Remember this post? Mike Daisey responded to it here. If you’re of a mind to, go read that, then come back here.

Mr. Daisey accuses me of making a straw man argument, either by putting words in his mouth, or by drawing hyperbolic comparisons. (Hopefully, not as outrageous as this one.) Straw man arguments, though, set up false targets (hence, the straw man); the charge doesn’t stick when you’re hitting something relevant that is actually there. I’ll get to that part. But first, one of his responses I flat-out don’t get. He says:

“Actually, theater has been in retraction about 100 years in Western culture….”

I’m not sure what to make of this. One hundred years ago, here’s what was playing in New York theatres: a lot of revues and musicals (hm, not much has changed), as well as Molnar’s “The Devil.” Elsewhere in the land, it was either minstrel shows, carnival sideshows, or nothing. I would be astonished to think that Mike Daisey thinks this was the epitome of our theatre history, and can only conclude that he misspoke.
In response to my scoffing at his suggestion that the theatre would die, he writes:

“I reiterate, I’ve never expected, predicted or commented on the idea that theater will ‘die’. This is a straw man argument.”

It is technically true that he never said the theatre would die. However, the way he talks about it is in a way we would associate with being on life support — which often continues after brain death. So perhaps it depends upon one’s view of “death.” Because I’d rather be unplugged if I were in such a situation, to me flatline life support equals death. Supposing that Mr. Daisey feels otherwise and is entitled to his own opinion, I’ll cede the point. Where we do disagree is that he seems to feel that theatre is dying — not “going to die,” but dying, or ailing mightily — while I think that larger institutions are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the future of theatre, a future which lies with smaller theatres and troupes immune to the economic realities he bemoans.

One last point I’m going to take the time to redress (and excuse me for quoting at length; the bold, from his own blog, is my own words thrown back at me; the itals are his response):

“Eleven years ago at the RAT (Regional Alternative Theatre) Conference in New York City a bunch of attendees were offering dystopian views similar to Mr. Daisey’s of what was going to happen to theatre in America and what to do about it. Many of the prescriptions, like those of Mr. Daisey, were interesting and fun to talk about and utterly impracticable. Erik Ehn suggested trading bread for admission. Here’s what I know about bread: Most of it goes stale before anyone eats it. The birds in my back yard are well-fed indeed. Meanwhile, many of us who buy tickets find it more convenient to pay with a credit card than to carry around fresh home-baked bread. You see where I’m going with this.”

Look, if you honestly equate my plans for repositioning non-profit theater development efforts to use their resources to adopt wholesale the proven university model of creating lockbox endowments for “chair” positions in order to create ensemble positions for artists with a plan to pay for theater with bread……I’m speechless.

“If the main thrust of Mike Daisey’s ideas is related to audience development, then I’m with him. If it’s about finding ways to keep local artists tied to theatres, then I’m with him again — except, all over the land, they are already (just not in larger theatres).”

Well, I don’t know if I want the artists “tied” to the theaters, so much as the theaters should provide homes and workspaces for ensembles to inhabit, and frankly I don’t talk in any form about “audience development”, though I’d argue that done correctly needs to grow out of the continuity and community of letting artists back into those buildings, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.

The model Mike Daisey is espousing is precisely one that will “tie” theatre artists to theatres at which they will reside. I’m not sure how it couldn’t be so: When you pay someone a salary, you expect them to show up for work. Even Esa-Pekka Salonen, with his starting salary of $1.09 million in 1992 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was expected to show up and, you know, conduct. The model Mr. Daisey envisions might work well in, say, Arkansas (and this is no dig at Arkansas, a state I have a fondness for, and one that offered me my choice of theatres in Little Rock if only I’d go down to City Hall and pick one out), but it is precisely in those smaller communities that the salaried resident artist will be expected to be performing. That responsibility will, in effect, tie the artist to the theatre. Which I think is an interesting model, and one I might try one day in retirement, in a small-town community.

With regard to bread and bird feed and their connection to Mr. Daisey’s prescriptions, we are talking about economic models. I’m sorry that he didn’t appreciate the comparison, but here it is again: Erik Ehn’s idea about baking bread and exchanging that for theatre performance was impracticable. So, for the most part, are Mr. Daisey’s ideas. His sole example is of he and his wife supporting themselves these past eight years as a mini theatre company (a feat for which I congratulate them, truly). I’m not sure that this is akin to the model he extols — if anything, it is more entrepreneurial, and speaks to his and his wife’s savvy as business-artists. In the main, I’m unsure that the existing large-scale regional non-profit theatre model has a future (just as I’m decreasingly confident that most non-profit models have a future). Commercial theatre is doing just fine, on Broadway, on the West End, and in major cities around the globe. Small theatres are immune to the proclivities of the marketplace. It is the mid-sized that is endangered, just as most middle players in most economies of all sorts are endangered.

I wish that I could see Mike Daisey’s show next month when I’m in New York, but it will have closed. I share his passion for the theatre and his hopes for its future, and I’m interested in learning more about why he thinks what he thinks (as I understand it so far). And I agree with him that management models need to change: If you remove the word “theatre” from the discussion, the root causes apply to every cultural form undergoing radical change, from music to movies to publishing and beyond. The most foolish mistake would be to try to hold onto a past that’s already gone.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 10:45 pm and is filed under On being, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.