Old + White = Problem?

Just finished reading Mike Daisey excellent article in a Seattle Newspaper on how theatre failed america.

One of his main complaints, and it something almost everyone in the sector has a problem with, is the main audience for most regional or local theatres is profoundly old and deeply white.

I've been on both sides of the ledger, producing theatre for an audience that was African-American and had an average age of maybe 45 or so and now marketing theatre to an audience that averages maybe their mid 50's and is majority white.

So what I feel like I can safely say is that unless you specifically program art to meet the desires of some ethnic group, you audience is naturally going to skew older and whiter.

But now here's the bigger question . . . is that really a problem?

I am conflicted on this issue.  I look at myself first.  I'm neither old (I'm 31), nor white (I'm black), which makes me a bit of rare thing particularly on the theatre administration end.

I'm also not an avid theatre goer.  I may catch 10-12 theatre performances this year .  . . and that include the five I will go to at Court Theatre. 

For me, I am much more fascinated by how art is created and marketed.  The end product (the thing on stage) doesn't move me quite as much.

Put it this way, if you gave me a choice betwen watching a particularly interesting rehearsal or seeing the final product of that rehearsal, I'm just naturally more inclined to want to watch the rehearsal.

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But I'm digressing a bit, let's focus again on this issue of art, age and race.

I've heard a theory advanced by many people I respect in the arts that we are simply overreacting to the fact that our audiences are older.

They believe that theatres, museums, operas, etc. or simply things that older people are more inclined to do.  They have more money, more free time, etc.

So while we keep freakin' out about our old audiences dying off, are we forgetting that fact that the previously young people are also aging . . . and thus becoming the next natural arts audience?

I don't go to theatre much now when I'm 31.  Will that change when I'm 41?  Probably.  Will that really change when I'm 61?  Probably.

So would our lives in the arts become easier if we just accepted the idea that most art is staged by the young and consumed by the older?

Is it really a good idea to keep trying to pull people my age into the theatre, or should we just make sure theatres are around long enough to grab me when I'm 45?

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As for the race issue, consider this.  The biggest indicators of whether a person goes to arts as an adult are:

1.  Whether they participated in the arts as child

2.  Whether or not their parents attended the arts

3.  Their ability to afford a ticket to the event.

So if you take a person of any race and they score high in those three factors, chances are they consume some form of art on a regular basis.

For many people of color our ability to participate in the arts as children is severly limited, mostly because the arts have been squeezed out of most school curriculums.

Also, due to variety of socio-economic reasons, many of us can't afford the ticket prices.  So it doesn't exactly shock me that many people of color aren't huge arts consumers . . . but we can't forget the fact that many of us ARE arts consumers. 

Or at least we would be if arts organizations were producing stuff we want to see.

And there's the rub . . .

If you are an arts organization that wants to attract people of color, then YOU HAVE TO DO WORK THAT APPEALS TO THAT GROUP!

And don't give me that "theatre is universal" BS either.  Putting a few blacks or Hispanic folks into The Crucible doesn't change the fact that it was written by a white author and intended for a white audience. 

Are some of the themes in The Crucible universal?  Sure.  But when Mr. Miller was writing it he probably didn't evision a multi-ethnic audience watching his work.

So let me make it plain, if you want people of color to come to your artistic performances they you have to step outside your comfort zone and produce work that appeals to them.

And not just a show every few years . . . but something each and every year.

Because nothing builds audience more then producing work designed for that audience over and over again.

Is your arts organization willing to put in the time, energy and resources it takes to do that?

Comments

[Simon]

Hmm...I wonder if the problem is that we spend all our time marketing to the late 20's to late 30's crowd and don't think about the high school and early college kids who probably haven't seen enough (or any) boring, stuffy theatre to be turned off by it. Most of the mid-thirties crowd (my generation) are probably a lost cause as far as being converted to rabid fans of the art form.

Maybe we should get 'em while they're young and show them that a theatre experience can be edgy, sexy and, well, rock and roll, maybe convince some of them to make their own. What's gone around has got to come around sooner or later, and most theatre artists can probably tell a great story about how theatre grabbed them on their first young exposure to it.

[Adam]

I'm with you on that Simon.

That's part of the reason I think theatre outreach is so important, it helps connect young people to the joy of arts participation.

And as we discussed arts participation = arts consumption.

[Chris Casquilho]

I was moved by Daisey's comments, and I think those of us working in professional regional theater have seen the truth of his observations in action all around us. One of the challenges of working in this business is keeping ahead of the dismal creeping sensation that you are in an industry that our culture doesn't find valuable enough to allow committed theater professionals to live with dignity. I think a lot about the over-sized back office and the salaries therein compared to the low wages and itinerant work of the artists on stage. I don't know that it has ever been much different.

One of my favorite companies is Montana Shakespeare in the Parks - though seasonal, the actors are paid a very good wage. The shows are free to the public and very popular with audiences all over the state. MSIP is the only theatre many of these folks see and will ever see. Yeah, they're all white - but I know that there was one Samoan in Sweetgrass County once upon a time... The MSIP model is very successful and solves most of the problems Daisey mentions - and I suppose might run all year if the weather weren't so bad.

I don't know - it just seems that theatre has been so many things in the last few thousand years that to pin it down in its current incarnation and call it a failure seems a little morbid. If all the rich white folks dried up and blew away, I'd still play my banjo for people who listen, and maybe I'd do my old vaudeville bit with the juggling and fake mustache, singing all the Russian composers' names at the top of my lungs as fast as I can. It's good for a laugh.

[Scott Walters]

In agriculture, a monoculture is unhealthy and will soon die. For the health of our own organizations, it is very important to create diversity everywhere -- from the audience to the artists. The key, though, is to recognize that diversity is involves more than jyst race or just age -- it is class, gender, education level, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and so on.

[Toya]

Thank you! This is something me and my black theatre friends have been talking about for the longest!