...let Michael Casselli tell you, over at Ecotheater.
Not a pretty picture. NYTW fires it production staff and closes the department.
Of all the jobs in theater, production always seemed pretty safe to me. I know nothing except what I'm reading on blogs, so I won't comment too much on it. Mr. Casselli seems to speak for himself.
Wow. I was going to offer some thoughts on this, but then I read Scott Walters' follow-up over at Theatre Ideas and instead I'll just second his thoughts, which I think he states with more clarity than I could.
ReplyDeleteI'll say only this: From what I've read, this seems to be one more example of a certain kind of cutthroat business practice, old hat in the corporate world, that is increasingly common in arts organizations: Spend money wantonly on your own pet projects, collect your salary (high six figures in some cases), and in the event of a fiscal crisis look around for people who have come to trust you, and throw them under the bus. Above all, never make yourself accountable. If the head honchos at NYTW couldn't even be bothered to face the people who were being axed, man, that's especially shameful. But not uncommon: I've seen it so, so often at well-respected theatres large and small. Again, in the corporate world, this is no surprise, but when arts administrators treat people this way, it seems particularly egregious because of the hypocrisy: when you treat people so shabbily, it's pretty rich when you turn around and produce theatre that purports to speak to our collective humanity.