At the recent Chicago Theater (anti-)Conference hosted by Theater Wit, I received a lot of questions about events. I’ve got some pretty strong feelings about them. I’ve planned about a zillion and I gotta say, I rarely love the process. But, I like going to events. I enjoy knocking back...
This past weekend at the Chicago Theatre anti-Conference (#ctac, if you feel like swimming up the Twitter stream), erstwhile arts-administrators-turned-funders Christy Uchida, Boeing Chicago’s Community Investor, and Paul Botts, from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, gave conference attendees the gift of some hard-won insights through a discussion entitled, “If...
There have been a number of conversations sparking up this week about the inherent value of theatre, the arts in society. A particularly vocal area has been about value of the arts in education. These conversations have been going on over at the #2amt hashtag as well as various blogs...
UPDATE on endowment possibilities at the end… I may be late to the party on this discussion; many 2amt commentators were featured in today’s You’ve Cott Mail dispatch. But one risk of Chase Community Giving has gone largely unexplored: what effects would a huge financial windfall have on a small...
These are the stories we’ve been following at 2amt this week: Chicago vs New York, development vs marketing, pricing too low vs too fair, theatre vs rock, patrons vs fans, competition vs opportunity, funding vs accessibility, -er vs -re. We even use some naughty words, mainly because they’re funny. Also,...
After the first sustained pause in the conversation between (sober) theatremakers the party question of choice is “what is your dream project?” It’s a fun topic and generally it means you don’t have to talk for a minute which limits your probability of saying something stupid. It works best for...
The space and conventions around a live performance determine whether it is fundamentally inclusive or exclusive. When an arts organization or producer decides to charge $100 for a ticket, and another decides to put on a show for free, either performance can be “legitimate” and draw a large crowd, if...
Or more precisely, just listen, as this is just the audio from Michael Kaiser’s appearance at Portland Center Stage last week. Whether you agree or disagree with his advice and observations, it’s worth a listen. Some of his advice applies more towards the large, institutional theatres and, in many ways,...