Rule of 70

In case you can't get enough teeth-gnashing onstage, backstage, at rehearsal or in the boardroom, here's something from the bloggy sphere you can sink your chops in like some tender ribs: a see-saw row between artists and administrators (so it is perceived) over the the failure (or lack thereof) of theatre in America.

Regular theatre blog readers may yawn as the story continues to trot out its dreary rounds, but here's a summary for the uninitiated. In one corner, Mike Daisey and his provocative show "How Theatre Failed America" and in the other corner (for the moment) Todd Olson, the artistic director of the Florida-based American Stage Theatre Company.

At the end of a good sum-up of the row, this curious observation appears in the comments:

the current debate about institutional theatre model, whether Olson's or Daisey's, is a debate about real estate and the social safety net.

More and more, I am beginning to realize that it is possible I am the only person working in theater who has ever heard of William J. Baumol. If you read this blog very much, you may have heard of him as well (and you deserve the highest praise for your taste in reading material). As much as the usual blowhards line up around the ring to watch the boxing match above, I'll be the blowhard that keeps talking about Cost Disease until maybe one other person catches on.

To wit: of course the social safety net (read: health care) along with real estate (read: fly space) are hamstringing theatre. Of course artists are pissed because they feel second-best to your capital campaign. Of course you feel needlessly maligned for trying to get the artists good lighting and indoor flush toilets. And the pressure will only continue to rise (at a rate of approximately twice the rate of general inflation) and so I suppose will the intensity of the debate.

Assuming the intensity accumulates annually at the difference between general inflation and industry-specific inflation, the debate should be twice as intense in 24 years - just in time for our kids to pick up the gloves.