Advocating for the Arts
At the Creative Conversations event last night, we were treated to a delightful panel on advocacy that included Gretchen Johnston (Washington State Arts Alliance), Denee McCloud (Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas), Richard Andrews (Henry Art Gallery) and James Keblas (Office of Film and Music).
One of the more interesting nuggets I took away was an anecdote by Mr. Andrews, who used to be Seattle's public art program director. He recalled speaking to a constituent on the phone who was upset about a work of public art in his community. "Do you support the library?" Andrew asked. "Yeah," the man reluctantly admitted. "Well, you might not read geology books, but you probably agree that the library needs to have them, right?" That calmed the man down.
Gretchen Johnson also shared some insight that was worth heeding: there's a difference between advocating for an issue and lobbying or electioneering, which are more tightly regulated. It's important for nonprofit arts groups to advocate: the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Mid-sized Theatres
Arne Zaslove has some good advice for Seattle's mid-sized theaters.
It's refreshing to see an article that doesn't complain about the lack of public funding, but rather offers some creative suggestions for helping to stabilize these companies. At Shunpike, this has been our creed for some time. Arts groups need to get creative about funding, that's for sure. But they also need to be unique in their mission. What makes them necessary? This is a question most arts groups have a hard time answering. For example, Zaslove writes:
In Seattle, where there were so many theaters, the lines between niches began to blur. ACT no longer had a corner on modern works, as every theater with a literary manager on the payroll sought out the next important playwright. Gay and ethnic themes could be found on the mainstages, robbing the Alice B. and the Group Theater of their exclusive mandates
"Exclusive mandate" is, in my opinion, a euphemism for "mission statement." Every arts group should have an exclusive mandate, otherwise why exist? What are you providing that people can't get elsewhere? Sure, many "gay and ethnic themes" have gone mainstream, but what niches aren't being served by today's arts organizations. Taproot, as one of the commenters notes, does well for itself by focusing on a niche.
Art on the Internets
bluecoatedstory, a short film by Erik Maahs that was once shown at the now-defunct Shunpike Follies several years ago is now on YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2. The film, as I understand, was inspired by a theater piece from Maah's old theater company, The Compound.
It's a wonderful film, do check it out.
In other web video news, a promising Seattle startup called Footbridge Productions makes movie-trailer-style promos for upcoming local theater pieces.
Talk of using the web to promote theater is as old as the web itself. But only now, with the advent of the social-networking sites dubbed "Web 2.0," and the rise of broadband, is it actually coming to fruition. Theater is a social medium, after all -- a community medium, much more so than film. It will be interesting to see how this develops, but I think we're finally headed in the right direction.
TV in the Lobby
Via email, I just got passed this New York Times article on the latest attempt to advertise to theatergoers: in-lobby LCD displays, coming soon to a Seattle Rep near you.
Called StageVision, the project is the work of the National Corporate Theater Fund in New York, which seeks financing for 19 leading nonprofit regional theaters. It is sponsored by Sharp Electronics, which is supplying the Sharp Aquos liquid- crystal-display screens in the lobbies and is a StageVision advertiser; Time Inc., which is providing coverage of the arts from Time magazine and time.com; and Palace Production Center, New York, which produces video from that information.The project also has the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, which provided a small but symbolic $30,000 grant to develop it.
So does the NEA have ulterior motives here? After all, increased corporate support would certainly take some pressure off of the NEA's tight budget for supporting the arts. And given the NEA's recent (unfortunate) trend towards funding less controversial work, it's unclear whether corporate money has any fewer strings attached than funds from government.
Regardless, I'm all for finding new ways to support the arts, so long as the ads stay in the lobby, and not in the actual performance space. Unless, of course, I start to overhear, "hey, that's a great-looking TV. If I buy one of those I won't ever have to come to the theater again!" But I doubt that will be a problem.
Co-opting Developers
I was at an interesting 4culture-sponsored "Creative Conversation a couple weeks back where the talk turned to space for art, which, inevitably, turned to developers. Some of the talk was positive, as in "we can really work with these guys and convince them that it's in their interest to preserve arts space in gentrifying neighborhoods." Some, of course, was negative, as in, "these effin' developers just care about..." Well, you know how that ends.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I stumbled across this New York Times article about emerging arts spaces in the rapidly-gentrifying Harlem and the Bronx. In the article, the new director of the Bronx Museum of the Arts notes that they've installed a new board president, Bronx developer Robert J. Perez.
That's a novel idea... bring the developers onto the boards. Give them some skin in the game. I wonder if anyone's done that in Seattle.
Empty Space Declares Bankruptcy
Almost exactly two years ago, I started this blog on The Shunpike's website because, as I wrote at the time,
2004 has been an intense year for Seattle's theater community. From the crisis at ACT, to the death of the Fringe festival, to the suspension of activity at Empty Space, it's been a lot to deal with. I see signs of a dramatic shift in Seattle's theater scene, and I wanted to be able to document it.
And today, after several cash- and location-transfusions, the Empty Space died on the operating table. Why? The Board president says there were too few board members:
[Board President] Blachford noted that serving as a non-profit arts organization board member is mostly a matter of "passion for the art. ... Our board was down to eight members. That is just not enough for a non-profit the size of the Empty Space."
I'm sure it was a hard decision. Nonetheless, I think he misses the mark when he says that being a board member is mostly about a "passion for the art." Sure, that's there. But you also have to have a passion for your community. Nonprofits serve communities. Good ones should have no trouble recruiting board members because they have very supportive communities behind them.
I guess what I'm saying is that if board recruitment is your problem, then you don't have a problem. The real problem is a lack of community support. And that, despite good ticket sales this season, seems to be Empty Space's real problem. After rallying their last community of Fremont to pony up $400 grand to save the theater, they closed up shop and left the 'hood. Not exactly the way to develop a strong community!
I should add, of course, that nonprofit theaters who want to avoid such a fate should sign up for our Sustainable Organizations program, which focuses on recruiting and developing board members.
Source Space Survives
A deal has been made to keep D.C.'s Source Theater space open. In doing so, the company will die and the space will live on, which is as it should be.
Theater companies are transient, and should remain so. Theater is an ephemeral art form, and often the creation of a permanent home (something that many, many small companies aspire -- wrongly, in my opinion -- to have) dilutes the art in favor of the pressures of paying the rent.
As the recent frenzy of re-urbanization in America drives up real estate values and squeezes out the cultural institutions that made the real estate so valuable in the first place, we need to keep an eye on our remaining physical assets. Converting a building into a suitable performance venue is expensive and time-consuming. Fire codes, lighting requirements, occupancy permits, zoning issues... it's a royal pain.
And so, much as Seattle's CHAC has decided to eschew in-house theater production in favor of a rental model, the Source will serve as an asset that multiple theater companies can use when they need to. In the end, the arts community is better off, because it takes mere minutes to start a theater company (and minutes to end one), but years to build and develop a usable performance space.
Incidentally, it's important to keep this in mind as we debate the future of ConWorks.
Pennies from Heaven
The sale of a D.C. theater's only remaining asset -- its home -- may net $2.8M. The local theater community is, unsurprisingly, fighting over the spoils:
The endowment would have come from the sale of the Source Theatre's longtime home at 1835 14th St. NW, which is being bought by Bedrock Management for $2.8 million. The activists argued that the funds would be quickly dissipated and forgotten and that the artistic community would be better served by preserving the stage.
Near as I can tell, the local theater activists are more interested in preserving the stage space than having the cash to split amongst themselves. Not having been involved in this at all, I won't comment pro or con, except to say that it's true that the funds would be quickly dissipated and forgotten if there's no strong executive dispersing them.
There's a big difference between an "endowment" and "dissipating the funds." The former seems like a great idea, the latter not so much. Theaters never have any capital. What a perfect time to start an endowed fund that someone manages, which funds small D.C. theaters every year, all the while building assets.
Great PR
Though I usually think that posters are a waste of time and money for small productions, Akropolis Performance Lab successfully used a provocative poster for their upcoming production of Oedipus to generate buzz for the show.
Poster was controversial enough that several businesses refused to hang it. This caught the attention of The Stranger's Brendan Kiley, who wrote about it here. The whole process of hanging (or not hanging) the posters generated a lot of buzz, and combined with the good reviews, have made the show a success.
This is a great example of how even a small company with little marketing budget can generate a lot of free press. Well done.
Minneapolis Values Small Theaters
Interesting piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on how the city's small- and mid-size theaters contribute to the overall ecosystem:
A few years ago, we analyzed several comparable metropolitan areas that have solid theater reputations and realized that yes, we had the largest (by budget) regional theater in the country and the largest children's theater and the most-successful dinner theater. But the analysis showed that the healthy current of small and midsize companies was the secret ingredient that pushed the Twin Cities ahead of like-sized metros and made us competitive with the big guys. These smaller troupes provide work for actors, designers, directors, writers, costumers and carpenters. For audiences, they enrich the ecosystem's diversity.
This is important to note. The nature of theater dictates that only a few local actors in any one city will get large, paying roles in a given season. The rest are either forced to travel to other cities, or look for other work. Healthy mid-size companies are key to creating a vibrant theater community.
Here in Seattle we lost many of those companies over the last decade, and it's hurting us at every level.