A Reminder: Beware of The Game Changers
Just a reminder that while we (for valid reasons) discuss many of the challenges in the arts there are:
July 24, 2008
July 23, 2008
How much is enough . . .
Mick offers a question:
I wonder about a bigger picture question connected to the idea of 'paying actors more'. What would a 'fair' wage per year for an actor be? Or What do we feel it to be? I know many actors working regional theater making barely $20,000.00 a year and they are considered successful in their region. I know some actors blessed with solid positions with resident companies making $45,000.00 a year, and that is successful in their region. However, I know a person today performing 8 shows a week on Broadway, and she can't afford her own apartment. Should actors make as much as say... a teacher? Or should they make as much as a waitress... or a lawyer or doctor? I wonder... -------------------------------- Any thoughts? Leave them in the comments. Update: To make the question more specific, how much should actors be paid JUST FOR ACTING. Obviously if an actor is doing admin work then they will probably be making more, but I want to focus on just acting alone.
Update 2: Fantastic comments. Keep them coming. I also want to draw some attention to Michael's comment below. Here is a professional artist (drummer) who was in his artistic field for decades and decided to move away from the field. As his comment notes, he did this because of some basic economic principles that he felt were no longer in his favor. Personally, I love his line of thinking. I understand that others may feel like his leaving the music world (for whatever reason) wasn't a good thing. If any has some thoughts on this please share.
July 22, 2008
Listening
As our buddy Seth reminds us, one of the keys to successful marketing is finding consumers willing to listen to your pitch.
July 18, 2008
The Perils of Being a Big Stack Arts Organization (Updated)
I have gotten jumped on before for comparing artists to poker players, so I hesitate to jump into that stream again but it seems like most people have gained some insight from the analogy.
So in that spirit, let me introduce a new poker concept to you. For the person that bought you Dead Money, I now present Big Stack.
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Alright, let's start with the obvious. The objective of a poker tournament is to win all the chips available. So if 1,000 people enter a tournament and each one is given $3,000 work of chips, that means the big winner is going to be the person who collects three milion chips.
Let's assume this tournament is going to last for five days.
By the end of the second day you'll have a few poker players with a very large share of the chips compared to everyone else.
We call those people Big Stacks.
What most poker players will tell you is that being a Big Stack is one of the best and worst things that can happen to you in a poker tournament.
It's a great thing because you control such a large share of the resources (chips) available that you can easily impact what all the other poker players around you are doing.
But it's a very dangerous thing because having all these chips makes you a huge target.
In fact, one of the things that seperates consistently successful poker players from those that are not is there ability to both acquire and keep a big stack.
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Whenever I think about some of the large regional theatres that have come under a lot of criticism lately, my mind always goes back to the Big Stack analogy.
I mean here in Chicago, that's what the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare and other theatres are right?
They control a huge amount of resources in the theatre world and that makes them (fairly or unfairly) a target.
But I think part of the reason I can't muster the righteous anger against them that some others can is because I understand the flip side of being a Big Stack.
I can't imagine how challenging it is to be the artistic or business leadership of those types of institutions. So while I truly believe that many of them should be paying their artists more, I also understand many of the reasons why they feel like they can't do that.
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So where am I going with this?
I worry that the looming battle between artists and institutions is going to be waged on a battlefield in which both sides are woefully ignorant about what life is really like on the other side of the fence.
I can imagine a team of artists storming the gates screaming "more money now!" while some Executive Director inside the theatre is looking at a budget he can barely balance and developing a healthy bit of hatred for the artists who don't have a clue about what the situation is.
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So let me offer my perspective as someone who works in regional theatre and has a pretty decent knowledge of the "inside" financial scene for a lot of regional theatres.
I would wager that 80% of those theatres agree that actors should be paid more.
The question for them is how they can manage to do that when they have tremendous fixed costs and incrediby artistic standards they have to meet.
It is not as simple as "pay the actors more".
I'm sorry.
It just isn't.
Think of this way. When a sports fan complains that his favorite player didn't make the All Star Team in a particular year . . . the question becomes, what player should they take off the team in order to put your player on?
So if actors are being paid more, then who gets paid less?
And if your answer is "raise more money then nobody has to get paid less" then I can introduce you to 1000 fundraisers out here who would love to hear your ideas about where that extra money could come from.
If we are really going to reform the regional theatre system then it is going to be done in partnership with the theatres. And partnerships can only be achieved through a level of mutual understanding.
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Update: One last thought . . .
If artists want to campaign for a bigger piece of the pie, more stability, or whatever then please understand that your fight is only partially with the arts institutions.
Your bigger fight is with the donors that fund the instituions.
I would guess that 90% of the funding that instiutions get from foundations and corporations are restricted to costs NOT related to overhead (i.e. actor salaries).
July 17, 2008
Promise and Proof
A few days ago I participated in a fantastic branding workshop done for a number of arts groups on the University of Chicago campus. It reminded me of the relationship between promise and proof.
We have talked about this before, but as a reminder, a brand is essentially a promise that you are making between your organization and the consumer.
If you make an attractive promise and consistently deliver on that promise then you will have a strong brand.
It's that simple and that complex.
What the branding workshop reminded me was the importance of being able to prove your promise.
If you are promising your patrons high quality art, then what proof do have of that quality?
So what if you're a new (or emerging) arts organization that doesn't have the sort of objective proof of quality (reviews, awards) that other arts orgs do?
Then don't promise quality.
Maybe you can promise cutting edge work.
Maybe you can promise an interactive night of entertainment.
My point is, don't promise things you can't prove.
July 14, 2008
Final Confession . . .
My name is Adam Thurman and I am an arts administrator.
It seems like the current trend in the theatre world is to make that term "arts administrator" a dirty phrase.
To some artists we are the keepers of the wealth, gaining salaries and health benefits at their expense.
We are the people that build the bloated institutions that produce the subpar art for the masses.
There have been times that I have read theatre blogs and come to the conclusion that everything in the theatre world absolutely sucks.
I mean that's what we talk about right? How bad things are?
And before Prof. Scott or somebody else reminds me that it is there role to point out the flaws in the regional theatre system . . . I know that already.
But it just seems like the comments skew heavily on the negative side of the equation and are sorely lacking in perspective.
Maybe that's the nature of the internet, I don't know.
To me, the relentless bashing of the regional theatre system and of arts administrators just seems like a bit much.
I admit my perspective is biased. I know a lot of arts administrators and I have found most of them to be incredibly smart, passionate people who love arts and love artists.
We are not perfect. The system we work in is flaws. Some of the flaws are our fault.
But we are not the enemy and sometimes it feels like are are.
Summary
Last week's theatre brawl is nicely summarized by Ethan here (and god bless him for doing it)
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July 11, 2008
The Power of Scarcity: A Response to Mike and Scott
So Don writes a post.
Then I write a post.
Then Mike Daisey and Scott Walters chime in.
And suddenly we got ourselves a tag team brawl where Don and I play the part of the Road Warriors and Mike and Scott playing the role of the Hart Foundation. And yes, that is a very old school wrestling reference but what the hell, it's Friday . . . let's have some fun.
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In their haste to bash my comparison of the poker world to the much more noble world of the professional artist Mike and Scott miss a few of my broader points, such as this one:
2. They understand the world they are in and how to thrive in it. - You think making a living as an artist sucks? Try making it as a poker player. But the profitable players don't complain about the environment. They thrive in it. In fact, they wouldn't have it any other way because if everyone could be a professional poker player . . . there wouldn't be any money in it.
Money is what we are talking about right? When we talk about artists making a living wage, being able to feed their families, retire, go on vacations, we are talking about money and what decisions should an artist make (or not have to make) in order to get some.
In this complex economic world we now live in, which is dynamically different then the one that existed just 10 years ago my theory is that the only thing that really creates money/wealth/value is scarcity, which Websters defines as "something in short supply."
So if you want to make a really decent living doing ANYTHING now, people have to believe that there is something about working with you that you can't get working with just anyone.
If you haven't been able to carve out that distinct niche for yourself, either in the work you do, how you do the work, or who you do the work for . . . then you are officially a commodity and you will be treated like one, meaning you will get paid just enough to keep you working but never enough to be stable.
It's true for doctors, lawyers, plumbers and artists . . . there is nothing sacred about the artistic profession that makes it different.
I used poker as an example of this because to be successful in it over the long haul you have to develop some form of scarcity in the midst of an incredibly hostile environment. Because in a poker tournament damn near everything is against you.
The other players want your money.
The structure of the tournament is designed to force you to make decisions early on instead of doing what you really want to do . . . which is wait for good cards.
And then there's the harsh luck factor which means you could do everything right and still lose.
So when I make the poker and art analogy, I'm not really comparing artists and poker players . . . I'm talking about the difficult environment both face and how each side has to develop unique skills to thrive in it.
But here's the thing . . . not everyone will develop those skills. That's just a fact.
Those who do develop those skills will eventually be the ones we call winners.
Those who don't will be the ones we call losers . . . or dead money.
Do you need some examples of people who have developed the skills? I got two good ones.
Scott Walters and Mike Daisey.
Scott and Mike are both artists and each one has carved out a path that has allowed them some artistic freedom (certainly not a perfect amount but some)
Scott's a tenured prof and an artist. Tenure is a system built on scarcity (not all professors get it)
Mike has done a brilliant job of taking his artistic talents, mixing it with entreprenurial skills and creating a niche. Maybe he didn't plan it that way, but that is what happened.
Now the question becomes, should Scott and Mike have to go through all the damn struggle to find a path to keeping art in their day to day lives? Shouldn't it be easier to make it as an artist?
Yes, it absolutely should be easier. But it will never, ever, be easy.
And as much as people saying they want it to be easy . . . they really don't mean it.
Because if everyone could make it as a professional artist . . . there wouldn't be any money in it.
July 10, 2008
Art and Dead Money
In a great post, Don Hall wrote this:
"The constant push to "make a living" in the arts is sort of like making a living as a professional gambler and I don't hear anyone supporting an ethical model to provide blackjack players health insurance."
Which has inspired me to write this . . . stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this and yes, it does relate to art.
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About a week ago, in Las Vegas, about 6,800 people showed up at a casino to play a poker tournament nicknamed the Main Event. That tournament is still going on as we speak.
Those 6,800 people put down $10,000 each to play in those tournament. All together they created a prize pool of 64 million dollars.
When it is all said and done, one person out of those 6,800 is going to walk away with about 9 million dollars.
Another 679 of those people are going to split the rest of the money, but not equally. The second place finisher may take home 4 million bucks. The guy that finishes 679th will make about 20,000.
That means that over 6,100 people are going to pay 10,000 to enter this tournament and walk away with nothing.
Nothing.
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Most of those 6,100 people are what the poker world calls "Dead Money". These are people who entered the tournament but really don't have a chance in hell of winning it.
They don't have the poker skills necessary to do it.
They are playing against people better then they are.
They don't understand the structure of the tournament they are playing and how to exploit it.
They would be better off buying a bunch of lottery tickets.
But here's the thing, most of the 6,100 people don't think they are dead money. If you asked them they would tell you have as good a chance of winning as anybody else.
They are delusional. And that is what makes them dead money.
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But enough about the poker losers, let's talk about the winners. Yes, there are some people that manage to be profitable at a game that is based on making a whole bunch of people unprofitable.
How do they do it?
1. They develop their own style. - Some poker players make decisions based on game theory. Some based on the "reads" they have of their opponents playing style. The particular style doesn't matter much. What matters is that they have spent years (decades) developing a style that is unique to them.
2. They understand the world they are in and how to thrive in it. - You think making a living as an artist sucks? Try making it as a poker player. But the profitable players don't complain about the environment. They thrive in it. In fact, they wouldn't have it any other way because if everyone could be a professional poker player . . . there wouldn't be any money in it.
3. They are very honest with themselves - In a world built off delusional thinking they are honest about their skills as a player and work to improve them daily.
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So here's the thing. I work with artists all the time. And when I work with some of them you know what I see?
Dead Money.
And they are dead money for the same reasons those poker players are dead money.
They delude themselves about their level of talent.
They compete against people way better then they are but can't acknowledge their opponent's skills.
They refuse to understand the current art making world, fucked up and hostile as it may be, so that they can find a way to thrive in it. Even if that way of thriving means ignoring the current arts world entirely and creating a system that works for them alone.
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Which takes us back to Don's comment. I could decide right now that I'm a professional poker player. Spend a year saving up 10,000, go play in the Main Event and lose it all in 10 minutes.
And then I could jump online and talk about how unfair poker tournament's are and how they really should create tournament's that allow everyone to make a little money and maybe even provide the players with health benefits.
And I would get laughed at.
People would remind me that I decided to become a pro poker player and when I made that decision I accepted all the risks and if I didn't prepare properly (or didn't understand the risk), then that was my own fault.
Look, I love what Mike Daisey and Scott Walters (and others) are doing. The regional theatre world should actively find a way to fund more money to the artists and the only way that is going to happen is by making some noise.
But my gut tells me that making a living as a professional artist will always be like making a living as a poker player.
A few big winners, another group of people that are consistently profitable in the world.
And lots of Dead Money.
And maybe that's the way it is supposed to be.
