a poor player

Dunkirk, NY - Over the past couple of days I’ve received the somewhat expected and typical emails urging me to contact my elected officials in the form of faxes, phone messages or emails, and ask them not to cut funding to the arts in New York State any further. The usual dire warnings abound, as well as the tried-and-true argument that cutting funding for the arts would harm the economy (as if cutting arts funding would make that much of a difference in this present economy). I’ve tried very hard to find a reason or two to justify why I should attempt to stop cuts in the arts, and you know, for the life of me I can’t find any really solid reasons to do so. Here are some of the things which have given me pause:

• Theatre is basically made up of urban upper-middle-class white people putting on shows for more urban upper-middle-class white people. Over the past 35 years or so theatre artists have made no effective effort to reach out beyond this demographic, and there appear to be no signs that anything will change in the future.  Why should such an enterprise receive government funding?
• The whole business seems more like an effort by people to keep their jobs rather than an effort to provide a vital service to the state and nation. Nothing wrong with that, really; but if given a choice of whose job to save these days, I think I’d choose an autoworker’s job or a nurse’s job or a VA counselor’s job.
• No noticeable common good seems to have come out of funding theatre. Children today are not measurably smarter or more appreciative of drama because of any public funding. There has not been any significant increase in the number of people attending theatre; in fact, TCG reports that over the past five years their 117 trend theatres’ attendance actually went down 6.1% (Theatre Facts 2007). Wouldn’t continuing arts funding be throwing good money after bad?
• There seems to be no strengthening of the cultural fabric because of theatre. Simply from an observational basis over 20 years of teaching theatre, it appears that students come in with less and less knowledge of the literature as a basis from which to work. Even in the world of musical theatre, they do not know the literature of anything which pre-dates Sondheim.
• From a political point of view, for whatever reasons, theatre cannot seem to manage to find conservative voices within its community. Theatre appears not to want to be a unifying voice in society from a political perspective, but rather wants to take a particular side. If theatre is so one-sided in its viewpoint, does it deserve to receive government money if it cannot prove it’s contributing to the national good in some fashion?
• In my home county of Chautauqua, there has been no visible benefit received from NYS money from the NYS Arts Council as far as theatre is concerned. The area’s two colleges, Fredonia State and Jamestown Community College, along with the Jamestown Little Theatre, a community theatre group, provide all the theatre in the county, and no state money goes to help any of these groups. No outside organizations, no touring companies, nothing in the way of legitimate theatre, has come through this county care of the NYS Council on the Arts in 10 years at least.

I’m sure I could find some more reasons, but when a man like Dan Gioia figures it’s time to leave the NEA, then perhaps it’s time for me actually to consider supporting cuts in arts funding. Perhaps Mr. Gioia has provided the best reason of all from his Stanford commencement address in 2007:

In a time of social progress and economic prosperity, why have we experienced this colossal cultural and political decline? There are several reasons, but I must risk offending many friends and colleagues by saying that surely artists and intellectuals are partly to blame. Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

When artists begin again to talk to the rest of society, I will consider helping to renew their art funding. Maybe it will take a zeroing out of their current funding, which might force them back into the world of non-artists suffering far more pain in these bad economic times, to awaken their sensibilities. I can’t see any good reason to continue to support artists simply talking to each other.  -twl

Fredonia NY – Signs You’ve Been In The Theatre Too Much:

•    Your weekend consists of Monday, and only Monday.
•    “Q” is not just a letter.
•    National holidays that fall on Monday seem pointless to you.
•    You know more than one theory for the origin of the name “green room.”
•    You can only read from a light that is blue.
•    You consider the red part of the stoplight the “standby.”
•    You can’t remember what daylight looks like.
•    You feel naked without your keys attached to your belt loop, or your belt without your Maglite, Leatherman, and Gerber.
•    You know tie-line has several uses – shoelaces, belts, ponytail holders…
•    95% of your wardrobe is black.
•    You watch the Super Bowl, waiting for intermission, not half-time.
•    You tell more stories of what went wrong on shows you’ve done than what went smoothly.
•    You start wondering what it feels like to be a prop.
•    You know anything can be fixed with duct tape, Mortite, sculpter-coat, a sharpie, tie-line, and a safety pin.
•    Your diet consists of fast food or microwaved food.
•    Your Halloween costume in some way utilizes running blacks and gaff tape.
•    Varying your diet means ordering the #2 instead of the #3, or eating with your left hand instead of your right.
•    You understand the jokes in Forbidden Broadway.
•    You insist on spelling “theatre” with an “re” – not an “er”.
•    People recognize you by the sound of your keys jingling down the hallway.
•    Going to a restaurant means ordering and sitting down in McDonald’s rather than the drive-thru.
•    You’d heard of Mandy Patinkin before he was on Chicago Hope.
•    “Practical,” “drop,” and “flat” are nouns.
•    Instead of saying that you’re leaving, you say you’re “exiting.”
•    At home, you “strike” your dishes to the kitchen.
•    If someone asks you what time it is, you respond with something like, “Half hour ’til half hour.”

-twl