source: The NY Innovative Theatre Fund Demographic Survey of OOB Practitioners

Notice anything interesting about it? I thought the most interesting aspect of this graphic was the fact that, while 77% of OOB theatre practitioners are white, only 45% of the population of New York City is white. And just as striking are the figures below it: while 27% of NYC’s population is Black/African American, only 5% of OOB theatre people are Black/African American. Although not in this graphic, the numbers for the Hispanic community mirror those of the African American numbers.

Something else from the NY Innovative Theatre Fund survey was interesting to me as well (this data is not, by the way, a part of the published study. I asked for the additional breakdown). It’s the fact that 32% of OOB theatre practitioners come from the tri-state region of NY (24%), NJ (6%) and CT (2%). The data does not give us where in the state those people come from, so we don’t know exactly what their proximity to NYC is, but regardless, what it also means is that 68% of all OOB practitioners originally came from outside the NYC metropolitan region (actually, the percentage is probably higher, because while the data says that 24% of them are from NY state, it does not say how many of those 24% are native to the five boroughs or Westchester/Rockland/Nassau counties). But once they get to New York, they live in the city. 93% live in NY State, while 91% live in one of the five boroughs. In terms of borough breakdown, it’s 52% Manhattan, 30% Brooklyn, 16% Queens, and the rest of the remaining 2% split between the Bronx and Staten Island.

If you connect the dots, a pattern appears which could be considered…well, controversial. It seems as if white people, about 2 out of 3 of whom were born outside the metropolitan area, have migrated to NYC and created a theatrical ghetto, producing theatre primarily for white people while being surrounded primarily by non-whites. In other words, in a city where people of color are in the majority, the theatre being produced appears primarily to be for the minority whites.

Now, considering that all these white theatre people need a place to live when they come here, could they be a part of the process of gentrification? The subject of gentrification is a sore one in New York. Depending on who you talk to, gentrification is either something that is helping the city revive and thrive, or something that is driving the poor and the immigrant out of neighborhoods they occupied for years. Brian Lehrer of WNYC has done a number of shows on this topic. Below is a sample, a show featuring Rosie Perez and Nelson George talking about their old neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the effect gentrification has had on Bushwick and Fort Greene. Of particular note is Nelson George’s description of Fort Greene as a haven for black artists before gentrification began to take hold in 2000.

You can also get various perspectives on gentrification from Curbed NY (PS – see what NYU is doing to the Provincetown Playhouse building as it builds around it). Regardless of which side of the issue you take, there can be little argument that gentrification is going on, and that it changes the makeup of a neighborhood. Theatrically, though, it appears that what gentrification helps to do is make space for more white theatre practitioners to live and work in New York City.

My point in all this is that I think it’s wrong to assume that theatre people in New York City are making theatre for “New Yorkers.” What has happened, intentionally or not, is that white people, more than 2/3 of whom came from outside New York City, have created a theatrical ghetto in which they produce theatre for white people, primarily in an effort to gain attention from bigger white theatrical producers up the industry’s food chain. The data indicates that they have little connection to the non-white majority around them (as attested by the lack of non-whites in the OOB survey data), and while they may feel “connected” to their neighborhoods, they are not interested in telling the stories of their non-white neighbors or of inviting them into their theatrical world.

I am willing to extrapolate this data and say that the same is probably true of Chicago and Los Angeles. Again, while I have nothing against the theatre created in these cities, I think it’s important to understand that this phenomenon of “white ghetto theatre” in cities where the majority population is non-white must be understood as part of the Nylachi mindset as a whole. Sure, there are scrappy urban theatres out there in the cities struggling to make a living and a contribution, but the vast majority of them are populated and run by “immigrant white” artists, not by the natives of the area. And in their eagerness to live and work in these cities, they contribute to gentrification, for better or worse.

Finally, where do all these people come from? Why, from college and university “pre-professional training programs,” naturally. These programs themselves are predominantly white, and turn out hundreds upon hundreds of young white theatre artists each year eager to head out to Nylachi and gain fame and fortune. Judging on what I once again saw at this year’s SETC, there appears to be an endles supply of them.

The biggest question I know of in theatre is “Who is theatre for?” At least in the early part of the 21st century, the data seems to tell us that theatre is primarily for immigrant/urban, ghettoized white people. I think this should change. Sure, I think white people should have a theatre that’s reflective of their community, their history and their values. But I don’t think they should overtake urban areas to do so. It smacks of colonization and a “gold rush” mentality, where the indigenous population gets run out or ignored. We can, and we should, be able to do better than this.  -twl

So, to some extent, I feel a bit compelled to come to his rescue and pull out from his post something I think is important to both of us, and why we collaborate in terms of trying to change the face of theatre education. Here is what I’d like to focus on from his most recent apologia:

My desire to increase geographical diversity has never been about rejecting the small theatres struggling to carve out a niche in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. Many of those theatre are very much a part of their community — I think of a theatre like, say The Classical Theatre of Harlem in this regard. My beef, to borrow Don’s terminology, is the message that theatre people can only have a “serious” career if they are in Nylachi; that theatre in Nylachi is the only theatre worth considering; that there is a geographical hierarchy with Broadway at the top (which has been recognized as a dumb idea for decades now); that “quality” and “excellence” has a geographical component. This is nothing short of an ideology, one that is oft repeated by those who have bully pulpits for the art form such as Michael Kaiser and Rocco Landesman, and that gets passed down to high schoolers across the nation through TV broadcasts of the Tony Awards and TV shows like “Taking the Stage” and “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” and “Fame” that are little more than extended advertisements for the Broadway and commodity-arts ideology.

I think it’s important for me to state as unequivocally and as clearly as I can that I am not against New York City theatre or Chicago theatre or urban theatre or anything of the sort. I am not against any of that, nor do I hate it, nor do I wish to tear it down. Not at all. What I am against is the mindset (Scott uses the term ideology) that has been created around Nylachi, and in particular, how that mindset affects young students studying theatre, and how much waste that mindset creates in our national theatre scene. So that we more or less are on the same definitional page, let’s use the Wikipedia definition of “mindset”:

“In decision theory and general systems theory, a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods or notations held by one or more people or groups of people which is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviours, choices, or tools. This phenomenon of cognitive bias is also sometimes described as “mental inertia”, “groupthink“, or a “paradigm“, and it is often difficult to counteract its effects upon analysis and decision making processes.” (italic emphasis mine).

“Nylachi” is a mindset, and needs to be understood and defined as a mindset, not as a dig or an attack on theatre in these cities. It is this mindset that Scott and I are trying to displace among theatre students and within theatre departments. We are trying to do this because we believe that the current system produces a lot of waste: waste in the form of theatre talent that goes to Nylachi, does not succeed according to the program, and becomes so discouraged or dispirited that it stops being involved in theatre altogether. We believe that if we can create an alternative mindset among students that says, “You know, you don’t really have to go to Nylachi. There are other options that might be more fruitful for you, fit your personality and talent better, give you a different and perhaps more satisfying lifestyle, and keep you creating theatre, something you love to do, longer.” That’s all it is – just trying to create options that offer people choices rather than always getting the message that there is only “one way.”

I grew up a hard-core Catholic, and one of the things I resent most in my life about Catholicism is that it has always tried, and continues to try, to present itself as the “one true faith,” painting all other faiths as somehow inferior. And not just inferior, mind you, but downright evil! I think anybody with a reasonable adult mind (who isn’t a hard-core Catholic) finds this pretty easy not only to observe and understand, but to condemn. Since I was raised in this faith, it was not as obvious to me at first, and it probably wasn’t until my mid-30s that it began to sink in that there were many, many ways to seek out God and faith and spirituality.

And this is what I am trying to work for in theatre education – the “de-Catholicization” of theatrical thinking and training that says “Nylachi=The One True Way.” That one must become a “working professional.” That one must earn one’s living completely from theatre/entertainment to be considered successful. That one has to have earned the badge of entry to AEA or SAG or AFTRA or the Dramatist Guild to be treated as a true professional in the business. This mindset is rampant throughout theatre education, and it is reminiscent of medieval Europe’s concept of “Christendom,” when Catholicism ruled the entire world view in every sense. It took bold thinkers like Galileo and Martin Luther to propose ideas that themselves took another few hundred years to break that Christendom mindset. I don’t expect to tear down the current theatrical structure, nor do I really want to, for it produces some beautiful work. But because of its entropic nature, it will soon enough fall of its own accord. I would like to have ready some options to take its place when it eventually falls.

I don’t need to bring up all the statistics again to convince anybody of how much theatrical wasted talent is out there, and how much of that wasted talent is concentrated in Nylachi. All I would like to do is be able to re-direct some of that waste towards other options, such as creating theatre in cities less than 100K in population, or creating theatre alongside non-artists in a community setting. I’m not promising them anything better, or easier, or even promising the potential for them to make a living. I’m only promising them something different, something with a different lifestyle and value and direction at its core, something with a different mindset – something with a different future.

For those of you who revere the Nylachi mindset and that way of doing things – more power to you! I hope you are successful in staying around for as long as possible. I don’t dislike you, or the art you produce, nor do I want to tear you down. Like Catholicism, Nylachi can create a certain level of beauty and mystery (Gregorian chant, or the works of Tony Kushner). But just as Catholic churches see less and less people in the pews as they realize there are other options, so too will there be less and less audience members in the rapidly crumbling theatres of today (the statistics already tell us this). Only the hard-core believers with enough money in their pockets, and the unrelenting dreamers, will remain to keep the niche alive.

I do want to make sure there are options there when the time comes to replace you. I am truly sorry if this offends you, that maybe I am not giving you the respect you deserve; but the world is not flat, the earth moves around the sun, the Bible can be interpreted by ordinary people for themselves, and all things die and are replaced. I have seen the past, loved the past, but I don’t want to cling to it, and I don’t want my students to get swallowed up by it. I want them to have better options, skills and opportunities for creating a stronger, more equitable, and more accessible theatrical future.

And now it’s off to SETC to see if I can face and change a few mindsets.  -twl

Perhaps it’s the winter. Perhaps my SAD is not fully under control. Perhaps I am not eating enough chocolate or getting enough exercise or drinking enough. Perhaps I am tired of looking at all my windows and realizing they are shut tight. Perhaps the lack of a full-functioning bathroom and having to shower in the basement for the last four weeks while waiting for the re-modeling to be finished is taking a toll. Perhaps it’s realizing I can’t find a pair of underwear without holes in it. I dislike shopping for clothes as it is.

It’s just that a series of events have taken place over the month of February, and those events seem to be nothing but acute reminders of how diffident I have been towards things lately. I went to see Avatar – the storyline was a re-hash of every hero myth I’ve ever seen, and I was rather indifferent to the computer animation. I went to see our department’s production of Electra last night – intellectually interesting but not much for the heart or the soul. The bathroom remodeling is my wife’s project, and I am pretty indifferent to it. It’s an improvement, to be sure, and the downstairs bathroom needed serious repair, but I just can’t get too excited about it. The Olympics – please. Every figure skater looks the same, and why is it that some kid who happens to be able to do twists and turns on a snowboard becomes such a cultural hero?

I spent some time and some political capital on my campus in a recent effort to create a College of Visual and Performing Arts. The result was favorable, and a new college will be created starting in the fall of 2012. But somehow, despite the fact that I believe this is a major achievement and the right move for our campus, I feel slightly disengaged about the upcoming process to create the organizational structure. It’s something I’ve been talking up since 2003, and now that it will happen, I almost don’t care. Almost.

Even in the world of theatre, I see so little that excites me. More British Shakespeare in New York leaves me cold. I just got cast as Leonato for the summer in Shakespeare in Delaware Park. I’ll be playing the role for the third time. Discussions in the world of the theatrosphere seem to solve very little, and the work of trying to change the theatre in the face of an uncaring and unresponsive culture seems to be fruitless. The Ohio Theatre closes, and who truly cares beyond a handful of devotees who probably loved the idea of the Ohio Theatre more than its actual existence?

And naturally, sometimes I just feel isolated. Living in a small city in upstate NY carries its own tribulations, especially in the winter. This past Wednesday there was a huge fire in downtown Dunkirk. The 101-year-old Masonic Temple Building went up flames. The building sits right in the center of the main block of the city, across from City Hall. The fire was spectacular, but depressing as well, as it’s another hit to the economic depression already afflicting the city.

When you consider the trials and tribulations that affect so many of my neighbors and this city, somehow the question of whether or not Sarah Ruhl is a good playwright loses its significance.

If there is anything that is of interest to me these days, it seems to be the people I meet who have absolutely nothing to do with theatre or academia. The man doing my bathroom is a great guy and wonderful to talk to. He knows so many local people that I feel jealous. I ate lunch yesterday with a complete stranger at a local diner and had an interesting conversation about next to nothing. He was just a plainspoken, friendly guy. I always have these wonderful little conversations with Angela,  the woman at the cash register in the student center where I get my bacon/egg/cheese sandwich some mornings. She talks about her vacation in Florida and how her husband is down there fixing up their small trailer, getting it ready for their retirement (retirement!). And Sue over in Cranston Dining Hall always asks about my son Eric, with whom she worked for a few months. They have their worries and concerns, I am sure, but at least they don’t appear to be trying to impress anyone.

I wish I knew how to create theatre for these people. I’m depressed that I don’t. They deserve better of me.  -twl

The Denver Theatre Center Conservatory was one of the few places where all the MFA students attended at no charge and also received a stipend, costing the theatre about $100,000 per student in scholarships.

The Denver Post story is here.  -twl

(Landesman) has just announced a new initiative that should alleviate the fear that this Yale School of Drama grad wants to give money only to fancy Manhattanites.

The just-announced Our Town program will use small, targeted grants to help arts organizations revitalize their communities. It draws on research showing that investments focused narrowly at the neighborhood level can produce social ties and a healthier local economy. In next year’s budget request, the agency asks for $5 million to start work in 35 or so locations around the country: developing arts districts, sponsoring festivals, and commissioning murals and sculptures. This ground-up, community-building approach seems like an arts-world translation of some distinctly Obama-ish values.

(h/t Community Arts Network API News)

The indie scene has seen a great rise in visibility over the past five years or so, due primarily I believe to the rise of the internet, theatrical blogging, and the web presence of such sites as TimeOut NY and TheatreMania. I think it’s also becoming the place where most graduating seniors bent on heading to NYC to begin their rise to fame and fortune find their first taste of doing theatre in NYC. As such, it bears significant study and observation.

A recent demographic survey released on January 20th by the Innovative Theatre Foundation, which is the producer of the NY Innovative Theatre Awards, is a survey that I think has flown under the radar a little bit in terms of its information and what it has to say about the “average indie theatre person.” I think that’s important because the most immediate place in NYC that any young actor is going to find theatre work upon getting their BA/BFA is in the indie scene. The data is not only telling in terms of what it tells us about the profile of a typical indie actor, it also says something about the nature of what we are doing as educators. Let’s see if we can get some sort of profile of the “average indie actor” by looking at what the numbers actually mean. And for now I will stick with actors because that’s what I primarily do – train actors. So, if you’re an indie actor in New York City:

• You’re highly educated, female, and you’re white. 84% of all OOB actors have a college degree: 60% with a bachelors, 21% with a masters, 3% with a PhD. 77% are white. 5% are African-American, 4% Latino. 53% are female, 46% male.
• You’re young. 67% of all indie actors are between the ages of 21-40, a 19-year span. The highest age group is 26-30 year-olds at 24%. The average age is 36, the median is 33. There is an attrition rate of 50% from the 26-30 age group (24%) to the 36-40 age group (12%). All the percentages over 40 are in single digits. Only 20% of indie actors are between 40-55, a 15-year span.
• You’re single and childless. 51% of you are single, and 18% are living with a partner (not married). 92% of you have no children. I am assuming this 92% childlessness rate runs across all age groups.
• Your average income is between $30-50K annually. Your average annual salary is about $38, 209, which comes out to about $18.37/hour (as a reference, the contractor re-modeling my bathroom makes $35/hr). But you’re doing better that the median hourly wage of all actors in this country, which is $11.61 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Before you get too excited about that, though, realize that you’re probably living in Manhattan (54%), where according to the Real Estate of New York’s rent survey for January 2010, the lowest rent for a non-doorman studio apartment is in Harlem at $1,312/month. In addition, your money is not being made through the theatre work you do – only 8% of the actors in this survey made all their money through their theatre work. 40% had a full-time job outside of theatre, and 31% had part-time work, for a 71% rate of employment outside theatre. Also, most actors indicated that acting was not the only thing they did as a theatre practitioner. 25% of you also do administrator/producer work, and another 22% also identify as directors. The survey is not clear about how much of the income that the 8% who make all their money through the theatre actually make it through acting alone, without income from these other theatrical identities.
• 48% of you managed to get into AEA, 45% did not. Union workers made an average of $32,092 per year (again, not strictly in the theatre), while non-union actors made $30, 786. So for the privilege of being a union member, you made $1,306 extra, which probably went to paying your union dues. Don’t spend that all in one place.

So, in summary, if you’re now in college studying as a theatre major at the graduate or undergraduate level planning to break into the theatre scene in NYC via the indie route, the statistics say that, for your educational and monetary investment, here’s what statistically you are/will become: a white, female, single, childless degree-holding actor holding down two or three jobs, and making $18.37 an hour at the career you educated and trained yourself for, all the while living in one of the most expensive geographic areas in the US. The stats also say that by 40 years old you will have left the indie scene at the very least; the odds are you will have moved on to something else entirely.

Is this what we really want to have happen to the human capital that makes up our richest resource for a vibrant theatre?  -twl

I have a snow thrower. It cost about $550. My plan, as usual, was to run the snowthrower later this afternoon after all the snow had fallen. I pointed this out to the man. With a weak grin on his face, he said to me, “I see that,” and he waited.

He was perhaps in his mid-30s. His coat was worn but serviceable for the weather. His shovel was ancient, curled up at the very end. Nothing about him indicated he was homeless, an addict, or any sort of substance abuser. He seemed to be a man eager to work, but out of work. He was polite, softspoken, but behind his eyes was a look of need. We negotiated terms – $10 for the sidewalk and the driveway from the back of the car to the street. He went quickly to work.

The snow was not deep, so the work took little time; 15 minutes at most. I finished my breakfast. When he was done he came to the door, took the money, said thanks with a smile, and left, presumably on to find another sidewalk to shovel.

I remember when kids used to come around to do this job. They don’t anymore. Now it’s unemployed men. Maybe I paid for his breakfast, or for the one meal he would have today. Maybe I paid for his kid’s dinner. Maybe I made a contribution towards his rent. And maybe I paid for a six-pack. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care.

I presume I will see him for the rest of the winter when it snows. I presume I will still use the machine later tonight as the snow continues to pile up the rest of the day. Or maybe he will return later this evening for round 2. I have a feeling that I may be using my machine a bit less over the next few months. That’s all right with me.

There’s a play here to be written. It’s the story of two men: one with, and one without, who meet on a chance encounter. For one, the stakes are low; for the other, high. The snow is the catalyst that brings them together. They negotiate a re-distribution of wealth, of means. Where will this lead both of them? If you’re a playwright reading this blog, why not give it a shot?  -twl

• 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