Not Color VERSUS Rural, Color AND Rural

In an essay on the Community Arts Network website entitled "The Need for a Community Arts University Without Walls," Marta Voreno Vega, the founder and president of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, has this to say:

It is important to recognize that the community arts movement is embedded in the movement of civil and social justice. It is the creative arm of the movement of civil and human rights. Community art is therefore the bearer of history, legacy, tradition and voice for cultural equity social justice and human rights. As we look at the conditions of communities of color and poor white communities across the nation, the reality is that our communities are still marginalized and under-resourced. Inequity continues to stifle the growth and achievements of young people and adults from communities of color and rural white communities. While there has been progress there is much to be done. [italics mine]

She goes on:

the reality is that our nation is still in denial of the systemic inequalities and social injustices that frame the major, historically endowed institutions of our society that generally perpetuate “less than” opportunities for people of color and poor rural communities. These institutions, while sustaining and concentrating their power due to privilege and preferential treatment, are also those that determine standards of excellence and what gets included and excluded as valuable in our society. [italics mine]

"Less than" opportunities. My post on who attends the NCTC, on how class affects college attendance and, as a result, affects who is able to succeed in a theatrical career -- all of these are about "less than" opportunities afforded the poor, the rural, the people of color.

The issues surrounding racial diversity are paralleled in the issues surrounding geographical diversity. They are not the same thing, but they have similar power structures, similar causes, similar means of enforcement. There should not be a sense of competition between communities of color and rural communities. That there are fears about money going away from communities of color to rural communities is evidence that the elite power structure is still determining the terms of the discussion. Race, class, and geography all intersect at the same bloody crossing.

Rerun: On Possibility

America is coming of age. Note the many changing aspects of America.

A maturing America means a nation conscious of its arts among all its people. Communities east, west, north, and south are searching for ways to make community life more attractive.

The arts are at the very center of community development in this time of change...change for the better.

The frontier and all that it once meant in economic development and in the sheer necessity of building a nation is being replaced by the frontier of the arts. In no other way can Americans so well express the core and blood of their democracy; for in the communities lies the final test of the acceptance of the arts as a necessity of everyday life.

In terms of American democracy, the arts are for everyone.They are not reserved for the wealthy, or for the well-endowed museum, the gallery, or the ever-subsidized regional professional theatre. As America emerges into a different understanding of her strength, it becomes clear that her strength is in the people and in the places where the people live.

The people, if shown the way, can create art in and of themselves.

The springs of the American spirit are at the grass roots. Opportunities must exist in places where they never have existed before. A consciousness of the people, a knowledge of their power to generate and nourish art, and a provision of ways in which they may do so are essential for our time.

If we are seeking in America, let it be a seeking for the reality of democracy in art. Let art begin at home, and let it spread through the children and their parents, and through the schools, the institutions, and through government.

And let us start by acceptance, not negation--acceptance that the arts are important everywhere, and that they can exist and flourish in small places as well as in large; with money, or without, according to the will of the people. Let us put firmly and permanently aside as a cliché of an expired moment in time that art is a frill. Let us accept the goodness of art where we are now, and expand its worth in the places where people live."

Robert Gard, Arts in the Small Community (1969)

When I read this ringing endorsement of the power of the arts in the lives of ordinary people, and the power of ordinary people in the arts, and then I think of so many of the conversations we have here in the theatrosphere and face-to-face, I am reminded of the minister's funeral oration over the body of Alex, a young man who has committed suicide, in the movie The Big Chill. The minister looks out into the assembled mourners, mostly baby boomers who have lost their idealism, and he asks, "Where did Alex's hope go?" When each morning I catch up on the thoughts of so many theatre bloggers, I ask the same thing: Where did theatre artists' hope go? When did we become so convinced that what we do is so little desired, so little respected? When did we lose sight of our importance to a community's understanding of who it is and what it believes?

But those are the wrong questions. Those are questions based in blame and retribution, questions that points us to the past: how did we get here? It is what Carolynn Myss calls "woundology," a focusing on one's injuries and wrongs, a dwelling in the past instead of the future. How we got here is unimportant; where we are going is crucial. As artists, we need to commit to a conversation about possibility.

Peter Block, in his excellent book Community: The Structure of Belonging, describes what such a conversation is like:

The possibility conversation frees us to be pulled by a new future. The distinction is between possibility, which lives into the future, and problem solving, which makes improvements on the past. This distinction takes its value from an understanding that living systems are propelled by the force of the future, and possibility as we use it here...is one way of speaking of the future.

Possibility occurs as a declaration, and declaring a possibility wholeheartedly can, in fact, be the transformation. The leadership task is to postpone problem solving and stay focused on possibility until it is spoken with resonance and passion. The good news is that once we have fully declared a possibility, it works on us -- we do not have to work on it.

The challenge with possibility is it gets confused with goals, predictions, and optimism. Possibility is not about what we plan to happen, or what we think will happen, or whether things will get better. Goals, prediction, and optimism don't create anything; they just might make things a little better and cheer us up in the process. Nor is possibility simply a dream. Dreaming leaves us bystanders or observers of our lives. Possibility creates something new. It is a declaration of a future that has thye quality of being and aliveness that we choose to live into. It is framed as a declaration of the world that I want to inhabit. It is a statement of who I am that transcends our history, our story, our usual demographics. The power is in the act of declaring...The future is created through a declaration of what is the possibility we stand for.

What possibility do you stand for? Block asks, "What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your life or in the project around which we are assembled?" Or more directly, and to my mind even more powerfully: "What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?" And the two "overarching questions" that point to the future: "What do we want to create together that would make the difference?" And "What can we create together than we cannot create alone?"

For me, I find myself at a crossroads in this project of expanding the reach of theatre throughout America where the artist and the community meets; where virtuosity and specialization meets human creativity and common wisdom; where fear meets trust.

I recently read a powerful book by Patrick Overton called Rebuilding the Front Porch of America: Essays on the Art of Community Making. In a chapter near the end of the book entitled "The Deep Voice: The Relationship Between Art, Spirituality, and Healing," Overton, who testified in front of Congress during the hearings about the NEA's support of controversial art in 1990, makes a declaration of possibility:

The arts aren't the cause of the crisis facing our culture, they are a cure. The arts aren't the source of the hurting in our society, they are a way of healing the pain. The arts are not in and of themselves, evil; they are an authentic expression of self that manifest in an individual's courage to face life as it really is. Art that is not an authentic expression of self is not art -- it is propaganda, or a product -- but it is not art. Art is the voice of the soul struggling to express what it means to be human.

He discusses participating in a think tank meeting for the Theatre Program of the NEA where there were two members who had a history together, and what seemed opposite visions of the arts.

One, from a very prestigious private foundation, kept talking about the beauty and magnificence of art because it lifted her spirit. To her, art makes meaning and beauty and this is the kind of art her foundation was interested in funding, This is art that inspires transcendence. The other person was from a theatre cpmpany from the south and he talked about art as that which must challenge the status quo. To him, art is not something created to be beautiful, or to make people pleasant or happy or comfortable. Art is something that confronts what is wrong and unjust in our society and is designed to make people feel uncomfortable. To him art reveals what is wrong with out world and, in so doing. demands something be done to change it. This is art that inspires transformation.

As I listened to them, it seemed to me they weren't really disagreeing. In essence, they were both saying the same thing, but in a different weay. To understand the nature of art, we have to understand it in both its "ascendant" and "descendant" purpose. Art can, through ascendance, through the elevation of the human spirit, help us transcend what we know, what we see, what we understand. When art does this it is "awful" (that is, full of awe). This is when art lifts the spirit. It is the exhale -- art that empties us and sucks the air out of our lungs because of its power and the truth of the simple/complexity it protrays in such a profound way. This is when art reveals mystery and truth and grasps us with such intensity that it transcends the human condition, and leaves us changed, forever. Art is one of the few things left in our world that can create this much-needed sense of "awe-fullness" in us.

But there is another function in art, art as descendence. Art can be an invitation (sometimes compelling) to descend from the surface of our lives -- beyond the facade and the masks, to the depths of our existence -- the deep place where truth exists. When art does this, it is the inhale -- driving us into ourselves, forcing us to gasp for air, taking in the force and intensity of the experience inside of us because of the power and the truth of the simple/compelcity it portrays in such a powerful way.

The one, the descendent function, reveals what is and shouldn't be. The other, the ascendent function, reveals what isn't but could be. Art can be beautiful and lift our spirits -- but art can also force us to face the truth -- to descend to the deep place and see the world as it is and shouldn't be. They both do the same thing -- they are a way we can transcend the condition of our lives -- a way we are transformed. These two functions cannot be separated -- they are converse images of the same creative force -- the same truth.

He then, in one of the most powerful descriptions of what art can do to heal, describes when he was invited to speak at the dedication of the Huntsville Vietnam Memorial in 1994. A Vietnam veteran himself, Overton had not spoken about his experience in Vietnam since his return to the US in 1968. Reluctantly, he agreed. He stood up in front of a crowd of older and younger people, mostly veterans of various wars, and he talked about his experiences on a flagship in the Gulf of Tonkin, and later in a naval hospital in Japan. He closed his speech by reading a poem that he wrote specifically for the dedication ceremony about his experiences with the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. The poem, entitled The Healing Wall, is stunning and deeply felt, and while I would like to share it with you, it is much too long for this already-long post. But in it, he describes his unwillingness to experience the wall, and then his eventual visit in which he looked for a name that he did not find -- his own, and he felt the pain of having survived. He ended the poem with this line: "No more walls, please, no more walls."

He writes:

I will never forget that afternoon in Huntsville. It was an emotional experience for all of us. Following my speech, people were very quiet, still. It reminded me of my visit to the Wall in DC. Slowly, people began to move, looking through the crowd for someone to hold, to hug. There was a need to touch. There was not a lot of talking. I saw men of my father's generation with tears running down their faces, something that is all too rare for them. I saw sons and fathers embrace -- with a kind of knowing and understanding that may not have existed before. That afternoon in May invited a small community, deeply wounded by the war, to heal. My speech and poetry did not do the healing. The people did. What I did was extend the invitation. What writing the poem did was invite me to name my own healing and celebrate it. And, by sharing the poem with that community, I invited others to name their own healing and celebrate it with each other as well.

After I read his poem, and imagined his reading of it, and after I finished the essay, I wondered whether it was ascendant or descendent art, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was both, like a descent into hell and a resurrection. In Ireland, Frank Delaney tells a story of an Ulster king who always had his cart pulled by two horses, a black horse and a white horse, because they represented both sides of himself that he must always ride yoked together. Perhaps that is when art is truly transcendent and inspired.

Overton describes a possibility for theatre and for the arts -- a possibility of healing. Sometimes healing requires surgery -- the cutting of flesh and the inflicting of pain in order to remove that which is diseased. Other times, what is required is nursing, care-full tending and attention. But the motivation is the same: to heal. That is an attitude of goodwill, of caring.

And so I declare here the possibility of caring as a relationship between artist and community, a mutual healing to be shared through descendence and ascendance, inhaling and exhaling, together. I declare the possibility that our fellow citizens hunger for what we can create together, by bringing our imaginations together in one place, and that like Jesus with the loaves and fishes, we can feed everyone through an attitude of abundance. I declare the possibility that all people everywhere share this hunger, and deserve to be fed what will most nourish them.

What is your possibility? What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your life or work in the project around which we are assembled? What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?

Comment Moderation On

In the comments to my "Response to Isaac re: CRADLE" post, I received a comment from someone named "Troll Watcher," who is either some sort of bot or someone who doesn't have enough to do. But s/he apparently is following Thomas Garvey and posting a definition of "troll" after his comments. Troll Watcher's comment has been removed, and comment moderation turned on. Any other future comments of this nature will not be posted, by Troll Watcher or anyone else with a similar purpose.

Let me be clear: this blog is a forum for an exchange of ideas, not personal abuse. Anyone who comments here will be treated with respect, regardless of whether I or any of my readers disagree with the ideas expressed. Focus on the ideas. Period. I will not tolerate personal attacks of any kind, and will remove them forthwith. If you wish to call people names and insult them, or have personal meltdowns and hissy fits, there are many other blogs in the theatrosphere where that is the coin of the realm. This isn't one of them. MySpace is a really good place for adolescent behavior.

For those who think you will follow up on this post with an attempt to argue whether Troll Watcher is "right" or not, your comments will not be posted. The issue is one of a free and open exchange of ideas. I have no patience for conversations about personalities. Personal comments will not be approved.

Comment moderation will stay on until I see evidence of an adult ability to converse intelligently. I invite anyone who has a problem with this policy to stop reading Theatre Ideas. If you have something you simply have to say on this matter, email me at walt828 at gmail.com

Response to Isaac re: CRADLE

In response to my post yesterday, Isaac stepped forward (with some trepidation, I got the feeling) and asked a couple good questions. Rather then bury my response, I thought it deserved a full post. Here is what Isaac wrote:

Here's a question that I have for you, because several people have raised it in conversations with me about CRADLE and theatreideas and I wanted to get your thoughts on it.

One thing that happens in urban environments (beyond their sucking up all the arts subsidy money) is that minorities and underprivileged people of various kinds tend to cluster in them, whether they be gay, people of color or poor. I honestly believe this is one of the reasons (not the only, i agree that urbanist prejudice probably plays a part, along with our willing denial of class dynamics) why funders wanting to encourage diversity in the arts target cities... you can get a lot of bang for your buck in them.

I was talking to someone about CRADLE and they said, "i think it's an interesting idea, but I'm reluctant to support it because if Scott is successful, money that could be going to racially diverse communities will be rerouted to largely white areas". I've heard similar arguments ("you know, I left SMALL TOWN X because I was gay, I'm not interested in bringing the arts back to that home" etc.) I'm interested in what you say to people who raise these objections.

Obviously, one thing to talk about is that it's not like cities are free of discrimination. But I'm more interested in an answer that lays out the positive rather than talks about the negatives of urban environments.

My initial response to the anonymous questioners was bafflement: really? You recognized that people in rural areas are getting systemically shafted by the arts funding models and priorities, but you're going to continue to support this injustice because your side is benefiting? When wealthy people do this, it is called cronyism, and it is something we liberals get all fluffed about. So the comment seemed sort of selfish and unethical, frankly.

My second response: wasn't one of the oft-recurring themes of the Outrageous Fortune conversation how the audiences in the institutional theatre was mostly white, wealthy senior citizens, followed by a report on the Broadway audience that was even whiter? To what extent is arts funding really benefiting racially diverse communities now?

My third response (I'm getting to feel like Cyrano in his Act I sword fight): the Hispanic population, to take just a single example, is the fastest growing segment of rural and small communities. Immigrants from foreign countries such as Cambodia are also starting to swell the rural population. Poverty is more prominent in rural areas than in cities. As far as bang for your buck, there is just as much needing help in rural and small town America as in urban areas, and the arts might actually play a vital role.

My fourth response: nobody is going to force you at gunpoint to go back home if you don't want to. I'm from Racine WI, and I have no interest in going back. This is about opportunity, not force. However, I find it odd that the commenter is so adamant about not being forced to go back home, while not acknowledging that by centralizing employment opportunities in New York, others are being forced to move there or forgo those opportunities. If all casting was being done out of small towns, how would you feel about it? Yeah, that's how others feel about having to go to MYC or some other metropolitan area.

My fifth response: there was this kid in my junior high school named Lupe Rodriguez -- I suspect you can guess from the name that he was Hispanic -- he beat me up because I said something that bothered him. Your desire to "punish" rural and small communities by withholding support for the arts because you were gay and didn't feel supported would be similar to my not supporting money for Latino/a arts because Lupe punched me. Our individual scars are dwarfed by larger social inequities. As I have said many times in other contexts, it's not about you.

My sixth response: if all you want to do is do plays for your friends and people who are like you, then OK, I guess. I happen to think that participation in the arts increases empathy, creates community, bridges difference, and helps dissolve barriers of all kinds. So preaching to the choir, to my mind, is not as valuable as preaching it where it could have admirable benefits. This is one of the issues I have with Richard Florida's work, which seems to encourage people to segregate themselves into gated intellectual communities where everybody is just like them. I don't find this very healthy in a democracy. In fact, I think it encourages extremism of all stripes. (See Bill Bishop's fascinating and alarming book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart to learn more about this.)

I doubt that these reasons will be very convincing to those with whom Isaac is conversing, but at root I consider this an issue of socio-economic justice, and I expect anyone with any sense of fairness to recognize this claim, and to not put their own personal preferences and individual privileges ahead of it. Fairness is a universal claim.

Bill Ivey, in his book Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, has laid out a cultural bill of rights that reads as follows:

• The right to our heritage—to explore music, literature, drama, painting, and dance that define both our nation's collective experience and our individual and community traditions.
• The right to the prominent presence of artists in public life—through their art and the incorporation of their voices and artistic visions into democratic debate.
• The right to an artistic life—to the knowledge and skills needed to play a musical instrument, draw, dance, compose, design, or otherwise live a life of active creativity.
• The right to be represented to the rest of the world by art that fairly and honestly communicates America's democratic values and ideals.
• The right to know about and explore art of the highest quality and to the lasting truths embedded in those forms of expression that have survived, in many lands, through the ages.
• The right to healthy arts enterprises that can take risks and invest in innovation while serving communities and the public interest.

I agree with Ivey's bill of rights. In our current arts climate, these cultural rights are being withheld from our rural and small towns, and those elements that I have italicized are particularly lacking everywhere. By centralizing funding in large institutions in urban areas, we are actively depriving large segments of our population of access to arts that are by, for, and about them.

Unfortunately, seeing funding as a zero-sum game is probably correct -- the pool of arts money is not going to suddenly expand to include enough to fund many other groups. However, if money is to be reallocated to support other priorities, it should be taken from the large, wealthy institutions, rather than be turned into a competition for the scraps and crumbs dropped from the table of the wealthy institutions .

Historically, the upper classes have benefited by creating a battle between different groups within the working class. During the Great Migration in the early part of the 20th century, when African-Americans migrated from the rural south to the urban centers of the north, corporate leaders used it as a way to lower wages as African-Americans and recent European immigrants battled for the same jobs. We must not allow ourselves to follow this pattern in the arts, one in which the poor battle each other rather than recognize that we are promoting the same values: to provide arts access to underserved populations. We must join forces to demand a more equitable distribution of the public and foundation monies. The rich cannot continue to get richer.

Why I Hammer Landesman and Kaiser

Every once in a while, I write an outraged post about something that someone like Rocco Landesman or Michael Kaiser has said, and inevitably I will receive a well-meaning comment that will suggest that my attacks are divisive. A recent example was Leonard Jacobs' response to my comments on a recent Michael Kaiser HuffPo commentary, which I responded to here. Jacobs lays out the argument succinctly, asking "why is Walters’ argument always “either/or” — either New York or the rest of the nation? Why is it never “and” — New York and the rest of the nation? Why is it better to be a divider and not a uniter?" What concerns Jacobs is that all the competing values and ideas creates "noise and instability" which is an "open invitation for common enemies to strike."

So why do I hammer on Landesman and Kaiser -- especially when the work of CRADLE is being done on the NEA's dime, so to speak? Am I biting the hand that feeds me? Shouldn't I be grateful? Indeed I am grateful, but I am assuming that the fact that the NEA saw fit to support my work indicates it values what I am trying to do, and at root, CRADLE is designed to counter the dominant ideology that privileges certain parts of the country and organizations of a certain size. The goal is not to denigrate or undermine those privileged organizations, but rather to call into a question the idea that they are the top of the pyramid, the pinnacle to which all artists and arts organizations should aspire, and the place to which the lion's share of fundraising should go.

CRADLE is not only about creating and supporting arts organizations in small and rural communities, but also about promoting such organizations as equally valuable to the artistic landscape of the US, and equally viable as a career path for artists. So when Landesman, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is quoted as saying, "I don't know if there's a theater in Peoria, but I would bet that it's not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman,” I feel it requires a response from me.

People like Landesman and Kaiser are thought leaders for the industry. They have bully platforms from which to speak. Kaiser, as head of the Kennedy Center, one of those privileged institutions located in the nation's capitol, writes for the Huffington Post, one of the most important on-line sources of political and cultural information. Landesman, as head of the NEA, has access to mainstream media such as Newsweek magazine, or the Associated Press. So what they say is distributed throughout the nation, and usually remains unquestioned. The Newsweek writer, Jeremy McCarter, provides a knowing wink to Landesman's refusal to acknowledge that his Peoria comments were insulting. In fact, McCarter paints them as "heterodox," implying that to hold such ideas was an indication of independence, a "principled" stand against political PC, uttered by a man known for his admirable outspokenness. While liberal thinkers scoff at the powder-puff questions Fox News throws at Sarah Palin, nobody questions whether McCarter, who previously was a theatre critic for New York Magazine and the New York Sun, might be doing the same thing for Landesman. The Nylachi bias is so deeply ingrained that, unless you are attuned to it, it goes by without notice. It is what French critic Roland Barthes called a "doxa," an "it-goes-without saying."

One way I have found effective for revealing doxa is to translate the statement into a context that we are sensitive to in our society. Let's try that with Landesman's Peoria statement:

• "I don't know if there's a theatre for African-Americans, but I would bet that it's not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman."
• "I don't know if there's a theatre for women, but I would bet that it's not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman."

Nobody would allow such statements to pass without comment, and I would predict that the focus of such commentary would be on Landesman's definition of "good." For Landesman and Kaiser, "good" is synonymous with "well-known," "well-funded,"and as a result "metropolitan." Fame, fortune, urban. This is the recent ideology of America.

Italian Marxist critic Antonio Gramsci called this "cultural hegemony,"which is described on Wikipedia as the idea "that a culturally-diverse society can be ruled or dominated by one of its social classes. It is the dominance of one social group over another, i.e. the ruling class over all other classes. The ideas of the ruling class come to be seen as the norm; they are seen as universal ideologies, perceived to benefit everyone whilst only really benefiting the ruling class." The use of the word "good" masks the underlying power structure supporting the term. In this case, the ruling class has the traditional background: Landesman is a Yale grad, Kaiser hails from MIT's Sloan School of Management.

What Landesman means by "good" is focused solely on the product. The production of August: Osage County or Krapp's Last Tape is "good" because it pulls together well-known artists to create a well-funded product that demonstrates, not surprisingly (although not always), aesthetic virtuosity. The acting is "good," the setting and costumes are "good," the play is "good."

This single-minded focus on the product is what Karl Marx called "commodity festishism." Again, I will refer to Wikipedia's description: "Marx argued that commodity fetishism tends to subordinate social relations among people to relationships between humans and objects: for example, the relationship between producer and consumer is obscured. The producer can only see his relationship with the object he produces, being unaware of the people who will ultimately use that object." [ital and bold mine]

Building on Marx, I propose that the definition of "good" should not solely focus on the art object itself, a focus which privileges money and fame and makes a fetish out of virtuosity. Instead, "good" should be defined as reflecting the "relationship between producer and consumer" that is mediated by the art object. In other words, what makes something good is the effect that an artist (producer) has through his or her work (object) on the audience (consumer). Imagine a triangle with "artist," "production," and "audience" at the three corners: "good" lives in the middle of the triangle.

The effect of this is to level the playing field by making value contingent on something outside the work of art: the effect on the public. So the San Francisco Actor's Workshop 1957 production of Waiting for Godot played in front of the inmates of San Quentin was "good" because the artists, the work of art, and the audience connected -- the experience had value whether or not the art object itself was as well-known (SF Actor's Workshop was relatively unknown) and well-funded (and it didn't have much money) as, say, the production done at Lincoln Center directed by Mike Nichols, starring Steve Martin, Robin Williams, F. Murray Abraham, and Bill Irwin and designed by Jennifer Tipton and Tony Walton. Using Landesman's definition of "good," the Lincoln Center production was "better" than the San Quentin production; using mine, the San Quentin production knocks the ball out of the park.

It might be argued that the effect of a work of art on an audience is impossible to measure. Perhaps so. But is it really any harder to measure than the "quality" of a work of art itself? Have we really ever successfully defined what that means? What it means in practice is that somebody with status says "I liked it," and then proceeds to reify their preference by placing it "inside" the work of art. (See Chapter 2 of John Carey's book What Good Are the Arts? for a thorough analysis of how this process works.) So "good" becomes defined as "what important people like." And we find ourselves back to the ruling class.

Others would argue that a relational definition of "good" would change from performance to performance. True, which would be fitting for an art form that changes night to night, right? And others still would argue that the work of art might appeal to someone in the audience -- isn't that enough? Indeed it is, although on the continuum of goodness, it would place the work near the lower end. But that's rank commercialism, another might object, the merely popular! To some extent, yes -- in the sense that in order for something to be "good" it needs to affect more people. But there are things that are popular that don't have an effect on the audience, as anybody who has left a blockbuster movie disappointed can attest.

The point is that the current definition of "good" reflects an ideology that privileges money and fame (and locale is part of this equation -- the intersection of money and fame, if you will). It is not "objective," it is ideologically charged, and defined by the ruling class. And it is an ideology that I reject as inappropriate for the democratic (little "d"), anti-elitist ideals upon which our country is based.

Royalists historically have tried to sneak aristocracy in through the back door by embracing the arts, which is why many of the Founding Fathers were suspicious of things artistic. While we tend to think the anti-art prejudice is Puritan, which creates a distant scapegoat that we can all bash, the fact is that the anti-art prejudice is rooted deep within our democratic ideals, ideals informed by the experiences that men like John Adams had in France seeing how the rich used the arts to display their superiority. America managed to avoid this elitism until the late 19th century, when people of wealth and privilege split the arts into high art and low art as a way of becoming an aristocracy. (See Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America for an excellent description of how this process occurred.)

I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, but rather that we are taking for granted ideas that need to be examined. And the only way to examine them is to make them visible.

That's what I do.

More Landesman BS

So there is an article about Rocco Landesman in Newsweek (h/t Teresa Eyring on Twitter), which includes some discussion of the Peoria bash he made when he first came to office that few in the theatrosphere really even noticed, so well did it fit with their view of the arts world. So did Landesman, who made a trip to Peoria as the kickoff for his "Art Works" tour, where he acknowledged the important role that places like Peoria play in the arts ecosphere, comparing it to the relationship between minor league baseball teams and the majors. I am wondering whether his "Art Works" tour ever crosses Michael Kaiser's "Arts in Crisis" tour? Maybe they could get together and sing more completely tone deaf, arrogant, elitist songs together. Lest we think that Landesman might have actually learned something from this early controversy, we are treated to this parsing of the situation:

"The general feeling about the Peoria thing was 'Whoops!' " he told me last fall. "Not my feeling at all. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I'd retract in what I was saying." Last month he said he "loves" the people in Peoria, but he still wouldn't take back a word."

Jeremy McCarter, the Newsweek correspondent writing ths story, seems to find this idiocy oh-so-charming: "When the 62-year-old Landesman says heterodox things like this," he write, "he breaks into a little grin: the more heterodox the sentiment, the bigger the grin. But this isn't stubbornness or a wicked streak talking. Landesman is asserting a principle here, one that marks the first real change of his tenure."

And that principle is to break out the old ax handle term "excellence," long undefined (I guess, like porn, you just know it when you see it), mostly reflective of budget, and highly urbanized. But hey, it's a principle, right? McCarter explains:

"Throughout its 45-year history, the NEA has tried to strike a balance between fostering artistic excellence and broadening access to underserved communities. Landesman's predecessor, Gioia, emphasized access, boasting of sending grants to all 435 congressional districts—a policy that, not coincidentally, pleased the 435 members of the House. Landesman, for his part, makes a more spirited case for excellence."

Actually, this is a self-serving description. Gioia didn't emphasize "access," he emphasized the fact that the NEA is supposed to be a national endowment, and that there was artistic activity taking place all over the country, not just in big city institutions that have been around long enough to Hoover up most of the arts funding. Recognizing he might be sounding a bit too Nylachi (notice the three cities he mentions -- I'm not going to claim that he's been reading Theatre Ideas, but I do have a grant from the NEA...one that will probably not be renewed because I'm not in Nylachi), he mouths, "Now art is not just in the big cities. It's everywhere—it's all around the country, and we support it where we find it. We're not limited to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles," he says." Wherever we find it, and find that it is created in wealthy institutions by mainstream artists preferably imported from Nylachi... "But I do believe this notion of putting a grant in every single county and congressional district because it's a county and congressional district, even when there's no valid recipients, when there are no arts organizations to speak of, is crazy."

Valid recipients. Are you catching this? Are you seeing the way the language of "excellence," of "validity," is used to mask the real ideas, which are "privileged" and "urban"? But he's willing to throw a bone: "Landesman acknowledges that this is "to some degree a shift in the NEA viewpoint." He knows that it might make life difficult on Capitol Hill, even though the new focus doesn't mean that the agency is going to abandon swaths of the country. The NEA's arts-education programs, for instance, will continue to reach communities everywhere. "

And like Lou Costello thrown over to third base, we are passed over to Michael Kaiser, who will tell us that money spent on arts education is well-spent because it will inspire some kids like Leontyne Price to leave home for NYC and make her hometown proud by singing everywhere except her hometown.

I discovered this article a few moments after having read this inspirational blog post by Suzanne Lainson at Brands plus Music (h/t Don Hall and Cal Pritner). I would recommend that Landesman read it, and read it carefully, and then look up and see the bus bearing down on the arts. His attitudes are old fashioned, elitist, and ultimately dangerous to the health of the arts. And this is the man that I was advised I should give a chance after the Peoria quotation.

I'm going to mash together pictures of Michael Kaiser and Rocco Landesman and use them as emblems of just what CRADLE is fighting against.

Trickle-Down Artistry: On Leonard Jacobs and Michael Kaiser

Leonard Jacobs has written a lengthy rebuttal on the Clyde Fitch Report of my comments concerning Michael Kaiser's post on HuffPo "Where Are the Arts Important?", and Tom Loughlin has weighed on his blog "A Poor Player" in with a post entitled "Theatrical Wealth." (These literature reviews are getting longer and longer lately. I suspect it would be helpful for you to read these posts before continuing, if you can do so, but I will do my best to provide a fair representation of the arguments presented by others.)

First of all, I'd like to thank Leonard for taking the time to seriously discuss the issues I raised, and for presenting my ideas fairly -- that is not always something that happens in the blogging community, which often sets arguments a-spinning as a way of attacking an argument without having to provide actual thoughts of one's own. I also thank Leonard for referring to me as an "articulate blogger." I take that as high praise from someone who makes a living as a writer. He also predicts, quite accurately, that I will "attempt to refute [his] argument at every turn." Welcome to the refutation.

The title of his post makes his first argument: "Michael Kaiser ÷ Scott Walters ≤ U.S. Senate." What he means is that, if there are too many differing viewpoints being expressed, "noise and instability" is the result, which is an "open invitation for our common enemies to strike." This argument sounds an awful lot like the arguments used to condemn dissent in the run-up to the Iraq War (I guess the NEA is the artistic World Trade Center), but the analogy Jacobs explicitly makes is the grid-locked U.S. Senate, where nothing is able to get done because everybody is pushing their own ego-driven agenda ala our good friens Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman. He concludes with an Obama-like "can gridlock yield to compromise? Can cacophonies harmonize into the collective good?"

My answer would be "of course it can," but agreement without discussion of the issues is simply rubber-stamping the status quo. As Tom Loughlin points out, this is an issue of fairness and justice, two terms that used to be the foundation of our democratic society, but which in this age of easy cynicism have often been dismissed as naive. So call me naive. The point that Tom Loughlin makes is central: what we currently have is a system that has concentrated artistic wealth in the hands of a very small portion of the community. In the case of arts that are not able to be distributed on a mass basis, as is the case with live performances, such centralization privileges certain populations and excludes large segments of society that are equally deserving of artistic experience and participation. This situation is not fair, not just, and directly results in arts funding being seen as yet another pork barrel. I am not surprised that Jacobs, who lives within the theatrical version of the beltway, thinks that this issue is a "canard" that was "dismissed long ago," but I can assure him the issue is alive and well west of the Hudson -- and rightly so.

In fact, Jacobs defends the status quo by pointing out that states like South Carolina and Texas, through their Republican governors, don't really want government money anyway. I would remind him, however, that it was a Senator from New York, Alphonse D'Amato, who was one of the leaders of anti-NEA forces during the 1990s. Following Jacobs' logic, that would be an indication that government money should have shifted to more supportive places -- say, to Rhode Island, where Claiborne Pell played such an important role in supporting the arts. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Because it is irrelevant.

Continuing his defense of centralized, urbanized arts funding, Jacobs trots out a canard of his own: "How many studies does the arts community need," Jacobs asks, "regarding the impossibility of making a living as an artist in, say, Dayton or Missoula or Little Rock or Providence or Portland, as evidence for why planeloads of artists still head to New York or Los Angeles or Chicago each year?" I suppose there are several ways to approach this question. For instance, a look at the annual report of the Actors Equity Association shows that just under 50% of its membership didn't work at all in the 2008-2009 season, that during any particular week a little more than 86% were unemployed, and the median annual earnings was less than $7700 -- which is hardly "making a living," in my book. I might also suggest that Jacobs not make this assertion about the impossibility of making a living to, say, Michael Fields at Dell Arte in Blue Lake CA (pop 1135) or Dudley Cocke at Appalshop in Whitesburg KY (pop 1600).

But the real thing that the arts community needs to learn from all those studies, it seems to me, is that what doesn't work is the current system that depends on artist-specialists creating products built with a lot of resources and sold at high prices to passive, middle-class spectators who sit in large, expensive pieces of real estate -- and it doesn't take more than a glance at a theatre's balance sheet to see how much unearned income is required to keep the H. M. S. Arts Status Quo afloat. Regardless, none of these statistics justifies anyone whistling their way to Nylachi in the hopes of "making a living." That's a myth that needs to be retired altogether.

Referring to my supposed "anti-New York bias," Jacobs asks why my argument is "always “either/or” — either New York or the rest of the nation? Why is it never “and” — New York and the rest of the nation? Why is it better to be a divider and not a uniter?" I must admit, this puzzles me, since my conclusion that "If you want a democratic society to support the arts, distribute the money democratically" says nothing about taking all the money away from NY and handing it out to everybody else. What I am saying is that giving most of the money to NYC and a handful of other urban areas is not the same thing as distributing the money democratically.

Jacobs and Kaiser are both relying on an artistic verison of trickle-down economics, in which money given to the wealthiest will eventually trickle down to those who are poorer. It is an idea that has been conclusively disproven in econmics (as our increasingly appalling income gap in the US demonstrates), and it doesn't work in the arts either. The fact is that Las Vegas' slogan reflects the current artistic status quo: what happens in Nylachi, stays in Nylachi, Leontyne Price's visit to Rochester notwithstanding.

What I am calling for is an admission from the likes of Kaiser and Jacobs, and frankly the rest of the artistic community, that the current system privileges certain areas, describes it as inevitable when it is not, then reifies that privilege by focusing additional funding within those areas. So, for instance, the Mellon Foundation's theatre program chooses a handful of metropolitan areas within which to concentrate its funding, including predictably New York, and within those areas devotes most of its money to "leading" arts institutions, i.e., the corporate rich, who use it to make bigger, brighter, shinier products for the privileged few. This privilege is then brazenly presented as based on "merit" (rather than financial privilege) and artistic "enlightenment" (in opposition to the great unwashed in the "flyover" part of the country). Further, defying all logic, the concentration of money is dismissed as having no connection with the concentration of artists in these places: Jacobs trots out the old canard (I love using that word) that nobody "forced" artists "at artistic or physical gunpoint, to abandon their hometowns," which of course ignores the collective power of ideology (communicated constantly, but most nakedly by Frank Sinatra in his signature song "New York, New York") and economic coercion through the aforementioned financial concentration. And then Kaiser tours the country telling everyone how the arts are so important because their local talent got an opportunity to perform in New York. It is narrow parochialism masquerading as open-minded generosity. The wealthy seeking a cheerful handout from the poor.

So if Jacobs thinks we should all unite behind an idea, I suggest it be behind the idea of the broadening and deepening the importance of the arts by supporting participation and creation throughout this country. To put it in slogan form: artistic democracy, not plutocracy.