Clog The Elevators

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Will Maitland Weiss.

My arts advocacy advice: clog the elevators—in Albany, in DC, wherever arts policy and arts funding are decided. Based on 30 years in the field? On having managed an off-B’way theater (in part by laying off all of its company and staff, myself included, ouch, but it survives today)? On running a place called the Arts & Business Council for the last five years, where we bring business skills, interns, volunteers, board members, executive education, and other resources to the arts community? Not so much.

It’s my advice based on what the legislators whose elevators we might clog told our audience last week at our free panel discussion at the Foundation Center on working with government and getting our nonprofit arts voices heard. City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer, who chairs the Culture Committee; State Assembly member Deborah Glick, who supports the arts in Chelsea, the Villages, and downtown; and State Senator Liz Krueger, who does the same in midtown and up and down the east side impressed on us again and again the need for us to get organized and get ourselves heard above the din of competing special interests. The issue of NY State Arts Advocacy Day came up—Tuesday, February 8; for more information click here  or here. Hundreds of people ride planes, trains, automobiles, and other forms of transportation (a chartered bus leaves from W. 125^th St. in Manhattan at 6:45 a.m. and costs $10 or $15) and descend on Albany like righteous locusts. The goal is to impress upon each and every legislator (and/or his/her hard-working staff, who, we learned, absolutely have their bosses’ ears) the value proposition of the arts:

• job creation: theater, music, dance, and even visual arts are labor-intensive, and these jobs will not be replaced by automation or outsourced to Asia (we represented about 200,000 NY State jobs in 2005, stats from the Alliance for the Arts Arts as an Industry study);
• economic impact: put on a show, and your audience will buy tickets, eat in restaurants, park, go shopping, pay babysitters ($20 billion in NY State in 2005);
• nothing draws more tourists to the State, or encourages them to part with more money (tourism accounted for another $6 billion in 2005);
• creativity in the workforce is employers’ #1 concern in the 21^st century; ABC/NY’s parent company, Americans for the Arts, has coined a great new tagline: “Inspired employees bring creativity to work.” I’m rolling that over on my tongue and liking it a lot. Dairy farming and apple picking are not the future growth industries for NY State. You want to attract smart, “creative industries” types? You want kids to stay in your community after college? You want families to move in, businesses to open up a branch in your upstate town? You’d better offer something creatively stimulating after work.
• this doesn’t even touch on the power of the arts to stimulate and motivate kids’ expression, collaboration, discipline, innovation in pre-K—12;
• and—hello!—truth, beauty, meaning, aesthetics, and fulfillment aren’t bad either.

But, per my friends Glick and Krueger (who are already pro-arts, and trying along with you and me to sell it to the less informed), on February 8, we’ll reach who we reach. Some yes, some no. Every Tuesday, some interest group is lobbying in Albany. Whether they meet or listen, the legislators get the message: our voters want ________ (something). Education. Security. Healthcare. Parks. Tax incentives. Clean water. Children; puppies and kittens… With all of which it is still, despite my list above, so hard for the arts to compete. These other guys all vote and they all clog the elevators. The arts must clog the elevators, too.

Looking ahead to February 8, and also to Americans for the Arts’ national Arts Advocacy Day, I have two other pieces of advice. But—just like you—I have to go out now and forage for money. Contributions, “earned” (please!) revenue, change from the sofa cushions; you name it. At least I don’t also have to get elected/re-elected. Small mercies. Clog the elevators; more to follow.

Photo L to R: Glick, Krueger, Glick, Van Bramer, Krueger

photo credit: ABC/NY

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Guest Blogger: Will Maitland Weiss

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February is dedicated to Arts Advocacy here on the IT Foundation blog. We are so excited to introduce our first guest blogger this month, Will Maitland Weiss.

Will Maitland Weiss is the executive director of the Arts & Business Council of New York [ABC/NY], which serves the field with volunteer development, professional development, and leadership development.  Since 1965, ABC/NY has worked to foster “more creative partnerships” between the arts and business communities; since 2005, ABC/NY has itself partnered with the country’s leading national arts advocacy organization, Americans for the Arts. Weiss served for five years as VP for development and communications for NY City Center; he spent ten years in development at with NY City Opera; and for five years he was marketing director, then development director, then managing director of the Off-Broadway CSC Repertory.  He has lectured or consulted on development, marketing, nonprofit management, and/or career development at the City University of NY graduate program in arts administration, and at Brown, NYU, Seton Hall, the University of the Virgin Islands, and his alma mater, Williams College.

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ARTS ADVOCACY MONTH

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We want to thank Martin Denton for his informative and inspiring blogs last week.

We are very happy to announce that February is dedicated to ARTS ADVOCACY here on the IT Foundation's blog.

We have lined up some people who are really knowledgeable about advocacy, what is going on in the world of politics that affects the arts and how we can maximize our own advocacy efforts.

It should be an interesting month and I encourage all of you to ask questions and engage with these folks.

If you didn't know, February 8th is Arts Day in Albany and the State and City budgets are also due this month, so there will be a lot to talk about.

Guest Bloggers include:

Will Maitland Weiss, Executive Director, Arts & Business Council of New York
Adam Huttler, Executive Director, Fractured Atlas
Norma P. Munn, Chair, NYC Arts Coalition
Paul Nagle, Executive Director, Institute for Culture in the Service of Community Sustainability

Please join us for these important conversations.

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Why I Love Indie Theater

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Martin Denton.

When I began nytheatre.com, nearly 15 years ago, I was a Broadway guy. For me, back then, "New York theatre" was the stuff that got done between 42nd Street and Lincoln Center, with the occasional anomalous foray to Greenwich Village, or, rarely, somewhere else in Manhattan. All the other stuff—what used to get lumped into a category called "off-off-Broadway"—was completely off my radar. My preconceived notion about it was that it was located in undesirable parts of the city, was experimental and/or somehow dangerous, and probably lacking in the professionalism (not to mention lush production values) that I was used to.

Luckily, some wonderful people quickly steered me in a better direction. They made me challenge these silly assumptions by inviting me to see their work, to discover that the world of theatre beyond Broadway and off-Broadway in New York is where the action actually is. In a heady 18 months or so, I found myself going to places I never imagined I'd go to in NYC: to deserted office buildings in the Flatiron District and Midtown; theatres in church basements on the Upper East Side and the far West Village; a whole festival, for goodness sake, in the Lower East Side, in venues with names like House of Candles and the Piano Store.

It was not simply the novelty that made this work feel interesting. And it wasn't simply its quality, though of course that bowled me over right from the start. No, what sold me on indie theater in the late '90s was the unbridled energy: the creativity, invention, and adventurousness of the thing. Thinking back on some of what I saw in 1998—the year I really found my niche and shifted my energies and nytheatre.com's focus to the world of indie theater—makes me feel a little giddy: Matt Maher in W. David Hancock's The Race of the Ark Tattoo at P.S. 122; Kirk Wood Bromley's The Death of Griffin Hunter at Walkerspace (the first show of his I ever saw); Let It Ride!, the first production of Mel Miller's Musicals Tonight! series, at the Lamb's Theatre; Tim Cusack in Rachel Kranz's Stunt Man, Eric Winick's Ian Fleming Presents Steve Gallin in Nobody Dies Forever, and David Summers & Gary Ruderman's "So, I Killed a Few People...", all at the 2nd FringeNYC Festival; Marc Geller's revival of Dark of the Moon at T. Schreiber Studio; Philip Ridley's The Fastest Clock in the Universe at the old INTAR space on Theatre Row; David Fuller as King Lear in Rod McLucas's production for Theater Ten Ten; Joe Calarco's R&J at the John Houseman Studio Theatre (before it went off-Broadway); Letty Cruz's revival of The Mulligan Guards Ball at Creative Place Theatre; Mark Lonergan's The Return of Avant-Vaudeville at Nada, where we saw the first glimmer of what would become his first hit, Velo/City; Storm Theatre's revival of The Shaughraun at Looking Glass Theatre; and Jason McCullough's Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig at ATA (which was directed by Adam Rapp before he was famous; Shay Gines was the publicist... and that's where she and I first met).

What a year that was! Turns out I was very wrong about Broadway versus its Other.

I have, since, been very fortunate to get to know most of the artists just mentioned, and so many more. Being pulled (willingly) into this community has had a lot to do with how I feel about it. Indie theater is the only kind of theater where audience and artists truly engage and reach the possibility of collaboration and community—there's no sense of rarefied "stars" that creates an "us" and a "them"; rather there's an ecstatic and genuine feeling of equality: everybody in the room is just as important as everybody else, but some of us are astonishingly talented and creative. The generosity of indie theater artists no longer surprises me, but the open arms with which I was welcomed into this community was entirely unexpected when it happened in the late '90s.

I have also stopped being surprised by how often I am inspired by the extraordinary output of the people who make indie theater. Way before I started nytheatre.com, I used to tell people that theatre was where I went to find out how I feel about things. The shows I see season after season by NYC's hundreds of indie theater companies constantly reinforce that thesis. But I've learned that theatre can do even more than that. A John Jahnke show (like his recent Men Go Down) teaches me how to see and listen, anew. A performance piece like Judith Malina's Korach reminds me to question all the stuff I think I know. Work by people of different backgrounds from my own (Ralph Pena's Flipzoids, for example) makes me become hungry to stretch and learn what I don't know. Immersive experiences like bluemouth inc.'s Dance Marathon offer authentic renewal and catharsis.

As long as there's stuff like this to take in, I'm not going anywhere.

One of the things I love about being a theatre reviewer is that I don't have to supply the topic for the evening's entertainment—that's the job of the playwright and other artists. All I have to do is show up, watch, and listen.

So, to all the indie playwrights, directors, actors, producers, designers, etc. who are reading this: I'm never going to tell you what kind of art you should make. The only thing I want you to do is to make the art that you know you have to make, and to do it with honesty and without cynicism, embracing the independence that working outside the mainstream provides. You inspire me, and for that I am eternally grateful.

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How nytheatre.com Can Help You

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Martin Denton.

As I've read many of the past guest bloggers' posts here on FULL OF IT, I've been impressed by the great ideas they've shared with readers about how to make use of scarce resources to do a great job creating and producing theater at the indie level. One of the things that excited me about this Guest Blogging gig is to be able to re-affirm nytheatre.com's mission, which is entirely about providing a platform, at no charge to theater companies and artists, where they can promote their work for a large, broad, diverse audience.

I hope you know already that nytheatre.com is a program of the nonprofit corporation that I founded called The New York Theatre Experience, Inc. Because we're nonprofit, we're not beholden to advertisers or any businesses; we're here to serve our funders (the two largest of which are the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts) and our audience, which encompasses people who make theater in greater NYC and people who see/love/care about theater.

In other words, we exist to serve indie theater companies and indie theater artists, to help them spread the word about what they do. Our goal has always been to level the playing field in the world of NYC theater. Large commercial producers and well-funded nonprofit companies have access to lots of media coverage. Smaller companies do not. That's what nytheatre.com is for.

Do you know all the ways you can market your show on nytheatre.com? Here's a list:

1. Send a listing for your show to be included on our website. Send it as far in advance as you can. Future shows are on our Coming Attractions Page. Current shows are on our Now Playing pages. Include lots of interesting information so we can figure out what special categories it can be listed in (such as Gay/Lesbian, Plays by Women, Kids/Families, etc.). If you're doing a reading series, we'll include it in our new Reading/Concert Series listings. If your show is part of a festival, we'll include it in our Festival Calendar. If it's a one-time only benefit or other event, we'll post it on our One Night Only page.
2. Email me if you want to do a podcast or a cyberinterview about your show. We have limited resources and so can't guarantee this kind of coverage. But if you can suggest a special "twist" about your work, you will have a good chance of persuading us to do a feature about it. Be personal--reach out to me directly (listings@nytheatre.com) to let me know what you're doing. Give us as much notice as you can: podcasts, especially, are often scheduled a month to six weeks ahead of time.
3. The best way to get reviewed is to give me a lot of interesting and valuable information about your show so that I can figure out who on our staff ought to cover it. And, once again, give me plenty of lead time. If your show is a revival, let me know what's distinctive about your approach to the material. If it's a new play, give me a good sense of the plot/themes/ideas in the piece. The more I know, the easier it will be for me to find the right person to review it and to get them interested in doing it.
4. Include info about all of the personnel involved with your show! This is a particularly good way to help me decide about reviewing it: I always feel terrible when I discover I missed a production featuring a particular artist that I admire because I didn't realize that he or she was working on it.
5. When you send your listing info, don't forget to include as many links as you can! We will link to any and all of the following from your individual show page on nytheatre.com: your company website, your show's website, your show's Facebook page, any video links (such as on YouTube), any audio links (e.g., a podcast).
6. Are you offering discounts on your show's tickets to students or seniors? Be sure to include that info with your listing, because then we can include it on our special DISCOUNTS section on nytheatre.com, which is (understandably) a pretty popular feature. And you should also consider offering nytheatre.com readers a special discount offer as well, which will also be included on the DISCOUNTS page. (There's info about our nytheatre.com virtual coupons here.)
7. After we post your listing, or review, or cyberinterview, or Indie Theater Companion profile, or podcast, or whatever on nytheatre.com, help us spread the word about it by using your Social Network to the max! Link to the article on Twitter and on Facebook. Include it in an email blast. Make it viral! This can make the difference between something being seen by a few thousand people and it being seen by tens of thousands of people.

Staying in touch is the most important thing. Rochelle and I are genuinely interested in the work being cooked up by the indie theater community, and it means a great deal to us when people let us know what they're up to. And it helps us find new, inventive, and interesting ways to apply our online resources in service of your art.

Oh, and before I sign off today...there's one easy way you can help us improve how we do what we do. We're currently conducting a reader survey, to obtain some information about ways we can enhance nytheatre.com in a few key areas. Please click this link to complete the survey. It's on Survey Monkey and it should take no more than 5 minutes to do. We appreciate your feedback!

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I Want YOU for the Indie Theater Companion

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Martin Denton.

I'm very excited to be talking with you as this week's Guest Blogger on Full of IT. Thanks to Shay, Morgan, and all the rest of the amazing NYIT folks for inviting me to be here.

I'm going to begin with an invitation. Please visit the Indie Theater Companion on nytheatre.com. And please join us by writing an article for the Indie Theater Companion.

Here's the link: http://www.nytheatre.com/itc.aspx.

What is the Indie Theater Companion, you ask? Well, it's the newest member of NYTE's family of free online resources serving the theater community. It's the culmination of about 30 months of nurturing and hatching on the part of Rochelle and myself. It's a dynamic collection of articles by and about the indie theater world; a place where indie artists talk about themselves and what's on their minds while the rest of the Internet gets to eavesdrop. It was inspired by Leslie Halliwell's mammoth Filmgoers' Companion and Danny Peary's delightful coffee table book Close-Ups. It's a comprehensive and credible site for information about indie theater artists and indie theater companies--a place where artists who generally work under the radar will find a permament home ON the radar, where people can learn about who they are and what they do and why they're so special.

ITC (as I like to call it, for short) combines the breadth and collaborative nature of Wikipedia with the social interaction of the blogosphere, all within a curated controlled framework that ensures that all content is created by bona fide practitioners in the field and is accurate. The good folks here at NYIT called ITC "a true resource for our community" in their round-up of the Top Ten Events Affecting OOB in 2010.

ITC really got started about a year ago, when two of the prime movers over at 50/50 in 2020, Andrea Lepcio and Cindy Cooper, recruited about three dozen people to write a series of profiles of women playwrights. Their contributions became the cornerstone of ITC. It was wonderfully exciting to read these pieces as they came in. We'd given out guidelines to everyone as to what we were expecting, but--because these writers are such talented and inventive individuals--what we got exceeded by a mile what we were hoping for. The writers of these initial pieces included a lot of names you'll recognize, like Austin Pendleton, Jeffrey M. Jones, and Saviana Stanescu, and we're so grateful to them for getting ITC rolling.

Many more articles have followed. Chris Harcum is spearheading a section on performance artists, and so far he's brought us profiles by Mark Lonergan, Jeff Lewonczyk, and Alex Roe. Alice Reagan is about to launch a section on women directors. I've started working on a section devoted to indie theater company profiles. And as word has spread, other indie luminaries have started to contribute. This week alone we got new pieces in from Leslie Bramm, Case Aiken, and Daniel Talbott.

So this is where you come in. I am inviting you to write a profile of an indie theater artist or company for ITC. Choose someone--an actor, director, playwright, producer, stage manager, designer--whose work you know well: someone about whose work you can write fluently and knowledgably, someone whose merits and gifts you're ready to share with the world. ITC profiles answer the questions:

•  who is this artist (or company)?
• what is their work like?
• why is their work notable?

Email me to let me know who you will write about BEFORE you begin! That's mainly so I can make sure that your subject hasn't already been claimed by someone else; we don't want duplicate profiles right now.

Please note these guidelines before you choose:

1. Pick someone you can write about easily. ITC profiles are not interviews and they shouldn't require a lot of research. (Do check your facts, though.)
2. Do not pick someone you are too close to. We need to be somewhat objective. So you can't write about your wife or your boyfriend, and if you're an artistic director, you can't write about your own company. But you can and should write about someone you've worked with and/or admired over the years.
3. Like all of NYTE's projects, ITC is a grassroots endeavor that depends on volunteers to make it happen. But we want to acknowledge and thank all of our contributors, and so for every ITC article that you write, you will be entitled to one week of free banner advertising that will run on every ITC page on nytheatre.com.
4. Most important: email me before you start to write! I'll send you more detailed guidelines and info about how to proceed when I hear from you.

The best way to get a feel for the ITC's style and feel is to read some articles. So please do!

And if you have a good idea of who should write the profile of YOU -- I want to know that, too. Send me an email with that info, and we'll get the ball rolling.

The goal is to have every indie theater artist and indie theater company in the ITC. The sooner the better. I can't wait to hear from you.

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