When I first started going to theatre in my teens, I loved attending post-performance discussions and special seminars and panels about plays. They were my education, my chance to learn from artists about how and why they did what they did. I was so fond of the form, that I began moderating these kinds of talks at my college performing arts center when I was only 19, leading off with JoAnne Akalaitis and Athol Fugard in my first year. Once I began working at theatres, I’d pitch in when a literary manager or dramaturg was overcommitted, and translated events like this into the new form called podcasting in 2004, ultimately hosting or co-hosting 325 artist conversations under the banner of “Downstage Center.” This coming weekend, I’ll travel to Philadelphia to do a post-performance chat with Terrence McNally on Sunday and a full evening with Bill Irwin the next night.

So it probably won’t surprise you when I say that, as a result of my access, I tend not to go to many pre- and post-show events anymore. I’m still completely committed to their value, which is why I happily moderate them when invited. But for me, when I am merely an audience member, the sense of discovery is not what it used to be. The fact is, they’re not geared for me and other working professionals. They’re designed for the audience at large, those who rarely if ever get to walk through theatre doors marked “staff only” or have their name on a list at the stage door.

So I was a bit surprised at my own reaction recently when a paper flyer inserted into a program at a show I was seeing proved uncharacteristically effective on me. It wasn’t anything special, but it invited the audience to gather at a nearby restaurant, just one block away, after the performance to talk about the show, saying such conversation was a feature whenever the play is performed. The fact that it was a minute’s walk away made sense: the theatre’s lobby is too small for any events and if the audience had been invited to stay in their seats, there would have been a formality to the proceedings, and obviously the theatre was seeking something less structured.

I don’t know why this particular invitation appealed to me. Perhaps it was because I was attending alone and I thought I might want to at least listen to what others thought afterwards, even if I chose to hang back at the fringes. I tucked the flyer back into the program and figured I’d make up my mind after the performance.

The show ran less than two hours. I had nowhere particular I had to be and I was certainly intrigued and troubled by the play. So I gathered my things, I stopped in the theatre’s rest room, I lingered on the sidewalk to overhear what other patrons were saying as they exited. Finally, I walked to the designated site.

Entering, I wondered at first if the restaurant was closed, though I spotted two tables at the back with patrons. The entire front section, a mix of tables and surprisingly open space by the bar was empty, save for some solicitous restaurant workers who exhorted me to sit. They generously reminded me that my ticket would afford me a small discount off any order. “I’m going to see if others come to talk,” I said, “Let me wait until others get here.”

No one else came.

I waited for 15 minutes, and not a single customer of any kind entered the restaurant, let alone fellow theatregoers. No staff from the theatre turned up either, and I stood there awkwardly, not wanting to take a table and then disappoint a server when I failed to order, my interest in hearing about or discussing the play waning as I pondered the reasons for my solitude.

Admittedly, the cast for the show was small, they were in previews and it was a two show day, so it was unreasonable to expect any of the actors to appear. Maybe after a few evening performances they might stop by, but not today. The show was not a premiere, the press was already coming (so the show was no doubt frozen), and the production team may have all moved on to their next ventures, or were simply enjoying some deserved time off. But despite a venue, admittedly a small one, which was full for the performance, I was the only person who chose to answer the invitation. I had decided, to use a buzzword, to “engage” – and no one else who had shared the prior couple of hours with me saw fit to do the same.

I was so disconcerted, that following my 15 minute wait, I retraced my walk from the theatre, eyeing each passerby to see whether they held a program, or the telltale colored paper flyer. I kept looking back over my shoulder for as long as I could to see if anyone was entering the restaurant. I would have doubled back. When I got to the theatre, the sidewalk was clear, and only two couples remained in the small lobby. So I went home and I have yet to discuss the play with anyone, or hear it discussed.

I have purposely avoided saying the name of the play and the theatre because I don’t write to blame either or both for my experience. Perhaps it was a fluke, and crowds have gathered at every other performance. I appreciated the effort to engage me, even if it left me feeling like a child who realized no one was coming to his birthday party, or a suitor stood up by a blind date, foolish and alone. I would have felt worse, actually, if just one other person had shown up, since then I would have been forced to talk, not merely to observe, to stave off their potential disappointment.

Maybe once the audience was released from the building, the sense of community engendered by a shared experience completely dissipated. Maybe the relatively comfortable weather after a cold snap was too inviting to miss. Maybe the 20 to 25 college-aged students who appeared to be there as a group would take up the play in class and consequently saw no need to discuss it sooner. There were plenty of variables, and unless I choose to visit that restaurant after a number of performances, I’ll never be able to analyze what contributed to my experience.

Because I am not the average audience member, this episode was ultimately a reminder about how difficult it can be to engage an audience beyond the time they spend seeing a show. I wonder: how many newsletters and program notes have I written or edited that have gone unread, how many people have left partway through talks I’ve moderated because of my failings rather than other commitments, how many people have actually listened to the end of every podcast? For all the efforts towards deepening the experience, about continuing the conversation, about creating a context for artistic work, what is the alchemy of engagement, and is it different not only for every theatre, but for every play? Or perhaps, sometimes, is it that a play is simply enough and we would all rather be alone in our thoughts?

For this play, at this theatre, at that performance, I will never know. But I’ll always wonder exactly why I was left unengaged and contemplate how I and others can do better.

*   *   *

It is not my intent to criticize or embarrass the theatre or show discussed above by naming them. In that spirit, comments attempting to do so will be deleted, but I welcome your comments on what I experienced and how you and others might engage audiences – or what engages you.

“Saturday at 10? It’s a date!”
Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Broadway’s 7 pm curtain on Tuesdays was introduced more than 11 years ago. I thought it a somewhat more recent innovation, especially since I still regularly attend shows where audience members enter at about 7:50, usually far into the first act, looking embarrassed, angry or both.

Of course, this curtain time is no longer limited to Tuesdays, as many shows also play on Thursdays at 7, and shorter shows that can still give their company an appropriate break between matinee and evening even manage it on Wednesdays.

I remember the doomsayers when the Tuesday plan began: people wouldn’t be able to eat dinner, restaurant business in the theatre district would suffer, suburban patrons would be deterred from coming in for a show given the compressed travel time. That doesn’t seem to be the case, because while overall seasonal attendance has fluctuated between 11.5 and 12.5 million in the past 10 years on Broadway, there’s no evidence that the change in curtain times hurt business and it’s entirely possible that the adjustment helped to stave off declines by introducing flexibility.

Of course, that flexibility has gone far beyond the 7 or 8 pm curtain options. There are also shows with 7:30 weeknight performances, matinees variously at 1 pm, 2 pm, 2:30 pm, and 3 pm, and family oriented shows may well play two shows on Saturday and two on Sunday. (I remember the 1999 Broadway revival of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown experimenting with three show Saturdays, though that was short lived and, to my knowledge, never repeated.). At long last, the Thursday matinee (long seen in London) has been added. Right now, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, perhaps to retain a connection with its downtown roots, has 7 pm and 10 pm shows on Saturdays, a performance schedule that was once commonplace in the Off-Broadway of my younger days. I’m probably leaving a few options out.

I recount all these variants because I think it’s worth recognizing that Broadway producers and theatre owners, no doubt in collaboration with the theatrical unions, have proven that by being responsive to the changing needs of audiences, they can break out of habits for which the rationale may be long forgotten. For tourists, this means there are more possibilities of catching a show; for die-hard theatregoers, it means their binge weekends can be even more packed, in that eternal quest to see as many shows as possible in a limited number of days. For local audiences, it means they may have plenty of evening ahead of them post-show, or the opportunity to get to bed earlier on theatre nights.

I will say that this proliferation of performance times doesn’t surprise me in the least. Growing up in Connecticut, many theatres there had 4 pm Saturday matinees (followed by 8:30 or 9 pm evening shows) and the 4 pm shows were usually the fastest to sell out, no matter what was on stage. 4 pm shows also yielded the most geographically diverse audience, since the schedule allowed for day-trips with the greatest options of complementary activities – even plenty of time to sit by a pool or at the beach before heading to the theatre. And it was in 1985 that we surveyed our audience at Hartford Stage about their weeknight performance preferences, finding that by a 2 to 1 margin, they wanted 7:30 instead of 8 pm. It was implemented with nary a complaint.

All of this is merely a reminder that, as we search for ways to retain or develop audiences, the most simple tried and true elements of past patterns may not be something to cling to, just as abandoned practices may yet come into vogue once again. What may have been just fine five years ago may not hold today. We’ll only know for sure by experimenting – and by asking our audiences for their input whenever possible. We’re never going to be Netflix when it comes to entertainment on demand, but we might find there are some demands we can easily meet, if we’d just listen, and give things a try.

The 2012 NEA SSPA Report

If yesterday’s news that theatre attendance is down more precipitously than any of the arts caused you to spit out your coffee over breakfast, well that’s probably because you haven’t been paying attention. To be fair, I suspect a lot of people haven’t been, with virtually every discussion of the performing arts in since 2008 having been prefaced with either “in these challenging times” or “since the financial meltdown of 2008.” But the time for qualifiers and excuses is clearly past, especially as every news report on American life in general seems to invoke the fairly recent cliché “the new normal.” Things have changed. Things are changing. Things will change. The arts need to change.

In citing slides of 9% for musical theatre and 12% for non-musicals over the past five years, and even more pronounced numbers over a longer range, the picture painted by the NEA shows an overall decline in arts attendance, with theatre hardest hit. Coming just days after some co-mingled summary numbers from an Americans for the Arts report suggested theatre might be looking up, it was certainly startling news. But a closer look at the latter study actually confirms the reported  NEA trend.

Looking elsewhere, the same picture appears. The last Theatre Communications Group “Theatre Facts” report, covering results from 2008 to 2012, shows a 1.8% decline in attendance in the portion of their membership studied – not as pronounced as the NEA figures, but certainly heading the wrong way as well. It’s also important to remember that as expansive as it is, TCG itself is only a subset of overall US theatres. In a more easily defined theatrical realm of activity, Broadway in the same period shows a 5% audience decline, with a 17%  increase in income, suggesting an increasingly inaccessible theatrical realm, and an economic model that will only further stratify audiences.

The Ticketmaster UK Report

The only encouragement that one might wish to cling to is a report from Ticketmaster’s analytics division, which shows stunningly positive stats about arts participation by younger audiences (including a snappy infographic). While it hints that there might be some lessons to be learned, we’d have to go to England to get them, because the study is entitled State of Play: Theatre UK. While it does include some US audience members (as well as a selection from Ireland, Germany and Australia), the US sample represents only 13% of the total, with 65% from the UK. Also, under theatre, Ticketmaster has folded in opera and dance, so it’s not a true apples to apples comparison.

Now I am one of the many who believes that theatre as a discipline will manage to survive the onslaught of electronic entertainment precisely because it is live and fundamentally irreproducible. We may be a niche, but there will always be those who treasure being in the same room with artists as art is created; I have often joked that theatre will only be in real danger when Star Trek: TNG’s holodeck becomes reality. Even these reports don’t sway me from that conceptual position. But I’m not sticking my head in the sand either.

Appreciation of the arts is, for many, something that is learned in childhood – namely in schools. Yet we only have to read about the state of public education to know that resources are diminished, anything that isn’t testable is expendable, and fewer students are being exposed to arts education than they were years ago. Citing the 2008 NEA SSPA report: “In 1982, nearly two-thirds of 18-year-olds reported taking art classes in their childhood. By 2008, that share had dropped below one-half, a decline of 23 percent.” In less than 30 years, inculcation in the arts through the schools declined notably, so is it any wonder that we’re seeing declines in arts participation over time?

In a 2012 Department of Education study, it was reported that “the percentages of schools making [music and visual arts] available went from 20 percent 10 years ago to only 4 and 3 percent, respectively, in the 2009-10 school year.  In addition, at more than 40 percent of secondary schools, coursework in arts was not required for graduation in the 2009-10 school year.” That’s all the more reason to be concerned. Certainly many arts organizations have committed to working with or in schools, but are the programs comprehensive enough? We’ve become ever more sophisticated in how to create truly in-depth, ongoing education experiences, but perhaps in doing so, we’re reaching fewer students. Maybe we have to look at how to restore sheer numbers as part of that equation, while maintaining quality, to insure our own future.

Art from Americans for the Arts report

It’s time to make an important distinction. As I said, I believe ‘theatre’ will survive for years to come. Where we would do well to focus immediate attention is on our ‘theatres,’ our companies. On a micro basis, it may be easy to shrug off declines, especially if you happen to be affiliated with a company that is bucking the trend. But these reports with their macro view should take each and every theatre maker and theatre patron outside of the specifics of their direct experience to look at the field, not simply year to year, but over time. It suggests that there is a steady erosion in the theatergoing base, which hasn’t necessarily found a new level; just as a rising tide floats all boats, eventually our toys lie at the bottom of the tub once the drain is opened.

I don’t have the foresight to know where this will lead. One direction is that of Broadway, where the consistently risky business model favors shows that are built for the truly long run, but only for the select audiences with the resources to support ever increasing prices. Might that be mirrored in the not-for-profit community as well, with only the largest and most established companies able to secure audiences and funding if resources and interest truly diminish? Or might we see a shift away from institutions and edifices and towards more grass roots companies, where simpler theatre at lower prices and more basic production values finds the favor of those who still harbor an appetite for live drama?

I’ll make a prediction. While in the first half of my life I watched the bourgeoning of the resident theatre movement, which in turn seeded the growth of countless smaller local companies, my later years will see a contraction in overall production at the professional level; it’s already begun, as a few companies seem to go under every year and have been for some time. That means that it will become ever harder for people to make their lives in theatre, because there will be fewer job opportunities for them.

Since I’ve already employed science fiction in my argument, let me turn to it again. We’ve all seen or read stories where someone goes back in time to right some past wrong (and for the moment, let’s forget that they often as not ruin the future in the process). Is there a point where we could or should make some fundamental change in how theatre functions – not as an art, but as an industry? Is there a single watershed moment where one choice determined the course of the field that some future time traveler could set right? I suspect not, unless we were talking about preventing (in succession) the discovery of electricity, the invention of TV and movies, or the creation of the internet.

That’s why we have to shift the paradigm now, and not just worry about selling tickets to the current show or meeting next year’s budget, but focus on what’s truly sustainable in 10, 25 or 50 years time. This week’s data barrage shows one thing we mustn’t ignore: even if we can’t see it in our own day to day experience, what we’re doing now isn’t working and the tide is going out.

My thanks to Mariah MacCarthy, who brought the 2008 NEA SSPA Report summary and the 2012 Department of Education report to my attention.

If you’ve been reading The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times this week, attempting to find out how the arts as a whole are doing, you would likely get a fairly consistent picture coming from the efforts of those two sources, and it doesn’t bode well for the arts in America. But if your focus happens to be on theatre, your head might spin from seeming conflicts.

On Monday, September 23, in The Los Angeles Times, Mike Boehm reported the Americans for the Arts just issued National Arts Index of arts participation, complete through 2011. He wrote, using their executive summary, “The report noted ‘overall increases’ in theater and symphony attendance in 2011, and drops for opera and movies.” Good news for the theatre crowd, right?

Well this morning, Patricia Cohen, writing in The New York Times about the National Endowment for the Arts newly released “Highlights from the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts,” made the startling statement that “theater is the artistic discipline in America that is losing audience share at the fastest rate in recent years.” Scary, no?

So the question is, are these reports in conflict? Is there some underlying difference in methodology that has yielded markedly different results? Is it because the Americans for the Arts report is only through 2011, while the National Endowment for the Arts report is through 2012?

Much as I’d like to tell you that things are not as negative as the New York Times story makes it seem, the discrepancy is in fact due largely to aggregation of disciplines on the Americans for the Arts summary, while the NEA report keeps each art form distinct – as does the full text of the Americans for the Arts study.  The rosier picture Boehm drew from Americans for the Arts emerged because it merges theatre with symphony and opera and, perhaps to the surprise of many, the latter disciplines had a very good year in 2011.

From the Americans for the Arts Report

Symphony and opera attendance increased by almost 3 million from 2010 to 2011, while theatre attendance was down by about 300,000 in the same period. So in merging, the loss in theatre is masked by the jump in symphony and opera. The discrete numbers in the NEA report, sampled in 2002, 2008 and 2012, show an ongoing decline for theatre, with the rate of change for musicals at -9% and the rate of change for plays at -12%. This mirrors an aggregate decline from 50 million to 45.2 million theatre patrons over the period from 2003 to 2011, as shown by Americans for the Arts.

From the National Endowment for the Arts report

So while summaries may indicate that there’s some upside for theatre, the detail of the reports are quite clear: theatergoing is trending down. If there’s another comprehensive report that actually challenges this data, it would be good to see it, but if the combined results from these two central representatives and supporters of the arts in America have yielded comparable results, the wake up call for theatre cannot be sounded any more loudly and clearly. No one should cling to shreds seemingly offered in a part of one study. To be sure, theatre’s overall attendance numbers far outpace symphony, opera and dance combined, but the trend doesn’t look good at all. And with arts attendance/participation in general decline, can theatre collectively get its act together to stop the bleeding, let alone reverse course?

I urge anyone working in the arts, in any discipline, to study both of these reports carefully. By all means, get beyond summaries and condensations. I’ve only focused on a few pages and I’m quite certain we’ve got a lot more to learn if we’re going to be able to generate good news about the field again and continue to make the case for the vitality and centrality of the arts in American life.

P.S. When a government agency and an advocacy group agree about the problems in American arts, wouldn’t it be nice if our president cared enough to even nominate someone to run the Endowment? The clock keeps ticking, but that’s the only sound we hear.

The Public Works The Tempest
Photo by Joan Marcus

There are many reasons to enthuse about The Public Theatre’s inaugural “Public Works” production of The Tempest – the conception and direction of Lear de Bessonet, the original score by Todd Almond, the perfect weather that blessed each of the three evenings it was on, the enthusiastic performances centered by the Prospero of Norm Lewis. But the greatest achievement was the participation and wrangling of some 200 non-professional performers, rallied in service of a musicalized and summarized version of Shakespeare’s play.

Billed at times as a “community Tempest,” the production utilized, according to a program insert, “106 community ensemble members, 31 gospel choir singers, 1 ASL interpreter, 24 ballet dancers, 3 taxi drivers, 12 Mexican tap dancers, 1 bubble artist (who I must have missed), 10 hip hop dancers, 5 Equity actors (though there were 6 by my count), 6 taiko drummers, 1 guest star appearance (again, I must have missed that, or simply not known the performer), and 5 brass band players.” It was an undertaking of remarkable scale that put me in mind of the deeply moving finale of the New York Philharmonic’s 80^th birthday tribute to Stephen Sondheim, when the stage and aisles of Avery Fisher Hall were filled with the bodies and voices of singers uniting for “Sunday,” except that in this case, the large company was present throughout the show and the music was raucous and exuberant.

Christine Lewis & Patrick Mathieu as Alonsa & Gonzalo
Photo by Joan Marcus

The preceding litany of performers accurately suggests that this Tempest was, like Prospero’s isle, full of noises and a wide variety of styles, an at-times almost vaudeville approach to the reworked text, with a wide variety of acts sharing the same stage (I remember the Mexican tappers vividly, though I have already forgotten the pretext under which they were included). But that’s befitting a production which endeavored to engage the New York community not simply by inviting them to watch the production for free, but to participate in it as well. It was also a fitting artistic complement to The Public’s immediately preceding production at the Delacorte, a musical version of Love’s Labour’s Lost.

To be sure, this wasn’t the result of a some lunatic open call. De Bessonet and her team established relationships with specific community groups and performing ensembles and presumably they each rehearsed their segments discretely until the final days when they were assembled en masse. The program for the evening even suggests that in some cases, existing work was incorporated into The Tempest, rather than groups necessarily learning specific material. Sometimes the fragmentary nature was rather obvious (what were those cabbies doing there anyway), but at other times seamless, such as the sequence when a corps of pre-teen ballet dancers wordlessly tormented Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban.

Xavier Pacheco & Atiya Taylor as Ferdinand & Miranda
Photo by Joan Marcus

This manner of artistic engagement with the community isn’t new; the production itself was modeled on a 1915 musicalized Tempest in Harlem with a cast of 2,000. More recently, companies like Cornerstone have gone into specific communities with a handful of professionals to foster the creation of works featuring local non-professionals and there’s probably many a Music Man production which has fielded 76 trombones and more from local schools. But in Manhattan, where community based performance can be overwhelmed in the public consciousness by the sheer volume of professional arts performances, this Tempest was a reminder that a very special and joyous entertainment can emerge from the efforts of those who may not be, nor even desire to be, professional artists.

Clearly this effort was guided by expert professionals and I suspect that its budget far exceeded that of many professional productions seen in New York or around the country. Costuming alone for 200 performers takes some doing, even when many of the clothes may have been borrowed from some of the country’s top regional theatres. Just opening the Delacorte Theatre for rehearsals and performances has real cost. The level of corporate and foundation support behind this Public Works production means this isn’t likely to result in a profusion of comparable efforts.

Norm Lewis as Prospero
Photo by Joan Marcus

That said, the driving concept behind it is worthy of exploration by other groups in other cities and by other coalitions in New York as well. At a time when engagement is both a goal and a buzzword, this Tempest is a high-profile flagship that will hopefully inspire others means of mixing professionals and amateurs, that will prompt more artists to create works that encompass their community, that will even mix up audiences so that the cognoscenti sit alongside proud parents.  The production once again affirmed that community theatre is not only valuable but essential, an asset to pro companies rather than a pale imitation of them.

It was also a reminder of the power of collaboration, of the intermingling of different artistic pursuits  and organizations to create a blended whole. At a time when the arts are often seen as frivolous or disposable, there is enormous strength in variety and in numbers, sending a message about the essential and broad-based value of creativity and performance at every level of society and life. After all, no one arts group is a magically protected island – they are all part of a vast archipelago, threatened by rising tides that would seek to swamp them.

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.

A famous cover from the early days of The National Lampon — which did in fact sell magazines.

“Unless business improves,” potential audiences were told, “we will have to close.”  Let’s parse that for a moment, this phrase that has popped up in ads and press releases a couple of times lately.

“Unless business improves” means that business is lousy. A honest admission to be sure, but when used in connection with entertainment, it also can say, “No one is coming to our show.” And if no one is going to a show, isn’t that a self-perpetuating situation? After all, who wants to go to a show that no one is going to? There must be something wrong with it, or else people would be going.

“We will have to close” is a statement of simple fact, since in theatre, if no one is going, you can’t generate enough income to sustain the run by at least meeting your weekly operating expenses. This seems rather self evident, given the first half-of the phrase. It’s amazing that news stories actually carry this phrasing straight from the press release, since it’s not news.

Taken together, there’s a somewhat larger meaning, namely that if you (yes, I mean you) don’t do your part, some unnamed ‘we’ will suffer. The unnamed we, if you think about it with a sensitivity to the people who make theatre, can mean that actors, crew and house staff will be unemployed. No one likes putting people out of work. But the we can also refer to the people who make the decision to close, namely the show’s producer(s). Without meaning to imply anything, I suggest that there is probably more sympathy among the public for actors than producers.

But that’s what is being played on – our sympathy, or looked at another way, our guilt. This message says it’s up to us to keep the show in question going, and if the show closes, then its our fault. Now perhaps we already saw the show. Therefore, we’ve done our bit and can’t be reasonably expected to go again just to keep the show alive. Maybe we’ve always been curious to see the show, in which case we either have to get a move on, or come to the realization that we’re just not going to get there. Or maybe we were never interested in the first place, and this sort of please means we can start gloating early.

Guilt, in general, is not a good sales tool in the arts. Being forced to eat broccoli doesn’t make it taste any better, and guilt isn’t going to make us want to see a show we’ve chosen not to see.

There’s a new variant of this. “Final weeks? Book and keep the conversation going.” Again with the guilt. There’s hope, this ploy says, but only if you act now, to co-opt the words of a thousand infomercials. Coupled with an ongoing campaign in which this same show constantly tells us about the celebrities who’ve seen the show, we’re made to feel like we’re losing out and we’re the ones dropping the ball. We’re not cool.

I haven’t named specific shows because they’re hardly the first, although you may well know of the ones that have deployed this maneuver of late. It’s a tactic of longstanding, yet I’ve never even heard an apocryphal story about a show that pulled this particular arrow out of their quiver and provoked a change in fortune. Might they have managed an extra week or two? Perhaps. But I’m unfamiliar with a turnaround. (Yes, Dreamgirls ran for months while advertising “final weeks,” but at some point, that devolved into a claim that no one actually believed. As many know from raising children, threats are only effective if you’re prepared to follow through on them.) This is a tactic of last resort, used when you can’t think of anything new to say or show about your show in order to sustain flagging interest. It’s a creatively bankrupt marketing campaign and death knell all in one.

At this time of year, when Broadway and Off-Broadway shows are closing in the seasonal culling of the herd, most merely announce their final date and hope that those who have yet to attend, or those who wish to attend once again, will be motivated by finality, and do what they’re able to do. The productions march stolidly to their final day, sometimes building sales as the end draws nigh, sometimes finding they’re really already gone. But telling us it’s our fault, that we should, that we’ll miss out? To me, that’s like ordering me to eat my broccoli. And you know what? I never have.

I had been planning to write about the pros and cons of “Tweet Seats,” weighing the potential of technology to complement live entertainment against its potential for intrusion and distraction. Whatever your opinion may be, I will no longer seek to address it, because such debates could become irrelevant. The reason for that worries me and I hope we will all find consensus as I explain.

Earlier this week, having seen some of my prior tweets and blogs on the topic of Tweet Seats, a regional theatre company (that has asked not to be named) shared with me a letter and supporting documents from the Global IP Law Group in Chicago, in which the firm, representing its client Inselberg Interactive, claims that said theatre has violated patents owned by Inselberg. What had the theatre done? They had a Tweet Seat night last year. The law firm asserted that U.S. Patent 6,975,878 covers the provision of “interactive audience participation at live spectator events,” and indeed that quote is from the patent document itself, which you may review here.

I am not a patent attorney or an expert in the field of intellectual property, but I can read, and I have reviewed this patent; I urge you to do so as well. It refers to a “method” which, among other things,  involves “querying the spectators,” “processing the spectator data into results,” “transmitting the answers to a central processor,” and “broadcasting the results of the processing of spectator data.” It includes two line drawings, one which shows a device not unlike a Motorola flip phone from the 90s, and the other which shows three people using such device at a football game, with scoreboards that read “Answer A, B, C.” Although Tweet Seat events of which I’m aware do not show results on a commonly viewed screen, they are shared with anyone who cares to look at their device, both at the event and elsewhere, which the firm asserts is covered. Interestingly, the patent abstract notes that, “The method includes providing spectators with an interactive device”; while Tweet Seat events require people to use their own phones, but this doesn’t seem to have derailed the claim of infringement. It does seem a bit of extrapolation has taken place.

Deeper into the patent document you can also find what is referred to as a “Detailed Description of the Invention,” but in this case the invention is neither the device nor the software which would make such interaction possible. No, “the invention” is the idea of doing so. Nowhere does the patent suggest that Inselberg invented the smartphone or any of its underlying technology, nor does it make any claim to having invented Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other program, website or application which easily and freely permits people to communicate with each other and with venues, presenters and producers on smartphones. They patented the concept of using such things at some point in the future when the technology became available, and now that it has, they seek to profit from it or restrict it.

So whether you like Tweet Seats or not at arts events, whether you think anything of their sort is entertaining at sporting events, the intent of Global IP Law Group is to either “license this patent portfolio,” or shut down such uses, theatre by theatre, stadium by stadium, on behalf of their client. Through this patent, they would seek to monetize methods of communication that have already swept the world, albeit they seek to do so in a particular set of locations. They would charge a toll for free speech in theatres.

In the blog post I planned to write, I was going to discuss the fact that social media is extremely new, and that while it has gained staggering traction in a very short span of time (Facebook was only opened to the public in 2006; Twitter debuted even later), it is still in its infancy. A few decades from now, its integration into our lives, our entertainment, and perhaps even our art will be vastly more sophisticated; interactive media 2012 will look like radio in the 1920s or television in the 1940s. It is possible that our current resistance to social media as part of the live entertainment experience will give way to something less intrusive and more organic (if such a word can be applied to the meshing of the innately human performing arts and the fundamentally technological nature of electronic communication). But should we pay in order to explore that possibility?

The performing arts, largely because of their budgetary constraints, tend to not be early adopters of new technology. However, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and so many other resources are available for free (although one still must acquire a computer or smartphone and pay for internet access). But we make an easy target for claims such as those made in the name of U.S. Patent 6,975,878 because the arts do not have the ready resources to fight them individually or even necessarily together, and we are likelier to cease and desist than to challenge and persist, yet avoidance or capitulation would be unfortunate. We are lucky that this incursion on our efforts at creative communication encompasses professional sports, since that field has vastly deeper pockets, and may help to confront the concerns I’m spelling out. However, the Global IP Law Group asserts in a cover letter to their claim that several stadiums and arenas, including the Target Center, Xcel Energy Center and the Hubert Humphrey Metrodome have in fact licensed the technology from Inselberg; if this is verified, then we are already on a slippery slope.

It is unfortunate that this comes to light through experimentation with Tweet Seats, which at this point are far from widespread or de rigeur, but do evoke great passion from their detractors; many would be delighted to see them ended, but again, now is not the time to argue their effects (though I ask you to recall, if you can, the vehement response once upon a time to supertitles at the opera). If Tweet Seats are what alert us all to this wide-ranging patent which could close off a means of communicating with our audiences, of connecting with them in our theatres – perhaps even pre- and post-show and during intermission, which perhaps many would find less offensive  – then I urge everyone to fly the flag of Tweet Seats as a right and a choice, rather than a service we must license.

I have kept the confidence of the theatre that shared this information with me because, sensibly, they do not wish to further draw the attention of the Global IP Law Group.  But I have been able to show you the patent which is public record and, if you are a venue which has already been contacted, I am willing to be the conduit through which you may find others. If you have already held a Tweet Seats event, I certainly understand why you would not wish to alert the Global IP Law Group of your efforts, but perhaps you might use an intermediary to query the firm about its claims, on the grounds of considering Tweet Seats or some other interactive venture. But remember, Google is available to everyone. For free. So these firms may well find you anyway.  They’ll probably find this post within minutes of my publishing it. However, I have spoken with another theatre which held a Tweet Seats event, and they had not been contacted with this claim.

Many people abhor when material that is considered offensive is defended under the principle of free speech, but certainly the arts have had to stand for their rights when they present material which some might find objectionable. In this case, the specificity of the usage to be defended, Tweet Seats, might be seen in and of itself as impinging upon creative work, or disrupting the experience of performance, and therefore an offense. However, commercially restricting the practice does raise issues of free speech using common modes of communication. Whether or not we employ Tweet Seats or something akin to them is a choice every organization should be allowed to experiment with and make on its own, as we work to use the very newest technology to connect with our audiences, in our own venues, and to maintain awareness and enthusiasm for our work when so many other options beckon and so many creative – and perhaps generally palatable – uses of technology have yet to be conceived.

Addendum: Late in the day that this post first appeared, the theatre that went unnamed as the recipient of the claim against their use of Tweet Seats reconsidered their request for anonymity and chose to waive it. The theatre in question is Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam CT, where I was general manager from 1994 to 1998, and intermittently serve as a consultant.

As some of you may be aware, I live-blogged the TEDx Broadway conference held in late January and my frequent updates stood as the most public record of the full event until the videos went live just recently.

Among the presentations, I have to say that the one which most affected me was the hip-hop editorial by Matt Sax (@MattSax), who has created and performed in the shows Clay and Venice. While I am slightly out of hip-hop’s target demo, Matt’s rhythmic commentary on his Broadway experiences past, present and future galvanized me and thrilled the audience as well (though the lack of audience miking doesn’t do our response justice). You can watch on YouTube to see his performance or view it below (he does two pieces; I’m focused on the second one), but the words alone have enormous power. Matt was generous enough to transcribe his handwritten work and give me permission to reproduce it.  I suspect you may find it eminently quotable.

Bravo, Matt!

*    *   *

tedxbroadway – 2012

by Matt Sax

Twenty years ago I saw my first Broadway show

The Secret Garden starring John Cameron Mitchell

who would have known, twelve years later Mr. Mitchell

would give me a carwash in the 2^nd row

after that first show I devoured scores day by day.

Memorized every lyric on the Great White Way

Was entranced by the majesty – whether comedy or tragedy

I’d imagine shows in my mind doing the play by play.

I knew my fate was sealed by the time I was ten

didn’t know how to begin, only knew I had to get in.

My dreams were affected like never before

wanted to put on a mask – I couldn’t sleep no more

So I trained to be an actor. A serious actor…who sings

but soon I knew I also wanted to create puppet strings

See I’m a product of a generation of entitled, impatient, apathetic,

lazy children who all feel alone… We created the internet

so we wouldn’t have to leave home. We are also brave

and process information differently

We combine multiple mediums

From rap shows to symphonies

We see music visually and hear images implicitly

We cross genre boundaries, prone to eccentricity

We’re a generation who tweets about the skeletons in our closet for recreation

We all have a voice and are prone to speak with exclamations

    I AM not a hipster

    or a skater

    or a thug

    or a hater

    I AM a great creator and I love the-ator

So where is Broadway going? What is the best it can be?

I think embracing this culture is a necessity.

I hate to say this – but Broadway is looking too much like Vegas

Retreads of old movies are never going to save us.

We need to look closer at the entertainment we’re affording them

We need to get back to creating stars instead of just importing them

And I believe in the importance of critics for chronicling our theatrical history –

But it can’t be that our collective fates are only written by Isherwood or Brantley

We ALL have a voice and we’re not afraid – look

what critic is gonna argue with a million “likes” on facebook?

We’re still in the world wild west where the internet’s free

And because of this the artists have a chance to shape the industry

Its important I swear

the opportunity’s there

to be at the forefront of pop culture

instead of in the rearview mirror

If I’m a little naïve – okay – I know the dollar is important

but for the future of our business we’re alienating people who can’t afford it.

As long as we create shows for only people who can see them

we run the risk of transforming the theatre into a museum.

Today we are willing to pay but expect content for free

so I say we take our Broadway shows and stream them live for a small fee

It’ll expand our reach. A million people watching in Dubai

maybe could save us from the fate of Bonnie and Clyde

I know the finances suck. How can we create a show that sells

when the NY non-for profit houses can’t produce a musical without commercial help?

It’s a different world now and I have to say

we can have people’s ears and hearts before they or we have to pay.

and before the purists scream at me and cry out

fuck out of town, give me an internet tryout

Everyone’s online, from 90 year old jewish women to toddlers

so lets get the public’s opinion before we drop a million dollars.

And so twenty years from now, what do I imagine Broadway to be?

Well I hope and pray that future will include me.

Galinda wants to be popular and so do we. I want to hear

our songs on the radio and keep seeing them on TV

I want Broadway’s reach to expand past the nation

it’s my goal to tell stories to inspire my generation.

And I am humbled to be in the presence of all these people out here

it is an honor and a privilege to have pirated your ears.

copyright Matt Sax, included here by permission

“Can’t believe that a MAJOR theater is producing [play title redacted]. Crazy talk. Does its “non-profit” mission mandate producing community theatre?”

I know. It’s just a tweet. Let it go. But it’s emblematic of bias I read and hear constantly. It’s about time I said something.

I would like everyone to stop using “community theatre” as a punch line or punching bag.

As people with a vested interest in building and sustaining interest in theatre, pretty much everyone in the business is supportive of and in many cases evangelical for arts education. We applaud academic drama programs and productions from kindergarten to graduate school, recognizing that such programs can give voice to the next generation of artists as well as the next generation of audiences. We decry funding cuts to such programs for their impact on creative as well as intellectual development. Of late, there is also recognition that these programs may offer refuge to those who seem “different” from student bodies at large, safe havens from predatory classmates (“bully” seems a bit tame these days) among those similarly inclined, close-knit teams for those who shy away from sports.

But once school is over, those whose lives and careers take them away from the arts, but whose love of performing doesn’t abate, become part of a maligned yet integral part of the theatrical ecosystem which, when spoken of by most professionals and media voices, is summarily disparaged. Why on earth does this happen, and why is it allowed to propagate?

While I’m quite certain there are some fairly sophisticated community theatre groups, I’ll cede the point that a great deal of the work done in community theatre likely doesn’t measure up to professional, or perhaps even collegiate, standards. But that’s not the point of it. If the participants wanted to be professionals, they might be pursuing those goals; perhaps some of them did, and didn’t succeed. But I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that the majority of the participants in community theatre never sought a professional theatre career, and are happy to be teachers, dentists, attorneys, mechanics, stay-at-home parents or what have you. The fact is, community theatre is a hobby, a passion and an outlet for people who truly love theatre; it’s the bowling league, the weekly pick-up basketball game, the book group for the performance minded. The participants are, I’m willing to bet, ticket buyers at local theatres, tourists who flock to Broadway or national tours, parents who encourage creativity in their own children. In some cases they may even provide the only theatre their community gets to see. They are the people we need.

Drawing on data from the American Association of Community Theatres website, which surely doesn’t include every community group out there, we know that AACT itself “represents the interests of more than 7,000 theatres across the United States and its territories, as well as theatre companies with the armed forces overseas.” They claim more than 1.5 million volunteers [participants], over 46,000 annual productions per year, an audience of 86 million and a combined annual budget of well over $980 million. That’s a lot of theatrical activity.

Before you accuse me of being a hypocrite, I will admit to enjoying Waiting for Guffman, an at times cringe-worthy satire of community theatre and a touchstone for many in the business now for a number of years. But like other Christopher Guest films, particularly Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, Guffman is an affectionate and at times absurdist view, which celebrates the passions of its offbeat thespians just as it lampoons them. There is no such affection in the tweet quoted above, or in the often-used critical riposte that labels sub-standard professional work as approximate to that seen in community theatre.

A couple of years ago, when I worked on the American Theatre Wing’s book The Play That Changed My Life, I was struck by the fact that this collection of independently written essays ended up including several paeans to community theatre, with both Beth Henley and Sarah Ruhl writing about how their parents’ community theatre experiences informed their own theatrical lives; Chris Durang wrote of play readings held in his living room which transformed his mother and the local newspaper editor into the elegant personages of a Noel Coward play one afternoon. Surely these are not unique stories. I even had my own experience with community theatre, when at age 16 I successfully landed the role of Motel in Fiddler on the Roof (playing opposite a 27-year-old school teacher); to be a high schooler cast amongst adults was my own moment of breaking into the big leagues at that stage in my life. Community theater can matter.

Let me swerve to a corollary issue, also invoked by the opening tweet, which is the suggestion that certain plays belong solely to the community theatre repertoire (I redacted the play named in the tweet because I don’t care to debate its relative merits, but rather address the broader issue). “Community theatre plays” share a common trait with many “high school plays,” in that both often feature large casts, casts that most professional theatres would happily employ if they could afford it.  But because for these groups, inclusion is essential, both in a desire to be welcoming and because inclusion can drive ticket sales, the large-scale plays common to the mainstream theatre in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and the larger scaled musicals from across the past 100 years are staples. The value of the pieces should not be diminished because they flourish in these non-professional settings; they may not always be the most current work (though, again, I know many community groups do recent, smaller plays too), but their only opportunity to be seen may be in the community theatre arena.

Size isn’t the only issue; current tastes dismissively relegate shows to “community theatre” status as well. You Can’t Take It With You stumbled on a recent effort at Broadway, but surely Kaufman and Hart, staples in community and school theatre, are no less important because of it. Neil Simon is not in critical or commercial favor right now, so his work can be tarred with the “community” slander, but if the upcoming West End production of The Sunshine Boys, with no less than Richard Griffiths in the cast, proves revelatory, a shroud may yet be lifted from Simon’s bust in the theatrical pantheon. We’ve seen somewhat of the same thing happen recently in England with the long out-of-favor Terence Rattigan; the acclaimed David Cromer attempted Simon’s resuscitation on Broadway a couple of years ago but was undone by finances. The non-profit theatre producing a “community theatre” play should be applauded for reexamining a work not often professionally staged — at least until it opens; then judge it on its own merits, not on a collective and peremptory assumption about its worth. There’s a corollary in “family” or “children’s” theatre, where You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and Annie are seen as staples, yet those shows weren’t written for or sold to children in their original runs any more than Wicked is subsisting solely on sales to 14-year-old girls today, as some would ignorantly suggest. This reductive labeling is detrimental on so many levels.

We are part of an industry that constantly worries about its future, but can be our own worst enemy. By slagging community theatre, we’re undercutting our own best interests and evidencing our own cultural elitism; by allowing others to do so we join the juvenile yet dangerous bullies who taunted us in high school — by doing the same to adults whose only wrong is to enjoy doing that which we’ve made our careers. Even if you’ve never uttered a word against community theatre, but merely have never given it a moment’s thought, you are doing it disservice. Is theatre so healthy that we can afford to be so blithely arrogant?