WE NEED A NEW MODEL

Tribes...originate among people who want to pool their energies and skills to make a living together" and they don't necessarily live together (in fact, it is probably better if they don't) ...

If you're thinking, "Say, this sounds like what theatre people sometimes do, especially in the indie movement" Quinn agrees with you ...

"a tribe is nothing more than a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living." It is a self-sustaining, ongoing group of people who, "among them, have all the competencies needed to start and run a given business," who are "content with a modest standard of living," and who are "willing to think 'tribally -- that is, to take away what they need out of the business rather than to expect set wages." A self-sustaining tribe "needs to perform all the functions that will make it successful." While each person may have something they are especially good at, they nevertheless share responsibility for all aspects of the tribal business.

We need a new model, we need a new model. This has been my mantra for most of the last 5 years, and it is one of the major projects of this blog. As Walters puts it "the current industrial system of production, which resembles more a Ford plant than an artistic process, doesn’t function in a way that furthers the art forms." Or as Don puts it "the current model sucks balls unless you have mattresses full of cash and are willing to lose wads of it four out of five times at bat".

Tribalism sounds like a possible way out. As Rekk, Walters, and Tony Adams point out, there are good examples of artistically potent groups that follow this model at least in part - Mabou Mines, The Nouvelle Vague, Theatre du Soleil. I'll also mention the Rude Mechanicals, who have about 8 artistic directors and use a codified decision-making process. (It's written in some notes somewhere, I'll have to dig it out.)

OPEN SOURCE THEATRE BUSINESS

This all reminds me of another interesting and useful article about a somewhat similar model for running a theatre business. It's by a guy named Roy Blumenthal.

It’s a proposed company structure, which gives equal ownership to people in the company, and makes provision for the fact that certain people will do more work than others, and will need compensation for that.

I’ve synthesized Marc Allen’s THE TEN PERCENT SOLUTION and the thinking behind UK ad agency, ST LUKE, as written up by Andy Law in CREATIVE COMPANY: How St Luke’s Became ‘The Ad Agency To End All Ad Agencies’.

In it, Blumenthal lays out a very specific structure for sharing profits and paying living wages. One of the most important ideas in it is that members take only what they really need from the profit-share, so that most of the money can be re-invested in the company. Brilliant. Since so many of us making theatre with small companies are being paid token wages anyhow, why not just let the company use that money for the better? In Blumenthal's model, workers can still get their money when they need it, but those token wages are pooled for the good of the company in the meantime.

A LITTLE TOO CLOSE TO HOME

This stuff also very close to my heart because I tried something very much like the tribal model with my first company, BlueForms Theatre Group. (Which came to a slow, stuttering, official halt just a couple days ago, 18 months after I left the company.) We tried hard for the non-hierarchical model. Though I was clearly the driving force behind the group, I insisted on being called the "de facto leader" rather than the Artistic Director. We made as many decisions as possible by group vote. We expanded our tribe slowly. We often created work as an ensemble, training in viewpoints, and building shows from the ground up with every actor, designer, stage manager, and director contributing to the text. I revelled in the flatness of our organization. I differed to the group's opinion, even against my better judgement, and we worked hard to give everyone a chance to live the life of the imagination.

Of course, it went bad after a few years. Don Hall sounds like he was there.

First, those most willing to forgo personal success have found they simply don't have the skill, ability or talent to justify a lot of personal ambition and the second, if they have that talent, they will soon abandon the tribal group once a good offer for serious employment comes along or they find that they are not getting out of the group artistically what they put into it time-wise.

Eventually, everyone was dissatisfied, from top to bottom, corner to corner. Worse, we weren't making art. We were paralyzed by the power sturggles and personality conflicts in the group. I decided to leave, for my own good as well as everyone else's. Now I've got a group with a hint more heirarchy, and we're very happy.

IS SITI A TRIBE?

The SITI Company is another near-tribe. I've talked to Ellen Lauren, a longtime company member and now it's Associate Artistic Director. She's always said that as much as they work together on everything, and as much as they share power and decision-making responsibility, she firmly believes that it's necessary to have one person that everyone will differ to at the end of the day. There must be a tie-breaker, there must be a unifying vision.

Of course, SITI isn't really being a tribe the way Quinn and Walters describe it. I don't think the actors are scrubbing the toilets or doing the books. They've been able to hire people for that purpose. I know though, that they started out by getting together in a staircase, figuring out how much their first show would cost, and getting out their checkbooks, each and everyone involved.

UTOPIA IS POSSIBLE

At this point, I do still belive that this non-hierarchical, tribal model could work, if you've got people who really are willing to put in equal time and effort. That the idealist's model and it may be completely unrealistic. It's like physics - in a theoretical model, you can balance the laws of the universe. In reality, it's much harder to maintain such a clean, balanced environment - the wind keeps blowing, dust interferes, and there goes your model.

You've got to have people willing and able to throw-down on cue. You've got to know that everyone in the group is willing to push just as far past the limits of reason as you are for the sake of the art. Otherwise, some night you'll be painting at 3am, or standing on a street corner by yourself handing out postcards to uninterested citizens, or writing a check to cover the company's debts, and in the heat of the moment you'll know how the whole thing's going to end.

A LITTLE ADVICE

Here's something Anne Bogart told me when she was encouraging me to start a company. "It's hard. And it takes a lot of courage. People will come and go and they'll break your heart."

Around that time, I asked another of my heroes - a great artistic director named Michael Herring - if he had any advice for someone on the verge of starting a company. His answer? "DON'T."