Tag Archives: Chicago

Link Roundup! – 5/20/16

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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ARTS AND CULTURE CHIEF JULIA BURROS. / PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER CHURCHILL

ARTS AND CULTURE CHIEF JULIA BURROS. / PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER CHURCHILL

Boston Magazine has a feature examining the ups and downs of the city’s cultural planning process to date:

But goals alone do not make a plan. Certainly, the effort was enormous, the aims lofty, the motives sincere. But let’s be blunt: The key issues were identified very early on in the process. It shouldn’t take more than a year of visioning exercises—at a cost of $1.4 million, almost the same as Burros’s fiscal year 2016 annual department budget of $1.7 million—to pinpoint challenges and strengths that have been evident in the arts community for years and years. Privately, people in the arts community have been wondering when all of those lofty goals will translate into action.

The answer wasn’t forthcoming when Burros presided over a town hall meeting at Bunker Hill Community College in March. Remember: The Boston Creates team had promised that the first draft of the actual plan would be released at this meeting. But Burros simply reiterated the five goals (which now include a specific focus on equity). No action items. No timeline. No metrics. No funding stream.

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This week’s Boston Globe also has an article looking at the funding details (or lack thereof) in the draft proposal of the cultural plan:

The authors write that Walsh has made “great strides” when it comes to arts funding, proposing a $2.3 million budget for the Office of Arts and Culture in fiscal year 2017. Nevertheless, they cede that the “possibility of further increases is severely limited. The city faces increasing fiscal pressure from different sources, including statutorily limited revenue tools, rising fixed costs, underfunding of charter school reimbursement, decreasing local aid, and the growing need for a wide range of city services.”

In other words, a push for dedicated arts funding in Boston — already a highly politicized venture as City Hall must sway state legislators — must also compete against other city needs, such as education, housing, and public safety.

Burros avoided discussing funding tactics, such as potential public-private partnerships, in detail last week, saying it was too early. “The creation of the plan and the implementation of the plan are really two different things,” she said, calling the draft a “milestone.” “When we’re at the final plan and we’re announcing implementation in June, there’ll be even more specifics.”

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#StaffChat: A Critical Look at THIS IS MODERN ART

Staff Chat posts feature articles and news that the C1 team discusses as part of our weekly all-staff meeting. We’d love to hear your thoughts too — hit us up on Facebook or Twitter!

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This week’s Staff Chat will focus on the conversation around the play This is Modern Art (Based on True Events), a Steppenwolf for Young Adults production co-written by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval. We’re looking at two reviews of the play and a few articles that examine the critical reception of the piece:

Kelly O'Sullivan (from left), J. Salome Martinez Jr., Jerry MacKinnon and Jessie D. Prez in the Steppenwolf Young Adults production of "This Is Modern Art." (Photo: Michael Courier)

Kelly O’Sullivan (from left), J. Salome Martinez Jr., Jerry MacKinnon and Jessie D. Prez in the Steppenwolf Young Adults production of “This Is Modern Art.” (Photo: Michael Courier)

The play, inspired by a real incident, follows a group of Chicago teens who decide to cover the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing in graffiti art. In their reviews, critics Jones and Weiss briefly touch on the artistic aspects of the play (which they seem to praise), but spend most of their columns taking the show to task for its portrayal of graffiti artists. From Jones:

But here is what “This is Modern Art” barely even mentions: Graffiti comes at a price. It can be invasive, self-important and disrespectful of the property of others — and plenty of struggling folks have had to clean graffiti off something they own or love. Graffiti can be inartful, for goodness sake. More importantly yet, graffiti had the effect of making people feel unsafe in the city. It terrified people. It was only when public officials declared themselves determined to wipe it out that cities finally came back to life, with broad benefits.

You wanna go back to riding public transportation in New York or Chicago in the 1980s? I do not. You do not have to be conservative or somehow not down with youth to think it reprehensible that these issues do not have a place in a show for schools that is quite staggeringly one-sided.

Weiss continues this line of thought in her review, though she takes it even further, stating:

This play is a wildly wrong-headed and potentially damaging work — one that fails to call “vandalism” by its name, and rationalizes and attempts to justify that vandalism in the most irresponsible ways. It also trades in all the destructive, sanctimonious talk about minority teens invariably being shut out of opportunities and earmarked for prison in a way that only reinforces stereotypes and negative destinies. Counterproductive in the extreme, it deepens and solidifies racial and class divisions and a sense of hopelessness among those who need to dwell on possibility.

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#StaffChat: Next Theatre (Chicago) Closing

Staff chat posts feature articles and news that the C1 team discusses as part of our weekly all-staff meeting. We’d love to hear your thoughts too — hit us up on Facebook or Twitter!

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On her Bitter Gertrude blog early last month, theatre artist Melissa Hillman’s post “The Most Important Thing in Theatre You’re Not Talking About” brings up an issue in the non-profit world that could use wider attention:

THEATRES ARE CLOSING.

Nonprofit theatres all over the country are in trouble. While larger theatres are doing better than they were during the recession, a jaw-dropping amount of small, indie theatres and even midsize theatres are in trouble.

Her post came on the heels of an announcement from Next Theatre that they would be shutting down mid-season. Hillman gives an interesting perspective to the news reported by Chicago Times and American Theatre Magazine and at this week’s staff meeting, we’ll be looking at a few articles about Next Theatre as a case study for the issues Hillman discusses:

Amy J. Carle and Jerry McKinnon in "Luce," Next Theatre's final production after 34 years. (Photo by Michael Brosilow)

Amy J. Carle and Jerry McKinnon in “Luce,” Next Theatre’s final production after 34 years. (Photo by Michael Brosilow)

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