BLOG: Climbing The Summit (or "How To Lose Audience and Alienate Artists")

At What Cost? You can't always tell what will get people all riled up. Last week on News and Notes, I offhandedly referenced a New York Times article that discussed the steadily climbing prices of tickets to nonprofit theater companies in New York. I was using it merely as a prop in my larger discussion about ticket prices overall; but, as it turns out, this article went on to cause a lot more consternation and clucking of tongues across the theatre and nonprofit worlds. Out in the interwebs, people in the nonprofit arts worlds are climbing over themselves to comment on it. Whether you want to see a dire warning that nonprofits should risk losing their juicy nonprofit status for this behavior; or a basic shrug that says, "I guess that's just the way it is"; or an honest admission that this is a complicated area of discussion, with no clear right or wrong answer, but we're going to continue doing it anyway, I'm sure someone out there has provided the right opinion for your needs. We all know that Broadway productions suck up and spit out a ton of money. This is why the Broadway of today relies almost totally on already existing brand names for its continuing existence; in much the same way that the Hollywood industry has come to rely on rebooting old films and adapting incredibly popular (yet demonstrably terrible) books. But that's Broadway, where they want to pay for bells and whistles and explosions and flying stunts and giant moving sets and crashing chandeliers and Mufasa and Neil Patrick Harris. What about all the other guys? Cape May Stage, a small Equity house in New Jersey, decided to put out an infographic to let you know exactly what it costs. (For those of you without a calculator, it's about $835,000 a year). Here at home, a lot of people in the theater community were seething over Graydon Royce's article in the Star Tribune about professional actors bouncing from one gig to another looking for better pay. While Royce's article seems to suggest that this is something new or something particular to Minnesota, rest assured it is not. Whenever economic realities run into artistic dreams, something has to give, and whatever gives will end up pissing off somebody. The View from the Summit What else is irking people this week? Oh, yeah: white guys who run theaters. A while back, Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks announced that he was working with Molly Smith, the artistic director of Arena Stage in D.C. to create a series of panel discussions with D.C.-area theatre artists, dubbed The Summit. The first panel, with artistic directors, was held last week and covered a wide range of topics that all ADs at every company should be talking about. Unfortunately, the organizers chose to neither broadcast nor record the panel, which led to the entire thing instead being covered via Twitter, which inevitably led to plenty of anger, sarcasm and controversy played out in 140-character soundbites. Of course, we had the obvious digs that the theaters this panel represent are pretty homogenous in their producing choices; but the issue that really touched off a firestorm was a question about female playwrights. Even though 44 companies in the DC area have all agreed to produce new works by female playwrights this year, the stats on their actual representation (especially at the companies represented at The Summit last week) were still pretty dismal. When asked about this, one of the panelists (Ryan Rilette, AD of Round House Theatre) responded that there just aren't enough new plays by women "in the pipeline". To be fair, Rilette's statement was taken a little out of context, and his full explanation was a more nuanced admission that the current "pipeline" from Broadway and London to the regional theaters is a big problem. Needless to say, this sent the Twittersphere into a frenzy. If you've got several hours to kill, you can peruse the full history of the Twitter debate; or, instead you can read a thoughtful rundown of The Summit from Elissa Goetshius, Artistic Director of Strand Theater Company in Baltimore. For further reading, you can check out Holly L. Derr's thoughts on the so-called "pipeline" and how it is killing the originality, vitality and diversity of regional theaters. Meanwhile, in Minnesota… Back home in Minnesota, there hasn't been much chatter about The Summit. This may be because of our general isolation from "the pipeline"; or perhaps it's because we go through a similar outraged debate every time the Guthrie announces its season. While we are lucky enough to have several nationally-renowned companies that consistently generate new work from people off the pipeline (and we're really good at calling out offensive material) we know we are still lacking. This is why the possibility of the Guthrie commissioning someone like Lynn Nottage can create such a buzz of excitement and hopeful (but unfounded) speculation. It's also why it's exciting to see a place like Park Square, one of the larger houses in town, actively investing in expansion and diversification of its offerings [full disclosure on that one: my company is one of the partners in the Park Square venture]. We still have a long way to go. At least we are well-practiced in talking about it. I Believe the Children Are the Future Among the myriad other things brought up for discussion at The Summit was the idea that investing more in arts education will help save the future of theater. This is an old idea in America, that theatre has been waning because we just aren't teaching children to love it. Playwright Mike Lew wrote out a counter to this argument recently, stating that no amount of education is going to make kids love theater if it's boring and inaccessible. Instead of relying on the old saw that our schools are failing us, perhaps theaters might try any number of things that could help revitalize and energize theatre and draw young people to it. Make 'Em Behave! But still, the reliance on schools to force the kids take their theater medicine continues. Over in the UK, a recent production of The Taming of the Show performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company for school children was briefly interrupted by unruly rascals in the audience. If you've ever performed for kids before, you'll know that this is not uncommon; but one reviewer from The Stage UK took it as proof that children need to be taught better theater etiquette in schools (never mind that they were doing exactly what the groundlings in Shakespeare's time would have been doing). However, Lyn Gardner at the Guardian takes a different tack: it's not the school's fault for not drilling into kids heads that they are to sit down and shut up; rather, it is the theater's fault for not producing something that kids will like. Make 'Em Cry! I have nowhere else to put this article, but I believe all of you need to know how to effectively cry on stage. Forget "sense memory" or "being in the moment". Just get some Vick's.