Theatre Attracts Largest, Youngest US Audience

Posted by Bruce Miller
Last June, the NEA released sobering data from their 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Christmas break was the first chance I’ve had to give the survey a thorough examination.

The new data indicates that the trends established over the last quarter century remain in place. Unfortunately, the percentage of U. S. adults connecting with any and all of the living arts continues its gradual but steady decline.

Being a glass half-full kind of guy, I can't help but mention that there is some significant good news for theatre lovers. National attendance may be trending downwards in theatre just as it is in every art form. But when examining the rate of decline in theatre attendance, and the aging of the national theatre audience, it's clear that professional theatre continues to be America's most popular performing arts discipline for audiences both old and young.

2008 Survey results include the following questions and answers.

How do our nation’s cultural activities rank in popularity?

What follows are the percentages of the national population that connected with each of the following cultural pursuits at least once during 2008:

Literature - 50.2%
Parks / Historic Buildings - 24.9%
Arts & Crafts Fairs / Art Festivals - 24.5%
Art Museums / Galleries - 22.7%
Outdoor Performing Arts Festivals - 20.8%
Musical Theatre - 16.7%
Straight Plays - 9.4%
Classical Music - 9.3%
Jazz - 7.8%
Dance (not ballet) - 5.2%
Latin / Spanish Music - 4.9%
Ballet - 2.9%
Opera - 2.1%

How much has cultural participation increased or declined (in terms of percentage of population participating) since the NEA began collecting data about a quarter century ago?

Here are the percentages of growth or decline in popularity of each cultural pursuit, measured over the last 26 years, 1982 – 2008:

Art Museums / Galleries - 2.7% growth
Musical Theatre - 10.2% decline
Literature - 11.8% decline
Jazz - 18.8% decline
Straight Plays - 21.0% decline
Classical Music - 28.5% decline
Opera - 30.0% decline
Ballet - 31.0% decline
Parks / Historic Buildings - 32.7% decline
Arts & Crafts Fairs / Art Festivals - 37.2% decline

(Older data is not available for Latin / Spanish Music, Dance (not ballet), and Outdoor Performing Arts Festivals.)

Which performing arts events are most enjoyed by audience members in each age group?

Among 18 to 24 year olds, 14.5% attended musicals in 2008, 8.2% attended plays, 6.9% attended symphonic concerts, 2.5% attended ballet performances, and 1.2% attended the opera.

Among 25 to 34 year olds, 16% attended musicals, 9.2% attended plays, 7.0% attended the symphony, 2.3% attended the ballet, and 1.7% attended the opera.

Among 35 to 44 year olds, 18.2% attended musicals, 8.9% attended plays, 8.9% attended the symphony, 3.4% attended the ballet, and 2.5% attended the opera.

Among 45 to 54 year olds, 17.4% attended musicals, 8.7% attended plays, 10.2% attended the symphony, 3.2% attended the ballet, and 2.4% attended the opera.

Among 55 to 64 year olds, 19.5% attended musicals, 12.3 % attended plays, 11.6% attended the symphony, 3.1% attended the ballet, and 2.4% attended the opera.

Among 65 to 74 year olds, 18.0% attended musicals, 11.0% attended plays, 12.2% attended the symphony, 4.3% attended the ballet, and 2.9% attended the opera.

Among those 75 or older, 10% attended musicals, 7.4% attended plays, 9.7% attended the symphony, 1.4% attended the ballet, and 1.8% attended the opera.

Those who speculate on the reasons for the continuing decline in arts attendance 1982 - 2008 suggest the following prioritized list:

1. decline in the national average of hours available for leisure activities;


2. growth of competing leisure activities such as the Internet, home gaming systems, movies via Netflix and pay-per-view, and bar and restaurant activity;


3. decline in arts education in elementary, middle, high school and university education; and


4. declining media coverage of the living arts.

All of us at Barksdale and Theatre IV have been working hard to buck the trends. Last fall I posted a blog entry about our increased attendance during the summer of 2009 (In the Good Old Summertime, Sept 3, 2009). Following the close of The 25th Anniversary Putnam County Spelling Bee on January 17, I’ll report on the attendance patterns established during our fall and holiday seasons.

Till then, I hope you’ll join our nation’s largest and youngest audience by buying a ticket to the THEATRE!

--Bruce Miller

Standing Up for the VCA

Posted by Bruce Miller
This morning's Times-Dispatch contains a regrettable editorial. At the top of the column on the left of the Editorial Page, under the heading "State Budget - Hard Times," the scribes at the T-D outline Virginia's currently woeful budget projections (a direct effect of our nation's recession). In response to these financial challenges, the editors write:

"Spending cuts are problematic: Much of the (Virginia) budget is driven by mandates and necessity. But there are agencies whose functions are not crucial to the commonwealth. Some possibilities:

--The Virginia Tourism Authority;
--The Virginia Economic Development Partnership;
--The Virginia Department of Business Assistance;
--The Virginia Department of Minority Business Enterprise;
--The Virginia Commission for the Arts;
--The Virginia Cooperative Extension and Agricultural Experiment Station;
--Assorted museums."

I'll let others speak for the agencies they know about. I cannot fail to step forward for the Virginia Commission for the Arts. I know first hand how well this agency is managed, and what vital and essential support it provides to all the nonprofit arts organizations in Virginia.

What frustrates me the most is that these misguided words from the editors of the T-D come after a year in which all of Virginia's Non-State Agency Funding was eliminated entirely. Non-State Agency Funding is the political pork that was traditionally awarded to arts organizations and other nonprofits above and beyond the objective funding of the VCA. Eliminating Non-State Agency Funding reduced total arts support in Virginia by hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Barksdale and Theatre IV received a total of $45,000 in Non-State Agency funding in 2006-07, and $0 from the same pot in 2007-08.)

Cuts of this size are devastating, even for a nonprofit organization of our size. It's not like we have $45,000 sitting around unused. Exacting additional cuts to our and other's VCA funding seems unthinkable to me. I believe it would be exceedingly reckless--perhaps even life-threatening to many nonprofit organizations.

Currently Barksdale and Theatre IV each receive $112,500 annually from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, representing about 2.5% of our overall budgets. Our two nonprofit organizations currently receive $44,455 from the Greater Richmond Consortium, which allocates support from the localities of Richmond, Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover, representing considerably less than one percent of our overall budgets.

For the sake of comparison, let's look at our neighboring state of Maryland. In the Old Line State, major nonprofit arts organizations expect to receive approximately 7.5% of their budget from the state, and an additional 7.5% of their budget from local governments. If Barksdale and Theatre IV were located in the Baltimore area instead of in Richmond, our public funding would equal approximately $750,000 per year, or roughly $480,000 more that we currently receive in public funding from the Greater Richmond localities and the state of Virginia.

All the other nonprofit theatres in town fare worse than we do in terms of actual dollars received in public support, but, in most cases, better than we do in terms of the percentage of their budget that is covered by public funds.

One of my favorite Theatre IV Board members, Phyllis Galanti, has an email address that begins with "NoWhining." I'm ashamed to admit that I can be an inveterate whiner, and so I keep Phyllis's email address hanging above my desk, just to remind me to keep a stiff, and frequently buttoned, upper lip.

But I believe that editorials like the one that appeared this morning do the public an injustice by suggesting that the activities of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and, by extension, the work of all of Virginia's artists, are not "crucial" to the people of Virginia. Trying not to whine, but nonetheless determined to present forthrightly the facts of the matter, I've written the following Letter to the Editor. The letter may or may not make it into the venerable T-D, but I think it's important for all of us who love the arts to know the facts and fight for the survival of essential, objective arts funding in the Virginia budget.

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

Like you, I believe Virginia’s “hard times require hard choices.” They also require informed thinking. In your discussion of possible budget cuts, you list the Virginia Commission for the Arts as an agency “whose functions are not crucial to the commonwealth.” I disagree. For the people of Virginia, the VCA is not only crucial, it’s a conservative investment.

The Virginia taxpayer contributes only 81 cents per capita to the VCA, making Virginia 33rd in the nation in terms of state arts appropriations. This taxpayer support earns for our state $719,000 in matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. With these limited resources, the VCA provided essential funding in 2007-08 to 743 grantees, sustaining over 500 nonprofit arts groups and bringing arts education to 3.3 million Virginia students. In 2000, an independent study found that the economic impact of the arts in Virginia exceeded $1 billion per year.

Not everyone enjoys theater, music, dance, the visual and/or literary arts. But those who don’t appreciate the value of the arts must not be doing the math. The arts build community. They also attract major corporations to Virginia; provide thousands of jobs; make possible Virginia’s principal child sexual abuse prevention effort; bring free-of-charge smiles to legions of Alzheimer’s patients; enhance the instruction of science, math, English and social studies in our schools; and infuse the Virginia economy with millions of dollars from out-of-state touring.

Because of historically low funding, Virginia’s arts industry has been in a precarious state for decades. Like parks and libraries, arts organizations are irreplaceable threads in the fabric of a healthy commonwealth. Cutting funding for the VCA would not help balance Virginia’s budget. It would decrease overall revenues and make Virginia’s financial challenges even worse.

Bruce Miller
Artistic Director, Theatre IV and Barksdale Theatre

I hope all of you will join me in standing up for the Virginia Commission for the Arts. I'm not engaging in hyperbole when I say that, should the state decide to make additional cuts to the VCA, many nonprofit organizations, including Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV, would find it difficult to survive.

--Bruce Miller

Congress Approves Historic Increase for NEA

Posted by Phil Whiteway
Four days ago, on Dec 20, something important happened—something I hope we all will applaud. In a lean budget year, the U. S. Congress passed the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill which included a $20.3 million (16%) increase to the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single increase that the NEA has received in 30 years.

The 2008 NEA budget will now be $144.7 million, equal to the annual budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities for the first time since NEA funding was decimated in 1995 under the Contract with America. The Contract, which was released by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign, condemned the NEA for funding “obscene” art. The Contract was written by Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Richard Armey, Robert Walker, Bill Paxton, Jim Nussle and John Boehner. Only Boehner continues to serve in Congress today.

To put this funding in perspective, Congress now allocates $144.7 million to the NEA in support of every nonprofit arts organization in the nation. That amounts to approximately $0.47 per capita. The Congress allocates $420 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, amounting to approximately $1.38 per capita. The Arts Council of England currently invests approximately $687 million annually in support of Britain’s nonprofit arts organizations, or $11.45 per capita.

This historic increase of funding to the NEA reflects years of advocacy to restore the Endowment to the funding levels it once had in the mid-90s. Thanks go to all arts staffers and Board leaders throughout Virginia who have been working hard for more than a decade to convince Congress that the nonprofit arts in America are worthy of support.

We will be writing to our members of Congress to let them know how the added funding for the NEA will make a difference in Richmond and Virginia. If you support 47 cents of your annual tax dollars going to support all of the nonprofit art organizations in the United States, we encourage you to write your congressional representatives to thank them for this restoration of funds to the NEA.

--Phil Whiteway

It's a Wonderful City -- and Barksdale and Theatre IV Help to Make It That Way

Posted by John Steils

Barksdale Bifocal’s current production of It’s a Wonderful Life is now bringing joy on tour to senior centers and retirement living facilities throughout Greater Richmond. In honor of the central plot device of this holiday classic, we found ourselves sitting around the other day contemplating how Greater Richmond would be different if Barksdale and Theatre IV had never existed?
Among the scores of answers that marketing team members yelled out, I was surprised by this one. If Barksdale and Theatre IV had never existed, there would be no Richmond Boys Choir.

If you want to hear first-ear what a loss this would be, you can attend a free concert this evening in Oregon Hill. The Richmond Boys Choir will perform their benefit holiday program entitled A Joyful Sound this evening, Fri Dec 14, 6 pm, at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church at the corner of Laurel and Idlewood. Admission is a canned good or non-perishable food item. All proceeds will go to the Central Virginia Food Bank. No reservations are required.

Both the Richmond Boys Choir and St Andrew’s have strong connections to Barksdale and Theatre IV. And in the case of the Choir, the “connection” goes beyond strong.

The current Richmond Boys Choir was founded as a subsidiary of Theatre IV in 1996. Our artistic director, Bruce Miller, apparently charged into Phil Whiteway’s office one day twelve years ago mourning the fact that the first Richmond Boys Choir had fallen into non-existence in the three years following the death of its founder. Bruce decided that Theatre IV was in a position to reinvigorate the Choir, and he convinced Phil of the validity of his idea. Together, the two men convinced the Theatre IV Board.

Billy Dye, who was at that time a staff member of Theatre IV, was assigned the responsibility of serving as the artistic director of the new Choir. As fate would have it, he’s continued to serve in that role for the last 11 years.

From 1996 until 1999, Theatre IV mentored the Richmond Boys Choir, paid its staff, built its Board, managed its finances, and raised funds on its behalf. During this three year period, the choir was housed in Theatre IV’s offices and rehearsed and performed in Theatre IV’s historic Empire Theatre.

In 1999, the Richmond Boys Choir fulfilled its strategic plan and became the fully independent nonprofit organization that it is today. Happily, our now independent companies continue to be the closest of allies.

The Richmond Boys Choir welcomes members from all socio-economic, religious and cultural backgrounds. They have opened for and/or performed in association with Wynton Marsalis, Lily Tomlin, former Supreme Mary Wilson, James Earl Jones and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Their spirit and talents have been showcased at the Governor’s Inaugural Prayer Breakfast and broadcast nationally on The Today Show, winning praise from Katie Couric.

Recently the Richmond Boys Choir was named one of 50 finalists nationwide for the Coming Up Taller Award presented annually by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Should they be selected for this honor, they will be the first Virginia organization to receive this prestigious recognition as one of the nation’s top arts programs serving youth beyond school hours. Keep your fingers crossed.

When it comes to St Andrew's, staff members from Barksdale and Theatre IV have been volunteering in their after school program since September. Our artistic director Bruce Miller works with third, fourth and fifth graders each Monday afternoon in this community-based enrichment program.

Our theatres’ partnerships with the Richmond Boy Choir and St Andrew’s School are perfect examples of the vital contributions that Barksdale and Theatre IV make throughout the community every day, often without publicity or recognition. In many ways that we frequently forget, Barksdale and Theatre IV are essential cornerstones of the life of Greater Richmond.

--John Steils

My Dinner with Bob Porterfield

Posted by Bruce Miller

In the winter of 1968, about six months after Barksdale’s Stop the World residency at Barter (see Barksdale and Barter, Aug 28), and about four months before my high school graduation, I was invited to dinner with Robert Porterfield--"please call me Bob"--Barter’s legendary founder. Here's a photo of Bob (taken about a quarter-century earlier) with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

This was nothing like my mealtime encounter with Arthur Miller (see My Lunch with Arthur Miller, Aug 12), where I sat respectfully and anonymously at his elbow with neither one of us saying a word. This was an animated three-hour dinner conversation with only four of us in the room.

A little background... In high school, I met one of my lifelong friends, Terry Bliss (pictured to the left). She’s co-author with me of Hugs and Kisses, and she works today as a practicing attorney and Artistic Director of North Street Playhouse in Onancock, VA. I was also good friends with Terry’s younger sister, Kathy. Through Terry and Kathy, I became friends with their mother, also named Terry Bliss. Terry Bliss (the mother) was the director of PAVE (Performing Arts in Virginia Education) after it became independent of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and just before it morphed again into the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Terry Bliss (the mother) is now named Terry Showalter, and doing great things in Harrisonburg, VA.

Terry Bliss (the mother) had met the late Mason Bliss (the father) while he was working as the booking agent for Barter Theatre after WWII. (Below and to the right, you can find a photo of the Barter touring bus from the post-war years, parked in front of the Algonquin Hotel in NYC.)

In 1946, Mason was trying to book a Barter touring production into Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina, where Terry headed the theatre department. He didn't win the booking, but apparently he won the heart of the drama chair. Six months after their first meeting, Mason and Terry were married in Abingdon. Southwest Virginia was “dry” in those days, so Ernest Borgnine (pictured to the right) drove to Tennessee to pick up the wedding champagne. Bob Porterfield was the Best Man. The happy couple moved into the Barter Inn, company housing for the theatre. It was in the Barter Inn that Terry Bliss (the daughter) was conceived and lived the first several months of her life.

Soon after his daughter’s birth, Mason Bliss needed to earn money. He established The House of Bliss Celebrity Bureau, Inc.—yes, that really was the name—and he moved his family to Richmond. From here he ran one of only three producing and nationally touring theatre operations to be located outside of New York or Los Angeles. Terry (the mother) was a respected local actress. (A photo of her on the cover of a Richmond Summer Theatre playbill appears above and to the left.) Each year The House of Bliss would produce touring productions starring the likes of Pernell Roberts, Dennis King, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Hal Holbrook. Google ‘em if you’re too young to know who they are.

When Mason died in the mid-60s, the House of Bliss died with him. Terry (the mother) went on to direct the state agency PAVE, and it was her job to book arts programs into Virginia’s schools. She relied on her good friend Bob Porterfield and the artists from The House of Bliss to help her with her job.

In 1968, Bob Porterfield was coming to Richmond, and he called Terry Bliss (the mother) to invite himself over for an evening’s meal. She told him about her daughters’ friend (that would be me), a high school student who was, as Moss Hart famously said, "drunk" on “the smell of the theatre.” Bob was renowned for how much he enjoyed talking with students who wanted to go into theatre professionally. He encouraged her to include me in their get together.

Terry (the daughter) was off in college, so Terry (the mother), Kathy, Bob and I met for dinner in February, and the rest of my life was molded, at least in part, in that one funny, moving and passionate conversation.

Bob spoke enthusiastically about the founding of Barter, and about his good friends Pete and Nancy Kilgore and Muriel McAuley (who, at that time, I had yet to meet). He expressed how much he admired Barksdale, because they were going through so much of what he went through in Barter's early days. He professed that theatre was the noblest vocation anyone could accept, and convinced me that, should I decide to pursue such a career, it would be a privilege and an honor that I could not take lightly.

He discussed the work that he and others had done with President Kennedy to create the National Endowment for the Arts, which had finally been established by President Johnson only three years prior to our dinner. Bob passionately believed that encouraging and showcasing artistic excellence would rekindle America’s creative energy, enrich a national cultural landscape that he believed was in danger of stagnation, and engender in average Americans an understanding of what true civilization really meant.

He believed that, due to our nation’s emerging prosperity, we in the U. S. had inherited from Europe the responsibility of being the caretaker of Western culture. He was convinced that the best way to lure developing countries away from communism and toward democracy was through artistic expression, a tool that the Russians were funding at the time with unparalleled vigor.

Decades before the social economist Richard Florida began discussing the "creative class," Bob Porterfield (pictured in the pencil portrait to the left) discussed American business’s need for the creative education and inspiration that only an arts-rich environment can provide.

It was heady stuff. It changed my life.

Bob Porterfield, Pete and Nancy Kilgore, and Muriel McAuley were great leaders not only because of the institutions they founded and sustained, and certainly not only because of the plays they produced. They were great leaders because of the imaginations they ignited, the opportunities they provided, and the dreams they applauded, encouraged and embraced.

I am forever in their debt.

--Bruce Miller

Addendum: On the "Six Degrees" front, Bob Porterfield's secretary at Barter was Byrd Jervey. When Mason Bliss founded The House of Bliss, Byrd accepted a job as his secretary, moving with him back to Richmond so that she could be closer to her sister. Her sister was Helen Jervey, who was Muriel's first friend and office mate at AAA, and would subsequently become a legendary Barksdale All Star, beginning with Barksdale's first mainstage production, Gold in the Hills.