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In 1992, according to a report from the National Endowment for the Arts¹, an estimated 13.5% of the U.S. adult population attended a live dramatic theater event.  This was up from 11.9% in 1982. 

In 1992, this estimated 13.5% represented between 24 and 26.2 million adult Americans².  Further, the NEA reported that there was a frequency of attendance of 2.4 times per person, meaning that roughly 60.2 million attendances of a live dramatic theater event were recorded in the United States.  As this study was not repeated for 2002, it is somewhat difficult to gauge the trend, but if the trend has been sustained, 15.1% of the U.S. adult population attended a performance in 2002. With an estimated adult population of 216 million in the United States that means that nearly 33 million Americans attended a theatre event in 2002 and if the same 2.4 frequency of attendance applies, 79.4 million attendances would have been recorded. To put this in perspective, in 2007 Major League Baseball gleefully reported 79 million people attended baseball games in the United States³. The data described above indicates, at the very least, that there is great interest in theatre in the United States, and other factors point to the impact that active and successful theatres have on their communities.  For instance, the June 24th Plain Dealer article presents evidence that successful theatres are a boon to revitalizing neighborhoods and increasing economic development⁴.  A fact further confirmed by the same NEA report mentioned at the outset, which concludes that:

Dynamic forces shape [theater] participation patterns in each community, including characteristics of the resident and nonresident markets, the supply of producing and presenting activity, the availability of suitable performance facilities, as well as local traditions and history."  And further, that vital [theater-going] communities will exist where vital theatre producing communities are active and available. 

The report specifically identifies highest theatre participation rates in "Seattle/King County (WA) where a thriving theatre community was observed, including playwrights, actors, and a plethora of small, experimental ensembles known collectively as ‘Seattle’s fringe theaters.’" 

Cleveland, Ohio, certainly has the potential of becoming one of the most successful theatre communities in the United States.  It has a diverse mixture of urban education centers and populations, interested young artists, and established veteran performers, directors, designers, and technicians combined with an historic economic downturn that has left numerous, low-cost spaces accessible and available for use.  This is to say that established, highly-priced, conservative theaters no longer hold the keys to gates of theater entertainment in the Northeast Ohio community. (A fact pointed out in a recent speech on local theater.)

Still, formal external funding sources seem to be the meat and potatoes of most arts organizations: either government sources (such as the newly created Cuyahoga Arts and Culture grants) or foundation sources.  These constitute one set of external stakeholders. While it is easy to see these sources as not only important but a possible bounty, reliance on these sources does not seem to me overly wise or recommended.  Changes in funding priorities or changes in government policies can bring a drought to stream very quickly.  Additionally, one of the dangers in accepting funding from a foundation is that there is some expectation of programming to go along with it, that an organization might, like one sister in Cinderella, cut off her toes to fit the shoe.  This fact is made poignantly clear by Mike Daisy in his article How Theater Failed America, when he writes:

Better to invest in another "educational" youth program, mashing up Shakespeare until it is a thin, lifeless paste that any reasonable person would reject as disgusting, but garners more grant money.⁵

This may be a cynical viewpoint, but if it weren’t true there wouldn’t be a phrase for it in the nonprofit "biz": mission drift.

But if not foundations or government, what then?  Ticket sales are an important part of revenue, but cannot sustain even basic and continuous organizational function, let alone full employment of an acting troupe–unless prices are terribly high.  One plan that came to me serendipitously in the form of an issue of American Theatre was to reach out to universities to cultivate new stakeholders—universities and their faculties, students, and staff.  The plan works like this: a theater sends vouchers to a college; the college distributes them to students; the students go to the theater with the voucher and get in free; the theater then bills the college for the cost of a reduced ticket–and the college takes the money out of the student life budget.  This astonishingly simple strategy accommodates the stakeholder fulfillment of two different organizations at one time, as many universities have, as a part of their strategic plans, some requirement to support the communities in which they live and operate, as well as supporting their more fundamental academic mission.

1. American Participation in Theater, AMS Planning and Research Corporation, Research Division Report #35, National Endowment for the Arts, Santa Ana, Calif. : Seven Locks Press, 1996

2. Stats based on calculation of 13.5% x the U.S. adult population at the time as reported in the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1992.

3. Bloom, Barry M. 2008. MLB salary increase lowest since ’04. December 4. http://www.ticketnews.com/Major-League-Baseball-sees-attendance-drop-for-the-first-time-in-five-years10810000. (Accessed online, December 8, 2008).

4. Litt, Steven. 2007. Energizing Detroit-Shoreway; Theater renovations, new building at the heart of neighborhood revitalization. June 24. The Plain Dealer.

Daisey, Mike. 2008. The Empty Spaces: Or, How Theater Failed America. February 5. The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=503829. (Accessed online December 8, 2008).

What have I been doing? (besides sleeping, it seems)
I haven’t posted in a few days and it may be a few more before I start talking about anything meaningful.

I’m in that happy down state after a play has been pushed from conception/inception to, well, in this case, about as far as it will go for now without a full run. I’ve got some real ‘pull-up-your-sleeves’ rewriting to do, but I’m going to let it sit for a while. I did tape the reading, so I can watch it at a later date and see all the painful points again.

For my NEOMFA class I have to write a paper on my “art” and why it’s important or what is relevant about it. That is something I haven’t really thought about, so I find the question quite intriguing and if there’s anyone else out there reading this blog and who is a playwright I would put the question to you as well. Why is the theatre important? What does it do for people? What does it do for you?

Shadows of the Gods

Now, I’m re-reading an article by Arthur Miller entitled The Shadows of the Gods: A Critical View of the American Theater; Harper’s Magazine, 1958 Aug; 217: 35-43. It is a speech he delivered, to whom I don’t know, but has some very interesting points in it.

I’m not going to address the question now, as I’m writing a paper that will. When I’m done, I’ll choke up the blogosphere with the results. In the mean time, I’ll mention a few points that Miller discusses that I find interesting, and then link to a blog entry by someone who has a completely different take on Miller. But, as I’m using this article in my paper and I’m only half way through a serious re-read, I’ll not be considering it too much either.

1. Miller mentions, in passing, that ‘professionalism develops only as a result of having repeated the same theme in different plays’; p35
2. He was ‘shaped’ as a person by the Great Depression and says that the time period gave him “a sense of an invisible world” and that “The hidden laws of fate lurked not only in the characters of people, but equally if not more imperiously in the world beyond the family parlor…” and this led him to a profound interest in process–“How things connected” p36
3. For him playwriting and art became a way of addressing or answering “the practical problem of what to believe in order to proceed with life.” p36
4. “‘The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.’ The hidden will be unveiled; the inner laws of reality will announce themselves.” p37
5. “There is a hidden order in the world. There is only one reason to live. It is to discover its nature. The good are those who do this. The evil say that there is nothing beyond the face of the world, the surface reality. Man will only find peace when he learns to live humanly in conformity to those laws which decree his human nature.” (This is what Miller says that Dostoevski’s The Brother’s Karamazov said to him). p37
6. “I connected with Ibsen…because he was illuminating process. Nothing in his plays exists for itself, not a smart line, not a gesture that can be isolated.” p37
7. Finally, one that answers the question I asked above, to some degree: “One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives. With the greatest of presumption I conceived that the great writer was the destroyer of chaos, a man privy to the councils of the hidden gods…”

But this is enough for now. The article goes on another six pages and for those interested I highly recommend getting it. If you can’t find it, email me and I’ll run it through the handy-dandy Side Kick scanner I have access to and shoot you a copy of it–marked up as it is. If you’re really nice to me, I’ll make you a fresh copy.

Screenplay time…

I’ve also started reading STORY (imperious) by Robert McKee again. I am going to (finally) go head on at a screen play idea that I have. I’ll talk about it later as I get beyond the “step outline” process I’m doing now. For a screenplay I find that I’m totally throwing aside the process that I advocated for playwriting earlier. For some reason I think that, for my first screenplay at least, structure and control are important. I’ve already got 22 index cards with an ordered listing of scenes. I just need to flesh it out and add more scenes and really get the whole step outline finished an in place. In the mean time, the messy side of me is generating piles of content about the characters, the world (it is futuristic a la Ray Kurzweil), and the events that control their destinies.

I’m having fun with this and so look forward to the process. I know soon enough, like a play I’m writing, this thing will take over my waking mind completely and the fun will morph into a mania that will only expire when I’ve done with the thing–seen it through to its completion and several re-writes and, hopefully, the silver screen.