Realness

Yesterday, our local paper did an article talking about the working being done by "three leading" theatres, one of which is my day job. 

Around said day job, some found it a bit ironic that we were being compared to two other theatres that have budgets six times our size.

Then again, our budget is bigger then 95% of the theatres in the great city of Chi, so it's all relative.

For me, articles like that remind me of the role that money and infrastructure have in creating great art.

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It wasn't that long ago that I was running one of those small, scrappy organizations that people often think about in an overly romantic light.

You know the type, full of energy and passion.  Jam packed with skilled performers. Not a lot of money.  Not a whole lot of organizational strength.

And a few years back, that small theatre I ran hit the pinnacle of the local arts scene, winning every major award available.  It was the first time an African-American theatre had ever pulled that off.

It was history.  For various reasons, it will probably never happen again.

It was the manifestation of the small, scrappy arts org dream, the moment that we proved that you don't need money to produce great art.

But we were only half right.

You don't need money to produce a great play, or a great dance performance, or whatever.

To do many great plays . . . many great artistic events . . . well then you need some money.  And probably more then money, you need some infrastructure (which takes money)

There is nothing wrong with being a small arts organization with not a lot of resources.

Then again, ain't much right about it either.  Despite what some may imply, there is nothing noble in it.

Small and limited is a place damn near everyone starts at, but it simply is not a place you can stay in for too long.

If you do then the run the risk of some pretty massive burnout.

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Someone out there disagrees.

They want to tell me about this little arts org that has been around for 15 years and has been doing great work with a budget of like 50,000.

I'm wondering if they did all that with 50K, what could they have done with 500K?

I'm thinking about a colleague of mine who just resigned his job because the stress of trying to do some much with so little was literally making him sick.

I'm thinking about the pyschic strain artists place on themselves when their artistic ambitions constantly outstretch their resources.

I'm thinking (again) that there is nothing inherently noble about having so little resources for so long.

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I know this question of growth . . . of how much time an arts org should spend trying to grow as a business versus trying to grow as artists . . . is a difficult one.

But here's the one thing I wish I could do for all those who are avoiding the muck of fundraising, marketing, Board Development, etc. just because they see it as some sort of bad thing:

I wish I could magically give them enough money to be properly resourced for their next artistic event.

I wish I could give them enough to pay their designers a good wage, give their actors a check that isn't a joke, maybe even pay someone good to write a grant or two.

But just for a little while.  Just long enough for them to see what they were capable of.

My guess is once they experienced that, they could never go back to what it was.

They would gladly embrace all the madness of building infrastructure, raising money, etc. because they would no longer see it as interfering with their art.  They would see it as what it is really is . . . a means to an end.

 

Comments

[Ed]

Being small and poor isn't noble, but it does have some practical value, to play devil's advocate.

The right things about being small without a lot of resources:
because money is tight, the financial obligations to which one commits oneself are usually small. One way to survive a recession is to be so tiny that you have no overhead when you're not producing- as long as the members stay committed the organization can exist indefinitely. For example, heaven help the itinerant company that chooses *now* to sign a lease on a space of its own for the first time (Rogue Theatre Company, anyone?), unless they're lucky and skilled indeed. Our first season we leased office space, and it almost devoured us financially by the start of season two. Sometimes premature growth is the death of a small nonprofit.

What could the $50,000 budget company done with a $500,000 budget? They could have overextended themselves and gone out of business. Or started overproducing shows and lost the edginess that made them interesting in the first place. I'm not saying a company should never want to grow- but it's not always a desirable end, either.

Now, to play devil's advocate against myself- I see your point about burnout when you're staying that small. The organization I belong to is lucky in that we have several people that are as skilled at the 'Muck' side of thing as the art. Doing both simultaneously for no pay for (going on) three seasons does wear on one. Still doing things the same way (for no pay) ten years from now is an appalling prospect, and this is coming from someone that kind of *likes* doing all that marketing/pr stuff in addition to the show itself. And I'm directing our next show in the fall- it's a super ambitious project, and due to our limited resources I've already had to make some major compromises to how I want to execute parts of it. I think it'll still be really good, but there are going to be some scenes where I shake my head wistfully and think "man, if only we'd had a few more grand to throw at this."

So I guess I'm saying I agree with you, but that especially in the current climate companies need to be extremely smart and cautious about how they grow.