Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

What interests me in the story is not Green’s panting “A Star Is Born” analysis of the spirit that runs underneath a public high school’s big-budget production of one of Sondheim’s trickier musicals. Green’s write-up actually manages to recall Fame. I have no doubt that the theatre group in New Albany is doing good work, but Green’s slobbering lovefest is almost too ridiculous for words.

In fact, in five pages of raving over the Passion of the Teens, Green manages to pen two paragraphs, specifically, that interest me.

With all the auto shops, fast-food joints and boarded-up houses in the vicinity, it is somewhat disorienting to find Mr. Longest operating out of a $17 million performing arts annex, part of a recently completed $50 million renovation of New Albany High School that was financed by property taxes. With its airy glass lobbies and soaring curved roofs, its 24-hour radio station, television broadcast center, huge indoor pool and student bank, the building could be mistaken for the centerpiece of a college campus. But it’s a public school. Despite local poverty (one-third of New Albany’s 2,000 students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches), residents rejected a tax cut – by a ratio of eight to one – in order to pay for the improvements. [emphasis mine] Steve Sipes, the principal, said they had done so because the arts at New Albany had over the years brought a measure of pride, comparable only to that generated by the sports teams, to a city that’s seen better days.

Rejecting a tax cut for the betterment of society is odd enough in today’s political climate. But to reject a tax cut for the betterment of society through the arts? Unheard of! Whatever would Dubya think?

I applaud the people of New Albany for this move. Generally, I would feel that the presence of a $17 million dollar structure in the middle of crippling poverty would be an obscenity – but, for once, the structure is part of a publicly funded and publicly owned property that exists not to put money into the pockets of the already wealthy, but rather to improve the quality of life for the community. The community has shown great foresight in putting its money toward public education, and I think it’s amazing that so much of the money went toward the arts in a time when the conservative power structure is in full swing with its “Reading and Math only” chant of education.

Green is later quick to point out that the program is unsubsidized – apart from the building, itself. But I think that Green misses the larger point here. The building is a subsidy. It’s a major subsidy. By spending $17 million on the building, the local community has made a decision to subsidize their high school arts program. And that’s a major leap to make in American culture – the one culture in the history of the world that has consistently expected and demanded that its art community should crank out earth-shaking works without subsidies. Check the history books, folks. From the time of Aeschylus, the vast majority of great art has been subsidized.

Thanks to the people of New Albany, their pride in their local high school arts program, and their forward thinking attitude toward the allocation of public funds and the wisdom of tax cuts (or the refusal thereof), the students are getting a rare opportunity. They are getting to work in a well-funded, professional-level theatre.

Which brings me to the second paragraph where Green actually managed to get my interest.

Tom Weatherston, who in the mid-1950’s started the school tradition of big musicals- and whom Mr. Longest described as his conscience – had anticipated this kind of problem during dress rehearsal. “They outsource and upgrade so much now,” he said, “that they don’t learn how do to basic things themselves. For instance, they think they need the microphones, because it’s a big theater, but what happens when the microphones don’t work? Because everyone has become dependent on amplification, they don’t learn how to project.” In his youth, Mr. Weatherston acted for three summers on one of the last of those Ohio River showboats. Now 73, he was looking for simplicity over spectacle. “We used to do a show on a couple hundred dollars! Now, they’re giving more kids an experience, but it’s an inferior experience. And, realistically, where do they go next? Where are they going to have budgets like these again?”

And in my day, we walked to school every day. Every day! We didn’t get weekends off! And it was five miles! In the snow! Four feet of snow! Uphill! BOTH WAYS!

I kid, I kid.

That paragraph interests me because, honestly, Weatherston has a valid point. The kids at New Albany High School are getting an experience that many professionals would kill to have. Short of Broadway productions and working the magic show at Disneyworld, professional actors and technicians will rarely – if ever – see a budget that grand and technology that big ever again. Green would rather focus on the fact that these kids will never again see a “circle of love” in the professional world, or that they’ll never again know the joy of cramming for exams between scenes, or that they’ll have to face a real world where people don’t give you a standing ovation, even if you stumble over your costume and forget the lines. But, to be frank and even a little bit harsh, that’s life. I’m far more concerned about the emphasis on musicals at the high school level – how many productions of Cats are there in a year across the United States? And how many of them can you actually be paid for?

High schools do musicals because they’re quick ways to bring in money and they’re quick ways to get a lot of people onstage. After all, if New Albany decided that this year they were going to do a season that included Twelfth Night, Arcadia, and Fuddy Meers, they would have a professional level season with plenty of opportunity for professional level technical work – but they wouldn’t have nearly the ticket sales and they wouldn’t have nearly the number of students in onstage roles. But the vast majority of paying work out there in the theatre is going to be outside of musical theatre. And a lot of it is in small dinner theatres and LORT theatres where they’re working to keep the old soundboard up and running for one more year while they try to raise funds to redo the sound system – or at least get a soundboard that they don’t have to hold together with duct tape. And some if it is outdoor theatre where they’ll decide to save money by not using amplification or more than basic lighting.

Weatherston recognizes something that is usually forgotten in the passionate hustle to produce a big show. He recognizes that in a real world where the general population doesn’t turn down a tax cut so that the money can go the arts—where, in fact, many people seem to feel that fifty cents a year in tax money is too much to pay for the arts—the history of the American theatre has been made by making more out of less. For Coloured Girls who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf was not built on a Broadway stage on a seven-figure budget – it was built by a group of women working in cabarets and nightclubs and playing their show wherever they could find a stage. Sam Shepard did not spring onto the arts scene with a multi-million dollar contract – his plays were first seen in the basement of a church. American Theatre is in part the art of doing a lot with a little.

And those are my thoughts on Green’s article.

Oh. One more thing.

“This is really a magical time, when they’re still doing it for the joy of it,” said Guy Tedesco, a professional who’d designed the costumes for “Beauty and the Beast,” beaming as he left the auditorium. “From here on out, it’s prostitution.”

Screw you, Tedesco.