Abstract
The authors develop a measure of the ‘innovativeness’ of the repertoires of U.S. resident nonprofit theatres and test hypotheses about the relationship between environmental and organizational factors and innovation. Access to potential patrons rich in cultural capital appears to make theatre repertoires more innovate, while dependence upon the market (as opposed to grants and contributions) is associated with greater conformity of repertoire. Theatres with smaller budgets to maintain, fewer seats to fill, and less need for earned income are less conformist in their programming than are large theatres with capacious houses and high rates of earned income. Holding size and dependence on earned income constant, there is no evidence that age, structural differentiation, or the presence of subscription audiences—all associated with ‘institutionalization’ – have either a negative or a positive impact on innovation. New York theatres innovate more, and are less negatively affected by growth and the market, than theatres elsewhere in the U.S. It is suggested that artistic innovation has come to depend overwhelmingly on the behavior of formal organizations and that, consequently, we must understand the principles that govern the relationship of such organizations to their economic and social environments in order to understand artistic change.
Market breeds conformity. Very similar to ideas expressed in Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma": one one hand you have to listen to your customers, because they pay your money; on the other hand you don't want to listen to them, because they do not know what they are going to need tomorrow.
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By the second half of the nineteenth century, a vigorous commercial theatre had developed, as the stock system sent touring stars on the ‘road’ to cities and towns throughout the United States.
The stock system was succeeded by the ‘combination’ system, whereby touring and bookings were centralized in the hands of a few New York-based theatrical promoters - notably the Erlangers and the Shuberts - who forged theatre trusts that monopolized commercial opportunities throughout the United
States. The effect of this system was to increase the viability of new plays, which the trusts had the market power to promote effectively, but to decrease the overall variation in repertoires and production standards, which were
regulated closely from New York City. The autonomy of the playwright declined markedly, for the monopolists could demand cuts and revisions in scripts and would only produce those that appealed to the ‘lowest common denominator’ of the public (Poggi 1968). Consequently, like American television during the era of network domination, American drama was a mass medium, with little innovation and little diversity.
tag: scale, control, standardization.
Almost inevitably, large scale operations, i.e. "mass market" applications lead to standardization. It is interesting to see how this trend manifests itself in a traditional "creativity" domain such as theater.
The rise of film (Poggi 1968; Moore 1968) effectively eliminated local
markets for dramatic productions and, with them, the power of the theatre
monopolies. For many years, touring companies and live drama were absent from many American cities.
ibid.
I guess we could call it a disruption, or an S-curve transition.
ibid.
There were approximately 620 nonprofit theatre companies in the United
States in 1980 (Mathtech 1981). Many of these were very small, producing only
two or three plays a year and presenting them to tiny local audiences. There
were many fewer nationally visible and institutionally stable resident theatres,
and these were members of a trade association, the Theatre Communications
Group, originally founded by the Ford Foundation but, since the late 1960s
an independent entity. The membership of this organization, which constitutes
the population we have studied, includes almost all of the large resident
theatres in the United States, most theatres that receive grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, and nearly all of the theatres whose
directors or managers are influential in the national theatrical community.
-- would be interesting to compare to the number of movie theaters or, more importantly, to the number of screens.
Innovativeness cannot be measured directly because students of drama do not
themselves agree about what constitutes innovation. Instead we measure
‘nonconformity’: The extent to which a theatre’s repertoire diverges from that
of the other nonprofit theatres. We do this by creating a ‘conformity/nonconformity
index’ to characterize each theatre’s repertoire. This index represents
the mean number of times that each play produced by any given theatre was
produced by all theatres in our population. By definition, theatres that
performed popular works scored high on this index; theatres that performed
unpopular works scored low. (A score of ‘1’ means that no other theatre
produced any of the plays in a given theatre’s repertoire. A score of ‘5’ means
that, on average, each play in the repertoire was produced by four other
theatres.) Our data are based on the repertoires for the 1977/1978 and
1978/1979 seasons of the 165 theatres that were members of the Theatre
Communications Group at that time.
--- solving the detection problem. how to measure innovation in a non-technical area.
We regard ‘innovation’ as occurring when new works are
entered into the dramatic repertoire, and when old works that have fallen into
disuse are brought back in.
Hypothesis I: Conformity in repertoire is negatively related to metropolitan area population, median education, and the percentage of workers employed in professional or managerial occupations.
Hypothesis 2: High rates of paid attendance and large seating capacities are positively related to conformity.
Hypothesis 3: Institutionalized theatres - those with large budgets, high rates of subscription income, and differentiated administrative structures ~
are more conformist than less institutionalized theatres.
Hypothesis 4: Conformity in repertoire is positively related to (a) predominance
of nonartistic over artistic forces in a theatre’s origins; (b) the
presence of a managing director whose educational and career background
is administrative rather than artistic, and (c) the dominance of the managing
director over the artistic director in the theatre’s decision making.
The most striking results of these analyses are the
consistent impact of two factors - location and size of budget - on theatre
conformity. Theatres located in New York City are much less conformist than
those in any other part of the United States. The typical play produced by the
average New York City theatre was presented only 1.84 times by all theatres in
the sample during the two seasons considered here. By contrast, the mean
conformity index for theatres in the next most innovative region (the midwestern
and central states) was 3.06. Southeastern theatres were somewhat less
adventuresome than others. Notably, northeastern theatres outside of New
York City were about as conformist as those in the rest of the United States.
There are simply more potential consumers in New
York City than anywhere else in the U.S., and more well educated professionals
with a taste for artistic innovation. Second, the labor market for theatre
professionals is more crowded in New York than anywhere else. The abundance
of actors, directors, technicians, and stage managers supports theatrical
innovation by (a) creating a pool of surplus labor that subsidizes productions
through low wages; (b) providing ready materials for the artistic entrepreneur,
and (c) creating the density required to sustain aesthetic ideologies that
legitimate material sacrifice in the interest of art. Finally, the number of
theatres in New York City - Broadway and Off-Broadway showcases as well
as resident theatres - is itself a factor in stimulating innovation. In most
American cities, a single major theatre holds a virtual monopoly of regular
programming. In New York, competition encourages differentiation and different
theatres occupy different niches.
Outside of New York, house capacity is the
only important predictor of conformity: Once capacity is included in the
equation the other measures have no effects. By contrast, for New York City
theatres, house capacity has no effect on conformity when earned income and
paid attendance are controlled.
In short, these findings confirm hypothesis 2 for theatres outside of New
York, but not for those in New York City.
Nonetheless, on the basis of the cross-sectional
analyses presented here, we can find only meagre support for hypothesis
3, and no support for the converse proposition that institutionalization engenders
innovativeness.
But, surprisingly, theatres founded by their current artistic directors tend to be
less innovative as well, when one controls for budget size and location. (The
zero-order relationship is quite different: As one would expect, theatres
founded by their current artistic directors have more innovative repertoires
than others.)
Two other findings were notable, Theatres with managers who had formal
training in administration have somewhat more conformist repertoires than
others. and the relative authority of administrative and artistic directors (as
reported by the former) influences innovativeness in the expected direction.
Taken together, these results provide limited support for hypothesis 4.
Substantial support exists for the proposition that market relations influence
innovation: Indeed, access to potential patrons rich in cultural capital appears
to make theatre repertoires more innovative, while dependence on the market
(as opposed to grants and contributions) is associated with greater conformity.
Other things equal, resident theatres with large, highly educated markets
innovate more than theatres located in small places with less well educated
residents. And theatres with smaller budgets to maintain, fewer seats to fill,
and less need for earned income are less conformist in their programming than
are large theatres with capacious houses and high rates of earned income.
We also learned, unsurprisingly, that New York City is quite different from
the rest of the United States. In New York, the effect of size on innovation is
far less pronounced and the effect of earned income greater than in other
regions. New York City resident theatres are less enslaved by the demands of a
large house and appear better able to cultivate audiences with a taste for
experimental fare.
Because so much attention has been devoted to individual artists as source
of innovation, it may seem odd that we study organizations rather than
playwrights or directors. We regard the conventional focus of students of the
arts on the individual creator as underestimating the extent to which works of
art are socially constituted and controlled (see e.g. Wolff 1981; Becker 1982).
Increasingly, formal organizations - art museums, galleries, record companies,
publishing houses, symphony orchestras, and theatres - have become the key
‘gatekeepers’ (Coser 1978) determining the structure of artistic opportunity
and regulating the flow of new works to the public.
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scale effect and flow control
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