Theatrical Wealth
Dunkirk NY – This evening, as I returned home from a disappointing meeting of my University Senate, during which a decision was made to continue discussing the issue of creating a College of Fine and Performing Arts, I happened to be listening in to the American Public Media show Marketplace. One of the segments on the show happened to be about a research study done on the topic of people’s perceptions of wealth distribution in this country. Here are the key points of the study:
- 20% of the nation’s population own 85% of its wealth (pre-recession figures).
- People polled in the research study underestimated how much of the wealth of this nation the 20% owned. They believed that 20% of the nation’s population owned only 68% of its wealth.
- When they were asked what they thought would be an equitable amount of wealth for this 20% to own, they said 33%. This figure cut across the political spectrum; Democrats and Republicans alike thought 20% of the population owning 33% of its wealth was OK.
Then later this evening, while desperately trying to catch up on blog reading, I read this article over at Leonard Jacob’s Clyde Fitch Report. Leonard spends some time trying to dismantle Scott Walter’s response to an essay at the Huffington Post by the Kennedy Center’s Michael Kaiser. The paragraph that got to me in Leonard’s post was the following:
And why is Walters’ argument always “either/or” — either New York or the rest of the nation? Why is it never “and” — New York and the rest of the nation? Why is it better to be a divider and not a uniter?
These two ideas – that of the notion of wealth distribution and the question of New York and/or the rest of the nation – seemed to connect in my head as I thought about them. If we substitute “theatre” for “wealth,” would this be a reasonable way to look at the issue?
Whenever I have spoken against the concentration of theatre in New York or other large cities, it is not because I have some ax to grind with them as such. New York is a community like any other community, and is entitled to the brand of theatre that suits it. But if one accepts the notion that wealth distribution skews opportunity in this country and puts all sorts of power into the hands of a few, it must be recognized that the concentration of theatrical wealth in the hands of a few has the same debilitating effect on theatre. And in our case, the theatrical wealth of this country – its people – is being squandered because so much of its potential goes untapped and wasted within the urban areas. Is it unreasonable to assume that 20% of the nation’s theatrical population, as represented by the major urban areas, control 85% of its theatrical wealth? Certainly the numbers from Actors’ Equity in terms of work weeks indicates that a small percentage of union members make a substantial percentage of the total dollars earned in any given year. And perhaps, as in the perceptions people have of wealth distribution, the illusion is created that the 20% don’t own as much of the theatrical wealth as they really do.
If we are looking to find some way out of the gridlock, we might find it in the 20/33 percentage split: 20% of the nation’s urban centers control 33% of the nation’s theatrical capital. This is a model that gives the major urban areas their due, not only as artistic communities, but also as the national hubs and centers from which ideas, innovations and trends can flow. It acknowledges that richness is a benefit, that it can create opportunities for everyone, and that it can help to establish broad-based standards of quality and excellence. But it also acknowledges that theatrical capital cannot be so concentrated as to strangle opportunity, deny living wages to artists outside the urban areas, and starve regions from having the necessary capital to develop strong regional theatres (and by “regional” I mean “of the region,” not the current LORT model). If Leonard and others want to see the cacaphonized voices of the theatrosphere unite for the collective good, then perhaps a first step towards that must be a re-distribution of the theatrical wealth in this country to something fair, workable and equitable. Creating strong community-based regional theatre, where theatrical capital can be used effectively and not squandered, is one way to do this. -twl
