Skillz to pay the billz...

Not to stay in the world of meta, and also not to single out the very excellent rlewis, but this comment here and other ones I've come across in the last couple of days need a bit of a response.

I think we've all often heard the argument that theatres need managers because artists don't have the skill sets/the right mindset/the interest to do the dirty work of management. It's usually broken down into artists=left-brain and manager=right brain. Someone's got to manage the money and deal with the business, the argument goes. Left to their own devices, artists can't manage the cash, so they should stick to the art stuff and let the business people stick to the business stuff.

Um. Not to put to fine a point on it (and at the risk of offending): bullshit. I call bullshit on that.

A while back, I met with a theatre consultant who said a very, very interesting thing: theatre artists are particularly skilled at providing a product on a hard deadline. We have our opening night and 95 times out of 100, we produce our product on deadline. You show me a designer who isn't aware of their budget, I'll show you a designer not worth their salt (going over their budget is another matter I'll get into below). Artists may be funky, they may be messy or even occasionally flighty, but they're not dumb (well, mostly not). That attitude is part of the false dichotomy and part of the disempowering of artists.

Art and money are intimately connected. The problem arises, I think, because the "artists" have different priorities than the "suits". (I really don't buy those distinctions.) Taking the designer example from above, you take a designer and ask them to build a budget for a show. They certainly can and they can probably stick to it. But give them a budget that doesn't share their priorities and that's a different matter.

Every artist is their own business. We often have to juggle not just the job of making our art, but the job of marketing ourselves, hustling for opportunities, the job of building connections and, for most of us, a "real world" job that pays the bills. We're constantly adjusting, budgeting, setting priorities, managing time and scheduling. We make investments in new technologies to help us, new techniques to make ourselves more marketable, new methods of reaching our audiences. We set our own priorities.

But once we're involved in a theatre, we're expected to relinquish all of that, and act like helpless children. We shown our sandbox, told to play there and not get the sand all over the place. All of the hustle, hard work, time-management, budgeting and marketing that got us through the door are chalked up to talent or luck or whatever and we're expected to leave that stuff at the door, so the grown-ups can work on our behalf.

I'm not saying that ALL artists have ALL the skills to be effective managers. But then again, not ALL managers are good at their job (and let me tell ya, I've got stories to curl your hair). I'm just disputing that we "need" managers because the artists can't/won't do it. We can, we're used to it, we have the skills. You just have to trust us.

Lying Liars and the Liars who Love Them

The other night, I met up with a literary manager connected to a pretty major NY theatre. We met to talk about a play of mine that's under consideration. We had wine and cheese and laughed a bit. When we turned to the turkey talk, I said, "Don't worry about sugar-coating it. I've been where you are, I know the lingo. Just give it to me straight." And the lit manager did. Which was helpful and made the conversation very productive. (The wine helped, too.)

But it reminded me of a conversation that I'd had a while back with an artistic director. He told me a story about a theatre which got a new artistic director who established a new policy that was revolutionary: no more lying. The big secret about working in artistic development is that we're all a bunch of liars. And these lies can do real harm.

What this artistic director at this theatre established was really simply this: when it came time to tell a playwright why they weren't producing their play, to tell them the simple truth: we don't love your play enough to produce it. See how simple that is? And yet how bald, vulnerable and open it leaves everyone involved? In these conversations, there's so much protection going on. The theatre people don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, they want to keep their options open, they want to help (in most cases). We're trained that there's some formula that means a play is ready for production and if it's ready for production, then you must produce it. But if you don't want to, you're not supposed to say that. So we hedge, we fudge, we give notes, we have meetings. We lie. We say that the ending isn't earned, that some thematic thing doesn't land, some character or scene or plot point is unecessary. We blame our subscribers, our audience, the finances, the board. But what we're really saying is that we don't love this play enough to produce it.

Because we all know that none of the notes, none of the restrictions about cast size, scenes changes, subject matter, none of that matters if the theatre (or, in most cases, the artistic director) loves the play enough. Come hell, high water or bad reviews, they will produce the play. And if they don't love it, no matter how many rewrites, revisions, alterations, they will never produce it.

This is a part of "development hell". It's, in some ways, the key part. One of the things my lit manager friend and I said was that this whole process was like dating. And it is. The problem comes after a couple of dates when the other person says, "I'd love to date you more, but you need to change your clothes and learn some better jokes." But they have no intention of dating you. So when you walk in with your new jokes and new threads, they sigh and say, "Well, the hair isn't quite right and you could use a tattoo." Eventually, you're a different person and still not the person they want.

This is what feeds the insecurity of playwrights, and the timidity. Instead of just hearing, "You're not for me. Thanks. Call me sometime for coffee", we hear, "If you were just..." And try to be just...whatever. And around and around it goes.

If more of us can break the cycle and work in the truth, then we can make better theatre, find better homes.

What Scott Said

This has been another edition of what Scott said.

I'll have some more to say on this later. But now I'm gonna check this out.

Models

So here and here I described what I call the Standard Model. There’s another name that it goes by in theatre circles: the Corporate Model. Often, as a theatre company moves from its rough-and-tumble early days of everyone pitching in and sharing the workload, and it moves towards the Standard Model, you hear the revolutionaries complain about the theatre going “corporate”. It means institutionalization, it means structure and control. But it’s not really corporate.

At one theatre I worked at, the big battle was getting the founding Artistic Director to relinquish control of the finances. Granted, he had made some bad choices, but the reasoning was that it wasn’t “business-like” to have one person make the major decisions, oversee the finances and decide the course of the organization. If that’s not business-like, what the hell are businesses doing? How often do you read about someone being the Chair and CEO of a major corporation? Often. And that’s basically the situation many theatres have, at least when they start. In fact, when the board forces out a CEO, it’s usually described as a coup, especially if it’s a founder. And it’s usually a bad sign for that company.

If we looked at theatres as what they are, small businesses, the attitude would change. But we don’t. And the Standard Model is one of the big reasons we don’t. Because it wasn’t designed for theatre. It has a different purpose and history.

A few years back, an arts consultant I met with explained this to me and it literally blew my mind. The Corporate Model is not corporate at all. It comes from a totally different world: foundations. In the early days of the non-profits, when the underpinnings of the regional theatre movement were put in place, when regulation was sought, the federal government looked to foundations to set up the rules. And they did, based on their model. Look at it this way:

When a family (or a company) has too much money, they create a foundation to distribute it to those who need it more than they do. The foundation’s prime purpose is to make sure that the family (or company) doesn’t just give the money back to itself, that there is a fair and even-handed policy. They act as a firewall between the money and the family.

So, with the Standard Model in theatre, instead of money, it’s art or talent. The artists have it, but need a board to tell them how to use it, how to support it, so that they don’t waste it. It makes more sense now, doesn’t it? They stand between the art and the masses, directing it, deciding how it should be used effectively.

This same consultant regularly said that theatre artists excel at one particular skill that’s important to business: delivering a product on time. We have a deadline, a drop dead deadline that (in most cases) must be obeyed. As a group, we can manage our time and set our priorities and achieve our goals. But still there is the perception of artists as being wasteful and frivolous. Mostly because we have different priorities.
One of the first steps in making theatre fully vibrant again is letting go of this attitude and remaking this model. Having a group of people dictating to the artists how their talents are to be “spent” does no one any good. We have to define for ourselves how we want to operate.

There is a legal question, since, for 501(c)3 status, you need to have a board. The loophole is that the government doesn’t care too much about how your board is organized. As long as it approves of your budget and meets a few other requirements, you’re good to go. You don’t have to buy into the idea that your board is financial engine of your theatre and therefore holding the keys. Other models are possible…

What's Wrong With This Picture?

So, okay, you say, that’s the standard model and it’s working. Theatre is being produced, all over the country, new plays are happening and finding audiences. Sure, it’s waning in influence, but what can you do? The world has changed. This model works, so why upset the apple cart?

Because it doesn’t work. And, in each passing year, it’s working less and less.

Let me say this upfront: theatre is not dying, will not die. Period. I’ve never been one of these people who believed that theatre would someday vanish from the world like the dodo. If anything, theatre’s like the coelacanth. Everyone will think it’s dead, but it’s out there, hiding. What I want is for theatre to stop hiding. Theatre can be truly vital again. The tools are there. The talent is there. The urge and need is there.

Over the last few years, whenever I’ve talked to anyone who’s working in theatre, the overwhelming feeling I’ve gotten is one of powerlessness. Artistic directors feel beholden to their boards. Artists feel beholden to artistic directors. Audiences feel let down by the theatre. And board members feel beholden to the audiences. Young artists feel that they can’t break through. Older artists feel like they have to keep doing the same thing over and over to stay in. There is a palpable feeling of disconnect between the primal artistic urge and the product that hits the stage and the audiences feel it.

But still they come. Yes, dozens, thousands of small theatres in New York have been snuffed out, but not really by lack of audience. In New York, theatre, including Broadway (which only about 45% of the time earns the name “theatre”), is the single largest generator of tourist income. Without theatre, this city would dry up and die. And not just because of all of the starving artists, but because people would have less reason to come here. Significantly less. People want to go to theatre, they crave theatre, they seek it out. They will make do with movies, with television, with whatever they can get their hands on. Theatre, in some form or another, will exist. Always.

But what kind of theatre will we have? Theatre that excites, informs, provokes, connects, entertains? Or the theatre we have now: theatre that is merely adequate, that fits the bill if you want live entertainment, but not much more, theatre that appeals to only a small subset of the population.

The standard model of theatre creates this. Innovation is frowned upon, pushing buttons is discouraged. Challenging the audience…no, no, no. Our subscribers will walk out. They will write angry letters. They will not come back. So we don’t.

New York Theater Workshop pulled its planned production of I Am Rachel Corrie, not due to death threats, but threats from funders. Let that sink in. One of the underlying assumptions in the standard model is that the “money” people handle the money and the “art” people make the art. This is never how it works. You can’t separate producing theatre from money. Money is part of the equation, and it should be. How it is, though, is the ultimate question.

What I want to talk about are different models, ones that encourage, support and reward innovation. One that put the artists at the center of the organization. Ones that don’t create this oppositional thing of money vs. art, as though only one can be served at any one time.

The grand sum of this model is that theatre is being produced for those who can afford it. We see plays about wealthy white people living in urban centers because those are the people sitting in the seats. And they’re sitting in the seats because they can afford to. This season, tickets for a straight play running in an mid-sized Off-Broadway house are $60 each. That’s $120, just for the tickets, for one night out, for a play, not by a “name” writer or featuring a “name” cast (though, it’s a play I like quite a lot. So see if you can get comps.). Through on that a good dinner, and you’re looking at a $300 evening. What if you don’t like it? How many people can put down that much money for one evening?

This is what the standard model is producing. This is the problem.

Theatre isn’t dying. But theatre artists are. And the audiences that most need theatre aren’t being reached