here’s a curious phenomenon in America called the “non-profit” corporation. It’s a template for arts organizations, particularly theatre companies. The term is generally misunderstood... it doesn’t mean no profit! The term refers to how revenues are acquired and how they’re spent. The ‘profits’ cannot inure to the benefit of any individual, which in practice offers a wide latitude for creative bookkeeping. These entities are “charitable trusts”, keepers of the “public trust” and, therefore, free of most taxation. There are some very profitable “non-profits”.  The Ford Foundation is one of them, and so is the Rockefeller. I don’t know of any theatre company that lives in that country club.

What makes this phenomenon peculiar is how it reflects America’s uneasiness when it comes to supporting the arts... more than uneasy, downright uncomfortable and anxiety-ridden. With the exception of the no-strings-attached grants by the MacArthur Foundation and a few other oddities in the philanthropic scene, patronage for the sake of the artist has no roots in the culture of England’s former colonies. America, after all, is a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (tr: Christian) society despite all the lip-service that touts the “melting pot”, the multiculturalism, the “watch out for the Hispanics and their birth-rate, we’re all going to be speaking Spanish next year!” It’s that Protestant work-ethic that purses its lips until they’re blue, squints at art and would have delivered to the grand Pablo something like – “Gee, Mr. Picasso, if you’re having so much trouble selling a painting, did you ever think of getting a job?”

The boom in non-profit funding occurred... how the Fates do relish irony... during the regime of that superior crook and premier hypocrite, Richard Nixon. In a quantum leap, he quadrupled the budget for the National Endowment of the Arts (a government-funded public trust). The NEA, partnered with Ford, Rockefeller and other plush, rich public trusts, pumped money into the arts, particularly the performing arts including the theatre. It was like a hallelujah payday at a camptown meeting!

Much good came out of that largesse, much bad too. And when the NEA fostered and funded regional arts councils in the early ‘70s, American communities came out of the closet... art was... okay, okie-dokie! If those free dollars had to be spent then let them be spent in my state, in my county, in my town, in my ward, in my precinct and above all, in my neighborhood. And let there be pleasure and let there be joy. And there was. (It is “not” amazing how easily this kind of government patronage becomes politicized, merchandized, and amoralized.) For all of the good the born-again arts support did... there was a price to pay. It actually began somewhat before the 1970’s gush of gold. The price was, and still is... mediocrity! It is a malady of non-profit, especially non-profit theatre. It exalts the community, the boards of directors, the “friends of...” and too often takes art out of the hands and mouths of the artists. The audience becomes the show!

The merchandising of the arts into the everyday common-denominator promoted a political correction that haunts us today – everyone is a painter, everyone is a writer, everyone is an actor, everyone is a director.... everyone is an artist, and no one is. “Elite” (my favorite word next to elan and panache) is a giggle of scorn because talent is suspiciously arrogant.

I have a point to make here... and to get to it, I want to reprint a column from a few months ago. Along with its second part, it documents my first major experience in the non-profit arena. Your indulgence is requested.

Chicago Confidential
or, How I stopped worrying about White folks and learned to love my Black friends.

From the top... I call my Black friends Black, because they call me White. What else are they going to call me... Caucasian? Well in my case it fits, because I am Caucasian; both of my parents were Russians from the Caucasus. But they call me White, and since I’m actually peachy-beige, I call them Black. Enough! Take it for what it’s worth.

In the early 70’s, the love of my then life and I brought The Ensemble to Chicago, Illinois, Midwest USA, North America. We had developed this first-ever combined theatre and dance company in San Francisco, which at the time was a rather remote region and annoyingly provincial. We were both New Yorkers, she a dancer-choreographer, me an actor-director and we spent three years in Northern California looking for sabor (she was Latin), some passion in the air, some fire in the eyes. The Bay Area was gray and tasteless. We figured it was time to get back East where dancers knew how to sweat and actors knew how to breathe  We figured we’d keep our act out of New York for a while and slide into a big city that was close enough to the Atlantic Ocean to feel the beat of Europe. So at the behest of the fledgling Illinois Arts Council  we took the offer to move which included a nearly new neatly designed theatre building and some funding. We were innocently and stupidly non-profit at that time.

Now Chicago has a problem... did then, still has today. It can’t get New York out of its craw. It desperately doesn’t want to be a “second” city to New York which is the first city in theatre, dance, music and visual art in the U.S. And by being a “not-wannabe” second city, it is... second rate. It also has some of the lousiest weather of any metropolitan area on the planet. And it was then the most racially segregated city in the states, dominated by a thick white power structure. I do say that to its credit it has one of the stunning collections of architecture in the country, even a Frank Lloyd Wright House.

It also had Richard J. Daley... hizzoner, the mayor for 20 years, heir to the Thompson-Capone political machine, the kingmaker who more than likely put Kennedy into the White House, The Man!... the man on the fifth floor (in City Hall) who never took a dime, lived modestly in a gray-white Chicago suburb and went to Mass every morning. The Man with no neck who danced a tightrope like a featherweight high-wire walker, stretched between the Mob on one end, and the Arch-Diocese and big Banks on the other. He kept the peace and they kept the pieces. He ruled the city with the motto: “Chicago is the city that works!”. And it did... Daley style.

After we set up shop, opened the training studios, fleshed out both companies... we began work on an experiment we had started in San Francisco. We were boldly going where no right thinking theatre artist wanted to tread... we resurrected the “Living Newspaper”.  This powerful mixed-media form (in our incarnation it included acting, dance, jazz, and graphics) was among the sharpest instruments that were turned against and used to  bring down a golden era in U.S. performing arts... the WPA especially the Federal Theatre Project (which see if you want to see what dreams are made of). We did two of them – one on education, called “School Crisis: Where Have All The Children Gone?” and one on public housing, called: “Housing Crisis: Who The Hell Cares.”  This was a preliminary  to our first full repertory season. The National Endowment funding hadn’t kicked in yet, so we were riding on a Leisure Time grant left over from the days of the “Great Society” and its “Model Cities Program”. We had patrons, but our white knight was the grant administrator, Clarence Cash, who was Black (I mention that because it comes into play later).

There’s an old saying in Chicago... “When it rains it pours and no umbrella or hip boots will keep you out of the shit!” And we were rained on... all buckets dumping our way. We were slammed by teachers, and parents, patriots and pigeons! But it was the housing piece that nearly done us in! We did some serious mixed-media theatre there, a hard-assed look at the city and The Man.  Absolutely not! Who do you think you are? We’re a theatre company. Then do your theatre and keep your mouth shut. Okay! But it was too late. Within days, our funding was cut. And then, this nearly new theatre building which had been designed by a leading architect as a class project with his Yale graduate students... suddenly developed more fire and building code violations than San Francisco the day after the 1906 earthquake. In the coming months, we had so many inspection visits we considered selling tickets and running matinee performances.

We struggled through a lean, mean first season... it was pretty good. But we figured it was our first and last. So before the chickens and tar buckets showed up, we decided to pull out the stops, go out in glory with another in-your-face theatre piece. We created another “newspaper”, and it was called: “The Screaming Yellow Chicago Blues, or, Dick Daley Won’t you Please Come Home!”  Theatre people are crazy... we were crazy. This cross between Brecht, Marat-Sade and the Cirque du Soleil was a romp, a party that even included a ballet-dancing full-sized gorilla in a tutu. On opening night, The Mayor’s daughter was in the audience along with her husband who was hizzoner’s right-hand man. She liked it! And the spies liked it! And the reports flowed back to Daley, and he liked it! Within days, our funding returned. A few days later, Clarence Cash (remember him?) paid us a visit. After nosing around for a couple of minutes, he came up to me and stuck his finger just below my sternum (he was a little guy) and said: “Jack, be cool... and you’ll be...  coool!” It took some time before that pearl of wisdom he pushed into my ear began to sing some sense.

Something had happened! The Ensemble was a repertory theatre company that did O’Neill, Williams, Horwitz, Carlino, and original work paired with a modern dance company that mounted full performance pieces and sets of commissioned pieces, both supported by complete training programs that offered scholarships and apprenticeships. The company artists worked with fever... classes in the morning, rehearsals in the afternoon, performances at night... six days a week, sometimes seven. It was a committed time.

But something had happened! As we began to prepare for a second full bore 120-performance repertory season, the quiet hum of a presence appeared. It turned the head, tilted the ear and slowly asked for attention. It sweetly, and gently prodded us to take a few small steps, very small steps, down a path that led to Oz, that led to what became a rainbow of gold and a nightmare of naked dreams. If we had been crazy, we were about to become certifiably mad. And I was about to learn the meaning of... “coool.”

Part 2: Click Here

Arthur Meiselman is a writer,
director, playwright and zingaro

© 2000 A. Meiselman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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