GiveMN, a CULTURE COIN, and Big Theatre

After watching the opening number of the Tony Awards with host Neil Patrick Harris, with its humble beginnings (and the little dig at Shia LaBeouf, which I hope you fully appreciated after our weeks of following the fate of Orphans), the gradual build and quick costume changes, Mike Tyson, dazzling leaps, magic tricks, and Tom Hooper-style closeups, I was sorry I missed watching it as it happened. Heart-achingly sorry. I'm making the point of watching the whole thing now. That speaks a lot to NPH's appeal, because I'm not a big awards show watcher. And though everyone has an admitted crush on NPH and can't helped be charmed by his many antics, it was a historic night at the Tonys in other ways: Cyndi Lauper was the first women to win for music and lyrics solo on Kinky Boots, and at the risk of reciting a long, reiterated-so-as-not-to-be-plagarising list, the New York Times has the full rundown on the other historic points of the evening. I was hoping for Tim Minchin to pull out a win for his Matilda score, but I'll take a historic win for Ms. Lauper and Kinky Boots instead. Go News & Notes, Go! Local GiveMN, the Donor Advised Fund that sponsors the annual fundraising event Give To The Max Day, announced this past week that they were upping their transaction fee from 2.9% to 4.9% on July 1st. A 3 to 5 cent jump on every dollar isn't an especially large increase, but seeing as GiveMN has taken in $73 million since its inception, that jump will eventually translate into millions of dollars. But I'm not surprised that the change is happening, and the old transaction fee of 2.9% is a lot lower now than I would have expected--GiveMN's press release states comparable giving platforms charge from 4.75% to 15%. If that is the case, the new 4.9% transaction fee will still be at the lower end of the spectrum. Even if you're angry about it now, you'll have the next few months to cool down and forget about it, just in time for the next Give To The Max Day. National I have been following HowlRound's campaign in the Business Unusual National Challenge, a crowdsourcing competition that aims to tackle problems facing arts organizations. Phase 1 was a call for entries, and Phase 2 consisted of selecting finalists to compete for "a package of grants and resources worth $35,000 to prototype an innovative new approach." After more crowdsourcing to occur in Phase 3, the winner will be determined by panel from the finalists in Phase 4. HowlRound has succeeded and passed into Phase 3 with the development of what they call a CULTURE COIN, "a peer-to-peer digital currency backed by a peer-to-peer sharing economy that matches artists’ needs to the community’s available and latent abundant resources." In order to combat what has become the normal of "sweat equity" and uncompensated labor in the arts sector, "cultural workers" will, in addition to normal payment, be paid in CULTURE COINS backed by the "community's pooled resources": intellectual, material, and otherwise. I have no idea if $35,000 is adequate to get the HowlRound idea into the world, but I do think it is a unique solution to what already exists as a shadow economy. How much of the arts is based on reciprocity, an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" mentality? And how do you begin to measure it? Howlround's adaptive challenge attempts to answer that question, and I wish I had a chance in the final phase to vote on it. As mentioned, that will be left to a panel, and I hope that increases their chances of funding. International The profile of Rosemary Squire at The Telegraph offers a brief glimpse at a the co-chief executive and founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG). Squire has some killer quotes on being a woman in the business world, and talks about how she once believed that by the time she had children, women would head just as many businesses as men. Reality has been more sobering, and of late she feels quotas are the answer: “We need quotas at board level and at the top of all businesses. It’s like not wearing seat belts or smoking inside. No one’s going to stop doing it until they are told to. Men still do most of the appointing at the senior level in businesses and they appoint in their own vision: other men." The remainder of the article discusses the expansion of ATG stateside and gives a closer look at how Big Theatre functions. ATG has acquired Foxwoods Theatre on Broadway and has further plans to expand around the globe, including into China. This trades heavily on their "integrated model"--producing, ticketing, what-have-you, it's all bound together. We're only given a small sense of the business, but I'd really like a closer glimpse at how the operations run at that scale. Perhaps they'd be willing to do a tour? There's a "women doing awesome things" trifecta in play in this News & Notes, so here's John Greene talking about all the accomplishments of women in the 19th Century. This Week in Fringe I love fringe festivals and I think we're uniquely blessed with one of the best fringes the world has to offer. I do hear one of the planets around Betelgeuse has the best fringe in the galaxy, but it's hard to get good news from that far out. Glimpses of how other fringes work occasionally penetrate my Minnesota Fringe bubble, and I found myself really excited that the Montreal Fringe has a beer tent. I'm now dreaming of a roaming Minnesota Fringe beer tent. It seems the Minnesota Fringe has investigated this already, because when I asked them on twitter if this were a possibility, they tweeted back that Minneapolis laws sadly prohibit it. But don't fret--Fringe Central will be returning to the Crooked Pint this summer! Obligatory Shakespeare/Pop Culture Entry I did a double-take today when I saw a post on William Shakespeare's Star Wars, after which I exclaimed "It's Hamluke!" It's not actually; it's Star Wars through a Shakespeare filter, more akin to Bard Fiction. But that's not a bad thing either, though I wonder if this is just enough parody to skirt around any copyright or intellectual property laws. Or maybe Disney just doesn't care. What Your Favorite Shakespeare Play Says About You No, I can't resist posting this bit of Shakespeare cold reading. Me? Coriolanus: "You’ve always seen yourself as a tragic hero in an unfair world." Well, maybe not a tragic hero. But definitely a hero. --- If you have feedback or comments on any of the articles above, or suggestions for future blog and news items, please leave them in the comments or e-mail me at [email protected].