Big protests about the war and immigration, but the arts? Just a little Monday night shindig. Before that, a subtle announcement.
In early 2024, we laid out the problem and gave you a path.
In late 2024, we gave you discussion prompts and rules to help you figure out the answers on your own.
And now, in late 2025, we show you that not only can success happen when you choose to focus on your community before you decide to focus on the art, but it has happened. It’s happening at other organizations right now, despite everything coming out of Washington, DC.
On December 1, Changemakers Books will be publishing my third and last book on the subject of using your arts organization as a tool of charity (rather than as a tool to benefit your own donors). In SCENE CHANGE 3: THE ONES WHO GET IT, you’ll discover that there are, in fact, nonprofit arts organizations in America that fulfill their nonprofit charter by centering their community’s needs over their own. In this book, you’ll discover nonprofit arts organizations that have saved people’s lives.
Literally. As in, some people would be dead without their intervention.
In this process, I studied organizations for about a year and embedded with two, each for about a month. I went to work with them, sat in on meetings (including board meetings), experienced the art as many times and in as many ways as he could, and met with local political officials and other arts leaders in their communities (to get a sense of the “arts-mosphere”). I also interviewed as many audience participants as humanly possible, wherever they happened to be, painstakingly transcribing each interview, in order to understand the success of the organization and that relationship to their collective decision to thrive in their respective communities. It can be done. It has been done. And this book will give you some ideas on how to transform your nonprofit arts organization into an impact catalyst, too.
It’s available for pre-order right now and is selling for about $20 or so. Use the QR code in the blisteringly busy image or just visit this website: https://bit.ly/3SZFIb0. Do it before you decide to close down. Really.
So, the summer of discontent continues, made inglorious winter by this son of Drumpf.
And still, no real response except the sound of… well…
The Kennedy Center s**tshow continues unabated (Remember to find the poster for the next show by clicking on this sentence), with little to no actual protesting. That is, no protesting except for the gay pride concert held on a Monday night in the Justice Forum, a tiny meeting space within the complex. The event, called “Love is Love,” was sponsored by five Democratic senators and people probably had a great time. Whether it achieved its stated purpose of “reoccupying the Kennedy Center” is doubtful, but it was at least something.
There are no plans for widespread striking of the box office or the area surrounding the Kennedy Center by Actors Equity Association or the other unions, even though the current chair of the joint has planned for union-busting non-union shows and country music to satisfy those in the thrall of the Trump cult. Where are you, Brooke Shields? Being president of the union is not an honorary post.
In other news, the out-of-towners-grass-is-greener hiring process continues to poison major cities across the nation. Jennifer Bielstein, who is excellent at what she does, just left her almost half a million dollar a year position at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre (assets: $90,553,200 in June 2023) to move to Houston and do the same thing at the Alley Theatre (assets: $101,801,697 in June 2024), where the peripatetic Dean Gladden was making $100,000 more than that after “resigning” from the Cleveland Play House.
Treating large arts organizations like major league sports franchises is not what the folks who created charities had in mind. In fact, it tells the world that your city, for lack of a better word, sucks when it comes to talent. In community-based services, the executive director is responsible for the betterment of the city, unlike the manager of your local ballclub.
The answer to that question is not for any of us to say. However, the missions of these once mighty companies couldn’t be less charitable in nature. That tracks, of course, because they haven’t been charitable companies that help their specific communities in decades. They’re only art producers and, secondarily, teachers of artists. While that makes them eligible to be 501(C)(3) corporations, it doesn’t really make them worthy of a donation of five cents. Here’s what I mean:
American Conservatory Theatre’s mission, according to their own website: “A.C.T.’s mission is to engage the spirit of the San Francisco Bay Area, activate stories that resonate, promote a diversity of voices and points of view, and empower theater makers and audiences to celebrate liveness.”
(“Celebrate liveness?” That’s a new one on me.)
The Alley Theatre’s mission, according to their own website, is “to inspire and enchant lives through a variety of theatrical experiences at the highest level of artistic excellence with our Resident Acting Company at the center.”
(I’m glad they’re attempting to engage in the highest level of artistic excellence, rather than the highest level of artistic mediocrity or a so-so level of artistic excellence, aren’t you?)
Still, there is nothing in there to infer that the core of either mission can be found within the tenets of the IRS code:
“The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”
Ay, there’s the rub. (I know that’s a different Shakespeare, but if the shoe fits and all that.) And so they move from one ridiculous prison/castle to another, neither of which is anything but intimidating to anyone but those in the know (or the toxic rich, of which San Francisco and Houston have a whole bunch).
That’s enough news for the moment. It’s hot and more s**t seems to hit that fan every minute of the day. Wait, what was that about the upcoming war…?
Dean Gladden is “peripatetic”?! I don’t think so: 20 years as Managing Director at Cleveland Playhouse and 19 years at Alley Theatre.