BLOG: Searching for Meaning in the Birth and Death of Arts Organizations

The Propeller Stops Spinning Last year, the Guthrie brought over Propeller Theatre from the UK for a double billing of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night. In case you didn't catch them and don't know who they are, Propeller is an all-male company whose interpretations of Shakespeare mix "original practices" with modern flair. They've toured the world, won awards and were pretty highly regarded while they were in town. "Why bring them up?" you may ask, "Are they coming back?! Oh, please say they're coming back!" If that's what you were asking, then you may want to sit down for a moment, because I have some bad news for you. Propeller might never be coming back to anywhere. The Arts Council of England recently cut all funding for Propeller, and the company's artistic director has expressed doubt as to whether they can exist without it. But, seriously, why should we care? They're in another country. And everyone knows that the UK gives a lot more money away to artists than the US. And aren't they an all-male group? Aren't we supposed to be against that sort of thing now? Valid points, yes, and I am going to artlessly dodge them, because the big question I want to pull out of the possible demise of Propeller is this: who gets to decide when an arts organization is done? To the Death! Devon Smith, a social media analyst for Threespot, accidentally kicked the hornet's nest in the arts world recently by suggesting that we should allow arts organizations to die naturally. When an article based on notes she had prepared for a debate on the life and death of nonprofit arts organizations went viral, she touched a firestorm of debate in the digital realm. Thankfully, Smith didn't just throw a firebomb and walk away. She thoughtfully responded to the hailstorm of Twitter, Facebook and email responses she received. Smith was speaking of nonprofit arts organizations. A big part of the reason she received so much criticism was that she suggested that there are simply too many middling nonprofit arts organizations and that government institutions and foundations might do well to thin out the herd by pulling the plugs on a few of them. Of course, being good Americans, none of us like the gub'mint treading on us. Remember how former NEA chair Rocco Landesman was spit upon for suggesting the same thing? Unfortunately, though, a lot of nonprofit arts organizations (both here and around the world) have grown so dependent on government agencies and foundations that they can't exist without that funding (see Propeller above). There is not a ton of funding to go around; but how does anyone decide which organizations are "failing" and which are "succeeding"? (Pro tip: Pay for your news coverage, and trust that they'll make you look successful.) Pay For Play The capitalist answer to that question is easy: if you sell tickets, you succeed. If you don't, you don't. But there's something about that kind of thinking that leaves an acidy sort of taste in the average artist's mouth. If theater is just a commodity measured by the buying and selling of it, then all we will have are bland commodities for sale. Although, selling theater doesn't always mean selling it to the audience. Over in the UK, celebrated immersive theater company Punchdrunk has had no problems creating "brand-backed" shows (that is, shows partially paid for by advertisers). You true blue artists out there may be picturing ugly product placement and shuddering in revulsion, but underwriting live events is old hat for corporations, and immersive theater events may be the next step for hip companies. Non or no? There is an unspoken assumption that being "nonprofit" is somehow more "pure" and "real" than for-profit, but that is not always the case. Here in the Twin Cities, the annual Twin Cities Horror Festival, which just announced its third year of programming, was finally officially incorporated. However, the group running it decided against the nonprofit route, incorporating instead as a standard Limited Liability Corporation (though the the "profit" portion of the festival will still likely be at "nonprofit" levels), thus avoiding any way that they could possibly grow reliant on government and foundational support. But not all nonprofits rely on that kind of support anyway. Minnesota's great Fringe Festival is going full steam ahead into its 21st year, and according to its 2013 annual report, 75% of its income is earned income. Only a tiny portion of the rest comes from small governmental grants, which means that this nonprofit operates with less governmental support than many Fortune 500 companies. (Sidebar for Fringe aficionados: The 2014 website has launched. There are new mascots. No, they are not Wobbles the kitty. Wobbles is dead. We all need to come to terms with that.) But Why? Seriously, why do we do this? Is it just in the hopes that the Ivey Awards will someday give us lifetime achievement awards? There is some good news for those of you trying to do this for a living. Minnesota Citizens for the Arts just released some interesting figures showing that Minneapolis and St. Paul rank pretty damn high when it comes to percentages of people employed in the arts.. (And if you're interested in making your life as an artist, too, the folks at Artists U have a free book for you on how to avoid the romance of being a starving artist.) Dance/USA's annual conference was held in Minneapolis this year. Of big concern at the gathering was how the dance world needs to make a case for it relevance to the current world. At the recent TCG National Conference, Kevin Brown gave a speech listing the top ten reasons why theater is important in the 21st century. Aside from the list format, which is all the rage on the internets these days, Brown's pat list of ideas don't sound all that different from what was in my 20th-century theater textbooks. Of course, that dry little list represents a bunch of large concepts that we basically take for granted. When presented with the "why" question, I always think about groups like Freedom Theatre of Jenin, a theater group that I've written about before in a Palestinian refugee camp whose founder was assassinated for his work. Or look at Belarus Free Theater, which existed underground in the heavily-censored dictatorship of Belarus until they were forced to flee persecution in 2011. They were granted political asylum in the UK and still work covertly with an underground troupe in their home country. A new documentary about the group was just released if you want to see people literally put their lives on the line for their art.