Feng Shui Your Practices

Since things are quieting down around the theatre this week (we only have a pre-school Christmas show, college winter graduation, Nutcracker brush up rehearsal and performances). I have been trying to dispose of obsolete equipment from around the office and such.

One of the things it is difficult to do around a theatre is get rid of stuff. The technical director here is notorious for holding on to things. In one respect this is good because so much is recycled, we don’t need to purchase new materials all the time. Saving money is good.

On the other hand, there are items we have had for 25 years and haven’t used and probably will never use again. We have tried to get rid of them but he insists we keep them against a theoretical use we may have in the future. This is preventing us from freeing up some much needed storage space and actually endangering other objects given that many of the old pieces are termite infested. We are able to toss some things out while he is on vacation (parting is less painful out of sight) or when they crumble under his touch due to the aforementioned termites.

Given that he is the one that has to work around the lack of storage, the situation is really more a bother for him than for me. I merely look around the shop and sigh about all the room we would have if shelves and the area under the pit were cleaned out.

In some respects, I am as bad as he only on a much smaller scale. We got brand new shiny ticket printers this summer but I just packed away the old one “just in case” even though it won’t work well at all with our new ticketing software. If the new printer had a problem, it would be a better use of our time to hand write all our tickets rather than attempt to configure the software to the old printer.

I am sure these type of practices are a metaphor for theatre as an industry as a whole. Resistance to tossing out barely functional equipment for fear we may one day need it probably equates to holding on to old practices and programming for fear that adopting new ones might leave us with less of an audience than we are already drawing.

In fact, I am pretty sure a feng shui practitioner would say that cluttering our space with old, unused objects is anchoring us to the past and hindering the progress we could be making in our lives. Since there are some items that we use often like our platforms, those feng shui practitioners and people on those anti-clutter home improvement shows wouldn’t necessarily counsel us to toss them.

Repainting a platform to make it look better on stage is one thing, but dressing up old audience development and programming strategies is another. The platform has some functional life left to it. There is often less hope to be found in old marketing practices.

The fear of discarding something with even marginal use when you have an untried replacement–or no replacement at all, can be paralyzing. I fully acknowledged to my assistant theatre manager that I would probably toss the old ticket printer this summer but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it just right now.

Sharing the Gold and Fleece

In years past I have written about how the members of my block blocking consortium leverage our purchasing power by proposing a tour to performers and their agents. Given the difficulty of finding workable time slots among 3-6 different organizations across the state, we often earn our discounts.

One thing I hadn’t found was a good example of producing organizations who cooperated to cut costs. Among presenters like my consortium, the questions that come up are mainly date and cost related–when are the artists available, are there openings on members’ calendars, can we afford the terms the performers seek.

Among producing organizations, there are so many more questions many potentially related to the artistic differences among the organizations- who does the casting, who designs costumes, lights, sets. Will the artistic quality and value reflect what patrons have come to expect of their local theatre. Will the other theatres have input into any of these elements? How much of the sets travel and how much is built by each organization? Given differences in stage sizes, what set pieces may be cut and still maintain the vision of the directors and designers?

How is it going to be paid for? If the theatres each normally operate under different Equity pay rates, will the actors be paid differently in each theatre?

Presenters face some of these questions on occasion, but to very limited degree compared to groups that are co-producing.

A blog entry on the McCarter Theatre website sheds some light on some of these questions. They are co-producing Argonautika with Berkeley Rep and Shakespeare Theatre Company. The show was rehearsed and first opened in San Francisco though the show was cast from auditions at all three locations. All three organizations are sharing all rehearsal costs (including the brush ups when the show moves) and presumably a portion of many of the other costs.

I liked McCarter Producing Associate, Adam Immerwahr’s reasons for partnering with other organizations.

1) it allows what would otherwise be a local production to have a much broader impact;

2) it allows an artist to continue to develop their work over time (allowing them another chance to make adjustments with each production);

3) it can be a cost-saving measure, allowing each of the theaters to share common costs (like the set, costumes, rehearsal time and casting expenses);

4) it is a way for multiple theaters to each share their expertise (new play development, mounting musicals, building big sets, etc.).

I especially appreciated the final point about shared expertise. I have been talking about cooperative efforts for a long time and while cost-savings is certainly going to be important in increasingly difficult financial times, I have always felt sharing knowledge and effort was going to prove crucial to the survival of many arts organizations because so little occurs among arts entities to begin with.

Succession Expectations

The cultivation of young, emerging arts leaders is a topic of growing importance these days. Two weeks ago, Andrew Taylor quoted as speech by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation in which Cameron noted

“….expectations from young people around higher compensation, shorter hours, in essence less patience for the sacrificed lives of dignity and the financial masochism that were the givens for so many in my own generation — this conversation brought to my ears, at least, a new strand: the unwillingness of emerging leaders to be mere custodians of organizations they inherit.

“There are plenty of us eager to give ourselves to the arts.” they said, “But unless we are given the same authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as you yourselves were given, we are not interested.”

The current issue of Inside Arts magazine addresses the same topic. (free registration required) The article, Leading into the Future, starts out talking about a young woman who becomes involved with an arts organization, ends up working 90 hour weeks and finally quits and starts working for a finance firm because the pay and opportunities to pursue her musical interests are much better. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending as the woman ends up working for the Future of Music Coalition.

The general theme of the piece is that arts organizations need to recognize what the interests and goals of young people in the arts are. While the arts can’t offer good pay, the industry can provide people with a means of expressing themselves. Only, they need to be allowed the time to do so.

The article quotes Andrew Taylor in his role as head of the Arts Management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have an astounding resource in terms of the value and power of the work, but we’ve created rigid structures that are not the kind of places young people want to work. My students are passionate, skilled and trained, but when they get into a place with an apprentice mindset, and they don’t get meaningful work for the first three to five years, it’s a waste on both sides.”

and later is quoted as saying

“Some experienced leaders say there aren’t people ready to step up, but that’s because they don’t see people exactly like them,” Taylor said. “The perception is that the younger generation is not as committed . . . [but] there are young people all over the place who are passionate and ready to lead.”

This is definitely an area to keep an eye on. As arts leadership approach retirement age, succession issues are going to come to the fore. Questions will emerge about not only who will take over but how these new leaders expect their organizations to operate in relation to employees.

Investing In Partner Success

I am not a big Oprah fan but I heard a story last week on All Things Considered that really impressed me as to how invested her show is in the success of their partners. The story focuses on a small company with 6 employees whose soaps were chosen to be given away on air as part of Oprah’s Favorite Things.

One of the things the Oprah people did was send the company technical details for their web server to make sure their website didn’t go down from all the visits they were likely to get. Apparently Oprah’s website gets near 4 million hits alone when she does her favorite things shows. It just strikes me that the show could easily regard the show as throwing favor to the small company and let them fend as best they can. Some of the other favorite things were made by corporations like Samsung, Hasbro, United Artists and LG electronics who have to resources to maintain websites and fulfill orders and are more likely to be partners in the future.

Even though arts organizations feel like they are the ones seeking/begging favor, there are plenty of times when arts organizations have the opportunity to make a partner’s experience more enjoyable. It might be the quality of advance materials for a school outreach or giving a sponsor a high quality of care even though they aren’t one of your bigger donors.