Laura Axelrod Ties Money and the Arts; Scott Walters Caresses His Cerebrum

Laura Axelrod, over at her not-celebrated-nearly-enough Gasp! blog, has apparently been engaged in a minor yet friendly dustup with that avatar of all things clattering and chattering, Scott Walters, with regard to the meatiness, or lack thereof, of theatre blogs.

Mind you, Pol Pot could be back from the dead and rampaging across southeast Asia, Dr. Mengele could be managing the greatest scientific breakthroughs in the history of mankind, Osama Bin Ladin could be perpetrating the murders of God only knows how many more of my precious American kin, and the stock market could be heading through the worst kind of thrashing since my grandfather woke up in October 1929 and learned that my well-to-do great-grandparents were down to about a nickel, and this dude, who I’ve noticed often worships syntax and sophistry over solidity and substance, is whining because theatre blogs aren't spending sufficient time blogging about theatre (as opposed to theatre and politics), and thereby abandoning the call to lead a bayonet-driven charge through the economic and aesthetic barricades. Harrrumph.

Anyway, when not celebrating National Very-Long-Sentence Day or wondering how the departure of Dana Gioia as the head of the National Endowment for the Arts will affect that organization, particularly if John McCalamity and the Alaskan Mynah Bird are elected, I’ve been catching the recent posts on Laura’s blog. On September 14, she had a great preview post called Money and the Arts, concerned in a general and very understandable way with to the probably economic impact of the unfolding financial-sector disaster:

It amazes me that my theater, literature and visual arts friends just don't want to hear it. This has the potential of being a generational-altering event; something that has been gathering steam for almost a year.

And then, on September 15, in a post called Markets and Roles, Laura responded to Matt Freeman’s terrific blog post on the same subject...

The fact of the matter is, some of the most untouchable financial institutions in the country are in serious jeopardy. Lehman is filing for bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch is being sold to Bank of America. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being taken over by the government. AIG is seeking a loan from the Federal Reserve.

How is this going to affect the arts? Here's some potential problems I can see. But it's something we should all be talking about.

One quick example is your day job. If you've got one, you're probably wondering how this will affect you. I know mine has to do with planned giving and investments. Which means we're directly affected by the markets. I'm also vested in our retirement plan, and that's, of course, invested.

...by writing this in her post, which I’m excerpting below and which moved me a great deal:

But I will say that after I wrote the entry and went to bed, I thought about how it might be unfair for me to judge others by my values. For instance, we all have a different definition of what it means to be a writer or artist. Maybe for some people, it doesn't include understanding how society works...

And then, on September 16, Laura filed a brilliant post called Where We Stand, which attempts, however difficult it may seem right now to do, to put some perspective on what the national fiscal meltdown will mean for artists. Here’s an excerpt:

The American mythology is based upon the belief that if you work hard, you will succeed. If you haven't achieved material success, you are lazy, immoral and unintelligent. Rather than basing our definition of America on the Constitution, we pluck out a single phrase from the Declaration of Independence: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

This mythology has found it's way into the spiritual lives of Americans. Prosperity theology promises material abundance for the spiritually enlightened. In this case, poverty is not only a sign of bad character, it's also a sign that God isn't smiling on you.

Most writers and artists have fallen into this money hell. We've taken out enormous student loans to pay for our education, with little opportunity to pay them off by working in our chosen profession.

Some of us chose to be artists so we could rebel against this way of life. Yet, telling the truth means alienating an audience that is complicit in keeping this belief system alive.

Success as an artist in America means making your work palatable to the masses, who are sleepwalking their way through life. Waking them up is dangerous, and dangerous work is rarely produced, exhibited or published.

Success as an artist in America means making your rebellion slick and chic. Our materialism is insatiable. It looks for the newest trend. Rebellion is crucified until it can become safe to hang in the comfort of our own homes. It is disturbing until it is tamed.

Success as an artist in America is defined by the bottom line. Respect is given to those who can achieve the most sales.

In this environment, it is easy for an artist to become a reactor instead of an actor. Rather than shaping the culture - presenting a new vision - the artist comments upon her present circumstances. The commentary is cathartic for the artist, but it doesn't present any real solutions.

When this commentary is rejected by the system it is rebelling against, the artist can have a variety of reactions.

It may validate her feeling of disempowerment. But is it fair to ask a system to embrace commentary that is attempting to destroy it?

It may lead her to believe that being an artist in this system is about suffering. But is it fair to ask the artist to have a miserable life without any personal benefit?

This is where we stand right now. Our generation has created celebrities out of people who have no talent. We have funded our lifestyles with imaginary money. We watch scripted reality t.v. shows.

Our way of life is a lie.

First off, clearly there's much substantive discussion in the theatrosphere (this being one of many example), and what particularly amazes me is that while months have passed since I’ve given Walters’ blog serious study, he’s still going on and on about “new models” for making work but not actually doing something about them -- like articulating them and putting them into action. In a post, for example, called Money and Art, he praises Laura and writes:

I think Laura is right, and we do need to talk about this. On an immediate level, any slump in the economy that negatively affects the stock market will affect foundation endowments, which means grants will be smaller and harder to come by. If the economy suffers, people have less disposable income, or are less free in disposing of it, which will impact ticket sales. When people are suffering in our society for economic reasons, money gets shifted in that direction and away from the arts, which are considered "extras." If tax collections decline because there is less money in the economy, then school budgets decline as well, and arts education suffers.

The fact is that the arts live on the fat of the economy.

But Laura wants us to deal with this on the personal level, not just the macro level. "I'm not saying that we should come up with a public policy position on the matter. I'm talking about dealing with this problem both in our work and in our lives."

So much of our conversation tends to be about money and how it impacts our artistic choices and opportunities. It seems to me that there are several possibilities every time we create a production:

1. Lose money
2. Break even
3. Make a little money
4. Make a lot of money...

From there, Walters begins to explain what these four possibilities mean in action, and then he reaches what is, from what I can tell, one of the rare times he has tried to articulate what a new economic model might look like:

My question is whether there is a way to disconnect from the commodity economy. Is there a way to make the arts less a product? Is there a way to move the arts into another type of economy? For instance, while still based in a money economy, a church doesn't really sell a product, but rather something else -- an experience? A shared identity? An extended family? [Etch-a-Sketch erase*] In Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken talks about a workshop that took place at a large agricultural chemical manufacturing plant, where the attendees, all employees of the company, were introduced to the "spaceship Earth" model and then put into groups and given a goodly amount of time to create a spaceship that was enclosed, needed to be self-sufficient, and had to last for 100 years. One of the interesting things is that the employees created a model that took along actual artists rather than a stock of DVDs and CDs, because for a 100-year self-contained trip they wanted people who could contribute new stuff that pertained to their journey. How might we get our artistic contributions looked as in this way?

This is fascinating stuff, but for me, what it doesn’t do is translate the abstract into the specific. For a new economic model to take hold, governmental intervention, for example, would be necessary. By this I am not implying socialism. But consider the tax code: If a new economic model required the end or radical restructuring of the nonprofit system, that’s a governmental effort.

But before I go down that road, little doggie, I take issue with Walters' glib idea that “the arts live on the fat of the economy.” What? If that were the case, would the arts not have been swimming in money for the last few, especially given the historic excesses being flushed out of the market in recent months, weeks, and days? The last time I checked, the whole demand for new models, the whole belief that there’s something not-strong in the fundamentals of our artistic-creation system (to be McCainish about it), is predicated, in part, on the lack of funding, on the lack of stability, on what ensues when Ayn Rand-style free marketeers throw artists to the wolves and encourage the laws of supply and demand to set their sociological and cultural value. No wonder Walters posted a whole slew of comments on Laura’s blog questioning, if also applauding, her posts.

I’m sure that by my posting this, I’ll ruffle all kinds of feathers -- after all, if you’re not in the clique of the theatrosphere, you’re nothing, as a certain other blogger, who shall remain nameless, made quite clear to me last year. (And, after all, Walters has adamantly refused to add me to his blog roll, as if I'm suffering from the intellectual cooties, which is like the pot calling the stoner stoned.)

Still, I thought it would be worth giving major props to Laura and stating that while some folks think Walters is a great blogger, not much has changed in the blather-for-blather's-sake department, especially when it comes getting off one’s ass, getting away from the computer, and actually doing something. Talk, in other words, is still cheaper than Lehman Brothers stock.

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Bring Out the Models!

I am getting into the new model discussion very late -- so late that I fear there's already a kind of orthodoxy around this subject that I am obviously flouting by engaging in a discussion (there's the word -- engaging!) with Mr. Daisey.

I should note that Mike and I exchanged emails privately today, and despite areas on which we are likely to agree or disagree, I was actually personally gratified by his interest in getting to know me and, later in March, getting together and breaking bread (and hops). As per my usual policy, I won't get into the content of my emails or of my private discussions with people. But I feel very good about what I've said and done, I think he feels very good about what he's saying and doing, and all of that, in the end, is about getting off one's ass.

Meanwhile, I decided to allow the publishing of a comment by Scott Walters, even though his first sentence asks whether...ugh, I'm too tired at 12:15am to find it to quote it precisely...but basically whether I want everyone to hold hands and sing. No, Scott, I don't want everyone to hold hands and sing. Because if you're holding hands, you're not doing something about problems in the American theatre. And if you're singing, well, Ryan Seacraft wants to check your bulge.

I do, however, want to respond to Scott's terse four-point plan, presented as a comment on a different blog, for how to take a half-century of the regional theatre/nonprofit/institutional theatre business model and chuck it out the window. It is more than likely that some of these thoughts have been expressed elsewhere and better, so please forgive any redundancies. Please understand that if you already know all or any of this, or if you've discussed any or all of this, or if you just want to blow up the carriage containing the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary so as to foment a World War and therefore don't care about any or all of this, that's ok. I do.

And my goal in this case, I might add, is not to refute, really, so much as to elaborate. Scott writes:

1. Decentralization. Get out of the major cities and gather somewhere else that isn't already choked with theatre. No drive-by guest artists from Nylachi.

So the problem is that regional theatres job in actors, writers, directors, etc., from elsewhere? That's fair, I think, if we're talking about regional theatres like the Intiman or the Wilma or New Rep or the Guthrie or the Arden or the Woolly Mammoth or ACT. But I'd gently -- gently, bloggers, very gently -- point out that there are differences between these groups and nonprofit presenters. In fact, here -- take a break from your rabies foaming and visit the website of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. While there is obvious overlap between the business models of the groups represented in APAP and, say, the membership of TCG, fundamentally they are after the selling of different kinds of products. Performing arts presenters aren't really in the business of generating new work but presenting work already created elsewhere. And no, my darlings, I don't mean E-I-E-I-O Repertory Theatre's Kabubi-style revival of Arsenic and Old Lace. I mean stuff like Matt & Ben. Now, regardless of what you think of such things, these organizations employ many, many, many artists -- indeed, many of the same artists who are, on other occasions, jobbed in from elsewhere to the regionals that are held in such low esteem. So when we say "no more drive-by guest artists from Nylachi," could it be too general?

Also, while I support the idea in theory -- and while I admire my buddy Zach Mannehimer for having the guts to put his money where his mouth is and shlep all over the US and land in Des Moines, I believe there is something vaguely paternalistic about this theory, too. And Zack knows that, and time will tell whether my concern is validated or not. (And if not, that'll be a good thing.) Now, perhaps it really is the case that red-state America requires a strong dose of blue-state-generated paternalism. But the idea that there are too many theatres and artists in Nylachi and therefore we must persuade people to go off and tell all the citizens who aren't in Nylachi that they should need our surplus artists, they should want our surplus artists, oh, they should welcome us, "they'll greet us as saviors," etc., is a little on the presumptuous side.

Quite frankly -- and here I speak as the national theatre editor of Back Stage -- there are far, far more artists in the areas beyond Nylachi than you think. Did you know Nashville is a booming theatre town? And booming with real-life Nashvillians? If it wasn't late, I'd actually do a list. Des Moines isn't on it, but I am constantly shocked by where there's theatre, and where there's theatre people fighting the good fight. These people are rightly infuriated by the NEA paying Shakespeare companies to come to their towns -- towns where they've already been making theatre, including Shakespeare -- as if they don't exist. That's paternalism, too. If this first theory is to be put into practice, I simply ask that we do some due diligence -- much on the Zach model, actually.

Note that I'm not bashing the theory. Just concerned about its sweeping nature and about the method(s) by which it may or may not be put into practice.

Scott writes:

2. Localization. Form an ensemble that will stay together for a while. Preferably with at least one resident playwright attached who writes plays for the ensemble. Become an active member of the community. Listen.

Fair enough. This is all predicated on economic viability, of course, but I have no problem with the ensemble method of creating theatre. I worry that people would impose it on vicinities in such a way as to make it seem that it is the only way to make theatre, but these things have a way of finding their own way in any event. After all, everyone thinks they want to suck Harold Clurman's teat (and Harold, as we know, only wanted to suck Stella Adler's), but the Group did not last all that long. What it did was birth a new generation of theatre artists. But again, it did not birth a long-term ensemble.

3. Tribal economics. Pool income. Take out what you need to survive. Each member brings more to the table than their theatrical specialty. Ensemble controls ancillary income. Everyone does everything.

Well, this is back to Zach's philosophy, and I'll let Zach speak to that if he wishes. I'm not convinced this is realistic -- I mean, what do you do, point a gun at people and tell them that unless they're willing to do When We Dead Awaken in Phoenix you'll starve them to death -- or make them serve Hamburger Helper for a week? I mean, fine, ensemble means ensemble, ok, we get it, lovely. But how, in this day and age, are you going to actually persuade people to start doing this? That's what I mean by DOING something. Presenting oneself as Karl Marx doesn't tell Lenin how to overthrow the Tsar. Well, actually, the Communist Manifesto does, ok, scratch that. But you see what I mean. Hopefully.

4. Education. Teach young artists the entrepreneurial and collaboration skills needed to control their own artistic lives and truly co-create.

Yes, yes, ok, but where? I mean, seriously, are we proposing a communist theatre? I ask that question not as a political red-flag, pardon the pun, but how does one make this happen in a capitalist system?

OK, done. Go ahead and yell at me some more for daring to question -- or even support with questions -- your orthodoxy. I hope it's not so precious that one cannot question it.

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