Greetings from Kansas City!

Random, I know, but here I am at the annual United States Institute for Theatre Technology Conference, in Kansas City, and today I have a lot to talk about from my first day at the conference.

I’ll start with the question I got asked earlier: Why do you come to this conference? Well, the answer is a little complex, but I’ll try to explain. There are other conferences that might offer more in the way of shiny new toys and technology to drool over (yes, LDI, I’m talking about you), but in reality, what can I actually buy for the school? Nothing that expensive, that’s for sure, and if you are sitting there surrounded by $10,000 (each) lights run by a $100,000 lighting console while listening to sound pumped through a $100,000 sound board, and $60,000 speakers, you tend to forget that you can’t afford that stuff because you are lost in the “cool” factor. This conference offers some of the wow factor, but more of the “I think I could actually get that purchase order approved” factor that you look for when you are working for a small private school on a “paper thin” budget (our Headmaster’s words). So you look for the extra value in a conference, and in this one, the sessions are geared more towards what I want. Not only to I get information on topics I’m interested in, but also I have found the sessions run by the Education Commission to be just what I need. I’m even trying to get more involved in the Ed Commission, but we’ll see where that leads later in the week. So, reason #1 is that I do learn something every year, and you can’t always say that about other conferences. #2, I get to see old friends from college, and even one of my former students at the high school who has gotten into stage management. It’s fun to catch up with everyone. And #3, this conference is the pause that refreshes every year. By this point in the school year, I’m pretty much toasted after 2 shows and all the other stuff that happens in the theatre, and I find that this little getaway does wonders for my psyche. I usually find something that reignites my passion for what I do, be it a session, or some new technology that I want to start using or when I found the Ed Commission and found my way to get involved in USITT. Not that I totally lose my spark, but by the time the second show is over each year, that flame is running low on fuel, and I just need that boost to get going again. So that’s why I come every year.

As for the first day, we listened to Sally Struthers speak this morning as the keynote. She was funny, but even she wasn’t sure why she was invited to speak. But she brought up a good point about collaboration, in that we all work together to create the magic of what you see onstage, and each person, technician or actor is important to the production. That can get lost in the shuffle sometimes. But in the meeting after her speech, I found the one thing that has stuck with me all day, and I’ll get to that in a second. Anyway, after the meeting it was off to the Expo for a few, then lunch, and then the Ed Commission meeting, where I threw in my card as a volunteer on a couple of things including perhaps being a liaison between USITT and the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) a group geared towards theatre educators in middle and high schools. They are the parent organization for the International Thespian Society (ITS), which is an honors society for high school theatre students. I run the ITS Troupe at my school and I’m a member of EdTA because of that I think I might get tapped for that job. I also volunteered to be a panelist on a session for next year, which would be a neat trick to pull off, since I think my schedule may not permit me to be there next year. We’ll see. Then it was off to an Introduction to Automation, and of course now I’m brimming with ideas of how to move scenery with winches and such. Again, we’ll see, since that can get pricy, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. After that, dinner, and now back at the hotel.

So that one thing that stuck with me from this morning is the fact that in Kansas City, the performing arts make more money than the professional sports teams do. I find that astonishing. I, like many of you I’m sure, would not have thought of KC as a hotbed for the arts, but yet here we are walking the streets of downtown seeing several theatres and watching the construction of the $400 million Kauffman Center a few blocks over from the convention center (http://www.kauffmancenter.org/). They are even offering us tours of the unfinished building as part of the conference! I am awestruck by the way other Midwest industrial-type cities have embraced the arts and really helped them flourish. In 2006 we were in Louisville, last year Cincinnati and now KC, and all of them have helped revitalize their downtowns with the arts, and I commend them for it.

However, this only made me think about how Detroit is suffering and specifically how the arts are suffering. We have no major company to call our own, like the Kansas City Reparatory Theatre. Where is our dance company? Why are our theatres shoehorned into small converted stores, or out in the suburbs? Why all of this when so many buildings are sitting vacant downtown? I see empty theatres that could be used, or torn down and rebuilt. Why do we go to the Fox, Masonic and Fisher to spend what little disposable income we have on touring shows? Can’t we do our own shows? Not if we don’t have a commitment of support from the city and suburbs, and I find it a sad fact that we don’t. I see a city struggling to redefine itself in the wake of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression and while everywhere else in the country is rebounding, we are not, because we have nothing to hang our hats on anymore. Yes the state has made an attempt at luring the film industry here, but they are just California companies renting space here. Why can’t we look at Louisville, Cincy and KC and find a way to remake Detroit starting with the arts?

Thoughts?