The Delusion Driving Much of American Theater

The Artful Manager has athought-provoking post up about The Amateur Vs. Professional divide in the arts in the age of the internet.  He also quotes Clay Shriky's Here Comes Everybody, which I happen to be reading right now (and really, if you care about blogging or want to understand the internet's impact on society, is a must read).  He ends it by asking this question:

what is the role of the expert and the excellent in a distributed world? How do we preserve space and return value to those who are extraordinary (by whatever measure you pick)?

I don't think that's a professional/amateur question -- although that's the frame we tend to use. In fact, I think the professional/amateur debate in the arts is clouding the deeper conversation.

This is worth thinking about in theatre, because our current system largely rewards club-house membership, not excellence, and it's because we have increasingly established and codified paths to being deemed a professional that have to do with attendance of the correct schools, interning at the correct summer festivals, (and having the money to be able to do so) etc. and only somewhat to do with doing good work.  This is only growing more problematic as many cities have LORT "professional" theaters that are outnumbered by "pro-am" theater companies (and by Pro-Am I mean theaters and artists doing professional quality work for amateur wages and largely in an amateur environment).  Portland, Oregon has two LORT theaters and over a hundred Pro-Am companies. LA's theatre scene is almost entirely ProO-Am, as is San Francisco's. A large percentage of DC theatre is Pro-Am, as is Chicago's and New York's.  In fact, I'm pretty sure in terms of number of productions, the majority (or at least plurality) of theatre produced in this country is probably Pro-Am (and i use this term to distinguish it from truly amateur productions such as community theatre).

And here's the thing: most of the artists working in the Pro-Am circuit have very very little chance of crossing over. They are, essentially, pursuing a delusion as a result of a category erorr, namely that the Pro-Am circuit and the LORT/Institutional circuit are part of the same system. They are not, or at least, it's more helpful to think of them as two sepearate systems. The path to working at LORT/Institutional theaters lies not in the Pro-Am circuit. it lies (largely, i know there are exceptions) in the institutional circuit, in interning at Humana, Apprenticing at Williamstown and going to UCSD or Yale (there are other paths out there, but this one is the clearest). Why is this? Because as theater has professionalized over the last fifty years, it has also adopted a Shadow Professional Certification System. It's a shadow system because it's largely social in nature; you don't have to pass a writing bar exam to be a playwright, but if you want to make a living doing it, you probably need to have gone to one of seven graduate programs. And I'm not going to say there's no relationship between Shadow Certification and Quality... there is, it's just not 1:1. There's plenty of terrible artists out there with MFAs from Yale (and awesome ones too, don't get me wrong).

If we want to understand what's going on in theatre in this country, we have to start looking at the Pro-Am circuit as its own beast that interrelates but is separate from the LORT-Institutional system.  For one thing, we need to start studying it. There are very few studies out there of this world. The NYTIF is doing yeoman's (or, I suppose yeowoman's) work in documenting the scene here in New York, and I know David Dower will be presenting findings on this at the NEA NPDBlog over at Areana's website.

I also think (and I'm trying to develop this into a larger and longer piece to be published elsewhere) it's in the LORT systems' best interests to try to find ways to learn about, be more involved with and collaborate with the Pro-Am system and start to break down the walls a bit. Why? Because, well... we have the audiences they want, the creative energy they need and the next generation of artsits likes working with us. I don't recall The Vampire Cowboys ever complaining about their audiences being too old, or too white, or not passionate about the work they do. And Youngblood doesn't have any problem getting people of all ages and races to come watch ten minute play festivals on Sunday mornings in the middle of winter and their space is a brutal, windy walk from the C/E train and roughly an hour away from where most of their spectators lives. In discussions with playwrights, they indicated a strong preference for working with theatre companies like Crowded Fire in San Francisco, who perform their shows in a space with less than fifty seats for fewer than twenty performances.

... adding I should also say that on some subconscious level artists working in ProAm know this already. When you talk to your friends in New York who want to quit New York and move to a smaller city, it is generally NOT to work at a LORT theatre there but rather to found their own theatre in the hopes that it will become a sustainable endeavor someday.

(note: an earlier version of this post identified Arena Stage's David Dower as Lighting and Sound America's David Barbour. This is what happens when you try to do Critic-o-Meter work and blog at the same time)

Comments

[Lucas Krech]

There is a fair bit of cross over and the smart AD's at the institutional theaters are looking to the smaller independent companies for fresh ideas and new artists. Not everyone makes the cross, but then not a lot of people can or want to deal with what is needed in "professional" settings.

Also, the problem is not inherent to theater. The small independent art-show-in-a-warehouse is a far cry from a Chelsea gallery or the Whitney. The indie comics scene is galaxies apart from Marvel and DC.

I do think the truly strong work rises above the mass and eventually gets into the institutions. After all, many of these very institutions are in fact run by people who came up doing edgy independent work.

[isaac]

Hey Lucas,

I don't disagree with you, and I certainly think some forward looking ADs are doing exactly what I was talking about (and in a longer less bloggy piece I'd talk about that). Particularly in my home town of Washington, there's an increasingly healthy interchange amongst smaller and larger companies.

I will say that I think the calcifying of the institutional career track (the quasi-professionalization that i'm talking about) is a fairly recent development. So while it's true that a lot of people runnign institutions today came up doing edgy and independent work, it is less true of the artists they are currently hiring. And, if current trends continue, I think it will be even less true of their successors in a decade.

[devilvet]

It is a complicated relationship though. There are certainly different ways and reasons why the cross over between the two systems is so small.

Totally randomized responses...

One reason has to do with how much status over a sustained period of time the LORT system believes it can afford as recognition.

Also, Pro-Am success isnt often directly translateble to LORT due to architectual needs of the performance venue... i.e. 20 performances sold out at 50 seats only translates to 3 sold out lort showings... artistically its big apples and little apples but as commerce the metaphor evaporates.

Would the divide lessen if there were more organizes socialization between the two systems that was able to transcend mere "networking" opportunities?

-dv

[devilvet]

as always apologies for my fat fingers and mistypes

dv

[cgeye]

The big news next season at Denver Center is that they're using a Pro-Am director, Christy Montour-Larson, for WELL -- and that's shocking considering how they usually recruit in-house or from the coasts:

http://www.denverpost.com/johnmoore/ci_12267014

Considering how the bulk of Colorado theatre is Pro-Am with DCTC, Curious, Arvada Center and the dinner theatre circuit the main giant Equity exceptions, it's about time.

[Lucas Krech]

Isaac,

I certainly agree the trend is a dangerous one. This also makes me wonder if the root lies not in the arts but in the larger American psyche. The trend towards greater certification in all fields is increasing. The ruling logic is that if you don't have a piece of paper and the requisite time spent in the proper buildings you can't make a career.

Seeing that reality was a large part of my decision to go to graduate school. And more and more graduate education is being pushed as a necessary prerequisite to working in the theater. Before even internships in actual theaters making actual shows. The result is people who can navigate meetings yet can not come up with an original idea to save their lives.

I know numerous people who have MFAs who have never made a play outside an academic institution. Its a little scary. It simultaneously devalues the art and the degree.

[Tony]

I think one odd thing about the pseudo-certification system is the lack of a peer-review process. (for ex. how colleges get and maintain accreditation has a lengthy peer-review process.)

[Jason Grote]

I dunno about this. Just anecdotally, there seems to be quite a bit of crossover between institutional/nonprofit and pro-am (or, to use a term I'm more comfortable with, showcase) theater. Playwrights, directors, actors, and companies all go back and forth all the time -- I wont argue that it's functional (and you know I'm not remotely fond of the way theater is made in this country), but even in my worst moments I have to admit that it at least slouches toward relative meritocracy.

Were you to do a survey of the playwrights in New Dramatists, most of them do probably get more productions from the showcase theaters, and more development or commissions from bigger institutional theaters. But there is definitely crossover between them -- the major exception would be DIYers like Young Jean Lee, Taylor Mac, or Richard Maxwell, but many of them receive some analogous sort of support from presenters like the Walker or the Wexner, or their big European counterparts. And then there's academia -- many of us get support (and increasingly, development and productions) from colleges and universities, either as teachers, as artists-in-residence, or guest artists. My play 1001 is having a second life on the academic circuit before its first life is even over.

The real bummer, however, is when an institutional theater discovers an artist at a showcase theater and proceeds to squeeze and homogenize and generally flatten said artist.

One could argue that New Dramatists is a club of the kind you describe, but as these things go it's a fairly equitable one. Almost every writer in ND does have an MFA, though, including me. Although I also know lots of MFAs from the big 7 programs who aren't even writing.

[isaac]

Jason,

Ach, this is what happens when you don't talk about the fully formed idea. I think presenters and generative companies have to be considered somewhat separately too, and that the presenter/generative system is actually in far better shape in terms of rewarding merit etc. Although it needs more money. I was ignoring the presentation system deliberately in this post and saving it for discussion in a follow up. And academia definitely deserves to be part of the conversation too. I was just in this post zeroing in on this particular dynamic, if that makes sense.

[Jason Grote]

Oh, yeah, I get that. There's no way we can really identify all of "the theater" because it's so widespread and diverse -- one of the thornier issues about the gender disparity study that's making the rounds. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that, for most working artists, the boundaries between commercial, institutional, independent/showcase, academic, generative, and even community theater are increasingly blurring, both practically and aesthetically. Something like Quixote in Philly is an example of this -- a playwright who has achieved some mainstream/uptown success, working with a Viewpoints-influenced generative director, with a core of seasoned downtown actors, a local Christian Anarchist squatter band, and some homeless people, all produced in a church on Broad Street.

One could argue that what was categorized as RAT theater in the 1990s has become increasingly professionalized, with an MFA becoming a prerequisite even for THAT. But one could also argue that theater is healthily outgrowing the systems developed to contain it.

[cgeye]

I know this is sorta unrelated, but Rob Orchard's leaving A.R.T. He's been there since Brustein, et al. were poached from Yale in 1980.

I'm more surprised that anyone's stayed that long, which tells me something about how we *don't* expect longevity in repertory companies or staff, anymore.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005359.html?categoryId=15&cs=1

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