Yesterday, I attended the Theatre Communication Group’s virtual town hall, Crisis and Chrysalis, “an emergent conversation to acknowledge the crises within our [regional theater] ecology, share what’s working, and chart paths forward.” I must confess that my hopes were not high, and I registered with some trepidation. My fear was that the crisis would be minimized, and the paths forward would be the usual paths ones that have been so ineffective in the past. And in some ways, I wasn’t far off in my expectations.
TCG’s Executive Director, Teresa Eyring, for instance, concluded the event with the usual appeal to write our representatives to urge them to provide more government funding for the arts, a tactic which hasn’t been particularly worthwhile for decades if the ever-diminishing NEA budget is any gauge.
HOWEVER…
As far as minimizing the crisis, yes, that did happen, but in a surprising way that made me sit up and take notice. At first, we were presented with the results of a survey of TCG member theaters that seemed to indicate a 50-50 split between theaters that were struggling and those who were doing about the same or better than before. I would have liked to have had the data broken down further into the financial categories according to annual budget that TCG uses in its Theatre Facts publication—I suspect that the smaller the theater, the more positive the outlook, but without crosstabs it was impossible to say for sure. Nevertheless, comments during the discussion seemed to bear this out.
However, what really caught my attention was that the younger people who were running the event or those who stepped up to speak during the discussion, seemed kind of, well, uninterested in the fate of the flagship regional theaters. They were more focused on the smaller, scrappier theaters who were embedded in their communities, and who seemed to be doing damn well, thank you very much, or at least better than before. There was the representative of a BIPOC theater who noted the usual lack of foundation support for theaters like hers (a reminder: 55% of foundation funding goes to the richest 2% of nonprofits), but within the context I was tempted to see this lack of of a reliance on grant funding as the reason that they were thriving. This is not to suggest that we ought to celebrate the struggles of such theaters, but rather the suggest that it is the large theaters’s reliance on government and foundation money that has made them vulnerable to the inevitable change in direction we are seeing today.
Regardless, I was heartened that the younger generation of arts leaders seems to get it: “small is all,” the the facilitator repeated several times. Small is all. Even Todd London, who provided eloquent opening remarks, seemed to suggest, in his thoughtful and understated way, that the Circle of Life also applies to theaters, and perhaps we made a mistake in creating such large institutions. He didn’t quite come out and say it that way, but he sort of sniffed around that idea with some interest.
I have more admiration for Todd London than almost anyone else on the theater scene right now. I think he might be the last theater intellectual. I admire his willingness to show us, especially in books like Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play and An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions for a New American Art, that maybe the way things are set up isn’t exactly working, and maybe we have lost the vision that nourished the artistic advances of the past. I look forward with great anticipation to the long-awaited anthology of Zelda Fichandler’s writings that he has been preparing. Nevertheless, he can also be maddening, and yesterday was no exception.
At some point during his opening comments, London made an pained appeal that we “stop yelling at each other.” Apparently, the passionate discussion on social media that surrounded Isaac Butler’s New York Times op ed, and Monica Byrne’s followup in the Washington Post disturbed his sensibilities, and he admonished us all to remember that, basically, we’re all on the same side.
Is that so wrong?
Well, yes and no. Or rather, no and yes. No, in that the social media kerfluffle tended to be long on personal insult and short on thought, which is pretty much the quotidian on social media. Posts displaying reflection and complexity are as rare as hen’s teeth, and that’s the main reason why I am easing my way out the social media door: it’s just, well, mostly self-satisfied people lacking real knowledge saying stupid things. So if what London was saying was “don’t behave like y’all behave on X,” then kudos to him.
And yet, if it is a crisis, we might want to act like it. The wobbling of many of the largest regional theaters in the US is revealing many important issues that require some intellectual heavy lifting to understand, much less solve. Such appeals as London’s to “just be nice” have the effect of causing everyone to turn off their crap detectors and ignore points of contention, and that’s not helping anyone. Everyone emerges from the conversational kitten pile feeling warm and fuzzy, but the critical edge necessary for actually wrestling with ideas is reduced to that of a butter knife. This was certainly the case during yesterday’s discussion, which became a snugglefest that let a whole lot of crap not only go unchallenged; indeed, it usually was celebrated as deep and profound. Lots of nodding and hmmmming.
Let me give you an example. There were several people who spoke about funders having changed their focus away from contributing to the arts, and while several people were reflective enough to acknowledge that this might be a good and necessary thing—that right now, in an age of climate crisis and increasing poverty, there might be better things to give money to—there were others who seemed to feel as if the arts were entitled to that money.
At one point, someone who was involved with fundraising announced that what we were seeing was “generational wealth hoarding,” in which the aging Boomers who were reliable and generous donors in the past were now holding onto their money in the face of their health care needs. She then went on to note that, while eventually those donors will die, their estates will be cut in half by inheritance taxes and so there will be less available for their heirs to contribute. In addition, she went on, the raising of the standard deduction on federal income tax has diminished the need for people to make contributions because they don’t itemize deductions and so don’t get the tax benefit of charitable giving. Finally, she noted that Millenials couldn’t fill the gap of their soon-to-be-dying grandparents because their share of societal wealth has been reduced to 5% of the whole national pie, whereas when the Boomers were her age they had 30% of the pie or something.
The facilitators nodded sagely, muttering supportive words of praise and admiration—oooh, yes, wealth hoarding, nice way to think about it—and people in the chat warmly celebrated this person’s deep, deep insight. Meanwhile, my crap detector was wailing like a fire engine.
I’m not a tax accountant, but I know enough from having done my own taxes for fifty years that this is nonsense from top to bottom. Let’s start with the effect of the standard deduction: yes, when Trump raised the standard deduction, he made it unnecessary for many middle-class earners to forgo the hassle of itemizing deductions, and it is true that if you take it you don’t get to deduct charitable giving. But let’s be clear: the people who benefit from this are not your Big Donors. It’s for people whose deductions for mortgage interest, local property taxes, medical expenses, charitable giving, state and local income taxes, and sales taxes don’t add up to $12,950 for individuals or $25,900 for a couple. Yes, people who might have thrown a couple hundred bucks your way may be less inclined to do so now, but the reality is that the tax writeoff on a small amount like that is negligable. In other words, they’re probably still giving something.
Second, inheritance taxes. The idea of a 50% tax hit upon death is simply untrue. First of all, federal estate taxes don’t kick in at all if the estate is less than about $13 million, after which it is paid on a sliding scale of 18%-40%. Only 13 states have their own estate tax, and like the federal system, there is a sizeable amount that is exempt. So no, not cut in half.
Third, “hoarding.” Everybody knows that we have a crappy health care system in this country, and one of the most expensive aspects is senior care. It isn’t silly for the elderly to make sure they are able to afford care and housing when they become infirm. However, Medicare is awfully good, and long-term health insurance is available. The likelihood that Big Donors are hoarding their money in order to cover their retirement years is low. Might it impact middle-class donors—the one’s with the couple hundred dollar donations—sure, it might. And understandably so.
Finally, the wealth gap between Millenials now and Boomers back when they were young. Yes, this is true, but it might be a good idea to look at little bit closer at the cause. Back when the Boomers were young, union membership was a thing, and factory work was plentiful. In 1970, 29.1% of the employees in the private sector were union members. That meant well-paying jobs, many of them in factories and construction, which did not require a bachelor’s degree. So people would graduate from high school and head off to GM or United Steel and start making a decent, stable wage with good benefits. That meant that their accumulated wealth by the time they were in their 30s, after having 15 or 20 years of work in at the plant, was considerably higher. Plus they didn’t have accumulated college debt.
Today, thanks to a variety of government policies that broke unions and shipped factory work overseas, only 10.1% of the workforce are union members, many more people go to college and are carrying college debt, and white collar jobs pay less and expect more. So yes, the Millenials have far less money available to contribute to the arts. In addition, for those who have gone into high-paying careers, they are being advised by people like the philosopher Peter Singer in his appalling book The Most Good You Can Do that they should make as much money as they can, even as Wall Street hedge fund managers, and then contribute it…to problems outside the US where the cost of living is low so their contributed money will go a much longer way. He especially advises against contributing to the arts. Really.
This is way more information than you needed, but the point is that the instruction to “stop yelling at each other” makes countering this nonsense difficult, and so the delusions proliferate. Nobody who spoke during yesterday’s discussion said anything with an edge, nor did they counter anyone else’s statements. Everything was just yummy, and I’m sure that means that TCG thought the event was a big success. The butterfly was emerging from the chrysalis. No fingers were pointed. Love you all. Mwah. Mwah.
But that’s not gonna get it done. It’s going to take some deep thinking and some hard conversations about what a new theater ecosystem is going to look like, who is going to get paid, who is going to be in charge, and what values are going to be necessary going forward. And yes, that might mean disagreeing, perhaps politely, perhaps sometimes not so politely. People are going to feel angry sometimes, but even so, iron sharpens iron, and a clash of ideas forces everyone involved to up their game in order to be heard.
That’s a good thing. In fact, it is a necessary thing.
The question is: where are these necessary conversations going to happen, and who is going to have the courage to not only lead them, but to attempt to provoke the kind of innovative thinking that happens only under duress?
I am personally relived that you slogged through that event and not me - because I likely would have lost my temper. But, before commenting on a few key items in your report, I am going to digress for just a moment, because a Monday post on Broadway World has influence on this topic as well.
CARA JOY DAVID wrote:
I’ve received multiple emails and calls from people blaming leadership for the failure of theaters. These individuals not only question how theaters failed to adapt quickly enough to the new normal, but also question how you can possibly run a theater that doesn’t exist solely on ticket sales.
I am one of those people writing her, but my email archive shows I wrote:
I suppose I am being too literal to hope that the theater company business model might eventually operate more like corporate US companies. But, clearly they need to do more to balance their production budgets and carefully manage their company expenses. I really do believe, for the US (and probably UK) theater system to regain equilibrium, it will need to practice far greater fiscal control of expenditures and do a lot more to align gross sales with gross expenses. So yes, I do think the companies need to work harder towards balance. I've been saying this a lot even though I am likely as convinced as the industry is, that they could never find full parity. Still there are many ways they can increase income (from more than productions) and a lot more they could do to reduce expenditures.
So I believe Cara heard her claim elsewhere, and not from me. Instead, she ignores my recommendation for change so that it doesn’t conflict with her argument which is:
Fundamentally, our non-profits were never established to subsist on ticket sales. It is well known that the regional theater system we know now expanded because of support from foundations, particularly the Ford Foundation, in the 1950s. The system was set up to rely on outside support because of the idea that organizations performing a public service should receive outside support.
Please make note that they were not created originally and did not originally operate in their current fashion, but ”expanded” into their present subsidy addiction. They chose that course because funds were made available to them. Apparently Cara does not think it’s the regional company’s fault for becoming addicted to the need for annual charity to survive because the foundations were the guilty pushers getting them hooked on same.
Now why mention this here? It is because it appears that Cara is taking up the same defensive talking points the speakers did at your recent event. Forget change. Their mantra is ”we deserve to keep the status quo by insisting we continue to promote ourselves and our artistic expression financed by charity and welfare. Wealthy companies, individuals and the government owe us this right to self promote without proving the work has a market that supports it.” I don’t know how these artists think everyone else owes them money, opportunity and recognition just because they want to be artists regardless of whether people want to actually partake of their art. Generally, we let the demand for that art determine the value of having it. Artists need to stop acting like an entitled class..
YOU WROTE:
At first, we were presented with the results of a survey of TCG member theaters that seemed to indicate a 50-50 split between theaters that were struggling and those who were doing about the same or better than before.
This should not be a surprise. Demand for theater has dropped, but not gone away. There is simply less demand and so not all suppliers (theater companies) can or should remain open to oversupply the market with more events than can be consumed. The reduction in demand is now redistributed where the remaining audiences are clearly choosing their favored suppliers. And part of this choice is the predicated on that company’s adaptability to survive financial challenges where other companies could not or would not.
YOU WROTE:
….the younger people who were running the event or those who stepped up to speak during the discussion, seemed kind of, well, uninterested in the fate of the flagship regional theaters. They were more focused on the smaller, scrappier theaters who were embedded in their communities, and who seemed to be doing damn well, thank you very much, or at least better than before.
I urge you to consider that these young people are also likely the artists most likely shut out from the long-established, older companies, where older artists hold control to protect themselves and their peers. The younger go where the door is open to them – where they need youthful energy and support. However, I assume, as you do, that the flexibility of youth and new enterprise, not yet set in their self-protecting ways, are apt to adapt more quickly and easily to the current changes in the market. Thus, they are more nimble and surviving. As you know from my assessment of Artist’s Repertory Theatre locally, the closed group of artists in residence that operate the company have faithfully overspent and ignored regular poor earnings merely to serve themselves. The result is a cancelled season, the threat of complete shutter by mid October, a desperate cry for welfare to keep them solvent, while pushing ahead on an underfunded facility reconstruction that appears to be $12mil short of settling contacted construction debts due in 2024.
All theater companies were small once. Then they grow, become self-protected cocoons serving the artistic expression of a choice set of insiders and, if Cara is right, welfare abusing charity addicts.
And that is the reason why “stop yelling at one another” is worthless. This bury your head in the sand and just let the companies return to the status quo, is unrealistic and impossible. The market for theater tickets is not going to return to pre-Covid stages any time soon. A minor recession is predicted for the next 12 months, with recovery starting to take shape in 18 months (I just attended an Economic forecast seminar this morning.) More likely, it will never return because the industry really does nothing to promote live theater to younger generations the way new technology and entertainment markets do.
Cara states:
But to accuse theaters of mismanagement requires more than to say: “You aren’t paying for your programs via ticket sales.” That alone is not enough to accuse leaders of malfeasance because it ignores that the theaters are contributing to the public good in a way that qualifies them as a charity.
And concludes with:
Yes, theaters need to adapt to changing tastes and economics, but we also need to treat them as we would other charities and donate to them.
And this too is her way of saying, after ignoring the real tangible problems, white wash everything and return to the status quo.
(And BTW, the malfeasance that company’s like ART practice has nothing whatsoever to do with balancing a budget on gross sales income. She made that up to slant her story and justify her demand for a return to status quo. The problem is that such companies spend with impunity, make no attempt to control expenses or bring them in line with projected income, they are not accurate or honest in their income projections and they do both these things, with the blind expectation that annual charity will make them whole regardless of this arrogant practice. Except for ART that charity did not materialize for a change.
And what do they do, they plant untrue stories about their plight in local media, beg for welfare bailout and seek to return to…you guessed it….the status quo.
They have no plan to make any changes to their outrageous spending and speak of magical ticket sales claiming audiences will flock to see their new artistic programming coming in 2024. That is, if they can raise $2.2mil to run for a season and $12mil to avoid construction liens and complete their facility reconstruction.
Simply put, Scott. “Demanding that nothing change, pleading we stop saying honest things about the errors of their management and give them more money” is the national mantra of the US regional theater industry. I don’t see any indication that the industry has been honest with itself or seriously considered making meaningful change.
Oh, yes, a simple word on the elaborate explanation of lost generational support of theater. It matters not what generations are at fault or why. The simple truth not often recognized is that the demand for tickets has dropped and may never grow to past levels. The only concern the industry ought to have is how they collectively develop new live theater patrons in the future. As the old generation disappears, they must concentrate on the generations following them and entice them to become new patrons. That’s all that matters. These are the same people who buy Xbox and Sony Playstation games and season tickets to the Lakers and have season subscription to Disney +, Paramount+ and Apple TV. They have whatever leisure money they want to set aside for same. They are simply not enticed and therefore not motivated to spend it on live theater.