Our creative dollars

Before we get started in earnest, here's a list of things I read this week that really made me think. I mean, you could argue that they didn't make me think enough to actually write much about them, but, you know what? I'm sick of your crap, imaginary guy who's always arguing with me.

(1) I don't know much about dance, let alone modern dance, but Marina Harss' recent article in The New Yorker made me think about the ways that once revolutionary people and organizations in all arts have to adapt once they become the institutions of the world they used to shake up. (As Ben Folds said: "It's no fun to be the man.") Along with that, Anna Marie Shogren's recent article for MN Artists made me think about something I had never pondered before: the different way that the dance world views this whole idea of "intellectual property."

(2) In what is ostensibly a book review for The Weekly Standard, Terry Teachout laments the devolution of the American musical genre. I'm putting this out there, partly because it made me think about musicals in a larger context through time, but also because I take a sick pleasure in tricking my liberal audience into reading something on The Weekly Standard. Also, to counter that, did you know that if you aren't on Broadway, that doesn't mean you're a failure?

(3) True story: I almost went to college to study architecture. Then I made the safer choice and went the much more economically viable route of getting a degree in theater. If you've ever wondered why I harp so much on arts institutions building big, grand, confounding and, frankly, kind of useless buildings, now you know why. You also know why I really enjoyed reading Duncan Webb's article in the Clyde Fitch Report on what arts organizations can do to build better buildings in the future.

(4) If you went to college for theater, then lord knows you spent plenty of time leafing through books of ten-minute plays. Let Donna Hoke, tell you what's wrong with them.

Enough with the thinking. On with the show!

The perils of marketing

Selling your play to the world ain't easy. When entertainment for most people is as easy as turning on a screen at home, getting people up off their butts and into your seats can be a Herculean challenge.

When marketing your show, it's hard to resist the siren song of the pull quote. That's where you find a review of your show and pull out one favorable line to dangle out like a shiny bauble to lure the fishes in. Hopefully, the whole review that the quote came from is good as well, but that's not necessarily a requirement. For example, if a review says of your show, "It was enjoyable, right up until the moment the actors starting talking, and then I wanted to put a corkscrew in each ear," you've got a fine pull quote in "It was enjoyable". Stick that on in your newsletter and spread it all over town.

But sometimes a random line taken out of context from a much larger pile of words can say something that you never intended.

As you might be aware, the Guthrie is currently running Joe Dowling's swan song, A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by the Joe himself. The reviews have all been good, so when it came time for the Guthrie to lean on a pull quote, they had some pretty good pickings to choose from. In a recent photo of the show they passed out to the interwebs, they went with a quote from Eric Ringham's review for MPR: "What's funnier in a professional theater than community theater?"

OK, so it wasn't the best pull quote. I could actually think of a lot of things that are funnier than that. Goats, for example. Goats are pretty damn funny.

Unfortunately, the quote didn't quite have the desired effect. As soon as it hit the Facebook realm, a number of theater types in the Twin Cities took it as incredibly offensive. I was personally witness to a number of conversation threads in which actors of all sorts took umbrage at this quote. How much umbrage did they take? All of it, my friends. There is no umbrage left for anyone else to take.

Now, you could say (as some people did) that this was making a mountain out of a molehill. I can't imagine anyone in the Guthrie's marketing department thinking, "Yeah, we're really gonna stick it to the little guys this time!" Well, actually, I did just imagine that. Then I imagined them screaming "Woohoo" and passing high-fives all around the office before a chant of "We're number one!" started up. But, that's just my imagination. I'm 99% sure that didn't really happen. (OK, 80% sure.)

However molehilly this really is, it does feed into a larger narrative that is rather more mountainy: that is, that the Guthrie perceives itself as existing so wholly outside of and above the rest of the Minnesota theater community, that they can afford (and maybe even enjoy) a little condescension toward the little guys. Now, we all know the truth is vastly more complicated than that, but if you know anything about politics, you know that narratives like this tend to stick, and they don't help you out terribly much.

Which is why I'm glad to say this bit of internet outrage actually has a decent ending.

Several people contacted the Guthrie about this particular quote, including local actor, director and writer Matt Sciple, who shared this on his Facebook feed recently:

I just received this notification from the Guthrie in regard to my recent post:

"We regret our recent community theater post and apologize for the misstep. We see how it might be considered disrespectful toward artists in our incredible arts community, of which we are an equal (and grateful) part. It wasn't our intention to offend, only to entertain with a photo of our favorite players of the moment. We have taken it down."

Matthew Sciple: "Thank you for your prompt attention! It was clearly an oversight that hadn't been thought through properly, but I'm sure the retraction will be appreciated. This is a great theater town partly because we don't generally create an artificial barrier between professional artists, those who volunteer their services, and those who do both. We all learn from each other, and will continue to do so."

Guthrie Theater: "Exactly. We couldn't agree more."

This made my morning. Somebody was paying attention, corrected the objections raised by a polite (if pointed) request, and apologized. Kudos!

For once, ladies and gentlemen, the internet helped do a good thing. Celebrate this day. And let's all learn together about the dangers of pull quotes.

I read the Creative Minnesota report so you don't have to

Last week on News and Notes I promised you that I would read through the new report on economic activity in the arts released recently by Creative Minnesota. Now, I could have punked out on you and just read the abridged At a Glance version; but, no, good readers, I valiantly set forth to dive into the full report. It was a daunting, grueling task that actually only took about ten minutes, because, in reality, Creative Minnesota put together a pretty user-friendly, easy-to read full report. This was quite a relief for me, especially considering that the latest NEA Arts Data Profile, which I tried to read through, is shot through with compelling writing like: "Historically, private fixed assets were in the form of physical capital (i.e., plant and equipment assets). In more recent years, however, the BEA has expanded its definition of investment to include the capitalization of intangible assets ghfgvgbvfgfghdhnfghfghfgh

Sorry, that last bit was from me falling asleep on my keyboard.

Creative Minnesota's report is downright approachable, and very useful for artists when they go up against government officials, businessmen, and you conservative uncle who threw back a few too many drinks at Thanksgiving that think they don't need to give a tinker's damn about whatever it is these hippy artist types are doing. So, don't get mad at me as I poke a few holes in the numbers in the report. I promise you, I'm doing this so that you are prepared when those numbers are thrown back in your face by someone who's not on your side. I'm not going to lie. This is going to hurt a little bit. You have to understand that there is a whole other way that people can look at the world, and that other viewpoint doesn't care that 19 million people are served by the arts annually, in a state with only 5 million people; or that 2.6 million students are served by our cultural sector. I'm going to leave out squishy, intangible benefits to the arts like "being a better human being" for just moment and focus on the thing that wonks of all sorts focus on: money. This is going to suck for a moment, but please bear with me. It gets better at the end. If I, a happy participant in the arts, can poke holes in these numbers, you can bet for damn sure that your uncle will as well while he adds it to the ever growing list of things he thinks his tax dollars shouldn't pay for and takes far more mashed potatoes than everyone else at the dinner table. You need to be prepared.

The report shows that arts and culture creates $1.2 billion in total economic impact in Minnesota annually. That sounds good! "Billion" is a big number! And, look at this: artists make up 1.5% of Minnesota's workforce. Nationally, that rate is only 1.1%. Look! We have more artists and they gin up more than a billion dollars!

But be ready for a hard-nosed numbers guy to point out that Minnesota's GDP in 2014 was $270 billion. This means that arts and culture counts for only 0.4% of our state's GDP. 1.5% of the populace only managed to generate 0.4% of GDP. If you put that on a spreadsheet next to some other Minnesota industries, it doesn't stand much of a fighting chance. Even fishing can boast $2.8 billion.

Still, $1.2 billion isn't chump change. I don't have 1.2 billion dollars just lying around (though I might have 1.2 dollars if I check the couch). You can do a lot with $1.2 billion dollars, like buy a presidential election, for example.

But $1 billion of that $1.2 billion in arts spending comes from the 7-county metro area alone, along with 18 million of that 19 million people served by the arts. The next closest region is the Arrowhead, with $40 million and 773,000 people served. If this feels pretty lopsided to you, you're right: out of Minnesota's population of 5.3 million, the 7-county metro area comprises 2.95 million, or 56%, while producing 83.3% of arts spending. Looking at that, it's easy for someone to argue that the arts is really some silly luxury for weird liberal city folks, and their hard-earned tax dollars are blah, blah, blah, something about Obama.

OK, how do nonprofit arts groups make their money? Surprisingly, 43.65% of their reported income is earned income. 31.2% comes from individual, corporate and foundation donors. The state only kicks in 16.11%. Not bad, eh?

However, according to 2011 stats from Americans for the Arts, the national average for nonprofit arts organizations is 60% earned income and only 2% money from their respective states. By now, you can probably picture the speech your drunk uncle will give you at Thanksgiving, before your mom nervously butts in about how there's more dessert, if anyone's hungry.

So, let's turn a corner and stop depressing the hell out of everyone. The only reason that balance of state support to earned income is so different here in Minnesota is because we chose to tax ourselves under the Legacy Amendment. "I didn't vote for that!", your drunk uncle might say. "Tough luck," you can say back, "You lost!" while your mom hovers in the corner suggesting that someone take that last piece of pumpkin pie.

Or you can turn the conversation in your favor using numbers like this: the state government spends about $80.9 million per year on direct support of the arts. It brings back in at the end of the year $100.6 million in revenue from economic activity generated by the arts. That is a 24.35% return on investment. That's an insanely high ROI for an investment. You could argue that the state may actually be investing far too little in the arts. What private sector business venture generates that much return without eventually being revealed as a Ponzi scheme?

Oh yeah, and the arts actually do make you a better person. So there's that, too. It's even quantified. Now, really, have that last piece of pie. For heavan's sake, it's just going to go to waste.