Toward an "Organic Theatre"

As many of you have probably recognized over the years, one of my favorite things to write about are analogues to the arts I have found, i.e., other fields that are exploring similar issues as those in the arts that can serve to illuminate our own situation. With that in mind, I have just begun reading a book entitled Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity by Frank Viola. I'm going to quote liberally from the introduction, assuming that you will see the parallels to the arts world, but I'll also make a few halting attempts to make the theatre connection clear.

After declaring a revolution both in theology and practice, Viola writes:

Countless Christians, including theologians, ministers, and scholars, are seeking new ways to renew and reform the church. Others have given up on the concept of church altogether. They have come to the conviction that the institutional church as we know it today is not only ineffective, but it's also without biblical merit. For this reason, they feel it would be a mistake to reform or renew the present church structure. Because the structure is the root problem. (emphasis mine)

Having gestured toward the issue, he then goes on to distinguish between what he calls the "institutional church" and the "organic church." The "institutional church" are

those churches that operate primarily as institutions that exist above, beyond, and independent of the members that populate them. These churches are constructed on programs and rituals more than relationships. They are highly structured, typically building-centered organizations regulated by set-apart professionals ("ministers" and "clergy") who are aided by volunteers (laity). They require staff, building, salaries, and administration. In the institutional church, congregants watch a religious performance once or twice a week led principally by one person (the pastor or minister), and then they retreat home to live in their individual Christian lives.

Viola is quick to add that the term "institutional church" is "not speaking about God's people. I'm speaking about a system. The 'institutional church' is a system -- a way of doing 'church.' It's not the people who populate it. This distinction is important..."

Just in case the analogy isn't clear, speaking in terms of the theatre, the "institutional theatre" would be represented by the regional theatre system, organizations that are highly structured, building-centered, run by professionals who oversee a staff, a building, and give salaries and administer daily activities. The original regional theatres came into existence thanks to the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and they were structured to look like Ford or Standard Oil -- institutional. Like the "institutional church," the theatre audience comes to the theatre occasionally to watch the professionals perform and then they return home. The "institutional theatre" is a system, a way of "doing theatre," and not the artists and staff who work within it. Neither Viola nor I see the people who populate an institutional church or theatre as somehow unworthy or bad. Most are committed, principled, and creative arts professionals who are passionately devoted to the art form. In addition, Viola writes, and I echo in terms of theatre, "By no means am I criticizing the church. In fact, I'm writing this volume because I love the church very much....Therefore, it's the present practices that I'm seeking to imagine, not the church itself." And he also says he is not saying that an "organic church" is the only right way.

In contrast, the "organic church" operates according to "the same spiritual principles as the church that we read about in our New Testament," the churches of the first century AD. It is "not a theater with a script; it's a gathered community that lives by divine life." An "organic church" as I understand it at this point (and as I said, I've just begun reading and the whole book is devoted to describing an "organic church" -- in fact, Viola wrote an entire book called Finding Organic Church) is small, non-hierarchical, and participatory. There are no specialists -- pastor and minsters -- who organize the service, but instead the service proceeds spontaneously. The meeting place is not a purpose-built building, but rather living rooms and other such places. Early Christians met in small groups in the homes of the congregants and were largely organized collectively, not hierarchically.

An "organic theatre" might follow a similar pathway. Instead of "professional artists" who create a "performance" that the "audience" comes to see in a theatre building, an "organic theatre" would be a small community of people who sometimes perform, sometimes listen -- a sort of ensemble who share their talents with each other in informal spaces. Passive consumption would be unacceptable -- each member would contribute in some way and in a variety of ways -- specialism would not fit. An "organic theatre" wouldn't create a "product" to be sold, but rather members would come together to share gifts, alternately giviing an receiving. There would be no need to spend money on marketing, because the ensemble is both audience and performer -- you would just let the members know about an upcoming event. If there was a desire, performances could be offered outside the group.

In many ways (but not all ways), this is how I conceive of a CRADLE arts organization. The ensemble would encompass as much of the community as possible, and everyone would be alternately audience and participant, giver and receiver, at different times. Events would take place all over the community -- in homes, in church basements, in courthouses, in libraries, in restaurants, in schools, in parks, wherever people might meet, the more creative the place the better. No tickets would be sold, although contributions might be voluntarily made to cover costs. Nobody would "make their living" this way, but together they might make a life, make a community.

This is very much outside the norm, of course, and sounds (even to me) a bit...woo-woo. And yet, I am attracted by the possibility of democratization of creativity, of removing the arts from the market economy and rooting them in the gift economy. I am attracted to the idea of "bringing the arts back home," both literally back into the homes of the community, but also into the hands of the community as well. A consumer culture such as ours relies on a concept of scarcity -- individuals are taught to see themselves as lacking in some regard, and encouraged to fill that lack through a purchase. In this case, we purchase stories about strangers which are told to us by strangers.

What if we proceeded from a concept of abundance? The assumption that we all have things we can share, and that the act of sharing them enriches both giver and gifted. That the value is found in generosity rather than virtuosity, connection rather than quality, circulation rather than specialization.

How might attitudes towards the arts be changed if this possibility were available? How might communities small and large be transformed? How might creativity be enhanced and spread far and wide?

I don't know. I am groping toward an alternative to the institutional system.

Marching Orders

Over the Fourth of July, my wife and I had our extended family over for a meal. After the chicken and potato salad had been eaten, I got into a conversation with my father-in-law that was quite interesting. Bud is a retired Lutheran minister who gave up his career as an engineer at General Electric at the age of 40 to go to seminary and become a minister. So I asked him how it was that pretty much every small town you go through has at least one church of some sort, and many have several. It doesn't matter how small the community, there seems to be a church somewhere.

He was able to answer only as a Lutheran, although I have since heard that the Episcopalians follow a similar process.

When members of a community decide they would like to start a congregation, they contact the synod and the national church organization (e.g., the Evangleical Church in America, or ELCA) to express their interest. The central administration then sends a Mission Director to visit with the community and to determine the level of interest. Prior to becoming a minister himself, Bud had been a member of such a group interested in forming a church, and he remembered being in a car with church representatives and the Mission Director writing on an envelope the expectations. According to a representative of the North Carolina Synod that I contacted (and this is how Bud remembered it as well): "The funding for new starts generally comes from three sources: The national church, the synod and the local community (area churches). Roughly a third is shared by each for the first few years and then as the mission grows more is picked up by the new church itself. Most of the funding in the first few years goes toward the pastor’s compensation. In fact the pastor is usually on the payroll of the national church for the first few years and the synod and local partners send resources to Chicago to help offset the costs." Once the church is independent, it is expected to make annual contributions back to the synod and national church. What about when, I asked, the new congregation gets on its feet, and decides it wants to build a church? "Most of the costs for a building is covered by the congregation, but our Lutheran Men’s organization provides loans at 2% interest which is a great help." I was also referred to the ELCA website, where I found PowerPoint presentations for some of the training sessions that the new congregation representatives are asked to attend as part of the startup process. The ELCA provides resources and training, as well as an experienced advisor assigned to the new congregation.

So to sum up, the process goes like this:

1. Costs for the first few years are evenly split between the new congregation, the regional organization (synod), and the national organization (ELCA).
2. Money is provided primarily to cover salaries.
3. After the first couple years, the new congregation takes on a greater share of the financial burden until it is financially independent.
4. At that point, the congregation begins to make annual contributions back to the regional and national church, which continues as long as the church continues in existence.
5. The congregation is responsible for raising enough money to build a church, if it so desires, but a service organization provides a source of low-interest loans to help with that process.

Now, let's compare this to the way we do things in theatre.

To apply for grants at most foundations, especially the governmental programs, the theatre usually has to have been in existence for a while -- to the best of my knowledge, three years seems to be the minimum. To qualify to receive such a grant, the theatre must have a history of quality work, and of community support. Once the theatre has become stable, foundations are more likely to give it money, and often the percentage of the theatre's annual budget made up of unearned income increases as the theatre becomes stronger and bigger. New buildings are paid for through capital campaigns.

In other words, except for the church and theatre both being largely responsible for raising the money for a new building, the two systems are opposite!

However, the more I thought about it, the more sense the church model began to make. It is during the first years that a theatre would benefit most from its founders being able to focus their attention on developing programming and building its relationship with the community. In our current system, this is precisely when the members of the theatre are most likely to be working a day job and using their evening hours to rehearse. Thus there is literally no time for the theatre's staff to forge relationships in the community, get the word out about what they are doing, design programming that will increase their profile, or do many of the myriad things that would put the theatre on its own two feet. Furthermore, this is when a young theatre could most use the assistance of an experienced consultant, who could provide advice on how to build their audience and publicize their work, design programming and outreach. They wouldn't be reinventing the wheel, or trying to figure out which of the many books has useful information. Once the theatre is on its feet, it would be more able to contribute to a centralized fund that would help other theatres get on their feet, and the more theatres there were contributing, the more money would be available to start new theatres. So the movement could build. Meanwhile, the central organization could field proposals for the creation of new theatres, and proactively encourage the geographical distribution of theatres throughout different parts of America, and different sized towns.

This organization could also provide education in the form of workshops, but also devise college curricula to educate young theatre founders in the skills needed for such theatre tribe work, and be a funnel of theatre proposals. A good senior thesis or MFA project might be to form a company and write a proposal to the national organization, who would then fund as many good proposals as possible. Thus instead of heading for New York or Chicago or LA, young people might graduate from college directly into a salaried job founding a regional theatre, and thus be more inclined to resist flooding the major markets with new artistic cannon fodder. The central organization, through its grant making process, could focus funds in different ways: one year, there might be special funds available for anyone proposing a theatre in a town of 50,000 or less, another year the funds might go to theatres to be founded in Montana and Wyoming, another year to theatres being founded in Hispanic communities.

When I finished speaking with my father-in-law, and finished emailing with the North Carolina synod rep, I came away with the clear feeling that this was the direction my efforts needed to be headed: to the founding and funding of a central organization devoted to the achieving of geographical diversity within the American theatre. And for all those donors who would like to have a theatre named after them, this organization could create a fund to build Del-Tec-based theatres that would bear their name at a fraction of the cost of traditional theatre edifices. This would be like the Carnegie Library system that brought libraries to small communities around the country.

If such an organization could get off the ground -- and as with any such undertakings, it is a big if -- we might see theatre tribes springing up all around this country.

Thanks to my father-in-law, I think I have my marching orders.

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Attempt at Synthesis: An Analogy

p'tit boo calls us out: "Ok, now let's get back to the fiery, heated conversations !" (Must be getting cold in Seattle.)

Last weekend, I was in an airport waiting for a flight back home, and I thought: on a practical level, what might the type of theatre you are proposing look like? So I started pulling things together that I had written about over the past month, and in the course of doing that, an analogy occurred to me: church.

Now, before everybody starts sharpening their long knives, I'm talking about structure, not content. Let me explain.

First, a disclaimer: I am not a churchgoer. When I was growing up, my family rarely went to church, so my knowledge of church life is not deep. However, my father-in-law is a retired Lutheran minister, so I have some insights. My background is also Lutheran, so that's the model.

Second disclaimer: this is a mind exercise. I have no evidence that these ideas will work, no examples to point to of people who have successfully tried it.

The Current Model
Currently, we think of plays as products to be sold. We create a product (product-ion) and try to sell it to people through traditional means: advertising, marketing, media, all of which are very expensive. Our competition, which is manifold, comes from other entertainment options: other plays, movies, television, other arts, home entertainment, sports, etc. If we're fortunate, we might have some subscribers, but a large portion of our audience is comprised of people who scan the entertainment options for something that catches their eye. As a result, we are dependent on media coverage: critics, feature stories, controversy.

It seems to me that this approach has led to a desperate economic crunch. We are an expensive art form to begin with -- inefficient (it takes the same number of actors to do Hamlet today as it did at the Globe four hundred years ago) and unique (a performance takes place in one place at one time). The cost of print advertising, postage, TV and radio advertising has skyrocketed. The mass entertainment forms, such as film, buy enormous ads that dwarf ours, casting us into shadow. The cost of bringing in new patrons continues to climb. Contributions to the arts are down as foundations and individuals shift their money to social issues, or cut their contributions due to changes in the stock market.

Proposed Model
What if we thought of theatre not as a product, but as an alliance (a "connection based on kinship, marriage, or common interest; a bond or tie"), a fellowship (a "close association of friends or equals sharing similar interests"), a guild (an "association of persons of the same trade or pursuits, formed to protect mutual interests and maintain standards"). Instead of buying a product (a ticket to a show), you became a member of this alliance/fellowship/guild and could participate in all of the activities associated with that organization. A church can serve as an interesting model.

Like the theatre, the church provides "performances," in this case the Sunday service. Unlike theatre, people do not regularly scan the religion section of the newspaper every Saturday night looking comparing ads for different churches. "Say, honey, this sounds like an interesting sermon -- let's head over to the Baptist church tomorrow and check it out." Rather, churchgoers choose a church, and then stick with it. There is a relationship there, a commitment.

Instead of tickets, each person contributes to the church according to their abilities and inclinations. Rich people give more, poor people give less. If you've fallen on hard times, you aren't barred from worship -- you're a member, you can come anyway.

You can go to church as often as you want without it costing you more. Want to do early service, bible study, and late service? Go ahead! But you don't have to pay each time you do.

The congregation comes to know each other. They have coffee and donuts before or after the service, they mill around the vestibule after the service chatting. They also come to know the minister(s). After the service, he or she doesn't scurry away never to be seen until the next Sunday; the minister stands in the doorway of the church and shakes each person's hand at they leave the church.

But the Sunday service is not the only thing the church provides. There are Bible study classes that meet to talk about the ideas raised by scripture, and struggle with their application to lives.

The church is involved in important rituals: weddings, funerals, baptisms. Thus, the ministers share moments of great joy and sorrow with their congregation.

The ministers visit people in the hospital, bring them food when they are sick. On Sundays, those who are sick are named, and the congregation prays for them. There is a relationship.

The church provides opportunities for service: making quilts for the poor, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, making trips to disaster areas like those surrounding Hurrican Katrina to help with recovery efforts, missions to third world countries.

The church provides youth activities and retreats, as well as counseling services.

There are church picnics and potlucks where the members of the church can socialize.

The church building is rented inexpensively to community groups for meetings.

--------------------

Now think about a regional theatre. It is run like a business, and the patrons are customers. The theatre itself is largely closed to the public except during performance times. The artistic personnel are totally focused on the creation of the next product. Outreach is minimal, and is provided for a fee. The artists do not greet the patrons before or after the performance, but rather rush off to the dressing rooms; consequently, the relationship between artist and audience is tenuous. There are few, if any, opportunities for patrons and artists to socialize (and usually when there is one, it is because we are raising money), and artists rarely participate in the important events of a patron's life. There are probably not play reading groups associated with the theatre. Because many of the artists are not permanent members of the community, they rarely participate in service activities, nor do the patrons do so as a group identified with the theatre. In short, the theatre is not an alliance, a guild, a fellowship. The patrons have little identification with the institution, and they attend based on their satisfaction with the individual productions. If you have a season that is a little rough, there are other theatres they can shift their allegiance to. And why not? Who really knows they're gone?

I teach at a university, and any Admissions Officer will tell you that retention of current students is much less expensive than the recruitment of new ones. We want students to stay, and while part of that involves our classroom experiences, a large part of it revolves around other aspects: social opportunities, clubs, activities.

What would happen if we changed our model? What would happen if you could attend our plays as often as you liked without having to buy a ticket each time? What if, instead of buying a ticket with a set price, you you knew how much it cost to run the theatre and contributed what you could? What if there were play reading groups attached to the theatre that read not only plays, but essays about theatre (say, from American Theatre)? What if members of the theatre were available to, say, tell a story at your grandchild's birthday party, or read selections of poetry at your son's wedding? What if the actors, director, designers, and playwright were in the lobby before of after the show, and there were free donuts and coffee out to encourage patrons to hang around and chat? What if there were theatre activities for kids that didn't involve tuition? What if there were picnics and potlucks and retreats for artists and patrons to socialize? What if artists and patrons of a theatre gathered for charity events that didn't involve money for the theatre, but rather helping someone else?

Perhaps the theatre would benefit from a new model -- the church, or the university. If we created an alliance with our audience, a fellowship, a guild with a group of members committed to a common interest, then perhaps their would be greater stability. If we knew the people in our congregation, then we wouldn't have to spend so much money on advertising, mailings, and media; we'd just send a schedule to our members. People would feel a part of our theatre, they would identify with it. They might invite friends to join. A community would develop.

This would require that we reconceive our mission, and our way of doing things. We'd have to commit to permanence, to participation in our community, to experience instead of solely to product.

Every year, it seems the situation becomes more dire for professional theatres. Perhaps it is time to rethink our model, our metaphor, from the ground up.

Marching Order Part 2

About two weeks ago, I posted about a conversation I had with my in-laws about how new churches are supported and developed in the Lutheran Church, which by analogy provided a conceptual breakthrough for me and new "marching orders" for my efforts on behalf of theatrical decentralization. Yesterday, in a comment on Don Hall's post entitled "Exploring Money Assumptions in Theatre" (between my post about daddyland below and this one, I feel like carrion feasting on Don Hall's roadkill these days), RVCBard made my head explode in millions of stars when she wrote about the relevance to theatre of the concept of "radical welcome" being promoted in some churches across America. (Be sure to click on "marching orders" and "radical welcome" and read before continuing, or else this discussion will seem incomplete.) RVCBard writes: "I know people are funny about religion, but you gotta admit those church folks know how to get butts in seats and people involved, often for free, with less angst. I think this is in no small part due to a policy of radical welcoming." I agree.

I read the definition of "radical welcome" right after I read a post at Butts In Seats entitled "Ninety Five Processes," in which my ideas were carefully considered, and several questions raised. In many respects, "radical welcome" might serve as a partial response to that post.

I hope you will all be patient while I think through some new ideas aloud...

First is the issue of "conservative" versus "innovative" approaches. "You have a choice between different formats and genres to focus on or ignore," Butts in Seats writes. "It would be disappointing to have groups nudged toward some form of what their advisers know or think would be appropriate. It is still their word that releases the money." Indeed, this is true. As with all grants, in order to receive money an organization or individual must be doing something that falls within the values espoused and promoted by the granting organization. Believe me, as someone who is in the midst of writing a grant for the NEA and is looking around for other granting organizations, I am very aware of what must be done to have even a hope of receiving support! Unless you are independently wealthy yourself, that is the nature of grantsmanship, and you simply don't apply for support from organizations whose values you reject.

In the case of the organization I am conceptualizing -- let's call it the ">100K Project," since it's focus will be on small and rural communities and regions with populations under 100,000 -- the focus of the organization will be less on the choice of programming (i.e., what plays are being done) than on the theatre's relationship to the community, a relationship that is suggested by the idea of radical welcome. A church following these principles has a relationship with its congregation that is active, engaged, open to conversation, welcoming, and intentional; likewise, a >100K Project theatre would be expected to foster such a relationship as well.

To that end, it is better to think not in terms of a traditional 5-play season-type theatre, but rather a community arts center where there are a variety of arts activities occurring. Some of these would, of course, be full-scale productions involving only the paid artistic staff, others might be productions that combine community members with the paid artistic staff, and others might involve the paid artistic staff facilitating the creativity of unpaid artistic community members. Similarly, events might run the gamut from full productions to low-tech events such as poetry slams, short story readings, storytelling and story circles, and other such events. The goal would be to make the theatre a place of continual activity and creative exploration. Theatre artists applying for a 3-year salary grant would have to demonstrate an interest in founding such a place, and develop a preliminary plan tied to the community where they propose to create the theatre.

In addition to salary support, the >100K Project would supply resources and instruction to help develop such a place -- the founders would not simply be thrown in the deep end with the expectation that they learn to swim quickly. There would be some on-line courses available to introduce the basic ideas and techniques, and then at least one live consultant assigned to their theatre to serve as a mentor and advisor.

Every six months or so, the paid artistic staff would provide a report to the >100K Project administration that would outline what had been done and assess its impact on the theatre and the community. The artistic staff would receive feedback, and dialogue and creative brainstorming would follow. Failure would be expected, but through a process of assessment something must be learned from the failure. The primary commitment of the >100K Project's administrative staff would be to the success of the theatre.

Butts in Seats 15-20 year timeline for self-support would be unacceptable (the salary subsidy runs out after 3 years), but perhaps the issue is in the definition of self-support. Like any theatre, it is likely that this type of theatre would require additional income beyond earned revenue. This might come in the form of grants, local or regional governmental support, individual contributions or other sources (and the central organization would help with this). Because the theatre would have a 3-year track record of activity, it would be more attractive to outside funders. While the central organization would no longer be paying salaries, this transition would have been planned for, and the central organization would still be available for other resources and consultation. However, after three years, the theatre would be expected to include in its budget a small percentage for the >100K Project central organization. I guess this would be the equivalent of tithing, and would symbolize a commitment to supporting others who wish to set up theatres like this.

There are many theatre people who will read this description and think, "this is not for me." That's fine. I don't expect it will, and like any granting organization, there is no requirement that anyone apply for support, and there's not unlimited money anyway (hell, at the moment there isn't a dime). It does require an artist who defines their contribution more inclusively than our Romantic-era artist-centered definition, and that might involve a different approach to educating artists. But I do believe that, in order to attract funding, the >100K Project needs to have a clear purpose and set of values. It can't simply be an institutional version of Daddy and Mommy providing a three-year allowance to anyone who happens to want one. The goal is to make the map below a darker shade of yellow by the creation of theatres that thrive and that, through their presence, strengthen their communities through dialogue, creativity, leadership, and active citizenship.

Do I Contradict Myself? Then I Contradict Myself!

Actually, I don't think this contradicts what I just posted below, but simply acknowledges the complexity of the theatre audience. In an article on the Guardian blgo entitled "Theatres Should Be Proud to be Bourgeois," Lyn Gardner writes:

Just before Christmas in an interview in the Times, Chichester's Church questioned "the amount of money that's been spent pursuing audiences who don't want to come in cities that don't really want theatre". He added: "Too much time has been spent creating work to find new audiences without supporting the audiences who came in the first place."

Church contrasted his experience at Birmingham Rep, a city of two million where he said he had to fight to get 15,000 people to come to a play, with Chichester, a city of 25,000 where 25,000 people will come. "Yes the audience here is older than average. But they're theatre literate. They're passionate. They built and supported the theatre and they're thirsty for new work. This is the only regional city I've worked in where 'new play' isn't two swearwords. So I think this audience is brilliant."

So where does that leave us? Clearly audience development that tries to broaden theatre's appeal and reach wider, younger and more culturally diverse audiences is important. After all you don't know if you're going to like something until you've tried it. But when leading theatre practitioners suggest that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water, maybe it's worth reminding ourselves that an audience is an audience, and all audiences are of equal value.

If theatres enter into contracts with audiences that really put the audience at the centre of their work, perhaps they will discover that the much derided traditional middle-class, middle-aged audience isn't as adverse to risk and innovation as they imagine.

The sentence that is bold is bold at my behest. Let me print it again: If theatres enter into contracts with audiences that really put the audience at the centre of their work... That seems to me to be key. It pertains not only to a tribal theatre discussion, but also the discussion of new plays as well: the Chichester audience, according to Church, is older but is committed to new plays. It also pertains to the discussion of seeking out smaller cities: Chichester is a city of 25,000 and it more enthusiastically supports a professional theatre than Birmingham, a city that is eight times larger.

Put the audience at the center of your work.

Wanted: Small Theatre Photos

Folks -- As part of the <100K Project, I would like to start gathering information about theatre taking place in spaces not originally intended for performance. I'm particularly interested in small facilities (say, less than 100) that have solved a problem in a creative way. For instance, LaMoine MacLaughlin, founder of the Northern Lakes Center for the Arts, writes in his article "Let Art Begin at Home: The Amery Story" about their search for a place to use as the performance space for the arts center orchestra. They were looking at a 100-year-old church that had been through several owners.

"Although the acoustics were excellent, the sanctuary that we envisioned as our proscenium stage had been raised almost six feet by the Ford dealership [that had previously owned the building] so that automobiles could be driven into the building for repairs; it was too high for our performance needs. We wanted to seat 100 people for our concerts, but that seemed impossible and remodeling to that extent would be cost-prohibitive to us." Then he attended a performance of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra that took place in " the Colonial Church in Edina, one of the wealthier suburbs [of the Twin Cities]. The venue is very intimate; you can almost reach out and touch the performers and the audience is seated on three sides of the orchestra. That performance sparked a question in our minds: what if we looked at the church in Amery in a new light? What if we arranged the audience around three sides of what would be an arena stage with the fourth side as a balcony in the raised sanctuary? We measured and found we could seat 75 people around the three sides, with 25 in the balcony. We had our 100 seats! Voila! And it would be a much more interesting performance facility than the common proscenium venues found everywhere."

I'd like to collect pictures and/or descriptions of other small spaces like this. If you have something, email it to me at swalters at unca dot edu

Thanks!

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Clarifying Community

One of the themes that surfaced during our value discussion was the idea of community. However, there seems to be a misconception about the term -- that is means community activism or involvement with community political and social issues.

When I use the word community, I mean it in a much simpler way: the ties or bonds between people. To create community is to create, and then strengthen, the bonds between people. One way to do that is through community activism, of course -- bonds are often strengthen through a common activity or a common enemy. But community is created simply through talking and listening. The times that I have been in church, there often were parts of the service in which we were asked to turn and greet the people around us. The intention is to create a sense of community, a sense of being part of a group. If that were the only thing, it would be a pretty superficial community, of course. But then there often was coffee and cake in the church basement afterwards, where many people went to talk -- and to strengthen bonds. I take a yoga class once a week, and at the end of the session, we all give each other a blessing, acknowledging each other individually. Why? To create a sense of community in the class.

So when I talk about theatre creating and strengthening community, it doesn't have to go outside the walls of the theatre. It might be creating a point during the theatrical event -- before, during, during intermission, after the show -- in which people are given an opportunity to talk to each other, to get to know each other as more than the head in the row in front of you.

For me, the traditional post-show Q & A session doesn't really promote community. Nobody introduces themselves (except whoever happens to be onstage fielding the questions), and the discussion is anonymous. But imagine a post-show discussion that follows the World Cafe model, in which people are put into groups of four and given a general topic to discuss, and then after a certain amount of time, they rotate and get new members. Each time, they introduce themselves to those who are at their table. In a small group, people are more comfortable talking than in the entire assembly.

So does that inspire community outside the walls of the theatre? Well, if you have talked to someone after a show and then you run into them in line at the grocery or at a meeting for another organization, you will probably talk again. And the bonds are strengthened. And when you are talking, you might introduce the person to another friend of yours, and the circle widens.

These are the bonds that are missing in many of our communities. This is how a theatre might contribute to creating community. Once ties are established, and community has been created, then you can put that energy to work. And that may or may not be something organized by the theatre.

That's what I mean by "community."

On Prostitution, Art, and Other Absurdities

I'd like to say there is an interesting conversation going on at Angry White Guy between Don Hall and Adam Thurman, but I can't. I could say there is an energetic argument, full of sound and fury, but...well, you know the rest of the quotation. And the fault lies with Don, I'm afraid. Now, my inner Camille Paglia loves Don's melodramatic style. It's clear, it's strong, and it is a lively read. But my inner Descarte rebels. If I have my crap detector turned on at even the lowest setting, it starts going off almost instantaneously.

Let's start with Don't analogy: theatre is like a brothel. This one, which bookends his "theatre is like poker" analogy of several months back, is something we've been dealing with since St. Augustine turned against the theatre a little over 1600 years ago, taking the Catholic Church (and later the Protestant Church) with him down the anti-theatrical road. Don does a great job rehashing that argument:

"Prostitutes sell themselves - their bodies and their submission - to the person who will pay them to perform. Theater artists put themselves on display and display themselves - their bodes, ideals, ideas, and submission - for cash. Not that difficult to grasp."

At the risk of pedantry, let me just point out that this isn't true. Prostitutes do not sell their bodies, they rent their bodies. It's a limited-time offer. One might argue that selling your body and submission wouldn't be prostitution, but rather marriage, which is another institution entirely. It is the temporary nature of the transaction that has always landed prostitutes in hot water. So let's get our definitions straight.
With that out of the way, the fact is that anyone who is a wage laborer -- which is pretty much most of us -- rents their bodies and their submission in exchange for money. Not just artists, but cab drivers, longshoremen, college professors, and even lowly NPR employees. One might argue that prostitutes pretend that they like you and want to do what you want to do...but that's what we do as employees, too. Nope, it's just hard to get the definition of prostitution that Don offers to reduce down to something that pertains only to whores and artists. Unless the issue is that whole "display" thing, which was a big part of it for medieval and Puritan anti-theatrical writers, as well as some Islamic justification for certain rules about dress for women. So if Don's issue is "display of the body," would that leave off, say, radio drama? Or what about film, which is really the display of shadows of bodies who did something in the past? Or what about, say, the performers in Beckett's Play, who are disembodied except for their heads? Man, this is getting harder and harder.
The discussion continues:

Adam: "The idea that art is so damn fragile that if it gets near anything that smells "business related" it will lose it's luster is a product of childish and immature thinking."

Don: It's as old as the Bible, brother. Money corrupts the process. It ain't the art that is fragile. It's the artist.

This is the 1 Timothy 6:10 argument. Let's take a look at that Biblical passage upon which Don is basing his economic theory: "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Hmmmm. So it isn't money that "corrupts," but rather the love of money, coveting, "to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others," in other words the excessive and wrongful hankering after money, which has caused some people to abandon their faith and, as a result, suffer pain. In Don's usage, read for "faith" the word "art," and maybe we're on to something. The artist is fragile, so saith Don -- he or she is easily tempted away from straight-and-narrow pathway of art by the love of money. When they sell their ideals for money, then they have sold their souls, strayed from their faith, and are cruisin' for a bruisin'. So preachest Reverend Hall.
But the Biblical injunction is against excessiveness. Like most classical philosophy, it is all about moderation in all things. One suspects that excessiveness has led a lot of people, artists or otherwise, down the forbidden pathway. For instance, excessive love of sex might just as easily lead one astray, or the excessive love of alcohol or drugs, or gambling, or...Facebook! Does Don recommend that artists equally avoid all these things (no! not Facebook!)? Or does he see, say, having sex with one's wife or husband as something that condemns the artist to corruption? Perdition on my soul, what are we to do?
The point is that it is the love of money, not money itself, that is the root of all evil. It is an overvaluing of money, placing it above all other things, that corrupts. It is arguable whether artists are "fragile" in this regard, or more fragile than anyone else who makes a living and puts food on the table. I doubt that most of us are making deep moral compromises in order to pay the rent, but maybe Don lives in a different world than I do and they ask him to do horrible stuff at NPR. When I look at the people who are doing theatre that some of us might find less than exemplary, I suspect that most of them have not, in fact, sold their soul, but rather either have a preference for that kind of theatre (yes, that IS possible), or have no preference about what they do as long as it is theatre. We all make choices, and Don's belief that all temptations should be removed lest artists stray smacks of paternalism bordering on puritanism. Artistic Amish-ness (Amish-itude?). I'd say we don't need anyone to protect our artistic soul for us. Some saint, quoted I believe in Herbert Blau's The Impossible Theatre, says something to the effect that she prays better when her stomach isn't empty. I suspect artists feel the same, and the the cost of doing so is not soul destroying.
Frankly, this discussion of Art versus Money, especially framed in simplistic terms like prostitution and instant corruption, creates a lot of heat and not much light. It takes a complex question about the relation of money and values and turns it into an all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil melodrama. Yes, some Big Institutions put Money ahead of Art; some Little Guys do the same. Money is not an economic Tar Baby that, once touched, leads directly to destruction. It is a complicated tool for living in this world that requires the development of deeply held principles to manage the balance, not the spartan rejection of all things monetary in the interest of some artistic virginity, pure as the driven snow. Don proposes an economic chastity belt. The choice is not between artistic Madonna or Whore, an opposition that has proven itself as absurd when it comes to women as it would in relation to art.
What needs to happen -- and this is why I am a strong proponent of arts education that intellectual content and not just how-to skill development -- is that young artists need to be explicitly and repeatedly required to develop a thorough philosophy of what they will and won't do for their art -- an artistic creed, if you will -- that can serve as a touchstone for later decisions that touch on artistic and economic integrity. That way, they can make thoughtful decisions in the moment, because they will have thought through what they stand for.
But I've always been in favor of education over abstinence.

My Life in Theater, or Notes from an Audience Member

[As my readers know, before I left for SETC, I invited my wife, Laura, to be a guest blogger in my absence. Unfortunately, she was unable to do so, but today she wrote the following post, which I am pleased to share with you.]

Why do I go to plays? Because I'm The Prof's wife. That would be the easy answer. But not the true one. Or rather, only the partial one. I grew up in the small town of Lexington, VA. My parents had to work with a group of parents to bring a dance teacher in from Roanoke, 55 miles away, so that a handful of little girls who were interested could take classes in tap and ballet. We had two colleges--but both were men's colleges, one of which was VMI. It was not an arts-rich environment. Nonetheless, I had a grandmother who was a drama queen. She had wanted to sing opera when she was younger, and after her children were grown she did a lot of little theater work. She was a diva with all the mental illness that the name implies. One thing she did, though, was give me the sound track for My Fair Lady for my birthday, and send me her old copies of American Theater. I think she had appointed me theater diva to follow her, but alas, my mental illness ran in the opposite direction. Painfully shy, I was never going to be the self-promoter that one needed to be in the arts. I feared putting myself "out there" for others to judge and possibly scorn (thanks, Don Hall).


When I became an adult, I noticed that my parents had become theater-goers. Who knew? They lived in a larger Virginia town by then, Lynchburg, which had a very active and innovative Community Theater. My parents went to many, many plays whether they "got" them or not. They just went. For a few years they lived in Northern Virginia where the opportunities for theater were greater. They often shared with me what they had seen and what they thought about it.


Then, I moved out to Normal, IL with my first husband and two small boys. That same first husband was pastor of a large Lutheran church, across the street from which was an interesting castle-like building that was home to the Illinois State University-sponsored Shakespeare Festival. They used our church for parking. It was hard to miss. It was hard to avoid. After living there for about 5 years, I finally started to buy tickets. I took my sons to a show here or there. It was magical. Shakespeare done well, under the stars. Who cared if the loud car drove by or the occasional plane went overhead? I was finally seeing and understanding Shakespeare live, spoken well. We loved it. After the first husband left, money was extremely tight. Sometimes food stamp tight. But every spring when the flyer came I scraped up money for 3 season tickets in the cheap seats and I and the boys would go. During that hard time, it was something that kept us together, that provided relief and respite. It was something to look forward to.


Then my oldest son tried out for -- excuse me, auditioned for -- his school's production of Superman. He was a fireman. He was cute. But his school was kind of unique and it would have been unusual for a child NOT to have auditioned. The next year he auditioned for Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He was 13. He got the role of Joseph. I was stunned. I didn't even know he could sing. He was off to the races after that and theater became a much larger part of my life.


I met my current husband and the writer of this blog at a little league baseball game. Getting to know him had nothing to do with theater. I was as surprised as the next person to find out he was Associate Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Festival. He was surprised to find out that I was an audience member. Thus began a long and interesting marriage that involved going to plays with people in it whom we knew, then going home, pouring a glass of wine and talking about that play. That is as much pleasure as the show itself. But the motivator for going is that someone I know is involved with it. I've gone to very little theater where this was not the case. I'd just rather stay home.


So what theater do I go to? Theater with which I have a connection. Theater is not competing with film or TV for my time. I rarely go to movies and I don't have a TV. I don't rent movies, either. I'm interested in people I know, people with whom I have a relationship, people I care about. If they are involved in theater, then I'll go to their show. I am not seeking adventure, so being "challenged"--a euphemism, more often than not, for "insulted"--is not my idea of fun. I experience it as a slap in the face--and it hurts. I've commented on this blog twice--both times when I thought that audiences were being either insulted or let down. Don Hall has insulted me both times. I'm using the word "insulted" a lot. What I'm trying to say, I think, is that I am real person out there beyond the lights. I bring a lot of hope and joy to the theater. I come because I know someone or have some sort of connection to the show. I am not part of an amorphous mass that can be categorized. I am smart, funny, interested. When I am disdained or disrespected by the playwright or the director, I know it and it hurts, and it makes me loathe to take that risk again. I come with hope and joy, and I share it with all my heart from my seat. Can you feel it? I'm in there with you. Really. I'm not your enemy.

-- Laura Sue Walters

Intriguing "All Things Considered" Story: Kutiman

When I was driving home from work Tuesday, I caught the All Things Considered story on the music producer Kutiman and his mash-ups created by layering together multiple YouTube videos. Here is a sample:


Now, I am aware that there is nothing new about mash-ups and sampling, but what interests me about this is that in all of the videos (and if you want to see more, go to his website: http://thru-you.com/) mash together the work of amateur artists, rather than sampling and manipulating the work of professionals. It is an example of an professional artist (Kutiman) using his skills to bring together and enhance the disparate talents of "normal folk."

I continue to be interested in a new role for the artist, one that is not only about self-expression or the creation of products to be sold to a passive consumer, but also is about facilitating the creativity of others, of using artistic talents to help magnify and amplify the creative talents of people who are not highly-trained specialists, but rather amateurs in its original meaning of "one who loves." Of course, anyone who is a church choir director or the director of a community musical understands the joy of using your own talents to allow others to use their. It seems to me that Kutiman takes this to another level by doing more than simply helping people to interpret already existing work, but instead combining their talents in the creation of an entirely new work. In the theatre, this might take the form of creating new performance pieces by combining the words, images, and music of local people, local stories, local images, local histories in a layered, musical sort of way. In a world where people may not have the time to participate in traditional rehearsals four or five nights a week, the idea of a theatrical mashup might be a way to put together a series of pieces involving different people that center around a common theme, for instance.

I'm not sure -- there are probably even better ways to build on Kutiman's inspiration. I just know that the what-if part of my brain felt a tickle when I heard the original story, and having now seen the videos I find myself thinking even more.

Shaking Head

Thanks to Isaac for drawing our attention to David Cote's review of Church, which ends with this paragraph:

Of course, if artists (or scientists) could find out why some people can’t do without supernatural bigotry, the world would be a better place. Since religion is bad theater for stupid people, I will happily worship in the house of Young Jean Lee.

All I can say is: Here is the line; here is Cote -- WAY over it.
Oh, and re: bigotry -- pot -- kettle -- black.

Ben Cameron on the Artistic Reformation

(Big h/t to Andrew Taylor)
Below is a video of former TCG director (now Doris Duke head) Ben Cameron at the Calgary TEDxYCC. If you listen carefully to his message, delivered articulately and passionately, you will hear many of the same themes I am sounding in CRADLE.

Cameron compares the current situation in the arts to the Protestant Reformation, which was driven by technology (the printing press) and fueled by the question of who was allowed to practice. And while Cameron acknowledges that the Reformation didn't eliminate the traditional church (i.e., the existing arts institutions, which bafflingly he refers to as the only opportunity for "economic dignity" for the artist -- really?), it did lead to a revolution in all aspects of society.

Today, Cameron goes on, the means of production and distribution have been democratized, and he notes that while arts audiences are shrinking, arts participation is exploding. He goes on to laud what he calls the "hybrid artist," artists who use their art in service of society. He mentions Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange, Cornerstone Theatre Company, and Rhodessa Jones, all community-based artists who work with the communty to tell stories about them and with them. "The power of the arts," Cameron asserts, rests in the ability to "promote understanding of The Other," to allow marginalized people to tell their own stories.

I was inspired to hear this from someone like Cameron, whose has great knowledge of the field and who has a bully pulpit from which to speak. He ties in to the NEA's focus on "Art Work," repeating the importance of the arts to economic revitalization, but the real center of his speech is about the contributions that artists need to make to the Greater Good.

Again, thanks to Andrew Taylor for the link.

What Are You Playing For? (Response)

Don Hall continues the discussion of the motivation for theatre, this time with a really interesting post entitled "What Are You Playing For?" Moving from blackjack to video games, he bifurcates motivation into those who play for the experience of playing, and those who play instrumentally to get "tickets" that can be redeemed for other things. He is the one who is playing for the experience, and Mike Daisey and I are the ones playing for the tickets. And he predicts I will deny this, which I do, but not for the reasons he thinks.

There was a wise man who once defined wealth not as money and things, but rather as time and space. That having free time to think and create and the space in which to operate is what true wealth really is. Virginia Woolf felt the same way, saying a woman writer needed a thousand pounds a year and a room of one's own. That is my orientation as well.

While I am known here in the theatrosphere as an academic, that fact is that until I was nearly thirty I was a freelance director and actor in Minneapolis. I worked at day job at a restaurant supply company, and then as a customer service rep at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (all you bloggers who have played Oregon Trail, my boss was the creator of that game, a man named Don Rawitsch, whose biggest dream was to give up the computer business and to teach high school history). I put in my forty hours a week, and I did theatre at night. I freelanced, and I produced as well. My then-wife and I rescued a hundred old theatre seats from a movie theatre being demolished in downtown St. Paul and stored them in the basement of the house we were renting while we negotiated to rent a space in the now-tony warehouse district in Minneapolis, and when that didn't work out another warehouse in St. Paul that was condemned by the city two days before we were slated to move in. I was ambitious, and recognized by many in the Twin Cities theatre scene as an innovator. And by the time I was thirty, I was toast. I hit the wall during a production of Ibsen's The Master Builder that I was producing and directing, when one night I sat in the church basement where we were rehearsing and had absolutely nothing to say, and I realized I had no creative energy left for the project -- I was exhausted and depressed. At age 28. I couldn't do the 60 hour weeks any more. I couldn't function in my demanding job, rush home for a quick bite, and then muster creative ideas for another 3 or 4 hours.

It wasn't until I was 40 that I became a professor -- I had been working as an Assistant to the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University while I worked on my dissertation nights and weekends. For all practical purposes, nothing had changed. I still was working a 40+ hour a week job, and then putting in another 20 doing research and writing. Once, I directed a production of The Fantasticks at the local high school just so I had an opportunity to spend time with my eldest stepson, who was an actor and singer and who I cast as one of the fathers. In 1998, I finished the dissertation, and took a job as Chair of Drama at University of North Carolina, where I am currently. I taught a full load, chaired the department, and directed a production each year. Teaching and administering took even more than 40 hours a week, and when I was in production I added another 20. For most of my life, the 60-hour week has been a norm.

So now I am 50. And as much as I like directing young people in plays and creating interesting and creative productions, I dread going into rehearsal because I know that by the end of the run I will be so tired I can hardly function. When I come home at 11:00, my wife is already asleep, and when the alarm goes off at 5:50 I will see her for a few minutes at breakfast and that will likely be it for the rest of the day. And that will make the mental fatigue even worse, because I love my wife, and I rely on her to keep me balanced and happy, and she will also miss me and grow tired of spending her evenings alone and tired of having to carry the burden of keeping the house going in my absence. I suspect there are others like me, others who love theatre, who have something to offer, but who at some point in their lives can't keep up the 60-hour weeks.

And so the ideas that I write about here, and the attempts I am making to find a way to put them into action, are attempts to rescue time and space for others, so that they can have the experience of creativity without having to have super-human energy, and without having to give up all other aspects of their lives, and without having to have understanding spouses willing to shoulder the burden in their absence. If that is a focus on "tickets," then so be it.  I want to decrease the number of hours theatre people must spend working in a week, and I want to increase the opportunity for theatre people to have the experiences that other members of our society have, so that they can create work that speaks to those experiences. I want to increase the amount of mental and spiritual energy that theatre artists have to devote to their work, and I want to increase the opportunities theatre artists have to create work that inspires them, grows them, and inspires and grows others.

Ultimately, yes, that involves economics. But my belief is that theatre should be an end in itself, not a means to an end -- not a means to money or fame, but a to fulfillment and self-realization. And so I am trying to create a model, a way of doing theatre, that frees theatre artists as much as is possible to experience their lives and fully realize their creative potential.

I have spent most of my life tired. When I had an opportunity to have a sabbatical this past semester, and as a result became rested and was allowed to focus wholly on my own creative interests, I realized how much different things might have been, how much more productive I might have been, and how many more ideas and insights I might have had if I had a little more time and space. And that's ultimately what I am trying to provide for a younger generation of theatre artists. It's not about me, it is about other people, and about time and space.

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Seth Godin's New Book

Imagine my surprise to find that bestselling business writer Seth Godin's new book is called Tribes: We Need You to lead Us. The Amazon description reads:

"If you're looking at this page this far ahead of publication, you're probably a member of Seth Godin's tribe. And if so, you already know what this book is about. You know about waiting in line at an Apple store, or the look on a fellow Deadhead's face. You know about the way it feels to go back to the church where you grew up. You know about the real power of a brand. According to Godin, Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have. The new opportunity is that it's easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes -- and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time. Tribes (the book) will help you understand exactly what's at stake, and why YOU can and should lead a tribe of your own."

As Robin Williams says at the end of Good Will Hunting: "He stole my line." Time to finish my book on theatre tribes!

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The Class Aspects of the Mike Daisey Affair

Over at Rat Sass, Nick raises an interesting aspect of the ongoing Mike Daisey controversy called "Us vs. Them." Late in the article, he raises an issue with class implications that shouldn't be ignored:

Collateral damage in the war with the Boogieman gang that attacked Mike that night goes beyond just the branding of the Norco kids as the Christian Crazies. We are also instructing other teenagers, including the 22 kids who remained in the audience that night (referred by ART as the other high school group), that theatre is a battle between Us and Them. “Us” signified as elite high school kids from a private school “studying” theatre as part of their senior seminar. “Them” are public school kids on a bus tour from Anytown, USA looking for a night of suitable entertainment.

Once again, the intelligentsia ends up bashing the religious and the lower class. For instance, over at Histriomastix, David Cote refers, in a post tagged "Goddites," to those who walked out as "a bunch of church-infantilized fools who can’t deal with Daisey’s salty language and lefty attitudes." This kind of classist, intolerant language reflects the us vs them, private vs public, educated vs less educated attitudes that permeate the American arts scene. When I look at European theatre, where many, many artists identify with and support the working class audience, and create art for that class, I despair about the American artists who mainly want to play to the upper 15% of the economic continuum -- although they will tolerate others as long as they share the college-educated secularism of that class of people. Until American artists make an effort to reach out to this audience, instead of expecting them to reach out to you (the Rilkean cry "You must change your life" is a motto, and one that is unidirectional), there will be less and less state funding, less and less public support, and smaller and smaller audiences.

Favorite Posts

Yet another crazy week (will it never end?). In lieu of writing a new post, I'd like to draw your attention to an old one that I looked back at and found worth repeating. I hope you find it intriguing.

http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2005/10/attempt-at-synthesis-analogy.html#links

Tags:theatre audience

• theatre
• church

Taking Aim At Isherwood

The blogosphere is taking aim, and with reason, at Christopher Isherwood's recent article on political theatre in the NY Times. Garret Eisler, George Hunka, and Isaac Butler each do a fine enough job dismantling Isherwood's woefully broken-backed article (did two different people write the first half and the last half of the article? [I refuse to call it a think piece]) that one is tempted to simply write "ditto" and save the effort it takes to write. As one who teaches theatre history, I am baffled by Isherwood's idea that people go to the theatre solely for "entertainment," and even more inexplicably that "entertainment" is the equivalent of "pleasantness." Is The Oresteia pleasant? Yet thousands of Greeks flocked to see it. Is there anything pleasant about Macbeth or Titus Andronicus or Doctor Faustus or The Duchess of Malfi? Yet the Elizabethans were there en masse. Is there anything jolly about Phaedra or The Cid? Yet the French filled the halls of Louis' theatres to see them. Of course, one could go on and on listing "unpleasant" plays that were wildly popular, but the point is made. I think that Isherwood underestimates the truly human need to confront the pain of life together.

Of course, in Part 2 of his essay, Isherwood proceeds to undo everything he wrote in Part 1, so it is hard to know what to think.

But very often the issue of "preaching to the converted" comes up when discussing political theatre, and in fact George asks, "But if the people who form that society don't show up for the performance, who is confronted? If agit-prop is performed in an empty theatre, is ti still agit-prop?" My quibble to that question might be whether political theatre and agit-prop are synonymous -- the latter might more usefully be defined as a subset of the former. But let that go. The dismissal of theatre that preaches to the converted is a topic I encountered just this morning in Jill Dolan's brilliant Utopia in Performance.

Dolan speaks about having Holly Hughes perform her Preaching to the Perverted (her one-woman show that examines her experience as a member of the NEA Four) at the University of Texas at Austin. She writes:

"Hughes remains an activist artist, who performance work and public presentations insist on examining culture and politics through art. She was eloquent in her meeting with my class and in her public interview. She deconstructed the notion of 'preaching to the converted,' an issue that already concerned my students, who feared that political work reaches a too narrow audience of people already persuaded to think progressively. How, they wondered, could more people be persuaded, so that performance and its potential for social change wouldn't be ghettoized far from the notice of those who perhaps need to see it most? Quoting theater scholar David Roman and performance artist Tim Miller's writing on this issue, Hughes proceeded to shake up some of these notions by suggesting that 'conversion' is always unstable, that people are never, finally, converted to anything; there's always ambiguity, ambivalence and doubt. Performance, Hughes insisted, is a renewal of faith, and progressive politics are always faith-based."

In a footnote in which she provides the citation for Tim Miller and David Roman's "Preaching to the Converted" in Theatre Journal 47, no 2 (1995), she also notes Vicki Patraka's interview with performance artist Robbie McCauley, in which McCauley says about preaching to the converted:

"I think that criticism is a cop-out. First of all, how much fo the converted know? And things resonate, ripple out. This is not to say that you do not work constantly for audience development; we need to grapple with ways to expand audiences. But we don't need to put that problem in the way of doing the work, making our work clear and beautiful for our audiences. The whole issue is just a block."

To be fair, Isherwood says just that:

"“Preaching to the converted” is the dismissive epithet easily hurled at plays that air a social ill in front of audiences predisposed to share the playwright’s view. But why shouldn’t theatergoers draw the same kind of sustenance from the collective experience of theater that congregants do from sermons at church? We all have spiritual lives of some kind, beliefs that are articles of faith more than reason. And they are nurtured by a sense of common feeling, the knowledge that we are not alone in our perceptions, whether they consist of general religious tenets or specific moral stances on social or political issues."

But he precedes it with this declaration, as if to put this thorny question finally to rest:

"Can art save the day? More specifically, can theater rouse the populace from a sense of numbed anxiety? Can a stage play change minds, or help channel passive beliefs into active commitment? Short-term answer: a resounding “Nope.” Long-term answer: a less resounding if hardly less dispiriting “Probably not, alas."

And this:

"Does this mean that theater has a perceptible or quantifiable impact on the issues raised? As I suggested earlier, not necessarily, or not much. I haven’t rushed to the barricades, hand in hand with the fellow in seat G102, any time recently. But I have left the theater with a more vivid sense of the painful human cost of public policy or a deeper knowledge of the gritty specifics of a specific historical event."

This is a red herring. To charge any individual event, artistic or not, with causing people to rush to the barricades is nonsensical. It is, as McCauley notes, a block -- an attempt to dispirit those who care by undermining any sense of hope that one's actions might make a difference. If political theatre does nothing else, it can serve to recharge the reserves of courage and commitment required of those who would enact social change. The changing of minds is a slow process of building empathy, making arguments, and exerting peer pressure (and probably the latter is the most important). Political theatre can be a player in the first two, and can provide courage and persuasive power for the last.

An additional red herring is to bemoan the lack of "masterpieces" in political theatre. The first critical question Geothe propounded was "What is the work trying to do?" The purpose of political theatre -- what it is "trying to do" -- may promote the expression of a clear and powerful message over artistic issues. While it is true that a combination of political power and artistic power might lead to a production that would be able to reach beyond the "converted" to touch a larger number of "average" theatregoers, this does not diminish the usefulness of those works that do not. I am not a fan of the aesthetics of plays like The Exonerated or Guantanamo, but I do value their power to bolster outrage and moral fervor. There is no doubt in my mind that Weiss' The Investigation or Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer are much better plays, but every once in a while, when the chips are down, we need to trot out Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been to remind people that America has a history of political bullying and a tendency toward fascistic behavior -- even though Bentley's play is, aesthetically, a rather flat affair.

The problem lies, it seems to me, in "One Size Fits All" theatre criticism that wants to measure every production using the same critical yardstick. When that yardstick measures the inches of "pleasant entertainment," what goes unmeasured is a powerful giant whose practical effectiveness may tower over the Liliputian entertainments being worshipped as aesthetic gladiators.

The Model (Draft) -- Part 2

As promised in Part 1 of this draft of a model theatre, the topic is now "The Artist in the Community." What I mean by this can be described best by taking apart a sentence in the previous post: "What does my community need right now?"

As a question, it sounds simple, but has several separate parts each with different, but conjoined, ramifications.

First, "my community" indicates that you are part of the community, and it is part of you -- no more Mysterious Outsider. Thus, the term "embedded." I know: the current connotations make me uncomfortable too, so let's try to disconnect them. I mean the broader definition of embedded: To cause to be an integral part of a surrounding whole. MY community means that you are an integral part of it, you claim it as yours, it emcompasses you. To some extent, this is a change from the modernist norm, which placed the artist outside of the community and valorized the perspective allowed by this disconnection. Here, you sacrifice perspective for detail, long shot for close up. This also means that the artist -- and I mean all of them involved in the theatre -- must live in the community they serve. No more drive-by performances. The artists should also be seen at the grocery store, the church or synagogue, the soccer field, the library, the voting site. They need to have a life that reaches beyond the rehearsal hall and makes contact with a diversity people with a diversity of perspectives. Artists have a tendency to live in gated communities where only those who are "in the know" and "one of us" live. As a result, their productions begin to lose richness, complexity, wholeness.

Second, the word "need" requires that you be connected enough to that community to recognize what it already has too much of, and what is lacking. You can feel it, you experience it in your heart. The word "need" is not the same as the word "want" -- usually a community will want more of what it already has and likes. Need requires balance. It is a dialectic: the artist in the community determines what the widely held thesis is and provides the antithesis with the goal of a synthesis. The artist supplies the yang to balance the community's yin. Oppositional complementarity. This is art as a thermostatis activity. I borrow this term from Neil Postman, who uses it in terms of education in his sequel to Teaching as a Subversive Activity, which he called (thermostatically) Teaching as a Conserving Activity. You set you thermostat to a certain tempertaure; its job is to make what is too warm cooler, and what is too cool warmer. As Postman writes, "A thermostat, in short, releases a counterargument." The thermostat does so not out of spite, not out of a spirit of criticism, but in order to achieve dynamic balance. So the artist is not solely focused on expressing a personal vision, but rather on serving the community's needs.

And finally, "right now" means there is no universal solvent, no single aesthetic that applies across time and space. You use the language that will have the greatest impact at that moment, the forms that will be most compelling at that moment, the images and metaphors that will have the greatest traction at that moment. The artist must become a master of as many languages and styles as possible -- he or she must have a sizeable artistic toolbox.

All of this pertains to the plays that are chosen, the stories that are told, and the relationships that are formed.

What's the slogan? Be here now.

Why Not?

In today's NYT, under the headline "Enter Stage Right: Live Advertisements," Campbell Robertson writes: "Seven fifty-five p.m. A moment, in theater, of whispered anticipation, of studying Playbills, of turning off cellphones. And a perfect time, before a performance of "Stomp" at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village last night, for a commercial. "Give me a picture of the London scene," said an actress in the audience on her cellphone, supposedly talking to her daughter in London on the eve of her own trip there. No, to answer your question, there is nothing sacred."

But after my initial kneejerk reaction, I wondered: why not? Theatre isn't church, as much as we often talk about it as if it were. We're used to ads before films -- what makes us so damned special? Hell, why not use this time to promote other theatre, sort of like Amazon does with its recommendations for other books. "If you like this play, you'd also like..." and then pitch some Off-Off Broadway production. This could be the theatrical version of the Long Tail in action, and actually be a way for theatres to support each other. Sure, we could put it in the program, but why when, as Ken Kelling (the communications dfirector of the Visit London program) said, "They're a captive audience. They can't switch channels or change over or walk out once the thing is started." Exactly. To hell with our purity, these are desperate times. Consider the possibilities!

Demonizing the Middle Class

It's been a busy couple of days, but when I finally find time to visit the blogosphere, I find George over at "Superfluities" bashing the middle-class again as a means of defending David Cote's review of Rabbit Hole by David Lindsey-Abaire. While I find myself, for once, on George's side as far as a reviewer's perogative to address not only the specifics of the production in front of him, but also the ideas and ramification of the play and production, I object to George's sneering at the middle-class in order to do it. He writes:

Ultimately, Mr. Cote's target, and he may not himself realize it (though I just suspect that he does), is the upper-middle-class suburban or suburban-minded community that the MTC attracts as its subscriber base, as its core audience, as the source of much of its private funding, and this is indeed a class question rather than a race or an age question. A complacent section of society, complacently feeling that art is doing its job when the audience "start[s] believing that the production in front of [it] is actually relevant, that [the play] is fiercely attacking [its] political, economic and moral assumptions."

Such an art, such plays, do no such thing: instead, they congratulate the audience on its perception of itself as open-minded, confirming that the great passions and pains of life, hemmed and hawed over for two hours in the confines of the Biltmore Theatre, are best and safely contemplated as a form of genial entertainment. That this theater is an economically and socially elite entertainment only serves as a further form of self-congratulation: I applaud Cynthia Nixon's portrayal of sadness, therefore I am compassionate and thoughtful, unlike those other yobbos at home watching American Idol. It is a closed round of self-approbation, this sort of theater. Its audience, contrary to its own belief, is not open-minded. Open-mindedness is not a characteristic of the spiritually but conceitedly dead.

The results of this complacency can be seen in the culture all around us, in our politics, in our schools, in our personal lives. In an odd way, this is no longer a culture of dynamic self-invention but deadly self-completion, exchanging the motion of the spirit for the security of the body and the bank account. We become complacent in our lives and bodies, feeling that we know it all and that, having achieved material and personal goals, we need no longer to change. More points for us; we are winning the game. We have, bizarrely, proved on the individual level that we are just as capable of internalizing and neutralizing rebellions, rebellions against our own limitations and the strictures of conformity, as the modern democratic society. We have set the system up, we have constructed a self that we can pay for with our jobs: all we need do is wait, then, until we pass on, expressing our discomforts to our therapists and watching them onstage, of no importance except as a bump on a relatively smooth road to the grave.

George's characterization drove me to the writing of another George, this one with the surname Orwell. In his essay entitled "Notes on Nationalism," Orwell writes: "By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’." Class feelings, which Orwell cites as an example of "transferred nationalism," exists "among upper-class and middle-class intellectuals, only in the transposed form—i.e. as a belief in the superiority of the proletariat. Here again, inside the intelligentsia, the pressure of public opinion is overwhelming. Nationalistic loyalty towards the proletariat, and most vicious theoretical hatred of the bourgeoisie, can and often do co-exist with ordinary snobbishness in everyday life." I don't know if George promotes the proletariat -- he may think that only the intelligentsia is worth a damn, when all is said and done -- but I think the rest of the quotation applies. In a footnote, Orwell continues: "Nations, and even vaguer entities such as Catholic Church or the proleteriat, are commonly thought of as individuals and often referred to as ‘she’. Patently absurd remarks such as ‘Germany is naturally treacherous’ are to be found in any newspaper one opens and reckless generalization about national character (‘The Spaniard is a natural aristocrat’ or ‘Every Englishman is a hypocrite’) are uttered by almost everyone. Intermittently these generalizations are seen to be unfounded, but the habit of making them persists, and people of professedly international outlook, e.g., Tolstoy or Bernard Shaw, are often guilty of them."

So are we all, sometimes, and we need to be called on it when we do it. You can't talk about ideas without generalizing to some extent. But flat stereotypes used as straw men in an argument does a disservice not noly to those who are being stereotypes, but also to one's own ideas. Here's a rule of thumb I go by: if you substitute "African-American" or "Jewish" for the the name of whatever group you are bashing, and it is offensive, then you need to rethink. This is why I try to avoid, for instance, talking about Republicans as a group -- I'd rather deal with specific ideas. Creating an Other of any kind, in my opinion, is rarely a good idea.

As far as the middle class is concerned, in The Politics of Meaning, Michael Lerner writes about a sociological study he participated in San Francisco “to better understand the psychodynamics of middle-income working people." He wrote:

"What we learned from the thousands of people who participated in these groups challenged many of the beliefs that prevailed among us, and, more generally, in the liberal culture from which we researchers had come. We had thought of ourselves as psychologically sophisticated when we started this work, but we quickly learned that our assumptions about middle-income Americans were mistaken, prejudiced, and elitist. For example, most of us imagined that most Americans were motivated primarily by material self-interest. So we were surprised to discover that these middle Americans often experience more stress from feeling that they are wasting their lives doing meaningless work than from feeling that they are not making enough money. We found middle-income people deeply unhappy because they hunger to serve the common good and contribute to something with their talents and energies, yet find their work gives them little opportunity to do so. They often turn to demands of more money as a compensation for a life that otherwise feels frustrating and empty. In the Left and among many academics it has been almost a rule of reason to believe that what people really care about is their own material well-being, and that believing anything else is just some kind of populist romanticization. But we uncovered a far deeper desire -- the desire to have meaningful work, work that people believe would contribute to some higher purpose than self-advancement." [ital mine]

Perhaps when one feels like bashing the so-called "middle-class," one might instead instead substitute for "middle class" the name of someone one knows and care about who is middle-class -- say, one's parents or in-laws -- and then decide whether the picture being painted is nuanced, fair, and complex.

I think there are better ways to defend ideas than demonizing millions.