February 2007 Field Letter
Written on January 28, 2007
You will by now have heard TCG's momentous news. Shortly after my last letter to you, the Board of Directors announced the appointment of Teresa Eyring as TCG's next executive director. Many of you already know her well. Others will soon have the pleasure of meeting a wonderful person and gifted leader with a deep dedication to the field, its mission and meaning in the community. Teresa serves currently as managing director of the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis where, with artistic director Peter Brosius, she has helped build a Tony Award-winning theatre producing adaptations of classics and new work for young audiences by many of the country's finest playwrights. Before coming to Children's Theatre she served for five years as managing director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Earlier in her career she worked at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis as assistant executive director and at both Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, CT, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Teresa is widely recognized for her leadership both within the theatre and the communities where she's worked.
A new era of leadership promises the prospect of a new vision and as yet unimagined possibilities. Teresa will lead an organization whose strength derives from both its diversity and its unity. Served so well for many years by Ben Cameron, Joan Channick and a remarkable Board of Directors, TCG reflects the vibrancy, commitment and creativity of the field and is poised to embrace the challenges and opportunities ahead. As Teresa concludes her work in Minneapolis and makes plans for a new home in New York, the TCG staff is preparing to welcome her. She will officially assume her new duties in late March.
TCG held its winter Board of Directors meeting last week followed by the annual meeting of its trustee council, the National Council for the American Theatre. In its board and trustee advisors, TCG could not be better served. Individually, the members of the current Board of Directors, representing the breadth and diversity of the field, bring extensive expertise and a wealth of experience. And they each give TCG not only dedicated oversight but countless hours of work attending to its goals and programs. Occasionally one or two have joked that they also sometimes work on their own theatres or projects when they're not working for TCG. I think there's more than a little truth in the jest. The board includes seven new members currently in the first year of their term, and it's a great group. A hearty welcome to Doug Brown, Philip Himberg, Rachel Kraft, Marc Masterson, Mark Shugoll and Kate Warner.
Under the leadership of President Abel López, the board oversees many of TCG's activities through a structured committee process. Board members serve on one or more of a number of committees including Artists, Audiences, Finance, Resources, Audit, Nominating, Selection, National Conference and International. The committees provide oversight and guidance, and they also serve as resident think tanks to explore issues and consider how TCG can enhance and expand its services to members, the larger theatre community and the public. Each board meeting's agenda includes discussion of a range of TCG programs and committee work. Of particular note at this meeting was a comprehensive discussion of TCG's international services. Led by Emilya Cachapero, TCG's director of artistic programs and director of the International Theatre Institute/U.S, the discussion focused on how TCG can best serve the field in the years to come in an area where the need and opportunities are so great. Over the coming weeks, Emilya will be reaching out to a number of you to invite your participation in a series of teleconference field conversations to explore how we can most effectively enhance international work within theatres, expand international exchange and meaningfully increase cross-cultural understanding.
Each January, the trustee members of TCG's National Council for the American Theatre gather in New York for a joint meeting with the Board preceding the Council's own meeting. This year the trustees' discussion focused on audience development, particularly the innovative programs within member theatres—what works, what doesn't and why—as well as how ideas and knowledge can be disseminated most effectively. It was a fascinating discussion. The potential of free, discounted or pay-what-you-can programs to build new audiences was compared to the increasing success of Restaurant Week programs around the country. One trustee described a compelling program at her theatre called the America Project that's designed to evolve over time. Intended to develop a core audience, the project enlists participation in a group that once a year for five years together attends a show that lends itself to a post-show discussion of civic engagement. The members develop strong bonds with each other and a deep investment in the theatre.
Several National Council trustees highlighted the opportunities technology offers to engage audiences more deeply and to bring young people into the theatre, whether through pre- and post-show online discussions with the artistic director or playwright, iPod commentaries or the promotional use of videotaped segments from a production. The need to communicate with the next generation of theatregoers on their own terms was beautifully illustrated by one council member's story about his teenage son. He wryly recounted a recent time in which his son had need to send off a hard copy letter—evidently a rare event, since the stamp had been placed in the wrong corner of the envelope. (Anecdote repeated with permission of father, if not son.)
At TCG we're busily engaged these days with planning for the 2007 National Conference to be held June 7–9 in Minneapolis. The opening of the original Guthrie Theater was catalytic in the evolution of the national not-for-profit theatre, and it seems fitting as well as thrilling to come together to consider "Artistry in a New Century" at the stunning new Guthrie Theater. The days will be built around discussions of the work and the chance to hear from artists—master and visionary artists, and artists charting the path forward. Conference themes will highlight the creative process, new models of making work and the arts and social change with a keynote by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Nigerian playwright and social activist Wole Soyinka. Education Directors are invited to a pre-conference day focused on a presentation and discussion of assessment models to advance arts learning work throughout the country, the outcome of TCG's year-long TEAM project with leading education directors. We look forward to a large turnout of people committed to educational work within member theatres and a fruitful discussion. The conference days should be rich and rewarding—and that's in addition to the joy of just seeing one another. Please call conference director Jenni Werner or conference associate Melissa Fendell if you have thoughts or questions, and make your reservations now!
Recent reports have noted a number of interesting trends and developments in the area of philanthropy and government support—some encouraging, others less so. The Christian Science Monitor reports that there are now 8 million American millionaires and that the number of family foundations has risen by 60 percent over the past six years—even as not-for-profit groups have doubled to more than a million within the past five years. The article also reports that although overall giving has remained stable at 2% of the gross national product, some who follow charitable giving trends see reason for optimism that future large-scale philanthropy will up that percentage. Also in the plus column, from Arts Consulting Group's December newsletter, sponsorship spending by North American companies is up for the fifth straight year. Projected to rise over 11% in the coming year, the growth is fueled by the emergence of new funding sources and an increase in sponsorship support outside companies' designated sponsorship departments. And finally, the economics editor of Barron's magazine argued in a recent Wall Street Journal article that the average rate of return on charitable contributions far exceeds that which corporations can expect to receive from advertising. All interesting observations.
On the downside was Robert Reich's recent call on The American Prospect Online to revise the tax code to limit the charitable deduction to "real" charities. In his view, "lots of charitable dollars—especially from the wealthy, who have the most to donate—are going to culture palaces; to the operas, art museums, symphonies and theaters where they spend much of their leisure time"—contributions he characterizes as investments in the lifestyle the wealthy already enjoy and in prestige, which, he argues, should not be supported by tax deductions. Though his source is unidentified, he states that only 10 percent of all charitable deductions this year will be directed at the needy. This is an argument we might have thought we'd answered over the years. Clearly, as in so many other things, communication of the value of the arts in community must be central in an ongoing dialogue.
As we await passage of the National Endowment's appropriation, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled the preliminary FY08 city budget, including that of the Department of Cultural Affairs. The $153.8 million DCA recommendation encompasses support for groups in city-owned buildings and for other arts organizations and reflects an overall $2 million increase. The dollar recommendation is accompanied by a comprehensive reorganization of the process by which the annual budget is determined. The new plan is intended to dispense with the elaborate and time-consuming dance enacted annually between the mayor, legislature and local arts organizations—potentially a real benefit to the New York City field.
A January 5 article in the New York Times, headlined "Noises Off: Playgoers Sip, Munch and Crunch," described the increasingly common "let-them-eat-snacks" philosophy embraced by many Broadway theatres that allow patrons to take food and drink to their seats. I'm curious—is this phenomenon sweeping the country? Is the crackling of bags of popcorn providing new counterpoint to the ringing of cell phones? What's the word?
For anyone who finds they can be in Washington, don't forget Arts Advocacy Day on March 12 and 13. The changes in Congress offer great opportunities for new support. March 12 will begin with legislative training sessions and guest speakers. That night at the Kennedy Center Robert MacNeil will give the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy. Tuesday the day begins with the Congressional Arts Breakfast on Capitol Hill and continues with Hill visits. If you can be there, be sure to let Laurie Baskin, TCG's director of government and education programs, know in order to coordinate schedules.
I've been gratified in recent weeks by the response from a number of you in regard to my December wish in American Theatre magazine for more artists to come home to parts of the country that have few theatres to tell their stories. It's been great to hear of the new projects underway—many of them fascinating and created in close collaboration with geographic or cultural communities. But I still continue to think to the larger challenge: so many of the gifted young artists from the Midwest or elsewhere move to theatre centers on the coasts after training to broaden their horizons. I wonder if as a field we can imagine new incentives to say to these artists, "When the time is right, when you've spread wings and explored, consider the challenge of creating a new company, new work, in a place you might immeasurably enrich and even change."
Last evening I attended a moving memorial service for Eve Adamson, the founder and long-time head of Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York. Against all odds, Eve held together for decades an accomplished company of repertory actors performing the classics. Hailed as tenacious, brave and uncompromising, she was lovingly remembered for figuratively and literally counseling all within the Jean Cocteau family to "find your light".
Though geographically I've been East Coast-bound, it's been a great month for theatre. The pleasures have included Part II of The Coast of Utopia at the Vivian Beaumont, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company's Radio Macbeth shown in workshop at the Public Theatre as part of the Under the Radar Festival, The Scene by Theresa Rebeck at Second Stage, the Big Apple Circus, and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. I look forward to future evenings in Washington at performances that will be part of the city's Shakespeare in Washington festival. The festival, under the aegis of the Kennedy Center and Michael Kaiser and curated by the Shakespeare Theatre's Michael Kahn, includes more than 60 arts organizations offering over 100 events and more than 500 performances. The festival opened with a free rehearsed reading of Twelfth Night in the Concert Hall—with all 2,400 seats filled and 2,000 would-be attendees who had to be turned away queued in a line that circled the Kennedy Center.
With TCG's past as well as its future in mind, I want to be sure you know about an evening organized by the Westchester Arts Council to celebrate the legacy of long-time executive director Peter Zeisler on March 12. American Theatre editor Jim O'Quinn and I will join Peter's wife Helen Harrelson, Zoe Caldwell, Barry Grove and many others to remember and honor Peter's inestimable contributions to the field. If you'll be in the area, please join us.
I'm told it's time to hit the website, so for another month stay warm and the warmest of wishes from TCG to you!
Gigi Bolt
Interim Executive Director