Money, money, money, money

Some people just don't like Fun

Hopefully by now you know about this other Broadway musical that upended everyone's expectations about what makes a Broadway musical, Fun Home (which also, thankfully, cleaned up at the Tony Awards last year). What you may not know is that the graphic novel the musical is based on has been frequently banned by libraries and colleges that hold on to the hope that, despite the existence of the internet, teenagers will never ever learn about the existence of lesbian sex.

Recently, Fun Home became the center of another outrage exercise when a Duke University selected the book as the official selection for its Common Experience Summer Reading Program. And, because this is America, and we can't let anything having to do with sex go unshamed, a group of incoming Duke freshman have publicly declined to read the book on moral grounds.

All right, my liberal friends, before you start frothing at the mouth, let's hear out the reasoning, supplied by the Duke freshman who got this whole thing rolling:

"[I]n the Bible, Jesus forbids his followers from exposing themselves to anything pornographic. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he says in Matthew 5:28-29. 'If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.' This theme is reiterated by Paul who warns, 'flee from sexual immorality.' I think there is an important distinction between images and written words. If the book explored the same themes without sexual images or erotic language, I would have read it."

So, if I'm hearing this right, Jesus thinks it's cool if we read the book of Fifty Shades of Grey, but not if we watch the movie. (And here I thought the right answer was "Dear god, no one should every experience either of these things, because they're just horribly, horribly written.")

Not to fear, my lesbian-loving friends, the Broadway production of Fun Home is here to defend you. The show has already stood up in defense of its source material in South Carolina, and in response to this latest controversy, the show is offering free copies of the book to college freshmen who ask for it.

Diversity? Diversity!

A few weeks ago on News and Notes, we chatted a bit about how modern theater is mostly failing at this whole "diversity" thing. It was a depressing conversation, I know, and I apologize for that. So, this week, let's get some sunshine and rainbows on order, and give you a report on how you can succeed at this whole "diversity" thing. Exhibit A: Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Now, I know words like "Oregon" and "Shakespeare" sound whiter than a polar bear chasing a snowshoe hare in a blizzard, but you should know that one of the healthiest, most critically acclaimed regional theater companies in the United States right now owes its success, at least in part, to its years-long commitment to diversity on its stages. (You know, when they're not covered in wildfire smoke.

And, if you want more proof that diversity on the stage is more than just some liberal nicety, I will point you (once again) toward the musical Hamilton, which is  one of the few game changers in Broadway history and which will be basically printing piles of Hamiltons for years to come.

Diversity: it will make you money.

Dollar dance

Hey, speaking of money: let's talk about money. Are you cringing yet?

While I was away at the Network of Ensemble Theaters gathering last week, one of the sessions I went to was about money and class, and the first thing the guy leading the session did was ask us to imagine a big pile of money in the middle of the room and blurt out three words that described our feelings/relationship to said pile of money. Since this was a group of people who lead nonprofit theater companies, you can guess how many of those words were synonyms for "anxiety" and "hate" (except for one guy, who is now my personal hero, whose three words were "I", "Want" and "It").

One of the greatest pastimes of the nonprofit arts world is worrying about money. (Hell, it's even true in the for-profit world; Broadway's been growing like gangbusters, and still people are biting their nails over its financial future). The market crash in 2008 upended our economy in more ways than just fat cat financiers losing their jobs and fortunes (HA! Just kidding! They didn't lose either of those things!). It made many of the big foundations that provide grants tighten their belts, as those foundations run off endowments that depend on investment portfolios paying off. If you're going after the big dollars these days, you now have to consider whether or not the stock market took a nosedive recently.

This is probably why you've been seeing Kickstarter and IndieGoGo campaigns proliferate like flies in the arts world, and why you will be getting approximately 2.35 bazillion requests for donations on Give to the Max Day. The received wisdom of the day is the wisdom of crowds. It's all about actualizing the individual and creating a grass roots donor base; except that received wisdom is undermined by how people actually behave in the long run. According to Jan Masaoka's article in Blue Avocado about common misconceptions concerning individual giving:

"Very few nonprofits that were not founded by wealthy, social elite individuals manage to develop even a small individual donor program. And while small donations from many people is an excellent constituency-building activity, it's seldom a successful revenue strategy."

Sorry, guys. Looks like we're stuck with these foundations, who we love to death when they hand out $200,000 grants and loathe when those grants come with all sorts of sticky strings attached.

A recent article from HowlRound by Adrienne Mackey has been making the rounds, being passed on from artist to artist with a righteous "hell yeah!" In this article, Mackey lays out her vision for how foundations should handle their giving to nonprofit theater world. Not surprisingly, her proposed changes benefit small organizations and young individual artists without offering any real benefit to the funders for making these changes. A response in the Clyde Fitch Report by Leonard Jacobs attempts to pull Mackey's ideas back into the land of reality with a bit of hard truth:

"Nice world, but here’s the dilemma: it’s not your money… But grantors micro-managing their money isn’t moral injustice, it’s merely unwise and a pain in the ass. Like not having a trust fund or a space to perform your first play."

The reality is that there is no magic bullet for funding your project or your organization. When you're asking myriad people and foundations to fork over their dollars, they're all going to want different things. Look at Kevin Smith, CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, who was criticized for offering raises to musicians based on some one-time gifts. His response: “There is nothing you can do to establish in perpetuity the [complete] financial security of an arts organization.”

Of course, to the business world, whose donors and foundations supply much of the cash for a place like the MN Orchestra, raising wages just after coming out of a costly strike is simply madness. "Where is the sustainability?!" they cry as they watch their precious cash go out the door in the hands of those filthy, greedy artists. And maybe that's the problem. Much of our ideas of how and why a nonprofit company should operate have been borrowed wholesale from the for-profit world, and they are fundamentally two different worlds. "Sustainability" (the buzz word that big donors love these days) means way more than money. We do live in a society precariously perched on the back of capitalism, so it's no surprise that our first instinct is to prove ourselves with our money, hence the proliferation of things like the Minneapolis Creative City Index. It's our way of shouting down the business community when they say, "Yeah, but do you make any money?"

But maybe, just maybe, there's more to life than money. (A shocking statement, I know. I'm scaring myself by writing it!) Maybe long term sustainability for the nonprofit arts world will come not from demonstrating that Minneapolis artists will gin up more money for less cost than a certain sports team who are getting a billion dollars thrown at them. We lean on money to prove ourselves because it's the easiest thing to quantify. But what if there was another way to demonstrate our worth?

Friends, let me introduce you to the concept of "wellbeing". If you can figure out how to quantify that, you should be golden.

Then they'll give you all that money.

Rock on

Were you a child (or an adult who was stoned a lot) during the first decade of the 21st century? Then you're probably a big fan of Spongebob Squarepants. You should know that your favorite cartoon sea creature is currently being chopped and channeled into a new musical, and the number of rock and pop legends who have signed on to contribute songs is absolutely insane.

David Bowie is one of them.

Just give them your money now and save the trouble.