Publish Your Book on Kindle.

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Here’s a great video from Kindle that explains how you, Average Joe, can publish your book on Kindle. The book will be available for download within 24 hours! Truly amazing.

 

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part III

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

TCG 2011 opens with a keynote by David Houle, author of The Shift Age. It’s 9 a.m. and I’m already missing the intimacy of the RADAR L.A. Symposia.

We’re meeting in the bowels of the Biltmore Hotel in the “Biltmore Bowl.” If you add just one letter to Biltmore Bowl it actually becomes Biltmore Bowel. Let’s just say the Biltmore has seen better days. I guess I would describe the decor as Hollywood:“Pre-Renovation.” North Skid Row-Ho.

When you’re in your room, you get the vague sense that someone famous, at some point,  attempted suicide in there. All the fixtures have been replaced with high efficiency lightbulbs that give the lobby’s gilded plaster work a green glow. If the government bans incandescent bulbs, all I can say is that they better give the entire nation a lifetime supply of free concealer. But the importance of good stage makeup…that’s another blog post.

David Houle has that familiar middle-aged-man-inspirational-speaker style. He’s corporate; he talks fast; he’s excited but you’re not yet sure about exactly what. Half the time you are so caught up in the energy of the performance that it doesn’t matter. You’re tired — maybe you’re tired of your job — but, hey, it’s o.k.! Because here is a dude with the energy and the answers. He quantifies our experience of all this uncomfortable societal change going on around us then gets us tense about the future. He’s good at keeping us suspended; thirsty.

I’m writing down that I feel like we never see women (or at least, rarely) in these roles, and I wonder to myself why that is. Ira Glass was the keynote at APAP a couple of years ago and it will be a long time before anyone tops that. Perhaps only better was when Big Bird sang at Jim Henson’s funeral, but that’s not really related because it was a funeral, not a conference, but trust me…it was extremely moving.

But that isn’t to say I’m not getting something out of what Houle is saying. He talks about how we, contemporary Americans, live in two realities: 1) A physical reality; and 2) a screen reality (be it Facebook, Twitter, online gaming, etc.). For the younger generations, their screen reality may be just as important as their physical world. Social media, says Houle, is the “word of mouth” of screen reality.

We talk about how information and production has changed from a global to an individual approach, largely driven by the accelerated connectivity of the interwebs. There are no more gatekeepers; everything is known. I wrote down, “If you don’t know, shame on you! You’re lazy!” But I’m not sure if Houle said it or I did.

Short summary: We are seeing the end of the middleman in music; publishing; industry. Technology empowers individuals to make choices. Houle uses cable TV as an example: We pay for what we won’t watch and we have to be at home not to watch it. He tries to bring it ’round to theatre but I’m not convinced.He’s one of those consultants that uses “The Five C’s” approach, and Houle’s “Five C’s” are: Creativity; Collaboration; Critical Thinking; Content; Context. Click through to see all the different Five C’s that are out there….

I’m reasonably confident that my theatre people are pretty good at David Houle’s Five C’s stuff. Houle continues by suggesting that 2010-2020 will be the “transformation” decade.  Management approaches to the Millennial generation are discussed. We’ve got to go new places; we’ve got to be resilient; dedicated to collaboration; develop a “vision” instead of a strategic plan because strategic plans are out of date; be ‘friends first’ to establish trust and authority among your stakeholders.

The root of the root comes when David Houle starts talking about Millennials in more detail. He observes that this generation should be understood as a group of “digital natives.” They were born into this technology and the rest of us? We’re just immigrants. We’ll never fit in IT-wise as well as a ten year old. He believes that this generation will change the world. The way they think and learn and the speed of that change is so radically different.

And that is the most important thing I’ll take away from David Houle’s speech. Some justification for the push toward [over]sharing via blog; Facebook; and Twitter. Email (and joke forwarding) is for old people. My favorite 17-year old told me the only reason she has an email address is so she can receive my messages. Meaning: I’m the only person in her universe that sends her email. She saw a fax machine on my desk and I had to explain to her what it was FOR. I mean…back in MY DAY (which wasn’t really that long ago) a fax machine was a TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION of sorts.

And by the way? She’d never heard of astroturf, either!

And when David Houle wraps up, I’m thinking about how we need to change our marketing approach to young audiences. We tell ourselves that work that is made for them doesn’t have to be intelligent or high quality, that it can’t confront difficult issues, or that it’s o.k. to market to their parents (just like we always have) and conveniently ignore the new reality – that kids are the major driver behind parents’ consumer purchases.

 

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part II

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Radar L.A. Symposium: U.S. Artists Touring U.S. Work

Clyde Valentin – Hip/Hop Theatre Festival; Megan Wanlass – SITI; Daniel Beatty – Actor; KJ Sanchez – American Records; Roger Guenveur Smith – Actor.

I sit in on this conversation because one of my clients is thinking about touring in 2013. I want to have the budget conversation, but also The Conversation about Equity that I can’t have anywhere else. The Conversation that is, like, “Hey, I totally respect your needs and I want to protect them but I also really, really, really, want to be able to share a video excerpt of your best three minutes of performance with the NEA, why won’t you let me?” That one.

Clyde Valentin introduces Megan Wanlass and she begins by talking about SITI; estimating that 40 to 50 percent of her organization’s revenue is earned from touring. We talk about how it is a challenge to reinvent the wheel every time in terms of finding presenting partners; the challenge of finding new people interested in making this kind of work.

It is a concern for all of us how we can pay actors (and ourselves) a living wage and give them health insurance and other kinds of support that they need to do good work. It was somewhat discouraging to hear that Tony Kushner had said (somewhere) that even he can’t make a living as a playwright.

Daniel Beatty decided that he didn’t want to be dependent on traditional theatre models in order to present his work. He talked about using alternative spaces (self-funded) and presenting at festivals. Ruby Dee hosted a cabaret evening for him and through that event, Beatty developed a series of relationships that help him on the presenting circuit. He talked about the importance of maintaining good relationships with presenters, and how he’s going in doing previews with community-based organization as early as three months ahead of the show.

KJ Sanchez presents at a range of different venues – anything from VA cafeterias to Dartmouth’s full stage. She has different budgets and different levels of tech-in – Alpha: The full design for big theatres; Beta: Modified for any presenter, as long as they can get a projection screen; and Charlie: Just stools and mics. She has branding language appropriate for each presenter – VA vs. Dartmouth. The VA is less interested in what the New York Times has to say about the piece than their [military] peers. We talk as a group about the A, B, and C of touring – the adaptability required to make it affordable for different stages. KJ Sanchez talks about how and why she formed American Records as a corporation [versus a nonprofit]. She receives fiscal sponsorship via Fractured Atlas. Daniel Beatty is also a corporation.

Eventually we circle around to the challenge of being an Equity house. The need for an open, honest conversation with representatives; the amount of paperwork required for concessions; the astronomical budgets; sticker-shock admin costs of developing a piece in a regional house. Megan Wanlass suggests spending a couple days together (sometime in the future) to develop a template that could be presented to Equity to begin a conversation.

Quita Sullivan [NEFA] encourages everyone to go to festivals so that the work can be seen.

MK Wegmann asks how we provide health, retirement and other benefits without participating in a commercial market that may not fit the artistic vision of a theatre? She asks about the role of booking agents in touring – but most in this group agree that they’ve been most successful booking the tours themselves.

And so, the answer is, one way or another – it doesn’t just happen. You have to be dedicated and you will have to do much of the work yourself. Of course, we already knew that but somehow hearing that everyone else will have to do exactly the same thing is…well…comforting.

Lunch. It’s Thursday, and I’m sure about that.

I treasure my outsider status at conferences – it allows me to observe as the anthropologist I am. Move between different groups and learn what I need to know, without compromising what it is I feel I need to say within my own space and time. But even I want to sit with someone nice at lunch. The tables are set up in the main gallery of LATC and it looks exactly like a middle school lunchroom. I know people here but you do get that feeling – they know each other so much better than they know you and they are not looking to make new friends. Or maybe it is that if you were anyone, they’d already know you.

Cool. I’ll sit with that solitary guy, but he keeps his face glued to his laptop. A woman sits down across from me and since we are being actively ignored by the people to the right of us we start a conversation about what my life in DC is like and it turns out she is gluten-free and while I listen to her talk about Michelle Bachmann I am really thinking about whether or not I can ask her for her cupcake. Since she’s not going to eat it. Finally, I convince her to just go ‘head and scrape the frosting off because it’s totally the best fucking cupcake I’ve ever had and she does and she eats it and she’s not sorry. We go our separate ways after lunch and I never run into her again. I consider pretending I haven’t eaten yet so I can get a second box lunch and, specifically, a second cupcake but I decide it would probably be unwise.

I start conversations but I’m still holding back. I know so many secrets; back stories; half-truths; and honest-to-g*d lies about the business of arts and culture I’m having trouble believing in it myself. Not the art part, but the business of making it for others and believing in what we say and what we do. What I know helps me do my job – I know who to go to for what –  I know who is doing what – but I crave a little more balance. I want to be surprised. I have what I am calling compassion fatigue. Like I said this morning, I want to fall in love again. During the break, I sit next to Shawn Sides outside and tell her she’s awesome which possibly freaks her out a little bit. I walk down to Flea and look at her overpriced vintage stuff and kind of chuckle inside when I observe her disappointment on hearing I’m not a props person.

I walk over to the BOOK STORE and find that it is called THE LAST BOOK STORE and it is actually a pretty good one. I fall a little bit in love with all the books and decide to buy a Russian book with cathedral stone carvings in it. When I get back home, I’ll use these in my art studio as inspiration for painting. I also find a copy of Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon for J. because I think he will like it. Out of print, because the books Jonathan Lethem writes so well aren’t anything remotely like his first attempts. Maybe not out of print. Maybe I just gave it away. Those early Jonathan Lethem are my favorites – the characters who go off and have their sexual awakening in outer space and eat purple space-grown potatoes to survive. I loved his Paris Review interview.

There are days when I wish I had skills – like the kind they talk about in Napoleon Dynamite. The kind my sister has that put her in medical school and have everyone at the Thanksgiving table think she does something really important. Versus the kind of skills that allow me to whip up absolutely anything out of chopsticks, duct tape and spray paint or write something about Tom Wesselmann on a moment’s notice.  [Which, truth be told, actually works out great at Thanksgiving (I make some pretty amazing pumpkin centerpieces, I tell you what….) But no one at the dinner table seems very clear on what value I’m adding to the universe beyond just being REALLY entertaining. I could stitch anyone back together with the good stories I have to tell about the work I’ve seen.

During most shows I am just so busy. Thinking…I would have done this or that or the other thing….until I’ve sewn together a completely different (and more powerful) show in my head. But there’s a PlayBill of work in my mind - always being edited, never published - that has moved me. Not always to tears, but in some significant direction. Seeing the AIDS quilt on the Mall in 1992 [which I wrote about here, on my personal blog] was one of those times. early days of development on The Laramie Project. Liz Lermann at Grantmakers in the Arts in 2001, performing the obituaries of 9/11 victims; Adrienne Truscott; the background research I did for a playwright on ancient Iraq….maybe what Richard Montoya said yesterday.

It’s addicting; that feeling of going in as one person and coming out completely changed by what you’ve seen.

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An Ethnography of RADAR L.A. and TCG 2011: Part I

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

[sadly, I forgot my camera's memory card. no photos.]

[all mistakes are mine. comments and corrections encouraged.]

RADAR LA:

Today is Tuesday. Possibly Wednesday. Must be Wednesday. I don’t know what day it is because my phone isn’t working down here in the bowels of LATC. What is the point of having hashtags for the conference if we can’t tweet? Honestly. But, then, if I’m honest with myself, I’ll have to admit that I don’t know what day it is because I’m disorganized. But let’s call it “tired,” instead. Two thumbs up for the smart theatre person who scheduled events to begin after 10:00 a.m. Two thumbs up for L.A.’s Delilah Bakery, who catered this thing.

Mark Murphy, Mark Russell, and Diane Rodriguez make opening remarks. Olga [Garay] is introduced as a “fierce and brilliant innovator;” and it is said that “several big ideas exist on this planet because of her.”  What would happen in the world of theatre if we did approached everyone, especially our audience, with this same reverence?

We are told that what we will see this week at RADAR L.A. showcases a kind of work not seen by a vast group of people; curated with a West coast slant vs. the New York sensibility that informs Under the Radar. This is work being created in the ‘here’ and ‘now,’ it is “tour-able;” ultimately, they hope we will take what we’ve seen back home and champion the work in our own venues and networks.

I am listening to the opening remarks and reflecting on conferences in general. I am aware that I hoping to fall back in love during my time here – with an idea, a person, a practice, a performance. We (as a field of practitioners, policymakers, researchers) have been having the same conversations for decades. I am thinking of how we make the mistake of alienating younger staff and excluding them from national conversations. Not only do we miss out on their energy and ideas, but it feeds that engine of repetition on conference schedules.

We can and will have these same conversations over and over again because the young folk were never at the table when we talked about it the last time. Some bright minds will leave for more lucrative positions and become the people we wish we would have been nicer to. Others, perhaps, will stay but give up (and only on the inside, where it really counts) on any possibility of change. Just sit back and think about their personal lives while we run through the all too familiar conference chatter about limited resources; importance of engaging youth; the lack of enthusiasm on the part of policymakers for arts and culture.

It’s the same old argument. The problem is that its the same old group of decision makers in charge of allocating resources to the field. Every once in awhile one of us goes over to the other side and thinks that we’ll be able to make a difference. To be the one that cuts a wide path through the jungle vines of need. It’s time for a radical shift in the way we talk about what we do. We can’t make that change for our stakeholders if we’re tired; if we don’t even believe in what we’re doing ourselves.

In her manifesto for the “future of theatre,” Shawn Sides will say, “Fuck the predecessors!” and I think there is some helpful truth in that. Throw out old ways of thinking and tired “best” practices that can’t peacefully co-exist with technology and friendship 2.0  Sides will also say that theatre should be “more like a party and less like church.” But truth is? Nowadays even some of the most conservative churches have espresso bars and allow you to bring your phone inside. When I attend theatre, I have to turn off my phone and throw my coffee in the garbage. I had to do that here; at this conference. And, I guess, in church you can’t say ‘fuck’ like you can in theatre. Shawn Sides rips the band-aid off the wound of good behavior and frees us all to speak in offensive tongues.

You need to wear some funky glasses to fit in around here. I should have worn the glasses. I HAVE the glasses. I have a leopard pair I bought in France, dammit. I have a black titanium pair; a frameless pair with neon blue sides; a brown pair. I have color-tinted lenses; wraparound black shades. I have fucking everything funky eyeglass related, quite frankly. But I still haven’t found that box in my storage unit. I’m also wearing a bright color, vs. all black, which makes me feel like people are staring at me thinking, “What the hell is that contact lens wearing person in the orange shirt doing here?!” Existentialism and high heels. No reason that can’t go together.

Mark Valdez, National Coordinator for the Network of Ensemble Theatres introduces the “Manifesto” speakers – a group commissioned to share their thoughts on the future of theatre.

First – Raelle Myrick Hodges, Artistic Director at Brava Theater. I love her from the moment she opens her mouth. I love her bitchin’ deltoid muscles and her acid green dress. Possibly I remember her from Philadelphia days [when I was working for Knight Foundation] but I’m not sure, which means that I didn’t know her, though she looks at me in the hall in a funny way, too. Probably because I am staring at her, trying to get my bifocal contact lens to focus to see if I really do know her or if she just reminds me of someone.

More important than all that, Raelle Myrick Hodges thinks and says that in a theatre made up of women-of-color, it is expected that she would ask everyone to weigh in on the topic at hand. Here is what they came up with:

1)      We [as practitioners] need to ask the tough questions because we must. We’ll never get paid to deal with them; never get paid to come up with the solutions.

2)      Do not equate commodity with community. When people say they want diverse audiences, Hodges suggests they are talking about people like her, and if they want people like her, then you’ll have to think bigger than “Raisin in the Sun.” Think about your neighbors; if your neighbors don’t know who you [the theatre] are, then you’re not doing it right. She talks about Brava Theater giving away Halloween candy – perhaps not the largest part of the vision statement for the organization but a ready acceptance that they are part of their community and they may be the only place for neighborhood children to go where they are safe and protected. I like this.

3)      Master laughing at ourselves to learn from ourselves.

4)      We need to CELEBRATE the work of our technical directors and stage managers as much as that of actors and designers. Every single person on the project yells at them at some point, yet who do you think is doing the work when you expect the show to open with one day of tech in? Love them. They’re an important part of your company.

5)      The future will all be INTERNATIONAL. Hodges asks a good question – where do you live that you are not already intersecting with that [meaning international cultures]?

Next up, Shawn Sides of Rude Mechs. During the introduction, it is noted that a previous Rude Mechs show you could give them objects and they would deep fry them for you.  I vaguely remember seeing this, but where? Edinburgh? Or am I just remembering my days in Scotland and associating anything deep fried with that time? Because lots of things were deep fried there. Even pizza. But I digress….

Sides says a lot of really compelling things, most of which I didn’t write down because I loved what I was hearing so much I didn’t want to be pulled away toward the page. She says the future of theatre is the end of a lot of things – that she thinks of a manifesto as a great, big “fuck you predecessors!” That rules are show men; that we should just go ‘head and admit we have no idea. The future of theatre will say no to:

words/concepts like “dogma;” “journey;” “bookends;” “narrative;” “my character would do…;”

curtain speeches; [can I get a HELL YEAH on the end of curtain speeches?!];

” that we have “no fuckin’ idea how to make a play, and if we say we do, we make a ‘dead’ play; an audition for the movie version.” I love that. Sides continues…

in the future of theatre… we will not start at 8 p.m..

I wrote down: “call it ‘devised’ work = idea + terror. Though now I really have no idea what Shawn Sides might have really said or meant about those words. She tells us “your future is grim; you have to make a play to give a shit.”

Guillermo Calderon, Director of Chile’s Teatro En El Blanco wants to ask China and India to stop growing; he says that he wants people to understand that we were are doing is not about the money, it’s about doing something absurd in a very small room. I’m looking for video so you can hear him.

Richard Montoya’s manifesto is published on Polly Carl’s online journal, HowlRound. My favorite words were:

Jesus is walking toward you in the desert
—he is filthy—he is dark—he speaks a tongue you do not
understand —what do you do? Arrest him? Give him
water as you would a dog?

and;

in LA nothing is concrete except our river—
in that river I would wash the feet of the dreadlocked kid felled
by the two bullets and bad luck—

And so it makes a lot of sense when, one week later, he asks about a painting I made last summer. The one that scares everyone.

In her plenary, Diane Rodriguez says that we are in the midst of change. That more regional theatres are taking on the role of presenter in their communities; producing collaborative work; commissioning a playwright is not the only route to new work. She gives an amazing list (which I will link to once I have the information) of practioners engaged in new work. The list (as I wrote down):

Theatre:

La Jolla Playhouse – The Edge series; Work Without Walls (site specific);Center Theatre Group’s non-text based commissions; Public Theatre; New York Theatre Workshop; ART in Boston (non-traditional space); South Coast Rep; Live Arts Brewery; St. Ann’s Warehouse; Walker Art Center; Getty Villa (reinterprets classics).

Venues:

Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas; Fusionfest at Cleveland Playhouse, a multi-disciplinary new work festival; No Boundaries at New Haven; QuestFest in Baltimore – visual theatre; NY Hip/Hop Festival; the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Mad River in Blue Lake, California.

Rodriguez mentions new producing models – folks like Pomegranate Arts; Beth Morrison Projects; Archetype, and MAP International. [not sure I have all those names right.] And funders who support new work – NPN; Creation Fund; NEFA’s touring grant; TCG’s Global Connections; MAP and Creative Capital; and Mellon Foundation.

[to be continued...]

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Policing the Sacred: Art and Censorship Panel features Shirin Neshat.

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Shirin Neshat; College Art Association, New York City, 2011.

Last spring, I attended a fascinating talk during the College Art Association meetings in New York City. The session, “Policing the Sacred,” was organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship but I can honestly say that I flew out there just to see Shirin Neshat speak on the topic – love her work.

This CAA panel came right on the heels of the removal of David Wojnarowicz‘ video from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. “Policing the Sacred” panelists were:
Artist and educator Richard Kamler, who talked about his installation piece that wove pages cut from the Koran and the Torah – and incited controversy in New Haven last year.

Bulgarian video artist Boryana Rossa – who talked about her husband, Oleg Mavromatti, who is currently wanted by Russian authorities. Mavromatti is accused of “inciting religious hatred” by performing a video work in which he had himself crucified.

Iranian artists and filmmakers Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari spoke about the recently completed “Women without Men.” A collaborative piece on film that evokes the religious, social and political tensions surrounding the 1953 coup that brought the Shah to power.

The panel was moderated by Eleanor Heartney, author of Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art and introduced by Svetlana Mintcheva, Director of Programs for the National Coalition Against Censorship.

It was a really interesting conversation, and I really appreciated hearing more about the situation in Europe and the East. The session was taped and the video is available (in two parts) via YouTube. For whatever reason, the videos do not embed correctly in this blog post.

WATCH THEM ANYWAY.

Part I:

watch?v=weqICrz_kT8

and II.

watch?v=_1V6bxUil4I&feature=related

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How to Save Money: Feed the Pig

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

When artists tell me that money isn’t important, I can be reasonably sure that it is because they rely on someone else to pay their bills.

The truth? No matter who you are, money matters. It really does.

For the next month — just as an experiment — start thinking about the small stuff. Not just the big expenses, but the items that have you digging in your purse to count coins. At work, the” small stuff” might be office supplies, lunch tabs, or add-ons to special events.  In your personal life it might be a daily caramel macchiato or a lottery ticket.

These small amounts are the items we don’t keep track of, the things we do to unconsciously (or consciously) “treat” ourselves after a hard day.  It’s the stuff we justify as “essential” even though it’s really a statement about our own feeling of powerless-ness.  We feel we “deserve it” but the truth is we feel we can’t do any better anyway; things will never change; it’s too small to make any kind of difference in our lives.

In organizations, money has a close relationship to power and control. At age 20, I worked as an administrator at a large corporation and one of my responsibilities was to draft a $1.5 million annual budget for my department. Part of that process involved collecting sensitive information about salaries and annual sales goals from other departments.

Standing at the copy machine, the sales manager turned to me and asked, “Are you authorized to have access to this information?” But what she really meant was, “You’re basically just a ‘secretary’ – I don’t want you to know how much I make and you shouldn’t be involved in deciding what needs to happen here.”

Actually, my boss was really smart. He trusted me to draft the expense budget and then we finalized it together. He worked on the salary projections himself and added them to the final numbers. In doing so, he shared the department’s goals for the year with me as well as the management responsibility for meeting them. I knew exactly how much folks got paid and I also knew how their professional experience and academic qualifications contributed to that figure.

But his approach is rare. Most managers treat the budget like a secret document, sealed with wax and passed around the c-suite. It seems easier –it prevents those awkward conversations about why so-and-so gets paid more than you – but it means that your staff will never feel accountable for what they spend, or have any incentive to make changes that improve the financial health of the organization.

Are you buying donuts every Friday out of petty cash?  Maybe it seems like pocket change or maybe donuts seem like a reward to a tough work week, but if your staff had to spend “their” money, they’d probably make different decisions. How can you make your budget more transparent to staff? How can you involve them in the budgeting process?  What salary increases can be secured for them if they meet those goals?  Because the answer to that salary question is the one that will get them to buy-in when you ask them to give up the donuts. And by the way, you have to ask (not tell) to make those changes voluntary and be transparent about the cost savings; otherwise, you’re on the fast track toward mass resentment. Brought on by low blood sugar.

Individual artists might find it helpful to change a regular habit and set the money physically aside in a jar or envelope. I did this when I quit smoking some years ago. I was barely making ends meet at that time in my life, but I always had $4 for a pack of cigarettes. $1000 a year was a lot of money to me in those days; even more so now when I think that, had I been able to put just one year of cigarette money into the stock market and kept adding $60 a month to the account instead of buying cigarettes… it would be worth  more than $19,000 today.

Being dependent on someone else financially (when they can’t afford to give) isn’t creative freedom. Being broke sucks a lot more than working, and it sucks a lot more than bringing your lunch to work four out of five days a week.  Last year I put a coin counting jar in the laundry room and pulled $87 in coins out of the washing machine in one month. I kept the money, spent it on a spa day, and quid pro quo, my family stopped leaving change in their dirty jeans. Do not underestimate the power of the small stuff.

In the beginning, it’s hard. You don’t get to do everything you want to do, but the fact is? You never will. Once you finally do get some money together, you’ll realize how hard it is to come by and you’ll stop throwing it away on stuff that doesn’t really matter. That’s the secret to acquiring assets and keeping them to spend on what you want. And that’s the secret no one seems to have shared with Michael Jackson and Ed McMahon. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy a whole lot of time in a recording studio, new paint brushes and trips to writers workshops.

Challenge:

For the month, starting today – June 9th, 2011 – take your coins and put them in a jar at the end of each day. On July 9th, 2011, take your jar to Coinstar at the grocery store and get it counted. Give yourself one of Coinstar’s vouchers and spend that money on whatever you want. Drop me a comment and tell me how much you’ve saved and what you bought yourself, and I’ll feature you on the blog.

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Careers in the Arts.

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

When I started working for 3M in 1988, lots of women looked just like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl.

 

I’m not sure what irritates my family more – that a) they don’t understand what I do for a living; or b) that I make a pretty good living at it.

Lots of interesting discussions happening at home lately about going to college vs. not going to college; what academic qualifications contribute to real world jobs, and whether or not the real world is a better teacher than the average college professor.

Very few college majors actually prepare you for a real world job. Is a college degree really necessary? Should high school graduates go straight to college? Why?

Did you go? Did what you study at college have any impact on what you ultimately did for a living? How so? What was the proportion of valuable skill learned at college vs. the real world?

What was your first real “break” in the world of work?

Some random thoughts. I’d love to hear your on-topic rants – whether you drive a taxi or run a museum.

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Take-Home Quiz: What Are Some of The Reasons You’re Broke?

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Heidi Rettig


T/F Your gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday; closed weekends and holidays. Ticket buyers call the box office but no one answers – not even a voicemail service.

T/F It’s 2011 and you don’t have a website. You don’t like people who self-promote. You’re not ready to sell anything, or you won’t sell it without a frame and, anyway, the relationship between art and money is just…so….

T/F You tweak your artistic plan of attack so often that you have no idea what is really bringing your audience in (or making them leave).

T/F You tell yourself people just don’t understand your work. And you’re not just talking about your Mom.

T/F You know what the paying audience loves (and hates), but you don’t care. You’d rather do what you want to do, because the relationship between art and money is just…so….

T/F You never open or review bank statements, because the relationship between art and money is just…so….

T/F You’re relieved when financial committee meetings are canceled; you serve on too many boards to be involved in all that.

T/F You don’t check the past performance of partner organizations; employees; or board members against your vision and mission of your organization.

T/F Getting credit (or handing it out) is more important to you than the quality of the actual artistic work on the project or the resulting impact on audiences.

T/F You tell me you’re ready to be famous, but when real opportunities come your way; you just never get around to filling out the forms. Or you decide to do something radically different (see #4) than the original plan we agreed on four weeks ago – the one we’ve all been working toward. You just forgot to mention it and, unfortunately? All those commitments made on your behalf will have to be broken.

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Deep Thoughts:Week of May 16, 2011.

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

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Please. Bring The Magic Back to Live Performance.

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Heidi Rettig

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti said that art that is celebrated often gets its laurels for being unchallenging. It’s worth remembering that sometimes a standing ovation means you have failed as an artist.

In my work as a consultant, I see a lot of stuff. Trust me when I tell you that the standing ovation is not what it used to be.

Instead of a rare gift from the audience to the performers it’s now more a sort-of bad habit. A standard practice for audiences who may be expressing their undying love, sure, but your audience may just as likely need a good stretch and a head start on getting home.

Automatic-Reflex-Standing-O’s are right up there with executive directors’ bad habit of grabbing the microphone at curtain time to say [all-in-one-breath] thank you to basically everyone they’ve ever met who might be in the audience and didn’t see their name noted in the Playbill; those who gave money; those who are just thinking about giving money, and the lead singer’s Aunt Edna who is in town from Skokie and always inspired.

Unless the work is exceptional; amazing even; my good friend J. and I applaud from our seats. We’re not trying to be jerks – we’re trying to bring back The Magic, because in trying to please everyone and make every idea and process brilliantly, wonderfully, accessible – I think we’ve lost some of The Magic and most of the mystery.

That hush that comes over the audience when the lights go down. The twinge of excitement as the curtains part. The “I have no idea what is going to happen” feeling or  “however did they do that?!” conversation that happens over drinks after the show.

That’s all still happening for Cirque du Soleil over there in Vegas because, in my opinion, Cirque knows the secrets of a good, Magic, show. They do amazing work but never let you figure out exactly how it happened. It begins the moment the audience enters the venue and they are kept in suspense until they walk out the door.

No one in Cirque leaves character to thank their Aunt Edna.  No one begs for just one more dollar. And, as far as you can tell, the performance came off without a hitch. You’ll leave without ever really knowing who was responsible for holding the rope or arranging the greens.

Yes, it’s for-profit. Yes…it’s Vegas. But the fact of the matter is that audiences love it and beg for more. They aren’t likely to make the distinction between for-profit and non-profit when they buy their tickets. They just want to see a show, and they want to be amazed. Is The Magic and Mystery of live performance what (insert broad, sweeping generalization here) “we”  sacrifice in favor of organizational transparency?

What do you think? What do we, as practitioners, owe the audience? Our staff? Our performers? Our boards? Our donors? How should we interact with them before, during, and after each performance? Do those responsibilities ever conflict with the process of making and performing the show?

 

*The Marinetti quote was taken from Max “Bunny” Sparber’s post, Bad Influences, on HowlRound. Read it. It’s brilliant.

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