{"id":145,"date":"2012-02-08T11:01:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T19:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=145"},"modified":"2012-02-08T20:02:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T04:02:47","slug":"funny-catchy-and-not-too-challenging-or-at-some-point-youre-just-an-elitist-fck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2012\/02\/funny-catchy-and-not-too-challenging-or-at-some-point-youre-just-an-elitist-fck.html","title":{"rendered":"Funny, Catchy and Not Too Challenging, or “At some point, you\u2019re just an elitist f*ck.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was having a conversation with Arlene Goldbard<\/a> about a month ago, and at some point I started getting a sour taste over some of the things we were discussing, but I couldn\u2019t figure out why.\u00a0 Our subject was the four interviews with patrons that I had conducted as part of our intrinsic impact research (which will be published, along with an essay by Goldbard, as part of the 450-page report out on the whole project, Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art<\/em>, available March 1).\u00a0 In particular, I was discussing a draft of the (fantastic) essay that, in its final form, prefaces the interviews, and we had gotten to the subject of why she hadn\u2019t drawn out more directly from the interviews (the essay instead takes the form, a la Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em>, of a dinner conversation among seven people trying to identify the perfect theatre audience).<\/p>\n

At the time, it was mostly an esoteric conversation, as I quite liked the essay and didn\u2019t feel it really needed<\/em> more direct quotation from the interviews, I was just curious\u2014but Arlene\u2019s response gave me pause.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember exactly what she said, but it went along the lines of, \u201cI think I\u2019ve taken everything from those interviews that I can.\u201d\u00a0 When I asked her to elaborate, she particularly focused on the fact that, among the four interviews, the shows that came up as most impactful were things like Wicked<\/em>, The Vagina Monologues<\/em>, Journey\u2019s End<\/em> and Six Characters in Search of an Author<\/em>.\u00a0 In short, the most impactful experiences of these people were, by and large, what we theatre insiders might call \u201cmiddlebrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which got me thinking about snobbery (although I don\u2019t think that\u2019s where Arlene was really going\u2014her issues focused much more, and rightly, on the fact that the four interviewees\u2019 experiences were fairly homogenous, which didn\u2019t make for very interesting, well, \u201ctheatre\u201d in the essay).\u00a0 I\u2019ve got to say that, for me, those middlebrow shows form a disturbingly large portion of my early memorable theatrical experiences\u201442nd<\/sup> Street<\/em>, Miss Saigon<\/em>, Les Miserables<\/em>. If I had to say what sparked the interest in theatre in me, I\u2019d be hard pressed to come up with an answer that wasn\u2019t a megamusical. And I tend to think now that I\u2019m a pretty insider-type person in the field, writing all highfalutin\u2019 like about all sorts of theory. There are times that I feel like Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama<\/a><\/em>, slightly ashamed of the shows that made me, especially when I find myself steeped in conversations where those shows are viewed derogatorily.<\/p>\n

As I continued to edit various sections of the book, I (as editors must do) gave many close readings to two other parts of the book\u2014an interview with Diane Ragsdale<\/a> about impact, effectiveness and evaluation and another interview with (controversial?) American Repertory Theater<\/a> artistic director Diane Paulus about how she sees her role as AD in terms of artists and audiences.<\/p>\n

Ragsdale\u2019s comments, which are brave and detailed and argumentative, also hone in on the role of the \u201cmiddlebrow\u201d as the sort of gateway drug of theatre\u2014but whereas there was something of a feeling of dismissiveness in my conversation with Arlene, with Ragsdale there was a supreme aggravation at our field\u2019s inability to understand how very crucial such work (and the purveyors of such work, most notably Broadway producers) is to the sustainability of our field as a whole.\u00a0 Neither Ragsdale nor Arlene used the term \u201cmiddlebrow,\u201d that\u2019s my articulation of it (feel free to insert \u201cbroad\u201d or \u201cformulaic\u201d or whatever)\u2014but both, either explicitly or implicitly, do spend a lot of time talking about \u201ccommunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Ragsdale says in our conversation in the book, “We have ignored the larger part of society for so long that they no longer think that we’re important\u2014and<\/em> they have evidence that we’re not important in their lives becasue they haven’t been going, nobody that they know has been going, and they’re all doing fine.”<\/p>\n

Community.\u00a0 Ah, community.\u00a0 \u201cCommunity theatre\u201d draws up images of amateurism, LCD (lowest common denominator) shows \u2013 Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Neil Simon. Funny, catchy, and not too challenging.\u00a0 Which of course, also brings up a sense of being derogatory.\u00a0 And I think, consciously or unconsciously, that derogatory stream extends beyond the work to the idea of that work\u2014creating work for the masses, \u201cdumbing it down,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n

In a way, this is what the people who get up the nerve and energy to be annoyed about Diane Paulus are annoyed about.\u00a0 She has moved into the leadership role at A.R.T., formerly one of the least<\/em> accessible, most \u201cout-to-offend\u201d theatre institutions in the country, and she\u2019s doing things like The Donkey Show<\/em>\u2014A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> reframed as a night of disco debauchery where the drinks flow freely and the subtext stops being sub-textual. She\u2019s championing work designed particularly to connect with young people, people who aren\u2019t white, people who aren\u2019t rich\u2014and she\u2019s unrepentant in being okay about seeing some of the A.R.T.\u2019s old stalwarts walk out the door frustrated at what she\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

This is deliberate.\u00a0 It is an attitude, a belief, of Paulus\u2019.\u00a0 And in the interview, she\u2019s very clear about it\u2014the only AD out of 20 who so clearly states a primary duty to the audience<\/em> over the artist.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what she says:<\/p>\n

I very rarely think, as an artistic director, \u201cI like this artist. We must do this artist.\u201d I really don\u2019t think that way. As much as I adore artists and I\u2019m their greatest fan, I very rarely think about an artist and my personal interest in them\u2026.For me, as an artistic director, I\u2019m looking at what kind of noise this artist and their issues and their energy are going to make at my theatre\u2026And it\u2019s not, \u201cOh, our audience only likes this or only likes that.\u201d It\u2019s really, \u201cWhat is the potential for engagement with this project?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would argue, with experimental (if blatantly audience-focused) works like Prometheus Bound<\/em> (done in a bar, partnered with Amnesty International, built around the explicit idea that Prometheus was the first prisoner of conscience) and Hair<\/em> (big group dance party at curtain call), Paulus, rather than creating something insiders might call \u201cmiddlebrow\u201d or \u201ccommunity\u201d-directed, is instead attempting to straddle the line between what might, if we were talking about movies, be the \u201cblockbuster\u201d and the \u201cart house movie.\u201d It\u2019s not aiming at the middle.\u00a0 It\u2019s aiming everywhere.<\/p>\n

In a discussion on the Slate.com Culturefest<\/a><\/em> podcast about directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, they called this type of thing the \u201cpersonal blockbuster.\u201d\u00a0 When you think about what that might mean, think about E.T.<\/em> or Star Wars<\/em> or, more recently (and, of course, Scorcese), Hugo<\/em>. Movies that are personal and also massively pleasing.<\/p>\n

It seems to me, right now, that a whole lot more of our theatre community than can really be sustained want to be art house institutions with blockbuster budgets.\u00a0 And the truth is, many institutions actively refuse to try the type of stuff that Paulus is doing\u2014they build up walls against it, arguing artistic prerogative, institutional integrity, cultural intelligence. They worry about \u201cdumbing it down.\u201d There is not a lot of movement towards the \u201cpersonal blockbuster\u201d in non-profit theatre.<\/p>\n

As I was mulling over this conundrum on my drive to work, I was listening to another podcast, this time from Wired<\/a><\/em> magazine, about an article they had published on FarmVille<\/a>.\u00a0 In the gaming community, Zynga, the company that created FarmVille, is sort of the equivalent of the Broadway producers\u2014the hugely successful monolith that is viewed as artless, pandering, giving the gaming community a bad name. The author of the article quoted one of the people interviewed for it, and I think it\u2019s the type of comment that resonates mightily across genres\u2014and especially in ours. The quote is from Gabe Zichermann, an expert on \u201cgamification,\u201d which is the process of turning everything into a game (think Foursquare).<\/p>\n

He says: \u201cOther gamers may think FarmVille is shallow, but the average player is happy to play it. Two and a Half Men<\/em> is the most popular show on television. Very few people would argue that it\u2019s as good as Mad Men<\/em>, but do the people watching Two and a Half Men<\/em> sit around saying, \u2018Oh, woe is me?\u2019 At some point, you\u2019re just an elitist fuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

So. Yeah. Who are we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was having a conversation with Arlene Goldbard about a month ago, and at some point I started getting a sour taste over some of the things we were discussing, but I couldn\u2019t figure out why.\u00a0 Our subject was the four interviews with patrons that I had conducted as part of our intrinsic impact research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-advocacy","8":"category-audience-development","9":"category-main","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}