It is the second to last day of the year and here we are, just the 4 of us.  You, me, my wife, and our marketing director.  The marketing director has to read this.  My wife likes to play nice and encourage my ribald behavior.  You?  This I don't know.

The end of a year is a time for contemplation of all things that have happened that year.  2008 was a year, one of many.

I am moved to think about, at the end of this particular year, an experience that happened to me in New York a long time ago.  There was a play by David Rabe that opened in the mid-1980s called Hurlyburly, and it starred a whole bunch of good actors:  William Hurt, Ron Silver, Harvey Keitel, Jerry Stiller, Sigourney Weaver, Judith Ivey, and Cynthia Nixon.  It was directed by Mike Nichols.  There was a whole lotta buzz about it, much hurlyburly, if you will. 

This was a brutal play, a play that demeaned women.  It also demeaned men.  And children.  And small animals.  And the audience members who paid $40 to see it.  Yes, $40, that's what Broadway plays cost twenty-five years ago. 

As for me, I hated it.  I was not alone in my hatred of it -- everyone in my party of twentysomethings loathed it.  It actually made us mad.  I believe that was the point of the piece, to make us mad.  It forced me to try to care about people who I didn't like, and I didn't, which made it difficult to care about the play they were in.

That said, after the play, we met up with some friends at Charlie's, which I don't know if it's still on 45th Street or not.  One was a follow-spot operator for Broadway shows for many years -- since the 1960s.  My date, someone who knew how to get drunk and say the wrong things pretty much all the time, said of the play we'd just seen, something to the effect of "It's horrible and I hope it closes."

This began a sharp-tongued, wild-eyed retort from the friend who ran the follow-spot.  "That's a horrible thing to say!" he said, rather loudly.  "Never say that again!  We're talkin' lives here, people's lives!"  A long, heated argument ensued.  Tears were shed, Charlie's threw us out, my date threw up on 45th Street into a trash bin, but no one was seriously injured.  Ah, the drama of one's twenties.

Of course my follow-spotted friend meant that literally dozens of people whose livelihood was based on the play's existence on Broadway would be forced out of work upon its close.  The longer it ran, the more work was available -- actors, technicians, promoters, general management personnel, ad agency people... the works.  I hadn't actually thought of it in those terms at the time, but had to agree that wishing a show would close was not in the best interest of anyone.  Clearly somebody liked this play and its people.  Just not me.  And for that, it should stay open.

It did stay open, a little less than a year, which is normal for a well-reviewed Broadway play, especially a new one.  But it was a play that elicited conversation, usually heated, usually ending with a tossed drink or a face full of blue cheese dressing, but still, conversation.  And for that, it succeeded.

One side note that has nothing to do with anything.  Cynthia Nixon -- who later came to fame on "Sex in the City" -- played the young boring girl in the play.  She also played the young boring girl in the wonderful Tom Stoppard play, The Real Thing, which played at a theater just up the street at the same time.  She actually appeared in two Broadway plays simultaneously.  Why?  I am still baffled.  She was drony milquetoast in both.  What's the matter, no other twentysomething white actresses in Manhattan in 1984?  What a waste.

Anyway, my follow-spot friend gave me the first argument in favor of organizational survival irrespective of everything.  My dipsomaniacal date gave me the first argument in choosing to thrive over choosing to survive.  I had never really thought of the arts in those terms until that night.  Something the follow-spotter told me later, with a little chagrin but with no regret:  "You know, every show closes except the ones that are open right now.  And one day, every one of them will close, too.  This can't be about just keeping something open for the sake of being open, but it also can't be about closing something just because you hate it.  There's got to be something in between."

In the world of commercial theater on Broadway, there is no "in-between."  When shows get rave reviews from the New York Times, they stay open.  Sometimes for years.  When they get pans from the New York Times, they close.  That night.  When they get mixed reviews -- say great reviews from the New Yorker and New York, a lukewarm review from the Times, and a few quoteable reviews from the television critics (yes, in New York, there are critics on television for plays!), and you've got to check your bank balance, because the show could go either way.

In the nonprofit arts world, the choice is simpler.  We cannot exist just to create jobs.  That's dumb.  We cannot exist just to exist.  That's ridiculous.  We cannot exist because we do art really well.  That's self-indulgent. (Almost as self-indulgent as writing a blog for four people.)

We exist to make our neighbors and our neighborhoods better.  We exist to make our businesses thrive.  We exist to make our audiences do something, do something to make the world a better place, even if it's just talking about the issues of the day.  Even if they hate it. 

Any nonprofit theater out there that chooses a mission that means nothing is failing as a nonprofit and deserves no support. 

Any nonprofit theater out there that chooses its work based on that self-same mission is a failure as a nonprofit and deserves no support. 

Any nonprofit theater out there that only produces "art for art's sake" without a thought toward what it is that it wants the audience to do with the information passed from stage to seats is a failure as a nonprofit and deserves no support.

Any nonprofit theater out there whose only criterion for successful art is that it "makes money" is a failure as a nonprofit and deserves no support.

(Any for-profit theater out there that does that, choosing to produce one play for the sole purpose of making money, is absolutely within its rights as a commercial entity. The company should try to make money any way they can.  It has investors to report to, to pay back, and that's the measure of success.)

However, any nonprofit theater that produces work that has an externally-facing mission, a mission that does not get done until and unless there is a quantifiable reaction from the audience, neighborhood, and community, a mission that believes that art is a tool toward something larger and not the end in and of itself -- now that's a theater that deserves support. 

It's what we try to do every single day at ArtsWest, and that's the best thing I can say about 2008.  Without exception, I believe every single piece we produced, in the gallery and on the mainstage, required conversation, improved the imagination, and promoted cultural vibrancy as a core value.  And that's what it's all about, nothing less.

Happy New Year, and I have every confidence that I will be able to write that last paragraph again on December 30, 2009 and mean it.  Here's to a year filled with conversation and imagination.

Cheers,

-- Alan Harrison, Executive Director
December 30, 2008