Occupy Lincoln Center (part 3)

On October 26th, one of the great pioneers of the regional theatre movement, Zelda Fichlander, addressed the assembled Stage Directors and Choreographers Society in celebration of the 3rd annual award named in her honor. The invaluable on-line journal HowlRound posted the text of her speech, in which Fichlander spoke passionately about the early history of the regional theatre movement and the values that formed its foundation. I take a back seat to no one in my admiration for Fichlander, who has provided strong leadership and a vital moral voice in the regional theatre and theatre education for decades. That said, there is a portion of the speech that is, frankly, inaccurate and one that propagates a myth about the development of the regional theatre movement that supports the lack of diversity that is revealed in the Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change report that has been discussed in the first two parts of this series.

About a third of the way through her speech, Fichlander talks about a meeting she had with the true founder of the regional theatre movement, Margo Jones, when Fichlander was founding the Arena Stage. She asked Jones whether she was doing the right thing, and Jones offered her insights, "and then came the prophecy that appeared later in her book, Theatre-in-the-Round," Fichlander says: “I dream of 40 of these theatres all around America, that’s what we need to have.” She didn’t live long enough to see what happened, but it happened as she said it would. It did grow to forty, and now it’s over 1,000."

Now, it may be that Fichlander is accurately reporting what Jones said to her in that meeting, but it is certainly not what Jones said when, sixty years ago, she published her vision for the regional theatre. On the second page of the book, she writes the following:

"What our country needs today, theatrically speaking, is a resident professional theatre in every city with a population 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, I believe it would be 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 whose population runs from fifty to one hundred thousand would also have their own theatres...I believe that the best way to assure quality is to give birth to a movement which will establish permanent resident theatres throughout the country."

That's the prophecy, that's the vision. First, resident theatres -- theatres with a permanent company at its core. That certainly has not happened with most regional theatres, who job in actors from New York on a per-show or per-season contract. That has reinforced the centralization of the artistic workforce, and undermined the greatness that can result from artistic continuity.

More important to this discussion is Jones' vision of geographic diversity. Not forty theatres, as Fichlander would have us believe, but a theatre in every city of 100,000 and ten years later one in every community with a population of 50,000. How has that vision worked out in actuality?

Reality

According to the League of Resident Theatres member list, there are 76 such theatres in the United States. While almost twice as many as the forty remembered by Ms. Fichlander, it is well short of the one hundred envisions by Jones even using the census of 1940 when there were far fewer cities over 100,000.

Of those 76 theatres, sixteen (21%) had populations under 250,000 and 12 (15.7%) had populations between 50,000 and 100,000.

Of those twelve with populations between 50,000 and 100,000, only three were in counties under 250,000. Why does this matter? Because it is an indication that most of these cities are suburbs of larger cities. We're talking Skokie IL, Cambridge and Lowell MA, Jupiter FL, Pasadena and Costa Mesa CA.

Oh, and nationwide, the percentage of counties with populations under 200,000? 91%.

Further, an examination of the demographics for these smaller LORT cities reveals that the average median household incomes for the group of $66,720. Compared to $45,018 for the US as a whole, this is almost 1.5 times the national figure.

So once again, we find that the vast majority of theatres are urban; of those in smaller cities, they tend to be wealthy suburbs of metropolises.

Margo Jones would not be thrilled. Nor would the Occupy Wall Streeters.

My research has also shown that funding from the National Endowment for the Arts is also centralized in certain states of the union, with New York and California getting the lion's share. The latest round of Our Town funding is no exception: New York and California received 44% of the total grants awarded, and the same percentage of the money awarded. When Illinois is included, it ends up with 50% going to just three states. Once again, these reflect the centralization of funding in certain areas.

Another Goal

Meanwhile, according to the Rapid City Journal, Rocco Landesman, "on his way out of South Dakota after visiting Red Cloud Indian School’s Heritage Center...stopped Thursday in Rapid City with a message: Art is the product of its place.“This is probably the best example of that that I’ve seen anywhere in the country,” said Rocco Landesman, who is finishing a three-state tour to visit organizations with grant money from the endowment. “You visit the Heritage Center and see Native American art produced by the people in those tribes, the Lakota people right there. It’s so obvious that it’s tied to that place; that this couldn’t happen in Malibu or New York City.”

South Dakota is one of three states that received no grant money from the NEA in this round of the Our Town Art Works grant program. Nor did they receive any in the last round of the Our Town grants. The other two states: North Dakota and Nevada. Nevada didn't get any Our Town grants in the last round, either.

Further, and examination of the percentage of submitted grants that were actually funded in the last round of the Our Town program reveals that proposals from cities with populations over a million had a 100% acceptance rate, whereas those from cities under 100,000 had an acceptance rate of less than 40%.

As the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy report indicates, and as this data reinforces, rural communities are severely neglected. "The economics of cultural philanthropy are extremely skewed and this restricts the ability of thousands of artists and smaller cultural organizations to advance their practice and contribute substantively to their communities." Sidford writes in the NCRP report.

"Culture and the arts are essential means by which all people explain their experience, shape their identity and imagine the future...People need the arts to make sense of their lives, to know who they are. But our democracy needs the arts, too. The arts animate civil society. They stretch our imagination. They increase our compassion for others by providing creative ways for us to understand and deal with differences. The arts protect and enrich the dignity and the public discourse that are at the heart of a healthy democracy."

Meanwhile, back in South Dakota, Landesman echoes the  same sentiment. "Studies show that introducing art in communities like Hill City, which has seven art galleries although the population is under 1,000, changes the economics and people who live there, Landesman said.“This is the real work, I think of the NEA, to get out there, to get around and to engage art where it’s happening and to promote that,” Landesman said. “When you bring art and artists into a place it changes that place. It changes that community.”

Perhaps the peer review panels who award grants didn't get that memo. Or perhaps this is just public relations while the NEA and the philanthropic foundations go on reinforcing the status quo. But I ask Mr Landesman, and people who head large philanthropic organizations like, say Ben Cameron at the Doris Duke Foundation:  why should the transformative, community-building benefits of the arts be confined to metropolitan areas and rich suburbs?

If this is truly the National Endowment for the Arts, perhaps there ought to be a bit more focus put on the nation as a whole. Perhaps that "real work" Landesman spoke of ought to include actively seeking and rewarding a more diverse pool of arts organizations. If we want to promote the arts throughout the nation, then we have to promote arts funding throughout the nation. Giving 55% of the arts funding to 2% of the arts organizations that reside primarily in a few metropolitan areas serving a rich group of patrons is simply wrong. There is no defense for it other than stubbornly ingrained elitism.

Occupy Lincoln Center (part 2)

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" -- Matthew 7: 3 (English Standard Version)

Yesterday, in the first part of this series, I compared the income and wealth disparities in the American economy to that of the philanthropic support of the nonprofit arts economy. It didn't come out too well. The income gap between the top 2% of arts organizations (those with annual budgets of over $5M) and the remaining 98% was twice a great as the income gap in the economy as a whole.  I think that should make us all stop an consider a wee bit, because the situation in the economy as a whole is really, really bad.


The wealth comparison came out better than the income comparison, but only because I switched data sets to the TCG membership, which isn't representative of the nonprofit scene as a whole. Of the 160 theatres who were included in the TCG Theatre Facts roundup, only 14 of them (8.75%) had annual budgets under $500,000, whereas, according to the Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change report recently released by the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy, "three quarters of all cultural groups have budgets under $250,000." In other words, the TCG membership is a rather rarified group, and comparing the wealth gap amongst them is sort of like comparing the wealth gap among residents of a gated community -- you're bound to come off looking a little better than looking at the city as a whole. Still, it was illustrative: even in that privileged group, the top 35% possessed 80% of the wealth.


Several commenters attempted to make the case that this disparity was OK because the larger theatres employed more people. Hard to argue with that -- they certainly do. The problem with that argument is that it is circular: the large theatres can employ more people because they get a lot more philanthropic contributions, and so...they should be given more money. Following this logic, if the foundations gave all their money to a single organization, they would employee a lot more people. But it wouldn't be good for the arts or the country. 


Somebody else wanted me to compare the nonprofit arts world with that of restaurants or airlines. This one puzzled me. Would it be OK if the income gap there was similar? Shouldn't the nonprofit arts world, which is nonprofit because the arts are regarded as a public good, be held to a different standard than the market in general? This seems a red herring.


At any rate, the point of yesterday's post was to suggest that those of us who support the Occupy movement, or even those of us who simply condemn the widening gap between rich and poor in this country, ought to recognize that we in the nonprofit arts world have created a system even more unbalanced as the overall economy. We have a lot of work to do here, and acknowledging that there is a serious problem is the first necessary step. The second step is to understand how the problem negatively impacts what is most important about our work.

Diversity

I suspect I am going to be quoting a lot in this post, because Holly Sidford, who wrote the NCRP report, does such an effective job expressing the ramifications of the data. Here's one that is really striking (underlining is mine):

Every year, approximately 11 percent of foundation giving -- more than $2.3 billion in 2009 -- is awarded to nonprofit arts and culture. At present, the vast majority of that funding supports cultural organizations whose work is based in the elite segment of the Western European cultural tradition -- commonly called the canon -- and whose audiences are predominantly white and upper class....This pronounced imbalance restricts the expressive life of millions of people, thus constraining our creativity as a nation. But it is problematic for many other reasons, as well. It is a problem because it means that -- in the arts -- philanthropy is using its tax-exempt status primarily to benefit wealthier, more privileged institutions and populations. It is a problem because our artistic and cultural landscape includes an increasingly diverse range of practices, many of which are based in the history and experience of lower-income and non-white people, and philanthropy is not keeping pace with these developments. 

Later in the report, she writes:

The economics of cultural philanthropy are extremely skewed and this restricts the ability of thousands of artists and smaller cultural organizations to advance their practice and contribute substantively to their communities. This includes most groups that serve lower-income communities; rural communities; communities of color; gay, lesbian and transgender communities and other underserved populations, broadly defined....The [economic] asymmetry disdvantages all of us by restricting the types of cultural expressions we experience, and thus our understanding of what our culture is becoming."

August Wilson

Fifteen years ago, back in 1996, August Wilson delivered his justly famous The Ground On Which I Stand speech at the TCG National Conference. He was angry."I speak about economics and privilege," he said:

and if you will look at one significant fact that affects us all in the American Theater...it is that of the 66 LORT theaters there is only one that can be considered black. From this it could be falsely assumed that there aren't sufficient numbers of blacks working in the American theater to sustain and support more theaters. If you do not know, I will tell you that Black Theater in America is alive...it is vibrant...it is vital...it just isn't funded. BlackTheater doesn't share in the economics that would allow it to support its artists and supply them with meaningful avenues to develop their talent and broadcast and disseminate ideas crucial to its growth. The econmics are reserved as privilege to the overwhelming abundance of institutions that preserve, promote, and perpetuate white culture.

He continued, in words that foreshadow those of Sidford's report:

We do not need colorblind casting. We need some theaters to develop our playwrights. We need those misguided financial resources to be put to a better use. We cannot develop our playwrights with the meager resources at our disposal. Why is it difficult to imagine 9 black theaters but not 66 white ones? Without theaters we cannot develop our talents. If we cannot develop our talents, then everyone suffers. Our writers. The theater. The audience. Actors are deprived of material, our communities are deprived of jobs in support of the art: the company manager, the press coordinator, the electricians, the carpenters, the concessionaires, the people that work in the wardrobe, the box office staff, the ushers, the janitors. We need some theaters. We cannot continue like this. We have only one life to develop our talent, to fulfill our potential as artists. One life and it is short, and the lack of means to develop our talent is an encumbrance on that life.

Why include an attack on colorblind casting as a preface to his demand for more black theaters? Because colorblind casting didn't change the system. The big, white theaters could throw in a little colorblind casting, maybe add a February Black History Month slot, and keep all the money. Nothing significant would change with color-blind casting. Wilson wanted to redistribute wealth in order to put "those misguided financial resources...to a better use." 


Substitute for "black" in the above quotation "rural," "poor," "people of color," "GLBT," or any other artistic tradition in this country and Wilson makes a case for the importance of a truly diverse theater scene that can only come through a more equitable distribution of funding, and the decentralization of theater all across the US.


Less than two years ago, I attended a convening at the Arena Stage that was called "Defining Diversity," and I wondered where Wilson's vision had gone. I was stunned to find that there wasn't much push for black theatres, nor much interest in working in them. Instead, playwrights wanted access to the same big, rich, white theatres that Wilson was trying to disentangle the black theatre from.


We in the theatre give lip-service to the concept of diversity, but until we start putting our money where our mouths are, nothing will change. Giving 55% of foundation money to a handful of big institutions devoted to doing the traditional white canon in front of well-heeled and wealthy patrons won't enrich our theater scene.


In summary, I will quote Sidford again:

Every ecological system requires diversity of living forms, and its multiple parts must all be healthy if the systen as a whole is to thrive. The components of an ecosystem may compete for resources, but they are interdependent and symbiotic. Biodiversity ensures resilience in the entire system, and gives it greater capacity to respond to change. For the most part, the smaller organisms exist on the edges of an ecosystem, and this is where the greatest experimentation occurs. The diversity feeds and refreshes the system and without the innovation an experimentation that takes place at the margins, the larger community loses its vitality. The cultural sector is an ecosystem, and the vibrancy and resilience of all its parts -- especially those at the margins -- are important to the viability of the whole. We need healthy biodiversity -- robust and well-functioning entities in all parts of the system.

As August Wilson said, we cannot continue like this.

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.