a poor player

The Antoinette Perry Award

Dunkirk NY – The Tony Awards will soon be given out. It’s the cap of the awards season that starts at the beginning of the year and goes through a succession of the arts: movies, music, and now theatre. I thoroughly dislike awards in the arts. They glorify one of the things I think has caused the theatre to become disconnected with people – the desire for recognition and fame. They also promote a certain amount of corruption. The objective of some productions is clearly to win some sort of award so as to have it make more money. I think Christopher Guest caught this aspect of human behavior most perceptively in his movie For Your Consideration.

But I shouldn’t pick on the arts alone. I live in two worlds, and I see the same thing in both. Academia is not immune from this process. While there are many academics worthy of recognition for their work, there are also many more academics who like to collect awards as résumé builders and ego builders.

Just this past week I discovered a situation on my campus which defies belief. On my campus we have several types of awards, ranging from local campus awards to awards given by the Chancellor at the statewide level. Some award-winners have been worthy, others questionable. Some probably got their awards deservedly, and some probably because they had the right connections and influenced the right people. In academia, of course, everyone will deny any hint of corruption or influence-peddling (or they will talk about in the hallways), because academia must always defend the perception that it is above the machinations of the outside world, even when such types of influence-peddling reach this level.

We will be awarding the SUNY  Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creativity to a professor on our campus who, during the nominating process, has been “investigated” on a charge of plagiarism. The “inquiry” determined that it had all been just an “honest mistake” on the part of this professor, and determined that while a certain “similarity” may have existed between the professor’s work and that of someone else in the field, the similarity was “unintentional” and can therefore be safely disregarded.

I find this to be the height of how awards corrupt. In my opinion, the outcome of the “inquiry” is irrelevant. Such an outcome would not be tolerated were this a case of a student plagiarizing on a paper. Regardless of the outcome, we should not be giving this award, the highest one within the SUNY system, to someone whose work had to be questioned in the first place. The mere fact that an “inquiry” had to be held (in secret, I might add), should be enough to disqualify such a candidate. There are many people on my campus whose work merits such recognition, and the integrity of their work is unquestionable. But, given how our campus works, it’s my opinion that the matter is being swept under the rug due to our president’s extreme distaste for bad publicity, and because he does not want to be viewed in public as having to retract an award he submitted to the state level. Hence a closed-door inquiry to absolve the perpetrator.

Awards inevitably produce a certain amount of corruption. Most of that corruption is subtle, and most people wouldn’t even call it corruption. But the minute you have awards, with that comes all the activity designed to influence the outcome. First there is the attempt to try and influence the nomination process. The only reason theatre critics exist anymore, by and large, it to provide for a show some sort of foundation on which to build buzz so as to get a nomination. If you fail to get good reviews, you point to box office receipts as an indicator of worthiness. Once nominated, you have to do what you can to influence the people who actually make the decision. Agents, producers, everybody does what they can to create pressure on the deciders.  It’s all a form of “acceptable” corruption. A work never really can simply stand on its own; it’s image has to be massaged and manipulated so as to influence the right people.

It is normal human behavior for people to want to be recognized for their work. But in the 21st century, with the rise of mass media, the need has become almost psychotic. With shows like American Idol and their ilk, people have come to believe that becoming famous is about the most significant thing you can do with your life. This mind set can suck dry just about every reasonable and humane quality in people. It’s particularly acute, and perhaps most visible to the general public, in the arts. But since it exists in academia, I am sure it exists at every level of human activity. If people can’t be famous nationally or internationally, they can at least strive to be famous within their own environment, and get to wear that medal or hang that certificate – to be “special.”

Arguing against awards is hard to do, though, because you do come across many situations where awards are well-deserved. But even when that happens, it’s inevitable that some other fine work has been ignored, because you can only give out one “winner.” The rest, regardless of their merits, become “losers” and will have to wait for the next time. And that creates talk of who’s been snubbed, who’s in, who’s out, and so on.

I argue against awards because I know that there’s a lot of fine work out there, and that most of it should be equally rewarded. I’m not a fan of singling something out as “the best.” I’m of the opinion that once you decide to institute awards, in too many cases the work then becomes about obtaining the award. The work itself loses a good deal of integrity, if it ever had any to begin with. Frankly, Broadway is what it is today largely because of the imperative to make money and produce a Tony-Award-winning production, which will then hopefully make more money. The work is of little significance, and thus becomes corrupted. I think the other term for this is “selling out.”

As a teacher, it’s becoming more and more difficult to convince students that theatre, as an art form, should be about so much more than fame and awards. It is difficult to point to something like the <100K Project and try to convince students that such a project can be the beginnings of a different way of doing theatre. There’s little hint of fame in it; there’s no sweet smell of success. When you see them come to your classroom, fresh from starring in their high school musical, able to name all the latest Tony-award winners, and have dreams to be just like that someday, it causes you to lose hope and question all you do. In academia, more hope – and trust – is lost when you realize that your own institution, by rewarding someone investigated for plagiarizing, is not even giving you as a professor the integrity to talk about making your work honest and your own. Re-gaining that hope and trust will not be an easy task. -twl