The new bigwigs

Important questions

Before we get started in earnest, here are a few very important questions that have come up (1) The Guardian wants to know "How do you explain theatre to somebody who's never been?"

(2) The Tangential wants to know "What are talkbacks good for?"

(3) HowlRound wants to know "Why are theater schools 'academically narcissistic'?"

Alas, poor Equity

Last week on News and Notes, I made a brief entry about the recent Actors Equity Association leadership vote that basically elected completely new leadership for AEA. For those of you who haven't been playing along at home, this comes in the wake of Equity's incredibly miscalculated move to change the "99 Seat Plan" in the Los Angeles market, despite the actors in that market voting 2-1 against the change. In a move that almost never happens in any large institution, Equity's members voted out the incumbent president. (FIFA could learn a thing or two from this.)

If you have been following my ignorant ramblings about why the 99 Seat dustup is important for those of us not in LA, Hoyt Hilsman recently wrote an article for Huffington Post that elegantly explains how Equity's failure in handling the 99 seat situation will have a ripple effect into other theater markets. And, just so you know that no one here is necessarily rooting for Equity's demise, Hilman also explains that Equity still has a chance to be on the cutting edge of a change in theater (provided, of course, that the new leadership radically alters Equity's vision and implementation of said vision).

The great Guthrie goodbye

I feel like we've been saying goodbye to Joe Dowling for months now (basically, since he said he was leaving). Well, it will all be over soon. The outgoing executive director of the Guthrie is staging his last play at the big G, and it's the one that first brought him to the attention of the Guthrie all those years ago.

But in between the start and its recursive finish, there were 20 years of Joe. This week, the Star Tribune wants you to reflect on them, with articles telling you about the highlights from those decades and the three things he'll be best remembered for.

In the meantime, Joe, enjoy your last month on the job. I'm giving you the going away gift of leaving you alone, because I've already picked at you and your organization plenty enough. For the rest of your tenure (you know, the next four weeks), this column will be free of Dowling-related news, and we're probably both better off for it. Unless you go and do something completely bonkers, like, say, install a death ray projector on the end of the Endless Bridge, I'm just going to bide my time and wait for the next Joe to move in.

So long, buddy. Thanks for providing me with plenty of things to complain about.

"As long as I remain president"

It may not be receiving quite as much attention, but another leader of a large local institution is also stepping down soon. Patricia Mitchell, president and CEO of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts recently announced that she will be retiring. Starting her tenure in 2007, Mitchell has seen the Ordway through some tricky financial times and managed to pull together the four major performance partners at the Center and raise the money to fund the Ordway's new $75 million concert hall.

But, I will always remember Patricia Mitchell for something that she would probably rather forget. Back when I first started writing News and Notes in 2013, she and the Ordway immediately handed me the juiciest local theater story I could hope to run my mouth about: Miss Saigon. Despite the fact that this aging, racially insensitive musical had been protested the last time it came through the Ordway, Mitchell's organization decided to bring it through again. (Considering the demographics of the board and advisors for the Ordway, it's probably not surprising that they didn't see anything wrong with it). Though this is wild outsider speculation on my part, I would guess that this decision had something to do with the fact that a West End revival of the show was shattering ticket sales in London at the time, and the Ordway was hoping to bring in a bit of easy cash with a well-known name.

Of course, this all went perfectly to plan, as long as the Ordway's plan was to see how much negative attention they could gather. In the years since the the last go-round with this show, the Asian American community had become much more organized in its opposition to Miss Saigon. The protests came, open letters were written and very persuasive arguments were formulated about why we should all expect better than this. It all landed on seemingly deaf ears; but Mitchell's initial plan of "ignore the protestors and they'll go away" surprisingly didn't work. It wasn't until Mu Performing Arts organized its own public conversation about Miss Saigon that Mitchell and the Ordway put forth much of an effort to engage with opponents of the musical.

To her credit, Mitchell did eventually see the error of her ways. ("Eventually" meaning "about a year later") In a letter to the Don't Buy Miss Saigon Coalition, she declared "the Ordway will not produce Miss Saigon as long as I remain President of the Ordway."" And she has faithfully kept her word: in the six months between that promise and her retirement, the Ordway has indeed not produced Miss Saigon again.

Of course, Mitchell's career at the Ordway shouldn't be summed up with this one incident. But since none of the news articles about her retirement from the Ordway have mentioned said incident, I feel like it should be put back out there in the collective consciousness. If there's not a true accounting of both the good and the bad, if Mitchell's promise is forgotten, then we might find ourselves having this same Miss Saigon fight all over again in the future.

Speaking of the future

What do you think arts reporting will look like in the future? Trick question! There won't be any arts reporting in the future.The standardized format for talking about art will become a simple system of "meh" and "YAY!", with an advanced algorithm calculating each artist's "meh" to "YAY!" ratio (M2Y) based on recordings of arts patrons first ten spoken words after leaving the gallery, performance or event. Artists with a consistently high M2Y, which indicates a high level of audience disinterest, are disintegrated by the robot overlords.

But let's just pretend for a moment that arts reporting doesn't wither away. (Come on, guys, stop laughing. Let's be serious about this) What will it look like in the future? MN Artists has gathered a crack team of arts journalists to speculate. Even though none of them mention M2Y, they do have some interesting things to say.