weebelly.com

Just jumped in on the last half or two-thirds of the keynote at the Theater Communication Group conference in LA: The Community Formerly Known as the Audience, given by Douglas McLennan, Editor of artsjournal.com/diacritical.

It was some pretty encouraging stuff to hear, see. I would say provocative, and maybe perhaps to some people it is just that, but I have been hearing some of the ideas far too much lately and not just from conferences. That is, I just attended the Dramatist Guild conference at George Mason, and some of the same persons were there as are now at TCG. While I heard some of these ideas at DG, many of the “provocative” notions that I am hearing from McLennan I have heard voiced from peer playwrights and, having recently gotten a certificate in nonprofit management at Case, ideas that I have heard expressed in many of the nonprofit classes (read, “marketing” and “fundraising”).

One of the more interesting ideas I came in on was when McLennan was speaking about a “Ladder of incentive if you interact with us.” Us being the theater. That is, the traditional nonprofit model is that there is a ladder of incentives if you donate to the organization—which can culminate in board membership or some “truly meaningful” (organizationally speaking) relationship with the theater. But in this case, McLennan was talking about finding ways to incentivize the patrons who most participate.

The point McLennan makes is: who do you value more, the person who gives you $1,000; or the person who buys $1,000 worth of tickets, sees all your shows, and brings their friends? If you know anything about fundraising, you damn well better value the latter person more than the former (unless they’re the same person).

McLennan comments, what if the Seattle Mariners call you up and say, “you bought a ticket on such-and-such a date, and your ticket only pays for 40% of our operating budget, would you like to donate to our organization?” McLennan notes that most people would laugh. So, he posits, why is it okay for theaters and other arts organizations to do the same?

Again, I just got a certificate of nonprofit management from Case, so I understand that nonprofit organizations are charitable organizations, that they exist to provide services that are of community benefit or toward a community purpose, but may not be services that are supported at the levels necessary by each community member/individual. For instance, clean air. Everyone values clean air; i.e., no one wants to breathe soot and smog and crap and die young. But who wants to pay for it? You? Your neighbor? The guy/gal down the block? Trying to get individuals to pay for clean air would be nearly impossible; but, get a nonprofit to advocate on behalf of healthy society, to monitor the government, EPA, etc., can achieve the goal of clean air. In this way, nonprofits are also an indirect way for the federal government to incentivize certain positive behaviors. This is one way to view arts organizations. Important, yes. Does everyone want to pay for them? Not really. Where am I going with this? To McLennan’s point. Why are there so many goddam nonprofit theaters? Why can’t theaters make a profit? Why is Broadway the only way? Why can’t we engage audiences in such a way as to bring them in and demonstrate the power of theater? Get them to participate with us? Why is “let’s pretend” encouraged when we’re children, but killed in us as adults? How can theaters tap into the new trends of engagement in our society, in the form of online participation? Perhaps a more brutal way of putting it: do we really so de-value ourselves that we believe that people won’t pay for what we offer?

McLennan put up a chart demonstrating his thinking on how arts organizations work: a hierarchy or pyramid where the institution is up top, artists are down a bit to the left, and the community is farther down to the right. That is, the theater as an organization sits as an arbiter over both the artists and the community. McLennan thinks, instead the model should be one of service on the part of the organization: artists <--> institution <--> community. The institutions connects both artist and community and works on behalf of both. It does not work as a filter or a parental figure, a regulator.

McLennan asserts that the most potent currency today is visibility. Your or your organization’s ability to get out in front of the community. The key, of course, is how you achieve this; how do you find a way to get in front of your audience and those who you would like to be your audience. McLennan asserts that not only do you have to find a way to engage your audience once they leave your building, but get them to engage each other about your organization. As McLennan pointed out, 78% of people trust peer recommendations of a product, whereas 14% trust advertising.

McLennan showed a television ad for the Australian chamber orchestra, the focus or meaning of which is that the purpose of the orchestra was to provide the audience with a great experience — hair blowing, knee grabbing, eye opening – that is, the “experience of the music”. And, further, that the “experience is not complete unless the audience has the ability to share it.”

Someone tweets in a question such as, ‘then why aren’t these people attending talkbacks’? – to which McLennan notes that the word itself is problematic. And if you think about it, he’s right. What does a parent say to their teen? “Don’t you talk back to me.” A “talk back” is not a conversation; this is an inherent problem in the nature of the dialog—or lack thereof. McLennan posits that “institutions have control of the relationship and they want to own it…that they are afraid to release that control.” McLennan thinks that theaters want a “perfect” product, and to get that product they have become too controlling. He posits that a better option is to give up control to gain influence: that it is “more powerful to be in the center of a community having a conversation; than being up on a stage preaching.”

McLennan recommended TED — Chris Anderson — crowd accelerated innovation and mentioned Clay Shirky — algorithmic authority; reputational capital; community capital.

The key, for McLennan, is to “incentivize your audience because they’re getting something out of it and you’re getting something out of it.” That there needs to be engagement and sharing and involvement. As examples, McLennan mentioned Netflix, which held a programming competition; Dragon Naturally Speaking, which enhances its product through its users , and Doritos, which found its best advertising by getting its eaters to create the advertisements during the SuperBowl.

Websites: ushahidi, indianapolis museum of art website, art babble. McLennan stresses the need for organizations to “shape your aesthetic.” That, for instance, your website needs to be not a brochure but split into two important goals: the first is the essential 411: ticketing, performances, info; and then there is the second: what McLennan calls “the daily you”: dynamic community, visibility, artists, institution, community, promote your artist who are out working in the community.

For instance, I have tried to get convergence to use its blog to share the elements that go into a production: director decisions, actor choices, character development, lighting and design discussions, also more dramaturgic stuff about a play. Additionally, for a while Lucy Bredeson-Smith was running a calendar on which company members could share what they’re up to in the community. McLennan asserts that this is a great idea. This is a great way to engage your audiences, not just for the organization, but to expand the reach of the organization into the community by demonstrating the reach and participation of your company in the community.

Other comments: that we are experiencing a “revolution in communication with our audiences in the arts world.” How are we going to interact with them? Our conversation right now is asynchronous, rather than two-sided, which has implications for the arts.

Escalation of expectation; paradox of choice; Barry Schwartz; the secret to happiness is low expectations

You can tweet or find tweets on TCG at #tcg2011; and you can hit live streams of the conference at http://www.livestream.com/tcgconference. There was a great moment where someone tweeted McLennan that his shoe was untied; he hadn’t noticed until he looked at his iPhone. Classic.

Attention Economy
Intention Economy
Share Economy

U.S. Happiness Index: Gross National Happiness

The Register denies that stage direction, as presented to the Copyright Office for registration, is copyrightable subject matter…[the] Register properly refused copyright registration for Mr. Rando’s claim concerning stage direction.

So reads a Department of Justice motion from 2007 regarding the claim by a deranged Broadway director and the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers (SSDC) that the rather common and unoriginal “choreography and pantomime” contributed to a Urinetown production be protected (and hence paid for) by other companies producing a play he happened to work on.

I suppose I am old enough now that I should not be surprised by the depravity of human beings and their actions, but I am continually amazed, newly, again and again, by the lengths that people will go to satisfy their voracious greed.

The case I’m discussing here is another case mentioned by Ralph Sevush when he spoke at the Dramatist Guild National Conference this past week.  It involves cease and desist letters sent to Akron and Chicago theaters producing Urinetown, asserting that John Rando’s rights were being infringed. To my mind, this case is an example of the most egregious and insidious of the SSDC activities.  In fact, if I were a Choreographer in that particular society I would be protesting the activities of the society for even pursuing cases that attempt to inflate the work of some of these directors to that of choreography.  Especially given the list of “creative” additions that this John Rando attempted to copyright:

• Using red scarves pulled from the actors’ pockets when they are shot to signify blood

Really?  That’s your copyrightable creative contribution?  Attempting to copyright a stage action that has been done in countless children’s theater productions, such that the number of scarves could stretch from NY to LA?  Hell, I believe that technique was used in the movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead back in 1990.  God knows, of course, how many years, decades, or centuries it has been used prior to that.

• Using the chorus to march and fight in slow motion for comedic purposes.

??? oh, I get it. ha ha.

• Having the supporting actors follow the lead actor upstage and downstage as he delivers an inspirational speech;

???

• Having a dead character speak when his final words are being communicated by a live character;

Oh, you mean, being theatrical?

• Using blue fabric stretched across the stage to symbolize a river;

Like that’s never been done.

• Using a moveable ladder and rowing gestures by actors to indicate characters rowing a boat.

Really?

I would heartily laugh at all of this if it weren’t for the presumption that Rando and his group of half-wits have actually attempted to place this crap in the legal domain and inhibit the production of a work elsewhere in the country.  In fact, as the article points out, Carousel Theater in Akron has gone out of business and who know to what extent this toxic power grab by John Rando contributed to their demise.  The needless, rapacious, voracious, and greedy lawsuit is precisely the sort of putrid sludge that is destroying this country.  I’d wrap myself in a flag and stand silently, but Rando would probably sue me for infringing on one of his stage pictures.

Now is the time when I disclaim.  I know directing is a creative activity.  I know it requires men and women with tireless energy, commitment, and the ability to marshal a tempestuous collection of variables and make them all cohere.  Many is the director I have watched marveling at their political ability with regard to handling tense and tricky situations, their command ability in getting all the variables to listen and move and perform as instructed.  Many is the director I have admired for his perseverance and fortitude in doing a scene over and over and over.  I understand that a good director can make a show or break one.  I know many directors and have found each of them to be warm, charitable, generous, funny people. People that I like being around. However, all THIS BEING SAID, directors are paid to get a script off a page.  As Sevush explicitly pointed out in his talk, directors are hired by producers to do a job.  THE STAGING of the play is THEIR JOB.

Directors (in this case) are members of a Society that PAYS them, including BENEFITS.  They are immune to the risk that writers necessarily have to take (if I write a script and no one produces it, I just spent a year or more with no result for my work). For this director to seek some sort of creative attachment to a work above and beyond that for which he has been justly compensated is flat out rapacious, unwarranted, and delusional.  It demonstrates concretely that the Tony Award and Broadway compensation was not enough: Rando needed to take from each and every future production of the show, even though he has contributed to that future production nothing, 0, zilch.  Sure, you say, but people at Carousel Dinner Theater go to Urinetown to see the Broadway show, which is Rando’s staging.  Perhaps. I might say, instead, that people go to Carousel to see Urinetown as it was created by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis–the LEGITIMATE AUTHORS. Rando may have won the Tony, but his interpretation of Urinetown is only possible by his interpretation of what is ALREADY in the SCRIPT.  And any director has the right to re-create that, only limited by his/her ability.

An even more egregious portion of this story is the suggestion that Rando took elements of his production from original director Joseph McDonnell’s New York Fringe production–thus making Rando a hypocrite.  Further, as Sevush points out, the action by the SSDC is so demonstrably selfish on the part of one person (Rando) that it puts other directors in a position where they will have to fight with him regarding the staging of the same play.  Talk about a vision squarely focused on the “me.”

The original copyright application sent in 2006 by Rando’s representatives “were for the sets, lighting, choreography and ‘stage directions’ for Urinetown.”  One must wonder, by this wording, if Rando wasn’t attempting to copyright the already-created stage directions in the script; perhaps even the set descriptions, presuming they’re in the script–which I would assume they would be.  I would also assume, by this application, that Rando was responsible for the scenic design and light design, otherwise he’s stepping on the territory of other creative artists who are associated with theatrical productions.  One must wonder just how much farther along it would have to go before Rando and the SSDC simply asserted that the whole of Urinetown was infact their creation and idea from start to finish!

Thank God, per the opening, the Copyright Office and the Department of Justice stepped in to say, firmly, that stage directions are not copyrightable.

Stage directions ARE NOT copyrightable.

Let’s all say that a few hundred times together.

Unfortunately, the suits in Akron and Chicago were settled.  That is, they didn’t go to court where a judgment could be reached to become firm precedent. Sevush posits and then answers the terribly depressing question: “Why were they settled?”

Sevush: “As anyone who has ever been involved in a law suit knows, litigants with deep pockets can prolong a court case, whether their position has merit or not.  And they can almost always force a litigant without deep pockets to settle a case which has become, quite simply, too expensive to pursue.”

So everyone send a happy thank you letter to John Rando and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers for their embarrassingly unabashed attempt to steal creative content that is not their own, hamstring productions of other people’s work, and for holding up (like highway robbers) productions to which they lay envious claim.