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Contributed by guest blogger of the week, Paul Bargetto.
One of the major pillars of the crisis that faces Independent/Off-Off theater is the misdirection of funding dollars. This problem is universal and includes the City, State, grant makers, and private individuals. Throughout the city, it is presenters, and primarily their buildings and administrations that are consuming the lions share of available funding. A quick glance around town and one can see millions of dollars being spent on upgrading and renovating buildings (PS 122, DTW, 3LD, the Kitchen, and HERE to name a few), all of which maintain staffs of full time curators and administrators. A significant percentage of this funding was borrowed and this has placed very expensive burdens on the institutions that threaten their sustainability. While I do not complain about having new spaces and beautiful lobbies and cafes, I wonder very much where the artists who produce the work enter into the funding equation.
The reality is that all of the spaces I have mentioned are presenting plays by small local companies and ensembles that are incapable of paying themselves even a minimum wage. The mostly all volunteer army of Independent Theater – (the Artists) work at rates that would be criminal in any other industry, and must work outside jobs to survive. So while the buildings have improved, the quality of the art inside has not. Theater takes time to develop and when the artists toil in part time dedication the result is to be expected. When will an equal gesture of funding be made toward the artists who make the work?
The system as it stands today means that there is rarely any reward out there for the successful production or ensemble. Beyond the temporary glory of a great review, where is the great production left at the final curtain? With touring options incredibly limited, with festivals offering no cash prizes, with Off Broadway transfers a myth, with funded residencies non-existent, where do the artists find the resources to keep producing? The clever and well connected ones are going to Europe, or are making solo pieces. For the rest, the best advice going is "get a millionaire on your Board!"
Since that dream is out of reach for most of us, (but not all!), I believe that what is needed are year long fully funded residencies that provide not only space, but salaries for the artists! Why are buildings continually created or renovated without equal endowments to properly program them?
The last question is whether or not the City’s existing spaces are being properly utilized. New York is a University Town and almost all of them have a theater, and many have more than one. Since these theaters already exist and are often under utilized (See the Skirball Center), why are more not given to deserving small companies as funded residencies? How interesting it would be for the current drama students to share their space with a real working company!
I have been working in New York long enough to see many small companies go under or completely transform their core artists. It is heartbreaking to see so many promising artists get ground down by the nearly impossible demands of simply keeping body and soul together and a roof over their head. Independent Theater is consistently making the work that the rest of the theater establishment has abandoned. It is serious and challenging in both form and content and is pressing the boundaries of the art form.
The Artists making this new work have out of necessity dedicated themselves to a monastic poverty sustained only by the measure of their belief. Does it really have to be this way? The time is ripe for a reconsideration of our funding priorities and time for the artists to claim their fair share of the pie.
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Showing posts with label Paul Bargetto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Bargetto. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Confessions of an Independent Artist/Producer part 1 - History lesson
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Contributed by guest blogger of the week, Paul Bargetto.
I have been working as a director and independent producer in New York City since 1996. I began my career at the Collective:Unconscious, a self described "art hole" on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side. For my first year in the big city I lived in the basement, under the stage with six other artists. In this wild and sleepless theater I began exploring and creating my first experiments as a director and producer. Traveling down to Ludlow Street at that time was still a somewhat risky proposition as its commercial heart was driven by the drug trade and the random mugging. That and theater! There was an amazing cluster of small Off-Off-Broadway theaters on that block at that time including The House of Candles, Todo Con Nada, The Piano Store, Expanded Arts, and of course Collective:Unconscious. Soon the bars followed the theater audiences down the block and for a brief time the scene was in full flower. The International Fringe Festival was born the following year on Suffolk Street. I was young, burning with ambition, and thrilled at the possibilities of making theater in such an amazing community.
Then the real estate bubble tidal wave that was poised over our head crashed down with a vengeance. Exploding rents shuttered almost all of those small theaters within three years and drove many of the artists to move out of Manhattan. A general migration began to the outer boroughs, first to Williamsburg, just over the bridge in Brooklyn and then to Queens and Long Island City. Those neighborhoods would also in time face the same problem and today's theater artists have been driven farther and farther from the creative center of Manhattan, the audience for their work, and most importantly from each other.
Those few blocks of Ludlow Street are unrecognizable to me today, it has transformed into an expansion of Soho boutiques and bridge and tunnel bars. The building that used to house the Collective Unconscious was torn down and never rebuilt. An "art hole" to the end!
Yet independent theater continued to grow and thrive! Each new year has brought more and more artists, many of them with freshly minted MFA's from ivy league schools. Despite the space churn and ever rising costs more and more dreamers bought the one way ticket, formed companies, and chased down their vision of a new theater and an artistic home. That process has continued right up to today, so that now, Independent/Off-Off-Broadway contains the largest population of theater artists in the city, and the nation.
This has created an incredibly fertile scene, with many brilliant artists who are pushing the boundaries and creating new forms. I have never seen as many exciting new plays, ensembles, and festivals as there are today. But this historic migration of American and international theater artists to New York City has created and exposed a host of systemic problems. I believe that the system of funding, presenting and producing as it stands today is at a crossroads and faces a fundamental crises. I believe that our already threadbare funding is consistently being misdirected, that the outlets and touring options available for successful work are limited or non-existent, and that the artists making this fabulous revolution are so under compensated as to guarantee that it is unsustainable. I will discuss each of these issues in greater detail in more entries to come.
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Contributed by guest blogger of the week, Paul Bargetto.
I have been working as a director and independent producer in New York City since 1996. I began my career at the Collective:Unconscious, a self described "art hole" on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side. For my first year in the big city I lived in the basement, under the stage with six other artists. In this wild and sleepless theater I began exploring and creating my first experiments as a director and producer. Traveling down to Ludlow Street at that time was still a somewhat risky proposition as its commercial heart was driven by the drug trade and the random mugging. That and theater! There was an amazing cluster of small Off-Off-Broadway theaters on that block at that time including The House of Candles, Todo Con Nada, The Piano Store, Expanded Arts, and of course Collective:Unconscious. Soon the bars followed the theater audiences down the block and for a brief time the scene was in full flower. The International Fringe Festival was born the following year on Suffolk Street. I was young, burning with ambition, and thrilled at the possibilities of making theater in such an amazing community.
Then the real estate bubble tidal wave that was poised over our head crashed down with a vengeance. Exploding rents shuttered almost all of those small theaters within three years and drove many of the artists to move out of Manhattan. A general migration began to the outer boroughs, first to Williamsburg, just over the bridge in Brooklyn and then to Queens and Long Island City. Those neighborhoods would also in time face the same problem and today's theater artists have been driven farther and farther from the creative center of Manhattan, the audience for their work, and most importantly from each other.
Those few blocks of Ludlow Street are unrecognizable to me today, it has transformed into an expansion of Soho boutiques and bridge and tunnel bars. The building that used to house the Collective Unconscious was torn down and never rebuilt. An "art hole" to the end!
Yet independent theater continued to grow and thrive! Each new year has brought more and more artists, many of them with freshly minted MFA's from ivy league schools. Despite the space churn and ever rising costs more and more dreamers bought the one way ticket, formed companies, and chased down their vision of a new theater and an artistic home. That process has continued right up to today, so that now, Independent/Off-Off-Broadway contains the largest population of theater artists in the city, and the nation.
This has created an incredibly fertile scene, with many brilliant artists who are pushing the boundaries and creating new forms. I have never seen as many exciting new plays, ensembles, and festivals as there are today. But this historic migration of American and international theater artists to New York City has created and exposed a host of systemic problems. I believe that the system of funding, presenting and producing as it stands today is at a crossroads and faces a fundamental crises. I believe that our already threadbare funding is consistently being misdirected, that the outlets and touring options available for successful work are limited or non-existent, and that the artists making this fabulous revolution are so under compensated as to guarantee that it is unsustainable. I will discuss each of these issues in greater detail in more entries to come.
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Sunday, January 17, 2010
Guest Blogger Paul Bargetto
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A huge Thank You to Lanie Zipoy for giving us some fun and insightful blogs last week.
We are very excited that our next guest blogger will be Paul Bargetto.
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