From the Executive Director
To the Penthouse!
By Teresa Eyring
When the National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson gave a speech that is often resurrected and quoted: "Art is a nation's most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves, and to others, the inner vision which guides us as a Nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish." That line was followed by a less regularly repeated one: "We in America have not always been kind to the artists and the scholars who are the keepers of our vision. Somehow the scientists always get the penthouse and the arts and humanities get the basement."
The resident theatre movement had its early roots in the decades prior to the 1960s. But the generosity of a few major private funders, along with the founding of TCG and the establishment of the NEA, helped fuel a virtual explosion of theatrical activity across the U.S. in the '60s and beyond. Since that time, the number of professional not-for-profit theatres operating in the U.S. has grown from about 20 to some 2,000—and the number of professional artists has grown exponentially as well.
When the NEA was young, a healthy percentage of its funding was awarded directly to individual artists. But for a variety of reasons, most notably the public and congressional debates engendered by the "culture wars," the NEA eventually eliminated most direct funding for individual artists almost entirely. These days, private funding for individual artists continues to be spotty at best. We lack a robust centralized system to support the professional development and life needs of the individual-theatre-artist community.
For many resident theatre founders, a piece of the dream was for more artists to be permanently anchored in particular institutions and communities. But with a few exceptions, that dream was deferred. Julius Novick, in the 1969 edition of Beyond Broadway: The Quest for Permanent Theatres, observed in the theatre organizations of that period a "lack of money, lack of talent and lack of time," and added that "the permanent, close-knit ensemble with a style of its own still seems at most theatres to be a not-quite-attainable, or not-yet-attainable, or totally unrealistic ideal."
The ideal Novick was tracking 40 years ago is alive and well today in a number of thriving ensemble companies, which benefit from the organizational and capacity-building support of the Network of Ensemble Theatres (which originally took shape at TCG conferences and is now an independent entity). Still, as our field has grown, the artist-employment system has evolved primarily as a freelance one, with artists doing multiple jobs in multiple theatres and without a permanent base.
Many of the theatre leaders I've spoken with of late recognize the dilemma and the challenge this situation poses. Theatre institutions generally have some form of human-resources function for their full-time employees—a way to regularly evaluate compensation and benefits, and to look out for the morale and well-being of the people who are on premises day in and day out. But there is no "Über-HR department" for the vast freelance community of artists that creates the work on stages across the land.
When TCG was founded, it served as a central organizing point for a young resident theatre community, and there was from the start a strong priority placed on supporting artists and bolstering their connection with institutions. (One "connector" in earlier days was centralized national auditions—to this day, I meet people who remember their first encounter with TCG in the context of being nervous about an audition.) TCG has since been able to assist individuals through funding programs that nurture and develop their careers; book publishing, which gives many distinguished writers a publishing "home"; coverage in American Theatre, which brings crucial visibility to artists' work; and individual membership, which increasingly engages theatre practitioners of every stripe as part of a national and international community.
TCG recently held focus groups with an array of artists—actors, playwrights, designers, directors and dramaturgs. In addition to the expected concerns about the economy's impact on jobs and the artistic process, participants expressed their strong desire to be more intimately connected to the ongoing lives of the organizations in which they work. These sentiments were reinforced across the board by a passion for more active involvement in our nation's larger artistic ecosystem—meaning that most artists are ready and willing to devote their energies to advocacy, audience-building and the development of long-term institutional visions and solutions.
At TCG's 2010 National Conference in Chicago, which will have ended by the time you read these words, artists and artistry has been designated as a principal issue, along with race and gender, the arts-learning continuum and the overall creative ecology of the field. Our aim is to explore some of the real structural challenges facing artists; to discover how individuals—people like you—can function at their creative peak as they contend with those challenges; and, finally, to parlay our explorations and discoveries into practical action.
Our field has grown into a vast national network. Ours is a success story in many ways, but we can do even better. It's incumbent on us (to expand on President Johnson's apt metaphor) to explore how to really bring the arts—and our artists—up from the basement and into the penthouse.
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