Mike Daisey Responds to Tampa Bay Artistic Director Todd Olson

April 22, 2009 by  

Mike Daisey puts his writing skills to work again and pens an intelligent response to a letter he received from Producing Artistic Director Todd Olson from Tampa Bay’s American Stage Theatre Company. The long post is a MUST read. Daisey breaks down Olson’s letter in a way that shows Olson’s ignorance about Daisey’s show How Theater Failed America (HTFA) and highlights how the Artistic Director does not seem to very artist friendly.

A main point in the letter that I want to highlight is the us vs. them mentality Olson has set-up between the staff and the artists. Olson states:

… we have had to work harder (and by “we” I mean all staff members not protected by a union; AEA actors have continued to get 3% raises annually despite decreases in all of our staff salaries, including my own).

Because of the blood, sweat and tears of my staff (again read, “not actors”) we have nearly doubled our subscriptions and our overall attendance has increased 42%, in large part from young and diverse audiences.

Why can’t a theater hire someone to fill a staff position and an acting role? Why can’t a theater hire a web designer who is also an actor? They can be contracted for one or two shows in the season and also work in one of the departments? Due to the actor needing to find other jobs to supplement their acting career, I am sure there is no shortage of actors who could also work is most office jobs within the theater.

Many theaters with education departments hire teaching artists. Why don’t they offer them a contract in a show as well to help supplement the little money they are paid as teachers? No one is arguing that a theater does not need a staff, but why continue to separate staff members and artists? If a theater has a couple of actors within their staff, then in theory, they also have a resident acting company. The theater can build seasons around those actors to ensure that they have an acting job year after year and a marketing pitch for audiences to come back and see their favorite actors in different roles. This might not be as sexy as bringing in a company of actors from New York, but I know many talented actors who would love to work consistently in a theater and would be willing to do both staff and artistic jobs. I hope it would be an honor for an artistic director to give an artist health benefits, a consistent paycheck, and a deeper connection to the theater, other staff members and its audience by also having them work in other positions.

I think a major point in HTFA is that people should come first before any theater building. I think this includes the staff. To sustain a theater as artistic director the real job is the care of the people. In this hard economic time budgets are being cut, so how can one look to sustain both staff and artists, by bringing both to the table in multi-faceted roles.

As Daisey points out, it is about the team, so bring the artists into the staff positions to create that unified team.

I never accused anyone of “supplanting” the actor. There have always been people doing marketing and PR—and in the best worlds I believe it is when the artists themselves are involved in that process, in an ongoing collaboration, and are interwoven with what is traditionally thought of as “staff” jobs.

Instead what has happened is that roles have been assigned, and the performer has been walled off from other areas, cut down from connecting with the rest of the theater and neutered. This compartamentalization is the currency of the corporatization that has infected most American theater.

There are so many more points touched on in the Daisey’s response including creating local work about the racial fault line in St. Petersburg instead of doing an August Wilson play, Theatre Communications Group not stepping up to do critical writing about regional theater because TCG exists because of the membership and advertising of regional theaters and the complete lack of Olson knowing anything about HFTA. This is why in my letter to American Theater Magazine I asked them to consider publishing HFTA so people who hear about it, and don’t have the opportunity to see it, could read the details.

Filed under: Theater/Theatre
Tagged:

First New York Theater Bloggers Social

April 10, 2009 by  

Ken Davenport of Davenport Theatrical is hosting the first New York theater bloggers social. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend as April is shaping up to be a busy month for me as I wrap up my final semester at NYU. I am excited this conversation is happening and look forward to future events.

FIRST THEATER BLOGGERS SOCIAL
Thursday, April 23rd.
6 PM – 8 PM
Planet Hollywood
Broadway at 45th St.

More and more people seem to want to enter the dialogue of where theater and social media can meet. In the recent issue of American Theatre magazine Diana Paulus talks directly about how American Repertory Theatre is going to work with social media. What do you think about Paulus’ comments? Does it seem like it is taking the next step from the live twitter feed that happened at Portland Center Stage?

As the new artistic director of American Repertory Theatre, I am grappling with questions that many theatrical institutions around this country are asking: Why are we losing our audiences, and why aren’t new audiences coming to the theatre? It is common to explain these trends by pointing to the changing world outside the theatre: Video games and interactive digital technology have shortened attention spans, and have therefore changed our audiences’ appetite for theatre; how can we possibly compete, given the multitude of entertainment choices available in our world? Even worse, perhaps audiences have lost interest in “culture.” The problem with these explanations is that they blame the audience. I believe the responsibility lies with the people who create theatre. Could it be that as arts producers, we are failing to provide a theatrical experience that values the audience’s engagement and empowerment? If we want to truly broaden our penetration into the culture at large, we have to concentrate our attention on the total arts experience for our audiences.

This is an idea that I have been passionate about in my own work as a director, and it will be the focus for A.R.T. as we move forward in the 21st century. Our new initiative, “Experience A.R.T.,” seeks to revolutionize the theatre experience through a sustained commitment to empowering the audience. This audience-driven vision will completely transform the way we develop, program, produce and contextualize our work. A new allocation of A.R.T. resources will give equal importance to the social aspects of theatre and the potential for a full theatre experience, including interaction and engagement before, during and after the production. A.R.T. will be the first theatre in the country that has a club venue as its second stage. Club Zero Arrow will be a unique environment that will foster the development of work that encourages a whole new relationship with the audience. Club Zero Arrow will be the venue where cell phones can be turned on. People will be told from the get-go that they are allowed to participate as they would at a rock concert or a sports event—capturing images, making videos and recordings, using Twitter, sending text messages while they are experiencing the event, and then sharing their responses with friends on networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Club Zero Arrow will promote an open-source culture in which creative content (such as video footage, audio clips, photographs and other forms of creative commentary) can be generated and shared, making the events more accessible and widely distributed. I believe that if theatre is to remain a vital art form, it must give audiences a voice, a sense of ownership and a feeling of importance in the theatrical event.

Filed under: New York, Social Media, Theater/Theatre, Web 2.0
Tagged: