Storefront Theater Toolkit: Empathy
In what I’m hoping will become a regular series on this blog, I’d like to showcase one of the tactics and tools that is always available to the storefront theater or artist to accomplish their self-development goals.
The recent hot topic of conversation in the Chicago Theater blogosphere has been the “regional theater disease” of hiring actors from NYC when we could be using our local pool of talent more. It’s an issue that riles great passion in many folks, and there’s a great deal of blame that gets thrown around on both sides of the equation. It’s also a problem that needs a lot of heads thinking about a viable solution and a roadmap to achieving that solution.
However you feel about the issue, if your goal is to really end the problem as quickly and permanently as possible, I find it’s often best to not start with a complete declaration of war and revolution against those making decisions. As much as I love to cheerlead on this site, I believe that real change happens faster and more completely when you use tactics of understanding and dialogue with the people that have the power to influence the situation. Speak Truth To Power, and have them Speak it Right Back. I believe these people are trying to serve the interests of the community, but the interests of the community are so complex that it is inevitable that they both succeed and fail somewhat depending on the perceived priorities of their organizations.
To put it simply: There isn’t currently a switch you can throw and make it a no-brainer to hire local talent over NYC talent. There’s crap in the road towards that beautiful shining city on the hill. We need to first identify what the roadblocks are. We need to realize that since we’re in the same car with the folks driving us there, we’re better served by pulling a better map out of the glove compartment than telling them to pull over in dangerous territory. This isn’t a father-knows-best argument - I’ll wager that everyone’s flying just as blind as we are. It’s just that theater itself is in trouble here, and the more we foster cooperation between individuals, small organizations, and large organizations, the more we can improve conditions for all of us.
So how to pick the brains of the folks currently in charge and figure out what they’re paying attention to? How do you convince them that your idea is something that is worth doing, something worth prioritizing? Empathy is hugely powerful in problem solving challenges of this scale. Start by reading what they’re saying, and understand what their focus is through their own words.
(The image here is of course from the hilariously dead-on regional-theater-spoof Slings and Arrows, which delves into these issues in a far more entertaining way that I’m doing here. See. It.)
Everyone involved in any complex problem is still a human, and most folks act from largely self-perpetuating motives (usually still with a bit of the faded youthful idealism of wanting to make the world a better place and correct injustice - so that’s an in with almost everyone). Researching, understanding, and redirecting those motives often can benefit all parties. Empathy gets two people butting heads to put down the rattling sabers and discuss contracts, concessions, grants and real action. Empathy helps win over groups of people at once - a positive message is almost always more effective than a negative one. Empathy helps you understand when someone could be receptive to an idea, and when they just need to grab a bite to eat and please get out of the way.
Empathy is a tool learned by every good intern on the first day. You’re new, you’re green, you can see that your entire career depends on just a few people noticing you and valuing you enough to give you recommendations and jobs. There are interns who rightly call this bullshit, and refuse to play the game. Then there are interns who watch everyone on staff like a hawk. They get to know the personalities of the staff, not just their roles and responsibilities. They see when an artistic director forgets her script everywhere she goes, and they know to be there to pick it up and hand it to her. They see where they can be useful and make the process easier. They see that the director of development is insecure about their interaction with the artistic staff, so they engage the director with conversation about their thoughts on the last play and help pump up their ego, self-confidence, and trust. They do all this so that they will earn the trust of those who have the power to make change. It’s a mutual exchange… the intern here isn’t lying to get ahead, they’re learning how the folks in powerful staff positions think, and engaging with that thought process for the time when they will be in power. They can learn simply by keeping the flow of creative energy in the room open.
Empathy is also a tool that can help a theater drastically improve its relationship with the audience. How does the audience feel when they walk into your space? What does your space tell them? How do your plays make them feel, and how do those feelings mesh with the artistic goals of your play? Empathy is an essential ingredient in fostering the trust that a subscriber feels for your theater.
So, back to the problem of actors: if you follow the chicken and the egg around, the real problem seems to be that there is a perception in the public that they should buy a ticket if a show is from New York or if the actors are from New York. The perception is that New York shows are good, and Chicago shows and the talent that creates them are hit and miss. This is certainly a false perception, but that perception is not being systematically repositioned to the Chicago public. In order to solve the problem, we have to understand why it exists and adjust the perception, slowly and patiently and with a minimum of blood and rolling heads.
This perception that Chicago needs star power in its plays is perpetuated by the immediate and constant need to provide high-risk and high-value arts programming in regional theaters that sells out or carries a minimum financial risk. If a regional theater casts an LA or NYC star in a gutsy show, the play will still sell out, and the financial reward will satisfy the board and create financial stability which means they have served the community by getting their public institution closer to self-sufficiency. Yes, it’s arguable that they haven’t served the long term needs of the community or the organization by failing to build a cult of stardom around the more sustainable local pool of actors. But long term needs and short term needs for any organization are almost ALWAYS at odds and need to be carefully balanced. There is no “suck” knob on a mixing board, and there’s no “local only” button in a regional theater’s speed dial.
So how do we change situations like this, with multiple motives that create systematic injustice over time? I take my lesson (yet again) from David Hare’s The Permanent Way, where Hare picks apart the various motives and personalities involved in British Rail’s disastrous and systematic string of train wrecks from ‘94 - ‘02. From the bereaved to the rail managers to the investment bankers who funded a failed privatization that resulted in reduced maintenance, track failure and lots of fatalities, Hare approaches the disastrous system simply by listening, and paints a path through empathy with each player towards systematic health. As it turns out, everyone wanted the same thing - a safer, efficient, and well-used rail system. Everyone in our community wants the same thing for our community - opportunities for all, artistic growth, and audience development.
The simplest technique to shepherding everyone’s competing interests turns out to be the reverse of a standard dramatic technique. If you seek to understand the motivations of the people and groups of people that you see blocking you from your goal, you can quickly defuse the drama and find the quickest path to a mutually beneficial compromise.
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Tags: Audience, Brains, Chicago, Community, Contracts, Development, Flow, Media, Perception, redirect, Storefront Theater
January 13th, 2008 at 11:59 am
the real problem seems to be that there is a perception in the public that they should buy a ticket if a show is from New York or if the actors are from New York. The perception is that New York shows are good, and Chicago shows and the talent that creates them are hit and miss.
The problem gets even more specific than that. A few months back, there was a minor firestorm of an argument in the comments section of Mr. Jones’ Theater Loop blog, about the perception of Equity vs. non-Equity actors, and their relative worth as artists. On one side, you had people who were actively disdainful of non-Equity performers, deriding them as “amateurs” incapable of creating quality theater on any sort of par with an Equity performer. On the other side, excuse me for being so dismissive, but on the other side you had logic.
The public sees an Equity performer as professional because they in fact spend all of their time as performers, even drawing paychecks for such work, and must therefore be professionals, and ipso facto they are always going to be better than the actors still struggling with 9-5 temp jobs on top of their theater careers.
However, the fine line between an Equity and non-Equity performer is simply acceptance into Equity, which comes in part by being fortunate enough to be cast in a show by an Equity company. As far as I know, Equity doesn’t require you to have been particularly good in that Equity show you did. There’s no conservatory training you go through to earn that Equity status.
Logic dictates, then, that the excellent Equity actor was likely also an excellent non-Equity actor, and the poor Equity actor (and yes, they exist, and yes, somebody will keep giving them work) was a poor non-Equity actor who was exactly what one Equity show ended up needing.
So the question is, why won’t the public take a chance on non-Equity shows with non-Equity actors, but will take a chance on those same actors once they become Equity?
January 13th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Bilal.
I guess what I’m driving at here is more of a strategy for overcoming these kinds of perception and motivation conflicts, not a further focusing of what the problems actually are. Given that we arrived at the present status quo through the almost total chaos of a bunch of individuals and individual companies, each one of us is going to have a vastly different take on what the most important problems are.
So we have a host of troubles, like the public perception that non-Equity theater means theater of diminished quality, and no way to crack the egg and address them. What’s more important to me is to develop a strategy that works to lobby the folks we need to influence - first, our entire potential audience, second, organizations like the League of Chicago Theaters, or LORT, or the City of Chicago. I think we spend a lot of energy on convincing people who already pretty much agree with us - the people we know, and have direct contact with. But these other folks have no apparent incentive to change their ways unless it suits them, and our job should be to find out and explain why change is worth investing in.
With any problem, there’s kind of a desperate attempt to express the problem clearly. You’ve done that:
That’s a good first step. The next step is: identify who has the power to change the situation. Now we’re not talking about the entire public here - we’re talking about people who have the perception that non-equity actors are too much of a risk to spend their money on - either they don’t go to much theater OR more likely they see theater exclusively at the big theaters but not small theaters. Convincing each of those individuals is incredibly complex and difficult for a large group of uncoordinated theaters to do, so let’s go for a much narrower target: the folks who control the dialogue with those big theater subscription pools, or organizations that represent smaller theater companies and have marketing budgets big enough to go directly to the public with a marketing campaign message.
Great. So we have the problem, and we have the people we need to influence. Now we’re stuck with another hurdle - we need to convince these people that it’s in their best interests to help us. Long-term value of supporting the development of non-equity talent is a pretty easy sell, but what about the short term? Why should Steppenwolf spend resources to convince their subscribers to also see non-equity theater? Why should the League spend most of its marketing budget on the segment of its membership that contributes the least to the financial stability of the organization?
Let’s get into their heads for a minute. What are they after? A bigger share of the market? Stability? Quality? Intimacy? A next-generation subscriber base? What can you offer them to also achieve the goal of exposing non-believers to a high-quality non-equity show?
Small storefronts and up-and-coming actors can offer the bigger theaters flexible and cheap solutions to their biggest problems through partnerships. The big theaters in town know that in town actors are cheaper, but not if they lose box office revenue in using them. They want to convince the audience and cultivate the chicago theater landscape just as much as we do, but they have a larger-scale business and artistic strategy in place that tends to steamroll its way through the season, and is much more difficult to redirect. If you had an audience that was more actively clamoring to see Chicago talent, I think the tune would change.
I think the solution lies within programs like the partnership of Silk Road and the Goodman Theater on their upcoming co-production of Yohen. Silk Road identified a need that the Goodman had - the absence of a key demographic within its diverse artistic collective - and offered itself as the perfect short-term solution. Silk Road benefits, and the Goodman benefits with minimum risk (since Yohen will be produced in the Silk Road space), and Goodman subscribers are exposed to what we all hope is a stellar non-equity production, which may help change their minds and build public interest in theaters of all sizes. This is the kind of empathy-led compromise that solves multiple problems in one easy step and theoretically benefits everyone involved.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Here’s to identifying and fulfilling needs. Here’s to treating one another like people. Here’s to focusing on nuture until nature catches up and does it right in the first place.