Seattle has already lost the print edition of the Seattle PI and the … The Empty Space. We need to fight against the Darwinian trend of saying that only the strongest survive, and take action against the slow erosion of the cultural tapestry of Seattle. We are a city that prides itself on its intellectual acuity.
Kate Whoriskey
Artistic Director of the Intiman Theatre
I am often accused of arrogance. The aspersion does not bother me much. I try to remind everyone who will listen that the last thing they should be looking for in a playwright is reticence. Dramatists can be wrong—often are— but after all boldly framed public dialogue is what we wright when we write. Institutional arrogance, however, is an all together different, more heinous sin. My recent work blurring the line between journalism and theatre with NewsWrights United has opened my eyes to the prevalence of this poisonous phenomenon in both fields.
Back in June 2010, at a panel on monetizing on-line news David Boardman, the Managing Editor of The Seattle Times, made a stunning statement about the recent death of his former competition, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “The reality is: it’s not like something was lost.” This is not the first time someone at The Times has gone out of their way to kick the corpse of The P-I. If you choose to watch the video (Boardman makes his remarks at timestamp 52:50 in the video provided below) you will notice that the journalism insider panelists barely blink at Boardman’s chilling dismissal of Seattle’s longest running daily newspaper. In fairness, they might have been reluctant to register the churlishness of one in the rare position to offer them a paying job in their chosen field. (As a playwright I have long since been liberated from this kind of fear, since no artistic director is willing to pay me, or any local playwright, at a rate comparable to even what an Equity actor makes, let alone a living wage.)
The Seattle Times survives through the idiotic exigencies of fate. It could have easily been the other way around, and in their hearts they know it. The jury remains out on newspapers. So “Fairview Fanny”, as The Times is traditionally nicknamed, would do well to watch her step in the cemetery lest she dance into her own grave.
The chasm gapes even wider and closer for The Intiman Theatre, one of Seattle’s three Big Houses. In a recent email to everyone in their database the Intiman made it clear that unless a half a million dollars is raised by the end of March, and then another half million by September, the theatre will cease operations. In the business, we call this a “shoot-the-puppy” campaign: a deeply desperate move, fraught with risk, but also deeply arrogant. At its core the implicit message is:
Our survival matters so much that you should overlook our ineffectuality, our malfeasance, our self-dealing, our cowardice and even the very arrogance of this plea. We matter more than the artists we underpay. We matter more than the audiences we fail to reach. We matter more than the smaller organizations you will not be supporting so that you can help us survive, because we must survive and you must pay now for nothing more than the chance to watch us live another day.
Allow me to honor the clarity of Intiman’s ultimatum with some clarity of my own: I hope they die. I hope they do it soon and with a minimum of suffering. And most of all I hope they do it without siphoning precious funds from the rest of us who make theatre in the Pacific Northwest.
In her note on the Intiman’s blog which I quoted at the top of this post, Artistic Director Kate Whoriskey invokes the ghosts of The Empty Space and The P-I as if she actually suffered their loss instead of showing up on the scene quite recently and long after those beloved institutions succumbed. She merrily previews the upcoming season: “I will be directing my husband in The Playboy of the Western World,” assuming we would be delighted by this nepotism. She must imagine we were similarly delighted when we learned that she had been hand-picked for her position by her predecessor Bart Sher without any input from the community, the patrons, and very little, it seems, even from board “Without the Intiman, will we be as strong?” she implores in closing. And all I can think of is the Lone Ranger joke. He and Tonto are surrounded by a band of Apaches. He says, “Looks like we might die here, old friend.” And Tonto replies, “What’s this “we” shit, Kemosabe?”
Seattle theatre is alive and thriving. Buy me a beer and I will name you at least 100 theatre organizations in Western Washington more deserving of your donation than the Intiman. For now I will give you three for free and attempt to tier them to your tastes:
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If you like raw gusty innovative new stories which actually take place here now in Seattle, then support the project for which I currently serve as Executive Producer, NewsWrights United. We are world premiering our second edition The New New News: A Living Newspaper this Friday. Our ticket prices are considerably more affordable than the Intiman’s. If you can’t make the show, you can still support us here. (I don’t hate our odds of surviving past September.)
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If your tastes are more conservative, but you still want to support a smaller endeavor; if you love the classics and want to see them done with verve, talent and bold new insights, support Seattle Shakespeare Company. They have a production of Three Penny Opera coming up that I am itching to see, since it’s by my favorite German playwright and it stars one of my favorite undersung Seattle actors, John Bogar. You can donate to Seattle Shakes here.
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If your tastes are still more conservative, and/or you are rich enough to consider such smaller theatres beneath the consideration of your largesse, give some money to A Contemporary Theatre. The day before Intiman sent out its desperate plea, its fellow Big House downtown announced that for the second year running it had booked a budget surplus. You can donate to an already healthy ACT here.
All three of these organizations prove that at every level of operations we can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. We know this in our hearts. What we do not know is if the Intiman can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. I tend to doubt it, and that is why I believe it is time to let it die.
Please do not misunderstand me. The shuttering of the Intiman represents a loss nearly as terrible and irrevocable within Seattle’s cultural ecosphere as the loss of the P-I is within Seattle’s journalism world (Mr. Boardman’s fear-born callousness notwithstanding). I will not dance on the Intiman’s grave. But I will also not be a party to keeping the institution on life support past the time of its viability, especially when doing so means diverting funds from theatre arts organizations that have been more successful in reaching and expanding their audiences, like, frankly, NewsWrights United, Seattle Shakespeare Festival and ACT.
The Intiman has been arrogant for a very long time. If Kate’s note is any indication, they have no intentions of improving their tone-deaf messaging. They want you to believe this current crisis was the fault of one lone mismanaging scapegoat. But as Michael Strangeways pointed out on the SLOG comments board: “Brian Colburn… didn’t steal the money, or spend it. Years of overspending and waste and the laziness of the Board has led to the woes of Intiman. It wasn’t one man/woman, but many, including fair haired child Bart Sher.”
Losing the Intiman will be a tragedy, but we will survive. We can even hope to be a better community for it in the long run, if we guard against institutional arrogance. We need to remember that artists matter more than institutions, that audiences matter more than funders, that plays matter more as works of art than career stepping stones. As Mark Handley, author of Idioglossia, remarked on Face Book:
I’m too much of an evolutionist to take this seriously. Every one of the theaters that produced me as a young man are gone, squeezed out by creeping provincialism. People seem to think that this is ALL (read: $60 ticket, NY director, LA actors) or NOTHING (as in: nothing, gone, kaput, out of business) is the way to go… *sigh*
So yes, harsh as it sounds: please let the Intiman die with dignity. Its time is done. In its place, let’s build something new, local and accountable. We actually already have the pieces in place for that. The Intiman will not live to see the promised land, but if Kate Whoriskey is serious about making Seattle her home– claiming its unique triumphs and defeats as hers too– then perhaps she will still be living here when we finally grow into a “world class” theatre town.
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(Above is full video of the panel discussion “Town Square: Revenue Models in the Changing Media Landscape” from which I referenced David Boardman’s glib remarks about the death of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If you dare, surf a little past the Boardman quote and you can see me holding Publicola’s Josh Feit’s feet to the fire on his equally glib Pollyannaish assessment of arts coverage in the current environment. If you decide to watch the entire event, you will witness the nearly monolithic patronizing attitude of the panel (David Brewster excepted) to questions from an audience who is clearly not buying their uniformly optimistic outlook. Oh, journalists love the concepts of honesty and transparency, as applied to others.)
