Performing Arts Institutions Research Articles

Études théâtrales and Performance Studies in Quebec

Études théâtrales and Performance Studies in Quebec Erin Hurley (bio) That this round table amounted to a preliminary public conversation about performance studies in Canada may be a sign of the “trans-discipline”’s somewhat shallow roots in these quelques arpents de neige, as Voltaire so memorably, if dismissively, called this country when it was still a French colony. And possibly the roots are shallow because of the snow. But I think other scenarios are more likely. Among them are the facts that performance studies scholars are spread out across Canada’s regions and that the vast majority of us do not work in performance studies departments. I realize that this state of affairs is not unique to Canada. But there is also something quite Canadian about this set-up, inasmuch as it manifests the federalist politics of regionalism that structures our educational and performing arts institutions. Regionalism, which is also a kind of wonderful fantasy of commensurate public spheres and equitable access to public services across a vast and varied land-mass, is also supported by federal financial mechanisms like the equalization payments program whereby those provinces with “inferior fiscal capacity” are given transfer payments, drawn from those regions with “superior fiscal capacity,” in order to ensure “reasonably comparable” public services across the country. This also means that in the public university system—that is, almost all Canadian universities—professional and graduate programs are also distributed according to this logic of reasonable comparability: they are dispersed across regions to increase access to their educational opportunities; they are allocated within regions to reduce redundancy. What I propose to explore in somewhat more depth is the impact of national narratives, imaginaries, and histories [End Page 84] on the development (or lack thereof) of performance studies. I’ve alluded already to a powerful national narrative—that of regions united under a federal system that apportions finances and legislative responsibilities across different areas for the common good. This story—which is also, in its bureaucratic structures, a condition of possibility—has deeply marked the story of the genesis of a “truly Canadian” (i.e., not English or French at the high culture level and not American in the popular culture domain), decolonized performing arts culture in English Canada. In short, it has been argued, the regional theatre system allowed for the efflorescence of Canadian drama and theatre, often linked mimetically to the experiential realities of the region. Click for larger view View full resolution Celebrated Quebecois conteur Fred Pellerin in performance. Photo by Richard Tessier In Quebec, the narrative—and imperative—of identifying, recognizing, distinguishing, and building a nation has, I think, both opened and closed doors for performance studies. In Quebec, as in much of Canada and, indeed, other settler nations, the performing arts have often been called upon to render national service by representing le pays. One of the effects of this effort at proving the nation’s existence via cultural production—despite and because Quebec lacks an independent state which would secure the nation’s existence otherwise—has been an embrace of a rather expansive range of expressive behaviours as national performances. These include but are not limited to humour (stand-up and monologues), vaudeville (les Fridolinades, La Poune), improvisation (Ligue nationale d’improvisation), clowning, drama of all genres, image-theatre, folk-dance exhibitions, folk, rock, and independent music, film, crafts fairs, television, and speech itself. In the context of a minority culture within Canada’s federal system—that equalizing model—these forms were valued for their French-language expression, for their ties to oral tradition and rural cultural practices developed in New France (thus the contemporary stand-up comic is an inheritor of the conteur or storyteller tradition, for instance), and valued as evidence of Quebec-ness, Quebec experience, or values. Click for larger view View full resolution Marie Brassard (centre) in Moi qui me parle à moi-même dans le future with Alexandre St-Onge (l) and Jonathan Parant (r). Photo by Frédéric Auger This formal eclecticism in terms of objects combined with the analytical penchant Sherry Simon among others has identified for theorizing the socio-political effects and stakes of representational practices (and vice...

Challenges of digital preservation for cultural heritage institutions

This article elaborates four major issues hampering the sustainability of digital preservation within cultural heritage institutions: digitization, metadata indexes, intellectual property rights management and business models. Using a case-study approach, the digitization of audiovisual collections within the performing arts institutions in Flanders (Belgium) will be scrutinized, providing an overview of the state-of-the-art preservation and access. The analysis shows that digital preservation policies in most organizations are underdeveloped and that archives suffer from deterioration and technological obsolescence.

Cross-border Cultural Tourism in Europe: Drivers for Cross-border Travels for the Performing Arts

Cross-border Cultural Tourism in Europe: Drivers for Cross-border Travels for the Performing Arts The aim of this paper is to examine the drivers for cross-border tourist exchanges between the two closest capitals in Europe - Bratislava (Slovakia) and Vienna (Austria). We focus on the field of cultural tourism in view of the cross-border visits to two major performing arts institutions - the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava and the Staatsoper in Vienna. The basic question raised by the study is: What makes tourists travel for the performing arts? The paper presents partial results of a bigger research analyzing intercultural differences in perception of cultural products among different audiences.

Godhet og galskap

Compared to the performing arts institutions, the non-institutional performing arts have a relatively marginal position in the Norwegian public cultural policy. This article explores if the reason for this is that the non-institutional performing is associated with an amoral that does not fit well with the regime of goodness in cultural policy.

Is “cost disease” contagious? The case of early music ensembles

The article aims to supplement traditional explanations of why performing arts institutions tend to run a deficit. The case of early music ensembles shows that the traditionally cited mechanisms do not suffice to explain why these institutions catch Baumol’s “cost disease.” Baumol’s model may be supplemented by another, based on two related hypotheses: the deepening deficit of early music ensembles is related to their going professional and is due to the fact that they are simultaneously competing with subsidized orchestras on two markets: the concert market and the labor market for musicians.

Empirical Evidence of Marketing Practices in the Nonprofit Sector: The Case of Performing Arts

ABSTRACT Arts organisations are adopting marketing practices as international literature suggests. However, there is an important lack of studies proving this. So, the overall goal of this article is to examine how performing arts institutions apply marketing principles in their management process. Specifically, we propose to group these organisations according to their implication with marketing practices. An empirical research design using univariate and multivariate techniques was drawn. The results showed that performing arts organisations are adopting marketing tools but with different levels of implication. So, the three groups found were labelled neutral, involved and image conscious due to the apathy, slight interest and image development show respectively towards marketing.

The State and the Arts: An Analysis of Key Economic Policy Issues in Europe and the United States

Part 1 Policy rationale - why the State gets involved: non-private benefits information failures and distributional issues. Part 2 Policy implementation - how the State gets involved: regulation taxation direct expenditure. Part 3 Sectorial policy issues - effects of State involvement: art museums performing arts institutions.

Developing Black Performing Arts Institutions (from a 1996 Video Interview)

As the ETA Creative Arts Foundation is in the middle of our 25th Anniversary Year, I find myself being extremely reflective. If one comes to understand that a life has a destiny, and if one becomes conscious of her own experiences, then one can move through life and make a contribution as an African American which may be unique and distinctive. In this sense, I feel very blessed. It's amazing that African Americans don't have many cultural institutions in the United States, nor do we have many in the world. How could this have happened? When I look back at the history of the Cultural Arts Movement, I'm reminded that, back in 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois told us the Negro Arts Movement should be by the Negro People, for the Negro People, about the Negro People, and near the Negro People. And I think, in the evolution of our cultural paradigms, most of us have taken this to heart, but we failed historically really to internalize it, to incorporate and institutionalize our cultural forms so that African Americans, as we are now called, could really benefit from the awakening and the mere image of ourselves. Our institution came into being out of the Civil Rights Movement, and out of the travel that some of us made to the African continent. It soon became clear that what we, in concert with other people in the Movement, needed to do was to create institutions to transmit our own values, our traditions, our lifestyles, the things that are important to us. And some of us knew that culture is the vehicle which drives all people across the planet. Once we are very clear about our own identity, our values, our traditions, our world-class history as a People, then we have certain fundamental answers not only about who we are, but about what we should be doing, what we have as a People that other people in the world need, and particularly and most especially about how we should educate our children. How do we incorporate in ourselves the spirit of our ancestors? How do we build a future while we're on the planet? And how do we move beyond that to leave something for the next generation? Ultimately, I secured a master's degree from the University of Chicago in Administration and Management, Community Organization, and more recently an honorary Ph.D. from Chicago State University. I'm saying all this because I started out as a dancer, then became an actress, quite by accident, and through an opportunity which presented itself moved into stage management, company management and at the same time having parallel experiences and parallel professional lives. At the time that the opportunity and the inclination and the wisdom and the emphasis and the impulse came together to develop a cultural institution, I was particularly prepared to do so. I went back to some familiar cultural paradigms. I went back to Langston Hughes, who wrote, in Note on Commercial Theater, You've taken my blues and gone. I went back to the history of our experience in the arts to discover, to my chagrin and surprise, that indeed integration into American cultural arts was as much a fallacy as it had been in every other sphere of our lives, meaning that the most talented among us, the most competent among us fled our communities to desegregate Broadway, to be discovered in the films. I'm not complaining about that, but if we are to survive this holocaust that we've experienced as Black people and come into our own as a world-class People, then those who are the most talented--as W. E. B. Du Bois talked about, the Talented Tenth--really have to align ourselves within the context of our communities. We need to bring our skills, our talents. As Amiri Baraka said during the '60s, maybe we use too much of our energy for other people's light bulbs. So we began very consciously to develop professional training in the arts, because I'm also one of that generation where the children took artistic lessons of some kind, not because our folks thought we would be professionals in the field, but because they thought the lessons would develop our character. …

Politico-economic interactions of German public performing arts institutions

Our paper analyzes the conduct of German public performing arts institutions in terms of “non-market decision making” or public choice. Apart from consumers of performing arts managers of performing arts institutions and public donors are main agents. A manager of a performing arts institution will not assume that the number of visitors is independent of his institution's programme or the ticket prices. By the same reasoning he will regard the amount of public subsidies not as exogenous, but dependent on his own policy. If future grants depend on present and past success (however defined), this will feed back into managerial decisions, along with expectations about demand. Data for the Federal Republic of Germany serve to empirically support the theoretical argument.

Perry-Mansfield School of Dance and Theatre

The Perry-Mansfield School of dance and theatre, founded by Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield in 1914, and still in operation, was among the first American performing arts institutions to offer a wide curriculum of theatre and dance training. It predates the famous Denishawn school, widely considered to be the first such programme, by a year. If the importance of a school can be measured by the pervasive influence of its students and teachers, the Perry-Mansfield school is undeniably of great significance to the history of American performing arts. Consider this partial list of Perry-Mansfield students, instructors and alumni: Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Jose Limon, Agnes de Mille, Hanya Holm, Valerie Bettis, Harriette Ann Gray, Eleanor King, Mary Hinkson, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Louis Horst, Daniel Nagrin, Fred Matthews, Julie Harris, Lee Remick, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Pleasant. Charlotte Perry (1889-1983) and Portia Mansfield1 (1887-1979) met in 1910 while both women were students at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Mansfield had expressed an interest in dance as a young girl, entertaining guests informally with improvisations and ballroom-derived dances in the lobbies of hotels managed by her father in various cities throughout the eastern United States. While the family was in residence in Chicago and New York City she was exposed to theatre and developed a keen interest in it, attending neighbourhood playhouses and Broadway shows. It was as a student at Smith, however, that she received her first formal training in dance. In addition to studying Delsarte technique as part of elocution classes, Mansfield studied what was known as the Gilbert Method.2 Lucile Bogue, in her book Dancers on Horseback, relates the following information about the style gleaned from interviews with Mansfield: