March 2006 Field Letter

Written February 15, 2006

Dear Friends,

If there is a theme to this month’s Field Letter, it is reinvention—reinvention in advocacy, in mission and in organizational behavior. I hope that by reading this you’ll be as inspired and provoked to reflection as I have been after hearing from so many of you.

On the Federal Level

At the top of this month’s letter are issues involving the arts and our federal government. I assume by now that you have learned of Gigi Bolt’s decision to leave her post as the NEA’s director of musical theater and theater after more than 10 years of service in Washington, DC—a tenure that follows an even longer term of service at the New York State Council on the Arts. Gigi has been the director longer than any other in NEA history, and what a remarkable legacy she has created. Many extraordinary grants have been shepherded through the agency under her guidance. But equally remarkable has been the grace, eloquence and undying passion that she has brought to her work. Certainly, working in DC can be dispiriting, watching as the integrity of the agency and its work are called into question by critics from various quarters—an experience I remember all too well from my time there. But Gigi has always risen above any sense of despondency or despair, always cheering our field forward and placing our needs above her own. We all owe her a great deal and she will be sorely, sorely missed. Time will tell who her replacement will be and how this will impact the agency itself, but it’s hard to imagine a better, more loyal or more dedicated leader than Gigi has been.

For arts advocates, this year’s State of the Union Address featured yet another frustrating analysis of the problems and proposed remedies for education. In stressing the need for improved educational performance for our young people, President Bush called for new emphasis on science and math and gave no mention to the arts at all. As is clear in Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning (the compilation of arts education studies published by the Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities several years ago), increased emphasis on arts in education is likely to reap many of the benefits that he and so many others are looking for. “Imaginative Actuality,” the study by Stanford’s Shirley Brice Heath articulating disproportionate advances in academic performance, civic participation and self-awareness made by arts students, is perhaps my favorite of the reports, but each is terrifically important. Daniel H. Pink’s A Whole New Mind, focusing on the increased importance of right brain thinking for a competitive society and Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, pointing out that the emphasis on math and science—the priorities of a school system designed to solve the problems of the industrial age—are no longer necessary in a post-industrial society, are additionally important for us in our advocacy work. Arts magnet school students typically perform at the highest levels in standardized testing. And yet we seem unable to advance the argument in a systematic way. Are we deluding ourselves about the importance of the arts? Are there possibilities for partnerships we are overlooking? Is anyone out there finding the education arguments easy to advance or impactful in shifting government support? At our National Conference in June, Public Education Network President Wendy D. Puriefoy will join us—a wonderful opportunity to explore these issues together with someone deeply engaged in the educational shifts that we need to take to heart.

Not surprisingly, in the wake of this “math/science” platform (along with other national priorities, of course), the proposed federal budget fails to propose any increase for the NEA. Americans for the Arts, our sister advocacy organization to whom we are all now connected through a partnership between our two organizations, issued an advocacy alert on the heels of the budget announcement—an alert that began with an analysis of the implications of the budget, including the impact on Challenge America, a program that targets groups based in large part on geographic criteria and focuses specifically on underserved areas. Those of us who read the email—as admittedly many of us do—in quick fashion interpreted this as a divisive strategy that would lead advocates on the hill to squabble over line item allocations within the budget. Those who read more patiently, however, realized that the ultimate call of the alert was to lobby for an increase above and beyond the administration’s budget—an increase that would embrace Challenge America in a way that the current budget cannot. At TCG, we have long favored efforts targeting increases above the administration’s proposals, urging us to be more aggressive and move towards, at the very least, restoration to the late 1980’s levels of roughly $170 million, with everyone—discipline programs and state/local programs—seeing increases as a result. The bottom line is that Challenge America is important for many arts organizations and that any increase that strengthens and fortifies for all of us is a good thing. Fighting over allocations within a flat budget? Not interested. Lobbying for significant increases that benefit us all? Sign me up.

News on State Advocacy Efforts

In response to a column in the Los Angeles Times, producing executive director John Gallogly of Theatre West wrote a letter, reminding us all of the critical value of government support while articulating the consequences of the devastating reductions in California arts funding over the last few years:

Last Saturday’s article, “A Polished Big Apple Gives LA Ideas” (1/28/06) re: City employees travel to New York to learn about the successful conversion of skid row into Theatre Row, leaves out the central reason for the 42nd Street Renaissance: ART. Simply put, without the rejuvenated and new large and small theatres to attract tourists, shoppers and consumers, Times Square would still be a mess. Even more important, the conversion from blight to economic engine was the result of a concerted multi-level investment in the arts by state and local government agencies, foundations and private businesses. This unusual coalition recognized that any investment they made in the arts would be returned multiplied. But it never would have happened without the leadership of an innovative government that believed that investment in arts and culture was fundamental to the welfare of all its citizens.  

Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, California has taken the opposite road. State funding for the arts declined by 94 percent in the last decade from a high water mark of $37,000,000 to a miserly $1,500,000 in 2005, of which only $750,000 was distributed in grants. NY State Council on the Arts currently has a grant budget of $45,000,000, sixty times the size of California’s to serve half the number of citizens.

The devastation caused by this paucity of state funding is hard to overestimate. If the investment of the NY State Council on the Arts in Times Square led to the planned renovation of classic theaters, which led to Disney’s investment in the area, the counter is true in California. California and Los Angeles cultural organizations now apply for other federal, local and foundation money with a handicap in comparison to other states’ cultural organizations. Imagine a slalom skier in Turino with a 20lb weight as a handicap. Not only would they not win, chances are they will injure themselves trying to ski the course. So, too, with California cultural organizations and citizens. Even more insidious, these cuts have a further negative multiplier. Private foundations and out of state government funders look at the financial health of organizations asking for grants. If the money applied for is to replace funding lost on infrastructure rather than to support new artistic work, they may balk at the investment and turn to a company in another state, where the infrastructure is securely in place.

The Los Angeles County Supervisors and Arts Commission and the current Mayor of the City of Los Angeles have each proven that they believe in the value of the arts to the quality of life of their citizens by investing a consistently increasing amount in cultural activities and arts education. The current state budget increases arts funding to about 13 percent of its high five years ago. Even a small increase will help. But in the meantime, the infrastructure needs of deserving organizations and communities grow while heralded programs like the California Artists Touring program, which were destroyed, must be rebuilt from scratch. Arts tourism brings over half a billion dollars a year into the general economy of Los Angeles and directly contributes over $60 million dollars in state, county and local taxes. Funding infrastructure and programs in arts and culture consistently pays back government dollars, even as it betters citizens’ lives and the health of the whole community.

A new 42nd Street may not be the solution to Los Angeles’ skid row problems but it is essential that the arts be factored into every fiscal decision made by the State, City and County to ensure the continued expansion of our economy and the quality of life of all our citizens. Otherwise, the reforms for skid row being examined by the City Council will continue to leave out the most important part of the New York solution.

Certainly, these arguments will resonate well with others across the nation.

Attempts are being made in various locations to reimagine government support. Kim Bitz, executive director of the Atlanta Performing Arts Coalition, recently sent an email announcing a proposed piece of legislation that would radically alter Georgia’s support for the arts—legislation that would raise as much as $8 million a year (roughly triple the current allocation) for not-for-profit arts groups. This legislation calls for the creation of a Georgia Arts Trust, an organization that would offer tax credits on gifts of up to $10,000 for businesses and $5,000 for individuals—credits that are extended only if the donor makes a gift of equal value to a not-for-profit arts institution. In the proposed legislation, the state of Georgia will provide $1 million in seed money to establish the Arts Trust, which would decide how money is to be distributed and would be governed by a 17-member board—one representative from each of the 13 congressional districts and one from each of the four state agencies (the Georgia Council for the Arts, Georgia Public Broadcasting, the Department of Education and the Department of Economic Development).

This proposed legislation apparently has caught the arts community, who were not participants in its creation, by surprise. The critical issue, of course, is whether this new structure will stimulate new contributions or simply divert or weaken existing ones. It’s an interesting, and to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented approach that all of us will be watching closely. Stay tuned.

Rethinking Our Role

In recent years, many of us have been focused on understanding our core values more rigorously and defining ourselves more specifically. Two recent conversations have been immensely helpful and inspiring to me in this regard. In Atlanta earlier this month, I had the wonderful opportunity to join artistic directors Lisa Adler (Horizon Theatre Company), Susan Booth (Alliance Theatre), Tom Key (Theatrical Outfit) and Jasson Minadakis (Actor’s Express) on a panel discussing our organizations. Each of them was deeply and wonderfully articulate in describing the work each is undertaking and the challenges that arise as a result—Jasson’s challenges in focusing on new and often provocative work; Tom’s dedication to Southern stories (either literally from the South or connected to the South by spiritual affinity) that are produced in a variety of formats and styles that may confuse or confound an audience member more used to artistic consistency; Susan’s quest to serve the citizenry of Atlanta—a group defying singular description or commonality. It was Lisa who launched us into a new plane of conversation, however, that the others rapidly embraced by her clear and passionate articulation of the shift in her attention and mission of late. After many years of existing to produce a certain kind work, Lisa now sees her mission as “to connect” her audience to that work—a subtle shift that nevertheless resonates through every part of the organization, that warrants a more personal exchange, that accounts for her presence at performances, the curtain speeches, the structure of talkbacks and more—including the shift of the audience education program to now an audience engagement program. Lisa is, of course, far more articulate about this than my clumsy attempt to capture her ideas would suggest, but this new emphasis for her is palpable and proving transformative—a focus that the others on the panel recognized with equal passion and dedication.

Martha Lavey, artistic director of Steppenwolf in Chicago, is leading a similarly inspiring refocusing of her theatre and board’s energies. In a paper she has written and has generously agreed to share here, she writes in part:

Our outlook is grounded in our core values of ensemble, innovation and citizenship and suggests a model—a presiding metaphor—for their greater articulation in all of our work. The metaphor that has evolved in our artistic office discussions is conversation. We see our work as a theater to be the creation of a multi-layered conversation with our audiences. It begins with our work on the stage: the discourse of drama is dialogue—our audiences come to the theater to watch characters engage in a conversation. The hope, in their doing so, is that we engage them in a conversation with the work. We ask them to negotiate the meaning of what they have seen by talking about it—among themselves and with us. We create the condition for an exchange—we engage in each others’ lives.

What I realized—what I feel—is that people come to Steppenwolf for a sense of community. However deeply or cursorily they choose to engage in that community, Steppenwolf provides, through its artistry, a unique experience—a play seen for the first time/a play engaging themes of a challenging nature/a group of artists available only at Steppenwolf/a level of discussion about those plays and artists unique to Steppenwolf/passionate, ensemble acting.

Some folks will choose to engage deeply—they’ll stay for discussions, they’ll join the Directors Circle or the First Look Council, they’ll come to subscriber events—and some folks will simply attend the performances—but if the performance or event has that only-at-Steppenwolf uniqueness, it serves as a kind of baptism, an initiation into a community that is funded by the expression of values and an experience that transcends the consumer transaction. (The transaction that says, “I paid X-amount for my entertainment. It was/was not worth it.”) In other words, the consumer transaction produces a buyer who walks away, satisfied or not. What Steppenwolf has the power to produce is a circle of ideas, passions and artistry, into which one can walk and in which one can participate. The constant imperative of our work is to welcome people into the largest sense of themselves. We must invite people to trust and engage the deepest, most pure and most expansive reach of their imaginations. We must hand over the work to them. We must be infinitely generous in our artistry. We must honestly feel, and act out of a feeling, that we mine the deepest parts of ourselves because there is someone there, ready to receive it. We must always talk to the smartest person in the room. If we do this, we are spinning into being the world we wish to live in; we are activating a discourse that expresses the best parts of ourselves. I use my own experience—there are people in my life who raised the level of conversation in my life. They made me know that I could (and therefore, had to) speak myself as I most knew myself. We must assume that our audiences are those people. The more we extend them that trust, the more we will be confirmed in having granted it.

The key to making this work—the key to creating a theater that asks the highest standards of its artists and its audiences—is to provide the opportunities and the tools for the necessary work of interpretation. Through which, we create an interpretive community.

I suggest that we lay emphasis on Steppenwolf’s unique capacity to galvanize community among people who feel they are being spoken to personally, spoken to with respect, listened to with interest and permitted expressiveness in a public space.

The more we hand it over to our audiences, the more we make ourselves transparent in our decision-making, in our artistic processes—the more we admit to our challenges and ambitions and doubts—the more we will elicit interest and loyalty on the part of our audiences. I am really convinced that handing it over to our audiences—by which I mean inviting them into the conversation of on what we work and how we work—will not dumb-down the work, it will elevate it. We need to be good listeners—and we need to create opportunities (and, in the case of marketing and development, mechanisms, etc.) to receive the input of our audiences.

The thing we must always keep in mind is that the very things that put theater out of step with a world dedicated to speed, with the privatization of leisure, with the mechanization of mediation of experience are theater’s strength. Our work is communally engendered and communally received, our work takes its time in creation and reception, our work demands presence. People choose theater for those very reasons.

We have all of us been drawn to work in the theater because we believe—avowedly or implicitly—that conversation is valuable, that it produces illumination, that conversation makes something important happen. And that conversation is fun—conversation makes a play. And is playful. Bringing that spirit to all of our work is to express our passion.

This quite simply knocked me out—the notion of citizenship as a core value and an articulation of purpose and activity as powerful as any I’ve ever heard. Many of us will recognize ourselves in her words, others may not—but I hope that the degree of self-reflection and honest self-appraisal will inspire all of us who may not have done so to embark on a comparable voyage.

And It’s Not Just Us…

The December 2005 Fast Company took a long look at the transformations afoot in Hollywood. Audiences are decreasing (down 12 percent last year, with an even higher defection rate among young males), piracy is increasing (at an annual loss of more than $4 billion annually to the industry) and new technology—the home movie theatre, the DVD, etc.—are undermining movie attendance, even while DVD sales are also decreasing too. In Alan Deutschman’s “Building a Better Movie Business,” the author writes:

The system has been imploding for two reasons. First, it depends on mobilizing a mass audience through mass marketing, and that’s a daunting task these days. It’s extremely hard, and extremely costly to reach an audience fragmented by the countless options offered by cable networks, the Web, video games, and home video....Second, nearly everyone loses money on its theatrical run these days. Studios typically pay as much to advertise a movie’s cinematic release as they spent on making the movie to begin with.

Sound familiar? Among other observations that follow in the wake: the preference for sequels has less to do with impoverished imagination than the benefits of not having to create a “brand from scratch” for a new film when one can simply ride the wave of the original film; the imperatives of DVD sales; and the consequent emergence of WalMart as one of the major factors in a film’s success.

Faced with these prospects, Hollywood is embarking on radical new strategies, including simultaneous release of DVD and first-run theatrical engagement. But at heart, the real issue is increasingly—as Robert Putnam and Ellen Ullman have told us—declining socialization and the encouragement to stay at home in isolation. The article here cites data about the hours of media use per person in 2004: 1035 hours in broadcast and satellite radio; 1010 hours in cable and satellite TV; 782 hours in broadcast TV; 189 in consumer internet; 78 in home video; 13 in movie theatres; and 3 in interactive TV. What we and Hollywood are both dealing with is a tendency to isolate/cocoon/nest—you name it—which we in the theatre at least must find new ways to confront. It’s part of the reason Martha and Lisa’s ideas hit me so powerfully—and so hopefully.

Uses of Technology From the Field

From Seattle Shakespeare Company comes the following—a hair too late for last month’s field letter but well worth sharing now:

Seattle Shakespeare Company launched its “Audio Jumpstart” podcast for the theatre’s production of Richard III on December 29, a week prior to the first performance. The web podcast contains background on the War of the Roses, interviews with the director Gregg Loughridge and artistic director Stephanie Shine, brief scenes and more. Despite launching the podcast right before the New Year's holiday, news of the podcast got mention in both daily newspapers and in both weekly papers. As of January 11, 2006, we've had over 500 hits/listens to the "Audio Jumpstart" with many people subscribing to receive our next podcast offering for Cyrano de Bergerac.

The “Audio Jumpstart” to Richard III podcast can be played on a home or work computer, or downloaded to an iPod or other portable audio listening device. The podcast can be downloaded at www.seattleshakespeare.org.

All the recording and editing was done in-house over several weeks on a catch-as-catch-can basis. We worked from a general outline, edited out some parts that didn't quite fit and tried to keep the whole thing to 20 minutes.

Fantastic—and, I think, a wave of the future for many of us.

Practical Advice on Turning an Organization Around

On the heels of last month’s letter, in which Patrick Mulcahy of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival (PSF) talked about the turnaround of his organization, I asked him to share how the turnaround was achieved. He wrote—with genuine candor—as follows:

The primary answers to HOW are: identity, alignment, resources, leadership and relationships. My mantra coming in was: Elevate (the artistry), Deepen (the connections with the community) and Support (find ways to pay for it, now and in the future).

Keys to the turnaround:

Bravo to you, Patrick. There are some valuable lessons here for many of us.

Final Thoughts about Arts and Young People

In the January/February 2006 issue of Details, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon looks at the future through the lens of his own children in “The Future Will Have to Wait.” He writes:

I don’t know what happened to the Future. It’s as if we have lost our ability, or our will, to envision anything beyond the next hundred years or so, as if we lack the fundamental faith that there will in fact be any future at all beyond that not-too-distant date….

If you ask my 8-year old son about the Future, he pretty much thinks the world is going to end, and that’s it. Most likely global warming, he says—floods, storms, desertification—but the possibility of viral pandemic, meteor impact or some kind of nuclear exchange is not alien to his view of the days to come….He sees himself as living on the last page, if not the last paragraph, of a long, strange and bewildering book.

Reading this on a plane depressed me more than I can say, even while it increased my sense of urgency about the work ahead of us. Kent Thompson at Denver Center Theatre Company reports that a local attorney has given $50,000 to start a student/faculty rush program for $10 tickets to any show an hour before curtain, with a dedicated hotline set up for them to call to check on availability—a strategy that already seems to be working wonderfully. We DO, I think, believe in the future—it underlies our work and informs our desire to engage in dialogue with the past through the work we do with classic plays or to create new work addressing the present in which we live. As Chabon concludes, “I don’t see how you can fail to do everything in your power to ensure that [your children] and their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren will inherit a world whose perfection can never be accomplished by creatures whose imagination for perfecting it is limitless and free.”

The Monthly Travel Report…

The past month was a busy one for travel—a trip to Boston to keynote the 27th Annual International Ticketing Association Conference; on to Los Angeles to spend the morning with critics gathered by the NEA for their second Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater—a fascinating morning where we tried to contextualize and understand the challenges of the not-for-profit theatre and then how our issues might suggest a reframing of the role of the critic; up to Ventura, CA, for a full two days of meetings with the Rubicon Theatre Company’s board, local theatre supporters and local officials; on to Las Vegas to address the board of Americans for the Arts at their annual board retreat; then to Milwaukee to speak with the board of Milwaukee Repertory Theater at their board retreat; and finally to Atlanta for a reception of local arts supporters hosted by two of our National Council members, Bill Balzer (of Theatrical Outfit) and Donna Darroch (of Actor’s Express)—all in addition to the joy of hosting our own TCG board here in New York for a meeting (where we also celebrated the 50th birthday of our own beloved Joan Channick!). Everywhere I traveled, I was shown such warmth, such generosity, such eagerness to engage in conversation.  These travels were inspiring to me in every way, and I can only hope that the groups I visited received one-tenth of the value I received in being with them.

On a closing note, I pass along with great sadness the news of playwright John Belluso’s untimely death earlier this month. What a year it has been—the loss of August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein and now John, whose death I, for one, was least prepared for. Each was, of course, an extraordinary talent; each broke barriers and gave voice to communities far too long largely ignored not only by our field but by the general public; and each was a special, delightful, inspiring person. I’m sure you all join with me in remembering each with affection, with gratitude for the work they left us and with an awareness of the new holes that have opened in our landscape with their departure.

On that sad note, we nevertheless send you good wishes for the month ahead and, as always, 

All the best,

Ben Cameron
Executive Director