BLOG: Butts in Seats

Grants! Before News and Notes gets started in earnest this week, I'd like to send some shout outs to Twin Cities locals who are bringing home the sweet grant-flavored bacon. Recently, Penumbra Theatre received $300,000 from the Surdna Foundation to support its Summer Institute program. In addition, Twin Cities artists including Ragamala Dance founder Ranee Ramaswamy, Catalyst Dance founder Emily Johnson and Open Eye Figure Theatre founder Michael Sommers took home chunks of change from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation But remember, friends: you don't have to be a nationally-known group or the founder of a respected company to get in on this hot grant action. The Knight Foundation is still taking applications for the St. Paul Knight Arts Challenge until May 5. Your Weekly South Carolina Update Last week on News and Notes we shared the heartwarming story of legislators of a certain state behaving in an ignorant, petulant and childish fashion by attempting to punish a public University for encouraging people to read the graphic novel memoir Fun Home. Upon hearing of this, the cast of the off-Broadway musical adaptation (which, by the way, was nominated for a Pulitzer) trucked on down south for a concert performance in support of the school. I just want you to know that it was a positive experience that was well-attended and well-received, which means, of course, that other members of the South Carolina state legislature are threatening more cuts to the school, because I guess spite is the law of the land in the Palmetto State. Reviews and You If you're a regular reader of Minnesota Playlist, you may have read editor Ira Brooker's series on reviewing our local theatre reviews; or you may have seen writer Dominic Orlando's new series of reviews; or you may have seen site founder Alan Berks' article on the importance of arts criticism. I guess theatre criticism has been on our minds. With the rise of individual bloggers and the decline of space for professional reviews in major publications, the way that the average persons comes into contact with reviews of live performance has changed radically. Of course, we all love to hate reviews, which can get awkward when the internet enables us to immediately post our more infantile first reactions; but what we hate even more is not getting a review. Arts Junkie TC published an article this week on the writer's personal use for theatre criticism and press coverage, and wonders if the problem with criticism is one of quality or quantity. Or maybe the problem is that we don't rate plays for age appropriateness like we do for movies. Getting Them In Ego aside, the biggest reason we worry so much about what reviewers have to say is that we think they can affect our bottom line by pointing people toward our productions or by keeping butts out of seats. As always, the biggest problem with live theater is getting more people to take part in the "live" aspect of it. One tactic that should no longer seem radical, but tragically is, is to adapt programming to appeal to more cultures than the standard, white, upper-middle class segment that the modern American theatre world has been built on. The Globe and Mail has an article on how the Gateway Theatre in British Columbia is overhauling its programming to attract a more multicultural audience. Instead of programming one play that appeals to southeast Asian immigrants and then hoping they'll stick around for another serving of Shakespeare, the company is making a long-term commitment to reflecting the neighborhood it actually exists in. On the other end of the continent, Broadway producers are having a similar idea. In recent years, Broadway shows have seen a significant growth in the number of black actors, playwrights, directors and stories on their stages. (You may remember that here in the Twin Cities, we apparently achieved this as well.) Granted, "significant growth" means going from "almost nothing" to "actually something", but the trend has resulted in a corresponding growth in ticket sales to African-American patrons. In fact, one of the newest productions to show up in New York, Holler If Ya Hear Me, a musical based on the music of Tupac Shakur, went even further than subject matter to attract modern audiences. Theatre spaces are curiously resistant to change (as you might notice when flipping through CNN's list of 15 Spectacular Theaters), so it was a big surprise when the producers of Holler laid down the money to completely reconfigure the seating of the historic Palace Theatre to look more like the stadium seating in a modern movie theater. By putting the audience in more immediate proximity to the performance, the production hopes to recreate the immediacy of a concert as well as the visual access of a large film screen. That's all good and well for a production that can afford to lay down several hundred thousand dollars just to shuffle around the seats, but what is the future of live performance for the rest of us? How do we find our audiences? Founder of Culturebot Andy Horwitz will be giving a series of lectures in May and June on the state of live performance today, including talks on the importance of live work to the digital world, the economics of the performing arts market and the rise of collaborative practice. Videos of the lectures will be made available on Culturebot afterward so that you can use the internet, which is killing your live performance, to find ways to save your live performance. But maybe there's no point in fighting this death. In a recent article at the Clyde Fitch Report, Sydney Skybetter muses on the effect of the internet on the dance world. At what point will huge home displays, fast internet and easy online access to staples like The Nutcracker replace the experience of watching live performance? As Skybetter says, "I see choreography becoming less about real bodies in actual space and time and more about moving kinesthetic ideas through platforms on the Internet." However, whether you welcome our new internet overlords or you will continue to fight for the live performance counterrevolution, there is one thing we can all agree on: performance art is stupid.