Changes

Grant, Baby, Grant Before we get going in earnest this week, some congratulations are in order: (1) Rock on, Intermedia Arts! You scored a cool million dollars from the Kresge Foundation to fund a continuation of your Creative Citymaking project. You're also helping to fulfill one of my predictions for 2014 concerning "creative placemaking", so thanks for that. (2) Way to go, you theatre and dance companies that were recently awarded the MRAC Arts Learning grants. Teach away! (3) Go on with your bad selves, St. Paul! The Knight Foundation just gave you $8 million in grants so that you can continue your insane rush to overtake Minneapolis in support for the arts. Gone By the Boards Minnesota Dance Theatre has been kicking it in Minneapolis since 1962. Originally founded by Loyce Houlton, it was taken over by her daughter Lise Houlton in 1995. Though currently weathering through difficult financial times (like almost all of us), the company appears strong and solvent from the outside. This is why everyone was stunned, puzzled, confuzed and even a little put out to hear that the company's entire board resigned in one fell swoop with little more explanation than that they were "no longer able to serve the needs of the organization". Houlton's official response was just as vague, and neither she nor the board have responded to any journalist's calls for more explanation. This has set off a mad scramble of speculation across the dance and nonprofit worlds, but almost everyone who has said anything has said nothing. However, a former board member who stepped down a few months earier hinted at tensions between the Artistic Director and the board. This is not the first time the company's AD and board have butted heads. A previous incarnation of the board actually fired company founder Loyce Houlton and eventually disbanded the group in 1986. In the days to come, I am sure that more salacious details will emerge about the current kerfuffle. In the meantime, those of you who work with on a nonprofit board should probably study up on the signs that there are problems with your nonprofit's executive; and those of you who are the executives of nonprofits should study up on what might be wrong with your board. And, for you corporate types who are clucking your tongues at this sloppy work you think that nonprofits are always doing, I know a guy who would like to set you straight. Goodbye, Garage For 26 years, the Minneapolis Theatre Garage has occupied a space at the corner of Lyndale and Franklin. It has no website, no decent parking, was difficult to book if you didn't already know the owner and was often empty for months at a time; and everyone in the theater community went bonkers when they found out that it's going away. As Uptown Minneapolis rapidly gentrifies and plows under its old buildings (and, yes, I know that the Garage is in the Wedge, not in Uptown, but everyone refers to the whole general vicinity as "Uptown" now, so deal with it), the Theatre Garage will be subsumed by new development that will swallow up the entire corner it occupies. So, the Twin Cities is faced with the prospect of losing yet another small theater space, after Gremlin and the Theatre Space Project pulled up stakes to hunt for new digs. But, not to worry, small theater people (I mean, people who do small theatre, not small people who do theatre… though, I guess that might include them, too, as long as their budgets are low enough), the Garage will rise again! The new complex developers hope to install has plans to reincorporate the space back in to "provide a space for Theatre Garage puppet shows". (!?) However, the project will require variances and changing in zoning from the city council, so you may be waiting for a while. Script Supreme? Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, stumbled into controversy recently, when their production of Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come was nearly canceled after the playwright threatened to sue. Asolo had fairly negotiated for the rights to the production, paid all the proper royalties and credited Friel. So, where's the problem? As it happens, the director, Tony Award-winner Frank Galati, decided to streamline Friel's play, cutting out three characters, swaths of dialogue and the play's two intermissions. He also stuck in some extra Irish songs and dancing, just in case anyone forgot that Friel is an Irish playwright and the play is about Irish people in Ireland. Friel's objections have forced the company to suspend the production, which opened January 10, while it is restaged with the full, original script. And the floodgates opened… Playwrights and their agents and lawyers have been flooding the interwebs with every line of attack possible on the idea that a director might make changes to a script. The reaction has been almost universally negative. The subtleties arise from exactly how negative writers want to get, ranging from the Wall Street Journal's polite "this was discourteous and imprudent" to a Samuel French, Inc. advisor's "this was ill-advised and illegal" up to Melissa Hillman's staunch cry of "VANDALISM!" Of course, this tension between playwright intentions and director interpretations is an old one. Yes, it's technically illegal to alter a copyrighted script, and if you've ever run up against the Dramatists Guild, you'll know that preventing alteration of a writer's work is is priority number one on their bill of rights. (Though, playwrights don't seem too conflicted when it comes time to exercise their own creative freedom against someone else's copyrighted work.) However, before you carry your torches and pitchforks down to Sarasota, stop for just one moment, breathe deeply and let Lyn Gardner at the Guardian guide you seriously through an argument that maybe scripts should not be the untouchable, precious snowflakes of theatre. You're the Best! Before we go, let me ask you something. Are you an actor? Did you go to school for acting? Did you got to one of these schools? You didn't? Loser.