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Show ANOTHER VIEW The arts by Paul Cracroft . j someone should. By that, Art Louvre does not mean ' that someone should decide that dance is more important than theater theater more important than music' music than literature. Instead, some well-defined body, including representation from all program areas, should be appointed soon sit down early and often and determine the, kinds of events that should be programmed-long range. Some will remind me that a variety of ad hoc committees have tried to do this. But Art Louvre has learned that such committees hoc a lot, add little. He has sat in on some of these meetings and must report that many of the plans discussed are half-vast. Everyone has a few built-in Things That Must Be Done. Somehow, a real pro must be empowered to convince some people that the world will keep turning if one "vital stomp" were to be cut, one "immortal film" bypassed, an "unforgettable opera star" held over until next season. You can spend a lot of money and time trying to promote an event only to learn near curtain time that someone has scheduled an event right on top of you. Everyone in the business has experienced ex-perienced this. All have deplored it and yet it continues to happen. The greatest night of madness occurred three seasons ago when the incomparable Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre was scheduled in Kingsbury Hall scheduled and rescheduled re-scheduled several times, as a matter of fact, to avoid trodding on other artistic toes. Almost a year and a half later, when the promotion wagon was rolling, lo and behold, another campus organization had dropped Henry Mancini in the Special Events Center, while Eugene Jelesnik had returned from the battlefields long enough to book Fred Waring into Hiahland Hiohl v Like Mr. Agnew's, my name is not exactly a household word on campus, which is a good thing if you knew some of the words that get by in our household. But I've been knocking around the University, man and boy, for 32 years. Subtract a few for preaching, soldiering and politicking. Add them back on with interest from some previous incarnation in-carnation when I was known as Art Louvre, then a handsome, virile transfer student from France.What I'm trying to do now is teach journalism, arrange and promote travel study programs and run the Lectures and Concerts office. Too many people are programming too many things for Art Louvre's comfort. That's a pretty dogmatic thing to lay on you right out of the blue or gray, if you still believe in the Confederacy. But it's true. It's 1984-ish to say it, but we've reached a point where too much is too little. So many things are happening on campus that no one event stirs up much excitement. Art Louvre's often said that he could book the Second Coming to little more than stifled yawns. There's so much to choose from that most students and staffers simply throw up their hands in dismay at the cluttered scene, then stay home and sit on em'. That takes a bit of anatomical doing. And it hurts. It hurts mainly because it deprives many people of hearing and seeing some things that are eminently worth hearing and seeing. It's 1944-ish to say it, but Art Louvre longs again for the simple days when a Master Minds and Artists program would overflow Kingsbury Hall, even though the University community then was one-fifth its present size. Maybe it only proves that a fifth still goes farther in Zion than anywhere else. Dr. Lowell M. Durham is heading up a committee to study the problem and make recommendationsno recom-mendationsno easy task in itself. His report is almost a year late because he ran into the very thing that Duane Moss comDlained about in his State of the Campus speech no continuity. Students have sufficient money to import fine programs to the campus, but, understandably, they have little know-how, since the promotions of the arts is a tough business that cannot be learned overnight or by occasionally playing host to a visiting star. By . the time most students learn these essential facts of programming life, they have left the campus, taking their skills with them and leaving behind another crop of students with money enough to burn holes in their pockets but no invested, interest-producing interest-producing wisdom. The only argument we've heard advanced against this nonsense is that it's all "part of the learning process." Bullfeathersl We're beyond bad example-teaching or the finger-on-the-stove approach or should be. Heaven forfend that we should eliminate students from programming! But the University badly needs a policy which can outlast the annual comings and goings of students. We need a person or a body concerned enough and, yes, powerful enough to be able to plan ahead for a year and more. This team can determine how much money to spend on performances and how to balance them out so that the University community can see and enjoy everything from The Sweaty Armpit on one extreme to the Met's Madame Primadiva on the other. If it's indeed true that the University exists for its students, then it should be equally true that a cultural program should exist not for the sake of the program but for the sake of the arts themselves. That's what the MGM lion has been growling about all these years. Saying "Ars gratia artis" several times a day in thousands of theaters across the country would make you growl too especially if Mickey Rooney, in a moment of jest had fed you a little tainted meat. It's not for this article to establish Program Priorities for the arts, but Realistically, there may be no way that all date conflicts can be avoided, but they certainly can and must be minimized by making use of such long-extant devices as prior planning, letters, memos, telephones, printed schedules, common sense and courtesy. The arts need media support. The Chronicle, for example, should concentrate its coverage on things related to the University, including the promotion of campus attractions at-tractions over all other events, no matter how attractive. If Chronicle coverage (often not even backed by advertising) contributes to the success of an off-campus attraction at-traction at the expense of a boxoffice failure on campus, sooner or later that campus loss will be felt in increased institutional costs, perhaps ultimately in increased in-creased tuition. To look at the other side of the coin, if students who work for the Chronicle and other campus media prefer the kinds of programs that are booked elsewhere, these protestors should have a single place to go where campus programming could be made to better reflect these diverse in-terests-and where the problem could be corrected. When poor coordination, false pride, inexperience, lack professionalism or any other easily correctable thing steps in to rob me of the full enjoyment of art and lire, when these things stifle a campus or withhold from a community or 20,000 the best of what is thereto reach out and enjoy, I say that system is potentially destructive and need wise change. Speak me no more speeches, , w-Moss. w-Moss. Act me some action. b Or Art Louvre could turn into nillar of salt. |
