Since you're here wondering about Militant Language and the National Premiere idea, allow me to fill in some details.

First of all, the whole thing started in the comments of a post on Matthew Freeman's On Theatre and Politics blog. (You'll find that a lot of theatre bloggers like to combine the two on their sites.) I got inspired by the ideas there, and wrote a post called "Every City Should Have a Dead City". (Funny coincidence, Dead City is a play by Sheila Callaghan, who's on the cover of that very American Theatre magazine that directed you here.) So, I suggest you open new tab in your browser and go read that post. Then come back, we'll wait.

The audience hears some really annoying - yet amusing - Muzak. Maybe something from Grunge Lite.

(You see how we did that? Theatre bloggers often enjoy inserting obscure pop culture references and funny You Tube videos in the cracks around their artistic analyses and political diatribes.)

Ok, you're back? Did you read all the comments? Well, you have to read the comments. A lot of the good stuff is in there.

After you read the comments, you're going to want to read this post, in which I responded to a lot of the comments.

More Grunge LIte.

Done there? Okay, I'll tell you how we got from there to here. You're gonna see some blue words that say "Continue reading 'Welcome American Theatre Readers'". Click those to get the rest of the story, and so I can track how many of you are reading today. Thanks.

I guess we kinda needed a summer vacation. But it hasn't been all play and no work. We've been writing. I've been researching and writing my thesis. Matt and the Available Light gang have been writing Time and a Few Words. We've also been hard at work prepping a new, more general arts and culture blog focused on the Columbus scene. Look for the launch sometime next month. But I wanted to take a moment now to highlight a comment from last month's discussion that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Guy Y lamented,

I am a little frustrated in the lack of actionable suggestions being offered. I am a theater person who is looking to start a theater ensemble in the next year. What can I do to make the change ... a reality?

Here's a buzzy term I picked up the other day: Portfolio career.

Just because 88% of Equity members are unemployed at any given time, doesn't mean they're all standing in line at the local soup kitchen. Most artists, including actors, put together multiple part-time and contractual jobs to assemble full-time employment. So maybe they do an Equity show, they do some voice-over work through AFTRA, they do a couple of walk-on film roles through SAG, they teach a Meisner class twice a week at a friend's studio, etc, etc. They have a career, it just requires some assembly into a "portfolio."

In other words, if you consider Equity's statistics in isolation, it gives the impression that the life of a working actor is awfully grim. Not saying that it's all roses and sunshine, either; only that "unemployed with Equity" doesn't mean the same thing as "unemployed actor."

Pop-geographer Richard Florida - author of the wildly successful Rise of the Creative Class - released a new book recently, strangely titled Who's Your City? I guess some people out there still demand to know "Who's your daddy?" at, I don't know, mud volleyball tournaments or something. How, exactly, this phrase connects with geography is tenuous, at best.

The book, in a nutshell, proposes that there are three big decisions a person must make in life. 1) Choose a career. 2) Choose a spouse/partner. 3) Choose a place to live. Florida's assertion is that choosing a good fit with regards to no. 3 can not only help you lead a happier and more satisfying life, but it can help you find a good fit for nos. 1 and 2, as well. Yes, it's a little self-helpy, but whatever.

How does this idea intersect with theater? Obviously, any professional must decide at some point whether it makes sense to move to a big showbiz town, namely New York or Los Angeles. Not to discount Scott Walters' lengthy discussions about the decentralization of theater, but Florida emphasizes a significant trend toward the clustering of industries in particular metro areas. In fact, he says, the big story of the last 30 years or so has been that of cities "sorting themselves out," gaining greater distinction and specialization in various industries. Here's a smattering of Florida's urban specializations:

I've managed to set aside a few hours since Wednesday to try to keep-up and read all the different posts, comments, reaction posts, etc. that popped-up on the day of blogging about value (and the days since).

You should definitely stop-by Theatre is Territory for their big list of all the posts and a nice collection of quotations.

Much more if you click through to the rest of the post.

What is the Value of Theatre?

First of all, this post is part of a Theatre Think Tank initiative - a group effort to crack this nut. Please also visit Theater for the Future, Rat Sass, Theatre Ideas, Parabasis, The Next Stage, Steve on Broadway, Theatre is Territory, Freedom Spice in the New Mash-Up World, Mike Daisey, An Angry White Guy in Chicago, Bite & Smile, That Sounds Cool, A Rhinestone World, GreyZelda Land, On Theatre and Politics, and The Devil Vet.

And be sure to check back here for additions to that list. (UPDATE: There's a better list here.)

What is the "value" of theatre? We need to figure out what it is that theatre does well and better than other art/entertainment forms. Then we need to figure out a positive way to describe those things to people who do not already identify themselves as theatregoers.

Theatre is local, and a group experience, and exchange does happen. Yes. And those are good examples because they are qualities that theatre excels at, even though they're not necessarily things you can't get elsewhere. Are those, then, the qualities that we can leverage into the concrete end-result we're hoping for - greater attendance? (Or is that the gold at the end of the rainbow? Is it even bigger? A sustainable model? I think that's another discussion.)

What does make theatre different, and, indeed, why WOULD anyone choose it over NetFlix? Is relevance the key? Obviously, we hope to make our art relevant to our potential audience members. So, we choose universal themes and/or write about current events. That's one advantage of theatre - it can be quick. But that's not unique, the news is quicker, so are radio talkshows. I don't think we can definitely prove that theatre is better at being relevant than books, movies, etc.

Relevance is important, but it also sounds like importance. I bet if you ask the "great unwashed masses" if theatre is "important" in the world, they'd say yes. If you asked them if they go, well, we know the answer. I think the symphony is important here in my hometown, but that motherfucker's about to go out of business, and it's at least in part because people like me don't go often enough.

So, I feel I can say that this part of the model doesn't need to be fixed, at least not for us. And that's good. It does occur to me that we've been spending more time (as the company grows) on all the stuff that came before this. We've been writing grants, working out rights, negotiating for space with a big corporation, scheduling, budgeting, etc., etc., since early last fall. Obviously, that's all necessary and I'm glad we did it, but I really wish we had more time to enjoy this part of it.

Since the money comes down, largely, to real estate, it'd be great if we lived in a place where real estate was cheaper, and we could still find a group of good actors we enjoy working with, and we could get an audience large enough to fill the house on enough nights to pay everyone well enough to quit at least one of their day jobs.

That shouldn't be so hard, right?

UPDATE: I'm re-reading this and remembering that I'm in Columbus, Ohio, and some people might actually think of making art here because the real estate is cheaper. Hmmm.

I was going to start my follow-up the rather negative post from the other day by saying something along the lines of ... "Most of the problems associated with the American theater in the 21st Century has to do with the fact that it costs too much to create."

But Don Hall beat me to it.

Then I was gonna talk about how space is the big bully in our budgets and that marketing cash-sucking beast that'll never be sated. I was gonna say something like ... "the most cost prohibitive aspects of producing live theater are the rental fees for viable and legally sanctioned venues and the ability to openly and effectively promote the existence of specific shows."

But Don Hall beat me to it.

I don't know what I was gonna write after that, but Don Hall wrote a specific action plan for his own town that should give a few folks in other parts of the country a couple of really worthwhile ideas. Please read it here.

Hey, Don, tomorrow I'm gonna write more about RSS feeds, you got any good ideas for that one?

PS. I saw Be Kind Rewind last night, right after I wrote that sad post. It re-invigorated me a bit. It's really movie about the power of creativity/ I recommend it.

And today I met a couple dozen people from all over the country who've come to Columbus to campaign for Obama. That was inspiring too.

Lastly, Adam Szymkowicz sent me a comment email. (Sorry, I haven't gotten around to fixing the commenting yet.)

What is good about theater? It's still a great way to
spend your time. There's no where I'd rather be than
in a theater seeing a show. Nothing inspires me more
and it can be a place of great beauty.

That said, all the things you say above are true.

Visible Soul, The Mirror Up to Nature, Theatre Ideas, Theatre Ideas, Marsha Norman, An Angry White Guy in Chicago, Rat Sass, Mike Daisey, DevilVet, Jonathan West, The Clyde Fitch Report, Mike Daisey

I often consider it my niche to condense discussions like this for those who haven't the time or energy to read everything that encompasses such an impassioned, complex look at the state of our art. But, I'm not doing that this time. It seems that what's needed most here, from us as writers, and you as readers, is engagement. So, please, pick a few of the above, read them throughly and get involved.

As for my part. I'm sad about regional theatre. I do think it's broken. No doubt about it. I think my theatre is broken. Our priorities are out of whack. In fact, I kind of think that everything about the theatre, except for the theatre itself kind of sucks.

No one can make a living. "Nice" spaces are way too expensive. Most ticket prices are too high. Young people don't come to the theatre. The audiences we do get are too small. Broadway is pretty much void of art. New plays don't get done enough. Play development is broken. Big theatres get the lion's share of public funding. The government doesn't care about the arts. No one cares about theatre. The biggest critics in the country are assholes. Bloggers can be assholes too. The regionals all do the same plays. Theatre is anachronistic. Competition from home entertainment is too great. Artistic directors are risk-averse. The declining quality of arts education will ruin the theatre eventually. Arts coverage in the media gets worse and less everyday. We're losing an enormous amount of talent to film and TV.

Go ahead, I'm sure you can think of a few more. So what is good about theatre these days? Why bother? And is making a list like that a waste of time?

For the answer, you'll have to come back.

What a sec. How do I get points for this?

What I thought I would do to keep us honest in this discussion about financial models is to tell you about Berkeley Rep's dark night of the soul, our moment of crisis--what we've perceived of as being action-steps to address that; and five or six years later, what we perceive as being the outcome at this moment; and then to raise a question.

You on the East Coast felt that 9/11 was really your crisis, but it was in fact a national crisis, and it certainly had ripples throughout the country and at arts organizations throughout the country. We found out that not only did 9/11 have an impact but it came, unfortunately, at the same time as the dot-com bust. And I was fond of saying, at that point, that every dentist was more invested in technology in San Francisco than they were anywhere else in the country. And so the impact on organizations in our part of the country was pretty devastating.

We immediately began cutting our budgets like crazy, trying to anticipate how bad it was going to be. And we realized that no matter how bad we thought it was going to be, it ended up getting worse. And for a few years, we found that we just couldn't figure out what was the right thing to do. I responded in one way; Tony Taccone, our artistic director, responded in another way; and I think neither of us felt, for a few years, that we could get a handle on what was going on. And one of the things that happened was that we all got very internal. Our programming got very internal and, frankly, our programming was not as strong as it had been for many years before or thankfully as it has been since then.

Here's an interesting article about the NEA, published twelve years ago in In Motion Magazine. Maybe it's in response to the Mike Daisey thing, maybe not. But it seems relevant to the discussion.

Although the nonprofit arts world contains thousands of organizations populated by tens of thousands of artists, administrators, technicians, trustees and donors, few are aware of its systemic features, nor are there many knowledgeable about its origins and the influences that have shaped its evolution.

As with participants in most large organizational systems, the citizens of the nonprofit arts world find it difficult to perceive changes, even massive developments, that occur gradually.

READ MORE

It's not one of mine. It's an article for Seattle's "The Stranger" and it's by Mike Daisey. Who I'm gonna start calling "the bravest man in the American Theatre".

I won't hide it from you, loyal friends, I cried reading this, even as I sit here at Luck Bros coffee shop, 300 steps from my front door.

Seven years ago, I left Seattle for New York--I abandoned the garage theaters and local arts scene and friends and colleagues--because I was a coward. I'd already tried to sell out once, by working at a shitty Wal-Mart of a tech company, but I knew I would not survive in the theater if I stayed. I fled to New York to bite and claw a living out of the American theater as an independent artist because I was young and stupid enough to think that would actually work. Today, my wife and I are one of a handful of working companies who create original work in theaters across the country. We're a very small ensemble: I am the monologuist; she is the director. We survive because we're nimble, we break rules, and when simple dumb luck happens upon us, we're ready for it.

We return to Seattle maybe once a year. During my first week back this time, I ended up at a friend's party, long after the rest of the guests had gone, in that golden hour when the place is almost cleaned up, but the energy of the night is still hanging in the air. We settled down in the kitchen under the bright light, making 4:00 a.m. conversation and, as all theater artists do, I asked the traditional question: "What are you working on?"

My friend's face fell, for just a moment--she's a fantastic actress, one of the best in the city, with an intelligence and precision that has taken my breath away for years. She corrected a moment later, and told me carefully that she wasn't going out for anything now--that she was giving it up. She has a job-share position at her day job to let her take roles when needed, but now she is going to go permanent for the first time in her entire life. After 15 years of working in theaters all over Seattle, she'd felt the fire go out of her from the relentless grind of two full-time jobs: one during the day in a cubicle, the other at night on a stage.

It all started innocently enough. Chris Platt noted aloud that the Jeff Citations will now be called the Jeff Awards, just like the closely related Jeff Awards.

The difference is that there will now be equity and non-equity Jeff Awards. The non-equity folks used to be stuck with paltry-sounding citations, now they get awards.

Well, "Julie" wasn't gonna take it lying down. She fired-up her practically anonymous and definitely-built-by-good-ol-USA-unionified-workers-keyboard and spoke her mind.

Nothing could drag the national reputation of the “Jeff Award” down more than to include non-professional theatres to share equal consideration with professional theatres.

So, get over there. Read it. And don't forget to leave your two cents in the comments.

On a side note: Can anyone report a theatrenet thread with more than 66 comments?