What's Next?

Adam Thurman has a great post today over at Mission Paradox about using a "who's next" strategy to recruit board members, like if you want to recruit a lawyer, instead of looking straight to the partners, maybe check out "who's next" in the succession line.

This reminded me of something a super-successful director once told me - that no matter what he's working on, he always has a "what's next" ready, like "I'd love to direct a version of King Lear in Sarajevo", or "I want to do a water-ballet version of The Trojan Women", or "I want to direct my friend's script about food poisoning". (None of these were his actual idea, which was so great I don't want to spill the beans on him.)

I am now addicted to "what's next". I love my job, I love going to school, but I know exactly what I would do if someone offered me $10,000 (or $100!). I know how to express my dream in one sentence. I'm not a director, but I think this is a brilliant way to approach any career in the arts.

Like your company just launched a successful new-play festival. What's next? A full production of one of the featured plays? An initiative to add a playwriting fellowship to next year's programming?

Or you just got a job at an organization you love. What's next? Thinking about going back to school part-time? Using your newfound fiscal stability to start a reading series? Writing a blog?

Or you were just selected for a prestigious directing fellowship. What's next? Setting a goal to re-mount one of your shows professionally? The Trojan Women as water-ballet? (Just kidding.)

Technology

Lyn Gardner, on the possible over-use of technology in theatre:

From what I've seen of it so far, Fifty-Nine's contributions to the productions on which they collaborate, whether it is in Black Watch or the adaptation of the cartoon Alex, are integral to the production and always in service of it. But I keep seeing productions in which it appears as if playing with the technologies is the prime interest of the theatre-makers, rather than the show itself.

The Fifty-Nine Gardner refers to is director Katie Mitchell's awesome in-house video production team. This essay is worth reading for the bonanza of experimental-theatre links Gardner has packed into it alone.

Whether technology is over or under-used in theatre is, of course, a concern for American theatremakers as well. The use of technology seems to really aggravate theatremakers' insecurities about our medium's relevance; we think we need to use technology to legitimize our existence, and it ends up being weilded around like a clumsy sledgehammer. A lighting designer friend of mine likes to joke that the measure of a green, usually unskilled director is their insistence on using "slides" in their production. On the other hand, when used well, it is seamless and unbearably cool - an iPod generating random, personal music for a dance piece, or the Wooster group creating a spooky, campy, double-reality Hamlet, or a great little film I saw used in Sweet Bird of Youth at Williamstown a few seasons ago.

Clearly, I live in NY, so my perspective is decidedly Northeastern. I'd love to hear readers' thoughts on the use of technology in regional productions.

Shuffle Culture

My ex-boyfriend is a visual artist (he's very good). Hanging out with him for like 6 years made me realize how totally different the visual art and theater communities are. When it comes to innovation, visual artists outclass theatre artists like it's their job.

Why is this? Well, after years of being lead around to galleries, openings, and gallery-openings, it finally dawned on me that visual art, unlike theater, is free to look at. Anybody can waltz into the Gagosian and check out a Cy Twombly (priced up to like $4.5 million), but free theater is for the most part nonexistant. I think this leads to some other important distinctions, like if I wanted to see something new by 100+ theater artists, it would probably take me six months (a year?), and several thousands of dollars. On the other hand, if I wanted to see something new by 100+ visual artists, all I would have to do is walk around Williamsburg on the second Friday of the month (or Chelsea, or whatever).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of the art scene (there's a reason he's my ex-boyfriend). But oh, do I envy their access. And I'm not advocating a night where 100+ theatre artists open up their rehearsal processes (well... maybe). But in the spirit of communication, I would like to draw your attention to these productions, all recent or ongoing, that are doing some remarkable things:

Contains Violence, currently getting terrible reviews in the UK, which is disappointing, because it sounds awesome. Theatre audience as Hitchcockian voyeur, happening in real time and space.

Democracy in America, Annie Dorsen's open-source deconsctruction/reconsctruction of deTocqueville with the Foundry Theatre.

Conversation Storm, recently at the Frigid Festival, described by Aaron Riccio as a marriage of Phillip Glass and Chuck Mee

Of All the People in All The World, by Stan's Cafe. A play without a plot.

Small Metal Objects by Back to Back Theatre, which I've written about before. Site-specific, tech-forward, and live as anything can possibly be.

The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, a play without words; "people-watching raised to the level of art"

Along these lines, I'd also like to point out this post from the Guardian Theatre Blog, which calls for an "iPod-like relationship between careful planning and chance" in theatre (Merce Cunningham is already all over this). I love this idea, and I think the performances listed above are making real strides in this direction. The live performing arts have got to fit into the landscape of open-source, of shuffle culture, and of personal control over information. I mean, we should own this one. We're live.

Score one for the little guys

The Times weighs in on the NYTW firings a few days before I expected them to. Unsurprisingly, Campbell Robertson doesn't mention that ecoTheater scooped the New York Times.

Let's hear it for the blogosphere!

Across the Pond

And then we have Europe, where the arts are funded by the government, bold risks are taken, everyone prances about in lederhosen and wellie boots, and priorites are just as confused as anywhere else.

Take these two wildly disparate stories for example:

The Telegraph reports, on a list of the top 100 most powerful people in British culture, seven are in theatre, including the amazing Nicholas Hytner of the National Theatre who comes in at #1. The man who pioneered the 10-Pound ticket and championed bizarro productions by Katie Mitchell and Melly Still gets the #1 spot. The list is full of brave, risk-taking artists and arts managers - Tom Stoppard, Michael Grandage of the Donmar Warehouse, Damon Albarn of Blur/Gorrilaz/etc., Nicholas Serota of the Tate Modern. Even dear old Kevin Spacey! I find it particularly heartwarming to have Hytner at the top of the list, as he consistently demonstrates that he is all about the work, all about access, and not at all about commercialism or ego. Makes me wonder who might get that honor in the US. Peter Gelb? Martin Scorsese? Robert Redford?

Ok, that's encouraging, but don't get too excited: apparently the UK isn't the only place in Europe experiencing an arts funding crisis. In language eerily similar to reports on this fall's UK arts funding crisis comes this report from Prague, which goes into excruciating detail on the pitfalls of public funding. From the first paragraph of the article:

The relationship between Prague’s nonprofit arts organizations and City Hall has long been strained by a series of culture policy changes and grant delays. But the latest funding flare-up brought the situation to a fever pitch, and this week arts groups started a petition calling for policy revisions and the resignation of involved city officials.

Yikes. You've got to love Europe - extolling the virtues of their arts community in one paragraph, snatching their money away in the next. Oh well.

Along these lines, if you're not maxed-out on the shrill discourse surrounding the UK funding crisis, here's an interview with the new head of the English Arts Council. That man has his work cut out for him.

On Priorities

Last semester, the big assignment in one of my classes was a group case study of a performing arts organization. On the day of our final projects, my very wise professor asked each group what the artists thought about working for these organizations. Most of us were stumped (luckily, my group had an answer). In all of our diligent research, ours was the only group to reach out to the artists employed by the company, and I'll admit that our efforts were pretty weak. Talk about a wake-up call.

No matter how basic this sounds, when you're sticking your arms elbow deep into Forms 990, balance sheets, and industry trend reports, it's hard to keep your priorities where they ought to be: on the art. Clearly, this effect can cause some big problems. I mean, why on earth would a respectable institution like the New York Theatre Workshop build a costume and scene shop, then promptly fire its entire production staff (see: ecoTheater)? I'm sure there are things going on there that I don't get, but it seems like a pretty lopsided decision to me.

To counter this disappointing turn of events, here's a story I came across via the Fractured Atlas blog: Luis Cancel, the newly appointed Director of Cultural Affairs for the City and County of San Francisco, declares that affordable housing for the city’s artists is a top priority. Hooray!

So, a New York theater fires its production staff in a move to stay fiscally afloat (so they say), and on the other side of the country, an entire city declares that artists are so important that keeping them around is a top priority.

I keep thinking about those blank stares offered up by myself and my classmates when asked about the artists' opinions. I mean, shouldn't that have been the first thing we checked? We were all pretty well prepared for questions about the institutions' fiscal health... but if the artists aren't happy, then you've really got nothing to sell. I'm not a big advocate for artist-managers, but this seems like a compelling argument for more direct managerial involvement in the production of art. (See the excellent 99 Seats for more thoughts on artist-manager integration.)

By the way, I'll say it again: Fractured Atlas is cool as hell. Read their blog. It is wonderful.

Weekend Reading

Ian David Moss did something really cool today at Createquity - he live-blogged what sounds like a killer conference at Yale (Jennifer Kiger, Gigi Sohn, Sergio Munoz Sarmiento... sigh). Moss writes up some top-notch discussions on intellectual property and audience development for our reading pleasure.

By the way, how many of you have signed up for the NPAC conference? I can't make it this year, but it's going to be a major event, housing all these organizations:

Alternate Roots • American Association of Community Theatre • American Composers Forum • American Music Center • Americans for the Arts • Association of Performing Arts Presenters • Chamber Music America • Chorus America • Conductors Guild • Creative Capital • Dance/USA • Early Music America • Folk Alliance • Grantmakers in the Arts • International Association for Jazz Education • International Performing Arts for Youth • International Society of Performing Arts Administrators • Kaiser Permanente Educational Theater Program • League of American Orchestras • Meet The Composer • Music Critics Association of North America • National Assembly of State Arts Agencies • National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts • National Performance Network • North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents • OPERA America • Theatre Communications Group • University/Resident Theatre Association

Crazy. ArtsJournal started an NPAC blog, which I read mostly to make myself sad that I can't go to the conference.