No One Knows You’re A Dog

June 8th, 2012 § 4 comments § permalink

Do we really know who’s behind that screen name?

I have occasion every so often to speak to young or aspiring theatre professionals about their careers and how social media can help, or hinder, their efforts. I tell them, in every case, that they need to think about their public profile. Not the words on their Facebook or Twitter description, though they matter, but the overall impression they give. My counsel is that on social media, they should endeavor to be the best person they can be, the best image of themselves that they want to present, to current, potential and future employers and colleagues. I don’t encourage them to lie or be false, but to remember that what may be acceptable in a circle of personal friends can come off very differently when it reaches strangers or cyber-friends, people who only know them by what they blog, post or tweet.

I describe to them a favorite New Yorker cartoon, which shows a dog, on a desk chair, at a computer, looking down at another dog, on the floor, and saying, via caption, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” I believe it illustrates my point about one’s web profile perfectly, even if my verbal retelling saps the cartoon of its humor.

I am reminded of this struggle, to present one’s best self, constantly, in my own efforts. I spend a great deal of time on Twitter trying to curate interesting content; I share links to articles that I think are worth reading, not always because I agree with them, but because I think people should know they’re out there. While I don’t post hate speech or anything close, I have been known to post articles which espouse opinions that are not necessarily commensurate with my own. Just this morning, I provided a link to what I considered a laughable column by the New York Post’s Cindy Adams – and I said so – but I also posted a critical column about the direction of The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park program without any indication of my position.  A few people wrote to share in my amusement over the Adams column, but several people wrote in strong defense of Shakespeare in the Park and there was an intimation of my foolishness for propagating a specious opinion. A single word could have spun that latter post, “claptrap” perhaps, but I naively wanted people to respond on their own; I had no such compunction about ridiculing the Adams piece.  Should I always let my feelings be known on everything I post? Perhaps, but I want to spark conversations, not end them before they’ve begun. It is a tightrope.

I was also taken to task (mildly) this week for refusing to comment on the inclusion of a musical number from a cruise ship on the Tony Awards broadcast. “Aren’t you a pundit?” I was asked by tweet. I have fashioned myself as one, but a pundit whose opinions are formed by my past and future work within the theatre industry. In the case of this aspect of the Tonys, I said it wouldn’t be appropriate, but I feel the need to be more explicit. It wouldn’t be appropriate because as a former staffer of the American Theatre Wing, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to make public statements about the organization’s work. I no longer work there, but I’m bound up in the organization’s history and I shouldn’t take my departure as leave to speak at will from the sidelines. My loyalty trumps my commentary, but I make no secret of it; I am neither mouthpiece nor gadfly when it comes to The Wing. I have turned down paid opportunities to write about The Tonys because I think it would be wrong of me to do so. If that undermines me as a pundit, then by all means, look elsewhere.

I had determined when I left the American Theatre Wing that I would not use my blog or Twitter feed to begin offering my opinion of shows; my connection to the Tonys had long given me cover from doing so, as it would have been inappropriate for me to praise or pan potential Tony contenders given my position. Although that rationale is not pertinent, I have chosen to sustain my position. I do not want to be a source of critical opinion about shows. There are plenty of critics; I prefer to discuss the issues of theatre, not the pros or cons of productions. Even offering only praise for shows I enjoy would carry implied criticism for all the shows I didn’t single out; after working professionally for some 30 years, I would also risk offending colleagues and friends, and so I feel I cannot go there. Did I see Timon of Athens and The Iceman Cometh in Chicago this week? Yes. Was the trip worth it? Absolutely. But that’s as far as I go.

Yesterday, I was horrified to realize that I had retweeted a funny message from my friend Laura Benanti, but in haste, working via iPhone, I had accidentally removed the indication that it was a retweet. Consequently, her brilliantly sarcastic remark about anonymous commenters on the Internet was sourced to me, as a number of people retweeted it; because I made the error before going into a five-hour show, it was too late to recall the error in any effective way when I realized it much later. Yet with each retweet, I felt like a plagiarist. I hope she will forgive me. I hope those who follow us both will not think me a thief. (The tweet in question was, “I hope to one day have the courage of anonymous bloggers/posters in comment sections. #TheyAreTheRealHeros.”)

We watch in politics, in sports, in the realm of celebrity, how our actions in social media can trip us up, and how that same media can be used to fan the flames and spread those failures. My impact is negligible compared to Ashton Kutcher, but to some small portion of theatre aficionados, I appear to hold some sway. So I must be transparent in my actions, or lack thereof, online; I must constantly consider whether my messages are the messages I want to convey. Brevity is no excuse – better to not tweet at all than to tweet ambiguously or detrimentally. After 20,000 tweets and more than 100 blog posts, I am still learning, still refining, still never quite vigilant enough. But I must be vigilant, lest I be the dog.

Making a List, Arguing it Twice

June 5th, 2012 § 25 comments § permalink

Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments” with the original Top 10 List.

We have become a society of list makers.  It shouldn’t be a surprise, when the Judeo-Christian ethic draws so strongly on the world’s earliest “top ten” list: The Ten Commandments. It’s a common year-end journalistic ritual: the top ten movies, the ten worst books, and what have you. These lists can be expansive and informative; they can be narrow-minded and limiting.

This morning, I came across a list of Ten Contemporary Plays That Should be on Your Shelf from the website Flavorwire and, save for the first entry — of which I’d never heard — it wasn’t a bad 10 play survey if you had to give a crash course in modern American, British and Irish theatre, although limited in gender and racial diversity. But of course, it’s impossible to include everything, and many other opinions are quickly voiced, typically in disagreement, in this situation.  But while it’s easy to name plays and playwrights who are missing, commenters rarely stop to say what should be removed.

So I’d like to offer my blog for exactly that: what are the 10 plays you would name as the 10 Most Important Contemporary Plays, the 10 that belong on any theatre lover’s bookshelf, and let’s say by contemporary we mean the past 25 years.  Start posting your top tens in the comments below; I’m eager to hear what people think of the Flavorwire list and how they’d make such a list their own.  A parlor game, perhaps? Dinner party conversation? Could be. But if enough of you contribute, we might have a very interesting sense of what new works are most valued as essential right now, knowing that in only a couple of years, it could be entirely different.

See Me, Feel Me, Like Me, Retweet Me

May 30th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

A while back, I wrote with dismay about the ranking systems like Klout, which purport to score your level of influence in social media. For a time, people seemed obsessed with their performance, and a whole new playing field of envy and competition blossomed. There were reports of Klout scores being considered in assessments of job applicants, and a general frenzy took hold. Fortunately, people seem to have grown bored with social ranking, just as the rankers seem to have grown bored with providing the incentives they once promised. Problem solved?

Not so fast.

While familiarity may make us less concerned with those opaque numerical rankings, there’s still a numbers game being played in social media, and there’s no mysterious algorithm at work. It’s the hard and fast numbers of how many people follow you, how many people like you — that’s the new obsession.

Surely you’ve seen a tweet to the effect of, “Only xx followers needed to reach y. Won’t you RT and help?”  Or, if you’ve seen any companies promoting themselves on Facebook, no doubt you’ve been required to “like” them in order to take advantage of some special offer.  But because words such as “friend” and “like” have such power, they seem to carry a weight far beyond there mere click of a button on one’s screen; frankly, “following” someone seems truly disproportionate, unless you harbor dreams of being the next Jim Jones seeking companions on a field trip to Guyana.

I must confess, in my early days on Twitter, I fell victim to this psychological lure and trawled for followers by asking others to help be reach some round-numbered goal. I have also mentioned more than once on Twitter that if one becomes my friend on Facebook, they’ll have access to content different than what’s on my Twitter feed (which is true). But I’ve realized how desperate I may have sounded for approval, for achievement. “Friend” and “like” carry as much weight as in those early school days when you might spend 30 minutes on a playground slide with someone and announce to your parents only hours later that they were your new best friend. Especially peculiar about requests for new Twitter followers is that you can only make it to those who are already following you, so you’re putting your online cohorts on the spot and asking them to endorse you with a retweet. Awkward! I have held the line on LinkedIn – I am not “connected” to anyone with whom I have not had a meaningful professional interaction, which I thought was the point of that site.

The implied endorsement or emotional attachment that the masters of social media have caused us to use can indeed be awkward. I have no feelings whatsoever towards American Express beyond holding a Macy’s charge card, but if I have to “like” them in order to help direct their philanthropy, I’m willing to pretend. I do not blindly “follow” the positions of The New York Times, but I do value their news updates, so I must be publicly perceived as a part of their coterie. A current Off-Broadway play, the title of which refers to a part of the anatomy that is uniquely male and unprintable in the aforementioned Times, now has people declaring that they like said appendage on Facebook, whatever their gender or sexual orientation, to my sophomoric amusement.

All of the social media sites make it easy to find out the number of people’s friends, followers and likes and to know how far they may be from some milestone number. I will only urge people to engage with new contacts who I truly believe to be of genuine value; I am more likely to retweet worthy messages and let each person who reads it decide whether or not they want to see more from that source.  But having suffered the ignominy of being chosen last on the playground for many years, having tried to shield my SAT scores from my peers lest I be labeled “a brain,” I’ve grown to loathe the numerical rat race, and I’ve opted out of it. Desperation, as I learned in my dating years, is unattractive, and doesn’t work.

If my tweets inform or amuse you, perhaps you’ll follow me; if they annoy you, by all means don’t subject yourself to me. If you enjoy pop culture videos (or want to meet up with my high school friends in virtual space), like me on Facebook, because that’s what I can offer you there. But as we have all heard about the media for so many years, and I paraphrase here: “It’s the content, stupid.” And if my content is stupid, I completely understand why no one would follow me where I go online, why they wouldn’t like me, or want to be my friend. Just as it was on the playground, I have to be worthy, or I’ll have no one to play with. And the same is true, in turn, for each of you.

Your friend,

Howard

 

Conduct Unbecoming to “An Officer”

May 23rd, 2012 § 4 comments § permalink

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 21st, 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.

Sacrificing Baby Ducks For The Arts

May 15th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

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.

 

What We Bring To The Theatre

May 14th, 2012 § 4 comments § permalink

In the days before I married, in the days before the advent of mp3s and i-devices, the soundtrack of my life was provided by the radio. Primarily listened to while driving, I had an elaborate series of preset stations for my eclectic tastes, geographically diverse enough to allow me to travel between Philadelphia and Boston without searching for stations. Yet, in the wake of each romantic breakup, they all seemed to be a single station programmed specifically to torment me. Every time a relationship ended, popular music seemed a conspiracy – every song was either about the desire for love, the thrill of current love or the desperation of lost love. Who, I wondered, were these sadists?

Of course, the programming was the same it had always been. What had changed was my perception of it. Bereft, expressions of love were taunts; plaints of longing or loss egged me deeper into despair. “Sylvia’s Mother” could reduce me to tears. It wasn’t good.

This effect is true in every aspect of our lives, since we are emotional creatures and view everything, especially art and entertainment, subjectively, not objectively, no matter how hard we might try. For all the talk about how theatre is different every night because of the interplay between actors and audiences, the real difference is found in what each member of the audience brings with them to the theatre: a rough day at the office, a misbehaving child, an undigested bit of beef. Theatres work very hard to create an optimal situation (excepting, for some reason, leg room) for the consumption of dramatic work, but they cannot know or in any way control the many experiences which each member of the audience brings to bear on the event.

Arthur Sherman, 1974

Arthur Sherman, 1974

I share all of this by way of prologue, because the effect of the day to day on theatergoing has been much on my mind for the past few weeks. Why that time period? Because three and a half weeks ago, my elderly father fell and sustained a traumatic brain injury (believe it or not, this had happened once before, just a year earlier, and he came back from it beautifully). As a result, I have been spending roughly every other day waking early, departing New York for the hospital in New Haven at about 6:45 am, arriving by 9 to speak with the attending physician during rounds, and heading back to New York by noon. Then I nap and, given the time of year, see a show in the evening.

Why did I keep up my theatergoing? Simply because that is what I do. I wanted to retain a sense of normalcy. My father had been seriously ill many times in my life, and always survived. I needed to do all that I could do for him, but for me, the less I broke my patterns, the better.

So the question is whether my response to the theatre I’ve seen in the past three weeks would have been different if my father had not been ill, if my days had been less complicated. Of course, I will never know. I have, to be sure, laughed in the theatre these past three weeks; I have not once cried. I have experienced joy; I have been dismayed and feel quite certain that I will never, willingly, see some of those shows again.

I also did something unprecedented: I walked out of a show mid-act. Was my anger and impatience at the story played out before me a true aesthetic appraisal, or did this show somehow become the repository of my concerns for my hospital-bound father? I really can’t say. I might have merely been exercising my own natural taste, since the kind usher who showed to me a door where my departure would be least disruptive tried to persuade me to stay. “It gets better,” she whispered, suggesting that perhaps others had made this mid-show journey. “Not for me,” I replied.

Was it fair for me to keep seeing shows at a time when so much was weighing on my mind? Perhaps, for the artists and my relationship to their work, it was not. But I was not about to sit home, passively watching TV. I was going to do, to the best of my ability, what I always do, which is go to the theatre. After all, the tickets were arranged, I couldn’t spend every minute with my father and even if I did there was little I could do for him. For me, keeping up the familiar seemed wisest. If I didn’t enjoy shows fully, if I can never enjoy those shows in the future because of those first impressions and associations, that is my loss and my error. But I have also been suffering from severe neck and shoulder pain for quite some time, recently diagnosed as bulging and herniated discs, so that has also influenced how I have perceived theatre over several years. I may have not given certain shows the fairest seeing because of physical pain, just as the emotional impact of my father’s injury may have clouded my responses more recently. My thoughts, my physical condition have always colored my theatergoing, so even at a time of extreme stress, I never really thought to stop.

As I write, it is four days since my father died and two days since his funeral. I was at a show only hours before he passed and I will return to the theatre, for a comedy, in two days time, with at least two more shows on tap in the following four days. I will carry memory of him as the lights go down, just as I carry with me the memory of others I have lost in all that I do. But because my dad was not much of a theatregoer, the environment will not specifically evoke him (though the play, or future plays, might). The interior of a theatre will instead signal to me that despite a loss, life goes on; after all, between vocation and avocation, I have spent so much of my life in theatres, they are familiar, comforting places for me to be, my refuge, my sanctuary.  I will always carry in delight and despair, happiness and worry, and countless other feelings. And the theatre may well give feelings back to me, intentionally or otherwise. But that, as it always has, depends on me.

The Stage: “It’s Time U.S. Theatre Reflected Its Society”

May 13th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Gender and racial diversity in the arts has been a topic of discussion for as long as I can remember. But the ongoing inequities in the American theatre have been simmering for a long time. Intermittent signs of progress – Garry Hynes and Julie Taymor winning Tonys in 1997, dual firsts for women; the rich cycle of plays by August Wilson that brought a black voice to Broadway and stages across the country; the current Broadway season which featured two new plays by black female writers – are received with attention and even acclaim. Yet overall, there is general consensus that these constituencies are profoundly underrepresented.

While dissatisfaction can be directed at the commercial theatre, it is decentralized; each production is its own corporate entity and producers do not consult with all of the other producers. When it comes to new plays, as it happens, a majority of the work seen on Broadway (if not from England) has emerged from not-for-profit companies. Consequently, the publicly-funded resident theatres have become the locus of attention on these issues and, accelerated by social media, the continuing lack of meaningful process may be coming to a head.

The underrepresentation of women and racially-diverse authors on our stages has come into sharp relief recently as a result of the season announcement by The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, one of our oldest and largest companies. In announcing a season of 11 productions thus far, there are no plays by female playwrights (although a Goldoni adaptation is by Constance Congdon), no plays by any writers of color, and only one project with a female director (more accurately, a co-director, with Mark Rylance). In the outcry that ensued, it was noted that almost 10 years ago, while rallying support and funding for The Guthrie’s new home, Dowling had specifically said the new venue would allow for a greater variety of voices; responding to current criticism, he stoked the flames by invoking and decrying “tokenism.”

This prominent example generated press coverage beyond the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, let alone an ongoing rumble of dismay across blogs and Twitter. Perhaps it was Dowling’s defensiveness that made The Guthrie situation so volatile. After all, this past season, Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre mainstage season featured plays only by men (one an African American), and this from a theatre with a female artistic director; I don’t remember comparable outcry. Was this tempered by the season including several female directors? Or has the Guthrie flap made it easier to raise these issues?

Now each new season announcement is being held up to an accounting, not necessarily in its own board room, staff meeting or local press, but by activists seeking to lay bare this congenital issue. In 2012-13? Arizona Theatre Company: Six plays, all by white males. Seattle Rep: Eight plays, two by women, one of them African American. Alley Theatre in Houston: 11 productions, 2 by women (one of them Agatha Christie) and one by an Asian American man. Kansas City Rep: seven shows, six by men and one developed by an ensemble. Obviously I cannot go theatre by theatre, and I think more detailed data will be gathered, but underrepresentation of works by women and writers of color (of any gender) prevails. What of Steppenwolf? Their next five play season includes plays by one woman and one African-American man.

Is it fair to apply what some might call a quota system in assessing the diversity work on American stages? I would have to say, as so many of our resident theatres are on the verge of celebrating their 50th anniversaries in the next few years, that a public declaration of these figures is not only fair, but necessary. Theatres have been asked by foundations, by corporations, by government funders to break down their staffs and boards by gender and race for years, and knowing that they were under scrutiny may have caused many companies to diversify internally more, or more quickly, than they might have otherwise. Actors Equity has conducted surveys of seasonal hiring, broken down for gender and race, for a number of years – another watchful eye. Now the focus must shift to the writers of the work on our stages if progress is to be made.

It is ironic that the civil rights movement in America is perhaps most associated with the 1960s, followed closely by the feminist movement — the very same period that coincidentally also saw the bourgeoning of the American resident theatre movement. How unfortunate that some of the language associated, for good or ill, with the first two efforts (tokenism, quotas) are even relevant in discussion of artistic breadth of the latter half a century later.

 

Guardian Culture Pros: “A Word From Your U.S. Sponsor”

April 24th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

While on a tear through London theatre in March 2012, I was invited by Nancy Groves, editor of Guardian Culture Professionals, to begin contributing pieces to the wealth of resources created and curated by that online community resource, operated under under the aegis of London’s Guardian newspaper. Since I am no expert in the British arts management scene, my focus for this (and subsequent pieces) is in where our practices may differ. First up was the issue of corporate sponsorship, at a time when the U.S. system was being held up by the British government as a paragon — just as major cuts were coming to bear on the Arts Council of England. Because the headline and sub-head were a bit broader than the piece itself, I’ve posted it here under my original title, but you can see the online version here.

As worldwide economic troubles continue to take their toll, it’s inevitable that the arts have become victims by afterthought. Expressions of support from our governments are undermined by cost-cutting measures that are often minimal in the grand scheme of national belt-tightening, but significant within our field (and indeed, that of other not-for-profit and charitable organisations).

Even as British arts groups are being told to look to the American system of sponsorship to make up for drastic cuts in funding from the Arts Council, both our governments are seeking to reduce tax incentives for charitable donations, a contradictory message – and tough times aren’t exactly the right time to initiate new sponsorships and new giving traditions where none may have existed before.

Corporate giving in the US was once primarily an altruistic act, which also yielded public relations goodwill for the donor. The recipient organisations benefited not only from new funds, but from the legitimising association with solid corporate citizens – companies like Mobil and AT&T, to name but two, saw the benefit of supporting cultural efforts on stages and subsidised television.

If you were fortunate enough to work in a community where a major corporation was based (I spent many years in Hartford, home to United Technologies), there was also enlightened corporate giving, and the question was rarely ‘if’ one would receive support, but only what initiative might be funded.

Corporations recognised that it was essential to contribute to their communities beyond just providing jobs; it was smart business for them to ensure quality of life issues as well.

As shareholder returns have become ever more paramount and as the economy has changed, so has a great deal of corporate thinking. While not absolute (and I’m no longer speaking of specific companies here), corporate giving has shifted, with many companies moving their philanthropic efforts away from enlightened giving and into the realm of marketing.

Once ensconced in marketing offices, the language of corporate “giving” has changed from one of charity to one of reciprocity. How many impressions will the company receive for each marketing dollar provided, what is the national (or even local) profile of the organisation, and what is the overall “bang for the buck”? The relationship has become, in so many cases, transactional.

I recall past generosity across the country from a major airline, which essentially sought to “own” the cultural sector through support to major arts organisations nationally, and I watched it descend into dollar-for-dollar trades of flight miles for “exposure.”

One major financial company supported the efforts of an organisation I worked at primarily to ensure that a competitor couldn’t do so, but as the competitor became less determined to dominate theatre, the support for my organisation became more difficult to secure, and ultimately vanished.

Apart from funds alone, modern sponsorship can be predicated on opportunities for corporate entertainment. In-demand, prestigious organisations benefit here, because the association is then markedly more desirable; access to hard-to-get tickets becomes part of the calculation. Once again, there are dollar figures attached, but if your organisation’s tickets are limited, corporations will place a premium value on those tickets as part of what they receive for their sponsorship.

Although it’s seemingly contrary, sheer volume of audience is also desirable, since that ensures the highest number of impressions from a visibly acknowledged sponsorship on and off-site (the more seats to sell, the more off-site advertising that may carry a corporate logo by way of “thanks” as well as more people walking by on-site branded banners acknowledging underwriting).

It’s worth noting, however, that seats provided under sponsorship, unless the volume is enormous (which is only possible for large organisations), rarely reach the company’s employees; they are in turn used for the entertainment of current or potential business associates, or even bartered away in other promotional deals.

Of course to some companies the arts continue to offer one thing that other marketing opportunities – and you’ll note I am no longer speaking of donations or sponsorship – do not, and that can be access to celebrities. If you are an organisation with high profile artists on stage, behind the scenes or in leadership positions, you have an asset that is much harder to quantify but much desired.

From “grip and grin” photo ops to intimate dinners where a celebrity will publicly thank a company for support, fame can provide an incentive that can make or break sponsorship efforts. Can you imagine anyone saying no to request for a meeting from, say, Dame Judi Dench? Does it become easier to recruit trustees with strong corporate credentials to your governance boards if they think they’ll be at meetings with Jude Law? You need only to look at the success of The Old Vic under Kevin Spacey, a master fundraiser (among his many skills), to see how the scales can be tipped.

Does this paint a pessimistic picture of sponsorship as a substitute for diminished Arts Council funding? Yes, especially for smaller groups outside of major metropolitan centres. That’s not to say that genuine corporate philanthropy has been extinguished or that a case cannot be made for the intangible value to a corporation of arts support.

Yet, when any but the largest arts organisations are competing with, say, the massive appeal of sporting events (the Olympics, anyone?) it is naive or even callous to suggest that corporations will simply step in to fill a precipitous funding gap.

Access, cultivation, negotiation – these all take time, and with few exceptions corporate arts funding in America doesn’t approach the percentage of support British groups have been receiving via ACE. Indeed, many British arts organisations may need to build up their fundraising staffs prospectively in order to exploit these specific avenues.

Like foundation and trust support (which remain truly charitable) the level of one-to-one corporate outreach is much greater than a broad-based annual appeal to your audience, although a single “yes” from a corporation can result in funds that might equal or exceed hundreds of individual donors in a sole success.

But the returns may be slow in coming, since it’s unlikely there are companies with unspent marketing funds just awaiting an entreaty from the arts – and the arts must make their voices heard among countless other charitable causes, all victims of the same climate of contraction.

 

 

Anatomy of Flop

April 24th, 2012 § 2 comments § permalink

It’s a word that is thrown about with abandon. “Flop.” It is synonymous with failure and it’s one of those words that sounds like what it means: short, blunt, unimpressive; the sound of a leaden landing or even the puncturing of expectation.

It is used profligately in the theatre, and indeed aficionados revel in tales of famed flops on Broadway: vampire musicals, Shogun, Carrie, Enron, On The Waterfront, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Even as you read this, you’re adding your own to the list. Theatrical dining spot Joe Allen reserves space on its walls for posters of famous flops (also accessible online); I have to imagine it has either driven away those who were involved in these shows, or at least induces a bit of indigestion as they dine.

There’s a certain grandeur and folly to the theatrical flop. There are countless shows that over the decades have opened, often with big stars and advance anticipation, only to sink quickly out of sight. But to be a truly legendary flop, there seems to be a unique and ever changing set of guidelines that lifts this show or that one into the pantheon; certainly hubris seems to play a role. The more godawful, the better they are for gossip and chatter, years after the fact. Even Shakespeare can flop on Broadway, despite the long-established reputation of the work; living down to its cursed reputation, separate Macbeths featuring Kelsey Grammer and Christopher Plummer come to mind.

Yet for some, notably journalists of a certain vintage, “flop” is not merely a pejorative, but an economic distinction, propagated by the much diminished show biz bible Variety. Any commercial production that does not recoup its initial investment during its Broadway run, even if only shy by five or ten per percent of the capitalization, is a flop. Any show which recoups or exceeds is a hit. This rigidly binary criteria permits no flexibility, so some of Stephen Sondheim’s most admired work takes its place alongside travesties in the Variety annals; flop is an economic distinction, not an artistic one.

I have no doubt that this terminology, part of the distinctive patois that made Variety such a pleasure to read (and commemorated by Animaniacs as “Variety Speak”) dates back many decades, to a time when all major new work debuted on Broadway and the not-for-profit theatre system in America was not yet formed (most agree it launched in earnest in the early 1960s). So does – and should – “flop” retain any power today? There’s certainly no eradicating the word (any more than the failure to nominate certain artists and works for awards will cease to be called “snubs”), but perhaps we can all agree that there’s a benefit to discussing the success or failure of theatre with something approaching nuance.

On a purely economic level, the failure of a show to return its entire investment during its Broadway run does not mean that the show is necessarily unprofitable. Yes, shows that lose their entire investment or return only 30% of the capitalization have a very long road, especially musicals produced for $10-15 million. But what of those shows that get to 85% or 90% recoupment? They are likely to tour; to be licensed to regional theatres, amateur companies and schools; to sell cast recordings even if they didn’t quite snatch the brass ring in the commercial incarnation. Maybe they’ll even be sold to the movies. As a result (and I’m not going to break down how investment income is returned to investors and producers in this post), they may enter profit a year or several years after they’ve shuttered on Broadway. But the public books have already been closed, the rubber stamp of flop already impressed upon their public file; no one issues press releases about recoupment on closed shows (though perhaps they might do well to start).

This isn’t as much of a problem for the not-for-profits that produce on Broadway, or for that matter, Off-Broadway. Since their expenses for any show are part of a larger institutional budget, the issue of recoupment isn’t germane; in their immediate wake, an unpopular show may be branded a flop, but over time that distinction seems to fade in a way it does not for commercial work. This doesn’t stop the media from trying to intimate the dreaded branding iron of flop when discussing not for profit work; witness The New York Times’ “autopsy” for MCC Theatre’s Carrie revival, which wishfully applies the paper’s own commercial expectations for the show in order to support its thesis.

“Flop” strikes me as particularly debilitating when it comes to work that is recognized as having artistic value, even if it fails in the marketplace. As far as I’m concerned, Sondheim’s score for Merrily We Roll Along is one of his finest and while the overall piece proves problematic in reworking after revival after resuscitation, I challenge anyone who would claim that it is an utter failure creatively, even if it is not an unqualified success. By Variety’s yardstick, the original Merrily was a flop, and it’s hard to argue given its brief run, but that fails to do the work justice. If one is allowed more than a single word in judgment, it is an ambitious, flawed work by one of the geniuses of musical theatre; it does not deserve dismissal in a column that codifies only hits and flops. Works of art shouldn’t be “guilty” or “not guilty.”

“Flop” is so associated with theatrical ventures that Dictionary.com goes so far as to help define its meaning by specifically linking it to works on the stage; I can’t compete with that. But perhaps in our conversations in the field, commercial or not for profit, we can bring shadings to assessments of productions. For economics, we must take the long view, and remember that a show’s life does not end the moment it closes in New York. For creativity, I recommend that The Scottsboro Boys, Caroline or Change and Passing Strange shouldn’t be lumped together on any extant list with In My Life and Metro. We would serve work better – even when money is lost, sometimes significant sums – if our collective focused on the succès d’estime, rather than the success of an accountant’s pen. It won’t necessarily cushion financial losses, however they’re calculated, but it will put emphasis back on the work, not just on its bottom line.

The Stage: “A View Of The Oliviers From Across The Pond”

April 19th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Having had a hand in The Tony Awards from 2004 through 2011, awards show-watching has been more than a pastime for me. But I’m a latecomer to The Olivier Awards. Two years ago I sat at home, watching the livestream in a window on my laptop. Last year, I finally accepted my annual invitation from the Society of London Theatres to attend in person. Earlier today, I spent four hours in the Jazz at Lincoln Center facility, where the livefeed of the Oliviers was shown on a large screen in Rose Hall, perhaps the city’s most unique venue, with views of Columbus Circle and Central Park behind the stage and, in this case, screen.  Today’s experience felt like an amalgam of my prior two: I was watching on a screen, but a big one which often brought the event to larger than life size; instead of calling out the winners to my wife in the other room, I was surrounded by several hundred theatre professionals and other guests.  This was the “NT Live” version of The Oliviers, so to speak.

I had expected the crowd to resemble “the usual suspects” seen at most opening nights, but it was an eclectic mix, with many folks I didn’t know. I spotted producers (Michael David of Jersey Boys, Sue Frost & Randy Adams of Memphis, Jed Bernstein of Driving Miss Daisy and Hal Luftig of Evita), some not-for-profit leaders (Teresa Eyring of the Theatre Communications Group and Victoria Bailey from the Theatre Development Fund), and a smattering of press (The New York Times, Playbill, Theatermania and AM New York). There was a large contingent from One Man, Two Guvnors there up through intermission (they had to depart for a 3 pm matinee), I don’t know how many from Ghost, Paulo Szot of South Pacific, and James Earl Jones.

It is impossible to know how many attendees had seen some, or any, of the nominated shows (I had seen only four), so an obvious question was whether one would feel any “rooting interest” in the room. Certainly the Guvnors crowd applauded heartily as their nominations were announced, but that was the only apparent partisanship in the room (and completely appropriate). What pleasantly surprised me was that the audience did respond as if at a live show, instead of a cinema; there was applause at the end of every musical number performed, all of which came off well on the big screen. If not the same as being there, there was the unifying effect that experiencing entertainment in a large group can bring; there was definitely a frisson of excitement when Matthew Warchus accepted his award live in New York – made even more exciting by it taking place just seconds after the briefly interrupted video feed came back online.

Andre Ptasyzynski’s opening remarks playfully hinted at rivalry between Broadway and the West End – he cited 14 million London admissions last year vs. Broadway’s 12.5, but also noted $1 billion in New York revenues against London’s $800 million, and also differentiated between voting rules for The Oliviers and The Tonys. But the prevailing spirit was of a carefree spring afternoon in London (even if it was nighttime there). The U.S. audience might have benefited from a few annotations by voice or on screen (Collaborators author John Hodge was never identified by name), and it was my sense that even with an introduction, the crowd neither understood who Ronan Keating and Kimberley Walsh were or why they were dropped into the middle of the event’s second act. Presenters from Downton Abbey needed no such identification.

Too often, in the press surrounding both The Oliviers and The Tonys, there’s an effort to stoke the fires of national competition. I’ve always thought it a false construct. This initial large scale opportunity for the New York theatre to join together for the Oliviers was a good first step and reinforced what I have always found to be true: the underlying unity of all theatre communities, wherever they may be and whoever wins their awards.

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