A Minnesota theater alliance?

Just returned from the monthly Artistic Director's breakfast at Marie's Cafe where they were summarizing the ongoing discussions about creating a Minnesota-wide theater alliance. (Corn pancakes at Marie's. Highly recommended.) Brief background: For the past two years, the McKnight Foundation has funded research into the usefulness and feasibility of an official theater alliance for the state. Two years ago, a consulting firm researched and created a preliminary plan. At the time, a steering committee made up of mostly Artistic Directors around the state supported the consultants. After one year, they decided to move forward with a reconstituted committee that met once a month and re-evaluated the proposal in light of the recession. That committee decided it was still useful and viable to move forward. They decided that the organization should be statewide (rather than just Twin Cities-based); should include theater but not dance, for the moment; and should incubate within Springboard for the Arts. Now they're creating a third committee to look into the actual program and funding structure for such an organization. Anyone who is interested in being on the committee should consider emailing Commonweal Artistic Director Hal Cropp, [email protected], about making this commitment. It is a volunteer position that requires a meeting once a month and probably 8-10 hours of additional research/work outside those meetings. It would be nice to diversify the committee with administrators and artists outside Artistic Directors. The upshot: The second committee decided that an alliance that would be useful generally as a "unified voice" for the theater. Hal Cropp, who summarized the committee's findings, described the purpose of such an organization as, broadly, advocacy (which may include audience development) and also a resource for "peer-to-peer" communication (which may include information, and perhaps other types of, sharing). The specific programs of this organization would, it appears, be defined by this third and hopefully last committee. The second committee also applied for additional funding from the McKnight Foundation as "seed money" to create a part-time position under the umbrella of Springboard for the Arts that would work on the building of the alliance into a larger, stand-alone organization. For those who wonder, the experience of other cities around the country suggest that it is normal to take many years just to get the thing off the ground We could say more. We have opinions (if nothing else), but, so far, the specifics of the program still seem too vague to opine on. "Advocacy" is the buzzword. We wonder what that means where the rubber meets the road.