Shape-Shifting for a Viable Future
TCG’s National Conference connects theatre to a world in transition
By Sarah Hart
The enormity of change—both ongoing change and that on the horizon—reverberated throughout TCG’s 14th biennial National Conference, held June 11-14 in Milwaukee, Wis. Over four days, the labyrinthine Milwaukee Repertory Theater (itself a physical model of change, having been transformed from a power plant in the ’80s) hosted more than 600 conference-goers, making the event, titled “Courage, Creativity and Change,” the second largest TCG gathering ever (surpassed by 2001’s Philadelphia convening). Assembling from 177 theatres, 38 states and 10 countries, attendees forged illuminating links between our art, our communities, our nation and our world.
The thin lines between the political and the artistic were vividly evident as several plenary speakers from outside the arts arena addressed the role of the arts in our national life, and speakers from within the field examined the theatre’s connection to national and international politics. “The principal difference between theatre people and other people in the world,” said TCG board member Judy Rubin in her introduction of the first plenary speaker, “is that we in the theatre read all of the newspaper.”
Plenary speeches each day were followed by breakout sessions, most of which were predetermined, but some of which, springing from ideas that took hold during the four days of the conference, were convened ad hoc by attendees. Sessions ranged from the artistic (“New Approaches to Classic Texts”) to the administrative (“Decoding the Balance Sheet”), and covered issues of community (“Cultivating the Audiences of Tomorrow”), the nation (“Moving a Federal Agenda Forward”) and the world (“Crossing Boundaries: Experiences in International Collaboration”). Led by experts and practitioners from within the field, breakouts varied in form from presentations to question-and-answer sessions to around-the-circle discussion and sharing. [Full descriptions of the breakout sessions are available on the conference section of TCG’s website at www.tcg.org.] A membership meeting, a first this year, was on the conference agenda, giving the TCG board an opportunity to address the field as a group. A nightly “open mike”—moderated by Huntington Theatre Company of Boston’s acerbic managing director Michael Maso—granted an outlet for conferees to announce new meeting topics, air concerns—or present solo artistry.
Beyond the organized sessions, though, Milwaukee Rep, conjoined with the elegant Milwaukee Center, provided plenty of conversation nooks, and conferees took advantage of all the central gathering spaces to network and carry on animated exchanges. The easy-to-navigate downtown of Milwaukee also became an extension of the conference, with participants venturing out into surrounding restaurants and bars to continue each day’s discussions.
Making a return from the 2001 conference in Philadelphia was the cyber café, providing a way for conference delegates to stay in touch with their home theatres and acting as a central “hub” for activity. A new addition to the cyber café was the video library, a collection from about 25 theatres of recorded performances, interviews and backstage tours. Conferees in search of other visual stimulation could also peruse the rehearsal hall just off the cyber café where the NEA/TCG Career Development Program grant recipients set up portfolios of their work. A vendor fair offered information on useful theatrical services—from lighting and architecture to ticketing and arts consultants—alongside the TCG bookstore in the main lobby of the Powerhouse Quadracci Theater as conference-goers poured in and out for plenary sessions.
As in previous years, performances in a wide variety of theatrical styles capped off each evening—the Flea Theater of New York’s elegiac The Guys, by Anne Nelson, one of the first theatrical reactions to 9/11; choreographer Ann Carlson’s solo sound- and movement-scape Blanket; and Slanguage, a dynamic, hip-hop-infused spoken-word piece by a troupe from the Bronx known as Universes. Friday also offered something in the way of stealth performance: Scheduled plenary speaker Josh Fox, of the International WOW Company, opened with a speech that gave way to a theatrical “trailer”—a sampling of the young company’s four-part Death of Nations, with performers from Japan, Thailand and the U.S.
Funding for the conference was provided by Chris Abele on behalf of the Argosy Foundation, Altman Lighting, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Fisher Dachs Associates, Forest County Potawatomi Community Foundation, the Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation, LMN Architects, the National Endowment for the Arts, Northwestern Mutual Foundation, Anthony Petullo Foundation, Schuler & Shook, the Speech Source, the Bert L. and Patricia S. Steigleder Charitable Trust and Theatre Development Fund.
“Remember that dissent is what made this country unique,” designer Ming Cho Lee exhorted the younger generation of theatre artists and administrators in his acceptance of the TCG Theatre Practitioner Award on the first evening of the conference. Setting the tenor for the conference, he continued, “Do whatever you are doing, but don’t shy away from dissent, and make your work dangerous.” Exactly how to find new models and channel dissent—whether political or within the arts field—into change was a theme that occupied much of the discourse in the following days.
Ted Halstead kicked off the first full day of the conference by outlining impending changes on the national scale. “The wave of history is coming,” said the co-author of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics. “Every 60 or 80 years we have fundamentally reinvented our republic, and, once again, we’re coming to a near-perfect political storm, which means that sooner or later we will see a fundamental remaking of the American republic.” Halstead laughingly illustrated the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of the field representatives by calling for a show of hands (though a smaller sampling of independents and Republicans rounded out the group), but went on to point out that more and more Americans are identifying themselves as independents, suggesting that we’ve outgrown our political system. In this new “Information Age,” he proffered, we are accustomed to more choices and should not have to limit ourselves to “flexibility,” as endorsed by the Republican party, or “fairness,” as offered by the Democrats. These are not mutually exclusive values, Halstead contended. “Whichever party is first to square the circle and offer the American people both—that party will own the future of American politics for the next several decades.”
Halstead’s speech took a turn for the historical as he categorized those cycles in American history in which five elements have coincided to bring about a “redefinition of the social contract”: extreme technological change, a profound shock to the system, change in demographics, great new periods of inequality and partisan dealignment. He indicated how all these circumstances came to play in the period following the Civil War and the New Deal era—and how all five elements seem to be coming together again now, driving the country toward a fundamental crisis within the next 10 to 15 years. “Although my message to you is bittersweet,” Halstead noted in closing, “the sweet part is that it will come—and throughout American history it has always been the artists and the intellectuals who have been on the forefront of change.” [The full text of Halstead’s speech, as well as the other plenary speeches, is available on the conference section of TCG’s website at www.tcg.org.]
Playwright Tony Kushner, while displaying a somewhat dimmer view of the role of the artist in effecting political change (“at some point you have to say you’re really not going to save the world in a theatre”), spoke passionately about the state of theatre, the nation and the world, first in a plenary address [see sidebar], then in conversation with Trinity Repertory Company artistic director Oskar Eustis. “Probably the best of what I have to say, the most useful, is said in my plays,” Kushner told his audience, and Eustis took the opportunity to delve into Kushner’s current projects: the revision of Homebody/Kabul, his eerie drama about a British woman missing in Afghanistan; the musical Caroline, or Change, about an African-American woman who works as a maid for a Southern Jewish family in 1963; and Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, a short play about Laura Bush reading stories to dead Iraqi schoolchildren. Amidst joviality between the longtime collaborators, Eustis managed to fully illustrate the conference’s theme as evidenced in Kushner’s work. “That’s your great theme: people changing and how they change,” Eustis told Kushner. “Part of what’s so moving about following your trajectory as a writer is watching you simultaneously be utterly convinced that change is the most important thing—and yet refuse to sugarcoat how hard it is.”
Conferees exhibited a similar pragmatism. A rational, even wary, approach to the discussion of the theatre and the world marked the tone of the following days. John Gallogly, of Los Angeles’s Theater West, and Ming Cho Lee chided Halstead for his unabashed optimism that a social reinvention would necessarily bring a better world. Candid dialogue and recounting of experiences were common in the breakouts, and session leaders and attendees seemed willing—even eager—to lay open difficult experiences for others to learn from. Like Kushner, they understood that change was the important thing—but making it happen productively and surviving it intact would take ingenuity and courage, and would not be comfortable.
“Where do we stand?” was the first question posed at the conference, and perhaps the most tangible answer came in a lunchtime session on the first full day that divided attendees into groups based on theatres’ budget size and artistic emphasis (canon-based work, new work or community-based work). Under the guidance of a TCG board member, each group filled in giant charts with colored dots indicating overall fiscal health along with rises and falls in ticket sales, subscribers, individual giving, government giving and corporate giving. The results, tallied by the end of the conference, showed that 44 percent of theatres in attendance expect a deficit, while only 29 percent anticipate a surplus. (And the picture is probably even more disheartening, reminded TCG executive director Ben Cameron—“You’re just a piece, and the reason so many others aren’t here is because of their dire economic distress.”)
On Friday morning, Amy Chua added an international perspective to the question of “Where do we stand?”—and the answer was repeatedly bleak (despite her later insistence, “I’m actually an optimist”). Chua presented the main thesis of her book, World on Fire (she blamed the title on her editor): that the combination of free markets and democracy in the presence of a market-dominant ethnic minority can lead—and has led—to catastrophic events. Offering examples from Indonesia, Bolivia, Sierra Leone and other troubled parts of the world, Chua then brought her analysis around to the United States and the role it plays in the world market. She admitted the analogy was flawed: The U.S. represents a national-origin minority, not an ethnic minority, and there is no democracy at the world level. “Nevertheless,” Chua said, “I think you’ll see precisely the same kinds of backlashes that I’ve described operating on the world level, only now directed at the United States.” Her energy and vitality seemed to inspire conferees both in subject matter (“I came all the way from Rochester, N.Y.,” said Jack Kraushaar from Geva Theatre Center, “and if I’d only heard your talk, it would have been worth it”) and for what such ideas could inspire in art (“I’m praying for the day you become a playwright,” said Aubra Gaston from Arizona Theatre Company in Tucson).
Back in the realm of the arts, Dana Gioia, the newly appointed chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, provided perhaps an even more foreign perspective—the voice from within that much-argued-over institution—though Gioia sought to deliver his speech less in the language of officialdom and more in the tongue of the artist. “I wanted to speak artist-to-artist,” said Gioia, a distinguished poet as well as a literary critic, “even though, as you know, I’ve descended from the bourgeois businessman to the bohemian and now the final descent into bureaucracy—but out of the depths I cry to you.” Gioia laid out his plan for rebuilding the NEA—into something more effectual than the “moribund institution” he had at first refused to lead—through four goals: making the NEA more efficient and effective; changing the public perception of the NEA and changing how we talk about arts funding; making model programs of enormous reach and indisputable merit; and trying to provide leadership on the issue of arts education.
Gioia’s speech was punctuated with applause (“I am so bored talking about controversies of the last century!” was his response to reporters upon taking office), but several conferees were prepared with tough questions, particularly regarding the NEA’s Shakespeare in America project, an initiative that will allow seven Shakespeare companies to tour all 50 states. Under fire was not the program itself, which was in the works before Gioia took office, but the lack of focus on American playwrights. “We need to talk about the richness of this country and its ethnic and racial diversity,” said Gary Anderson, artistic director of Plowshares Theatre in Detroit, Mich. “Wouldn’t it have been better to expose those theatres to the full mosaic of this country?”
Gioia was not the only one to unveil a grandiose plan: The TCG board, in the first-ever “membership meeting,” presented a kernel of an idea for an initiative in audience-development that would garner national attention—a goal enthusiastically embraced by the constituency and one that dominated many of the conference’s breakout sessions. “Is there value in coordinating a national event?” asked Gary Anderson, speaking for the board. “Something that would capture the imagination of the general public in this country, hopefully growing the pie of people who go to the theatre?” While the event—or series of events—has not been defined, the board suggested it could take the form of a free performance, set for a uniform date; a “try it and see” event where first-time theatregoers could get their money back if they didn’t like the show; or ticket discounts. Though a revolutionary approach for TCG, the proposal was met with excitement, and conferees began to generate new ideas for what such a scheme might look like and how it could be implemented.
The rousing response to the membership meeting gave way to the theme for the conference’s last day: “Galvanizing and Reaching Out,” a more local- and community-based approach than some of the broader-scope ideas on previous days. In a speech as funny and plainspoken as it was substantial, former Austin mayor Kirk Watson took Halstead’s large-scale premise—change is coming and artists will be on the forefront—and tethered it to hands-on practices and the changing economy. With no-holds-barred Texas humor, Watson related stories from his home city illustrating Carnegie Mellon professor Richard Florida’s theories in the best-seller The Rise of the Creative Class: A new creative economy is in the making and, in order for regions to prosper, they must exhibit the “Three Ts—technology, talent and tolerance.”
“You play such a fundamental role in this new creative and innovative economy,” Watson told his audience, “you ought to find yourself a way to the table.” His advice for artists ranged from the basic (“Invite your decision-makers to the things you put on”) to the somewhat more daunting (finding a way to the table in the first place, when economic-development teams are being put together).
Exhibiting an even more hands-on arts/community relationship, Dance Exchange’s Liz Lerman closed the plenary sessions Saturday morning on a serene note. She urged conferees to “collaborate across differences, make sure people’s asses are on the line—and amazing things will come of it.” Using her entire body as part of her explanation, she encouraged the rotating of the top-down, vertical model of most companies—business and artistic—to a horizontal, exchange model. “But here’s the trick,” she said. “You have to actually ask yourself, ‘What can I respect on the other side?’” Her talk was broken up with dance interludes, both from Dance Exchange’s repertoire and from the fruits of “Collaborative Process” breakout sessions, in which attendees created a dance in the hour and a half allotted.
“Maybe a way to define ourselves is in our relationship to our audience,” said Mark McKenna of Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem, Pa., at the close of Lerman’s address, bringing conferees back to the primary point of contact between theatre and the world at large.
Current national politics may have lent an “us versus them” pitch to the proceedings that brought conferees closer together as a community (though, suggested Ben Cameron in his fervent closing remarks, “There was more disagreement among us than we allowed ourselves to air. More than one person worried that the price of disagreeing might be community ostracization”). Still, Cameron closed with the hope that, “If this conference has taught you anything, in the months to come, when times are bad, there are others for you to reach out to.” Perhaps, more than anything, conference-goers were left with the same sensibility suggested by Kushner in his closing remarks: “I am always aware of our mutual interdependence, how much we need each other, we theatre people, to make our mistakes together, to fail together, to suffer shame together and, together, to move ahead.”
And, as the world changes, our communities change and our theatres change—we can change as well. Lerman offered as her final piece of advice: “If it starts hurting, just shape-shift for a second and it’ll be fine.”
© - 2006 by Theatre Communications Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.