Parabasis

Mustafa Barghouti on the Daily Show

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Some Good News For The Arts!

The House and Senate have passed a $12.5 million increase in the budgets of the NEA and NEH! (In case you're wondering, that's roughly an 8% boost). The budgets for both agencies will now be $167.5 million.

According to the e-mail I just received, this brings the NEA's budget to the highest it's been in 16 years. In 1995, the NEA's budget was $162 million dollars, but adjusted for inflation, it was $224 million dollars. In other words, this is a victory (particularly in this climate when the Republicans are looking for basically anything remotely demagogable), but it's not quite as big a victory as Americans for the Arts' might have you believe. 

We have a long way to go if we're to reach either the funding goal of $1 per capita arts funding ($300 million) or if we are going to restore the NEA to its funding height, adjusted for inflation ($470 million), but this is a start. 

Diversity in the Arts

Playgoer and Mission Paradox both have highlighted this piece by Michael Kaiser raising some interesting questions about diversity in arts orgs. I'm not part of the cult of Kaiser quite yet, I found his much-lauded piece on arts management, for example, to be a bit overrated. (I don't think the lack of good managers is the single biggest problem facing the arts, nor do I think that getting more and better managers and paying them better is necessarily the best way to take care of all the other problems facing the arts. The Roundabout and The New Group, for example, both "know how to find resources, attract audiences and other constituents and provide support to our artists" but they also do consistently awful work and surely although the main goal of any institution is to perpetuate itself and grow, doing good work has to be up there in the goal list too, right?)

My thoughts on it are going in too many different directions for me to quite cohere them yet, so I'm going to hold off for now and simply ask you, dear reader, what you think about it. Here's some sample graphs:

Having spent a great deal of my career working with arts organizations of color, I am as committed as anyone to the diversity of our arts ecology. I do not believe that we can have a truly great artistic community if all segments of our society are not represented well.

But I do not think I believe anymore in forcing Eurocentric arts organizations to do diverse works or to put one minority on a board.

When large, white organizations produce minority works they typically select the "low hanging fruit," the most popular works by diverse artists featuring the most famous minority performers and directors. This almost invariably hurts the minority arts organizations in the neighborhood, most of which are small and underfunded, and cannot afford to match the marketing clout or the casting glamor of their larger white counterparts. How else to explain the reduced strength of American black theater companies over the past twenty years?

Busy Busy Little Bee

Today is a crazy-busy day. I'm in phone meetings for the day job from 11AM-6PM and I have all sorts of other writing projects I need to get cracking on. So it's time to link-o-rama.

I believe this Matt Yglesias post meets the definition of Pwnage. (Also on Yglesias: Monkey Econ 101)

As per usual, Ta-Nehisi Coats has a beautifully written, thought provoking post on something. This time, it's on blogging and journalism. 

What does your playlist say about you?

I might have said this already, but welcome back to the theatrosphere, Scott Walters! People might not know this, since we argue nearly constantly, but Scott and I actually get along quite well.

Haven't you always wanted Hey Jude in flowchart form? Sure you have.

Some of you may know that I have taken up playing the ukulele as a hobby. And man do I love it. The openness of the tuning makes for really beautiful harmonics, and chords are quite easy to play on it. Also, the high pitch of the tuning makes dissonance really quite lovely, and it's basically built for seven chords.  I've always been hopeless on the guitar, but Gertrude (the ukulele) and I are really tearing it up.  The latest three songs i've learned are this, this and this. I've been trying since the beginning to tackle this, but it's hard on a uke.

Is Israel A Jewish Democracy?

Spencer Ackerman yesterday espoused a widely-stated left-leaning pro-Israel view that I've always found really, seriously bizarre:

If Israel doesn’t get out of the West Bank soon, demographic realities will force Israel to make the most painful existential choice of its life: whether to abandon Jewish democracy or whether to abandon Jewish statehood in favor of a binational homeland. Both of these options, in fundamental ways, represent the end of Israel. Not from an Iranian nuclear weapon. Not from a super-empowered Palestinian intifada. But from political failure and international diplomatic failure, the end of Israel can, actually, be achieved.

This is not a hypothetical fear. Unless a settlement is reached before there are more Arabs between the Jordan and the Mediterranean — which is, I don’t know, ten years away? — it will be the case. Even before then, the Palestinian national movement would have very good incentives to stop pursuing the cause of an independent state, because they’d feel themselves to be the majority in a binational state. If they can force Israel to choose between its Jewishness and its democracy — a choice that risks overwhelming and perhaps untenable diplomatic isolation. (emph. mine)

The idea behind this viewpoint is that Israel currently occupies the West Bank. The population of Israeli Arabs + Palestinian Arabs is currently a minority, but only just barely.  Perhaps as soon as a decade, this will change. Israel can't import enough Jews to keep up with Palestinian birth rate. When that demographic crossover happens, Israel will then cease being a Jewish Democracy. It will either stop having to be Jewish, or become an apartheid state and anti-democratic.

Here's why this viewpoint doesn't make sense to me... from a Palestinian rights standpoint, Israel already isn't a democracy. Why does the population switch over suddenly make the Israeli treatment of people in the occupied territories worse when substantively that treatment won't change at all. While a minority, Palestinians already don't have rights.  They'll have the same amount of rights as a majority. But all of a sudden this is bad? 

To me, this all seems about creating a legal framework in one's head that allows one to resolve cognitive dissonance. What I'm surprised by is how commonly expressed and easily accepted this viewpoint is, given that it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is wrong. It's not going to be more or less wrong when Jews are outnumbered by Arabs.  Israel has already sacrificed its democratic ideals to serve the purposes of Ethnic Nationalism (i.e. setting up a state for the express benefit of one ethnic group), an ideology that Ackerman and other left-leaning Zionists argue against so long as the Ethnic Nationalists aren't Jews.

Cutest. Thing. Ever.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention I got this via Jaime's Twitter Feed.

Beagle Puppy Attacks Rottweiler - watch more funny videos

The Women Of Afghanistan

I was about to write a post saying that in the debate over sending more troops to Afghanistan, you never really hear about women's rights issues when all of a sudden TAPped publishes a little piece surveying the field. Turns out that Afghan feminists are not united in how they feel about the American occupation:

From the United States, it's difficult to figure out who speaks for Afghan women, or even Afghan feminists. Malalai Joya, a heroic 31-year-old Afghani activist and politician, calls for an end to the occupation in her new book, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. "I know that Obama's election has brought great hopes to peace-loving people in the United States," she writes. "But for Afghans, Obama's military buildup will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians, while it may not even weaken the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

...Listening to Joya and Zoya makes everything seem simple. If these astonishingly brave Afghan women want American troops out of their country, then it would seem that feminists could, with clear consciences, join their fellow progressives in calling for an end to the war.

But there are also many seconding the message of Women for Afghan Women. "As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants who now threaten it," the Afghan human-rights activist Wazhma Frogh wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

RTWT here.

Meg's New Friend First Rehearsal

I am sound designing Meg's New Friend, written by Blair Singer and directed by Mark "Mr. Excitement" Armstrong for his company, aptly titled, The Production Company.  It was a great first rehearsal (what I was able to attend of it, anyway). It's always interesting as a director to get a sense of another director's process, and the way they do things etc.

I was really struck by a few things:

(1) Mark founded a company called The Production Company because he wants to keep the group's focus on Production. A similar thing to 13P's "We don't develop plays, we do them" approach. The idea being that he saw all this great writing around him and wanted to create a space where it would actually be produced instead of read.

(2) Blair Singer quote: "People are hungry to see good acting in small spaces". I think this is one of the comparative advantages of Off-Off Broadway theater that's relatively seldomly remarked upon-- the intimacy of the venue is important. When you have some really good actors (or as Blair put it, "truth tellers") on stage, the smallness of the space really heightens the experience.

(3) Meg's New Friend is a play about a woman in a long term relationship who begins to fall for her boyfriend's sister's new boyfriend.  The new boyfriend is black. The other three characters are white. Part of what I really like about the play is that it is  a play about relationships, not about race but it doesn't ignore race either. Race is in the mix, but it's not the whole conversation. It's one of the reasons why I really wanted to do the play. This has actually really informed the sound design. There's a way in scene transition music where you could make this play about race, or try to comment on the race politics of the play. And it doesn't need it.

(4) Blair's real talent is for creating plays that feature universally decent characters. They have flaws, yes, but they're decent people trying to do the right thing. And yet there's still stakes, conflict and drama.  This is really hard to do.  It's much easier to do plays about fundamentally not-decent people (Labute) or insert spoiler characters who do fucked up things (Rebeck) to create conflict and stakes. 

(5) Similarly, Mark is very talented as a director at focusing on the human dynamics in a play. he really gets back to fundamentals like relationships, stakes, given circumstances etc. and is able to articulate those and bring those dynamics out in a show really well.

I'm really looking forward to this project! And looking forward to just being a sound designer. And to blogging about it, because as a designer i feel capable of writing about it in ways I don't when I'm directing plays.

Mad Men Blogging (All Spoilers)

So it seems to me that I was right at the beginning of this season when I said it felt like they had no idea where they were going and what they wanted to do this year.  The question is... is this a bad thing?

 Let me explain... this season has progressed thus far through three different movements.  For two or three episodes in the beginning, they basically treaded water, with the characters doing... not that much important and, as we can see now the writers setting up... very little for later on in the season.  It was just kinda dull.

Then we moved into a second act that was Balls Out Insane.  Every week seemed at least as strange as the Don In LA plotline, and you began to see a real David Lynch influence begin to suffuse the series. There were strange incongruous moments, shocking gore, suburban creepiness, the whole bit.  

Now we've moved through a final phase where they have to set up a big season finale.  And so they've decided to pull the pin on Betty finding out about Don's hidden past. To me, this feels like the writing room admitting defeat. It's a moment of "fuck it, we didn't really know what we wanted to do with year three, so let's go to plan B".  We've always known that Betty would find out about Don at some point.  They've been keeping that one on the back burner since the end of Season 1.  

So why deploy it now?  It doesn't really flow from anything else that's gone in this season. It doesn't have that feeling one gets from a well plotted work where things feel simultaneously surprising and inevitable. It just feels like they needed to do something to raise the stakes and finish off the year and they were sick of waiting around for Betty to discover The Box so they just did it.

In the meantime, they've set up other plot lines that they've discarded so swiftly they've become red herrings.  What happened with Duck? And with the competition between the two accounts men? And with Peggy's newfound sex-drive? They have two more episodes to go, and Sterling Cooper is secretly on sale and it's completely unclear what this year's season is even about which is kind of a big deal when you are doing a serialized realistic TV drama. 

That being said... I'm not actually sure that I mind and of this.  I think this season has been clumsily plotted and kind of haphazard, but this week's episode was really outstanding and having Betty discover the box has really raised the stakes (my heart was beating so fast I could feel it) and the fucking crazy episodes in the middle of the season were really bracing and exciting. 

It does, however, worry me for seasons ahead. It was clear watching (for example) both The Sopranos and Six Feet Under than they had no idea what they wanted to do with the shows after their first seasons. Both shows flailed around with the success rate declining steeply each year  until their final seasons, where the first went completely off the rails and the second brought it home brilliantly.  It's not clear that Matthew Weiner and his writers have figured out why we should still be watching Don Draper and Co. And by removing Joan from the Sterling Cooper offices, they've taken out some of the key dynamics (Joan + Roger, Joan + Peggy, Joan + Men, Joan + Women) and haven't replaced them with anything yet.

Some Questions

Women's health insurance rates are generally higher than men's. The thinking behind this is that women generally consume more health services (go to the doctor more often etc.). Is this sexist?

Rap concerts are more expensive to insure than other events. Is this racist?

Pumpkin Pie Show: Commencement

So it should be said before I write my recommendation that you all see The Pumpkin Pie Show: Commencement at Under St. Mark's that I couldn't be more compromised here. Clay McLeod Chapman, the writer/director (although he wouldn't use that second word) is one of my best friends and most frequent collaborators.  I acted in a previous incarnation of The Pumpkin Pie Show. Hanna Cheek, who stars in the show, has been in two projects I've directed and is a good friend (and was in the version of the PPS that I was in). 

I'll keep it short and sweet then: In the performance I saw Saturday night Hanna Cheek gave one of the best performance I have ever seen in an indie theatre show.   It was truly remarkable, and as someone who has followed her for years, it was pretty stunning to watch her hop to another level and make it look easy. 

Casting directors and agents take notice! Ignore Hanna Cheek at your peril!

Admin Note/Open Thread

My internets done broke, and i'm waiting around for the repair guy and hoping on some very spotty wifi in my building. Thus, i cannot guarantee what posting'll be like. 

So... if there's anything you'd like to talk about, consider this comment thread the place to do it!

A Serious Man

Just saw A Serious Man at the Cobble Hill Cinemas.  I just wanted to quickly offer a corrective to a meme that's floating around most of the reviews of this film most likely because it's embedded in press materials somewhere... A Serious Man really has almost nothing to do with the Book of Job in the Bible. Claiming it does is like claiming that any revenge story involving a son avenging his father's murder is an adaptation of Hamlet.

In The Book of Job, Satan and God make a bet that the Devil cannot turn one of God's most devout followers against him.  Satan chooses Job, a wealthy landowner with a large family. God says, essentially, "don't physically hurt him". So Job's land and livelihood and children are taken from him in a series of disasters. He remains devout. Satan asks God for permission to cause Job bodily harm, claiming the game isn't fair.  God assents and Job is afflicted with boils.  At this point, Job's wife loses faith, tells Job to "curse God and die" and leaves him. 

Although Job doesn't lose his faith in God, he loses his faith in the idea of divine justice. He is then visited by three friends who try to convince him that Divine Justice exists and that he must've done something wrong to piss God off.  Job rejects this and rails against God.  This goes on for awhile. Eventually, God appears in a whirlwind, basically calls Job one presumptuous SOB and says that Job has no right to judge that which he does not understand.  Job repents. God restores Job's prosperity and gives him a new family and then goes to Job's friends and says, essentially, "Job was right, there is no divine justice, bad things happen to good people" and fucks off back to heaven.

In A Serious Man, Larry Gopnik (perhaps named after the author of A Cartoon History of the Universe) is a not-particularly-devout-nor-prosperous Jew who goes through some bad stuff (but nothing really on the Job scale), and wants to understand not why the bad stuff is happening to him but rather what he should do about it. These are very different questions. Job knows what he wants to do about it, he becomes a ranting homeless man on a pile of shit and yells about how there's no divine justice.  Larry doesn't seek answers so much as guidance.  The visit of Job's three friends is unwelcome. Larry seeks out three (not very helpful) rabbis. God appears to Job and restores him. Life just kinda goes on for Larry.  There's a couple of references to Job (particularly in the film's final shot) but, other than some thematic similarities, they don't have much to do with each other.

As for the film... I'm not totally sure how I feel about it. It's well made, well shot, well acted, and a movie that no other filmmakers could've delivered.  Like all of the Coen's serious films (with the possible exception of No Country for Old Men, due to it being an adaptation) it's a donut, with a giant hole in the middle where things like Meaning and Significance normally are, and in their place is the Coen's nihilism and misanthropy. 

What makes A Serious Man a little different is that the movie itself is about a pointless quest for meaning. So, in a way, they've created a structure in which their nihilism and misanthropy are essential to the film.

I have to admit, after two decades of really deeply loving the Coen's films... I'm a bit bored by them now. There's a strange sameness between their movies, not only in the way the camera and (particularly) music are used, but also in world view.  It seems that the Coens have on some level not grown as artists or human beings from Blood Simple to A Serious Man. It's a bit like being friends with someone who never changes; eventually, you grow a little tired of their company.

No Country had given me some hope that this had changed. The cutting of all underscoring, the adaptation of someone else's material, the masterful suspense sequences all felt like steps in the right direction. And i still have high hopes for The Yiddish Policeman's Union (in many ways A Serious Man feels like a warm-up for that forthcoming venture), and if I hadn't seen all of the Coen's other movies (except for The Ladykillers)  I think I probably would think A Serious Man is a really good movie. And I would've found its nihilism and misanthropy bracing, the way I did the first time I saw Fargo. But honestly, the whole thing left me kinda cold.

What did you all think about it?

Billionaires for Wealthcare

Terry Gross Interviews Tracy Morgan

Definitely not what you'd expect. It's interesting, when you reach the halfway point of the interview, they're both clearly shocked by what they've stumbled upon. 

Things I Agree With

Lindsay Bayerstein Edition.

More on Critics from Rob Kendt

I was going to include John Lahr's review of Bye Bye Birdie as another example of bad contextualization in my earlier post today, but for some reason forgot to. Whoops.  Rob Kendt does a great job of explaining what is so wrong with Lahr's BBB review, and what is so right about Lahr's writing at its best here. 

Thoughts on Critics (5)

CONTEXT!

In thinking about the value of reviews beyond the consumer-guide, one thing that struck me that reviewers (can) do is provide context for the work being seen. They're not the only ones who do this, of course. CultureBot (for example) largely exists to provide a context in which experimental work can be understood.  Adam Szymcowicz's blog, with its now-pushing-70 reviews of living playwrights is providing (along with other things) contextual information about new work.  

This is pretty basic stuff, of course, but it's harder than it looks.  Let's take a particularly good recent example: Jason Zinoman's review of "Ghost Light" in the Times this week.  Now, it helps that Jason happens to be working on a book on American horror, but anyway, in the course of that review we get these two paragraphs:

The playwright Desi Moreno-Penson belongs to a new generation of theater artists reared on a diet of vampires, zombies and charming serial killers. Call this movement the Theater of Blood, after the Vincent Price movie about a Shakespearean actor who kills critics, after torturing them with a hammy monologue. (It still gives me chills.) At the forefront is Clay McLeod Chapman, whose “Pumpkin Pie Show” (running at Under St. Marks) channels the spirit of H. P. Lovecraft. The Grand Guignol showmen at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the goremeister Timothy Haskell also contribute their fair share of shocks.

This play aims directly for movie buffs with its setting, a creepy motel (“Psycho”), an ominous figure in a mirror (“Repulsion”) and an old motivation for evil, ambition for theater fame (“Rosemary’s Baby”). The director José Zayas does nice work with his actors, staging a sweaty grapple of a sex scene between Brian and Natalie (played with burning eyes by Kate Benson). Interrupting this affair is the sudden appearance of a ghost and an aggressive security guard (Hugh Sinclair) killing the mood.

So here we have the piece put into a broader context, and then that context brought to bear on what works (and later in the review, doesn't work) in the show.  In the course of reading this short review, you've learned the names of some other artists to check out whose work is similar (in case you want to check out good exemplars of this kind of show) you've learned the other work its speaking to and is in conversation with etc.  Not too shabby.

Another review that I think did this well was David Cote's review of Rabbit Hole.  Some people at the time pegged it as totally unfair to the play to weigh it down with the baggage of Manhattan Theatre Club (and a friend of mine actually called me on the phone to yell at me at the time because I praised it).  But if a play is an object lesson of something broader about plays in general that is positive or negative, than it's worth talking about in that context. No theatre artist would mind Cote saying a production was symbolic of everything right about a given theatre company's approach, would they? No. No one would say "your positive review has unfairly saddled this play I liked with your own positive baggage about the theatre company producing it". 

One non-theatre reviewer who is pretty much a master at providing context is Douglas Wolk.  In both his comics and music writing, he's very good at telling the story that surrounds the work in ways that are informative and entertaining.  Take his review of James Brown: The Singles, Vol. 7 for Pitchfork in which he tells the story of the drastic personnel changes in Brown's back up band and how that shaped his music for the better. (Similarly, Scott Plagenhoef's review of The Beatles Revolver does a great job of providing narrative context for the work).

While we're on the subject of Pitchfork, it's worth noting that they regularly provide examples of how contextualization can be done very badly.  One example is when reviews provide contextual information that does not add any value but rather exists to establish that the reviewer is part of an Exclusive Club of People Who Have Authority And Are In The Know. In this way, it works the way that Orwell discusses academic language in Politics and the English Language (and which DFW expands on in Authority and American Usage). Let me give you an example:

No one ever wants to admit that summer's totally over, but it's even tougher this year considering how fun it all was-- seems like every other day, an evocatively named band would come about and contribute to this glo-fi/dreambeat/chillwave thing that was perfect for those unbearably humid August nights rife with possibility, imagining an alternate universe where the narcotic of choice in danceclubs were Galaxie 500 and Saint Etienne records. (emph. mine)

Glo-fi. Dreambeat. Chillwave.  These terms are, to the vast majority of people (including yours truly, who reads a lot of music reviews) meaningless. They do nothing to describe the music being reviewed. They do nothing to put it in a broader context. It's just random genre hair-splitting.  The reference to Galaxie 500 and Saint Etienne isn't particularly helpful either... For one thing, what does Galaxie 500, with its drony, shoe-gazer minimalism have to do with Saint Etienne with its deep indebtedness to club beats and 3-minute pop single revivalist tendencies? 

Another negative example of contextualization is this Hilton Als review of David Adjmi's Stunning, which is more like an  essay on Tennessee Williams with some references here and there to Adjmi's play.  Adjmi's play contains Williams references, so it's understandable, but it still reads like Als had a big stack of Williams on his bedside table and didn't want his reading list to go to waste. And of course, one can also get contextualization wrong by including in the review things that one doesn't really know anything about etc.

So this is the problem that I see in the future... One of the reasons why Jason can do this is that he has the word count to do it.  Ditto Michael Feingold (although the context he usually puts work in is how much better plays were back in his day).  It's nearly impossible to provide much broader context writing when your word count is two hundred words. And, of course, we all know print review space is shrinking fast. 

This is where the online world could fill in the gaps.  I say could, because I don't think it is yet and I don't think it's necessarily a slam dunk that it will.  The problem right now is that most print publications can't stay afloat, either in the short or long terms.  The Washington Post loses money and is kept afloat by Kaplan's test prep revenues and The New Yorker frequently loses money, but the prestige of the magazine's brand is important to CN as a company, to take two examples.  But (and here's the problem) online revenues aren't sufficient to support these print publications either. If they were to move to being entirely online, they'd still be screwed.

I think it is a good thing that we have professional reviewers whose work is edited by professional editors. I might not always think their work is good, I might want it to be better, but I think it is a good thing for our artform and our industry.  I don't think an army of amateur (or even Pro-Am!) reviewers is a cure-all for the problems facing theatre criticism.  I think the amateur/pro-am reviewing and criticism that happens online is definitely important, and good, and I think the rise of it along with the rise of the blogosphere is definitely a positive or else I wouldn't have started critic-o-meter! But still, having a professional reviewing component is a good thing.  So... how are we going to have that in the future if the mammoth print publications that support that coverage may not be sustainable?  That scares me. I'm sure it scares my reviewer friends more, but the question scares me.  

One positive development here is reviewers having blogs. This provides an opportunity (not always taken) to discuss the work more in depth than the reviews allow.  

Which reminds me...why don't the Times' reviewers have blogs?

PAY ATTENTION!

No-Brainer Secrets Revealed Part Two: The Internets

So let's say you're a theater company or producer and you're interested in having more of an online presence.And let me reiterate... you want to do this to reach your audience not to change your audience. I mean, it could gradually be used for to shift your audience demos (provided you are also changing your work), but you have to start with where you are, ya know?

 You're not an idiot. Everyone and their mother has a blog.  Your grandma just added you as a friend on Facebook.  Neil Gaiman's twitter feed is telling you how many times he pet his cat this morning and the excruciating details of what he had for breakfast and yet he has like a bagajillion followers.  And yet, you don't really understand twitter and facebook and blogs. Now before you say "Why of course I understand them!" Let me just correct you: You don't. And you want to know how i know you don't?  Because you take workshops in how to do them and when confronted with idea of twitter, all you do is make fun of the name of the website. 

I've seen you do it, it's okay!  It's okay to be a little out of touch! You're who you are! You're busy! But still... how is it that all these other busy people are able to do this? What gives? How do you get yourself some of that internets magic?

Just to be clear... not all of your difficulty is your fault... Some of this is the artist's fault.  A lot of artists out there think that their responsibilities end at creating the work and doing it well. After all, creating good work is really fucking hard. Artists, however, are wrong about this. You've encouraged some of that wrong-ness because you don't really want them all up in your grill about marketing images and bullshit better left to the "experts". But still, they're wrong about the division. And plenty of artists want to be more involved and recognize that it's part of their job to help bring the horse to market, as it were.

Anyway.. alls I'm saying is this:

People (in general) don't want to read blog posts from your marketing director, they want to read blog posts from the artists working on the show. Or your artistic director. They also want to read interesting stuff that'll make them feel like an insider.

In order to accomplish this, you might have to lean on your artists a little. But you know what? One of the reasons why novelists all have facebook pages, blogs and twitter feeds now is that their publishers are telling them to. Ditto bands. Every other artform seems to be miles ahead of theatre on this one, it doesn't have to be that way.  (And btw: just to be clear and head off some of the comments at the pass... some of this is a generational thing, a lot of younger artists are much much more comfortable with this whole internets thing) 

That's just a small tip for you, because really, I have another no-brainer secret coming up here... if you are having trouble setting up your web presence and thinking through the issues and how to make it better... well here's the no-brainer secret:

There are a number of people who have been doing this for awhile in what is known as the theatrosphere. Some of us are good at it. All of us need money. Hire one of us to come in and help you set it up and think it through.

See? That's not too hard, is it?  If you want to learn how to do something well, hire an expert to teach you how to do it for awhile. I'm sure Adam or Andy or myself or Jaime or Rob or Gus or Prince or 99 or any number of Quality Bloggers Who Read a Shitload of Blogs and Understand This World would help you, if you feel you need the help. Those are just the first seven names that came to me off the top of my head. There's plenty more!  And clearly, you feel you need the help, or you wouldn't bring up twitter at every panel and go to the TCG Conference's Facebook workshop. 

One thing to think about before you shoot someone an e-mail tho: Who is your audience? And what do they want from their online experience with your company?

If really all they want is show info, save your well-earned, hard-won Ford Foundation dollars. Because, again, the internet is not a way to trick people into going to see your show, it's a way of telling people who might want to see your show about your show and giving people a more in depth experience of your company. 

Good luck!