This book examines recent trends in the performing arts and discusses howthe arts are likely to evolve in the future. It is the first book to providea comprehensive overview of the performing arts, including analysis ofopera, theater, dance, and music, in both their live and recorded forms. Theauthors focus on trends affecting four aspects of the performing arts--audiences, performers, arts organizations, and financing--and offer a visionfor the future. The book discusses the implications of current and likelyfuture developments and considers public policy issues such as publicfunding for the arts.
Arts organizations across the country are actively expanding their efforts to increase public participation in their programs. This report presents the findings of a RAND study sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds that looks at the process by which individuals become involved in the arts and attempts to identify ways in which arts institutions can most effectively influence this process. The report presents a behavioral model that identifies the main factors influencing individual decisions about the arts, based on site visits to institutions that have been particularly successful in attracting participants to their programs and in-depth interviews with the directors of more than 100 institutions that have received grants from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds and the Knight Foundation to encourage greater involvement in the arts. The model and a set of guidelines to help institutions approach the task of participation building constitute a framework that can assist in devising participation-building approaches that fit with an institution's overall purpose and mission, its available resources, and the community environment in which it operates--in other words, a framework that will enable arts institutions to take an integrative approach to building participation in the arts.
The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts. The past decade has seen an extraordinarily intense period of experimentation with computer technology within the performing arts. Digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and new forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. To document and analyze contemporary digital performance practice, Dixon considers changes in the representation of the body, space, and time. He considers virtual bodies, avatars, and digital doubles, as well as performances by artists including Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Blast Theory, and Eduardo Kac. He investigates new media's novel approaches to creating theatrical spectacle, including virtual reality and robot performance work, telematic performances in which remote locations are linked in real time, Webcams, and online drama communities, and considers the "extratemporal" illusion created by some technological theater works. Finally, he defines categories of interactivity, from navigational to participatory and collaborative. Dixon challenges dominant theoretical approaches to digital performance—including what he calls postmodernism's denial of the new—and offers a series of boldly original arguments in their place.
The Second Edition of Leading Organizations offers an expanded focus on the fluid roles of leaders and participants (followers) and their mutual responsibility for organizational leadership. Like the first edition, this text contains chapters on implementing the organization's mission, structure, culture and strategy written by leading scholars in the fieild. New features include: - Strategic leadership - Virtual leadership - Leadership, organizational change, and conflict - Building a culture of leadership
The Art of Governance is an essential guide for trustees in the performing arts and for the artists, managers, and community leaders who work with them. This book provides the larger context in which trustees govern—the art, artists, history, institutions, and national policies of the performing arts—and also explores more practical issues, such as board development, planning, finance, and fundraising. A wide range of distinguished artists, trustees, managers, and consultants have contributed articles, covering everything from “The Art of Theater” to “Understanding Financial Statements.” An invaluable tool for building an enlightened and inspired board, this resource above all recognizes the need of trustees in the performing arts to find a balance between the uncertainty of artistic creativity and the need for fiscal stability. Editors Nancy Roche and Jaan Whitehead have served on the boards and staff of numerous theater organizations. Nancy Roche has been a trustee of CENTER-STAGE in Baltimore since 1987, serving as president of the board for seven years and as interim managing director for one year. She has been a consultant on governance for the National Arts Stabilization (now National Arts Strategies), a councilor of the Maryland State Arts Commission from 1992-1999, and has twice served as lay panelist for the NEA. In the summer of 2000, she participated as a theater trustee in the National Critics’ Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, returning in the following summer as a founding member of their week-long Trustees Program. She is a founding member of the National Council for the American Theatre and serves as a trustee and treasurer of the board of Theatre Communications Group. In addition, she serves on the boards of the Roland Park Country School, the Institute for Christian-Jewish Studies, and the Baltimore School for the Arts. She is a graduate of Dominican University and received an MA in teaching and an LLA, both from The Johns Hopkins University. Jaan Whitehead currently chairs the board of the SITI Company, an ensemble theater in New York led by Anne Bogart. She has served on the boards of The Acting Company, Arena Stage, Living Stage, and The Whole Theatre Company, where her particular interests have been board development and institutional change. She has also been a trustee of Theatre Communications Group and the National Cultural Alliance, an arts advocacy group in Washington, and is a founding member of the National Council for the American Theatre. In addition to her work as a trustee, she has been executive director of Theatre for a New Audience in New York and Development Director of CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore. Ms. Whitehead graduated from Wellesley College, holds and MA in economics from the University of Michigan, and, early in her career, works as an economist for private industry and the Federal Reserve Board. She received her PhD in political theory fro Princeton in 1988. She taught at Georgetown University for several years but, as her involvement in theater deepened, she made the arts her main work while retaining her interests in economic and political theory. Drawing on this background, she has recently been writing a series of essays on the challenges facing the arts in a commercial society.
The entertainment industry is one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy and is in fact becoming one of the most prominent globally as well, in movies, music, television programming, advertising, broadcasting, cable, casino gambling and wagering, publishing performing arts, sports, theme parks, toys and games. The eighth edition of Entertainment Industry Economics differs from its predecessors by inclusion of a new section on the legal aspects and limitations common to all such 'experience' industries, reference to the emerging field of the psychology of entertainment, partial restructuring and expansion of the music chapter, enhancement of the section on advertising, and broadening of the coverage in the gaming and wagering chapter. The result is a comprehensive, up-to-date reference guide on the economics, financing, production and marketing of entertainment in the United States and overseas, that will interest investors, business executives, accountants, lawyers and arts administrators.
'Ruth Towse is to be congratulated on assembling such a high quality range of writers on cultural economics and on orchestrating their contributions so expertly. From anthropology and auctions through copyright and superstars to visual arts and welfare economics, scholars and general readers alike will discover in this Handbook an absorbing compendium of entries covering the main themes of a fascinating sub-discipline.' - Martin Ricketts, University of Buckingham, UK 'The best collection on cultural economics, definitive. An invaluable, original, and important addition to the field. Ruth Towse is the perfect person to put such a book together. Unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon.' - Tyler Cowen, George Mason University, Mercatus Center and James Buchanan Center for Political Economy, US A Handbook of Cultural Economics includes over 60 eminently readable and concise articles by 50 expert contributors. This unique Handbook is both highly informative and readable; it covers a wide area of cultural economics and its closely related subjects. While being accessible to any reader with a basic knowledge of economics, it presents a comprehensive study at the fore-front of the field. Of the many subjects discussed, chapters include: Art (including auctions, markets, prices, anthropology), artists' labour markets, arts management and corporate sponsorship, globalization, the internet, media economics, museums, non-profit organisations, opera, performance indicators, performing arts, publishing, regulation, tax expenditures, value of culture and welfare economics.
