Imagine that
The state of New York is reeling from a $16-billion-or-so deficit. Governor Paterson's solution? More or less across-the-board budget cuts. Seems fair-ish. But it's a strategy that has created a lot of anger and senselessly wiped out a lot of good programs that might actually generate more tax revenues than they cost.
Facebook changed its Terms of Service and granted itself "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" to pictures of your last family reunion. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg responded to cries of "foul," explaining
Hence the need for the irrevocable etc etc license to your baby pictures and pithy status updates.
What have these got to do 1. with each other; and 2. with theatre?
These situations highlight classic examples of dilemma - two equally less-than-appealing choices - one of which must be taken and rationalized. There's a limited amount of money in New York, and nobody wants their project cut; in order to protect itself from liability, Facebook has to egregiously violate the trust and rights of its users.
The other thing they have in common is an utter lack of imagination on the part of the deciders. Here's where theatre comes in: watch a theatre production team at work with a limited budget (is there any other kind) - and you'll see some amazingly imaginative solutions to all kinds of tricky business. How about the audience? I'm fond of saying "we're not fooling anybody" when someone comes to a play - but what creates narrative continuity for the skeletal sets, blackouts between scenes, people bursting into song on the streets where they live?
Imagination.
If the complex solutions to the administrative and creative problems that face theatre pratictioners daily were solved in so ham-fisted a fashion as the Facebook ToS and the New York State budget, we'd have been out of business a long time ago. It's not my job (or my area of expertise) to solve those problems - but I can provide a place where imagination holds the highest value - where people like Paterson and Zuckerberg can learn how to find graceful, flexible, and surpirising solutions to these seeming dilemmas without cutting of their noses.
As the melee for scarce resources forces the arts to make instrumental economic arguments - albeit very sophisticated ones - we become vulnerable to arguments against funding the arts on the grounds of opportunity costs. Let's offer our fellows imagination in the context of complex problem solving as a unique intrinsic benefit of our art.
A massive highway overpass may create more economic activity than 10 regional theatres in 10 years - but the engineers and financeers have to learn to use their imaginations somewhere...
Facebook changed its Terms of Service and granted itself "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" to pictures of your last family reunion. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg responded to cries of "foul," explaining
"people want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them-like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on-to other services and grant those services access to those people's information...these two positions are at odds with each other."
Hence the need for the irrevocable etc etc license to your baby pictures and pithy status updates.
What have these got to do 1. with each other; and 2. with theatre?
These situations highlight classic examples of dilemma - two equally less-than-appealing choices - one of which must be taken and rationalized. There's a limited amount of money in New York, and nobody wants their project cut; in order to protect itself from liability, Facebook has to egregiously violate the trust and rights of its users.
The other thing they have in common is an utter lack of imagination on the part of the deciders. Here's where theatre comes in: watch a theatre production team at work with a limited budget (is there any other kind) - and you'll see some amazingly imaginative solutions to all kinds of tricky business. How about the audience? I'm fond of saying "we're not fooling anybody" when someone comes to a play - but what creates narrative continuity for the skeletal sets, blackouts between scenes, people bursting into song on the streets where they live?
Imagination.
If the complex solutions to the administrative and creative problems that face theatre pratictioners daily were solved in so ham-fisted a fashion as the Facebook ToS and the New York State budget, we'd have been out of business a long time ago. It's not my job (or my area of expertise) to solve those problems - but I can provide a place where imagination holds the highest value - where people like Paterson and Zuckerberg can learn how to find graceful, flexible, and surpirising solutions to these seeming dilemmas without cutting of their noses.
As the melee for scarce resources forces the arts to make instrumental economic arguments - albeit very sophisticated ones - we become vulnerable to arguments against funding the arts on the grounds of opportunity costs. Let's offer our fellows imagination in the context of complex problem solving as a unique intrinsic benefit of our art.
A massive highway overpass may create more economic activity than 10 regional theatres in 10 years - but the engineers and financeers have to learn to use their imaginations somewhere...
Comments
Post a Comment