Happy Podcasting

I often listen to podcasts when I'm walking or commuting. I realized on my way home Friday night that, without meaning to, I bookmark my weeks with two "happy" podcasts. 

Monday mornings, as I walk to the train station, I listen to the marvelous Happy Monday podcast, hosted by Josh Long and Sarah Parmenter. As soon as I hear the first couple of notes of the upbeat theme song I am in a good mood and ready for the week. The podcast is designed to be short, commute-sized, and features fantastic interviews with design and web practitioners. Today's edition features one of my favorites, Seth Godin. You should subscribe and listen. 

Friday evenings, as I walk home, I listen to a podcast that is in no way work related. Pop Culture Happy Hour is NPR's entertainment and pop culture round-table podcast featuring spirited discussions of movies, books, television, and nostalgia. It is hosted by Linda Holmes and features a witty, self-deprecating, group of pop culture loving friends and guests. Last week's episode was about the new tv show The Bridge and the many faces of Doctor Who. You should subscribe and listen. 

Beyond the "happy" in their titles both podcasts have a similar section. In each episode of both podcasts a recurring question is asked. For Happy Monday the question is "what is inspiring you this week?" and for Pop Culture Happy Hour the question is "what is making you happy this week?" Fantastic things to ponder as you begin and end a week. 

Theater Business Models: The Next Frontier→

Scott Walters, Professor of Drama at the University of North Carolina, encouraging arts organizations to really consider innovation in performing arts' business models: 

I’m a theatre historian, and as such I am prone to making sweeping generalizations without batting an eye, especially when I am trying to cover 2500 years of theatre history in a single semester course. Here’s an example of such a generality: theatre people spent the first 2000+ years innovating about theatre spaces: they invented the arena theatre of ancient campfire storytelling, the thrust stage of the Greeks and Elizabethans, the moveable stages of the medieval mysteries and commedia, the proscenium of the Italian Renaissance. Throughout most of that time, while storytelling techniques waxed and waned, generally speaking we had a fairly consistent form: plays written in verse with a presentational relationship between the actors and the audience (i.e., usually somebody talked directly to the audience), and a mixture of words, music, and dance. We then spent about 300 years getting really good at writing plays — Shakespeare, Moliere, etc. Then in the 20th century (if you extend the 20th century back to the 1870s), we spent most of our time developing “isms“: realism, naturalism, expressionism, symbolism, dadaism, theatricalism, absurdism, and so on. Postmodernism stands as the end point of the “ism” period, an admission that we’ve pretty much discovered all the isms there are and now all that’s left is to create mashups out of them.

So we up until now innovated about space and about form — what’s next? Well, in my opinion, the next area for innovation is (drum roll, please) in theatre’s business model. […] Back in 1947, Albert Einstein said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Well, without a new business model (or, better yet, many new models), I predict theatre will end up back gathered in a circle on the threshing floor telling stories around the fire, the theatrical equivalent of sticks and stones.

This is a subject that really fascinates me, particularly when I'm at board meetings for arts organizations.  Most artists work very hard to look ahead, to create ahead. Sure the great ones know the history of their craft very well, respect it, and they look ahead. On the other hand the boards and operations, in essence those artists' support systems, seem determined to continue to do their work, their art, only in ways that worked before.  

The fact is, as Walters mentions on his blog, most regional theaters, and I would venture most performing arts organizations, are working on the business model first made popular by Danny Newman's Subscribe Now!, first available in 1977. 

Marketing and advertising struggle with this as well, with a changing world that may not be interested in what they have to offer unless is presented in a better, more relatable way.

Technology on the other hand is all about innovative models, sometimes very risky but often revolutionary. Arts organizations need to start thinking a bit more like startups, reconsider how they get funding and how they make, market and sell their "product." We don't like to think about art as a product but the truth is the audience we need for the arts to survive thinks of it that way. 

We need to learn to trust the artists we align ourselves with that they will create worthwhile art, while they in turn have to learn to trust us, the behind the scenes, that we will create worthwhile ways of telling the world and make money. The status quo is no longer a successful business model. 

Should we put up with disruptive behavior at the theatre?→

Theatre Blog with Lyn Gardner: ​

In a perfect world, nobody should have to police anybody else in the theatre. Everybody should know that using mobile phones to text is as rude as talking throughout. Mobiles should stay off and out of sight, unless they are part of the performance or have been sanctioned by the theatre and are being used from specially designated tweet seats so as not to cause disruption to other members of the audience.

But they don't. There are plenty of people who seem to think that they haven't actually experienced something unless they have photographed and videoed it – and that extends to their theatregoing. I have seen members of the audience blatantly video the whole of both Dora the Explorer Live! and Jesus Christ Superstar, and ushers have watched them do it, entirely unperturbed. Maybe people are confused. If it's all right in Dora the Explorer, maybe it's OK in the new West End production of Passion Play, too?