On a whim, I forwarded a link to my post on Rural Theatre, along with my post "A Vision" and the "NEA Google Map" to Bill O'Brien, the NEA spokesman quoted in the Columbus Dispatch article. I received this very kind email in return, and will likely call him later this week. Here it is (quoted with his permission):
Hi Scott,
Thanks for writing. I enjoyed reading the first blog you linked below a few weeks ago when someone brought it to my attention.
I would love to see your imaginary theatre flourish some day. In a way, it reminds me of the way the Barter Theater was formed, which is one of my favorite stories from the field. It would take someone of considerable passion to steer it along, which I think is true whether you were trying to make vibrant theatre in Asheville, New York or Dubuque.
I said quite a few things to the journalist on this subject that did not make it into the article. I think he did a great job with it for the most part, but I personally don't think it left you with a very accurate impression of prejudices that do or do not exist in me or at the NEA, but I think I can understand how you made some of your observations.
I became engaged in and committed to excellent live theatre while growing up in a farm in Iowa. Much of the most excellent theatre that I have had a hand in producing occurred in modest (to put it lightly), sub-99 seat spaces.
I'd be happy to discuss eligibility requirements, review criteria or any other topic that could help familiarize you with how we fund theater and musical theater projects here at the NEA. If you don't catch me at my desk, I'll call you back as soon as I am able.
b.o'b.
Bill O'Brien
Director of Theater and Musical Theater
National Endowment for the Arts
202 682 5510
obrienb@arts.endow.gov
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
On William J. Baumol and the "Cost Disease"
I love the theatrosphere. What is best is when a discussion happens elsewhere that leads you to make connections to people and ideas you hadn't considered. This is certainly true of the discussion at 99 Seats on "A Multitude of Casualties" and "Good Point...And Some Follow-Up Thoughts." Both of these are addressing the discussions concerning new business models for nto-for-profit theatres. I was particularly inspired to respond by a section of Chris Casquilho's comment that is quoted in the former post. Chris writes:
As Joseph Wesley Ziegler put it in his 1973 book Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage, "the 'cultural explosion' had already proved to be largely a myth: the natural increase in population and per capita income had given the appearance in the early 1960s of increased interest in the arts, but the percentage nof people interested in the arts had not grown significantly." (63) This inconvenient truth, however, was largely ignored in favor of a truth that was more useful to the growth of the regional arts -- the "cost disease."
What Baumol and Bowen said that had the most traction was that the income gap in the performing arts was inevitable because unlike industry, the performing arts did not benefit from increases in productivity -- it took the same number of actors to perform Hamlet in 1965 as it did in 1601, and it took the same number of musicians to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony now as it did in the 1800s. So while productivity remained flat, wages continued to rise as did other costs, and the result was that either ticket prices would have to rise beyond levels that patrons would be willing to pay, or there will be an income gap. Based on this "cost disease" concept, Baumol and Bowen made a strong case for foundation and governmental support for the arts by pointing out the "inevitability" of this income gap. The effect of this can be most dramatically illustrated by the case of one of the eraly regional theatres, the Arena Stage in Washington DC as led by Zelda and Thomas Fichlander.
Again Ziegler, who in 1962 went to the Arena Stage as an "administrative intern" on a grant from the Ford Foundation to improve his management skills (and who later served as the head of the Theatre Communications Group), provides the perspective:
The fact is that Baumol and Bowen were right on both counts: there WAS no "cultural explosion," it still was and would continue to be a pastime aimed at the economic elites, and they were also right that given a business model that emphasized large theatres, large budgets, and a production aesthetic that mimicked NY, an income gap WAS inevitable. But the conclusion that was drawn from those two truths -- that what was needed was private and public subsidy -- was flawed.
First of all, in the case of theatre there was, in fact, an increase in productivity: it was called film and television. While we choose to see these as different art forms, the amount of crossover that occurs between the artists of all three belies their difference. While it still took the same number of artists to perform Hamlet, film and television multiplied exponentially the size of the audience. In other words, theatre was being mass produced through film and television. What should have happened at that point, and didn't, was a reconsideration of the business model. Instead, Baumol and Bowen recommended that the government and rich people bail us out.
Think of this in terms of, say, furniture. For most of history, furniture was created by local craftsmen who made chairs one at a time and sold them to customers in their town. With the rise of industrialization, chairs could now be mass produced in factories, with the result that prices fell. There still were craftsmen making chairs by hand and selling them to people in their town, but the business model had changed as had the market. Chairmakers did not demand government subsidy, but rather went about changing their way of doing business.
Theatre might have done the same in 1965, but didn't. Instead, we learned to beg. According to the most recent Theatre Facts published by TCG, regional theatres now have a whopping 48% of their budget coming from contributions, and only 52% is earned income. Chris is right to wonder "where the subsidy is going to come from," because we have reached a point, like Blanche Du Bois, where we are completely reliant on the kindness of strangers!
To me, this is unacceptable. The NEA annual budget is an insult, and an intentional one in my opinion. Artists continually point with outrage to the fact that more money is allotted to military bands every year than to the arts in the country. Do we really think that is an accident? The federal government annually reminds us how little our work is valued. Meanwhile, in response to the gutting of social services by the administrations of the last two decades or more, the private foundations have shifted their money elsewhere to address the myriad social problems that have worsened. So the arts experience a double-whammy: both sources of largess suddenly are reduced precipitously.
And what is our response? Like infants who suddenly find their bottle taken away, we wail at the top of our lungs about the injustice of it all, and we point at Europe and complain that they have higher allowances than we have.
It is so undignified, and so disempowering. How in the world can anybody in this country take us seriously?
So we need to go back to Baumol and Bowen, yes, but we need to address the economic issues they raised from a different perspective, one that looks at how our so-called "aesthetic choices" are not only aesthetic but also both economic and ecological -- in fact, essentially economic and ecological . We need to question ourselves about what values are reflected in our way of doing theatre, and whether, in fact, they reflect a typically American reliance of more and bigger "stuff" instead of creativity and hard-headed realism. Take a look at this picture from the recent production of Tamburlaine the Great at the Shakespeare Theatre
Company in Washington DC and ask yourself whether it is likely that Marlowe's original production was quite that elaborate. Perhaps it isn't just lower wages that made Hamlet economical in Shakespeare's time, but also a commitment to an aesthetic that relied on language instead of "stuff."
We need to stop crying and figure out a way to stand on our own two feet and reclaim our power and dignity as independent artists rather than pathetic and ungrateful beggars groveling and sneering at the kitchen door of our society. Until we do that, we will always be looked down on by American society.
One of the glaring oversights in every thread I've read about creating aI'd like to talk about "Baumol's Cost Disease," which had a major impact on the development of the regional theatre movement through William J. Baumol's and William G. Bowen's 1966 book Performing Arts, the Economic Dilemma: A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music, and Dance. At the time that Baumol and Bowen were writing, a "cultural explosion" was being declared by writers like Alvin Toffler (The Culture Consumers, 1964) and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund panel report The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects (1965, headed by Nancy Hanks, who would become the frist NEA Chair), both of which helped lead to the passage of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965. Baumol and Bowen, and the Twentieth Century Fund who paid for their report however, deflated that bubble.
new business model is the total lack of math. The general agreement among
audiences and NFP theatre producers is that ticket prices are too high - that
costs are too high to take risks, etc. Due to tricky things like Baumol's Cost
Disease, "affordable" theatre exists in a state of what traditional economists
call "market failure" - meaning the cost of the supply is higher than the
existing demand is willing or able to bear. NFP status provides a vehicle
through which we create subsidy that compensates for the difference.
If we ditch the NFP model, where is the subsidy going to come from?
As Joseph Wesley Ziegler put it in his 1973 book Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage, "the 'cultural explosion' had already proved to be largely a myth: the natural increase in population and per capita income had given the appearance in the early 1960s of increased interest in the arts, but the percentage nof people interested in the arts had not grown significantly." (63) This inconvenient truth, however, was largely ignored in favor of a truth that was more useful to the growth of the regional arts -- the "cost disease."
What Baumol and Bowen said that had the most traction was that the income gap in the performing arts was inevitable because unlike industry, the performing arts did not benefit from increases in productivity -- it took the same number of actors to perform Hamlet in 1965 as it did in 1601, and it took the same number of musicians to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony now as it did in the 1800s. So while productivity remained flat, wages continued to rise as did other costs, and the result was that either ticket prices would have to rise beyond levels that patrons would be willing to pay, or there will be an income gap. Based on this "cost disease" concept, Baumol and Bowen made a strong case for foundation and governmental support for the arts by pointing out the "inevitability" of this income gap. The effect of this can be most dramatically illustrated by the case of one of the eraly regional theatres, the Arena Stage in Washington DC as led by Zelda and Thomas Fichlander.
Again Ziegler, who in 1962 went to the Arena Stage as an "administrative intern" on a grant from the Ford Foundation to improve his management skills (and who later served as the head of the Theatre Communications Group), provides the perspective:
By the time I arrived, the Fichlanders [Zelda and Thomas] had mastered running their theatre to the point where they could do the job without a budget. They simply never spent more than the box office and grants brought into their coffers. Each year there was either a breakeven situation or a surplus....Since that time, however, the picture has changed. During recent years, Arena Stage has always incurred an "income gap" -- commitments to creditors over and above funds brought in as earned income. It is characteristic, I think, that after moving into its new building Arena Stage did not have income gaps until they became acceptable. Income gaps in the performing arts became acceptable with the publication of the Twentieth Century Fund's The Perfomring Arts: The Economic Dilemma, which proved their inevitability and opened up the possibility of deficit funding for theatres. The other justification for income gaps came from the establishment, at the same time, of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal government's first step in accepting support of the arts as a proper function. Arena Stage, with its extraordinary administrative savvy, saw the income gaps could be funded; from then on Zelda instituted additional programs which could be judged suitable for foundation assistance and which assured the Arena Stage would need help. (34-35)Thus, Baumol's "cost disease" became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and like a crack dealer introducing the drug at the schoolyard, Baumol quickly had the performing arts addicted to a combination of government and foundation subsidy. The other pusher in this scenario was the Ford Foundation, which pumped millions into the regional theatre, pushing small-scale operations like the Mummers Theatre in Oklahoma to build a huge theatre far beyond their needs, and funding young regional theatres to import actors from NYC to fill its stages instead of building ensembles committed to a community.
The fact is that Baumol and Bowen were right on both counts: there WAS no "cultural explosion," it still was and would continue to be a pastime aimed at the economic elites, and they were also right that given a business model that emphasized large theatres, large budgets, and a production aesthetic that mimicked NY, an income gap WAS inevitable. But the conclusion that was drawn from those two truths -- that what was needed was private and public subsidy -- was flawed.
First of all, in the case of theatre there was, in fact, an increase in productivity: it was called film and television. While we choose to see these as different art forms, the amount of crossover that occurs between the artists of all three belies their difference. While it still took the same number of artists to perform Hamlet, film and television multiplied exponentially the size of the audience. In other words, theatre was being mass produced through film and television. What should have happened at that point, and didn't, was a reconsideration of the business model. Instead, Baumol and Bowen recommended that the government and rich people bail us out.
Think of this in terms of, say, furniture. For most of history, furniture was created by local craftsmen who made chairs one at a time and sold them to customers in their town. With the rise of industrialization, chairs could now be mass produced in factories, with the result that prices fell. There still were craftsmen making chairs by hand and selling them to people in their town, but the business model had changed as had the market. Chairmakers did not demand government subsidy, but rather went about changing their way of doing business.
Theatre might have done the same in 1965, but didn't. Instead, we learned to beg. According to the most recent Theatre Facts published by TCG, regional theatres now have a whopping 48% of their budget coming from contributions, and only 52% is earned income. Chris is right to wonder "where the subsidy is going to come from," because we have reached a point, like Blanche Du Bois, where we are completely reliant on the kindness of strangers!
To me, this is unacceptable. The NEA annual budget is an insult, and an intentional one in my opinion. Artists continually point with outrage to the fact that more money is allotted to military bands every year than to the arts in the country. Do we really think that is an accident? The federal government annually reminds us how little our work is valued. Meanwhile, in response to the gutting of social services by the administrations of the last two decades or more, the private foundations have shifted their money elsewhere to address the myriad social problems that have worsened. So the arts experience a double-whammy: both sources of largess suddenly are reduced precipitously.
And what is our response? Like infants who suddenly find their bottle taken away, we wail at the top of our lungs about the injustice of it all, and we point at Europe and complain that they have higher allowances than we have.
It is so undignified, and so disempowering. How in the world can anybody in this country take us seriously?
So we need to go back to Baumol and Bowen, yes, but we need to address the economic issues they raised from a different perspective, one that looks at how our so-called "aesthetic choices" are not only aesthetic but also both economic and ecological -- in fact, essentially economic and ecological . We need to question ourselves about what values are reflected in our way of doing theatre, and whether, in fact, they reflect a typically American reliance of more and bigger "stuff" instead of creativity and hard-headed realism. Take a look at this picture from the recent production of Tamburlaine the Great at the Shakespeare Theatre
Company in Washington DC and ask yourself whether it is likely that Marlowe's original production was quite that elaborate. Perhaps it isn't just lower wages that made Hamlet economical in Shakespeare's time, but also a commitment to an aesthetic that relied on language instead of "stuff." We need to stop crying and figure out a way to stand on our own two feet and reclaim our power and dignity as independent artists rather than pathetic and ungrateful beggars groveling and sneering at the kitchen door of our society. Until we do that, we will always be looked down on by American society.
Rural Theatre
Thanks to Nick at Rat Sass for pointing this out to me (I need to resubscribe to the Art Journal feed -- I got annoyed and unsubscribed). It was an article in the Columbus Dispatch entitled "Audiences, Support Growing for Rural Troupes." The article draws attention to Mad River Theatre Works (West Liberty, OH), Roadside Theatre (Whitesburg, KY) and Barter Theatre (Abingdon, VA). Nice article indicating that it is not only possible to have a professional theatre in smaller towns, but also that the support is growing. And it includes a good description of how artists and audiences interact on a more personal level ("We . . . buy a gallon of milk at the supermarket. That's where we get our reviews," says the artistic director) and how the atmosphere is different ("a feeling of more of a camaraderie -- of a closeness -- to the actors" says an audience member).
Perhaps I am over-sensitive to these things, but there was one part of the article that annoyed me. Here it is -- see if you can spot the annoying part:
This prejudice is not only common, but unashamed. In conversations on this blog, many commenters have insulted the work being done in non-Nylachi venues with an impunity that I have found shocking. There is an assumption that anything outside of Nylachi is lower quality which is unfounded and, frankly, offensive. There is crappy theatre everywhere, and excellent theatre everywhere as well. In fact, I don't think the prejudice has anything to do with quality, at least as far as the NEA is concerned, but rather with budgets and buildings. If a production isn't being done in a multi-million dollar arts palace with big bucks being spent on design and actors being flown in from NY, then the NEA needs proof that the productions are good.
The assumptions that are strangling the American theatre run deep, and aren't even recognized as being prejudices. They must be countered whenever they arise.
Perhaps I am over-sensitive to these things, but there was one part of the article that annoyed me. Here it is -- see if you can spot the annoying part:
If you chose the last two sentences, you win. To my mind, the NEA's ass(umptions) are showing. Why would it even be necessary to suggest that the rural art being supported "has to be good...not...mediocre"? When talking about all the money being funneled to New York or Chicago or San Francisco, would Mr. O'Brien feel similarly compelled to make sure it was understood that those productions have to be good? No, it would be assumed that if they got NEA money they were good. But when talking about something outside the metropolises, and off the radar of the MSM, the NEA representative feels compelled to issue a disclaimer concerning quality.Arts organizations in big cities receive most of the National Endowment for the Arts grants because metropolitan areas have more projects.
In the past five years, though, the agency has increased by 14 percent its support of arts that reach rural and other underserved areas.
"Our funding comes from taxpayers in every corner of the country," said Bill O'Brien, director of theater and musical theater for the NEA. "It's just appropriate for us to consider the cultural health of every American.
"But it has to be good. It has to be access to excellent art, not access to mediocre art."
This prejudice is not only common, but unashamed. In conversations on this blog, many commenters have insulted the work being done in non-Nylachi venues with an impunity that I have found shocking. There is an assumption that anything outside of Nylachi is lower quality which is unfounded and, frankly, offensive. There is crappy theatre everywhere, and excellent theatre everywhere as well. In fact, I don't think the prejudice has anything to do with quality, at least as far as the NEA is concerned, but rather with budgets and buildings. If a production isn't being done in a multi-million dollar arts palace with big bucks being spent on design and actors being flown in from NY, then the NEA needs proof that the productions are good.
The assumptions that are strangling the American theatre run deep, and aren't even recognized as being prejudices. They must be countered whenever they arise.
Monday, March 17, 2008
New Year's Intentions
I'd like to draw my readers' attention to the "How to Save the World" blog by Dave Pollard. I just discovered it recently, and while sometimes I find his love of flowcharts difficult to grasp (my spatial sensibilities are not strong), often I find he really says great stuff. This is his "New Year's Intentions 2008," which I think includes some great goals.
Leaving London
Andy Field writes in a Guardian article called "There's Life beyond LAMDA and RADA":
Every year frenzied hordes of prospective theatre students descend upon London, drawn to it like moths to a flickering neon sign. From Lamda to Goldsmith's , they traverse the city geographically and philosophically, filling up the infinite number of theatre courses that it has to offer. And when they finally graduate, these theatremakers rush out to fill every poorly lit, leaky-roofed studio space and every young writer's programme and pub theatre in a city overflowing with them. In this environment, surrounded by national critics and national institutions, it can feel like this is the only place to be.
But London is a bubble - an island of expensive flats, expensive transport and very expensive theatre spaces. For a lot of young artists and theatremakers, myself included, even living in London is a painful experience. And if you're beginning to put together small-scale work off your own bat (especially work that might be considered unconventional - work that's still finding itself, let alone its audience) then setting up shop on the gold-paved streets of this most commercial of cities can be nigh on an impossible.
Fortunately in this country we have a burgeoning network of institutions outside of London that support and promote young artists; places that foster a spirit of adventure and inventiveness.
And Lyn Gardner, also in the Guardian, writes why "The Future of British Theatre Lies in Bristol":
Decentralization and cooperation. What a concept!
I left Bristol feeling cheered, not least because it felt good to be sitting around a table where so many interest groups were represented, from street arts and circus to panto producers, and live artists to children's companies. Everyone seemed to recognise that it is shared interest, not self-interest, that will really allow Bristol theatre to thrive. It was a welcome contrast to the last few months, when opposition to the Arts Council cuts has united the theatre community in some ways, but in others seems to have opened fissures.
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:
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.
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.
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