Occupy Lincoln Center (part 1)

Occupy Wall Street encampment

(First in a series)


As I write these lines, the Occupy Wall Street movement has been protesting for two months that the top 1% of Americans take home roughly 25% of the nation's total income, a shocking statistic that is very difficult to justify morally or politically. For the sake of illustration: if there were 100 people dividing a million dollars, it would look like this:

• 1 person would receive $250,000
• The remaining 99 would each receive $7575
• The ratio is about 33: 1

Sets my liberal blood a'boiling. Of course, this isn't how it works out in reality. While the 1% is correct, the 99% would not be evenly distributed -- some would get more, some much less. But for the sake of simplicity, we'll use this model. 


The OWS movement, and now all the similar movements across the nation and the world, has effectively changed the narrative in discussions about the American and global economy -- suddenly, we are all part of the 99% -- and artists and non-profits have, overall, been strongly supportive. The editor of the Blue Avocado blog, which provides "practical, provocative and fun food-for-thought for non-profits," encapsulates the general opinion: "The nonprofit sector has always been about the 99%. Let's embrace this narrative and movement, talk about it, build upon it, join it." 


Indeed, let's.

A 1% of Our Very Own

At the end of October, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy issued a report entitled Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change. Holly Sidford, who wrote the report,  researched philanthropic giving to arts organization across the US. What she discovered is as disturbing as the Occupy Wall Street facts about income disparity. Sidofrd found that nonprofits in the arts with budgets over $5M, which she says represents just 2% of all arts nonprofits, receive 55% of contributions, gifts and grants. Let's break this out in the way we did with national income above. 


If there were 100 nonprofit arts organizations dividing a million dollars, it would look like this:

• 2 organizations would split $550,000 ($275,000 each)
• The remaining 98 organizations would each get $4591
• The ratio is a about 60:1

In other words, the income disparity between nonprofit arts institutions is nearly twice as bad as the income disparity in the economy as a whole. If the arts are supposed to hold the mirror up to nature, it is a magnifying glass.

Wealth

Let's look at this another way. In addition to the income gap, the Occupy Wall Street protesters also discuss the wealth gap. Income is what people earn from work, but also from dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are paid to them on properties they own -- it's the money you make. Wealth, on the other hand, is the value of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds -- it's the value of the stuff you own. 


In America, the top 1% possesses over 40% of the wealth in the country. Going back to our imaginary 100 people splitting a million dollars:

• One person would possess $400,000
• The other 99 people would each have $6060
• The ratio is 66:1

Which made me curious: how does that shake out in the arts; specifically, in the theatre, my primary interest? Thanks to the TCG Theatre Facts report for 2010, we can get a sense. TCG analyzed data from 171 member theatres. They analyzed the data as a whole, but they also compared data for theatres according to their annual budgets. They had six categories, the top comprised of 27 theatres with budgets over $10M, and the bottom of 14 theatres with budgets under a half million. 


On page 33 of the report, they compare "average total net assets" for each category (in this case, using only 160 theatres), focusing on land, buildings, equipment, investments and other assets. The theatres with budgets of $5M or more (representing 34% of the total) possessed 80% of the total average wealth. Again, using the hundred arts organizations dividing a million dollars:

• 34 organizations would possess $800,000 ($23,529 each)
• The remaining 66 organizations would possess $200,000 ($3030 each)
• The ratio is about 8:1

In summary, arts organizations with budgets over $5M have more wealth and get more, and by very large margins.

Flashback

Less than a year ago, January 2011, I was present when Rocco Landesman, speaking to the assembled artists attending the Arena Stage's New Play Development Program convening, opined that the reason artists couldn't make a living doing theatre is that there was an overabundance of theatre companies. Indeed, Landesman suggested, perhaps the nonprofit theatre system was "overbuilt." After all, demand was falling at the same time as supply was rising, and artists might be better off if the NEA and other arts supporters focused their funds on fewer institutions, so they could give larger awards to a smaller number of theatres.


Following Landesman's comments, Kirk Lynn of Austin's Rude Mechanicals took the microphone to ask whether this weeding out of the theater community would be likely to concentrate more resources in the hands of already large institutions. And what would that mean, he wondered, for the companies whose work isn't compatible with the structures of large institutions?


What Lynn and the assembled artists snuggled into the Arena's brand new, multi-million dollar theatre might not have realized, but that NCRP report now has dramatically brought to light, is that the centralization and concentration that Landesman proposed and that Lynn feared was already in place. To put it bluntly, the nonprofit arts scene makes the general economy look like a model of socialist income redistribution. 


Occupy Lincoln Center, anyone?

Margo Jones in 1951

Margo Jones

"What our country needs today, theatrically speaking, is a resident professional theatre in every city with a population of over one hundred thousand. According to the 1940 census figures, there are over one hundred such cities in the United States. For reasons which will become evident in this book [Theatre-in-the-Round], I believe it woul dbe easier to start in the larger centers, although I am certain that once all these cities acquired resident professional theatres, smaller communities would want them too; and possibly within some ten years the one hundred and seven cities would also have their own theatres." [italics mine]

Sixty years later

•  Number of cities with LORT theatres: 63
• Median Population: 804,000
• Average Population: 1, 460,000
•  Number of LORT theatres in cities under 100,000: 8
• Population of the counties these are in:
• Skokie, IL (pop. 69,731): 5,288,655
• Palo Alto, CA (pop. 61,200): 1,682,585
• Bethesda, MD (pop. 55,277): 930,813
• Abingdon, VA (pop 8,191) : 51,102
• Jupitor, FL (pop. 39,328): 1,351,236
• Laguna Beach, CA (pop. 23,727): 2,846,289
• Princeton, NJ (pop. 14,203): 350,761
• Malvern, PA (pop. 3,059): 433501

Of those eight cities, most are suburbs of major metropolitan areas: Chicago, San Francisco, DC, Palm Beach (largest county in Florida), Anaheim...

Sorry, Margo.

Participate in the Process

Charles Olson

You must speak to your community.

The poet Vincent Ferrini, talking about poet Charles Olson, said "Everybody has to find his or her place. You find a place and you operate from that place. Once you find that place, that place becomes the center of the whole cosmos. It’s like the dot that keeps the circle going around it. So the center and the circumference are the same thing. Especially if you find your place and work that place to the best of your ability. So you participate in the process. "

That last sentence is crucial: participate in the process. Don't stand apart from it throwing explosives into the group like an Oakland policeman attacking Occupy Wall Street protesters. Join the group, listen and speak, participate in the process. The idea of the artist as magical outsider is cowardice not purity. Don't give up your selfhood, but be open to other voices and offer dialogue not monologue. Participate in the process of creating a community, a place, an idea of what it is to be human today, now, in this place.

I don't believe you can live one place and write for another -- the massification of something as local as drama has led to homogenization and and impoverishment. Drama not written for a specific place is like supermarket tomatoes compared to those you grow in your back yard -- mealy, watery, lacking in nutrition and gusto. Find your place. Write for it. If others find that what you have written speaks to them, that is gravy, but it is not the goal. Charles Olson said "Polis is eyes." It is you looking out through your own eyes at a place.

Participate in the process.

Latest Email from StageNorth

As some of you know, I am a big fan of StageNorth in Washburn, WI (pop 2,280). I am on their mailing list, and received the following this morning. For those of you who think that "culture" only happens in urban areas, StageNorth has an independent film festival this month, and their hit production of Hamlet being extended "because of our long waiting list and sold-out shows of our recently completed production or Hamlet." Are you paying attention, Rocco? 

StageNorth where every night is entertaining...

Hello from StageNorth! It is such an exciting time at the theater.  Tonight, more than eighty (!) local students will descend on StageNorth for our first rehearsal of Christmas Carol, which will run from December 8-18th, the phone is ringing off the hook for our upcoming reprisal of "Hamlet", and we are getting ready for this weekend's (4th Annual) "Big Water Film Festival."  Life couldn't be better! We hope to see you here!  - All of us at StageNorth P.S. Check us out on Facebook too!

Coming up...

The 4th Annual "Big Water Film Festival" November 4-6 The Big Water Film Festival offers a whole weekend of independent films from around the corner and around the world, each one "as fresh as the water of Lake Superior," combined with question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers, and special features, all in the friendly and inviting ambience of StageNorth. The Big Water has developed a reputation for good films, a welcoming environment, and a lot of fun. To see the complete schedule of films, please visit http://bigwaterfilmfestival.org/ StageNorth presents... Hamlet Thursday, November 17th - November 19th Because of our long waiting list and sold-out shows of our recently completed production or Hamlet, we are extending our run by another week.  We hope to see you here! StageNorth is taking on the Bard, and is starting with the most famous of tragedies.  With themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption, these 400-year old words are just as stunning and true today.  Starring Artistic Director Noah Siegler, this is sure to be one of the biggest productions of the season. Show dates & times: Thurday, November 17th, 7:30pm  ($9 Night!) Friday, November 18th, 7:30pm Saturday, November 19th, 7:30pm Tickets: $16 Adults / $14 Seniors / $9 Students Reserve your tickets online now!

Jo Carson

On September 20th, a wonderful American playwright passed away: Jo Carson. Perhaps you've heard of her, perhaps you haven't -- most likely you haven't, because Jo Carson wrote plays about specific places, places that weren't megalopolises, places where the national media doesn't venture much. Places like Colquitt GA and Sautee Nacoochie GA, which I wrote about here. She also was a contributor to NPR, and published quite a few marvelous books like Spider Speculations and Liars, Thieves, and Other Sinners on the Bench. She also was the founder of AlternateROOTS, an inspiring organization devoted to community-based arts.

I never met Ms. Carson, although I was reading Spider Speculations with a mixture of amazement and inspiration the week she died. But I wish I had known her at least well enough to say thank you. But its more selfish than that: I wish I had heard some of her stories. In her collection of poems called Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet, a mother asks her child to come home while she is still alive, saying ""I could fill you up with stories, stories I ain't told nobody yet. . . . When I am dead, it will not matter / how hard you press your ear to the ground."

If you are a theatre person who is interested in diversity, I encourage you to expand your ideas of what that term means to include stories about people who live in the small towns and rural areas of America -- the people that Jo Carson wrote about. Read her books, her plays, her poems and break through the stereotypes fostered by the mass media.

But you can start by listening to her keynote speech at the AlternateROOTS 35th anniversary celebration three months before she died. What you'll hear is an authentic voice of passion, commitment, humor, and humility -- the kind of voice we could use more of in the theatre today. At one point in her speech, she says that people can live through hell if they have a strong community to support them. That certainly was true for her, and I think it is something we forget at our peril. I remember a time when certain members of the theatrosphere referred to "community" as the "C-word," reflecting the all-too-common alienation that turns cynicism into a virtue. I prefer authenticity, passion, commitment, humor, and humility.

Rest in peace, Jo Carson.

TEDxMichiganAvenue: Bringing the Arts Back Home

Back in May, I made a trip to Chicago to deliver a TEDx talk organized by David Zoltan. I was only able to stay briefly, because my stepson Jake was graduating that same day from Illinois State University with a degree in acting, and I had to head back. So it is nice to have an opportunity to see the speeches I missed. Here is mine, called "Bringing the Arts Back Home."

Learning from 9-11

As we get ready to commemorate the attacks of September 11, 2001, I'd like to remind everybody about a video message that Osama bin Laden released just before the 2004 presidential election. At the time, pundits and candidates alike focused on defiance, but I would draw your attention to the following paragraphs from that speech:

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. That being said, those who say that al-Qaida has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise, because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains.
Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations - whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction - has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results. And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and we are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.
And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. [When they pointed out that] for example, al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost - according to the lowest estimate - more than $500 billion [current estimates: $1 trillion to $3.2 trillion]. Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars … besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan…

Osama bin Laden didn't do that to us, WE did that to us through our typically militaristic response to this attack. Putting this into context: less than 3000 people died in the September 11 attacks; on the same day, 35,615 people starved to death around the world. What if we had put that $1 - $3 trillion dollars toward world hunger rather than invading Iraq (of all places)?

Yes, let's mourn those who were unjustly murdered on September 11 2001, but I also direct your attention to Wendell Berry's powerful thoughts in an essay entitled "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear," written shortly after the attacks.