From the Executive Director
This Art Is Mine
By Teresa Eyring
Recent research and publications from luminaries in our field examine historic trends in the way individuals participate in the arts: from active participation (late-19th-century piano playing at home, drawing, etc.); to passive consumption (watching movies, listening to radio, attending performing arts events, etc.); to co-creation (in which individuals generate their own artistic content or collaborate with others, particularly in electronic formats). Compelling perspectives on these shifts have been presented recently in the Bill Ivey/Steven J. Tepper collection Engaging Art, released in Dec. ’07, and also in speeches by former TCG executive director Ben Cameron, who is now Duke Charitable Foundation culture program director.
If these shifts are irreversible and true, the question for professional arts organizations is how most effectively to embrace and respect audiences and potential audiences as they self-identify as creators, with a capacity for meaningful involvement in the artistic process that has often been closely held by professional theatre artists and organizations.
A similar pattern exists for criticism, though the chronology may not fall out as neatly. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, critics integrated art and social commentary in a way that inspired community discussion; later critics became consumer advisors (Eric Bentley’s term, I think), effectually instructing audiences to pull out their wallets for a ticket—or not; more recently, we have the phenomenon of scores of self-appointed critics who have nearly equal access to a hearing through Internet blogs and other forums—and with that, the possibility of a new wave of community engagement in the discourse on art.
Theatres and critics stand at an electrifying place in time. More people want to play. And there are more tools to play with, both in terms of content and technology.
For theatres and theatre artists, this trend presents questions that are both practical and semantic, such as: What do we do with the word “professional”? In the 20th-century arts world, this word has often been used to instruct the public, critics and funders to expect an experience qualitatively superior to that which is non-professional or amateur. It has also come to reflect a distinction between those who pursue a particular creative endeavor as a livelihood and life’s work, versus those who pursue that same creative endeavor as a leisure-time activity. All valid distinctions.
However, with the growth of a pro-am culture that goes beyond art into science, technology and other realms, the power of a professionals-only province continues to fade—or at the very least, the nomenclature is less effective and meaningful. Some of the teeth-gnashing over this development has to do with how the public will know the difference between what is excellent creative expression and what is merely average if that public is less than well-informed or poorly educated about the discipline at hand. If audiences can’t feel the qualitative difference in the way Cyrano talks about love versus the way Christian de Neuvillette does, they will quickly lose interest in Cyrano de Bergerac. (If Roxane couldn’t feel the difference, there would be no play!)
Likewise, in the area of criticism, critic-bloggers—some trained, some not—have joined print-media journalists in establishing a platform for discussion on numerous topics, including theatre and the arts. Is this trend leading to a decline in good criticism? How does the reader know which critics to trust—or what to expect from them, especially when they don’t have long reputations or an attachment to a well-known source? In its Dec. 16 piece “Bloggers vs. Critics,” Time Out New York surveyed a number of regular bloggers and print critics on questions such as “What makes a critic a critic?” Steve Smith of the music blog Night After Night wrote: “A professional critic needs a deep familiarity and a passionate engagement with the subject that he or she discusses, period. That can take the form of an advanced degree in an arts specialty, but it can also result from a serious self-directed pursuit of knowledge and exposure.” Another response came from Thigh Master, editor of the culture blog Thighs Wide Shut, who wrote, “Why should it matter if the opinion comes from a stuffy journalist who addresses actors as Mr. and Ms. or from some slothy guy blogging the night away in his parents’ basement?”
As Mark Blankenship and Randy Gener note in their articles on criticism, the trend toward blog-critics can have an enormously positive impact in communities where there is little or no critical coverage for theatre in the mainstream press. In fact, we should be encouraging bloggers to talk about theatre more regularly everywhere, as it sends signals to decision-makers in the mainstream media. Along the same lines, if theatres can find ways to tap into the growing interest among individuals in participating in the actual creation of art and the arts experience, perhaps we can move this trend to a tipping point of sorts, bringing theatre into a new period of cultural ferocity and ascendancy.
An important footnote: Thank you to the National Endowment for the Arts and its chairman Dana Gioia, the American Arts Alliance and all of you in the theatre field who have advocated to increase the appropriation for the NEA. On Dec. 26 the President signed an omnibus budget bill that includes a $20-million increase for the agency. This is the largest dollar increase in the appropriation since 1979.