Thinking Out Loud in Public

“Meanwhile, back in the Year One…” – Jethro Tull, Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

So how did the theater get where it is today? And how could it be different? These are the two questions that form the foundation for this series.

The importance of the first question is described by Alfred L. Bernheim, whose book The Business of the Theatre, published in 1932, is considered definitive by many. “To understand the theatre of today,” Bernheim writes, “one must go back and study the developments from which the theatre of today has evolved. Hence we must examine the theatre of yesterday and trace the evolution of present practices and customs.”

The second question–And how could it be different?– is my own, and reflects my own dissatisfaction with the economic environment in which theater is created today, one that is increasingly desperate, dysfunctional, and financially unsustainable for the artists who make it. And so as we examine previous forms that American theater has taken, it benefits us to keep an eye out for practices that were abandoned for historical reasons but that might be restored to our practice today.

The Starting Point

Jack Poggi, in his excellent book Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870-1967, is pretty blunt:

“Before 1870 most plays in America were performed by resident stock companies, groups that used the same actors and the same theater for a series of different productions. These companies were self- sufficient units, content for the most part to remain in one place and capable of producing old and new plays with the same nucleus of actors, augmented usually by a visiting star.”

Those characteristics are important to reiterate. Resident stock companies are:

• rooted in a single place
• in a single theater
• using a consistent group of actors (occasionally augmented by a visiting star)
• performed a variety of plays

Folks, a reminder: that was the original vision of the regional theater in the middle of the 20th century that was considered so innovative that Joseph Wesley Ziegler, an early Executive Director of the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) subtitled his history of the regional theater movement as the “revolutionary stage.” Well, he was right: the regional theater had its roots in the theater that arose around the American Revolution!

In addition to the dominance of the resident stock company in Early American theater, and (again) similar to the ideas advocated by the regional theater movement one hundred years later, the system was decentralized:

“Every community with a theater was a producing center. A new play might appear in Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, or San Francisco, as well as in New York. It is true that New York was already the leading theatrical city, but only because it had more and better stock companies and because most stars began their tours there.”

So rooted, decentralized, and, perhaps most importantly, independent.

Again, Poggi:

“Each local manager was virtually independent. He owned or leased the theater building, hired and fired actors, chose each play or booked a star in a particular play, cast the actors and directed the play— at least to the extent that direction existed in those days (and to the extent that he could wrest control from a visiting star, who was usually his own director).”

Be careful, though– the word “manager” didn’t have the same meaning that it has today. Bernheim writes, “The manager was in almost every instance an actor himself, and he was in complete control over every phase of the company’s activity. He was not responsible to any outside interest, for there was never any outside capital invested in the company which might claim a share in management or look for a share of profits.”

OK, so a manager was an early entrepreneur? Sort of, with one major difference. Again, Bernheim:

“In its internal financial aspects, the company was generally organized on a cooperative basis. It was not until after the Revolution that the system of paying regular salaries to actors became prevalent. Up to that time it was customary for all members of the company to get a pro-rata share of whatever surplus there might be at the end of a season after all costs, including living expenses, had been met.”

In other words, the artists in one of these companies had skin in the game–they benefitted from the artistic decisions made during the course of a season. They felt each success and failure in their pocketbook.

So let’s add that to our list of characteristics of resident stock companies:

• Independent – the capital invested in the company came from those within the company
• Organized as a cooperative

If you’ve studied your theater history, you’ll recognize this as the dominant model for European theater companies from the Elizabethan Era through the 19th century. And it serves as the basis for my own ideas described in Building a Sustainable Theater. So what happened in 1870 that Poggi hinted at?

Pretend with me for a moment. I bring you into a room where you find a Red Box, a Blue Box, and a Yellow Box. In front of them is a pile of poker chips also colored red, yellow, and blue. I ask you to sort the chips into the box with the matching color. Easy peasy, right? There’s no value judgment about which color is “better” than the others– there’s no hierarchy. It’s a simple matter of categorization.

The philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood did the same with art, focusing on differentiating kinds of art according to their differing purposes. But as Michael Rushton found with his Substack post “A is for Art,” people get all het up about such categories because they think you’re setting up a secret hierarchy that is going to end up dissing the stuff that they enjoy. If you are talking about this in theater, inevitably somebody is going to say, “Hey! It can’t all be Beckett!” (For some reason, it’s always Beckett.) Or, just as commonly, “You watch what you like, and I’ll watch what I like.” End of conversation.

Admittedly, Collingwood makes it hard to avoid this, because he starts out by separating things into two categories: art and pseudo-art. That…wasn’t wise, because people see the word “art” as an honorific, the top of the heap. So right away, their hackles are up. Then he separates the “pseudo-art” into three subcategories: “craft,” “magic,” and “amusement.” I’ll define those below, but first I want to state foundational principle that I intend to use for this discussion. Like the red/yellow/blue boxes I mentioned above, I am not setting up a hierarchical value structure with my terms. This isn’t about creating piles of bad/good/better/best, it’s about identifying kinds of “art” with different purposes. To help us remember this, I will employ Collingswood’s definitions, which are useful, while using entirely different terms that (I hope) will minimize defensive reflexes. First I’ll define the categories, and then I’ll discuss why they might be useful.

1. Art as Craft
2. Instrumental Art
3. Art as Entertainment
4. Art for Reflection

Craft is the creation of objects that have a useful purpose and are an end in themselves. Making, say, a table is a craft, and it creates something that is used in normal life. Whether the table is beautiful is secondary to whether it does what it is supposed to do.

Instrumental Art is the creation of something that is not an end in itself, but is designed to accomplish another purpose. For instance, a ritual–say, a rain dance–is designed to appease the rain god and result in precipitation. The example Rushton uses is a good one: “The singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before US sporting events is a similar thing - the words of the song don’t matter (I’m not sure how many Americans could pass a quiz on the War of 1812), it has nothing to do with sports; what matters is that this is a thing we do, as a collective…“The Star-Spangled Banner” is meant to promote a shared patriotism and respect for the armed forces and its veterans.” Likewise, agit-prop performances are instrumental in that they are designed to convince spectators to take political action or to vote differently.

Art as Entertainment involves objects whose primary purpose is temporary escape. Turning again to Rushton, entertainment “is all about the moment, stirring emotions in the audience - laughter, suspense, horror, romance, awe at a technical achievement - but leaving no trace.” The film Snakes on a Plane is all about thrills and suspense, and afterwards you don’t head to the pub to discuss the deeper meaning of legless reptiles in a flying machine.

Art for Reflection are objects created to express an emotion in a way that inspires a spectator to think more fully about the meaning of that expression later. This definition uses only part of Collingwood’s actual definition, which is for him entirely about an artist expressing their own personal emotion (and only emotion) with little concern for the effect on the spectator–in other words, the expression is an end in itself. I would add to that: if “entertainment” provides immediate experience of escape but “leaves no trace,” then by contrast objects of “reflection” are designed to lead to further thought after the experience is over. It leaves a trace.

My goal with these not-fully-developed definitions is to create separate boxes–and remember, no box is better than the other–that we can use to separate various art-objects. There could be more or fewer boxes, but the purpose is distinction. We’re separating apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas. Judgments regarding value take place within each category–whether a Pink Lady apple is _better _than a Honeycrisp takes place within the Apple category, for instance–but we’re not rejecting a banana because it isn’t crisp enough! Each category has different criteria of judgment.

By using these categories, we can more easily have a discussion about whether, say, Snakes on a Plane is better than, say, Con Air in the “Entertainment about dangerous air travel” category. And frankly, one movie is clearly better than the other, with Con Air the hands-down winner no question about it. So if, in the midst of the inevitably heated discussion at the pub that would follow such a provocative statement, someone loudly declared that Con Air was a lousy movie because “what am I supposed to DO about the problem of convicts hijacking a plane?,” I can turn to that person and calmly say, “Dude, what are you talking about? It’s not an instrumental movie! Go buy us another round of beer and while you’re at it get your head straight.” Similarly, if at the pub after a production of Waiting for Godot someone said, “Sheesh! That was super-boring–no explosions at all!” I could calmly respond, “WTF are you talking about??? It’s not an Entertainment play , but one that is supposed to make your reflect! Get us some more nachos and don’t come back until you have thought about what you’ve done.”

So many potentially violent pub brawls could be avoided by simply employing these categories! (Because all discussion of art takes place in pubs.)

Are there art objects whose category might be ambiguous? Sure. For instance, was Barbie a “Reflection” movie or an “Instrumental” one? Or maybe it was pure Entertainment? What about Oppenheimer? For most things, however, it’s reasonably clear what purpose they serve and what category they belong in so we can move on to a different topic: what makes an Entertainment movie, say an action film, especially entertaining, and why is Con Air better than almost any other Entertainment action movie including *Die Hard"? Sorry. I’m revealing my biases.

As a Drama professor who taught a lot of courses on dramatic literature, I almost always taught plays that fell into the Reflection category. Why? After all, I’m a big fan of farces, but I rarely taught them in class. Why didn’t I do a semester-long course called “Door-Slamming Underwear Farces in the 20th Century”? Probably could have packed the house. The reason I never did is that it’s really, really difficult to talk about door-slamming underwear farces once you’ve covered the “it was SO hilarious when the pastor had his pants stolen and then he fled into the room where the Bishop was waiting for him” parts. It’s not a disdain for humor qua humor (when discussing door-slamming underwear farces, one must use qua to restore one’s dignity), it’s a recognition that the Entertainment category is designed to “stir emotions while leaving no trace.” It’s made for consumption, not reflection. It’s potato chips.

What if these categories were used for awards? Maybe more comedies would win Oscars if they weren’t competing for Best Picture with Oppenheimer or Schindler’s List. “The nominees for the Entertainment Category are…”

Anyway, the goal of this whole thing is to make conversation about the arts easier to have, because let’s face it, we seem to have lost the ability to talk about the art that we encounter in a way that allows us to share our thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a way that makes sense. And that makes me sad.

Back in 2011, I wrote a lot about Holly Sidford’s study for Grantmakers in the Arts called “FUSING ARTS, CULTURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy.” Sidford showed that the tichest 2% of cultural organizations in the US received 55% of charitable contributions and grants, a ratio that was worse than the income inequity in the US as a whole.

Well, I just discovered that, in 2017, Sidford did a followup study to see if anything had changed in the ensuing years. And indeed they had! As a result of a “growing numbers of arts foundations [that] have become concerned about the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in the nonprofit cultural sector….spurred, in part, by national conversations about economic inequality, racism, LGBTQ rights, class bias and various kinds of unexamined privilege in society overall,” things had actually gotten worse! Instead of the richest 2% getting 55% of philanthropic support, in 2017 they were getting 60%! God knows how much they get today.

These organizations are symphonies, opera companies, regional theaters, art museums, ballet companies and other large institutions — the majority of which focus primarily on Western European fine arts traditions. While most of these institutions have made sincere efforts to broaden participation in the past decade, their audiences remain predominantly white and upper income. (NEA Research Report #57)

Very few organizations of color or cultural groups based in low-income communities are included in this large-budget group. Across the nation, fewer than 50 cultural organizations whose missions focus primarily on artistic traditions from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Native America, or that focus primarily on reaching rural populations and low-income communities, receive enough funding to maintain budgets of $5 million/year.

You can read Sidford’s report, “Not Just Money,” as well as Dudley Cocke’s response, a Minnesota Public Radio interview of Sidford, the late Diane Ragsdale’s call for some “moral imagination” (including 3 suggestions for change), and American Theatre Magazine’s investigation.

I could write pages and pages about this, but I won’t. It’s time for artists to start questioning the way their systems are organized and decide whether they want to keep supporting such inequity in the hopes of getting some of the crumbs, or instead try to create a new way of doing things. If you fall in the latter camp and are in theater, I humbly suggest you take a look at my book Building a Sustainable Theater: How to Remove Gatekeepers and Take Control of Your Artistic Career, which you can read free here. It might provide a few ideas to get you thinking.

I’ve been reading Michael H. Shuman’s books for 20 years. This one really has me thinking about how to get my money out of Wall Street.

Put Your Money Where Your Life Is: How to Invest Locally Using Self-Directed IRAs and Solo 401(k)s a.co/d/7QdzzEC

social.ayjay.org/2025/01/0…

Lately, @ayjay has been the source of a lot of new thoughts and new reading for me. One thing about social media is that the changes that happen incrementally sometimes aren’t noticed until someone like Nick Carr adds them up for you. Add in Musk and Zuck eliminating fact checking and social media is a quagmire.

For quite a while now, I’ve been trying to find a through line for the thinkers I’ve admired, and I think I may have discovered it. The umbrella term is (true) anarchism (not the incarnation with violence). Here is how it seems to connect (in chronological order):

Peter Maurin –> Dorothy Day –> Ivan Illich –> John McKnight –> David Graeber –> Murray Bookchin –> Chris Hedges (maybe - I have a certain ambivalence to his self-righteous humorlessness)

It seems to me that what micro.blog is helping me to do is avoid what Ed Zitron describes here.

As tech moguls each “contribute” money to Trump’s “inauguration fund,” I am reminded of Russia’s “mafia capitalism." It seems as if this is what has drawn Trump’s admiration for Putin.

Michael Rushton asks “what is public funding for the arts for?” He offers a starting point for reflection.

My rejection of public funding for sustainable theater (not of public funding in general) is a desire for independence from artistic meddling. I want artists to pursue a unified vision that is their own in relationto their audience, unsullied by funders' priorities. Basically, artistic cussedness.

Here are the basics for the article I tried to write yesterday, but couldn’t get off the ground:

Inspiration for the post: _Philanthropy by the Numbers: Measurable Impact and Its Civic Discontents_ by Aaron Horvath in the Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture

Additional Source: The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer

Thesis: The basic concepts of Effective Altruism are bad for the arts.

Definition of Effective Altruism:

• Utilitarian (the greatest good for the greatest number)
  • Cost-benefit analysis determines philanthropic contributions: the most bang for your charity buck
  • The “good” in Singer’s book title is “the number of lives saved or, in terms of the movement’s preferred metric, increases in quality-adjusted life years, or “QALYs”.
  • Goal restated: the most good you can do per dollar.
• Cost-benefit: make contributions in poor economies where an American dollar is worth more
  • effective altruism leader: “if you want to do the most good…the worst place you can start is your neighborhood, your friends, your country.”
• Definition of success is data driven: outcomes should be quantifiable, usually defined in terms of number of lives saved

Why Bad for the Arts:

• Arts are
  • American (so a dollar = a dollar; li.e., ess bang for a buck)
  • Local (ditto, only worse)
• Arts don’t save lives, they enhance them; i.e., focus is not on quantity of life, but quality of life
• Focus on quantification entices arts organizations to focus on quantifiable outcomes (number of underserved children served, increase in audience or company diversity, number of plays by marginalized playwrights, etc)
• If board members bring this orientation to their service, the mission of the organization is distorted

Underlying premises:

• The arts are primarily about art, not politics
• Increases in quality of life is immeasurable, but important despite that