Theatre Critics Lose Their Vote in the Tony Awards

Julie's Notes:

Theatre critics and journalists have been licking their wounds from a lot of battles lately. The most recent tussle comes as a result of a memo announcing their removal (as a field) from the rolls of eligible voters for Broadway's Tony Awards. Until now, critics made up 1/8 of Tony voters.

Some critics claim the Tony will lose its credibility without the influence of the journalists. Others argue that productions will lose reviewers (and thus attention) because critics do not need to attend the full seasons any longer, since they aren't allowed to cast votes for the awards. With fewer critics attending, does this mean a decline in publication and marketing for Broadway? If so, what does that mean for Off Bway, Off Off Bway, Showcase, Fringe, etc? Do they benefit from spillover?

Ilana's addition:

What does it mean for the Tonys that it will now be primarily an artist-driven honor, rather than one bestowed because of a semblance of critical agreement on what's worthy? What do we lose when we cut the critics out of the conversation?

This gets to a larger question which probably merits its own post: can the theatre makers and theatre critics find a place of mutual growth and purpose? Or is all hope lost?

A Few Pro/Am Questions

Hello all! Looking forward to seeing you in a couple of days.

As a continuation of Ilana's and my conversation about the Professional vs. Pro-Am debate-- which I tend to boil down to a Professionals vs. Locals debate for a variety of reasons, though I think that dichotomy is changing too-- I have some statements to throw around in advance of our discussion on Saturday. Rather than framing them all as questions, I would wrap this whole post in a blanket of Do You Agree with This Statement or Not, and Why? What's Been Your Experience?

Note: The statements below do not actually reflect my beliefs about regional theatre, or the beliefs of anyone else involved with the blog. They're just meant as a series of potentially inflammatory jumping-off points which have been bandied about. The following statements assume we are in a city which is probably not New York or Los Angeles, and that we're talking about an older model, cliched regional theatre, pre-recession.

Do You Agree with This Statement or Not, and Why? What's Been Your Experience?

-- Locals are amateurs or could be called pro-ams, whereas professionals are from out-of-town.
-- This discussion isn't even relevant anymore because there are no such things as lines between amateur, pro-am, and professional theatre, and the recession is proving that.
-- Theatres want to hire the best/most appropriate person for the job, and if that person lives elsewhere, the theatre will use its available funding to facilitate bringing in the best person for the job; if the theatre has the money, they'll hire the best person from far away. If not, they'll hire the best person from close by.
-- The locals here in [insert city name here] must not be very good because they're still local and haven't moved to New York or LA. If they were serious about working in the theatre, they would have moved to a larger city than this by now.
-- The locals must not be very good if they have to hold down an additional job outside of the theatre to get by and therefore can't make daytime rehearsals.
-- To do a good job and earn a living doing theatre, one needs graduate-level training from a good school that, more often than not, is not located in the city in which professionals wind up doing their work, therefore of course the "professionals" come from somewhere else. (ie went to grad school in New Haven, work in Dallas, went to grad school in New York, work in Chicago, etc.)
-- Professional and graduate school training is ruining the American regional theatre model by churning out fleets of mercenary "professionals" who don't care about the cities in which they're living, but only the theatre in which they're working.
-- How are you supposed to "earn a living" doing theatre if you don't live in a theatre hub like New York? So people who live in New York are automatically outsiders to whatever "local" community they "invade" when they want to work professionally, outside of New York?
-- Regional theatre audiences expect the artistic variety that only a steady stream of newcomers and out-of-towners can provide, rather than the same old local stock.
-- It is cheaper to bring in actors and artists from out-of-town than to keep dozens of people on payroll and with benefits for a season. To fill the variety of roles and positions one needs for a successful theatre season, we would have to keep hundreds of people on retainer to make good shows and who has the money for that?
-- Since regional theatres were intended to be an alternative to Broadway, audiences expect their regional theatres to serve as a window to what's going on in larger, more artistically advanced cities, rather than just reflect local fare.
-- Theatres can't lure audiences in without the appeal of "big-city" names or an imported staff of artists.
-- Smaller mom-and-pop operations eventually implode without the administrative professionalization that staffers specializing in those particular areas bring. (Art people can't do money, money people can't do art.)
-- Local designers won't know what to do with a larger regional theatre design budget even if we did want to hire them because they're used to smaller budgets and they won't know how to fill the space.
-- As Americans, we will always have a "grass is greener" attitude when it comes to art and privilege the unfamiliar (from elsewhere) over the familiar (local).
-- Larger theatres will automatically have less personal connection with their audiences because of their sheer size and need to fill the theatre with more people. In other words, a theatre which seats 600 nightly will naturally have less connection to its audiences than a theatre which seats 20 nightly.
-- Professionals don't care about their work in the way that amateurs do because amateurs are doing theatre out of love, whereas the professionals are doing theatre for money.

Bring your coffee on Saturday morning!

Even the Socialists Want to Know

Coming at you today from the People's Republic of Cambridge...

I was thinking recently about how I am naturally suspicious of any reporting or journalism that comes from a clearly politically/socially biased point of view -- whether I agree with that p.o.v. or not. Which is all well and good, but then I got to thinking about all the news sources I look to where the bias may still be present, but it's hidden under layers of declarations about unbiased reporting. So, maybe a clearly stated bias is a step in the right direction?

Whatever. The point is, the Socialists are contemplating some of the same questions we are. I still don't know how deeply I trust the World Socialist Website, but they do some interesting arts reporting. Here's what they're saying about the economy and the arts.

- A lay-of-the-land survey of arts in crisis around the U.S. (circa Feb 2009) that also asks readers to think about what it means to be an artist in a capitalist society.

- "The Future of Art in an Age of Crisis," Part I and Part II -- it's part history lesson, part Trotsky mash note, part call for a de-commercialization of art-making. WCWS issues a call-to-arms for artists, if they are to survive the world financial breakdown. What does it mean to be beholden to big business --whether that's the large theatre, or large donors/funders -- while aiming to reflect the truth of the world? (The classic artistic conundrum, no?)

You may feel there's much to take issue with here (politically, socially, economically, what-have-you), but there are also some elemental truths scattered within. Like this:

"It’s not possible to make an artistically convincing work that ignores or fails to address seriously the most burning human questions."

And:

"The artists, in our view, must orient themselves toward investigating our reality, bringing to bear all the creativity and depth of feeling available to the human heart and mind, to represent the present human condition in its complexity and dynamism."

No doubt.

Closing Some News Tabs

Here's a collection of (semi-)recent news items of interest to our investigations.

THE LARGER ISSUES

In The LA Times, Ben Donenberg reminds us why we should care that US students are underexposed to the arts, and why those with philanthropic impulses should give to the arts.

If there's still any doubt in anyone's mind about the value of arts jobs and their impact on the economy (and culture!), here's a glance back to an older article from the Denver Post. Some of the best bits include:

5.7 million jobs in the arts

100,000 arts organizations

612,000 arts-centric businesses (4.3% of all American businesses)

$29.6 billion in tax revenue

$166.2 billion in total economic impact

FUNDING NEWS

In Seeding-Local-Economies news... The City of Chicago handed out $1 million in arts grants as part of its 30-year-old City Arts program. ...The Troy, Michigan based Kresge Foundation handed out $450,000 to Detroit-area artists ($25k each, directly into artists' pockets!) as part of a $8.8 million commitment to local arts and culture. ...Cleveland imposed a cigarette tax to fund local arts groups, to the tune of $800,000 ($20k grants to up to 40 individual artists in the visual and performing arts).

RISKTAKING

The Minnesota Opera has balanced its budget despite the economy, thanks in part to bold programming and a commitment to a New Works initiative. (Michael Kaiser comes to mind, re: his imperative that arts orgs must continue to take artistic risks, even in times of crisis.)

The NYT reports on The Issue Project Room, which aims to be "a Carnegie Hall for the avant-garde." After years of big ideas and not enough funding, they've got a permanent space which they use to house exciting work by other people. With Manhattan spaces for the avant-garde are fading fast, Brooklyn Borough President (and funder) Marty Markowitz puts it best when he said "I don't understand half the things they do, and when they tell me about them, they lose me. But that's not the point. [The point is that] the arts create jobs."

NEW TACTICS

In an excellent lay-of-the-land style article for Backstage, Michael Kuchwara gives us a snapshot of how various theatres across the country are trying to be nimble in these hard economic times, while simultaneously trying to figure out the new ticket-buying habits of their target audiences. (Staycation, anyone?)

The AP's Jim Fitzgerald addresses similar questions as Kuchwara, but focuses on the issues faced by suburban arts orgs that must compete with offerings in nearby urban centers.

Professional Vs. Pro-Am?

Isaac Butler of Parabasis has an excellent and thought-provoking post up about the divide between the professional and the amateur in the theatre. I think there's a lot to consider here when it comes to questions about how theatres large and small, professional and (as Butler terms it) "pro-am," are dealing with issues of funding, community support, and programming.

This connects back for me to what Jack Reuler talked about here, what Mike Daisey talks about here, and what corwinchristie (Technology & The Arts blog) and John Fogle (North Shore Art Throb) talk about here.

It seems that there are questions to be addressed about how theatres (large and small) farm out the available jobs, whether those are artistic jobs (actors, directors, designers, script readers, etc), or administrative/operational jobs (telemarketing, ushers, carpenters, etc). There are questions, too, about how value is placed on art and artists -- and how sometimes that "value" is determined by those who have little or no stake in the community in which the artist lives and creates.

Perhaps the issue comes down to price versus cost -- that is, dollar amounts versus the actual costs (things beyond dollar amounts) of the decisions that are made -- and how common it is for concerns about price to eclipse those about cost when in the midst of crisis. (And once again, Michael Kaiser's work comes to mind).

I don't know what I think about all this yet, but it's definitely worth contemplation. I'm going to let Allison jump in here and add some thoughts...

Tough Times for Florida Companies

A dim report of the New Vista Theatre Company in Palm Beach, FL, which put out a desperate fundraising call recently, and which faces a smink-or-swi August deadline.

The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center has laid off 20 employees as ticket revenues continue to fall, due largely to ticket-buyers opting for cheaper seats.

Paying the Artists / Paying the Admins

A thoughtful post via Technology in the Arts about non-profits and the payscale for artists.

Some of corwinchristie's inportant points:

-Non-profits arts organizations need to be able to employ artists at a rate that is livable.

-Art is not a luxury.

-Do non-profits perpetuate the undervaluing of art by expecting to have artists’ collaboration without paying them What They Are Worth?

But, of course, we can't talk about pay for artists without taking on the issue of administrative pay scales. What are the big dogs making? Is it in line with the overall budget of the company? John Fogle of North Shore Art Throb blog addresses this in regards to the recently shuttered North Shore Music Theatre:

"Perhaps the corporate model - wherein competition reigns supreme and CEOs are compensated at 400 times the average employee* - invaded this theatre world. I’d be curious to see what the composition of the NSMT Board was but I’d wager there weren’t too many folks with direct theatre-arts experience there. Such a disparity in compensation (or value) is toxic to any arts group sets off a particularly nasty racket within a theatre company. Reports of a staff revolt prior to NSMT’s meltdown do not surprise."

Want to do your own investigating into the top salaries at non-profits? The steps are simple:

1. Go to Guidestar.org and register (it's free).

2. Once registered, use the search box on the front page to find the theatre or other non-profit you're interested in.

3. After finding your non-profit, choose the tab marked "Forms 990 and Docs"

4. View the pdf of the non-profit's IRS 990 -- it's on this form that the organization lists the salaries (if over $50k/year) of the 5 highest-paid employees -- other than trustees, officers, or directors -- in Schedule A. The other top people (like the AD, Managing Director, etc) will likely be listed separately, in Part V-A, under the heading "Current Officers, Directors, Trustees, and Key Employees." You can also check on any independent contractors (actors, directors, etc) who earned over $50k in a given fiscal year.

5. Of course, if you're at all savvy about reading tax forms, there's a lot more info to be gleaned from the 990 -- from yearly budget, to earned vs. donated income, to expenses, etc etc.

This Blog fiercely asks Chicago to fight the Legislators who want to cut arts funding!

The Time Out Chicago Blog tells us just how important the arts are economically, culturally, and locally. Writer Lauren Weinberg offers us an incredible number of employed and involved artists: 132,882 people and Chicago is always attracting more college graduates and theatre goers near and far.

The Blog asks the community and surrounding public to click on the link to contact legislators and fight the threat of cutting out the arts!

Empathy

Sometimes it's wise to back up and remind ourselves of the big picture....  

Yes, the economy is in the crapper.  Yes, arts organizations -- and of interest here, specifically theatres -- are suffering mightily.  People are out of work, communities are losing vital fora for drama.  

So what?  What does it matter?

I offer a recent article from Charles McNulty as a reminder of the Big Picture.  It's about empathy, and how the theatre is one of the ways human beings learn to be empathetic.  It's worth a read.

Baseball Analogy

Ok, you have to get through the baseball stuff (and I love baseball stuff) before you hit the meat of the argument, but it's worth it.   This is good stuff. 

Highlight:

-Industrialization is ALWAYS a wasteful process.

-In theatre our raw materials are people.

-Those people waiting tables in New York, providing casting directors one more alternative look, with enough talent to be ‘starting’ elsewhere? That’s wasted raw material.

-That’s hurting theatre.