There's a lot of talk about Economic Recovery out there. This talk often assumes that "recovery" means a return to some version of what we had before everything went spinning down the drain. Reich offers a contrary opinion:
This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained. [...] X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin.
His point is one worth thinking about re: the arts. If we're all waiting around, treading water until the economy gets back on track and people start buying subscriptions and making donations at the capacity they did before, we are going to be sorely disappointed. I have to say I'm with Reich on this one: there is no going back.
One example: for years we've watched theatre subscription numbers in the regionals shift and drop, and administrators everywhere have worked to think up new and exciting marketing copy and flexible programming packages to give the audiences what they want and get those numbers back to where they were before. We continue to recalculate, recalibrate, and try again, our eyes on what seems to be a largely unattainable goal.
Perhaps something more radical is in order. A re-think. A big bag of new ideas. Maybe a whole new goal?
I very much like Reich's reorientation of the question, and I think theatres would do well to consider what their audiences really do want, whether or not the theatres know immediately how to deliver it to them. A steep learning curve is likely to be required of us all in order to succeed in the new economy... whatever it looks like.
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