From Lambeau Field to the gallery wall

A couple of thoughts: My family loves the Packers. We've spent a few summer days watching training in Green Bay (they practice outside to the delight of fans sitting on the bleachers on the sidewalk - a great show - second best thing to actually going to a game). I noticed when Brett and the other quarterbacks practiced their moves, well, it was choreography. There's a dance in there, definitely. And the theatre involved in a good Packer game is hard to beat. Not knowing the ending - so much innate drama.

I love art, theatre, music. I've devoted my career to this world. And there is room for both sports and the arts. In fact, a study done a few years back showed us that sports lovers and arts audiences are not necessarily two separate groups - what does differentiate people are those that go out (sports, arts, community events, voting booths) and those that don't. Other posts say it well - it's all about engagement. Sports do it really REALLY well.

Right now Lansing is going through a "Shaw" phase where lots of different groups are putting on shows about George Bernard Shaw.

The phase right before this one, I called the baseball phase. One group did "Take Me Out," another did "Cobb" (about Ty Cobb, a Detroit Tigers controversial player from the turn of the century), and another did "Rounding Third" which was about Little League baseball. All took looks at fairly serious issues using baseball as the storytelling device. It worked surprisingly well.

For lighter touches, I saw "High School Musical" on stage this week and one of the most impressive parts of the performance was the number "Get'cha Head in the Game" where they proved what I already knew--that basketball could be beautiful as a dance.

I wonder whether some of the difference is that it is a lot easier to televise a game than to televise most art. Once you televise art, it changes in its form and function. I think television shows can be art, but they are an art that is different from a dance concert, an opera, or a theatrical performance. Likewise with visual art, how can you determine how long to leave the image on the screen. Do you capture the texture? Are you able to give someone the time they need to absorb it?

Just some random thoughts.

I remember the first time I went to a Liberty game in NY's Madison Square Garden. There was so much spectacle and drama I realized theatre will never successfully compete with sports in the U.S. Unless something extraordinary happens to the market, theatre will remain a leisure pursuit of the wealthy elites.

Having grown up in Wisconsin, but not having lived there in decades, I can attest to the primal tug that the Packers exert deep into the subconscious. Images of Brett Favre in Packer regalia evoke memories of a simpler time as pleasing as the smell of crackling breakfast sausage on Sunday morning. It's a rich vein for artistic deconstruction - what's not to love?

My friend passed this page on to me knowing that I grew up in Wisconsin, own stock in the Packers, and take advantage of my dad's Packer season tickets every chance I get. But in my day job I'm an arts administrator working at a composer service organization in Minnesota. I work to support composers and their music by managing community engagement and education programs. In fact, one of the pieces we commissioned celebrated the baseball city of St. Louis, combining prerecorded sounds of the crack of the bat and beer vendors with a string quartet by composer Philip Bimstein. (http://www.continentalharmony.org/community_detail.cfm?oid=1416)

Part of the reason why I love the Packers so dang much is because they represent the ultimate in community engagement project: no other team is owned by their fans. It is the emotion and support of the fans that helps continue the legacy of the Pack. Just walk through the Hall of Fame sometime and you'll see a movie about the Packer Fanatics (not to mention the three Lombardi trophies).

I was at the San Diego game at Lambeau a few weeks ago, and was absolutely blown away by the sheer joy of the fans; the stadium was literally shaking from the raucous cheering that erupted. And this was AFTER the game--fans walking out to their cars who randomly started to scream with joy and excitement over the potential for this season. I tried capturing some of the audio on my cell phone--but there was no way to grab that feeling of hearing 70,000 people shouting around you, vibrating you to your very core.

Would this ever happen at a Minnesota Orchestra concert? Concerts used to be a much more wild event than they are today. Some of the research I've done points to the invention of gas lights in the concert halls which created the ability to keep the audience in the dark and the performers in the light. This created a 4th wall--a wall that many organizations are now trying to break to build and develop audiences.

Will there ever be a time after a new music concert when the audience reacts in the same way to a Packer win? Probably not--but Green Bay Symphony has just started a commissioning club, which is a pretty big step for an arts organization competing for audience attention in Packer country.

Thanks for this entry--I'm excited to see what others have to say.

Art/Sports

1. "Take Me Out" by Richard Greenberg, about a superstar baseball player who announces he is gay, won the Tony Award for best play a few years ago. Greenberg is a maniacal New York Yankees fan, something he came to late in life; baseball probably appealing to his sense of drama unfolding with slow-building anticipation, then sudden bursts of action.
2. Getty Museum vs. Italy over who gets custody of 2,000+ year old "Victorious Youth," aka the "Getty Bronze," a priceless statue fished out of the Mediterranean, depicting a naked, laureled athlete. Statues of athletes are nothing new. The Brett Favre of his day, perhaps.
3. Richard Dresser wrote a play about two Little League dads in conflict, I can't remember the name but it originated in Chicago and has been produced widely (theaters love two-handers nowadays for salary reasons).

A play about Vince Lombardi could be great or pandering, depending on whether the writer takes an interesting and truthful point of view that says something about broader human issues. I'd think that would be the standard for judging any art work or exhibition about sports. There's nothing wrong with meeting a broad audience where they live, as long as you take them somewhere they probably didn't expect to go. Sports art of the Leroy Niemann school doesn't qualify.
You'd think more artists would be turning their gaze into the grandstands and the sidelines and sports bars, trying to show Americans how they look and what it means when they're gorging on sports. But I suppose most artists grew up being picked on by the jocks and don't want to rekindle bad memories.

Conjecture: the Heisman Trophy is the most famous piece of sculpture ever created in America? Seems like the Lincoln Memorial statue and Mount Rushmore would be the only competition.