In Honor of Martin Luther King

While there will be many tributes today to the vision and determination of Martin Luther King, from artists and non-artists alike, I think the best thing the arts as a field could do would be to take seriously the Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change report and address the inequities that are built into the non-profit arts infrastructure.

Lately, we have seen the enormously negative effects of Big Money in politics through the creation of Super Pacs and the lifting of limitations on corporate political contributions as a result of Citizens United. Well, this situation has long been in place in the arts. The wealthy and powerful dominate governing boards, and major institutions court major donations from rich individual donors and their foundations. And then we wonder why the money is centralized in elite, white, urban institutions and why those institutions present art that appeals to that demographic.

It is important that CRADLE not fall prey to this pattern. Local CRADLE organizations should have boards comprised not only of town leaders and elites, but of people representative of the population as a whole. This means choosing board members not for their ability to contribute and raise money, but for the value of their viewpoint and wisdom.

In the book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, authors John McKnight and Peter Block call on citizens to create powerful and competent communities based on three "universal properties":

• The Giving of Gifts -- The gifts of the people in our neighborhood are boundless. Our movement calls forth those gifts.
• The Presence of Association -- In association we join our gifts together, and they become amplified, magnified, productive, and celebrated.
• The Compassion of Hospitality -- We welcome strangers because we value their gifts and need to share our own. Our doors are open. There are no strangers here, just friends we haven't met.

The latter is particularly important, as it promotes what Block calls a "welcome at the edge." It isn't only the rich and powerful who have gifts to offer, but those who have been traditional ignored or marginalized. And those must be actively sought out and celebrated.

We must not continue to waste the talents of our people. We must not continue to ignore the stories of our people. We must celebrate the richness that exists in all people. And we must create an artistic infrastructure that promotes these values.

daddyland On Theatrical INteraction

Over at Don's place, a commenter named daddyland has laid out pretty clearly some of the things that many of us have been saying for a while about liveness, presence, and interaction:

In response to Don's "Exploring Money Assumptions in Theatre," daddyland wrote:

A couple thoughts...

I am not a theatre industry person, I choose to go directly to film/tv. I could even see 20 years ago that all my drama/theatre profs/coaches were feeding me a line of bull that the theatre would be relevant in 15 years. I had just gotten my first taste of the internet and I knew things were about to change radically.

The theatre isn't relevant or accessible to the average man nowadays. And they don't want their taxes going towards it either. It simply cannot compete on any level with huge plasma tvs and the Home Theatre/Internet connected TV.

I saw Metaluna on last Thursday. I thought it was brilliant. The performances were all outstanding even though at times I struggled with the Dada elements. Lisa Fairmain's performance was particularly titilating and worth the enormous effort alone it took to find a sitter for the kid, drive into the city in this horrendous construction traffic, and then find parking. But I would have never heard about it if I didn't know Brownlee. Now I am telling all my friends, but my angle is the whole "Lisa F." thing. Otherwise, I am faced with the whole "why should I go to so much trouble?" question. I am selling sex here, but they get much more than that with your show.

Theatre is the ape in Darwin's theory of evolution to what the human is to the Home Theatre TV in most American's eyes. I am afraid the most effective change of tactics would be to become a bunch of terrorists and completely destroy the entire television/internet infrastructure. With no other entertainment around, Americans will flock to their local theatres, and start creating their own troupes.

All that said, I believe the focus should be on the experience an audience member can have in live theatre. It can be truly enthralling, as it is with Metaluna.

IN response, RLewis had written that theatre wasn't in competition with TV and film and plasma TV screens, but with live events such as baseball. "If digital TV were really the competition, then there would be empty stands at our ballparks (our real competition!), and that certainly isn't the case. Somehow folks manage the construction filled roads, parking nightmares and mass mobs at the gates to see the local teams play. So, clearly the Ape here is just to throw you off the trail."

daddyland responded:

I believe we soon will see empty stands at ballparks. My cousin recently bought two 50inch Plasma TVs. One for the living room, one for the bedroom--to watch sports in close up High Def. His comment to me was he loved the group spirit at baseball/football games, of which he had season tix to both the Bears and Sox, but seeing the sweat drip off a losing pitcher's brow was far more enjoyable to watch. He is moving on from one kind of experience--an experience which I still think is valid.

Market forces are deciding that the digital TV experience is more exciting across the board. That is where marketing comes in to solve your problem.

It may make you feel sick to do this, and a true betrayal of the craft, but unless it is titilating, live performance/theatre arts perhaps needs to be expressly interactive with the audience. It can take a variety of forms and concepts. Metaluna is titilating and does involve the audience. That is a start. Take part of the set home as a piece of art for your house? That's cool... How about we get crazy and have an interactive chat session with the cast? How do you integrate Web 2.0 technologies into the marketing plan? Don's video interviews with the cast are an example of thinking out of the box to market a show. But even then, his audience was limited...he was talking Dada to other industry people. I didn't know my baby's "Dada" from "Stage craft 'Dada'" until last Thursday. I don't think you have to be running an Improv Olympics or comedy show to get the audience to interact. Get clever. People want an interactive experience--that is what digital life is all about--it is not just being lazy and staring at a screen. I would counter it is the exact opposite of that.

I think the key here for theatre is not evolution, it's transformation. And it will require outsiders to your clique to help you determine where you go. You must do it now and work the hard problems before it is too late. The culture is changing rapidly.

I don't buy the titillation thing -- that's a function of liveness, in my opinion, just a more obvious element. But I think he is right about interaction, and right in not limiting it to Improv Olympics and other forms that are often thought of when interaction is mentioned. It isn't about voting for the ending as in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, although that certainly kept an otherwise uninspired musical running. It might mean creating a forum for people to interact with each other and/or with the artists -- again, not the typical Q & A, but real interaction. After all, according to a Wallace Foundation study, by far the strongest motivation for attending the theatre is "Socializing." We can fight that, taking Goethe's attitude that the audience should be seen and not heard, and Wagner's attitude that the audience shouldn't even be seen (so he turned the lights off), or we can ask ourselves just what that "socializing" means and what ways can we provide social interaction. Dialogue promotes community, and if you can create a community around your theatre, no plasma TV's are going to destroy you.
 

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Selling

I just subscribed to Kevin Davenport's blog "Producer's Perspective." Davenport is an Off-Broadway producer. I suppose, given my theatre tribe orientation, that this is an odd choice. But as Richard II says, "And yet, not so." Davenport has an entrepreneurial frame of mind that I find admirable and applicable to the tribe model.

For instance, his most recent post is "Hit the Street to Find Out How to Sell." Kevin tells the story of Duane, a rapper in NYC who is selling his CD's by performing on the streets of Times Square. While Duane is focused on how commercial producers have no choice about who is hired to sell their tickets at the Broadway theatre or at the ticket ordering companies like Telecharge (did you know the Shubert Organization owned Telecharge? What a mess this whole business is!), my focus is on Duane. As Kevin notes, Duane "believes in his product," and "there is nothing more powerful than the live pitch."

I hate to say it, but we're back at community again. But this time, I mean face time. An artist and a someone they don't even know. Showing a little bit of the product, and talking about it from a standpoint of commitment to it. In Mike Daisey's How Theatre Failed America, he talks about coming to a point in his career when he decided that he wouldn't do any more projects that he wasn't 100% committed to -- which meant that he didn't work for a long time. And sadly, this lack of 100% commitment is the situation all too often.

Because many theatre artists have been taught to snap up any job that is offered regardless of what it is, often they end up doing things that they are luke-warm about, or even embarrassed about. And so when they are out an encounter their friends, much less total strangers, they don't have the fervor to really get people excited enough to buy a ticket. This should never be the case with a theatre tribe.

Because of the consensus model that a theatre tribe utilizes, tribe members have no excuse not to believe in their product, since they will have agreed to let it be produced. When using the consensus model of decision making, every member has the right to use a "blocking concern" to say no to anything they feel seriously violates the values of the organization, regardless of how the other members feel. Consequently, members will be very sparing in using what is essentially the "nuclear option" for consensus. However, if they don't use the clocking concern, then they are consenting to support the decision. And so they should, in good conscience, be able to stand face to face with a potential audience member or a friend and really sell the show.

And they need to put themselves in situations where they have an opportunity to do that. But that's another topic.

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."

Time

I've been thinking lately about the way we live. Not just theatre people, although that is my strongest focus, but everyone else, too. And myself, of course.

I am starting to realize that part of my motivation for creating this "new model" is rooted in a desire to step outside of the way we live. To disconnect from the frantic, non-stop lifestyle and take a breath. Take a lot of breaths.

In many ways, it seems to center on time, doesn't it?

I've been taking part in a reading circle about the book Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. Last Friday, we read several chapters from the book, including "Organizing for Improvisation," which included "The Ten Secrets of the Collaborative Organization." Number 4 was "Allow Time for Ideas to Emerge." Here's how that section began:

Many people say that they work better under pressure. At some companies, tight deadlines and long hours are a semiofficial part of the company's philosophy. But the Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile has found that this management tactic usually kills creativity. Yes, it makes people work harder, but it makes them less creative. In a study of 177 employees in seven U.S. Companies -- all working in teams where creativity was critical to the success of the group -- days that were more hectic were less likely to result in creative thinking. But, paradoxically, the emploees reported that they felt more creative when time pressure was high. Amabile discovered the real story by analyzing daily work diaries written over a six-month period. The people felt creative, but the diaries showed thjat creativity on high-pressure days happened less than half as often as it did on low-pressure days. And creativity remained depressed for at least two days after a high-pressure day.

Keith Sawyer, the author, concludes "You can't rush creativity." I think part of my desire to create a new model involves recovering time. If the tribe controls ancillary activities, and thus owns the surplus value of labor, then each person would have to work fewer hours to make the same amount of money. The 15-hour day that might feel so creative, as Amabile shows, actually is not only not creative, but it depresses creativity for days thereafter.

But it isn't only that. It's aout consumption. Bill McKibben in a chapter called "All for One, or One for All" in his outstanding book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, writes that between 1973 and 2000, "the average American employee added 199 hours to his annual schedule -- that is, the equivalent of five forty-hour weeks." People responded by buying more stuff: "Over the last thirty years, real consumption expenditures per person has doubled."

What are we buying? Sure, some of it is for luxury items, but "much of it simply buys the services that make it possible for us to work those long hours -- more child care, more prepared meals. People who are strapped go to McDonalds." Certainly, this is as true for theatre people as suburban professionals -- while it might not be McDonalds, we are probably much more likely to eat out or eat takeout when we are in rehearsal than when we aren't. We don't have time to go home and cook a meal.

What might happen if we reduced our hours? McKibben writes, "there would now be more time for almost everything, from talking to your spouse, to sleeping in, to volunteering at the local hospital. You could grow some more of your own food, and have time to cook it, using other ingredients you got from your neighbors. You would have less money, but also less need for child care, for work clothes, for the expense of commuting."

In addition, the "more hours you work, the bigger your ecological footprint, too. That's because you're spending more money and spending it carelessly: with no time to go to the farmer's market, let alone cook what you buy there, you drive through the drive-through instead. The numbers are substantial: an American working twenty to forty hours a week requires about twenty-three acres of the earth to support him; someone working more than forty hours requires nearly twenty-eight acres." That's about 22% more.

The effects on our community are as dramatic, and perhaps even more serious. In the recent book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors describe an experiment in caring. A group of seminary students were asked to prepare a sermon on the theme of the Good Samaritan. They were supposed to report to a room where they would be guided through an alley to the chapel where they would deliver their sermon. In this alley, the researcher had placed someone who looked like a homeless person who was obviously in some sort of distress an in need of help. The test was to examine how many of the seminarians about to deliver a sermon on the Good Samaritan would follow the example they were about to talk about in their sermon and stop to help this person. However, the researchers added one element. When half of the seminarians arrived, they were told that there was a slight delay, and they had a little more time than expected to make their way to the chapel; the other half were told that they were running a little late, and that they needed to hurry a bit to get to the chapel on time. Not surprisingly, those who were told they were running late were far less likely to stop to help the homeless person than those who felt they had more time.

Expand that effect exponentially in our ever-accelerating society and perhaps we have an explanation for the slacking of interest in helping the poor, the destitute, the sick, and the desperate. Perhaps it isn't a hardening of the empathetic arteries so much as a lack of the time it takes to slow down and actually see those in need of assistance. Not to mention other people in your community -- your neighbors, for instance.

In 1930, during the Depression, McKibben writes, "the cereal entrepreneur W. K. Kellogg put his workers on a six-hour day at full pay. Productivity increased dramatically, helping pay for the experiment. Meanwhile, the company town's parks, community centers, churches, and YMCA's all flourished. Researchers who interviewed the townspeople found that their interests had grown and changed: they now asked themselves, 'What shall I do?' not just 'What shall I buy?'"

Again, McKibben: "If we are to reverse the trend of overwork, change will probably begin with small and voluntary schemes like those that have begun to change the food market" through CSA's and farmer;s markets. "A number of towns around the country, for instance, have begun to experiment with time-bartering networks. If you help an elderly neighbor cook her meals, you are rewarded with a certain number of 'time dollars,' which guarantees that 'somewhere down the line a neighbor will help you in return.' In a traditional, well-functioning community, such arrangements are unnecessary; people do the calculations intuitively, on the fly."

It is my hope that a theatre tribe might be a "small and voluntary scheme," one that would demonstrate the benefits and wisdom of having more time. The goal would be to take a step away from the status quo and reclaim part of our lives as artists, as family members, as neighbors, as community members, as human beings.

I suspect there are those who will characterize this as nostalgic or impractical. but I think there are more and more people who are realizing that the current way of living is unhealthy, and that it contributes to the ecologically-destructive approach that is destroying our planet. Whether you call it voluntary simplicity, or deep economy, or the "paradox of progress," it all adds up to a questioning of the status quo. And that's what we, as artists, do -- isn't it?

Don Hall enjoins us to "tell a different story." Perhaps we should not just tell it, but live it.

Just a Question

If I'm not mistaken, MySpace was created to allow bands to publicize their music. Could a similar site be set up for theatre?