Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas has caused a stir on blogosphere the last few days. He did a 10 Questions Interview on Theatre Is Territory that was critical of the NYC orientation of the theatre profession and the training of artists in general. He says a lot of provocative stuff, including “Dogs are trained, not artists,” which make it worth reading. Long time readers might remember Walters from his discussion of Tony Kushner’s suggestion that all performance degrees be abolished that I covered about a year ago.
Actually, I should back up a little, most of the interview was about artist training and the environment in which the arts now operate. Most of the comments on the Theatre is Territory posting, Walters’ response posting, and Theatre is Territory’s response to his response dealt with one answer he gave suggesting that all roads to working in your hometown go through NYC.
Walters actually gets around to expounding on the more central ideas of the Theatre is Territory interview on his blog today. His thoughts on not taking potshots at conservatives in performances and other art works just because it is easy is something to consider.
His expansion on what he envisioned when he said that encouraging students to be innovative, experiment and take risks was the only way to move performance forward aided my understanding of his argument. I initially thought he was calling for more of the same attempt to be avant garde until he qualified it by saying
“Experimenting doesn’t just mean “doing weird shit.” You have to do it for a purpose, and pay attention to the results. And if your purpose is simply, solely something like “to confuse the audience” or “to offend the audience,” then I am going to say “That’s too easy. Raise the bar.”
Ultimately, I have to confess though that the whole NYC centric debate, while interesting, made part of me grumble inside. It wasn’t a big grumble, but still part of my mind was grumbling that the debate wasn’t contributing any solutions to the problems facing the performing arts.
Frankly, it isn’t fair to expect that every conversation on an arts blog help industry professionals sharpen their minds and hone their perceptions so that they ready to synthesize the next great artistic movement and then promote it utilizing the best techniques and emerging media channels.
On the other hand it is tough not to have an ever present anxiety about the future of the arts permeating your psyche even if you only read half the stuff I do every day. Pretty much everyone agrees the current environment is in what Seth Godin terms a conceptual dip.
Maybe Walters is right about how to educate the next generation of artists. A lot of smart people are giving well considered advice about how arts organizations can make a transition from the current mode of operations to a new way. No one really knows which projections about future trends and how to prepare for them is correct.
For many it’s hardly worth panicking that neither you nor they know which strategy is going to be most effective because you most certainly don’t have the time, money or personnel to effect whatever suggested changes you decide are best. (That is if you had time to review the most recent theories about the future of the arts in the first place.)
In this larger context of the arts creeping toward its inevitable doom, it seems rather pointless to debate the NYC effect. Even the commenters pretty much admit the city doesn’t have a nefarious plan to suck the artistic energy out of the rest of the country. Though there is something to be said for leading by example. If you want audiences to stop thinking the only things worth seeing come from NYC, theatres have to stop going there for the majority of their talent pool.
I wonder if the owners of the proprietary arts organizations, the model that preceded the current non-profit arts organizations, had similar discussions as their businesses were dying out. (For the record, I am in the freshness and relevance are needed camp rather than the end is near.) In Performing Arts, The Economic Dilemma . economists Baumol & Bowen note that at the start of the 20th century there were 327 touring theatre companies, less than 50 by 1915 and less than 25 in 1930s.
I imagine those folks were blaming the movies, records and radio for stealing their audiences as much as arts people blame DVDs, the internet and big screen televisions for diverting attention today. I’m sure they made much ado over factors that had no real bearing on the success of their businesses too because they had no idea what was coming.
Hindsight allows us to take comfort in the fact that vaudeville survived and appeared on television on the Texaco Star Theatre/Milton Berle show and Ed Sullivan. At one time there was a more golden era for the current non-profit arts model with subscribers packing the halls.
But it is no guarantee for the future. All this proves is that there is a law of conservation of artistic energy–it can not be destroyed but manifests itself in different media. Our real worry when we complain about empty seats and lack of art in schools isn’t that art will disappear. It is that it will change form and we don’t know what line to stand in to participate.