Is It About the Car Wash, or the Car Getting Cleaned? Steps Toward a Post-Covid Performing Arts Future

The last time I went to a car wash, the rear window wiper snapped off. (They paid for a new one.) The time before that, at a different car wash, my front license plate came out bent. (I tried to bend it back, but it’s not the same.)

Given what’s going on in the world, this is a big nothingburger. Still, there is a metaphor here.

Two recent news items, unrelated to each other, piqued my interest this week. One, “She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next?” is Frank Bruni’s colorful portrait of Laurie Garrett. Ms. Garrett, who made her prediction in a 1994 best-seller, The Coming Plague, is “a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was prescient not only about the impact of H.I.V. but also about the emergence and global spread of more contagious pathogens.”

Bruni naturally asked her about what happens when we get back to normal.

“Did we go ‘back to normal’ after 9/11? No. We created a whole new normal. We securitized the United States. We turned into an antiterror state. And it affected everything. We couldn’t go into a building without showing ID and walking through a metal detector and couldn’t get on airplanes the same way ever again. That’s what’s going to happen with this.”

The other article, sent to me by Leonard Jacobs, was Douglas McLennan’s brilliant take on the next steps of the arts community, “Arts: Rebuild What? And Why?” This article breaks down the composition of the sector, particularly the nonprofit arts sector, into two distinct camps: “Restorationists” and “Opportunists.”

Restorationists are deeply invested in their business models and want to rebuild as quickly as possible. They have built, often painstakingly over generations, pipelines to talent and support and the means to reach audiences. They’re terrified that the infrastructure that supports them will collapse and they’re desperate to shore it up and get back to work.

Opportunists have long seen cracks in the cultural infrastructure and suddenly find themselves (along with the rest of us) in a place where all the usual rules and structures have been turned upside down. They see a world that could look considerably different AV (After Virus) and perhaps opportunities to rewrite better rules going forward.

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed seating charts as a symbol regarding the immediate future of the performing arts venue. But maybe it’s not just the immediate future.

The performing arts, at least in the United States, have always lagged behind the customer in distinct ways. There has been a fear-based tendency to continually do what has worked for a particular cadre of people, even when those people are long gone.

For example, eating and drinking was only tolerated as acceptable in movie theatres and circuses (and not live, “legitimate” theatre) until relatively recently. Seat choice has been based on status and subscriber mentality, a vestige of the 1960s Mad Men America. The non-interactive premise of the live, performing arts (you sit down and shut up, we declaim/perform) has been replaced by its completely interactive substitutes among those under 40. And except for spectacle (e.g., The Lion King), authentic use of contemporary art (e.g., Hamilton), or tradition (which can also fall under the “spectacle” category, e.g., The Nutcracker) the audience itself represents the most effete, overprivileged niche in America.

An aside: this evolution toward artistic elitism flies in the face of some of the most significant art in history. We’ve heard of hooks from the wings and rotten tomatoes thrown at actors on Vaudeville stages. But even during Shakespeare’s own time, the fruit was flying. From the Royal Shakespeare Company:

Shakespeare's actors had to compete against the noise of the crowd who shouted, hurled oranges and tried to join in with their performance on the stage.

People from all classes went to the theatre. The general public would pay a penny to stand close to the stage and interact with the actors. The gentry would pay to sit in the galleries, bringing cushions to make themselves more comfortable.

So, what’s next? The Opportunists are working on that because that is the intelligent thing to do. Getting ahead of the audience is not the goal; rather, catching up to them is key. The Restorationists are fighting it, just as there are those in the public who want to get their hair cut at the expense of certain increases in the length of time and death from the Coronavirus’s impact.

In a sense, the Restorationists are going into the car wash expecting that the process with which they’re familiar will always work, with no bent license plates or snapped wiper blades. They’re about the car wash.

The Opportunists, on the other hand, look to innovate the process so that, in the here and now, there are fewer opportunities for body mishaps. They’re about the car getting clean.

Thus, the issues go way beyond seating charts. In fact, marketing Opportunists have been screaming for the reconstruction of the subscription model for decades now. Restorationist and fearful leaders have hushed these innovators on that subject for fear of reprisals from older (and more established/wealthy) board members. Yes, seat selection is currently the most compelling reason given by subscribers. But what if it weren’t a consideration at all?

What if seat selection is the thing that separates your current audience from your future audience? What if rather than specific seat selection, you gave each subscriber a “priority ordering period” in which they could choose their seats (either at the time of the order or even a separate one for each production/play/performance)?

In doing so, the seating “charts” for each production could be changed on a regular basis, depending on the comfort of the audience. If each audience member needs to be seated six feet away from their neighbor, we as producers ought to be able to do that. If the time comes when couples or foursomes from the same household might be allowed to sit together, six feet away from the nearest couple or foursome, then producers ought to be able to do that, too. On a dime, as they say.

The future will also require producers to separate the performers. For symphonies and chamber orchestras, are we going to reduce the number of musicians and seat them six feet apart from each other (and the audience, for that matter)? Will actors no longer be able to kiss on stage unless they’re actually in a same-home relationship with each other? And what about the wings, usually packed with technicians and crew – even among smaller production companies? Given sweat, spit, and shared air droplets (How many times has a cold made its way throughout your company?), how can you quietly increase ventilation and safety measures without harming a performance?

Fair or not, reopening with no changes whatsoever is a prescription for doom. What steps are you taking? Please share them with your “competitors,” (use the comments section here if you’d like) because if we cannot collude to make the performing arts a viable live option, we become as much to blame for its demise as the virus. Indeed, we would shoulder more blame, because we have a choice, while the virus is just doing what viruses do.

Alan Harrison is a writer, father, performer, nonprofit executive, artist, blogger and impresario (in no particular order). He has led, produced, directed, promoted, raised money for, starred and failed in over 300 theatrical productions on and Off-Broadway and at prestigious (and not so prestigious) nonprofit arts organizations across the country. He’s also a two-time Jeopardy! champion so, you know, there’s that. The arts invoke passion (mostly from artists), but nonprofit arts are only successful when they result in measurably positive change among those that need it most. When a nonprofit’s donors are also its recipients, then its mission is meaningless puffery, flapdoodle and codswallop.