 NewbillieTV, ready, Vijay? We're good. We're live. So welcome everyone to our launch of this report in the intersection. Coppings are outside. I'm Polly Carl and I'm the director of the Center for Theater Comments here at Emerson College and very fortunate to be here with people who have been critically involved in the conversation that surround this report and participate in this report. And so I'm going to let you all introduce yourselves. I'm going to say just a couple of things. One quick little housekeeping thing, which is we are going to be out of here on the nose at 7 p.m. So I'm going to cut off any conversation because a reversal has to come in. But then we're going to go out to the lobby and we'll all be hanging around and whatever needs to continue can continue. So I just want you to know that I'm going to be obsessively pushing us right out the door at 7. All right. So Diane, you want to introduce yourself? We'll do that first. Sure. I'm Diane Ragsdale. I'm currently a PhD student, doctoral student at Erasmus University, studying cultural economics and doing research on the American theater and the evolving relationship between the commercial and nonprofit theater over about 50 years specifically. And formerly I was at Mellon and before that worked at a number of arts organizations and I had the great privilege to attend the meeting and write up the document. I'm Bob Rustin and I founded the Yale Repertory Theater in 1966 and with Rob Orchard, we founded the American Repertory Theater in 1970 and 1980. Since then I've been teaching at Suffolk University and also writing was left. And in fact we have a play that we're working on with Art Samerson called King of the Schnorrers which is going to get a reading under Robert and the Office of the Arts at Emerson College and we are the really proud and honored host of this kind of theater program. And I'm David Darin and I'm the director of artistic programs at Art Samerson and one of the founders of the Theater Commons and moderated the event that this report is released about. Just to note we were, all of us were at that event except for Rob and Rob, you just say what you did in 74 and 2000 and how you were involved in those two meetings. So this is the third meeting of three that we're discussing here but maybe just a minute. Yeah, there was a, the first meeting was in 1974 at Princeton University. I tried to find the right analogy for it. It was like a middle school dance. Your first middle school dance where you get into a room and wonder why am I here? Who are these people? I need to find my own corner. It was very awkward and the two realms really didn't dance much at that meeting. And then the, 26 years later in 2000 there was a convening at Harvard. Bob, you departed. You weren't there. And the two parties had gone to the senior prom, they got married, they were raising families and they were dealing with framboanches teenagers. And then this final session or the third of the convenings between the not-for-profit and the commercial theater was held in Washington DC in November of 2011. And at that point the question was should we keep this relationship going and we need a marriage counselor to try to find the truth. And we're done. And we're done. So now we're off to marriage counseling. So a couple things. The conversation tonight had kind of broken up into just talking a little bit about his door sizing at the background, how we came to the meeting, talk a little bit about shifting definitions of success, a little about how the commercial sector is involved and then sort of where the meeting ended. We're not going to cover it all. It's really comprehensive reports so I encourage you to actually read the whole thing. It's pretty amazing a conversation and for my 15 or more years making theater it's one of the most honest and sort of heartfelt conversations and Diane really captured it perfectly. So just to know we're not even going to really scratch the surface in the next 15 minutes. David, would you start off, and I know Diane, you can chime in here too, but can you just talk about how this gathering came about in DC, why did it seem in your mind like it was the right time to revisit this issue and 12 years had passed? Would you put that in context a little bit? Sure. A couple of pieces to this. How it came about in many ways starts with Diane Ragsdale. I had the great fortune of working with the support of the Mellon Foundation on a study that I did on the state of new plays and the introduction for new plays called the Gates of Opportunity. And in that process started to be a regular conversation with the Mellon Foundation and their goals around support for the new play sector and ultimately was able to launch this thing called the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena State. And one of the things that we were supported in doing was regular convening of the field around issues of importance to the new plays in the U.S. And in the first year we had done three and those were primarily, well the first was focused on diversity, diversity in new plays and then African American playwrights wanted to meet to talk about what stories were allowed to tell these days and then devising companies wanted to meet to talk about how the new play infrastructure was actually related to their challenges and whether they fit it or not and how it served and didn't. And so what started to happen was that we would listen to a group of people who were asking questions to try to support that investigation. And I was doing this work with Jamie Galoon and with Jay Matthew who are also part of the Center for Theater Commons here now. And at the same time Mellon and Diane I think your interest in this issue was starting to turn into serious interest like maybe you were going to spend your Ph.D. years. And so Mellon convened a conversation, very tiny conversation right at the same time that I was starting to think about maybe we should convene one in the Institute. We had five resident playwrights and one of the things that was really challenging for them was understanding the role for some of them. They were entering this set of conversations around relationships with commercial producers, their agents were pushing them in that direction. The theater we were all working in at Arena was starting to do more and more of this work and it was increasingly bizarre results. And so it seemed from our standpoint that it was the right time to actually sit down and talk about these questions just very personally from what it was that was going on in our place. Diane at the same time organized this very small, very powerful lunch at the Mellon Foundation. Really quietly off the record but that was the moment where Gregory Mosher and Rocco Lambson and Rocco you know he's now the chairman of the NEA but he was a commercial producer for many years prior to taking that job and still he'll return to it when he comes out. And as we find out, a longer history with this issue than probably anybody. And he had written a series of editorials and Gregory Mosher had attacked him as being wrong around this issue. Rocco was calling danger danger back in the eighties. And Gregory wrote an editorial back saying no you're wrong and they had a public argument about this. So we get to this luncheon after all these years of these two sides having been staked out like you know the two sides of the you know Hadfields and McCoy's and Mosher very quietly started the meeting by saying I just have to say back then I didn't see it but you were right. And I'm here to say you were right and let's start from there. And that was like holy crow it's time to have a real conversation. And he brought the article he put on the table and said I just want to say you were right. And so that meeting was really powerful and it was clear that something else needed to bubble up from that amount of energy so we tried to recreate that moment but with a wider circle of people here and then they started off sharing their stories about how you know what they had said at the time and where they thought it had gone. They said a tone of generosity and authenticity there by sharing their own personal you know the process and their own concerns and discomforts about their own opinions and how they changed not just about the behavior but about for themselves how their thinking had evolved. So that's kind of where it came from and the second thing that was happening and I will throw this in there because it's important about who we are we also had a fellowship program there where we were training new producers we were running a producers fellowship program through this institute and one of the producers in that fellowship program his focus was on commercial work and so he wanted to produce a convening on this intersection we had all this evidence at arena that the results are all over the place and the energy goes scattered in many different directions and this thing had happened which really said ok well let's do it through the institute let's do it at arena let's focus it on new place and so that was what we did. Diane can you talk a little bit about I mean two things you know one I just think it would be interesting for people to hear a little bit about your methodology putting this together because it's a pretty rigorous methodology I had the pleasure of being one of the people at work with Diane to edit the piece and I think I changed the period once and I got like a you know 700 word email back saying that period was over here so it's really very rigorous it was a really rigorous editing process but if you could talk about that and also just as the person who tried to sit back in that meeting objectively can you talk a little bit about just what surprised you as you both sat there but also went back through all that material. Sure well from a methodological standpoint I mean there are a couple of things that were top of mind as I was putting it together remember we had some initial emails to say well what what kind of report is this going to be because there you know there are many ways you can document something and I at the time that the convening happened the decision was made to close the meeting in part because there was it was acknowledged that it was going to be important for people to be able to talk candidly about their concerns to the degree that they've had from it and everyone felt that if the press were sitting there hanging on every word or if it was even a performance for 250 people it would be very difficult for people to speak candidly however the choice to close the meeting was controversial and in part because the institute had a historic precedent for opening up all of its meetings but also because this is a rather sensational topic for some some people don't actually it's not on anybody but some people's radar at all but for some press it was a rather controversial topic and there was a sense that people should be allowed to know what was happening with that in mind I felt that it was really important to let the participants speak for themselves and to share as kind of straightforwardly as possible the arc of that meeting trying only to kind of coalesce certain parts under themes in order to help the reader kind of tease out what were the major points that were made but without kind of coming in with a big slant or judgment on what happened because I wanted both the participants to feel as though their story were accurately told but I also wanted readers there were people who were questioning you know whether I should even document and I remember that but people were like well why should Diane Ragsdale be trusted to tell the story and you know it's true I mean why should anyone be trusted to tell a story in some ways and so I didn't want to betray that and so in large part when you read the report and you guys were there it follows quite closely the actual arc of the meeting in the hope is that it will bring readers into the room and really be able to understand that these 25 people were wrestling with these issues I mean these are complex issues and they can't be sort of simply sort of just pick up the report and go well it's clear that these deals are bad and we just shouldn't do that or I think it's fine you know which is kind of the tender of the 2000 meeting like well you know we need the money and it's probably not going to do much harm so let's just let the sleeping dogs lie it's more complex than that and I think as you read the report you see you really get a sense of individuals struggling with these issues both moral and legal issues I think that come up so that has a lot to do with why it's structured the way it is why you sort of read a lot of the first person sort of account and as I sat there and listened I think I went up to Polly at one point during the meeting and said is it just me or I wonder if everyone realizes how what they're saying because I was struck by the fact that people were speaking quite candidly about you know things like their relationship to money and how their own personal values had changed over time and how this affected their choices and a recognition of the disconnect between how they were perhaps behaving now their practices now and what they believed in when they got into the theater in the first place and that seemed to me to be the real step forward from the last meeting which is that in 2000 it seemed as though there was not space for people to say you know actually I'm worried about this and the sense of will these deals corrupt nonprofits I think nobody thinks that these are individuals I don't think everybody is thinking these are individuals that are just so greedy that they're just going to do things that are unethical you know just because they don't have a good sense or the morals to do otherwise I think I don't think that's the issue but I think that the corruption which the group seemed to sort of arrive at was this very thing that Franco really had put his finger on a long time ago which is the thing that's going to get corrupted is your definition of success and if you can't as a nonprofit theater hold up an alternative value system and an alternative definition of success in Broadway becomes the way you define success in the nonprofit sector and all of the things we associate with Broadway New York Times Reviews, celebrities, Tony Awards, etc then you've kind of lost your center and that's the thing that gets corrupted and that's the thing that I think this room acknowledged has been corrupted and yet in 2000 I think the sense of is there corruption that was kind of like now there's not changed the subject so to me that was kind of like when I stood back that was the thing to me that seemed really meaningful about this meeting was that sense of yeah that has changed and perhaps these deals haven't caused that change I mean you could say but it seems to be part of that shift yeah I mean to that and you know I wonder about just to think a little bit more about the trajectory of when it all started and where we are now you're quoted in the book as saying I'm going to just read this brief quote the geography of the American theater which we're neglecting to talk about is from idealism, obscurity, passion, commitment to a certain modicum of fame to being accepted and going after the next piece that's going to get you even more accepted it happens to individuals, it happens to playwrights and you're really referencing a shift in sort of where the idealism of the beginnings of the regional theater movement and not in the private theater movement to this moment where our definitions are starting to slide about why we're involved and you could talk more about that kind of historical shift well there are reasons for it of course and they're always partly economic not entirely economic but but this movement was really started as an alternative to Broadway and not as an extension to Broadway and the last thing in the world we expected it to be was to be a kind of a tryout grounds for Broadway musicals and Broadway plays we were going to create our own theater which established the commonality and the family and the collective nature of theater as opposed to the pickup cast and the star driven and sometimes commercially driven quality of the New York theater and that first TCG conference is something I wrote about in the times and my title was Broadway and the non-profit theater A Misaligned and from the very beginning I really and to this day I see this as a mismarriage as a mismating something that really changes the nature of of both movements now our movement essentially was really built on the notion of company I cannot emphasize this enough even though there are maybe no more than one or two or three companies left in the country but it was the notion of company that that was what that gave us our particular quality and difference from the commercial theater and we didn't invent this idea if you look at history all the great theaters were companies let's just start with Shakespeare Shakespeare's had the Lord Chamberlain's company a collection of actors and playwrights and let us assume designers as well prop people who had their audience and were familiar with their audience their audience was familiar with them and they were deeply engaged in evolving productions out of their company with their playwrights I'm teaching a script breakdown of Hamlet now it's at Suffolk where I am at the moment and I was very interested in these 12 lines that Hamlet wrote you know he said can you do 12 lines or so that I'll write for you and then he gives, I was interested in what the 12 lines were in the play The Murder of Gonzaga and I began to get an idea from the fact that he addresses the actors and you know that famous speech speak the speech I pray that as I wrote it trippingly on the tongue and do not mouth it as some plays do or else I'd rather just as leave the town cry as spoke by lines and do not saw the edge and let those clowns speak no more than a sit down this is a playwright talking to the actors of the company it's not just Hamlet talking to the player king it's Shakespeare talking to his fellow actors saying you're screwing up my play and you give me a little too much Fran Boyance you know don't offend lines I wrote the lines I intend to hear them as they were written every playwright has this in play now this is a comedy from Cez and from there we go to a succession of companies for example the Moscow Art Theatre Company and Stanislavski and Chekhov and then we go to the Berlin Ensemble and Bertolt Brecht who's both a director and a playwright and the interesting thing about most of these theaters especially as we get into the modern period is that they have training units so the Moscow Art Theatre has a school which is training all the theater so young blood will come in and Nina will not be played by a 75 year old woman who once had the role for the last 50 years but rather by a newly trained young woman who can play that part and the old Nina will go on to play Madame Marcadne so there was a kind of organic quality going on in this kind of theater where we had a collective that the actors knew each other's plays knew had shortcuts in rehearsal had a connection with the playwright could indeed suggest changes in the plays even though Shakespeare didn't like that but most playwrights do respond to that according to how they would play it best or looking at the consistency of their own characters so you have a training ground and you have a collective company and you have an audience which is part of that family you get an audience that comes to your theater not to see a hit or a flop but comes to see a succession of plays which if the the artistic director is very good has related those plays one to the other to make some kind of statement so it's not whether this play is successful or that play is successful but you come to see actors mutating changing, transforming from part to part and it even changes the whole nature of the acting so that instead of just doing versions of yourself as the acting studio would have us do which is great for the movies you transform you are unrecognizable ideally from one part to the other and I admit that one of the one of the lapses and fallbacks of this kind of situation is the problem that you see an actor over and over again you get tired of him, you get tired of her but if the actor is any good you will not recognize him and you will not recognize him and my best example is Meryl Streep on the stage of the Yale Repertory Theatre doing a play called The Idiots Karamazov by a fellow student named Christopher Durant another fellow student named Alvin Lerato and she was in her third year and she was completely unrecognizable she had a ward on her nose she had a grey hair she was in a wheelchair and she was playing Constance Garten at the Ancient Translatorix as it was called and she was saying to the audience go home, go home, go home and it was a wonderful evolution of a young woman into an old woman and that was the ideal for this kind of theatre so I longed for that and I don't see it anymore and I noticed that each major theatre began to dissolve and become commercial once it sent a piece of the company to New York with a play and that was the end of the company it happened with the long walk it happened with the Guthrie it happened with any number of theatres around the country and if we can get back to a situation where companies will be supported economically by the culture and by the National Endowment for the Arts by the Mellon Foundation which by the way is one of the most if not the most enlightened arts foundations in the country not in the world and Diane Ragsdale has been a fantastic force in that foundation but what we need is economic support because ultimately everything you see that's going wrong if you think it's going wrong with the non-profit theatre is going wrong for economic reasons I don't care about the company idea I think those ideals have been reinvented by a younger generation and you see that now in some of these smaller ensemble companies that are devoted to that kind of collective ideal that are staying together that do know that shorthand that are capable of transforming and that's an encouraging sign for me it may not be the case in the larger institutional structures but it is bubbling up through some of these younger ensemble companies and I think the word misalliance is a right one because if you go back and you look at some fundamentals that relate to the for-profit and the not-for-profit world I mean why do we have these two worlds I mean why is there a theatre that exists in the not-for-profit world and a theatre that exists in the for-profit world and there are advantages for the not-for-profits because they have tax advantages they can receive contributions and the government has given anointed these groups as not-for-profit that's a motive thing they're organized not-for-profit and they're given these various tax advantages because the government is saying that they are providing a service to the public that could not be provided if they were structured for the purposes of making a profit not only in culture but it exists in human services in health and in education so the misalliance is a fundamental one between the not-for-profit world and the for-profit world it is built into their structure the for-profit world exists with one measure of success only and I'm criticizing it it's pure, it's simple it's clean and it's there to make a profit so a production that goes through the for-profit commercial channel exists as long as it's making a profit and the producer, the commercial producer has a fiduciary responsibility to shepherd that production along and to make choices that maximize the profit and as soon as it stops making a profit it closes clear and simple the measure of success is much more complicated and that I think is what began to be part of an interesting discussion in Washington so this intersection is really a crossroad alright and the crossroad is full of potential for collision you can't deny the basic fundamental foundational aspects of this one is a marketplace and it's transactional and totally aligned with money and the other has a larger ideal to it and that's where I think we constantly have to ask ourselves those of us who are involved in leadership roles and institutions in the not-for-profit world how are we distinct from the for-profit world what is the service to the public that we are providing and what are our ideals and what is the ethical nature on which we are operating and we have a mission and we need to constantly and I think it might be important for organizations who articulate as they do their mission statement but what's their value statement what's their ethical statement and more importantly how do they measure success and then I think you are in a position to understand but we are relying upon each other there is a lot of synergy between these two worlds inevitably everybody wants the work to originate from the not-for-profit world or originate solely in the commercial Broadway world isn't it wonderful if it just has a life and everybody gets a chance to see it and younger artists and risks can be taken and there is a natural kind of very constructive and positive relationship between the flow of work that comes in maybe in the not-for-profit world where they are annotated to this where they can embrace younger talent in the commercial world there was a lot of discussion in this report that I agree people were incredibly frank and beautifully articulated about the need that the commercial world has to I mean it's a far team I don't want to put it in those major and minor terms it's not they are totally different but there needs to be there needs to be there needs to be a healthy relationship and that's what they were struggling to find but a lot of it gets corrupted by transactions and materials and I say if the commercial theaters producers want there to be a relationship with the not-for-profit world then every time a play emerges in a successful situation in the commercial world that that commercial producer has an obligation to acknowledge and to compensate every other theater that had anything to do with developing that play and if producers did that they would change the whole atmosphere between the two worlds I think this sort of crowding out of the cultural value of not-for-profits that resonates for me because not-for-profit it's easy to just turn that into well as long as we're not making money maybe we're doing okay but it's really are you continuing to fulfill your social mission David I wonder if you would remember that point with the discussion of coming into the intersection what the commercial producers want and what the non-profits want I remember you were having that conversation at the time where some of the collisions because the two come in with different purposes well I mean yes the commercial and I'm someone who thinks the the terms of engagement are off and they are corrupted and they are dangerous and they're hot and yet we're all in one ecology and so for me the whole purpose of this conversation was how can we be responsible respectful maintain our value sets and tech as we move through this intersection how do we do this with integrity and recognizing that that's not our primary concern right now in the way that we're behaving so in this word behavior actually became an issue people saying well you say it's a behavior there you're already implying that there's something wrong with it it's not a behavior it's a business relationship or whatever they're all trying to say it's not behavior but as the commercial producers are approaching this intersection they are trying to get for as little money as possible as good an idea of how the play is going to succeed in the world in the marketplace and what needs to happen to succeed in the marketplace as cheaply as possible they get that from an audience reaction they can't do it in a studio people have to actually buy tickets and so they have to have an audience that's buying tickets for them to know what they're learning but what they're going when they go through that intersection out the other side is for the commercial success of this for themselves for the artists who made it they're going for this very long life that returns money for a really long time in big numbers and they're legally obligated to do it that's exactly right and it's clean it's clear it's really everybody who knows that's what's going on and it's fine everybody signed up for it and hoping that it succeeds nobody goes into it uncomfortable because it's really clear you're trying to get through and in that intersection when they're in the regional theaters in the non-profit world they're trying to get through that as clearly as cheaply as possible information at the lowest cost the most information at the lowest cost and on the other side you have the non-profit organization which it's trajectory it's not financial success it's a long term conversation with the community and the artist that it makes work with and they're trying to find how is the extension of this relationship between our stage and our community overtime how are we going to keep that vibe how are we going to make that a vibrant artistic space how are we going to stay relevant to the world how are we going to make it sound financially and they're moving through so here comes the commercial producer going right down that up and the non-profit producer is going along this way and they're trying to have this trajectory that's related to their community to the artist that they're working with and to I have to read this quote because it's so on my mind and the sustainability of that and the institution of the infrastructure and Zelda Zelda when non-profit status was conferred on theaters there was a big debate on Capitol Hill and there was testimony requested for why should it be extended to theaters it already existed in certain realms it did not exist in the theater but Zelda who founded arena stage once we made the choice to produce our plays not to recoup an investment but to recoup some corner of the universe for our understanding and enlargement we entered the same world as the university the museum, the church and became like them an instrument of civilization right so here comes this car going that way that's trying to recoup some corner of the universe as an instrument of our civilization and they need to sustain that and worry they're trying to do this thing that has nothing to do with that thing and somewhere in the middle they come into that intersection together and how does everybody get through that in a way that has integrity that they get where they're going financially and the kind of success, global success artists need that success it's nobody saying they don't or just can merit it people can have it and this other thing going that way a sustained effort to recoup some corner of the universe and David it seems to me, do you think this is accurate that what you see is that that longer term ambition of the non-profit can get derailed because right there then suddenly the measures of success are short term and did it sell out did we get the broad way if I can propose the fact that the non-profits don't put their head in the sand they're really interested in ending up in the black and we work very hard to raise money and to attract audiences and impossible to get money from commercial producers but you don't get it by having them hand you a project and saying would you try this out and because they're going to be around nosing around wanting to have some impact on it and some influence on it so if you get a project from a commercial producer and that commercial producer wants to have a say that you've got to drop it it's no longer yours but if you put on a show and it's successful let's say and broadway gets interested in it and Rob was brilliant with this you don't make an agreement with the broadway producer before you put the show on you make the agreement after the show and to take this example with Big River which was misrepresented in the globe because it said that was the first move to broadway we really moved to broadway we didn't move that show to broadway we did that show and Rocco Landisman had given us the original play it was an adaptation of Huckleberry Finn by a former student of mine named Bill Haukman Rocco Landisman was a former student of mine at the same time so this was Pham coming back and let's do this play and then Rocco said oh by the way I think it would be good as a musical I said fine let me ask some of the people I know who write music and I asked James Taylor and I asked Carl Simon and I asked her sister Lily Simon and none of them could do it and he said I know a composer named Roger Miller I said I never heard of him he said well listen to this and he played in a gang bang me and I liked it very much I said okay he went out there got six songs and he brought them back and Roger Miller wrote the music for our musical and then we had Desmakinoff who was with La Jolla Theatre at the time the artistic director directing it Heidi Landisman, former wife of Rocco was doing the set she was a great set designer and then it moved to La Jolla with a completely different cast because we still had our company doing other plays that cast then went to Broadway it was La Jolla production that went to Broadway but Rob had wrangled an agreement with the Rocco who was producing that to the effect that we got a certain royalty we I think got as much as $300,000 from that production without ever signing over our lives for it and it's also true of actors the actors want to go to Broadway God bless them if the playwrights want to go to Broadway God bless them the fact is that they are trained for non-profit theatre if they function in non-profit theatre Meryl comes back Christopher Walken comes back Sigourney Weaver comes back they all come back to their roots and they're happy to be there and so they can spread themselves the same thing with the playwrights our first year at Yale our second year at Yale we had a playwrights program which we wangled out of RCA they've formally been giving it for television that's what's happening at Yale on those days we were training for theatre so we got RCA to give us money for something called Writing for the Camper and we called Sam Shepard David Mammoth when they were kids Barbara Garson Megan Terry, John Ware Lanford Wilson and we had an incredible group of playwrights there and they would begin to write plays for us we got a lot of plays out of Sam Shepard a lot of plays out of David Mammoth and so on and this was this was a loyalty that they owed to us and they gave to us at the same time that they were doing Glenn Garrigan on Broadway so that can work but it won't work if you make agreements beforehand to let the commercial producer have a part in the production so there's a following on this just to make sure it's clear these distinctions because what's happening now and what is partly the disturbing piece of this is that the rights to a project are actually owned by the commercial producer at the outset and the commercial producer goes to the non-profit and they say I have the rights to project S let's call it Ray because that's one of the big ones I have the rights to this project and I'm not sure this is exactly the way Ray went but so let's pick one that it is Little Mary, Little Miss Sunshine I have the rights to the movie Little Miss Sunshine and I want to make a Broadway musical out of it and it would be a lot cheaper for me if you, La Jolla, produced the first production of Little Miss Sunshine and I would give you the money that it costs you to produce this play because it's going to cost you less than it would cost me to do it myself and I'm going to give you a certain amount however they work that out I'm going to hold the rights and so we're going to hire now the director but I'm going to tell you who the director is because that's the director I want to work with and I'm not sure that maybe it doesn't even matter to the commercial producer it doesn't need to matter who the director is who the director is that the non-profit wants they own the rights so they get to keep saying we like those actors, we don't like those actors we like that set, we don't like that set we like the production schedule we don't like the production schedule we like the marketing materials we don't like the marketing materials and over and over and over and over those things that are supposed to be the conversation with their community about recouping some corn in the universe they've handed over all that responsibility to the commercial producer what was really interesting in the conversation in the meeting was that the commercial producers were saying yes but we're artists too and you and the non-profit world won't let us be artists you make us the money bags, you make us the bad guys but we are coming to you with the best projects you wouldn't do this project if you didn't pick this you didn't get the rights to it there would be no next to normal if there hadn't been David's go years and hundreds and hundreds of thousands dollars so they don't see themselves as the money bags just write the check and disappear, they're invested artistically and they feel they have an artistic voice in the developmental process and the non-profit producers are saying and for good reason no actually we have a responsibility this 501c3 we're the stewards of that and it's going this way for a different purpose that we have to make those artistic decisions and then the money doesn't, you don't get the money and you don't get the opportunity and where where it gets tweaked is in the right end there when the artistic director of the non-profit says okay we will do this project together but since the commercial producers holding the rights and the commercial producers paying for it and the long future, financial future goes that way they control that all of the artists who are involved are really reporting to the producer not to the artistic director of the non-profit there is no way for Molly Smith to stand there in arena and say I actually don't like the choices you're making about the script now and I would like another script conference because I think it's rewriters thrown up the rest she cannot say that, she can say it nobody has to listen to her and that's everybody, I happen to be working at arena that's I use Molly not Molly's not some outlier this is just what happens that's why I think the big problem comes the producers are coming with the rights, the commercial producers are coming with the rights to the projects and then they are buying the tax exemption of the non-profit in order to do the thing more cheaply and then they're driving on through and making their success with it and often they're kicking back a percentage like relationships that do create some return but the cars come in going this way then it goes that way and in the middle they've used non-profit exemptions for which there's a very specific purpose which is to recoup a corner of the universe. I want to just jump in with one last question related to this and then we'll have like a couple minutes of conversation then we can continue it out Oscar is just in terms of this question of the pressures on the non-profit and why they make these deals so Oscar is just who's the artistic director at the public theater in New York he said during our gathering we should be clear that this cultural shift and by cultural shift he's referring to the sort of more transactional nature of the culture we should be clear that this cultural shift is not something that could be changed by a heroic chairman of the NEA this is happening across the world and there's a distinction that I just want to make really clear there is the addiction there is the drug there is the fact that of course the Tony Awards are fun and the acclaim and all that that temptation is a personal temptation that each of us has got to wrestle with it's our job to wrestle with it but there's also the question of the money and following it which is different it's not about how tempting it is it's about the fact that those of us who are charged with running institutions are charged with making those institutions succeed and be healthy because if they aren't no artist are going to get paid and no art is going to happen and I just wonder if you can respond to that you know, consistently from the artistic directors in that meeting was the unbelievable pressure to continue to perpetuate these incredibly large institutions that it's not just about temptation but it's really about the survival of the institution that's true, I mean but it's always been about that I mean it's never been easy yes, there have been times when there's more money coming from the government and when the foundation and there was a different coalition of funding sources in place and they shifted and they changed and nonprofit organizations are very nimble in that regard it's always that pressure it's true that our culture is more transactional now and the marketplace is a heavier influence but the other part of the money which gets back to I just like to make a recommendation because I think there's been a lot of talk about this there are things that can be done and I hinted at it before and Big River is a good example because yes, we were able to negotiate a percentage of the weekly process on that but you know what, La Jolla really should have had some of that too because the producer was only willing to give away that percent and a half that percent and a quarter to us because we negotiated it and then it went to La Jolla and it morphed, it got six more songs became a full-fledged musical and it went to New York and it was unfair it was just simply unfair and so if in this world we have for the not-for-profit institutional theater it's the same thing that the playwrights have the playwrights have which stipulates certain limitations and rules about how the commercial theater has a relationship and transacts a relationship with the writer give you the same thing if some other guild is invented and presents the not-for-profit theater world and every time a play that's read or written before finds its way into that commercial world that there is a rule that you take that percent and a half or that percent and a quarter and you divvy it up among theaters that had a seminal influence on the development of that writer or the development of that play and then the boards and the leaderships of these not-for-profit theaters can relax because it's going to be fair it's going to happen after that particular corner of the commodity of that particular project and then the energy flows much more possibly back up between the two realms there is a model for that which was the August Wilson's play August Wilson used to move his plays from the L. Repertory Theater on the Lloyd Richard St. to Goodman Theater and then to another theater on its way to Broadway and I imagine that all those theaters to some extent, maybe I'm wrong in that movement but that was a form of theater which I called Mac Theater after McDonald's I didn't like it, it just seemed to me to sell out by the theaters to a popular playwright a very good playwright but a popular one and you were not really doing your own work you were doing shared work as it were and you were losing your sense of your own identity as a theater in this transaction this topic of nonprofit co-productions came up with the meeting as well and it was interesting that the artistic directors were almost equally as concerned about that practice and so we tend to think oh this is just about commercial nonprofit partnerships but actually anytime I mean people go to work for nonprofit theaters because they want to make the work they want to make the work there they don't necessarily want to have a piece come in from another theater but it's already been 95% produced and then just kind of gets trucked in to the next theater and the next theater I think that's another interesting issue to be grappled with but building on something you said David about you were sort of describing these counter purposes I think it's also important to acknowledge that these deals get put together in different ways but not all of the commercial producers are coming in already with a date set on Broadway controlling everything there are some who seem to be more sincerely trying to build partnerships and we will have a little more give and take with the nonprofit partners and I think that's really interesting in my research I'm really trying to understand how the different ways these deals get put together affects how the process the artistic process, creative process and the product and one thing that one of the commercial producers Michael David said a few times was that the most adulterating aspect was when you went into these partnerships already having set a date on Broadway to his mind that's the thing that adulterates the relationship right because you kind of you're definitely trying to hit that hole as opposed to the Big River model which listening to the story at the meeting it seems there was this sincere idea gosh maybe we've got something here but we need to go work it out somewhere first and they worked with the nonprofit that was sincerely interested in the product as well the play and then gosh that went pretty well we should probably keep working on it though let's go to another one and it was after that second production that they determined to go to Broadway likewise I think we're all familiar with the success of August Osage County which we talked about today that was a great example of a nonprofit sincerely building a work that it passionately believed in and after its success regionally a determination being made that it could transfer I don't even know if it transferred with commercial support or if it transferred on its own it did but in that case it's really it seems pure right and so I think this is also the thing that I think we have to another reason that the meeting is worthwhile and I think continuing to look at this issue is worthwhile is because it does seem to matter how they get put together and at what point the partnership happens and at what point enhancement money comes in or not at what point you decide you're going to book a space you know I would say the example of next to normal is a really instructive one and an important one for me in my understanding of this because that show had been produced at second stage with commercial support and it was hoped that it would go to Broadway and it wasn't ready to go to Broadway and it would have just sort of go away and maybe been done in the regional theaters eventually but and we were interested in the show we liked the show and knew it was needed work and we called about the show and that call went to David Stone who had the rights and David Stone was also interested in developing the show and so a deal was struck around our production to continue to develop that show toward his goals but we came into it wanting to work on the show and we made the production he enhanced the production to the extent that it was outside of our capacity as a nonprofit to pay the salaries that needed to be paid to the company that had made it to re-orchestrate but there were all kinds of things that were bigger than what we could do it's small musical but we but he paid for those we paid for the things that we would normally pay for and then the show left us and we did it as part of our relationship to our audience and it went on to another success and we actually earned some money and we earned some money but that seems like that I think we made it through the intersection everybody intact in that one You know one thing I want to, Rob you were sort of putting forward this idea of a shared maybe more equitable share of the loyalties from these deals but one thing that did come up in this meeting is that to some degree it seems that enhancement enhancement money has been going up you know the amounts of enhancement paid it seems to be going up and really it's gone from like 100,000 50,000 you know back in the 80s to some of these deals now multi-million dollar, million, two million dollar deals maybe some of you know Wasn't it like a 12 million dollar deal that fell apart? I mean the amount of enhancement paid to the nonprofit and at one point in the meeting it's brought up somebody says well I think David you asked what's causing that number to go up is that just increased production costs and they say yeah that's part of it some of it might just be nonprofits that are getting sort of more aggressive in making their deals but also perhaps increased reliance on this money to cover operating right so it's not just covering the additional costs that the nonprofit needs to cover in order to do a musical let's say as a person will play but really a dependence on having to hit a certain line in the budget every year and I think that's an area that is worth paying attention to right at the point when there's a line item in the budget that says X amount from enhancement or commercial deals meaning that you really going to have to have those relationships year after year that to me you know I wonder whether that could create an unhealthy dependence and even so I don't even hear about your sort of proposal to share these royalties I wonder would there be a risk do you think that some theaters might actually get kind of dependent on that revenue and it's not a theoretical risk it's actually happening and theaters are finding ways to mask enhancement because they're embarrassed about getting it so they say they can actually say I'm not getting any enhancement money none of that money is flowing through my books but oh by the way we know that the producer is paying this whole echelon cost out of his own office and then they have enhancement is a very very dangerous thing and then you have the measure of success being this Broadway conduit and you have board members who make their money in transactional culture and they're going to want it and it just feeds on it and then you get board members investing in the production spirit that the theater is doing that they go on Broadway and then you get artistic directors who independently of their institutions are working on commercial projects and are raising money from their board members for those commercial projects it is mind blowing there was a period historic presidents two glorious periods of for non-profit theater and they had to do with the time when there was money for non-profit theater the most obvious one was recently the non-profit movie in the 60s and the emergence of the national down for the arts as a major force in funding them and the reason it emerged was a simple thing it was spotting the Russians got into space before we did and the government panicked and for some reason began to support the arts and the humanities and education and all those things that don't get normally supported and for a period there and science right and Nixon and for a period there this endowment was going up and up and up they were giving us money for company work they were endowing company work for us the other precedent before that was the federal theater and that too was government sponsored it lasted only four years it was led by the most extraordinary figures in all American theater history and that was Holly Flanagan Davis and she created almost 400 theaters in this country of all types they had black theaters they had Jewish theaters they had Latino theaters they had the mercury theater and housing which is a company doing classical work it lasted four years they thought it was communist just like you know with Serrano and April Thawthorpe the congress put their thumbs down on it and brought Holly up to testify on the communist nature of her undertakings and they asked her if Christopher Marlowe was a communist and she said let it be known that Christopher Marlowe was the greatest playwright after Shakespeare over the years period there also was the group theater the group theater was a company of great actors who also trained they trained under Lee Strasberg who was one of the directors of the theater and they had Stella Adler they had Luther Adler they had Jayle Wood-Romberg they had Malaya Kazan they had Cliffidote Dets they had Francho Tone they had an extraordinary company Francis Farmer it was a commercial company they didn't have a non-profit company stand and Clureman in his book The Fervent Years laments and regrets the fact that they were a non-commercial operation forced to function under a commercial umbrella as a result it only lasted nine years and all of their people ultimately went to Hollywood like Francho Tone and not Malaya Kazan who then came back to Broadway became a director Stella Adler remained as an actress or theater actress Luther Adler remained a theater actor as well as a movie actor they came back to do what they were trained to do but there was that commercial component that ruined them they couldn't balance their budget so money remains the issue and money has to be provided by the government I don't know if it'll ever happen but it's the only way our theaters are going to survive and on that note we're going to move outside I wanted to make sure that we're respectful of the artists so just to couple things we'll move outside and continue the conversation out there we are selling books just so you know that this is a report that we felt everyone should have access to so you can download it for free on iTunes you can download it for 99 cents on Kindle I am not a very good marketer in that regard that said it helps us if you buy the book it was an enormously expensive study to put together and just in terms of all the work that went into it and all of we have some like little haul-around mugs all of those things that money just goes directly to artists' pockets to do research on the field so just to say that it helps us but if you can't afford it you can have it for free and you can download it you can download the mug you can download it on the wall so we're going to head out and the show that's rehearsing in here is Whistler in the Dark's production of Tales from Avid directed by Mae Payton Normally would