Show Me the Money!

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced that it will distribute just under $27 million in grants to 1,207 projects. Included in those numbers are 994 projects ($23,828,500) in the “Access to Artistic Excellence” category. According to the NEA press release, 1,697 eligible applications were submitted seeking funds for the creation and presentation of work in a variety of disciplines--a 22 percent increase over the prior year. For those keeping track, that means that just under 59% of the requests were funded (though many may have received a smaller grant than requested).

NEA Chair, Rocco Landesman stated that these grants will support “projects that have great works of art at the heart of them; that work to inspire and transport audiences and visitors; and that create and retain opportunities for artists and arts workers to be a part of this country's real economy."

With ten Oregon arts organizations receiving grants totaling $232,500, that works out to be just about 1 percent of the total. According to population estimates from the U.S. Census (2008), Oregon has 1.2 percent of the nation’s population. Seems to me, we got screwed out of .2 percent of what's due. But let's not quibble over rounding errors. You might note that six of the ten Oregon projects are to theater companies.

Here’s the list of Oregon's awardess, with project descriptions from the NEA. On behalf of Culture Shock, I extend a hearty congratulations to all of them:

Miracle Theatre Company
Category: Theater
$15,000
To support the West Coast premiere of El Quijote by Santiago García, based on the early 17th-century novel Don Quixote by Cervantes. Artistic Director Olga Sanchez will direct the piece.

Oregon Children's Theatre Company
Category: Theater
$20,000
To support the adaptation and premiere of Small Steps by Louis Sachar. The play will be a sequel to Sachar's novel Holes, which also was successfully adapted for the stage.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association
Category: Theater
$50,000
To support the development and world premiere production of American Night, a new piece by the theater ensemble Culture Clash to be directed by Jo Bonney. The project will be the first production in the company's American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, a decade-long public dialogue, commissioning, and production initiative.

Portland Center Stage
Category: Theater
$15,000
To support the 12th annual JAW (Just Add Water): Playwrights Festival. The festival supports playwrights in the development of new works to enhance the repertoire of the American theater.

Third Rail Repertory Theatre
Category: Theater
$10,000
To support a final workshop and world premiere production of The Gray Sisters by Craig Wright. The production will be directed by Producing Artistic Director Slayden Scott Yarbrough and performed by company members.

White Bird
Category: Dance
$25,000
To support the presentation of dance companies in the White Bird Uncaged series. The project will include master classes and lecture-demonstrations.

Portland Art Museum (on behalf of Northwest Film Center)
Category: Media Arts
$35,000
To support the Northwest Film and Video Festival and its tour throughout the Northwest. The festival showcases new work by media artists living in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Eugene Symphony Association, Inc.
Category: Music
$12,500
To support American Encounters: Steven Stucky. The series will include performances of Stucky's recent compositions, a radio broadcast, and educational activities by the composer.

Artists Repertory Theatre (aka Artists Rep)
Category: Musical Theatre
$20,000
To support the development and production of Gracie and the Atom by Portland playwright and composer Christine McKinley. The production will be promoted through the theater's education and outreach program Actors to Go, which features student matinees, artists in classrooms, and post-show discussions.

Portland Opera Association Inc.
Category: Opera
$20,000
To support new productions of a chamber opera triple-bill comprising Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti and Monteverdi's one-act operas Il Ballo Delle Ingrate and Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. The artists will include the Portland Opera Studio Artists (POSA) and the POSA Chamber Opera.

Portland Taiko
Category: Presenting
$10,000
To support the development and presentation of Ten Tiny Taiko Dances. The series of new works will be created in collaboration with invited choreographers, musicians, and performance artists.

Although the organization is based in Vancouver, there’s one more project that touches Oregon:

Confluences (aka The Confluence Project)
Category: Design
$32,000
To support a landscape art installation by artist/architect Maya Lin at Celilo State Park. The installation will be located near The Dalles, Oregon, where one of North America's largest waterfalls was once located.

One final note: This post is an example of the new citizen's journalism that will soon be crushing "legacy media," which is what we're supposed to be calling that old fashioned stuff like newspapers. Frankly, I don't see why we need real reporters anyway. All I had to do was extract text from a press release, pull a list from a website, and do a quick Google search for census data. Any idiot could do it.

Who's on Top?

OregonBusiness magazine just released its ranking of the Top 100 Nonprofits to work for in Oregon. I didn't make it to the award ceremony last night, but received the rankings this morning.

The organization with which I am associated, Oregon Children’s Theatre, ranked 26th in the “Small Company” category (with a score of 479.2). Woohoo! We're 26th!

Broadway Rose Theatre beat us at 21st place in the same group (score of 485.7); however, as a musical theater company it has the advantage of lots of happy singing and dancing to boost morale. Our friends at Portland Center Stage reached 30th place in the “Large” category (more than 75 employees) with a score of just under 411. I believe that means we kicked their asses, and I don't care who knows it. Oregon Shakespeare Festival brought up the rear in that category at 33rd place (score of 406.2).

Our other friends at the Regional Arts and Culture Council placed 9th in the “Medium” category (24-74 employees) with a respectable score of nearly 474. The table provided by OregonBusiness describes RACC’s purpose as providing “pre-natal to end-of-life social services to low-income people.” That sounds about right since they support artists.

The only other arts group in the rankings was Caldera, scoring 9th in the small category with score of 499.3 -- very well done.

Who ranked at the very top? Susan G. Komen for the Cure, OR/SWW Affiliate in the large category with a score of 520.7; Idealist.org in the middle group at 519.4; and, Oregon Rehabilitation carrying the small group (with a whopping score of 537.7).

100 Years of Blogging Dangerously

Gather ‘round me youngsters, and I’ll tell you a wee tale from old timey-time. You might even call it a legend, ‘cause it’s the story 'bout how your great-great-grandpappy became the blogger known ‘round these parts at that Mighty Toy Cannon.

Before I git started, one of you tykes might just top up my glass there. Don’t be stingy now. Fill it up to the top and plop another one of those olives in there. Oh yes indeedy! That’s what I call tasty. Okay, simmer down now and pay attention.

It was the long, hot summer of 2008 as I remember it. I wasn’t doin’ nothing what amounted to anything. I was just a lost soul sitting outside of the social network peering in through the window like a hungry dog lookin’ at a pork chop. Everybody those days was startin’ to blog and facebook and twitter and twatter, and all kinds of crazy things they was doing. I could hardly keep up with it all. It was just one big mess of intercommunicating that would raise hackles on the head of a hoarhound in heat. You see, we was all learnin’ to get along without having to look each other in the face.

One day that fellow you know as Uncle Jeffy sent me what we used to call an e-mail message. The “e” stood for “electrozimbonic,” and it was the way we used to talk to each other. That was the time right before holographic iBrain implants made communicating as simple as sayin’ “Howdy do?” to your neighbor. Nowadays y’all are used to communicatin’ using jes’ your brain waves. Back then we had to flap our lips or use our fingers to make words.

Well, I remember that July day when Uncle Jeffy (we called him Culture Jock) sent a message to a mess of us that read, “Hey. I need some help making this here Culture Shock blog more interesting and entertaining.” There was another word he used--it’ll come to me in jes’ a second-- provocatitious? I’m not sure if that’s right, but it’ll have to do for now.

Ol’ Culture Jock asked, “Would you be willin’ to lend a hand?” He said it would be like an old-timey barn-raising. The way he told it, we’d all pitch in and drink lemonade and eat biscuits when we was done. Everybody else … I forget their names now … jumped in right away, but I was naturally skeptical. You might have even called me dubious.

Well, I said to Culture Jock right off, “What the heck would I have to say ‘bout anything?”

Right back at me, he said, “Go on! You say interesting things all the time! Everybody says so, they do.”

Then I said to him, “What if I want to stay 'nonymous ‘cause I don’t want nobody finding me out and learning my secrets?” I didn’t really have secrets, but we had this thing called “privacy” that we used to let our heads worry ‘bout back then.

Just like that, he answered, “Heck. You could just make up some crazy old name and nobody would ever know the difference.”

So I threw one last thing at him: “What if I get in one of my moods for weeks at a time and jes’ stop writin' anything?”

You see, that was a time when this old fellow you're listenin' to had important work to do. There was grants that had to be written and arts that needed to be administrated. That was before the Council of Overlords passed the Oxygen Tax on Breathing, givin’ us a dedicated funding source for all the artistic and cultural stuff you now enjoy for free. Nowadays, if you’re born a Creative, you get all kinds of special mollycoddling, and you live the life of Goldman Sachs, looking down on regular people from atop your highrise units over at the South Waterfront Protective Compound. Back then, we was underappreciated and never got squat from nobody.

These days, things are good as pudding for artists, that’s for sure. I still regret that we couldn’t stop the robots from replacing human actors though. That was the one battle in the Great Culture War we lost. I gotta admit, after that happened, theater got more … what’s the word? … consistent. But we still have the ballet!

Anyways … where’d that martini shaker git to? Pass it over here quick, ‘cause I’m starting to feel parched with all this story-tellin’. Ahh, now that’s what I call a pleasing refreshment!

As I was saying, it took a bit of jawing, but Culture Jock finally convinced me to give it a go. “Don’t worry about writing posts on any kind of reg’lar schedule,” he said, “Nobody ever keeps up with blogging! Shoot, most bloggers give up once they realize nobody out there gives a hoot what they got to say.”

I guess that must have convinced me 'cause the next thing you know, I done posted something! My very first blog post. Jes’ like that, I was on the Internet Highway plying my trade as a gol’darned blogger by the handle of Mighty Toy Cannon.

By the end of that very first year of blogging, I had published 168 posts on Culture Shock, not to mention another 42 on a darn site of my very own, Mighty Toy Cannon (which I named after myself on account of it was all mine). I was as hot as a meth house on fire with a basement filled with kerosene! I could scarcely believe how much time I was wasting writin’ up some of that crazy stuff most every night. Lookin’ for the pictures to go with every post was half the fun! Lord knows, I was pleased to use that word “published” all the time, ‘cause it sounded so awfully important and all.

Those were good times back then. We was all posting things left and right and willy-nilly. Sometimes we got all serious and grim about topics, especially when some politician was actin’ bat-shit crazy. Some called us high-and-mighty and smug, on account of us tellin’ folks how things ought to be. You woulda thought we were in charge of the world! And you know what? We shoulda been, dammit!

Other times, we was jes’ a bunch of cut-ups, jokin’ around, trying to make people laugh and forget their troubles. We was bustin' people up like they was chifferobes! Lord knows, them was troubled times back then. People wanted a good laugh and we gave them what they needed!

I know, I know. Truth be told, we didn’t have a clue in heaven what our Followers wanted or liked. Most times they just read things and kept real quiet, like hidin' in the woods from a grizzly bear when your hands is full of fish heads dipped in honey. When that happens, you try not to jerk fast so as not to be noticed any more than you already are. But we knew they were there.

We always figured our brilliant writing had them readers cowed. That’s right, I said it, they was cowed by our extraordinary show of intellect. Every darn one of them readers wanted to comment, you know they did. But did they? No! They was scared to say nothin’ on account of we set the bar so goddamned high! I know it’s a grievous sin to be prideful, and I expect I’m gonna burn in hellfire and all, but it’s gotta be said before everyone forgets what it was like back then!

No, I’m not cryin’ sonny boy; I just got a piece of dust up in my eyeball. Which one is you anyway? Little Baby Cannon the Third? That’s sweet. Now why don’t you just get me a little more ice while you’re up and about. Might as well pass that bottle over too. That’s a good boy.

Now where was I? Oh, sure there was some posts I’d just as soon forget. Some of them still sneak up and haunt me now and again, makin’ me wonder what the heck I was thinking. But, other posts still make me kind of prideful to this very day, I have to admit in all modesty.

Pretty soon, me and my Culture Shock pals were startin’ to draw a little attention to ourselves. People were even admittin’ in public that they were Followers. Every now and then, other respectable folks would notice and comment about the crazy things we wrote.

You want to know who? Well, for example, people like those brainy guys at Art Scatter. They said a thing or two now and then.

You don’t know who I’m talking about? Well they were those fellows what won the Pulitzer Prize for Excellence in Cultural Blogging ‘round about 2022, the year Culture Shock was disqualified due to the Incident.

Yeah, that’s right-- they're the folks whose heads are on display down at the old Memorial Coliseum Museum and Fun Time Center. Why that Barry Johnson fellow was the last journalist left at the Oregonian when it was finally sold to the owner of the Pyongyang Gazette. Barry once wrote that one of my book reviews was the “best book review of the year” back in '09. Now I’ll grant you he wrote that after the year was but a week or two old, but it sure was a nice thing to say and he didn't have to go doing that.

Now quit all that wiggling or you’re gonna knock over my beverage and there’ll be hell to pay! I’ll be done soon enough and you can go back to gathering up sticks and twigs.

Pretty soon, more people knew me as Mighty Toy Cannon than by the name my folks bestowed on me at my birth. They was callin’ me things like “MTC” and “Toy Cannon.” Sometimes they’d mash it all up together as “mightytoycannon” and sometimes I'd called myself “MTCannon.” I’d be walking down the street and people would shout, “Yo! It’s the Cannon!” and give me the thumbs-up (when people still had thumbs), and they’d say, “I liked that post you posted!” I’d tip my hat and go on my way, holding my chin up a little bit prouder.

Well I tell you, that first year of blogging was something else. Some credit my series of "Election Countdown" music video posts in October of that year for having put Barack Obama over the top in that final election. Others say we were doling out hope at a time when hope and a million shares of General Motors wasn't enough to buy you a shot of Stumptown coffee.

I still have a hard time believing how quickly that first anniversary came around. You know what’s ironic? The traditional gift for a first anniversary used to be paper! You kids don’t even know what paper is, do you? That goes to show you something.

Shoot, at times that year seems to have flown by just about as fast as it took for Major League Soccer to fail in Portland! Other times, I remember it going as slow as being stuck in a hovercar on the 48-lane Nike River Crossing and Cyclocross Bridge to Vancouver before the Great Reckoning severed our relationship with our northerly neighbors.

You want to know what happened after that first year of blogging at Culture Shock?

Well, we’ll just have to save that for another time. I’m startin’ to think this glass isn’t going to fill itself. Skedaddle you little muskrats! Give this old man some time to think his thoughts by hisself.

Drammy Awards

Another season of theater in Portland is wrapping up and the annual Drammy Awards are upon us. The Drammy Awards party is an amalgam of celebration and seething resentments, lubricated by drink. I’ll be on vacation next week, so don’t expect me to be there.

In previous posts, I stuck my neck out with a few predictions and/or recommendations, though this list is far from complete and is not based on careful consideration of the competition.

Best Costumes: Sarah Gagahan, "James & The Giant Peach"
Best Ensemble: "Biloxi Blues"
Courage in Full Frontal: Tim True, "Dead Funny"
Actor: Bill Christ (“Frost Nixon”)
Actress: Sharonlee McLean (“The Receptionist”)
Direction: Rose Riordan (“The Receptionist”)
Choreography: Amy Palomino (“Fabuloso”)
Sets: "How to Disappear and Never be Found"/"Frost/Nixon"

Who do you think deserves recognition for "Outstanding Achievement" this year?

Here’s the official announcement:

WHAT: 30th Anniversary Drammy Awards
WHERE: Crystal Ballroom
1332 W. Burnside St.
Portland, OR
WHEN: Monday, June 8
6:00 PM Social hour and slide presentation
7:00 PM Awards presentation
COST: FREE ADMISSION, no-host bar and pizza
DRESS: Theatrical, elegant, innovative. Costumes are encouraged.

Welcome to the biggest all-theatre cast party’s 30th anniversary celebration. Mark your calendars and spread the word. Last year’s ceremony, featuring theatrical exuberance and flamboyant décor, drew well over 600 attendees. So plan to attend this year, because even if you don’t come with a group, there are sure to be people you know to sit and chat with.

The Masters of Ceremonies this year will be Portland favorites, actor/director Philip Cuomo and actress Maureen Porter. Expect a fun, joke-filled evening. The ceremony includes a slide show retrospective of the 2008-2009 theatre season. This year, in honor of the 30th year of the awards, we will be honoring 30 “unsung heroes” of the theatre scene, who have been suggested by area theatres.

PATA will present their “Spotlight Awards” in the main ballroom during the Drammy ceremony this year. The Spotlight Awards honor the important individuals who work behind the scenes to create great theatre. These awards are nominated and voted on by the theatre community.

The ceremony is free and open to the public, young and old.

The Drammy awards, a program of the Portland Civic Theatre Guild, are organized by the all-volunteer Drammy Committee, a group of theater artists and administrators, journalists and academics who review well over 100 productions in a season that ends May 24. In order to be considered for a 2009 Drammy Award, a production must be locally produced and has to have run at least eight performances (not including previews) by May 24. Because the awards are presented for “outstanding achievement” rather than “best of”, there is no list of nominees and from 0 to 4 awards may be presented in each category in any given year. Award categories are flexible in order to reflect the work presented in any given year.

Weekend Divertissements

This started out to be an abbreviated post--a space-filler and a diversion from Culture Shock's recent immersion in serious matters of arts advocacy and cultural policy. It was going to be a post about Jerry Lewis. Then my mind wandered.

As previously announced, the Mighty Toy Cannon household has given up its regular subscription to the New York Times. Fortunately, the Grey Lady has adopted a sure-fire business strategy based on one simple principle: If the customer is no longer buying your product, give it away for free!

(Perhaps the auto industry should consider a similar approach: Instead of selling vehicles, GM could park cars all over town and let people use them anytime they want. The industry could "monetize" this business model by selling banner ads that run on a little screen mounted on the dashboard.)

Thanks to the publisher's generosity, not only did I enjoy the Times over coffee on Saturday morning, but I was able to read an article that did not appear in the pulp and fiber version until Sunday. Let's examine the NY Times approach more closely: (1) Give away your content; and (2) Give away the free version before it gets to the people who are paying for it.

What I like about the NY Times online is that it's easy to navigate (unlike OregonLive) and isn't slathered with banner and pop-up ads. So there's a third critical element in the business model: (3) Minimize online ads as much as possible. Recipe for financial ruin? Or a cunning strategy beyond our ken?

The media industry is madly trying to figure out how to survive and adapt to changing times. (This morning's news included a report that the Philadelphia Inquirer has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection). In a recent Time Magazine cover story, “How to Save Your Newspaper,” Walter Isaacson (a former managing editor of Time magazine) argues that the advertising-supported model of online journalism is flawed; not only is it failing financially, but it makes publications beholden to advertisers. He hopes new approaches to paying for online content will ensure that news organizations get paid for the journalism they create, perhaps through micropayment mechanisms. Jon Stewart recently interviewed Isaacson on the Daily Show. (I had originally embedded a video of that interview on this post, but it had a ton of HTML code that made me nervous so you'll have to follow the link instead).

The NY Times media critic, David Carr, makes essentially the same case in an article, “Let’s Invent an iTunes for News,” though without delving very deeply into how that might happen. (Side note: If you're a fan of grim, unflinching memoirs by former junkies, Carr's "Night of the Gun" is a fascinating confessional and journalistic exercise).

My inner-optimist thinks (hopes) that we'll emerge from the global economic meltdown stronger and smarter, including finding new ways to communicate and share information. That may require us to figure out how to pay for journalism and other online content. Would you be willing to pay to read online articles (or even blog posts) by making "micropayments" for each story? What about the monthly or annual subscription model?

I don't want to have to make an economic decision each time I open a link to an article (even if each choice was a matter of pennies). Nor do I want to sign up for multiple subscriptions to get the variety of content to which I've grown accustomed. On the other hand, I might be willing to pay a small surcharge on top of my monthly internet charges if the proceeds were distributed equitably to content creators. The algorithms for calculating what's fair would be complicated and subject to debate, but I presume the technology for tracking usage is not an issue. (As Isaacson points out, the original concept of the hyperlink was that it would work as a tool for tracking content usage and to allocate micropayments).

Realizing that I've waded into complex policy territory that I barely understand, let's get back to Jerry Lewis, who just received one of those honorary Academy Awards. This post was prompted by a story by NY Times film critic, Manohla Dargi ("Hey Laaaady!"), in which she calls the movie, CinderFella “an astonishment” and describes the “knockout musical number” in which Lewis (as Fella) dances down a long staircase.

By the time he makes his way to the understandably stunned-looking princess (Anna Maria Alberghetti), Fella has captivated the entire ballroom. He awkwardly takes the princess’s hand, and the two begin to move harmoniously around the white polished floor. They separate, then join together, hitting the floor in synchronous, jazzy motion until Fella suddenly motions for her to stand still. And then, as the horns keep blasting and blaring, he begins jumping around her, drawing circles with his hands while his legs turn into airborne right angles. It’s a ridiculous expression of pure kinetic energy and — as is often the case with this performer — a blast of untamed, untamable libido that threatens to destroy the carefully controlled gathering like a bomb.

Though Dargis provides a lively and detailed description of the scene, I wasn't satisfied until I could see it with my own eyes. Thanks to the miracle of the internets, I jumped over to YouTube and found the scene. Since Culture Shock, unlike the NY Times, doesn’t have a legal department to advise us on intellectual property and copyright rules, I can post it here for your enjoyment and edification:



Lewis’s frantic, goofy solo reminded me of Steve Martin doing a happy dance on Saturday Night Live. I couldn’t find a copy of that scene (SNL is diligent about scrubbing the internet of copyrighted material), so I wandered around and was soon watching videos of Christopher Walken dancing , and then an excerpt of Eddie Izzard doing a Christopher Walken imitation, then back to Jerry Lewis (in his alter ego/Buddy Love persona), then to Andy Kaufman (in his alter ego mode) ... and then ... and then my Saturday morning was over and it was time for a fresh cup of coffee.

And the 2008 Artists Fellowship Award goes to...

It’s not a MacArthur Genius Grant like what has been discussed on Art Scatter this week, but RACC has just named its 2008 Fellow for Literature: Kim Stafford.


Flickr photo by Beyond Baroque

Stafford is, without question, a local treasure and a consummate storyteller. The son of former Oregon Poet Laureate William Stafford has certainly become one of the most important artists of our place and time, leaving profound impressions through poetry, prose, essays, children’s stories, and public art. He is also one of the most kind and generous artists I have ever met; even a simple letter for recommendation from the man brings instant understanding, inspiration and authenticity.

I also like what poet and novelist Naomi Shihab Nye says about Stafford: “He has an ability to be present to every moment he ever lives in – a native, original brilliance with language and imagery – a perfect sense of time – an endless appetite for deep listening – a wonderful sense of humor… a true belief in the powers of language to connect, not to divide.”

The RACC Fellowship Award for Literature includes a cash grant of $20,000, and in the year ahead Stafford plans to reduce his teaching time and other commitments to wander the city and engage residents in conversations. All will be documented in a series of essays entitled, “Pilgrim at Home: Local Encounters Beyond the Epoch of the Car” that will undoubtedly deepen our appreciation for the local experience that is Portland, Oregon. How cool is that?

Also, a shout out to Debra Gwartney, Mead Hunter, Karen Karbo, Renee Mitchell, Greg Netzer, Ellen Waterston, and Matt Yurdana who sat on the panel that selected Stafford for this award.

Here’s hoping that our colleagues at Art Scatter are compelled to abide.