You must believe me when I say, "I adore what Michael Kaiser has to say."That said, I can't quite put my finger on why after hearing him speak at The Overture Center in Madison yesterday that the overwhelming feeling I have now is one of frustration.
I heard many of my colleagues talk of how inspired they are by the gospel that Michael Kaiser is preaching as he does a 50 state tour to talk about Arts in Crisis in the good old U.S. of A. I think Michael Kaiser is doing the world of arts producers a whole heap of good. He is a brilliant speaker, uses personal anecdotes to great effect, and produced more than one laugh from the crowd assembled in the Capitol Theater yesterday.
Still, I can't feel inspired by all the talk generated from the discussion yesterday. Not yet. No, no.
I agree with Mr. Kaiser on almost every single point that he addresses on how to deal with arts in crisis. I could go on and on and give you the rolling details of his talk, but I encourage you to check out Lindsay Christians' very fine encapsulation of the day at 77 Square Arts (and read her often, because she just does damn fine work). Rather than recap, I will offer my own anecdotal perspective.
If you want one big take away from what Michael Kaiser has to say, it is this: PLAN COOL ART. Boil it down, and that's what the man is saying.
This is where the sad part comes in for me. Have we as a nation of consumers, and I as one of the dropped-on-their-head-and-so-chose-a-life-in-the-theatre-producers-of-stuff-dramatic strayed so far away from the basic guiding principle that doing cool art is what people want to see? Really? Someone should kick my ass if this is the real truth.
Many years ago (okay, not that many) I produced a play called PSYCHO BEACH PARTY. It was a gimic play, and I did it because my theater company needed some cash. We gave away beer, filled the cast with sexy talented kids, and threw in a few drag queen cat fights and my mom in her stage debut for good measure.
What I really wanted to do was figure out a way to produce THE BLACK RIDER, a Tom Waits musical. Imagine that, huh?
The PSYCHOs in swimming suits brought in some bucks, but not nearly enough, and folks who saw it wanted more of that kind of stuff. But I wasn't having it. The trick didn't really work. It was the first play I recall having produced that despite its carnival atmosphere, I didn't really think of as "a cool event" (though I adored the whole company and the free beer).
The lack of a plan for my grabbing at straws project was the harbinger or doom in so many other respects in my role as a producer of plays for a scrappy little theatre company that thought they could. So I could be a case study for Michael Kaiser.
The thing I have to come back to is, "It is no one's fault but our own," that this arts crisis is actually an arts crisis. Its real, it's hard, and it's kind of unbelievable that we're all walking around with our tongues wagging screaming "Horrible economy! Horrible economy!"
Maybe I've just been doing this too long, but I'm no longer inspired by the common sense that Michael Kaiser preaches. I take nothing away from those who are inspired by the words being said by this incredible man in each of our 50 states in the coming months. Indeed, I wish I had that purity of heart to think in that manner. I'm disenchanted enough to think that the folks who really, really need to listen to Michael Kaiser still have cotton in their ears.
Communication can be a hard and annoying thing to do. Often I find myself thinking, "I'll just ram this through, because it will be so much easier to get this done," when considering something I need to accomplish as a theatrical producer. Yet, I know, because I have been that "ram it through" kind of operator in the past, that the better decision is the one that comes when people feel they have a vested interest in the success of a planned move.
I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Kaiser a question yesterday, one about the role of social media in our world. Mr. Kaiser mentions that he has one rule when he comes in to lead an institution: THERE WILL BE ONLY ONE SPOKESPERSON FOR THE ORGANIZATION. I applaud this contention, and understand and embrace the merits of that forthright stance with a zealot's passion. When I asked Mr. Kaiser how you enforce this practice in a world that operates on the Web 2.0 (or 3.0 depending upon where you think we are) mentality that the social interaction that people have via the internet in community places like Facebook and Twitter, I prayed and hoped for an answer.
He admitted he had none. Sigh. I wish the smart guy in the suit onstage had all the answers.
It pointed up something else that I struggle with daily, and this is the way that we all relate to one another in what the strategizers like to talk about as the new creative economy. This creative economy has a new meet up spot. The days of relationship building over a scotch and some talk about the great art being done at a particular company aren't gone, but they certainly have changed when a whole segment of our society wakes to start thinking about what their wittiest Facebook status update can be. The master plan for this kind of community building seems to grow more and more elusive to me as new iPhone apps are created and Steve Jobs recovers from a liver transplant to get cracking on the newest Apple game changer.
Plan, plan, plan artists and administrators. Do it often, do it with a long view into the future and do it without fear. Do it because it is your life's work, and do it because people really like cool art. They really do.
One thing I wish I had asked Michael Kaiser (and something the group of artists and arts administrators in the room maybe had lodged in the back of their heads) was, "How many hours a week do you work on this stuff?" In defining a state of crisis, I believe you need to envision a state of success. Success as an arts administrator should, in my very humble opinion, never mean 70 hour weeks and an inability ever sit with your family and talk about dumb stuff over a meal you make together. I would like to know how many hours a week Michael Kaiser works, because though I envy his sheer brilliance, I don't aspire to ever have the type of calendar he must keep.
I've rambled. A bit more than I thought. It's so hard to fundamentally agree with everything the messenger says, and yet not get that kicked-in-the-gut feeling by that messenger's rhetoric. I pray that arts administrators, artists and boards drink the Kaiser Koolaid and start planning projects that make the world think that arts kick it hard, and kick it often. Just don't let the public know that it's being done of the basic equation of GOOD ART+GOOD MESSAGE=GREAT COMMUNITY.
