Anatomy of a Mess

I've been a little surprised at the lack of coverage of the Goodman's recent decision to pull the musical "The Boys Are Coming Home". In my book, a major regional theatre yanking one of its subscription shows is big news.

Shedding some light on the situation is Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune, who thoughtfully details the rise and fall of "The Boys Are Coming Home" in this article. I love that the Tribune even ran this - it's rare to find such a nuanced description of the sometimes-painful, sometimes-breathtaking process a play goes through on its way to maturity.

I highly recommend checking out Jones' account of the Goodman's decision to first produce, then trash "The Boys...". Lots of good lessons for artists, playwrights, administrators, designers... I could go on.

Notable from the article:

"We couldn't find enough tickets to give to people," says Dominic Missimi, who runs Northwestern's musical-theater program.... In a weird inversion of the usual state of business, critics and audiences seemed to have a lot more confidence in the show than the people who were charged with taking it to the next level."

"Still, the only collaborators on "Boys" whose work was ever fully formed were the original, mostly student cast members. Too young to be cynical and blissfully unaware of the fatal delicacy of new material and its creators, those undergraduates gave a suite of gorgeous songs everything they had. And if only for a few memorable summer nights in Evanston, that was all it took."

The Regional Rebellion

I wanted to submit the following resources with some thoughts on the current chatter in the blogosphere (am I really using that word?) about the Regional Theatre model (discussions happening here and here and here and here).

I'm wondering if what's going on is really a kind of a natural progression of the American theatre - as in Broadway leads to Off-Broadway leads to Off-Off-Broadway, etc. I've been trying to turn up some data on how long it actually took the Off- and Off-Off movements to generate, and I haven't found anything too concrete, but I'm going to take an educated guess and say like 30-40 years? Anyway, by those figures the Regional model is way overdue for a malcontent child. "Alt Regional"? "Off Regional"? I don't know.


Food for the malcontent child:

A recent article from the Beacon Journal Arts (Ohio) about The Bang & The Clatter Theater Company. This brilliant company is creating a kind of Regional alternative in Ohio (Akron to Cleveland). Who wouldn't love these guys? From the article:

At first, word of the free beer and wine given out at performances might have enticed audiences to check out the unprepossessing (OK, makeshift) theater upstairs in the Summit Artspace building in downtown Akron. But people keep coming back for more of the raw, unpredictable drama that co-founders Sean Derry and Sean McConaha began producing at Akron's Bang and the Clatter Theatre Company in October 2005.

An amazing article from the Harvard Business Review ('96 I think) about how strategic collaboration between arts organizations, such as shared ticketing initiatives, not only improves the finances of each arts organization, but improves the local economy.

The New Radical Theatre Notebook, by Arthur Sainer. Have you read this? Sainer's discussion of the birth of Off-Off Broadway, which he witnessed firsthand, is nothing short of inspiring.


One more thing I'd like to point out: as far as I can tell, girls have been conspicuously absent from this debate (besides commenters and now myself, I guess) . For that matter, I can't think of any girl-written performing arts blogs. Yet another area where the wider Nonprofit world trumps the performing arts: Rosetta Thurman, Katya Andresen, Beth Kanter, and many other brilliant women write regularly on nonprofit technology, management, marketing, and other issues of interest. Am missing something? I would love to be corrected.