If you wanted to vote in Chase Community Giving, this shows what you had to give them for the privilege (click to enlarge).

This morning, my Twitter feed was filled with a series of almost repetitive messages from New York Theatre Workshop, the excellent Off-Broadway company that was the starting point for Rent, Once and Peter and the Starcatcher, to name but three. The messages were directed tweets to a number of people that they, and I, follow on Twitter, and the message was to ask for support through re-tweeting in NYTW’s quest for funding from the Chase Community Giving program on Facebook. The program deadline is today.

For those unfamiliar with the program, it is one of several corporate initiatives which enables the general public to vote for their favorite organizations, in this case a quest for a total of $5 million in funding. Populist? Sure. Using social media creatively? Yes. A terrific step in grant-making? Absolutely not.

This sort of funding mechanism forces companies to compete in the ugliest way; a couple of years ago, one NYC not-for-profit (which I won’t name, since they publicly apologized) actually tweeted about needing help to “beat” other organizations to the money. It also requires everyone who wishes to vote to “like” the sponsoring corporation, allowing them access to one’s Facebook timeline before one can express support. In the case of Chase, it gives a voting advantage to their own customers, so the process is already rigged, laying bare that this sort of funding is marketing in sheep’s clothing.

Last week I wrote about artistic directors who abdicate their responsibility when they allow audiences to vote on their program, and this mechanism shows how corporations are comparably willing to abdicate their responsibility for adjudicating and weighing where their philanthropic dollars can do the most good. Oh, wait, I’ve misspoken, since this isn’t philanthropy at all, it’s a contest, run by marketing. I keep forgetting. I bet most people do, in this era where we vote for idols on our cell phones.

No not-for-profit can afford to look a prize horse in the mouth, and so countless organizations do their best to rally their constituency in these Darwinian survivals of the fittest (or, really, most popular). But I worry that they cheapen themselves in their efforts to enrich themselves. And so many worthy causes have a truly uphill struggle: could the presence of The Ian Somerholder Foundation’s at Number 4 on the Chase “leaderboard” at the moment be due more to its founder’s youthful celebrity than its excellent focus?

Facebook giving contests have a strange corollary to politics, where so often people vote for the lesser of two evils, not someone they’re truly excited about. But here, most every candidate is probably worthy of our respect. It’s the process that is un-“like”-able.

Update, May 16, 2014: I read a blog post today from CreateEquity entitled, “Crowdsourced corporate philanthropy died a year and a half ago, and no one seems to have noticed.” It should surprise no one who read my post that I am delighted at the news. Whether this is a hiatus or true end remains to be seen.

“Broadway” is an industry that not only produces theatre events in mid-town New York City, but it’s also the primary engine and idea factory of American theatre, and arguably, theatre worldwide.”

I’m sorry, but I can’t read a statement like that and keep silent.

The above quote is taken from a blog by Jim McCarthy, CEO of Goldstar and one of three organizers of TEDx Broadway, which will take place this January for the second year. Jim organizes the event along with producer Ken Davenport and Damian Bazadona of Situation Interactive. I attended last year’s event and furiously live-blogged it; there was some very interesting conversation that day and what struck me about it was how little it spoke specifically to Broadway and how much of the content spoke to issues of theatre as a whole.  But as much as I’ve enjoyed meeting Jim and communicating with him subsequent to last year’s event, my response to his premise is at least dismay, if not outright offense.

I have spent my career in not-for-profit theatre organizations, the last of which, the American Theatre Wing, is inextricably linked with The Tony Awards, an honor for work in the Broadway theatre, clearly defined as 40 theatres on the island of Manhattan. The Wing gave me a ringside seat at the workings of Broadway, but never for a moment did I forget that I was running a not-for-profit organization, nor did I ever declare or think myself to have “gone Broadway,” despite the jokes of my friends and the assumptions of many in the broader theatre community. My love and dedication is to theatre, all of it, and Broadway is only one segment of a very wide-ranging art form. It is predominantly, but not exclusively, commercial. While its individual productions, running for years, playing in other countries and across the U.S. on tours and licensed productions, may reach the widest audience for individual shows, there are literally countless theatrical productions in this country every year far beyond Broadway’s annual average of perhaps 38.

That is why I take exception to falsely subsuming American Theatre under the banner of Broadway: because Jim has it backwards. Broadway is part of The American Theatre, but the majority of American Theatre is not Broadway.

There’s a second misleading statement in the quote from Jim, because Broadway simply is not “the idea factory of American theatre.” Very few productions reach Broadway without having first been developed and produced in not-for-profit theatre. This even holds true for British and Irish imports, which emerge from the subsidized sectors there onto platforms of ever-greater success. I’m not saying that Broadway never originates valuable new work, but I’d lay odds that more than half of the productions each year have achieved success after benefiting at some point from the efforts of not-for-profit companies.

Because I view Broadway as a part of the American Theatre, I neither love nor hate it as an entity; frankly, it’s a collection of theatres and productions, not a singular body. I have seen great work on Broadway, just as I have in small resident companies. Broadway is one model of producing, one that can yield great rewards for its investors and artists, but one which also benefits from the vestigial patina that remains from the days when it was indeed the primary source of theatre in America. Yet the coalescing and expansion of the resident theatre movement in the 1960s (there were regional theatres decades before that) fundamentally altered the balance of American theatre. While every aspect of theatre is perpetually challenged by economics, it is the not-for-profits, here and abroad, that now lead artistically; Broadway benefits from scale, from history and from its proximity to the majority of the country’s cultural media being so close by.

I don’t think I’m saying anything radical here, but it’s a message that bumps up against the tide of immutable conventional wisdom, because the mystique of Broadway is so powerful. Having worked alongside the Broadway League on The Tony Awards, in a mutually beneficial partnership, I have watched their increasingly strong efforts to brand Broadway, to make audiences internationally ever more aware of it, to unify its constituents, and to hone its image. They face a challenge, because “Broadway” is not a trademark, it cannot be controlled the way a corporate brand can, so they fight an uphill battle at times, while at others they reap the rewards of being the theatrical equivalent of Hollywood’s “dream factory.”

I learned last year that only official TED events can cover “topics,” while the offshoot TEDx conferences must be “geographic.” Indeed, the TEDx Broadway organizers told me of their challenges convincing the TED organization that Broadway is a locale, not a discipline, so they could hold their event; “TEDx Theatre” would not have passed muster. In that usage, I understand their rationale.

But they mislead their potential audience by using Broadway as a catch-all phrase; some of the NFP folks might stay away thinking it’s not for them, which is actually a shame. I support what Jim, Ken and Damian are doing with TEDx Broadway and if I haven’t made myself persona non grata with this piece, I hope to attend again this year. But let’s not confuse positioning and marketing with facts, especially since we’ve long been told how essential truth in marketing is to success. Let’s remember that Broadway actually prides itself on its exclusivity and grant them that, without judgment or rancor. But as for The American Theatre, there’s vastly more to it than just Broadway, and the theatrical idea factory is not restricted to 40 theatres in Manhattan by any stretch of the imagination. Period.

I wrote this essay for HowlRound, the online journal of the Theatre Commons, now based at Emerson College. It was posted there on June 30, 2012, unwittingly for all concerned only a day before the national celebration of Canada Day by our northern neighbors. The piece provoked a great deal of comment, and while you can read my original thoughts here, you would benefit from many views other than my own, which can be found in the comments section of the original post.

Canada, land of plays largely unknown to Americans

Quick, name five modern Canadian playwrights (Canadian natives, put your hands down). Can’t do it? OK, name five Canadian plays that aren’t The Drawer Boy or The Drowsy Chaperone. Having trouble? I bet you are.

I’ve probably seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 to 2,500 productions in thirty-four years of active theatergoing in the U.S., with occasional trips to England and, yes, Canada. But while I can minimally exceed my own low threshold by citing George F. Walker, Joanna Glass, Michel Tremblay, Morris Panych, Tom Cone and Michael Healy, that’s the sum total of my knowledge of Canadian authors. That puzzles me.

The United States and England may be two countries separated by a common language, but the fact remains that theatrical literature flows fairly freely across the Atlantic, with Irish and the occasional Scottish work thrown in for good measure. If you use theatrical awards as any kind of a yardstick, it’s often hard to tell, based upon nominees and winners in any given year, whether you’re looking at results for The Tonys or The Oliviers. While provincialism may rear its head in certain quarters, there’s no arguing that Miller and Williams are staples of the London stage just as Stoppard and Churchill are revered here—and of course that Shakespeare guy is everywhere, and not just because his works are royalty-free.

But what of Canada? Surely U.S. Customs is not stopping Canadian plays at the border, which seems sufficiently porous to allow U.S. works to make the northbound trek unencumbered. It’s not as if there isn’t a theatrical tradition in Canada (remember that Sir Tyrone Guthrie started the Stratford Festival ten years before founding his eponymously named Minneapolis venture) and thriving theater communities in the major cities of each province. And even if our northern neighbor has mixed English and French heritage, let’s remember that authors as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Marc Camelotti and Yasmina Reza have written their plays in French, all of which have gone on to international success—so language can’t be the barrier.

The love affair between the British and U.S. theater may be rooted in our common heritage, although it’s not as if shows shuttled between the countries constantly since we settled our differences in 1776. But the American stage, which began coming into its own in the early days of the twentieth century, could look to London for a rich, centuries old heritage of authors and actors; a healthy Anglophilia fueled camaraderie. As the glitter of our Broadway evolved the form known as musical comedy, British theatergoers came to love the form as well, beginning a reciprocity that would ultimately expand beyond that particular form. Canada seems to stand outside that mutual admiration society.

It’s not as if Canadian culture has not been embraced by Americans. There are countless Canadian actors who have become big Hollywood box office (some quite venerated, as evidenced by the many awards heaped on Christopher Plummer over the years); Canada’s SCTV and The Kids in the Hall proved as seminal to U.S. comedy and satire as did Saturday Night Live and The Second City; Toronto emerged as a key Broadway tryout town (boosted, no doubt, by a once favorable exchange rate). So where are the plays?

I am taking it on faith that there are a lot of terrific new plays being done in Canada because Canadian theaters’ seasons, based on a cursory survey, aren’t made up solely of imported works. New work is being done and (presumably) people are going to see it. So I first have to ask what’s happening in Canadian literary agencies? Are they aggressively courting the literary offices and artistic directors of American companies—and if they are, is the response welcoming? As for the theater companies themselves, I am used to seeing a barrage of advertising from the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, often in glossy inserts to newspapers and magazines backed by tourism councils. But where are the companies that specialize in new works? Are they the victim, like so many companies that focus on what’s new, of taking a backseat to that which is bigger, higher-volume and already better known? In point of fact, Canada’s greatest cultural export is a commercial enterprise, Cirque du Soleil, the circus behemoth that encircles the globe with its particular style of circus arts. Maybe the clowns are blocking everyone’s view.

The aforementioned festivals, terrific as they are, probably aren’t helping matters much either. They are major tourism attractions with huge audience capacity, and because they are at their height during the summer, they offer the vacation and junket-ready U.S. media the perfect opportunity to take a northerly jaunt to see many plays in a concentrated period of time, fulfilling some unspoken quota of Canadian theater coverage while visiting bucolic towns. But what’s on display there are fine classics by Shakespeare and Shaw and, with increasing frequency, U.S. musicals. The work is Canadian theater, but rarely Canadian literature.

I’m compelled to point out that I’m not lobbying for Canadian plays because I find something wanting in new American plays, and I hastily acknowledge that there are already too few opportunities for new work to be produced here as it is. But there is a cultural lacuna when it comes to Canadian theater that seems perpetual. We owe it to Canadian artists to see beyond our own borders and the theaters of the West End, especially when we can get to major cities in Canada in perhaps one-fifth the time it takes to get to London, and if we’re of a mind to, we can even drive (not an option for London, as you know). To those who say that Canadians have a different sensibility than Americans, I say so do the English, the Irish, the Scots and the French, yet we don’t have any problems there (although some do start quivering the moment any play mentions cricket). And if anything, the Internet should have helped to erode this invisible barrier, since we can now read Canadian theater reviews online at will, rather than trying to hunt down copies of the Globe and Mail at our local, dying newsstand.

For all of our interest in international exchange, in world theater, it is work from other continents that excites the programmers of our own cultural festivals and the centurions of our literary offices. Perhaps proximity breeds indifference, since Canadian work is not familiar enough to us to breed contempt. But I for one would like to know more about what’s going on up there and can’t help but think that at least some of it belongs down here. After all, Canada theater veterans produced the greatest television show about theater ever made, Slings and Arrows, which transcends national boundaries. There must be more.

P.S. Yes, yes, what about Australia, I hear you cry. They speak English too. But that’s half a world away. Let’s look in our own backyard first.

Followers of the ethical issues surrounding the press in general, and arts journalism in particular, spent the first few days of this week watching and opining on Peter Gelb’s decision to remove reviews of The Metropolitan Opera from Opera News and his decision, only a day later, to restore said reviews, amidst an almost unanimous outcry against his maneuver. Gelb’s efforts inspired sufficient umbrage that even when he reversed his decision, people then criticized him for folding so quickly and not having the strength of his own convictions.

As a result, you may be unaware of another critical contretemps that has set the theatre world abuzz – the Australian theatre world, that is. This past weekend, the stage musical of the film An Officer and a Gentleman opened in Sydney, Australia (please, hold your contempt for musicals derived from movies for the moment). This opening was a source of national theatrical pride, as Australia seeks to bolster its image as the starting place for major musicals, a position declared in the pages of Variety only last week. Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Dirty Dancing, also film-derived, are two previous productions cited. With the advent of the internet, going out of town to work on a show without press scrutiny has become increasingly difficult. Australia is seeking to supplant the West Coast of the U.S. as a place where one can go relatively free of prying eyes.

So what’s the fuss? The Australian, a national daily, first published a short review on May 19 critical of the musical and, on May 21, the same critic reinforced her views with a longer piece. But on the 21^st, The Australian also saw fit to publish a letter from Douglas Day Stewart, screenwriter of the film and co-writer of the book of the musical, in which he lashed out strongly at The Australian’s review and its critic, going so far as to suggest that she is “incapable of human emotion.”  Because I have seen this coverage on the Internet, I do not know the relative prominence each piece received in print, although it is fair to say that The Australian sought to provoke controversy, since they could have declined to run the letter.

Now artists writing to newspapers to complain about reviews is hardly a new phenomenon. It’s not hard to understand why someone involved in a creative venture would feel compelled to try to debunk not only criticism but the person who wrote it. After all, no one likes being told their baby is ugly. However, in my experience, it’s an impotent gesture at best and a counterproductive one at worst: I am unaware of any critic ever seeing such a missive and then realizing that they were “mistaken.” More often, the critic will respond to such letters by reiterating or embellishing upon their original position, and the artist doesn’t get a second whack. The critic may harbor resentment, to be expressed in the future, against the artist or the producer, whether commercial or not-for-profit. When this sort of thing has come to me as press agent, as general manager, as executive director, I have always sought to talk the artist down, expressing genuine compassion, but trying to explain that other than making themself and perhaps the company feel better, no real good comes of such an action.

When this first blew up in Australia, several of my Twitter friends down under were quick to send me various links, saying, more or less, “Have you seen this?” My initial reaction was to not comprehend why this perennial conflict merited much attention, but consistent replies said that, indeed, national pride was at stake.  If that’s the case, then it is unfortunate that so many people have invested emotionally in the current state of Australian theatre through this one production – and even more unfortunate that Mr. Stewart (Mr. Day Stewart?) caused more attention to be focused on An Officer and A Gentleman.  The fact is, were it not for his letter, this opening might have escaped me (and no doubt many others internationally) entirely and the show would have been free to develop in relative solitude. Instead, it’s now “the show where the author got mad at the press.”  By citing “a plethora of five-star reviews,” Stewart sent many looking for them, and let’s just say I hardly found a “plethora.” (For your reference, here are a selection of reviews from: The Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Stage, Crikey, Nine to Five, and The Coolum News)

Thanks to Mr. Stewart, my sense of An Officer and a Gentleman is that it did not meet with general critical acclaim, save for The Australian, but (thanks to comments beneath reviews) that it is a crowd-pleaser. If the creative team feels they have an impeccably wrought success and feel no further work is necessary, the show may be a risky venture based on what I’ve read. The more strategic response to the reviews, if there was to be a response, would have been to talk about the value of many opinions, critical and general public, and talk about how the time in Australia was going to be used to make the show even more successful and entertaining before conquering the known world.

Like the Gelb incident, the Officer and a Gentleman kerfuffle is a result of people not thinking through their actions fully in advance, perhaps not seeking (or accepting) the counsel of others, to the detriment of their institution or their production. The Metropolitan Opera will go on, and it’s very likely that An Officer and a Gentleman will be seen in other countries one day soon. But in both cases, focusing on the productions instead of the press would have been more, well, productive.

Yes, you read that right. I am advocating getting rid of adorable little ducklings in order to advance the cause of the arts in the United States. Getting rid of them from national television news, that is.

This morning, during the first segment of The Today Show, the portion of the program supposedly dedicated to “hard news,” roughly 20 seconds of airtime was devoted to a story about baby ducks being rescued from a storm drain. I do not recall where this gripping tale of survival had occurred, only that the duckies were safe. Whew.

This follows on the heels of last night’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, which included reports on the new low-calorie Slurpee, The Avengers passing the $1 billion mark at the box office, Thin Mints being the most popular flavor of Girl Scout cookies (as if there had been doubt), current trends in baby names, and a segment on the dog that won Britain’s Got Talent.

This is not exactly a new phenomenon, this ongoing degradation of what is considered news, but the aggregation of so many meaningless stories on a single network in just over 12 hours got my dander up. Because I do not have multiple DVRs or an intern, I cannot do a comparison as to what stories were worthy of airtime on CBS or ABC at the same time; I take it on faith that the Slurpee story did not make it on to PBS’s The News Hour (though their sober coverage of such an important dietary advancement might have proven rather entertaining). I suspect I missed some really terrific fluff.

Whenever I see stories like these, I wonder why national television news rarely finds time for the arts. Yes, if Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark starts injuring actors again, you can bet the networks will be right there. When The Book of Mormon introduces the first $1,000 theatre ticket, we’ll hear about how expensive theatre is. But showcasing the excellence and breadth of the arts, even in 30 second snippets? That, apparently, is not news.

Further evidence of this phenomenon. Have you ever read about a production of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class? I’m willing to bet that if you have, it focused on the live lamb the script requires, and the care requirements for said infant sheep. It’s a perennial and always engaging, as they grow quickly, don’t take direction and tend to defecate at inopportune times. Or take last summer, when there was an uproar and significant coverage when the Royal Shakespeare Company skinned a dead rabbit on stage and they were forced to substitute a prop bunny. That, apparently, was arts coverage gold, sustaining my theory. Cute animals = coverage. Endangering cute animals or trafficking in their corpses = even more coverage.

Must America’s orchestras, opera companies, dance companies, and theatres produce only baby-animal themed works? Or must they take baby animals hostage en masse in order to get attention? Has soliciting coverage of the arts been reduced to pandering or kidnapping? I have previously suggested that getting celebrities arrested during protests in support of arts funding might draw attention, but apparently Streeps and Kardashians alike have an aversion to orange jumpsuits, so that’s gotten nowhere.

News directors, please leave the animal stories and pictures to the Internet, which was apparently built specifically to disseminate such “aw”-inspiring material. And with the time you free up, maybe you can spare a minute for the arts now and then. If you do, I’ll spare my pet baby koala from anything untoward. Promise.

When I first heard it, it sounded strange to my ear. I wondered whether Charlie Rose had just misread his teleprompter, whether some young segment producer had written an introduction without being sufficiently steeped in theatre terminology, or whether it was simply a typo. But as my initial surprise wore off, I found I rather liked the word, and wonder whether it could brought into common usage in the arts.

Allow me to set the scene before going forward.

Having a moderate degree of interest in this week’s barrage of stunts by television’s network morning programs, I was doing a bit of channel surfing to see how the Katie Couric (ABC) vs. Sarah Palin (NBC) counterprogramming might be working, and whether CBS had anything up its sleeve as well. At one precise point, to give you a picture of the ethos of the three programs, Good Morning America had a interview with Camille Grammer directly opposite The Today Show’s visit with Tori Spelling, while CBS This Morning had a feature on what the 1940 U.S. Census reveals. In this particular atmosphere, I didn’t expect to find anything that might make me think deeply about theatre.

So when Charlie Rose, on the CBS program, began introducing an interview with Candice Bergen in conjunction with her role in Broadway’s The Best Man, it was jarring to hear the production described as, “a renewal.” Not revival, not revisal, not reinvention, not revisitation, not refurbishment. Renewal.

I’ve decided I like it.

Now there’s an argument that could be made for avoiding any of these qualifiers about plays or musicals, but there seems to be a deep desire to distinguish new work from that which dates back over some period of time, so I’ll leave that alone for today. Revival is the default mode; musicals which have been altered, whether in part or substantially from their original texts may be called revisals. The other “re’s” I’ve cited above are used on occasion, but they’re not standard terminology, in conversation or in marketing.

Yet whenever I’ve spoken to a director about staging a work which previously received a substantial production or productions some time ago, be it a decade or a century or more, they all say some variation of the same thing when asked about their work with it: “I treat it like it’s new.” Whether the creator(s) are alive or long dead, directors talk about working with the authors, collaborating with them, be it Shepard or Shakespeare. Yet the word revival carries with it, to me, a whiff of the grave, more resurrection or resuscitation of something dead than reinvigoration of something awaiting only light and air.  Yes, I’m parsing these words closely, perhaps pedantically, and through my own associations, but in a field that trades in words, their meaning and their implied or inferred (if not intended) message is tremendously important; I’m quick to challenge obfuscation or misdirection.

So I find renewal a very optimistic word, because while acknowledging history, it seems very forward looking, and indeed may reflect precisely what theatre artists hope to achieve when they look to past work for today’s repertory. It may even be goal setting: that when such works are undertaken, they should be renewed for both the participating artists and audiences, so that they are more than mere replication of something from the past, but are instead made relevant.

Do I expect this to fall readily into common parlance among our peers? No, that optimistic I’m not; it would require endless repetition. But having inveighed against the “er vs re” debate regarding the very name of our field, here’s an “re” usage I’d like to think we can all get behind when the opportunity presents itself or necessity arises.

So whether this morning’s usage was intentional, ill-informed or simply a slip, I salute Charlie Rose and his team. Renewal is refreshing.

I should note that I have not yet seen The Best Man and that nothing in this post should be construed as any comment upon that production.

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.

March 28, 2012

Mr. Harvey Weinstein

The Weinstein Company

Dear Mr. Weinstein:

I have been reading of late about your struggle with the Motion Picture Association of America over the ‘R’ rating given to the film Bully, which you will now release, in two days, unrated. While doing so is normally box office poison, I have read that AMC Theaters have agreed to show the film despite its lack of MPAA sanction, recognizing the educational and social value of the film; hopefully all others will follow suit. Fortunately, the publicity surrounding your confrontation with the MPAA has no doubt added to public awareness of the film, building upon the growing awareness in the country of the insidious and escalating harm that bullying causes to our country’s children, and countering the negative marketplace effects that an unrated film can face.

From all of the advance press I’ve read, the filmmakers have produced a remarkable film, and you are to be applauded for buying the rights to it last summer. Indeed, you had to suffer through the initial round of press which sought to have fun at your expense, commenting repeatedly that there is an irony in someone so often portrayed as a bully championing an anti-bullying project. But you are no doubt strong enough to have weathered the brickbats, as you have before in the press, and you have worked on behalf of what is by all accounts a valuable and important film. Indeed, “bullying” seems too tame a term for the apparently systematic torture that many youths suffer for a variety of reasons, all of which must be brought to a stop.

But something is nagging at me, namely: where will the profits go on this film? I looked on the website, and while it describes the film as having been financed in part by foundations, and lists partnerships on both the film and The Bully Project behind it, I saw no message that profits from the film would be donated to anti-bullying efforts. I tried, but could not find it. I did find, with a bit of hunting, a page that allowed individuals to donate to the Creative Visions Foundation, a non-profit partner to the film.

I realize that your company is not a not-for-profit, but please, Mr. Weinstein, please tell me that you are not going to make a profit from this film. Please tell me that you will meet your acquisition, distribution and marketing costs and the rest of your profits will go entirely towards further efforts to combat this apparent epidemic. I would like to “like” the film on Facebook, I want people to see this film if it is as effective as people are saying, but I bridle at the thought that someone might be profiting from its release. Please tell me what is happening in that regard. Put the opportunity to donate to fight bulling right there on the film’s home page, along with a declaration of where the film’s revenues will go.

Frankly, you have an even broader opportunity, one that could be of even greater benefit to bullied children and teens everywhere, and which would also reflect your altruistic, rather than capitalistic, goals. Why not figure out how to make this movie available for free? Would the theatre owners consider this? Could you partner with a broadcast TV network (for greater access)? Could it be downloaded as free content online? If the point of the film is indeed the message, shouldn’t it be as broadly available as possible, without regard to the economic ability of those who might benefit to pay to see it? With a call to action at its end, even more money could be raised for anti-bullying efforts, whether through The Bully Project or other initiatives.

I realize that this seems a naive position, and no one would accuse me of being naive. But with a non-fiction film that is reportedly free of partisan political content, one which could literally mean life or death for untold numbers of youths, maybe this is the moment to aspire to something greater than box office returns. I can afford to pay to see your film, and I will, but I’m thinking of all of those who can’t – and should. You can truly elevate a movement here, not just release a film. I hope you will.

Sincerely,

Howard Sherman

once a target for bullies

I have never seen Mike Daisey perform. However, I have been to The Public Theatre many times, I have read many reviews of and features about Daisey’s The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (and his other monologues) and have discussed it with people who have seen it and were, indeed, quite enthusiastic about it. Apparently, by the standards of non-fiction that Mr. Daisey followed, at least until this past Friday, I could have claimed to have seen his show. Yet I never would have thought to do so.

As someone whose primary interests have long been the arts and journalism, “The Daisey Affair” is a train wreck, media circus, artistic bombshell and teaching moment all bound up with a bright big bow of schadenfreude. After declaring to all who would listen, both free and paid, that he was an honest messenger about deplorable conditions, Daisey got his comeuppance when, after repurposing portions of his stage piece for radio’s “This American Life,” someone sought to fully fact-check his claims and found them wanting, insofar as Daisey’s own first-hand experiences went. There have been independent reports of the working conditions at Apple’s China-based supplier Foxconn; Daisey himself did not witness all of the effects and abuses at those plants, and had wholly fabricated certain anecdotes.

Perhaps it is fitting that Daisey was caught out by public radio itself, since the excerpt that ran on their stations was no doubt heard by more people than had actually seen Daisey perform the piece at The Public Theater and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company as a whole (this is a guess, not a fact). Frankly, had it not been for the “This American Life” airing and its tragic sequel, “Retraction,” theatergoers may well have gone on indefinitely believing everything Daisey said to be true as objective fact. So while public radio may well loom larger, proportionally, in overall impact, I would like to focus solely on the theatrical presentation, since that is the world in which I travel.

Am I angry at Daisey? Yes, I am. Not because I feel personally duped, since I never saw the show. But I’m upset for all of the people I know, and those I don’t, who were completely taken in by Daisey’s account, which he declared to be a work of non-fiction, a phrase that with every passing day, accelerated by people like James Frey and Daisey, becomes ever more suspect. Yes, theatre is primarily a world of artifice, but it is also a world in which “truth” is valued, be it literal truth, emotional truth, what have you. In a place where we are normally are asked to suspend our disbelief, where that is an essential principle, we are also ready to believe wholeheartedly in fiction, where we willingly trust artists – and therefore, we do so even more when we’re presented with something represented as fact.

Theatres are not in the habit of fact-checking the work they present; they operate on a good faith basis with the artists with whom they work and unless something seems egregiously out-of-whack, the work of artists like Daisey, Spalding Gray, Anna Deavere Smith, Eve Ensler and others are accepted as art and as theatricalized documentary. Now, of course, Daisey has spoiled the fun for the rest of the class, and artists who traffic in “true stories” may well have to provide footnotes to be printed in the programs or on the websites of the theatres that produce or present such work, or even open their notes for scrutiny, as if every production was a libel suit waiting to happen. It’s interesting to note that Smith makes her original tapes available online already, although this was intended as a guide for those who would attempt to mimic her subjects as she does, but they certainly provide the ability to verify her faithfulness to their words – or indeed to examine how her artistry has taken their words and melded them into a work of theatre.

I am angry with Mike Daisey because he made people I know, respect and like complicit in his fabrication. While both The Public and Woolly Mammoth have appropriately remained rather silent in the first 72 hours of the revelation beyond short prepared statements, I have no doubt (but again, I am guessing) that the people who worked to promote the engagements of Agony and Ecstasy, those who chose to present it, those who helped to mount the production, are feeling betrayed because, so far as we know, they had taken Daisey at his word. The only insight we have thus far are tweets from Alli Houseworth, who was the marketing director at Woolly Mammoth when the show ran there and she is, to say the least, profoundly unhappy. She is also, I imagine, only one of many feeling this way, but the rest must keep silent, be it by employer edict or professional decorum. [Addendum: subsequent to my posting of this piece, Alli wrote her own post expressing her thoughts in detail.]

In addition to theatres’ staffs, those who reported on and reviewed Daisey, and indeed praised him (people I also know, respect and like), feel they have been ill-used; one major critic wrote to me that he felt like he had egg on his face, others have publicly questioned their role in facilitating Daisey’s untruths, as if they had given glowing coverage to Bernard Madoff which caused people to lose their savings (I exaggerate here for effect, and the metaphor is wholly mine). Some have pointed out that they had noted uncertainty about Daisey’s veracity; no doubt like all arts writers, they were too overworked and underpaid to attempt to verify the story independently, or simply felt that by questioning it, they had sufficiently addressed the ambiguity they perceived, because, after all, it’s only theatre.

Mike Daisey failed me, and everyone who attends the theatre, because he has contributed to the degradation of the word “theatre.” Some time ago, I wrote about the fact that, in modern parlance, theatre can either mean the presentation of dramatic and musical works as well as the venue in which that work is presented – but an can also mean any act from which true meaning has been dissociated from visible action. We most often hear this applied to ploys by those who govern, or seek to govern us; “political theatre” is a constant refrain. But now, by attempting to convince us that his work was factually true ,only to be revealed as partially false, Daisey has further eroded anyone’s belief in theatre. Even plays which do not pretend to be “documentary theatre,” but which utilize real-world events as the setting for stories either invented or amalgamated from research, will be called into question. Could audiences value Ruined or Blood and Gifts less in the wake of “Daiseygate”? I fear they might, and that is a shame both for the artists who created them and for the real world situations that they brought into focus in a way that the evening news perhaps never had. The same holds true for the working conditions in China that Daisey sought to bring to light, until the spotlight shifted from message to messenger. Daisey had shown with Agony and Ecstasy, as some often wonder, that political theatre does have a place in American discourse, only to undermine his own platform.

Movies have long ago degraded the phrase “based on a true story” as a catch-all to exploit tales which may have their roots in real world events, but which take creative liberties with the historical record. Must theatre now apply very specific disclaimers – or claims – to any production which seeks to be perceived a something more than pure fiction? I have already seen a real world application of such efforts, in the London program for the play with music Backbeat, about the very earliest days of The Beatles, and it remains one of my favorite program notes ever. In order to assure the audience of what was true and where they had strayed from fact, they went so far as to excuse a small flaw in their casting by noting that, “And, of course, Paul was left-handed,” lest everything else be discounted. Interestingly, Claude Lanzmann, who made Shoah, which many consider the definitive documentary of the Holocaust, refuses to use the term; because he staged moments with some of the survivors he interviewed, he prefers to call his epic document “a fiction of the real.” If only Daisey had done so as well.

Finally, I’m upset with Mike Daisey because he has provided a theatrical scandal for the media to feast upon once again. Theatre is, beyond those specifically charged with and invested in reporting upon it, rarely able to break beyond the ghetto of the arts page into the larger consciousness: the electronic media, new media, the front page. We only find ourselves there when something goes spectacularly wrong, and though you may think this an unfair comparison, the Daisey brouhaha is the biggest “beyond just the arts” theatre story since Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark began its troubled journey to the stage.  Just as the Daisey story broke on Friday, I wrote a post musing on the attention that George Clooney’s arrest might focus on the Sudan and wondered whether some celebrity might be willing to get arrested to promote the arts, since that appears to be the only way to get attention these days. Daisey wasn’t a celebrity, nor is he a criminal, but he has achieved his greatest fame to date for engaging in actions which are ethically questionable. He has made theatre relevant to more than just those who love it, but in the worst way possible.

Let me return to my opening sentence, the fact that I have never seen Mike Daisey perform, because there’s a tremendous irony. I never chose to see him because, based on what I had read, and despite the glowing remarks of those who knew his work, I conceived a bias about the work, however unfair it may have been to do so. I did not wish to spend my money to go to a lecture, no matter how artfully presented. Just as I tired quickly of Michael Moore, I assumed that an evening with Mike Daisey would be somewhere between a profoundly biased 60 Minutes segment and a partisan polemic – and that’s not why I go to the theatre. I go to see and hear the world transformed by an artist into something that is, indeed, emotionally true but filtered through a creative sensibility. Fiction may be a lie, but it is a lie I willingly participate in, whereas I mostly leave my fact consumption for other media. If only I had known what Daisey was really doing, I might have been more willing to see him, not less. Now, I look forward to his next play.

Unless you have been isolated from all news sources for the past few hours, you are likely aware that actor George Clooney was arrested this morning for his participation in a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington DC. I doubt you’ve missed it and, even if you have, you’re going to hear more about it, because it’s a story that unites a significant humanitarian crisis that has been relatively underreported with one of the true movie stars of our generation. This makes it catnip to everyone from TMZ to The News Hour, and it does what Clooney no doubt intended: shines a stunningly bright light on a vital story that hasn’t managed to get a foothold in the American consciousness (or conscience) to a significant degree.

A massive human tragedy cannot legitimately be equated with the issue of arts funding and arts education, and please don’t misunderstand my intention here. But I can’t help look to Clooney’s action today, and the media response. I wonder what effect such an action might have on declining arts support if someone of his stature were arrested at a rowdy protest against arts funding cuts.

After all, there are plenty of articles written weekly about the proven value of the arts, not simply as a quality of life issue, but as a tool in students’ development and creative thinking, as a magnet for economic development, and so on. These articles may fly about the internet among the faithful, but they don’t seem to be getting much broad-based traction at a time when political candidates campaign by declaring their intention to gut or eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (among many other essential, and infinitesimally small parts of the Federal budget).

Some of us have, in varying degrees, been watching or fighting this fight for several decades, and it remains a worthy battle. There are certainly celebrities who have gone before Congressional hearings to make the case, and that manages to generate a bit of video or a few inches of print. But jailing someone famous (and I mean legitimately famously, worthily famous, not some reality TV freak of the week), that’s a game-changer, lifting the issue to whole other level.

Do I have suggestions? While he may well be willing, I have previously written about why Alec Baldwin doesn’t suit my purpose. There are stars who willingly leap into public fray, like Martin Sheen, who was regularly arrested at nuclear protests even before he became one of this country’s favorite fictional Presidents; unfortunately being a regular presence diminishes the impact. I believe we need someone who hasn’t staked out a position on another divisive political issue, and whose appeal cuts across racial, political and social lines.

We need to pick our moment, our place, our specific flash point – making sure we’re in a major media market – and marshal as large a group of artists, arts staffs, and arts supporters so that we’re not asking someone to front a bedraggled few dozen malcontents. Then we have to push Tom Hanks, or Julia Roberts, or Denzel Washington, or Beyonce, or Neil Patrick Harris, or Ellen Degeneres, or Jeremy Lin, or Sofia Vergara, or Justin Timberlake, to the front of the crowd with the express goal of having those plastic handcuffs tightened around their wrists and their heads protected as they’re thrust into a police conveyance.  My god, if they were up for it, imagine the press if Angela Lansbury or James Earl Jones led the civil disobedience on this topic.

When these famous and even beloved offenders are released, which they will surely quickly be, they have to be ready with the right speech – the perfect speech – to give to the phalanx of journalists who will be waiting eagerly for their emergence. Then maybe the arts agenda will rise in the public consciousness, then we can work from a higher plateau of awareness.

When people can’t get attention they desire, we hear them mutter, “I can’t even get arrested in this town.” Maybe the arts need to get arrested now and again, and must do whatever it takes for that to happen.

And of course, if Mr. Clooney wants to join us, we’ll take him too.