Aha?

So I just got the following press release. After all this time, I don't really need to spell this out, do I? I'll highlight the cities and link to their counties. Bottom line: rich get richer. Same ole same ole. Thanks TCG and Met Life for continuing to define "innovative idea development" in terms of the same people doing the same thing: in-school theatre classes, expanding upon already existing theatre engagement practices, exchanging artists. Seriously? This is what passes for innovation at TCG?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                                                  

August 23, 2012                                                                                                            

MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group Announce Fifth Round Recipients of the A-ha! Program

New York, NY – MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announce the fifth round of recipients for theMetLife/TCG A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It, which supports the creative thinking and action of TCG Member Theatres with the goal of impacting the larger theatre community. Five theatres were awarded grants totaling $225,000 to either research and develop new ideas or experiment and implement innovative concepts.

The A-ha! Program has two components: Think It grants ($25,000), which give theatre professionals the time and space for research and development and Do It grants ($50,000), which support the implementation and testing of new ideas. The projects supported by the A-ha! Program will go on to impact more than just the recipient theatres. Successful initiatives will serve as models for theatre and arts professionals across the country.  

“Theatres are filled with creative and entrepreneurial minds that rarely have access to the risk capitol needed to conceive and test out new ideas,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director of TCG. “This round of the A-ha! Program will empower innovative idea development and action in areas like artisan exchange, community engagement and arts education.”

“The recipients of the fifth round of the A-ha! Program exemplify MetLife Foundation’s commitment to building livable communities through access to the arts,” said Dennis White, president and CEO, MetLife Foundation. “We are proud to continue our partnership with TCG and serve as a catalyst for the creativity and risk-taking that are essential to the growth of the not-for-profit theatre field.”

The 2012 MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program recipients are:

THINK IT

• California Shakespeare Theater, Berkeley, CA
  California Shakespeare Theater’s Artist as Investigator project will invite 10 artists to lead experiments in new methodologies in how theatre is made, with whom it is made, and to what end it is made.

DO IT

• Atlantic Theater Company, New York, NY

Atlantic Theater Company and Park Slope Collegiate, a public high school in Brooklyn, will partner on Staging Success, providing four years of in-school theatre classes to more than 300 students and an intensive afterschool mentorship for select seniors.

• Cornerstone Theater Company, Los Angeles, CA

Cornerstone Theatre Company will expand upon their existing community-engagement efforts by providing tools and resources to community participants for ongoing impact, thereby improving economic viability in the communities they serve.

• Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN

Mixed Blood will assemble a comprehensive national database of both artists with disabilities and English-language plays that explore worlds of disability in content, as central theme or via character.

• Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will develop an Artisan Exchange of production skills and resources with three to five other theatres. Three to five OSF craftspeople will work eight to twelve weeks at those theatres, and will in turn host three to five artisans to assume parallel jobs at OSF.

For more information about the program and previous recipients, visit: http://www.tcg.org/grants/aha/aha_recipients.cfm.

Opportunity: The Ignored Part of the US

The following chart uses data from the TCG database of member theatres combined with data from the US Census.

I have identified the size of each county in which TCG member theatre(s) are headquartered. I have then broken them into categories and identified what percentage of the TCG member theatre counties are in each category. For instance, 8.7% of TCG member theatres are headquartered in counties with populations under 100K, 8% are in counties with populations of 100K - 200K, and so on. These percentages have been put in the form of a bar graph and compared to the percentage of U.S. counties overall in each category. The bar graph looks like this:




As you can see, the percentages for TCG member theatres and US counties are almost reversed: there is a much larger percentage of US counties under 100K than over 500K, but there is an overwhelming number of TCG theatres in counties over 500K. This chart would be even more unbalanced if counties with multiple theatres were given proportional weight -- the number clustered in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, all in the over 500K category of course, would grow that blue bar much higher and everything else would be adjusted much lower. But I didn't want to make the data melodramatic, so no matter how many theatres were in a given county, it was only counted once.

While there is nothing particularly surprising about this lack of balance -- we've all known that theatre has long been seen as an urban art form -- I think what is surprising is how much of the US is still made up of small towns, most of whom are not being served by professional theatre at all. Of those that are under 100K that have professional theatres in them, many of them tend to be Shakespeare festivals or  the county is a bedroom community for a larger city.

When I look at this chart, what I see is opportunity. I think of a small factoid from Bill McKibben's Deep Economy: "in 1900, in the state of Iowa alone, which was then crowded with small farmers, there were also thirteen hundred local opera houses, all of them hosting concerts. "Thousands of tenors," writes Robert Frank [in Luxury Fever], "earned adequate, if modest, livings performing before live audiences." I wonder about why we have come to think that a theatre can only exist in metropolises. I wonder if the same model for creating a viable theatre in a metropolis is functional in a smaller place, or whether the required skills and techniques are different -- I suspect they are. I wonder whether interest in theatre would increase if we could add more blue to the left side of that chart, and I also wonder if support for the NEA would increase as a result. I wonder whether he have created a "trickle-down" model of the theatre economy, where the rich continue to get richer while the poor wait for the benefits to work their way down to them. I wonder, when we are looking to Europe with envy for their subsidy, whether we will notice that England has professional repertory theatres in Sidmouth, Wolverhampton, Burslem and Taunton, not just in London.

We tend to look at the popularity of movies, TV, and music as being the result of a more attractive form, but I think the real reason is that they reach every corner of this country, and theatre has stayed huddled in the metropolises. Yes, it is easier for mass media to send movies, DVD's, CD's, and cable into smaller markets, but it doesn't seem to me that we in theatre are making much of an effort. Instead of recognizing when a market is flooded, we keep pouring our talents into them in the hope that we'll be one of the lucky ones -- that we'll be one of the blackjack winners. Meanwhile, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and any number of small businesses manage to survive in these smaller counties. But we in the theatre think it can't be done -- impossible.

What's the possibility here?

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Exile! Exile!!!

So I'm reading the latest American Theatre (January 2008) -- you know, American Theatre the magazine published by the Theatre Communications Group, whose mission is to "strengthen, nurture and promote the professional not-for-profit American theatre" through its "400 theatre members in 47 states." The TCG, who is devoted to representing the regional theatre movement. That TCG. And I'm reading the cover article by Carol Rocamora called "Albee Sizes Up the Dark Vast," about Albee's 80th birthday and all the productions that are scheduled to open. Rocamora, whose bio says she "translated Chekhov's complete dramatic works," precedes her interview of Albee with a thumbnail of his career. She writes:

Albee earned his second Pulitzer for Seascape in 1975, but after the critical failure of The Lady from Dubuque in 1980, he descended into what [Mel] Gussow called (with considerable understatement) a "down period" that would last a decade. Despite numerous setbacks, both professional and personal, in the early '80s he launched what would become a distinguished 15-year teaching career at the University of Houston, where that city's Alley Theatre also gave him a home.

Now get this: "His years of 'critical exile' (as Albee's friend, director Michael Wilson, refers to those years) ended in a triumphant comeback with Three Tall Women in 1994, which earned him a third Pulitzer..." In case we hadn't quite picked up the phrase, Rocamora repeats it again: "Under James Houghton's artistic direction, Signature hosted an Albee season in 1993-4 (Marriage Plays, Counting the Ways, Listening, The Sandbox, Finding the Sun), giving the playwright a new home after a decade of critical exile from New York." [italics mine, except play titles, obvi0ously.]

I turned the magazine over to make sure I was still reading American Theatre. Yup, and it still said Theatre Communications Group underneath the title. So let me get this straight: according to American Theatre, which presumably is still editing its writers' work and giving editorial approval for production, having a 15-year home with the Alley Theatre, one of the oldest (60 years!) and most storied regional theatres in the nation, is critical exile? And having another TCG member who just happens to be in NY do a season devoted to Albee is coming back from critical exile?

I would expect such NY-philia from the NY Times, the Village Voice, Variety, or Show Business. But American Theatre ought to know better. And that Michael Wilson should coin that insulting phrase -- Michael Wilson who was the Associate Artistic Director at the Alley Theatre from 1990-1998, and who is the artistic director of the Hartford Stage, which I assume is also critical exile (but getting warmer, since Hartford is closer to NYC than Houston) , and who has made his career in the regional theatres of this nation -- well, it is breathtakingly insulting. It doesn't surprise me that Rocamora's expertise is translating Chekhov, because the portrayal of anyplace west of the Hudson as exile is a remnant of the 19th century.

As long as theatre people allow this nonsense to continue, we will never have a regional theatre of any substance. The regional theatre will continue to play the role Triple-A baseball teams play to the major leagues: low cost development sites. And that is NOT what the regional theatre set out to become when Nina Vance at the Alley Theatre, Margo Jones at Theatre 47 in Dallas, and Zelda Fichlander at the Arena Theatre brought it into being. And it is NOT what American theatre needs. And it should NOT go unnoticed when the TCG dishonors its members by printing such drivel.

Miscellany

Following the example of one of my favorite bloggers, Don Hall at Angry White Guy in Chicago, I am going to combine several shorter posts into one. After the length of the last one, this might be a relief...

Don't Know Much About Creative Writing MFA's
Reviewing the discussion of MFA's, it occurred to me that a large portion of my commenters were talking about something entirely different from what I was talking about. There seemed to be quite a few playwrights who were discussing MFA programs in creative writing. I know virtually nothing about such programs. My comments were confined solely to acting/directing/design MFA programs in theatre.

Anonymous Commenters
I am toying with the idea of changing my settings so as not to allow anonymous posters. While the MFA discussion didn't get that out of hand compared to some of the other shit storms this blog has seen, I was discomfited by anonymous commenters bashing people. I think if you want to participate in a conversation, you should at least identify yourself. For now, I am not changing my settings, but I would encourage those of you who usually post anonymously to consider signing some sort of name, so that we an keep the different commenters separate. If for some reason you really need anonymity, then make up a phony name.

Where Are the Actors?
Perhaps I'm not reading, or read by, the right group of people, but where are the actors in the theatrosphere? I see a lot of writers and directors, and even one or two designers, but actors seem notable by their absence. And I hardly ever get comments from actors. If you are a blogger who is an actor, please put your URL in the comments so I can add you to my reading list. If the actors aren't participating in these discussions, what are we to make of it?

TCG Database Weirdness
Thanks to Matt Slayburgh at Theatreforte for bringing this to my attention. He found it odd that, in my post on the lack of world premieres being done in LORT theatres, the TCG database listed Actor's Theatre of Louisville as having an annual budget under $500,000. "I followed your tracks," Slayburgh emailed me, "and TCG also told me that ATL is in their bottom budget range. So, I checked on Guidestar, which has actual copies of 990s submitted by non-profits. On their own 990, ATL reported an $11 million budget for 2006." Hmmmm. At the time, I remember finding other theatres that seemed odd in that category: Lincoln Center Theatre, Long Wharf, the Public Theatre, Steppenwolf, and the Yale Rep jumped out at me. I will try to track down information about this. This has little effect on my latest post on the distribution of theatres in the US beyond changing the color of the flags on those who are misreported. However, it does affect the data about new play productions. It may be that a larger percentage of big-budget theatres will be responsible for premieres. While my confidence in the TCG database has been shaken as far as financial information is concerned, so far it seems that the other info is accurate. At the very least, the addresses must be right!

Theatre = Film = TV = Commercials as Far as Acting is Concerned
In my last post on MFA programs, one of my anonymous posters wrote the following:

"it seems many people here think that actors or writers or artist should only be trained FOR THE THEATER - but that is a bit naive and willfully ignorant and also elitist. from Wikipedia - Actor: "An actor, actress , player or rarely thespian (see terminology) is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity. The ancient Greek word for an actor, hypokrites, when rendered as a verb means "to interpret";[1] in this sense, an actor is one who interprets a dramatic character.[2] from the Greek - TO INTERPRET." - but, in your incredibly narrow definition, actors should ONLY interpret theater? or MFA programs should only train for that very narrow specialty? That is a bit ridiculous and again smacks of elitism. Doctors train for everything, THEN chose a specialty. Why should acting training be different?

This commenter, whoever he or she is, has perceptively identified something very important to understanding almost everything I write on this blog: all I care about is live theatre. So call me naive and elitist, not to mention willfully ignorant -- you won't be the first or last. If you define acting as "pretending that you are the guy" (my favorite definition of acting, by the way, brought to you by master acting teacher Cal Pritner), then maybe you can feel sanguine about this crossover from medium to medium. I happen to think that the skill set needed to be an effective stage actor is very, very different from that needed to be a good film actor or TV actor. And I think that it requires devoted and single-minded attention to develop those skills. I hate seeing a film actor failing to be able to fill a theatre space. I witnessed it firsthand when I acted in a production of Love Letters opposite a fairly well-known film actress. Sitting across the table from her, she was doing an excellent job, but the audience in this theatre of 500 thought otherwise. It was me who got all the laughs, and who afterwards spectator after spectator told I was by far superior to my film-star co-actor. Plus, she couldn't hold for a laugh or do a basic take in support of a laugh line to save her soul. These things aren't necessary for film -- the film editor creates your takes and holds for your laughs, and you don't have to project your personality more than a few inches beyond your face. In other words, it is a different world. As far as doctors are concerned, I don't know how they are trained -- it seems to me that they choose a specialty pretty quickly. Regardless, when my appendix burst I was really glad they called in a gastroenterologist and not a podiatrist, even though they both might have had similar basic medical training in their early years. Same with the theatre: when I sit down in my seat, I want to know that the actor, director, and designer are specialists in what they're doing. The MFA is a specialist degree, not gen ed. I think we would do well to focus on that very difficult art form and forget about the others. This applies to writers, too. When I was in grad school, the school I was had a new play contest every other year, and I volunteered to read scripts and provide evaluations. It was amazingly interesting to see how so many young playwrights didn't understand the difference between theatre, film, and television. I read so many scripts that did one of two things: either the play was told by cutting between dozens of short scenes, some as few as a line or two, as in film, or it was told in a series of 13-minute scenes with a break for commercials. I suspect that the writers in the theatrosphere will confirm that writing for the 3-dimensional stage is an entirely different animal from TV and film, and the demands of the theatre could take a lifetime to grasp. I know: elitist, naive, and willfully ignorant.

TCG Books! Wha...?

So I was thrilled to get my TCG Books catalog in the mail yesterday, especially since book orders for next semester are due today and I wanted to use some plays TCG publishes (I plan to use August: Osage County in my play analysis course, for instance). So I turn to the "New Titles" section and find August: Osage County, and I turn the page to see other books and there is Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio. Hmmmm. A twenty-one year old play being re-released. I wonder why? So then I read the blurb:

Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio -- his breakthrough Public Theatre hit that was made into a film by Oliver Stone -- was revived recently in a "mesmerizing" (Newsday) production on Broadway, with Liev Schreiber playing the role of the late0night shock jock that Bogoisan himself originated...

So let me get this straight. The reason that the TCG, the publishing arm of the Theatre Communications Group which was formed to support the non-profit theatre in this country, has republished this play is because there was a Broadway production? Now, I could be totally wrong about this, but I'll bet that there were productions of that play in regional theatres across the US. But the reason it is being published now -- with a picture of Liv Schreiber on the cover -- is a Broadway revival.

And I find myself wondering: is there no publisher or media outlet or organization that takes as its inspiration the regional theatre? Is there nobody, including the regional theatres themselves, that aren't being wagged by the NYC tail?

Occupy Lincoln Center (part 2)

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" -- Matthew 7: 3 (English Standard Version)

Yesterday, in the first part of this series, I compared the income and wealth disparities in the American economy to that of the philanthropic support of the nonprofit arts economy. It didn't come out too well. The income gap between the top 2% of arts organizations (those with annual budgets of over $5M) and the remaining 98% was twice a great as the income gap in the economy as a whole.  I think that should make us all stop an consider a wee bit, because the situation in the economy as a whole is really, really bad.


The wealth comparison came out better than the income comparison, but only because I switched data sets to the TCG membership, which isn't representative of the nonprofit scene as a whole. Of the 160 theatres who were included in the TCG Theatre Facts roundup, only 14 of them (8.75%) had annual budgets under $500,000, whereas, according to the Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change report recently released by the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy, "three quarters of all cultural groups have budgets under $250,000." In other words, the TCG membership is a rather rarified group, and comparing the wealth gap amongst them is sort of like comparing the wealth gap among residents of a gated community -- you're bound to come off looking a little better than looking at the city as a whole. Still, it was illustrative: even in that privileged group, the top 35% possessed 80% of the wealth.


Several commenters attempted to make the case that this disparity was OK because the larger theatres employed more people. Hard to argue with that -- they certainly do. The problem with that argument is that it is circular: the large theatres can employ more people because they get a lot more philanthropic contributions, and so...they should be given more money. Following this logic, if the foundations gave all their money to a single organization, they would employee a lot more people. But it wouldn't be good for the arts or the country. 


Somebody else wanted me to compare the nonprofit arts world with that of restaurants or airlines. This one puzzled me. Would it be OK if the income gap there was similar? Shouldn't the nonprofit arts world, which is nonprofit because the arts are regarded as a public good, be held to a different standard than the market in general? This seems a red herring.


At any rate, the point of yesterday's post was to suggest that those of us who support the Occupy movement, or even those of us who simply condemn the widening gap between rich and poor in this country, ought to recognize that we in the nonprofit arts world have created a system even more unbalanced as the overall economy. We have a lot of work to do here, and acknowledging that there is a serious problem is the first necessary step. The second step is to understand how the problem negatively impacts what is most important about our work.

Diversity

I suspect I am going to be quoting a lot in this post, because Holly Sidford, who wrote the NCRP report, does such an effective job expressing the ramifications of the data. Here's one that is really striking (underlining is mine):

Every year, approximately 11 percent of foundation giving -- more than $2.3 billion in 2009 -- is awarded to nonprofit arts and culture. At present, the vast majority of that funding supports cultural organizations whose work is based in the elite segment of the Western European cultural tradition -- commonly called the canon -- and whose audiences are predominantly white and upper class....This pronounced imbalance restricts the expressive life of millions of people, thus constraining our creativity as a nation. But it is problematic for many other reasons, as well. It is a problem because it means that -- in the arts -- philanthropy is using its tax-exempt status primarily to benefit wealthier, more privileged institutions and populations. It is a problem because our artistic and cultural landscape includes an increasingly diverse range of practices, many of which are based in the history and experience of lower-income and non-white people, and philanthropy is not keeping pace with these developments. 

Later in the report, she writes:

The economics of cultural philanthropy are extremely skewed and this restricts the ability of thousands of artists and smaller cultural organizations to advance their practice and contribute substantively to their communities. This includes most groups that serve lower-income communities; rural communities; communities of color; gay, lesbian and transgender communities and other underserved populations, broadly defined....The [economic] asymmetry disdvantages all of us by restricting the types of cultural expressions we experience, and thus our understanding of what our culture is becoming."

August Wilson

Fifteen years ago, back in 1996, August Wilson delivered his justly famous The Ground On Which I Stand speech at the TCG National Conference. He was angry."I speak about economics and privilege," he said:

and if you will look at one significant fact that affects us all in the American Theater...it is that of the 66 LORT theaters there is only one that can be considered black. From this it could be falsely assumed that there aren't sufficient numbers of blacks working in the American theater to sustain and support more theaters. If you do not know, I will tell you that Black Theater in America is alive...it is vibrant...it is vital...it just isn't funded. BlackTheater doesn't share in the economics that would allow it to support its artists and supply them with meaningful avenues to develop their talent and broadcast and disseminate ideas crucial to its growth. The econmics are reserved as privilege to the overwhelming abundance of institutions that preserve, promote, and perpetuate white culture.

He continued, in words that foreshadow those of Sidford's report:

We do not need colorblind casting. We need some theaters to develop our playwrights. We need those misguided financial resources to be put to a better use. We cannot develop our playwrights with the meager resources at our disposal. Why is it difficult to imagine 9 black theaters but not 66 white ones? Without theaters we cannot develop our talents. If we cannot develop our talents, then everyone suffers. Our writers. The theater. The audience. Actors are deprived of material, our communities are deprived of jobs in support of the art: the company manager, the press coordinator, the electricians, the carpenters, the concessionaires, the people that work in the wardrobe, the box office staff, the ushers, the janitors. We need some theaters. We cannot continue like this. We have only one life to develop our talent, to fulfill our potential as artists. One life and it is short, and the lack of means to develop our talent is an encumbrance on that life.

Why include an attack on colorblind casting as a preface to his demand for more black theaters? Because colorblind casting didn't change the system. The big, white theaters could throw in a little colorblind casting, maybe add a February Black History Month slot, and keep all the money. Nothing significant would change with color-blind casting. Wilson wanted to redistribute wealth in order to put "those misguided financial resources...to a better use." 


Substitute for "black" in the above quotation "rural," "poor," "people of color," "GLBT," or any other artistic tradition in this country and Wilson makes a case for the importance of a truly diverse theater scene that can only come through a more equitable distribution of funding, and the decentralization of theater all across the US.


Less than two years ago, I attended a convening at the Arena Stage that was called "Defining Diversity," and I wondered where Wilson's vision had gone. I was stunned to find that there wasn't much push for black theatres, nor much interest in working in them. Instead, playwrights wanted access to the same big, rich, white theatres that Wilson was trying to disentangle the black theatre from.


We in the theatre give lip-service to the concept of diversity, but until we start putting our money where our mouths are, nothing will change. Giving 55% of foundation money to a handful of big institutions devoted to doing the traditional white canon in front of well-heeled and wealthy patrons won't enrich our theater scene.


In summary, I will quote Sidford again:

Every ecological system requires diversity of living forms, and its multiple parts must all be healthy if the systen as a whole is to thrive. The components of an ecosystem may compete for resources, but they are interdependent and symbiotic. Biodiversity ensures resilience in the entire system, and gives it greater capacity to respond to change. For the most part, the smaller organisms exist on the edges of an ecosystem, and this is where the greatest experimentation occurs. The diversity feeds and refreshes the system and without the innovation an experimentation that takes place at the margins, the larger community loses its vitality. The cultural sector is an ecosystem, and the vibrancy and resilience of all its parts -- especially those at the margins -- are important to the viability of the whole. We need healthy biodiversity -- robust and well-functioning entities in all parts of the system.

As August Wilson said, we cannot continue like this.

TCG and NEA, Google Map and Spreadsheet

Lately, I have been using the Theatre Communications Group's Theatre Profiles database in an attempt to uncover some data that might inform what up to now has been largely intuitive feelings on my part. Inductive reasoning -- analyze the data.

At the moment, my focus has been on my first principle (see sidebox): decentralization. Just how centralized is the regional theatre, actually? Where are the TCG theatres located?

As you know from the previous Theatre Profiles work I did into new play productions, TCG separates theatres into categories according to the size of their annual budget. Instead of focusing solely on LORT theatres, as I did in the previous analysis, I included all 384 members of the TCG database for the 2006-2007 database. I then used Google Maps to place markers where each theatre is located. (In the case of theatres that listed only a PO Box, I just used the city and zip, so the location may not be exact.) What I wanted was a visual representation of how theatres were distributed across the United States. After that, I went to the National Endowment for the Arts annual report to look at the fiscal year 2006 grants for theatre -- how were those grants distributed across the country. The results follow:

I began with the richest theatres on the TCG database - those with a $10M+ annual budget. There were eleven such theatres that were distributed like this (to view the map in Google Map, go here):

(While it looks like only nine flags are in the map, that is because there are multiple flags in Chicago and Minneapolis, and you can't see them unless you are closer in.) So note this pattern: several on the West Coast, several in the Midwest (specifically, Minnesota and Chicago), and several in the Northeast.

Now let's add in the next group of theatres -- those with annual budgets between $5M and $10M. These will show up as yellow flags -- we'll keep the pink ones there for reference as well (Google Map version of just the yellow theatres):

This was a larger group: 26 theatres. While the pattern still remains, there are a few more theatres scattered in the south, the midwest and the southwest. Interestingly, so far in these two categories there is only one theatre in NYC: Roundabout, with its $10M+ annual budget.

Continuing on to the next category, theatres with annual budgets between $3M and $5M. Again, we will leave the previous theatres in place and add in the 18 additional theatres using green flags (Google map of just these theatres here):

The pattern continues: lots of theatres in the Northeast, the West Coast, and the Chicago/Minneapolis corridor, but still pretty sparse in the south, Midwest, and southwest, and non-coastal West.

The next map adds in theatres with annual budgets between $1M and $3M dollars -- a larger cohort of 75 theatres indicated by red flags. (Google Map of just these theatres here.)


I hate to be redundant, but the pattern becomes stronger and stronger, with huge numbers of theatres huddled in the Washington to New York to Boston corridor, and on the California coast. The huge mid- and southern section of the nation is getting very little attention at all from the theatre community.

The next map adds in the theatres between $500K and $1M -- about 45 theatres (Google map of these theatres here):


This last map is when things get a little messy, and I can't vouch for the representation. Apparently, Google can only handle 100 flags on a map, and this one -- including theatres with annual budgets of less than $499K -- add 203. It LOOKS like everything is there, but I'm not sure how to check. But I will include it anyway -- these theatre have blue flags (Google Map here):
So there they are -- 384 theatres. Huddled together in a few select parts of the country, with new theatres being added each year and new theatre people crowded in providing the 87% unemployment desired by casting directors, while large swaths of America are virtually theatre free. I suppose one might argue that those states that are...sparse, shall we say?... don't have the population to support a theatre. Well, Omaha has about 500K, Oklahoma City has over 535K, Witchita has over 350K, to name just a few. Meanwhile, Pasadena has 135K, and Blue Lake CA has 1,135, and they have theatres. Nope, something else is happening here.

It's the herd mentality. Instead of asking themselves where in this country might there be a need for theatre artists, where might I actually have an opportunity to create a theatre that would allow me to work regularly and practice my art, theatre people leave school with the advice that they head for New York or Chicago or San Francisco because that's where the work is, by which is meant that's where there are a lot of theatres. Never mind that there is an 87% unemployment rate in NYC and that you will spend most of your time auditioning rather than doing your art, that's the place to go. Why? Because of what the Heath Brothers call, in Made to Stick, the Sinatra Effect: if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere, combined with the Cinderella Myth that maybe you will be plucked from oblivion and declared royalty. This defines the value of theatre not according to the quality of the exchange between artists and audience, but rather according to where this exchange occurs. Apparently, 99 people in a downtown Manhattan theatre are better than 99 people in Omaha or Wichita.

Meanwhile, the idea that our regional theatre ought to spread the wonder of the theatre throughout this nation is abandoned. The National Endowment for the Arts data makes clear how much it is being abandoned.

Follow the money has always been good advice for evaluating what is truly valued. In fiscal year 2006, the NEA gave theatre grants in the amount of $2,878,000 (this does not include "Access to Artistic Excellent II" grants or Musical Theatre grants, which I might evaluate separately sometime in the future). Not being a statistician, I did my best to figure out a fair and efficient way to examine the distribution of federal grants. First, I created a spreadsheet into which I typed the amount of the grant, and the city where the theatre is headquartered. I then sorted according to state. Knowing that the nation's zip codes were distributed geographically, I decided that I would assign the first digit of the 5-digit zip code to each theatre according to the state it was in.

According to Wikipedia, the first digit of the ZIP code is allocated as follows (I have removed territories and Army post offices):

• 0 = Connecticut (CT), Massachusetts (MA), Maine (ME), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), Puerto Rico (PR), Rhode Island (RI), Vermont (VT)

• 1 = Delaware (DE), New York (NY), Pennsylvania (PA)

• 2 = District of Columbia (DC), Maryland (MD), North Carolina (NC), South Carolina (SC), Virginia (VA), West Virginia (WV)

• 3 = Alabama (AL), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Mississippi (MS), Tennessee (TN),
  

• 4 = Indiana (IN), Kentucky (KY), Michigan (MI), Ohio (OH)

• 5 = Iowa (IA), Minnesota (MN), Montana (MT), North Dakota (ND), South Dakota (SD), Wisconsin (WI)

• 6 = Illinois (IL), Kansas (KS), Missouri (MO), Nebraska (NE)

• 7 = Arkansas (AR), Louisiana (LA), Oklahoma (OK), Texas (TX)

• 8 = Arizona (AZ), Colorado (CO), Idaho (ID), New Mexico (NM), Nevada (NV), Utah (UT), Wyoming (WY)

• 9 = Alaska (AK), California (CA), , Hawaii (HI), Oregon (OR), Washington (WA)
  

The distribution of grants were as follows -- Column 1 is the first digit of the zip, column 2 is the total grant amount given to that zip, and column 3 is the percentage of the total amount distributed that this represents:

|ZIP 0| 288000|10.01|

|ZIP 1| 754000 |26.2|

|ZIP 2| 290000 | 10.08|

ZIP 3 |128000 | 4.45|

ZIP 4 |145000 |5.04|

ZIP 5 | 255000 | 8.66|

ZIP 6 |171000 | 5.94|

ZIP 7 |106000 | 3.68|

ZIP 8 | 145000 | 5.04|

ZIP 9 | 596000 | 20.71

Not surprisingly, the zip with New York (1) and California (9) dominated the distributions, receiving roughly 47% of the NEA grant money. But this didn't seem counter-intuitive, after all New York and California have some huge cities in them -- maybe this is equitable. So I added a fourth column: percentage of the US population that each zip code represents. It looked like this:

ZIP 0 | 288000 | 10.01 | 7.14 |

ZIP 1 | 754000 | 26.2 |10.74 |

ZIP 2 | 290000 | 10.08 | 9.5 |

ZIP 3 | 128000 | 4.45 |13.5 |

ZIP 4 | 145000 | 5.04 |10.56 |

ZIP 5 | 255000 | 8.66 | 5.29 |

ZIP 6 |171000 | 5.94 | 7.63 |

ZIP 7 | 106000 | 3.68 | 10.99 |

ZIP 8 | 145000 | 5.04 | 6.54 |

ZIP 9 | 596000 | 20.71 | 13.86|

Hmmm. Zip codes 1 and 9 had a little less than 25% of the US population, but were getting 47% of the grants. And remember that swath of blankness on the TCG map? A lot of that was zip code 7, and 8, which represents 17.5% of the population and received 8.7% of the grant money. But it was when I went in a little closer that things got really interesting.

The population of New York City and Chicago equals 4.02% of the U.S. population. Yet the theatres in those two cities received grants totalling $781,000 or 27.14% of the NEA total. Meanwhile, pulling back a few steps, there were 17 states that received absolutely nothing from the NEA -- not a dime. Here is the list of those states the NEA decided were not worthy of recieving a grant:

Arkansas
Colorado
Delaware
Iowa
Michigan
Mississippi
Nevada
Nebraska
New Hampshire
North Carolina
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Vermont
Wyoming

Included in that list were the #10 (North Carolina) and #8 (Michigan) ranked states according to population.


So what? What am I advocating -- that grants be distributed according to geography and population? No, although I do believe that, in a democracy, there should be some equity when it comes to things like this, and when 47% of the federal grants for a year go to two zip codes and 27% goes to two cities -- well, something is wrong.

In addition, when theatre artists get in a lather about the narrow-minded people in those big states in the midwest and the west who don't think the federal government ought to support the arts, they should take a look at these maps and these figures and ask themselves: what's in it for them? For instance, why should Jesse Helms, whose state received no NEA funds despite being the 10th most populace state in the nation, feel committed to funding the NEA? None of those artists do anything down south. When 36% of the NEA funds go to the northeastern-most states in Zip Codes #1 and #2, and another 20%+ goes to the West Coast in Zip Code #9 -- well, what's a good southern politician to think? Might he think that there might be a little elitism going on? A little snobbery?

But, you cry to this provincial hack, the grants are distributed by peer panels of artists who are focused on questions of merit. Right, says the politician, and where are those expert panelists from? Dollars to donuts there is an over-representation of zip codes 1, 2, and 9 -- with maybe a few Chicago and Minneapolis folk thrown in for "balance." Maybe.

No, this whole system is rigged to support the status quo, which is narrowly centralized. It's not regional theatre, that's for sure, if you understand regional to mean the breadth of this nation. It is a theatre focused on the metropolises of old wealth in this country combined with the new media center of California. Just like (ot connect this to our previous discussion) the "name MFA programs," which follow the same pattern and are centered in elitist eastern and Californian private schools designed for the children of rich, old money.

For those of you tempted to write this off to provincial "paranoia," I would point out that I have spent 80% of my life in the zip codes that have received the highest amount of dollars and theatres. This is more than just grumping. This is about a system that is working against the development nd appreciation of the art form that I love. Somebody must speak out against the cultural discrimination that this represents.

SF and TCG

I just received an email that reads as follows:

Theatre Bay Area (TBA) and the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) recently released new data from a snapshot of the San Francisco Bay Area’s theatre community that I thought you might want to share on your blog.

 

“Taking Your Fiscal Pulse: A Report on the Fiscal Health of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Community” (attached as PDF)

 

Among other findings, the report reveals that in the face of economic adversity theatre companies are returning to their mission. Instead of scaling back, companies are embracing new social networking tools to develop personal relationships with their stakeholders.

 

The Snapshot report provides preliminary findings; a more comprehensive report will be coming out in the fall (September/October).

Now, there's part of me that wants to make another crack about the TCG's recent discovery of Facebook, and how this report (or at least this email about this report) apparently sees it as the savior for a failed business model. Oops! I guess I did make another crack... But seriously, does anyone else think that sentence is weird: instead of scaling back, SF theatres are using Twitter more? Wha? And does anyone really think that Twitter and Facebook really "develop personal relationships"? And "stakeholders"? Stakeholders???

Anyway, if you want the report, email me and I'll send it as an attachment. It might actually have info that is useful, who knows?

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On Rants

Because I value Nick's observations, I spent some time last evening reflecting on his criticism of my tendency to occasionally use this blog for rants against the current way we create theatre in this country. I asked myself what purpose I thought such rants served, and whether I could put those reasons into words that would make sense to other people. Because I want this blog to be more than a place people come for entertainment; I want it to be a place where people come for inspiration, and for hope, and maybe for some guidance. And the more I thought about it, the more I found myself thinking back to when I was a senior in high school in 1976, and the effect that Paddy Chayefsky's brilliant film Network had on me. I thought about how electrifying the scene below was at the time. If you have never scene this film, please rent it; if you have and think you remember, I hope you will watch this scene in its entirety anyway to remind yourself of the details.




(Isn't Peter Finch great?) The importance of this scene was not in Finch's Lear-like, water-drenched rant, but rather in the last minute of the scene where William Holden's daughter opens the window to find that, one after another, people have come out of their apartments and are expressing their rage. And it isn't the expression of that rage that is central, but the fact that everyone on the balconies hear that other people share their frustration -- suddenly, they realize that they aren't alone, they are a part of a large community of hurt and angry people who don't want to take it anymore. And that's important.

It is important to realize that other people are equally frustrated with the fact that the current way of doing things forces people to work a full-time job and then choose between doing theatre or spending time with their children and/or their spouse. It is important to realize that other people resent having to leave places they love and move to New York if they want to be cast in the so-called regional theatres. It is important to realize that other people want to devote themselves to theatre, but have to do commercials and TV and film in order to make ends meet. It is important to realize that others are frustrated that they can't get their plays done on the stages of the regional theatres because those theatres are focused on Guthrie's 50+-year old classics.

That is why I encourage lurkers to stop lurking and express themselves in my comments box, even if it is just to say "I agree." This is why I created the Theatre Tribe discussion site so that people can join and connect with people who share their experiences and frustration.

There are some who will call this whining. They will tell us to suck it up and deal with it. But change only happens if people express the fact that the status quo isn't working, or isn't working for many people, or isn't working for you. We can't afford to keep losing intelligent, creative artists because the economics force them to make either/or choices about their lives. We should not only feel sorry for the Seattle actress Mike Daisey describes in his essay, but we should feel upset that the art form that we care so much about has been diminished by the loss of her talents, and the talents of thousands just like her.

Nick is right: it isn't enough to just rant, isn't enough to just express frustration. But it is the first step. It may be preaching to the choir, but sometimes you have to preach to the choir if you want them to sing. And sometimes the choir needs to hear all those other voices, the voices of the congregation, raised along with theirs to give them the courage to sing in a voice that is loud and clear and confident. And that's not whining.

There is one other moment in the Network scene that is important. It is the moment that immediately follows the opening of the window, when William Holden cocks his head in surprise when he hears the first voice raised in anger outside his apartment. Holden is an insider, and the frustration he hears being expressed is unanticipated. He didn't know that people felt that way.

One of the great things about the internet is the ease with which ideas can be spread. Seth Godin calls these "ideaviruses." You can cut and paste posts into emails and send them to other people you think might need to hear those words -- I urge you to do that. And you can send links to people you don't know, but who you think need to hear something -- I urge you to do that. If you know of a theatre in your town that is importing actors instead of using locals, send them a link to my post about this. If you want regional theatres to do more new plays, send them a link to a post about this. Use my blog, use my words, to be heard. Email the TCG at tcg@tcg.org and include some of Mike Daisey's words or my words or some other person's words, or use your own words, or a combination of all of those -- but raise your voices so that you are heard. Let people who can do something know what the problems are on the ground. Let them hear your experiences. Give them a chance to see the world from a different perspective, to empathize. The only way things change is if you communicate.

We're not powerless to affect change. Look at the theatrosphere -- ideas get picked up. commented on, they circulate from blog to blog. Suddenly, everybody is talking about My Name is Rachel Corrie or theatre tribes or the ethics of criticism. If it ends there, something important haas happened, but it need not end there. The next step is to communicate those ideas to people beyond the theatrosphere through emails or letters or phone calls.

So use these rants however you like -- for your personal catharsis, to form a link between you and others who share your feelings, to communicate your experiences to the powers that be. But use them. And use them to communicate.

Teresa Eyring's Non-Response

I see from Dennis Baker's post "Response to Teresa Eyring's Response" and Mike Daisey's September 4th post on his blog that Teresa Eyring has responded to letters, including mine, Dennis',  and Mark Valdez's, concerning her previous editorial "How Theatre Saved America, Part 1" published in the July/August issue of American Theatre. I haven't yet received my copy of the latest issue , and since TCG doesn't find it necessary to put the letters section on their website (because, you know, why in the world would somebody want to read anyone else's thoughts?),  I don't know whether Mike Daisey's response was published at all, or even if he formally submitted it (did you, Mike?), but he did effectively rebut Eyring's original article point by point here.  It is a shame if it wasn't published.

Eyring's response, at least as published on Dennis' blog (is that the whole damn thing?), is a non-response, and if it represents the depth of thought of TCG's Executive Director, we are in some serious trouble. She chooses to focus on her choice of title (blaming it on Daisey's influence -- the Devil Made Me Do It) rather than the real issues that Daisey brought up, and that Dennis and I addressed in our letters. The one sentence in which she makes any attempt to address more than the title is peevishly defensive: "I have also written about-and will continue to write about-the troubles and the failures in our system, such as the Feb. ‘08 column on actors’ compensation and underemployment (which received exactly zero discussion in the blogosphere)." So take THAT, all you blogospherians! How DARE you ignore anything she has written? Surely we, like Joe Biden, are a bunch of big blowhard doofusses. Or is it doofii?

Anyway, let's go back and take a look at Ms. Eyring's editorial, which (unlike letters) is posted in the American Theatre archives. The first three paragraphs of this twelve-paragraph article are a Valentine to actors about how important they are to the theatre. She quotes Garland Wright (a director) and Ian McKellan (a Brit) to make her point. (Sidenote: have you ever noticed how many of the articles in Actors on Acting are by people who aren't actors? Doesn't that seem strange to you? At least when viewed in light of the book's title? Maybe there was some monologist doing a show called Actors Under Acting that Cole and Chinoy were responding to...) However, at the end of the third paragraph, she drops all that stuff to ask "what do we find when we examine in broad daylight the current financial realities of the stage acting profession?"

My heart quickened! What indeed? She turns to Collegegrad.com, that source of all things theatrical, for the answer: "long periods of unemployment, intense competition for roles and frequent rejections in auditions." Get out! Did you know that? Why didn't anybody send me an email? But wait -- there's more: " Because earnings for actors are erratic, many supplement their incomes by holding jobs in other fields." I hope you're taking notes. She then turns to the Actors Equity report for 2006-2007, noting the dismal employment figures.

I'm breathless now, because clearly she gets it: actors don't make much money. Man! How could I have missed this?

And what's the source of this dismal situation? Why, college theatre departments, of course, who continue to crank out acting majors and what's worse they sometimes saddle them with student loan debt so that they have to "head straight for pilot season" (because, you know, the employment figures in TV and film are so much better than in theatre) and skip a career in theatre. Or, "Young actors devoted to the stage often pull together their own companies and pay themselves little or nothing in order to pursue their craft."

But then she gets serious: "Is the situation an irreversible byproduct of market forces? Is there hope for something better?"  Her answer: "In the late 1980s and ’90s, the Guthrie raised the largest endowment the American theatre had seen up until that time and designated as one of its purposes the increase of actor salaries and the support of a large year-round acting company." Now, let's just pause there for a second: what about that "irreversible byproduct of market forces" question? Was that just too damned hard to really go into? Too Big Picture? Well, maybe I'm just being a doofus for even wondering why she brought it up in the first place, just to let it dangle there unanswered. Let's just erase that sentence, sorta like Etch-a-Sketch. Moving on: just how much hope are we supposed to glean from the effort of a single regional theatre that did something ten or twenty years ago? That's the best she can do? But hey, I feel a lot better knowing that there's this one theatre who a couple decades ago actually committed to a permanent acting company and raised some money to do so (say, isn't that what Mike Daisey suggested these theatres do, instead of raising money for new building? Wasn't it that idea that Nichaolas Martin poo-pooed as being uninteresting to donors? You know, the Nicholas Martin that was interviewd in American Theatre last issue?).

But alas, my raised hopes are almost immediately dashed by a single clause in the very next sentence: "While the Guthrie’s acting company is no longer fully intact..." So, see, that one time back twenty years ago when actors could have ongoing employment -- that didn't really work out. (Say! Wasn't that what Mike Daisey was saying in his performance? That once there was a commitment to permanent companies, but now...not so much?)  But don't despair, because "many of [the former Guthrie company] members still reside in the Twin Cities with families, homes and continuing work in the theatre community—including at the Guthrie." Wow! You mean you could cobble together a bunch of part-time jobs to put food on the table and a roof over your head? Imagine that! What a deal! That sounds way better than being part of a permanent company!

But if that prospect doesn't ring your bell, you can always apply for a "Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships, administered by TCG, [which] provide support both for actors to further their professional growth and for theatres to deepen their relationships with actors. In that program’s “extraordinary potential” category, which is focused on early- to mid-career artists, grantees can use up to $10,000 to pay off student loans." Wow! That's way better than talking about that whole "irreversible byproduct of market forces" thing, and all that business model stuff. Who needs a reasonable wage when you can get a one year grant? I'll bet those fellowships will vastly improve those Actors Equity numbers in no time flat, and that $10,000 for student loans? Gee -- that oughta do it, huh? Let's see, how much does Yale charge a year? "The tuition fee for 2007/2008 is $25,735. A reasonable estimate of costs to be incurred by a student attending Yale School of Drama and living off-campus in the 2007/2008 academic year is between $39,135 and $40,435." So that 10G oughta cover a little over two months of expenses! SIGN ME UP!

So there you have it -- an in-depth exploration of the "current financial realities of the stage acting profession." Because the rest of the article doesn't say anything. The next paragraphs talk about how LORT theatre provide 36% of what little Actors Equity employment there is, but don't get too excited about that because "theatres on average continue to experience declining working capital and difficulties in maintaining audience levels. Under these circumstances, the fundraising priority tends to be generating enough support to meet basic costs—and perhaps even to maintain stability." I hate to be nit-picky, but just why aren't artist salaries considered "basic costs"? And why doesn't the desire to "maintain stability" extend to them? (Gosh, wasn't that what Mike Daisey was asking?)

Well, let's not talk about all that stuff or we might get depressed. After all, we should focus on the Good Stuff, right? We don't want people to think we actually have a problem. Because after all, "Actors’ Equity’s visionary new executive director, John Connolly" is on the job, and he must get it, because he was once an actor himself! So let's get excited about John's visionary ideas that will surely save the whole damned stage acting profession! Ideas like: "How to ride the wave of opportunities offered through new technology-based media platforms" -- because on-line and stage acting are pretty much the same, right? And then we could "better utilize old technology—such as videotape—to promote, disseminate and celebrate the work of theatres and actors." Because what we need is more celebration, not more money. And then there's that "ever-increasing interest in international dialogue and exchange," because why work at home when you can tour the world? And then we could "collaborate on building a stronger national arts policy" -- there's a new idea! Why didn't we blogospherians think of that? I guess that's why I'm just a small-time academic, and John Connolly and Teresa Eyring are visionary Executive Directors.

Eyring concludes this deeply visionary and inspiring article: "Along with AEA, innovative funders and TCG theatres nationwide, we look forward to a productive investigation of these and other topics aimed at enriching actors’ lives and work." As long as they aren't like Mike Daisey.

You know, I'm really glad Ms Eyring drew my attention to her article. I don't know why we blogopherians didn't spend a couple weeks digging into all the innovative red meat she offered up for us. Why, I alone could have spent a month chewing on that whole Guthrie thing in the 80s and 90s. Really, I just oughta shut Theatre Ideas down and let Teresa Eyring do the intellectual heavy lifting she is obviously so capable of doing. Actors of the regional theatre, I hope you feel honored to have a visionary like Teresa Eyring working on your behalf. This whole unemployment thing oughta be a thing of the past in no time flat now that she's on the job. A new Golden Age of American Theatre is in the works.

Sheesh.

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The Artistic Home: How Long, Oh How Long?

Last night, I skimmed TCG's 1988 publication The Artistic Home: Discussions with Artistic Directors of America's Institutional Theatres, at the suggestion of Tony Adams who wrote in his recent post "Artists as Administrators" that "Reading it it sounds like a time warp. Little has changed." That's for sure. Particularly disappointing is the chapter entitled "Thinking Beyond Four Walls: The Individual Artist as a National Priority." There's a great title, right?  Here are a few subtitles:

1. Artistic directors are concerned with keeping artists in the theatre; they need to constantly renew their commitment to making their theatres homes for artists.
2. Theatres and artists alike need to find creative ways to address the chronic undercompensation in the field.
3. Theatres need to build better long-term relationships with artists and find ways of integrati9ng them into the ongoign life of institutions.
4. There is a need to invest in the future of the art form and the profession by taking responsibility for the training of and access for future artists and nontraditional artists, including minority and women artists.

Sound familiar? So why, in twenty years, has so little happened in this regard? Here were the assembled leaders of America's regional theatres -- what many would regard as the most powerful people in the non-profit theatre world -- and yet, do we see any progress? It leads me to wonder about leadership in this so-called "industry" -- should TCG have taken this report as its priorities following this gathering? Is publishing a book enough? Is there another group who should be taking leadership roles? Because we all know what happened after this assembly, right? The same thing that happens after most conferences: we all return to our normal context, and we might be a little inspired for a while, but very quickly we are sucked back into the day-to-day struggles of life and we lose sight of what was inspiring and we just keep keeping on. So how do we stay focused? How do we enact change?

As I dipped in here and there in the book, and also looked at the appendix where there were "highlights" from the various topics, it occurred to me that the book is almost totally concerned with problems. The group will acknowledge that doing X is something that would benefit the theatre, then what follows are the reasons that get in the way of X, and few but the most minor suggestions are offered. Here's one designed to address #1 above: "Providing convenient and attractive housing for guest artists, equipped with fu8rniture, telephones, television, even fresh flowers." And another: "Actively welcoming artists into the theatre community by greeting them at train stations or airports, organizing group parties, hiring company managers sympathetic to the needs of artists, and encouraging volunteer groups to create their own methods for making guest artists feel at home." These represent 2/3 of the "highlights" for that particular problem!

The highlights of #2 read like the table of contents for recent blog discussions: "Artists express deep frustration at not being able to make a living or maintain a life while doing the work they love in the theatre;" "Artists increasingly view theatre as a young person's profession; for people under 40 whose financial responsibilities are modest;" "theatres are troubled by thge difficulty of getting and keeping commitments from actors;" "geography and distance work against theatres located away from the commercial production centers where actors feel they need to be based to have access to other work;" "the disintegration of the resident acting ensemble of the '60s and '70s may have reinforced a feeling of insecurity on the part of actors entering the profession;" "while a growing number of artistic directors are attracted to the goal of creating resident companies, most agree that the current economics of theatre conspire against permanent ensembles of sufficient size."

Some of the solutions they propose: "employing more artists...on a year-round basis..." "setting the goal of raising fees for guest artists..." "exploring new incentives for artists to choose work in theatre over higher paying work in film and television, such as establishing and maintaining exciting collaborations among artists;" "taking collective action whereby a group of theatres pool resources to support a writer, director, or designer on a year-round salaried basis" (notice the absence of actors in that list); "creating new structures for larger, looser networks of artists than are currently identified as 'ensembles'..." "reevaluating compensating arrangements for playwrights..." "encouraging larger institutions with more resources to increase salaries as much as possible in order to allow artists to also accept work at smaller theatres with fewer financial resources" (this one made me laugh); "seeking outside paid employment for actors -- commercial work, voice-overs, teaching, docent tours, advertising connections -- to supplement their salaries and connect them with the community..."

 Some of these ideas are more interesting than others, and most shift the responsibility to others. Which seems to be the major problem with this book. Instead of talking about what they could do as artistic directors, and accepting accountability for taking those actions, these artistic directors laid out the to-do list for everybody else in the organization -- primarily the trustees, because if there was only more money... (When I read discussions such as these, I am constantly reminded of D. H. Lawrence's short story "The Rocking-Horse Winner": "There must be more money. There MUST be more money."

It is a disappointing book for just that reason. There seems to be little acceptance of responsibility, little recognition of one's personal power, few examples of specific commitments. It was like a 17-day pity party: "Gee whiz, it sure would be better if we did a few of these things, but how can we do that and keep doing things exactly the way we've always done them?"

Mike Daisey has revived this conversation amongst the TCG artistic directors, who apparently circulated his Seattle essay amongst themselves and huffed and griped about it for quite some time. "Naive," they said; "just let him try to run a theatre sometime, then he'll see" they said. With absolutely not recognition that what he was saying is simply an echo of what they had said twenty years ago. In effect, he was asking them, "So, did you ever DO anything about these issues?" The answer, obviously, is mostly no. Rather, over the twenty years since The Artistic Home was published, what has happened, apparently, is that the AD's have decided these problems are intractable, and the best thing they can do is put a few fresh flowers in the guest artist's apartments and make sure they have cable TV.

It leads me to contemplate the Buckminster Fuller quotation that is written to the right of this post, and recognize why my efforts have been more focused on creating a new system instead of reforming the old. There just doesn't seem to be the will to change anywhere.

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Michael Maso Replies | TCG Circle: "I don’t know why DR thought I was talking about her."

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Fear of New Plays

Yesterday, I discussed why a commitment to the production of new plays was important to the health of the American theatre. I quoted regional theatre pioneer Margo Jones, who wrote in 1951 that America's regional theatres needed to assume a "violent" commitment to the production of new plays if the American theatre was going to progress. "We must have our new play­wrights," Jones wrote, "and we will not have them unless we give them many outlets to see their plays produced. This is the best way in which they can learn to write better plays." So now, 47 years later, how have America's regional theatres done in terms of Jones' vision? Is there a problem? If so, what is the scope?

Despite being a theatre person, I kind of like crunching numbers. So I decided to check out the TCG Theatre Profiles database, which has an "advanced search" screen that allows me to search for the specific information I am seeking. Once there, I decided that the best place to start searching for Jones' vision were with the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) institutions, the 73 regional theatres that one might see as following in the footsteps of Jones' Dallas theatre. So I clicked on "LORT membership" and "American Premiere" and "World Premiere" (I didn't want theatres getting credit for importing plays like Stoppard's Coast of Utopia, which was not only considered an American premiere but counted as three productions, one for each part!) for the 2006-2007 season. The results were interesting, to say the least.

TCG separates its theatres into six categories according to the size of their annual budgets. They are:

Category 6: $499K or less
Category 5: $500K - $1M
Category 4: $1M - $3M
Category 3: $3M - $5M
Category 2: $5M - $10M
Category 1: $10M or more

In the 2006-2007 season, the 73 LORT institutions broke down into the categories as follows:

Category 6: $499K or less = 19
Category 5: $500K - $1M = 1
Category 4: $1M - $3M = 12
Category 3: $3M - $5M = 11
Category 2: $5M - $10M = 23
Category 1: $10M or more = 7

So of these 73 wealthy non-profit theatres, 56% of which had budgets over three million dollars, how many of them had at least one American Premiere during the 2006 - 2007 season? 15, or a measly 20.5%. Four out of five American LORT institution did not feel it was necessary to support American playwriting. They broke down as follows:

Category 6: $499K or less = 19 theatres --> 5
Category 5: $500K - $1M = 1 theatre --> 0
Category 4: $1M - $3M = 12 theatres --> 1
Category 3: $3M - $5M = 11 theatres --> 4
Category 2: $5M - $10M = 23 theatres --> 5
Category 1: $10M or more = 7 theatres --> 0

At those 15 theatres that did have an World and American premiere, there was a grand total of 27 productions. They broke down as follows:

Category 6: $499K or less = 19 theatres --> number of productions: 15
Category 5: $500K - $1M = 1 theatre --> number of productions: 0
Category 4: $1M - $3M = 12 theatres --> number of productions: 1
Category 3: $3M - $5M = 11 theatres --> number of productions: 4
Category 2: $5M - $10M = 23 theatres --> number of productions: 7
Category 1: $10M or more = 7 theatres --> number of productions: 0

Look at that carefully: 55.5% of the American premieres during the 2006-2007 season were produced in theatres with the smallest budgets. In fact, a single Category Six theatre produced nearly as many American premieres all of the theatres in Categories 1 through 5 combined: The Actors Theatre of Louisville (10 productions). Without the Actors Theatre of Louisville's commitment to the American playwright, there would have been a anemic 17 world premiere productions of American plays on LORT stages.

If we wonder why American playwrights find themselves drawn to film or television, we need look no further than these statistics, which to me reflects an appalling lack of interest in the fate of American theatre by the artistic leaders of our country. More evidence of the Schiavo-ization of the American theatre.