up. What the conversation was about was whether or not minorities, particularly in the school systems of this nation, have sequential programs of music instruction that will enable them to have the same opportunity and the same chances that children who are not in those zip codes have. And the answer to that question is no, not currently.

Currently far too many of our urban centers do not have deep sequential programs of music instruction and where would it be more important to do that than in our urban centers. These are complicated and profoundly difficult conversations to have and we have to have them in an open, honest and direct manner. So when we talk about the skills that one needs to be admitted to a college or university in order to study to be a music educator, keyboard skills are important, as are theory skills. If you are in an educational system where it does not provide that opportunity then you are less likely to have the opportunity to be admitted.

It is not because of you or your ethnicity that that’s the case, but that it’s the direct problem that we face in multiple areas in American society. We have underfunded, under cared for, under thought through the ways in which multiple elements make it more difficult for minority people to have the same opportunities that majority people do. And they’re really difficult conversations. So there’s a big difference in terms of talking about the opportunities that people have and making a statement that is attributed to me that minorities do not have the skills. That’s simply not true.

So how does that comport with what two people say Butera said at the NEA convening? “Clearly, I have to admit,” said Butera, “I didn’t do a good job or I wouldn’t be seeing the blog. Obviously that’s true, you can’t be blind to what other people interpret. But it’s an interpretation and it’s not the fact. I am deeply and profoundly personally and organizationally committed to social justice in every way you can imagine.”

The NAfME’s five year strategic plan, slated to begin in 2017, shows efforts at equity, diversity and inclusion as one of its five core values (the subject was not part of the prior five year plan). In response to a question about any EDI initiatives or training to date, for staff, board or membership, Butera said:

This plan that you’re looking at, this plan was only adopted in the last few months I believe. So you can see that in the newer plan to make a significant effort to make a statement of our belief that this is an area we have to work on. So now we are in the process of developing initiatives that will move us in that direction. You know these things don’t happen – the plan passes and the next day you have 25 different plans. I’m not trying to be light about your question. So the answer is yes we’re trying to build a series of initiatives that would be appropriate to each of the planks in our strategic plan, and of course this is one of them.

Asked to clarify his statement on the diversity of the board, Butera once again disagreed with McCord’s portrayal, saying, “What I really said was not about my board at all, but a different part of the conversation saying the issue of diversity is not a matter of counting numbers and color and ethnicity on the board. The issue of diversity is whether or not there’s a firm, solid, meaningful commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion and in that context I believe our board is firmly committed or they would not have changed the strategic plan to move in that direction.”

Butera went on to say that while the board doesn’t have any members of color, he said that people of color were on subcomittees, task forces and research entities of the organization, and noted there would be a new board member of color come June. He remarked, “Yes, we would surely have a better conversation when minorities are sitting there, but you know it’s not true that there aren’t any minorities in the organization.”

Butera said he could not provide any statistics on the diversity of his board or committees, or the racial or ethnic make-up of NAfME’s members, saying the organization doesn’t collect that data. He also said that he had no influence whatsoever over the election of board members, not even the ability to make suggestions, and that only a by-laws amendment would permit his participation.

*   *   *

The board president of NAfME, Glenn Nierman, who is the Chair of Music (Music Education) at the University of Nebraska, responded to inquiries from Arts Integrity twice, briefly both times. In his first e-mailed response on May 6, he simply acknowledged that the board was aware of the situation and would be looking into it at an executive committee meeting on May 7. Following the meeting, he followed up on May 8, again by e-mail, writing, “The NAfME National Executive Board has been advised by legal counsel to proceed prudently and cautiously in gathering information about this matter.  That is what we are doing. We have been advised not to comment about the situation at this time.”

*   *   *

At one point in conversation with Arts Integrity, Butera commented,” The facilitator said we should consider this – and you’ve facilitated meetings yourself – see this as a safe environment. A safe environment to me means that we should all let our hair down and tell each other as best we can and as respectfully as we can that we think about, feel about, can do about these kind of issues.

On the subject of safe spaces, Sarmiento of the NEA noted, “We are a government agency. Every meeting, unless we were having a closed session with the National Council on the Arts, any time a government agency convenes a meeting, it’s always open. When we have our meetings, they are always open to the public.” That suggests that everything is ‘on the record.’

*   *   *

The irony in this situation is that all parties seem to agree on the necessity of music education and the lack of proper arts education in our schools. (A separate open letter about the state of music education, prompted by this situation at the NEA service organization meeting, has been jointly issued by Grantmakers in the Arts and The New School College for Performing Arts.) McCord, Rosen and Butera all speak to the need for equity, diversity and inclusion work as part of that effort. However, while Butera denies the specific statements attributed to him, two other professionals in the field directly contradict him, suggesting that his statements and behavior at the NEA convening are inconsistent with that mission.

Specifically in Butera’s case, the implications for his role as the head of NAfME are serious. Can he continue to lead the organization if indeed he harbors the beliefs that McCord and Rosen say he voiced? Can he effectively function to initiate and pursue EDI work if he fundamentally believes – although he said in an interview that he does not – that blacks and Latinos lack skills that are central to music study, a statement that is absurd to anyone with a knowledge of music nationally or internationally? If his communication around these issues results in accounts like those of McCord and Rosen, can Butera be an effective advocate for music education for all, regardless of race? Will investigation by the board of NAfME include conversations with the people who are currently unwilling to go on the record about what took place, or the three who are as of yet unidentified to Arts Integrity?

The board and perhaps membership of NAfME will make the final decision as to whether Butera is the person to lead them forward on their new strategic plan and the implementation of EDI work for the organization overall. In the wake of McCord’s post and Rosen’s affirmation, they have a lot to consider. But even if one accepts Butera’s assertion about that implementation requiring time and consideration before disseminating to their extensive membership, it seems there are two essential steps to be taken.

First, the staff of NAfME must go through its own EDI training immediately and must be held to account for it by the existing board, because even if Butera merely communicated poorly instead of actually making statements which can be construed as racist, he and the people working for him need to learn how to meaningfully discuss the issues of equity and diversity throughout the field of music education. Based on what has transpired, regardless of which account one accepts, there is essential, immediate work to be done.

Secondly, the board of NAfME and its executive staff cannot simply say that it would be helpful to have people of color in the room as decisions about diversity and inclusion are made. People of color must be present, they must be central to the planning, and one board member of color simply isn’t enough in this day and age.

Equity, diversity and inclusion aren’t, to use a loaded phrase from the days when these topics weren’t even discussed, the white man’s burden. They are the job of everyone and everyone has the capacity to do the work. But participants have to work towards believing in EDI as essential for music, for the arts, for society, if they do not already, and they have to give voice to it, truthfully and meaningfully, at every opportunity if that is truly part of their values.

Update, May 10, 2016, 8 pm: As of this evening, the following statement appears on the NAfME website, as “A Message From The National Executive Board”:

Last week, we were made aware of a situation involving remarks made by NAfME’s CEO, Michael Butera. We take this issue very seriously and, understandably, have heard from many in our community in recent days. Diversity, inclusion and equity in music and the arts are at the core of what we do at NAfME and we are committed to taking the appropriate actions to ensure that remains true. To that end, Mr. Butera has been placed on administrative leave while we conduct an objective investigation, which is nearing conclusion, into the matter. We have reached out to participants in last week’s discussion, including Keryl McCord of Alternate ROOTS, to fully understand what happened and assess the situation. We appreciate the dialogue that has taken place over the course of the last week and look forward to continuing this important conversation.

Update, May 11, 4:00 pm: Michael Butera is no longer the leader of NAfME.  A statement on the organization’s website reads as follows:

After a thorough review process, the National Executive Board of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and Michael Butera have agreed that he will not be returning to the association. We wish him well and thank him for his service to our purpose and mission.

Additionally, we are announcing that Michael Blakeslee will serve as the new Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for NAfME, effective immediately. Mr. Blakeslee’s vast experience and knowledge of our organization, fostered over nearly 30 years of dedicated service to NAfME and the music education profession, best position us to move forward and advocate for and provide opportunities to students and teachers.

These last few days highlight the need for real, substantive conversation about what must be done to provide access and opportunity to all students no matter where they live. This is an ongoing journey and we are ready to play an increasingly important role in convening and facilitating a dialogue and prompting action around how all of us can increase diversity, inclusion, and equity in music and the arts.

Update, May 11 7:30 pm: Members of NAfME received an e-mail with much the same message this afternoon, but with an additional final paragraph not on the organization’s site:

While not in the manner we would have preferred, we believe this incident granted an opportunity to address an issue facing too many students and educators. Moving forward, we will be reaching out to a number of organizations, members, and partners to continue the much-needed dialogue regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity in the music and arts. We are committed to upholding our mission, achieving real solutions, and bringing about substantive change that impacts the future of our work and provides access to music for all Americans.

This post will be updated as warranted.

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Note: There is a growing conversation around the term ‘people of color,’ with some entities advocating for the use of ‘African, Arab and Native American (ALAANA),’ in addition to white, Asian and Latin@. Because the remarks in question herein speak of ‘black’ and ‘Latino,’ and attributed quotes include the term ‘minority,’ Arts Integrity has elected to utilize the broad term ‘people of color’ for the purpose of this essay and will be taking the new language under advisement for the future.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College for Performing Arts and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.