Moviefone News Moviefone Copyright 2011, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Moviefone Good old fashioned elbow grease. <![CDATA[Ensnaring Theatre Critics in the Spider-Man Web]]> Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark may have violated consumer protection laws by failing to distinguish previews from post-opening performances. So it's another headache for the long-delayed, migraine-prone musical, which will open on March 15 unless Armageddon happens first. Certainly the people happiest with de Blasio's view are journalists and critics, not merely because it adds fuel to Broadway's biggest conflagration in years, but because it takes the heat, for now, off of them.

And that's because, right before the New Year, mindful of audiences attending weeks of Spider-Man previews amid dramatic cast injuries and endless tech troubles, Bloomberg's Jeremy Gerard and Newsday's Linda Winer saw the production and wrote about it. While Gerard's piece was an outright review and Winer's a hybrid of news and critique, in the anachronistic kabuki of theatre journalism, both pieces were tantamount to wearing sneakers at a fancy-dress ball. By tradition, critics attend productions when invited and hold reviews until opening night. In exchange, critics receive complimentary tickets, usually a pair.

As a former first-string critic and current Drama Desk member, I believe the protocol breach represents an important opportunity to review how utterly outmoded the protocol really is. It offers us a chance to ask what constitutes a critic and who decides; and what influence critics -- traditional-media critics, that is -- exert in a social-media-wired world.

Make no mistake: the "pre-reviews" by Gerard and Winer sent the guardians of the status quo into fits of apoplexy. The inestimable John Simon, opining on his blog, skewered it as "grabbing a dish from a restaurant kitchen before it is fully cooked, and then judging the meal by it." New York Times second-stringer Charles Isherwood was less toxic but no less tsk-tsking. While the global media circus surrounding Spider-Man may explain critics "feeling like the last in line at the buffet," a work of art, he wrote, "should be allowed to achieve the completed form its creators had envisioned before judgment is rendered." Meantime, Spider-Man press agent Rick Miramontez was downright indignant. In a written statement, he told the Hollywood Reporter:
For a major critic to review a Broadway musical, or play for that matter, after only the twentieth preview, is disappointing and uncalled for...

Whatever reason the critic or their editor may have, it does not mask the fact that for decades, musicals have developed in front of paying audiences before critics are INVITED. ...this unprecedented new development is troubling, to say the least.


Putting aside Miramontez's remarks (as a press agent, his job is shaping stories, not following them), critics of Gerard and Winer err in two respects.

First, critics are journalists and reporters even if they style themselves to the contrary -- and to argue otherwise is to swim in a pool of sophistry. Gerard and Winer apparently decided enough was enough: Spider-Man has postponed its opening who remembers how many times, and with so much of the universe gabbing about the show via social media, and especially with stuntman Christopher Tierney's horrific injuries giving the musical even more press (followed by even more press following Tierney's recovery), they felt it was time to serve their readers, protocol be damned. Why should any work of art have it both ways? (And now that the musical has postponed its opening for yet a fifth time, the question is ever more salient.)

To rail against the breach of protocol, moreover, is to willingly overlook the fact that Gerard and Winer -- or at least their respective news organizations -- paid for their tickets. (Gerard has disclosed the amount; Winer, to my knowledge, has not.) So the terms of the protocol, in fact, do not apply -- unless someone from the Spider-Man side wishes to argue that Gerard and Winer have no right to engage in commerce. If the Spider-Man side really wanted to make a point, they could simply ban Gerard and Winer from the theatre. The precedent for this was set back in 1915 when the Shubert brothers banned New York Times critic Alexander Woollcott from their venues, a right that was ultimately upheld in court. The Times, in response, refused to run advertising for Shubert shows, and eventually, feeling the fiscal pinch, the Shuberts relented. One wonders whether such a tit-for-tat would bring the same results today.

Second, while one can debate the ethics of traditional-media critics reviewing Spider-Man before official invitations are issued, the whole idea that such critics still operate in some lofty, rarefied universe, with the unwashed masses breathlessly awaiting their verdict before deciding whether or not to buy tickets, is astonishingly 1970 (or earlier) in its thinking. In the real world, traditional-media critics and even some online critics compete constantly, unrelentingly, with the rest of the well-wired world for influence. Traditional-media critics can look askance all they like at twittery chit-chat websites like All That Chat at Talkinbroadway.com, or at every theatre-related hashtag imaginable, but the fact is, blog posts can be longer and more substantive than many so-called reviews, and even the occasional tweet can be as informative as the scribblings of the reviewing gods. Factor in the articulate theatre bloggers out there and what we're really hearing from traditional-media critics is the sound of dinosaurs roaring in denial about the asteroid that detonated in their feeding ground. Those who carp over what Gerard and Winer did are clinging to the idea that they're gatekeepers. The gate is wide open.

If a blogger-critic can attract thousands of readers a week (it can happen now, and will happen more in the future), and if a blogger-critic can buy tickets for a show and write about it, what will prevent that blogger-critic from generating even more readership, even more influence? What will press agents and traditional-media critics do then? How long will tradition, protocol and reality exist in opposition?

Consider the following, especially if you think I'm writing in generalities. As the controversy over Gerard and Winer shook Broadway out of its post-holiday slumber, Time Out New York's David Cote, readily describing himself as a "great big media whore" for all the commentary he's given to press outlets about Spider-Man thus far, wrote a blog post about Isaac Butler, a well-known blogger who, Cote says, may aspire to traditional arts journalism. On his own dime and for his own blog, Butler saw Spider-Man and wrote a 3,210-word piece about it, including a detailed assessment of the production, the story arc, the special effects, the performances and even the audience. His piece additionally featured a 121-word addendum directly attacking the free-ticket protocol violated by Gerard and Winer:

NOTE: The performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark that I saw was, obviously, in previews. I paid full price for my ticket and I have no deal with producers where they give me free tickets in exchange for waiting to see a show when they want me to. I also think that custom is somewhat arcane and should be rethought, but that's a post for another day. The show at this point has had a longer run than most of the plays I've directed put together, and the issues outlined above aren't going to change in a meaningful way, even if the show itself might improve in some small ways prior to its opening, whenever that turns out to be.


Traditional-media critic Cote, having extolled Butler's epic-length post, argued that Butler's review was not a review because it didn't "adhere to the technical specs of a theater review," the definition of which Cote left undefined. We'll agree to disagree: Butler's post is quite manifestly a review. The greater point is a question: By what right does Cote decide who and what is critic is, and when a review is a review? His post is like an Orwellian feedback loop: a critic who is a critic promoting a non-review review by a non-critic critic.

Let's tie this back to the source of the upset within the community of critics: that Gerard and Winer did not wait for their complimentary tickets before publishing their Spider-Man reactions. If, in Cote's view, Butler is a non-critic critic writing a non-review review because he bought a ticket, surely Gerard and Winer are non-critic critics writing non-review reviews now, too. This, I suppose, would dovetail with the view of Miramontez that a critic-critic is someone who accepts complimentary tickets and a non-critic critic is someone who buys their own. That, of course, would mean press agents decide what a critic-critic is and what a non-critic critic is, and not a critic-critic or a non-critic critic. Or the consumer. And who, I wonder, decided that?]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:39:26 EST 806101 <![CDATA[Turn Off the Snark: A Short History of Death, Near-Death and Injury in the Theatre]]> Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, in this sense, is the biggest PR orgy since Caligula tried to deify his horse. People living far from Broadway, under rocks and in caves, not to mention unknown life forms living near shimmering supernovae, all know that four Spider-Man performers have been injured during previews of the problem-prone $65 million show. The most serious injury, of course, occurred last Monday night when the rope of a stunt double, Christopher Tierney, snapped, introducing him to the law of gravity by a 30-foot fall. Understandably, actors are outraged.

What I find amusing and sad is our collective memory loss. Tony winners like Alice Ripley may rage against the Spider-Man machine ("Does someone have to die?") and Adam Pascal may think director Julie Taymor should go to jail for "assault," but this is commercial theater: audiences are eating it up. That Caligula line may seem hyperbolic, but centuries after the Roman Coliseum served as a theater of death, we're as fascinated as we ever were by even the hope of watching excruciating pain.

Yes, we've come a long way from grisly gladiator battles and wild beast bitch-fights. Personally, I'd have loved to see Molière's final performance in The Imaginary Invalid in 1673, when a hacking cough stopped the show and led to his death. Stories abound: Nelson Eddy's on-stage stroke in Florida; Irene Ryan's on-stage stroke during a Broadway performance of Pippin; songstress Sylvia Syms finishing an encore of Sinatra songs at the Oak Room of New York's Algonquin Hotel before collapsing fatally to the floor.

Disconcerting as these examples may be, the real trouble isn't when the cycle of life interrupts a live performance. The trouble is our addiction to ever-improving feats on-stage derring do -- not to mention technology -- lead to mechanical error, human error, or both. As the trade paper Back Stage seemed to suggest last month, it's lately an epidemic: Yeauxlanda Kay's broken legs; Santino Fontana's concussion. Before Tierney, Adrian Bailey's horrendous 20-foot fall during The Little Mermaid on Broadway was the high-water mark in stage plunging.

But again, Spidey is selling. So maybe Ripley's right. Maybe it will take death on stage -- new additions to an old list -- to change the chances we take and the ways we think.]]> Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:00:44 EST 800453 <![CDATA[Advocates Target NY Arts Cuts: Extent of Possible Job Losses Remain Unknown]]>
This has been the question since New York Gov. David Paterson announced a 40 percent cut to New York State Council on the Arts for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

In response, arts advocacy organizations are launching an all-hands-on-deck effort to force Paterson to retreat -- or at least to convince members of the fractious, dysfunctional state legislature, nearly two months late in voting on a budget, from going along.

Trouble is, even as these groups ramp up public outreach, private outrage and quiet dialogues with state lawmakers, the absence of an easy-to-digest, one-sentence answer to the question "How many jobs will be lost?" is not helping their efforts.

Which is why Norma Munn, chairperson of the New York City Arts Coalition, is asking constituents to join a protest-email campaign currently underway across the state. In a communication with her membership, Munn asserted that lobbying Paterson, who is not running for reelection, is a lost cause: "Please do not spend your time on Gov. Paterson's office. He has made his proposal. We need to focus where decisions will now be made."

Instead, Munn wants advocates to email four legislators in Albany: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Assemblyman Steve Englebright, State Senator John Sampson and State Senator Jose M. Serrano. She also provides five sample emails to send, and while rhetoric in them is civil, it stings: "...we can do better than 77 cents per person in state spending...Arkansas is managing 74 cents!"

In an interview, Munn told me that Paterson's NYSCA cut is a "back to the future" proposal that "does nothing" to solve New York's budget issues. Instead, it will "tip some arts groups into a decline from which they will not recover. In New York City, we have had two arts groups close in the last two weeks, another on the verge of bankruptcy, and a few weeks ago another actually closed temporarily. Those are the ones that made the news. These were long-term and/or sizeable groups. We will see more."

Meantime, another advocacy group, NYS Arts, has activated a network of "regional captains" to drive a massive email campaign of its own -- to the same posse of lawmakers. In an email to her members, Executive Director Judith K. Weiner vowed the campaign would go on "until we have a state budget." So far, she wrote, more than 16,000 emails have been sent to Albany lawmakers.

It remains to be seen whether comparing per-capita arts funding in New York to that of Arkansas, or sending 16,000 emails, fundamentally affects the voting of New York state legislators or the budget priorities of a lame-duck governor. If the "How many jobs will be lost?" question had an answer, one must ask, could the case for preserving -- or even boosting -- arts funding be made more easily?

In a one-sheet document familiar to those in Albany, it seems that the New York State Council on the Arts itself offers something of a direct answer: approximately 200,000 jobs, according to the agency, are "generated by arts and cultural institutions in New York State." How many of those jobs would be vaporized following a 40 percent NYSCA cut remains unclear.

NYSCA's figure, it should also be noted, is remarkably close to the conclusion of 194,000 jobs announced by Alliance for the Arts, another advocacy group, in a 2006 study (though the recession has surely eaten into that total).

Of course, timelier statistics would be helpful, admits Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance, but arts groups are so resource-bereft that filling out surveys -- a crucial way to generate statistics -- tend to fall by the wayside.

"As we say in our militaristic way, the field suffers from survey fatigue," Bourscheidt says. "With the greatest of sympathy, I want [Gov. Paterson's cuts] to be reversed. But I would rather slap a 20-page report down on somebody's desk. Something that says, "This proves what a substantial loss of jobs the governor's proposed cuts will result in.'"

Coming soon, he says, is a potential new arrow in the arts' quiver that could be a game-changer.

It is called the Cultural Data Project. New York, along with Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and Michigan, are participants in it. Operated by the Pew Charitable Trusts, it enables "arts and cultural organizations to enter financial, programmatic and operational data into a standardized online form." Results can then be devised on various topics -- including, perhaps, sector employment. Officially, the stated aim of the Cultural Data Project is to help grant-making organizations reach funding decisions. Clearly, though, any up-to-the-minute arts data has the potential to be used as a policy and political tool.

Bourscheidt wouldn't go quite that far. But he did say, "Once the Cultural Data Project becomes the norm, that is huge progress."]]> Thu, 27 May 2010 17:35:17 EDT 588991 <![CDATA[A Tale of (Mis)Communication in the Corporate Workplace]]>
The temp recruiter's phone call seemed promising: a financial publishing company, its name not revealed, needed someone to "manage its blog." The company, I was told, uses the hugely popular WordPress, an open-source content-management system, so fluency with it would be crucial. As it happens, my blog, The Clyde Fitch Report, is "powered" by WordPress, and it is indeed a remarkably versatile system. Together with my Web designer, we devised a clean, unique layout in lieu of a prefab template. I have blogged for more than a year using WordPress. My resume states as much. Which is why my name popped up when the temp recruiter scoured her database for a candidate for the job.

More obvious on my resume are my core competencies: journalist, editor, all-purpose writer, author. Obviously blogger, too.

Not that software is foreign. Over time, I have acquired familiarity with many programs, and not just the ubiquitous Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but proprietary software fashioned for specific tasks, projects and companies. One is not only expected to learn new software but to do so on the fly, on the job. I am proud being able to do so. Even though there was little information to go on, I told the temp recruiter that, yes, she could forward my resume to the client. Work is work. Opportunities are opportunities.

A full day passed without a word. The following day, a Friday, the temp recruiter emailed me at 10:30am. Could I start at 11am?

Mind you, there had been no discussion of responsibilities, site location, compensation or -- again -- even the name of the company. Tactfully, I suggested I could start on Monday. After all, we agreed, I needed to fill out some paperwork and to hash out the details.

At 2pm, I was in the temp recruiter's office. Finally I had the name -- impressive -- of the company. Key details were discussed. Most important, I was given a job description. It totaled 73 words. It featured vague phrases -- "a temp to manage their blog," "should have a blog of their own or be a writer," "interface with internal & external writing staff" -- but it was better than nothing. The temp recruiter confirmed it was all the information she had. I was asked to arrive for work on Monday, 9am.

And I did. But the person to whom I was reporting did not. Building security called upstairs. I called my temp recruiter. Waiting, waiting, followed by more calls upstairs, more calls to my temp recruiter. At one point, security, calling the supervisor of the person to whom I was reporting, asked for the number of my temp recruiter at the same time that my temp recruiter, talking to me via cell phone, asked me for the number of the supervisor from security.

Time passed. My temp recruiter called again, this time confirming that the person to whom I was reporting was, in fact, missing in action. Some minutes later, the temp recruiter called again. This time, she assured that the supervisor knew my name. Would security please call upstairs again? Security did. Then I was told the supervisor had no idea who I was or why I was there.

Waiter, I'll have the Kafka Salad, please. Hold the dressing.

The time is now 10:15am. My temp recruiter called yet again, for I was still loitering in the lobby of the building in which I was to have started working 75 minutes earlier. The company, she explained, had a change of heart back on Friday and asked that I start on Wednesday, not Monday. The temp recruiter pleaded that no email, nor any other communication, had been received to this effect. Judging by how earnest she sounded, I suspected this was true. I thanked security for its marathon phone effort and left. The temp recruiter's instructions: return on Wednesday, 10am.

And I did. And the missing person was no longer missing! She turned out to be a lovely young woman in her 20s. Let's call her Maria. She was mildly harried, but very pleasant.

After Maria brought me to my workspace, I spent 45 minutes in a tornado of log-ins and passwords. I also had to call tech support to install the company-preferred browser. At 11am, Maria furnished me with a grand tour of the company's blog -- there are nearly 20 of them, it turns out. There are dozens of contributors to it from within the organization (what remains of its recession-thinned staff) and literally hundreds from without, in a conscious mimicry of the Huffington Post model.

At 11:30am, I was asked to join a conference call with an off-site colleague. Let's call him Buehler. For the next 25 minutes, Buehler spoke without interruption, whizzing by such topics as taking over his job the following week (he's taking a long vacation) and the "importance of diplomacy." What his job was, exactly, he never said.

Buehler did pause long enough to ask if I was up to speed on a certain type of project-management software. Diplomatically, I said no. He then asked if I knew WordPress MU (the initials stand for "multiuser"), an advanced version of the blog software I use for the Clyde Fitch Report. I assured Buehler, who I pictured gasping beneath an oxygen mask, that I could learn it quickly.

Now Buehler began to debate Maria: Should email communication with blog contributors offer generic signatures ("Thanks for your inquiry-- Blogsupport") or should they see specific names they can refer to later on ("Thanks for your inquiry-- Maria")? "Leonard," Buehler asked, "what do you think?" What do I think? I said I thought it would be best to defer to whatever they thought would be best. Remember, this is just two hours into my new temp gig.

At 12:30pm, Buehler emailed me privately on a new topic. "I see no reason you can't write for our blogs," he declared, wanting to know which editor I wanted to meet and when.

At 12:40pm, the managing editor emailed me. He asked if was "the new helper" and where I was sitting? I never heard from him again.

At 1:10pm -- after asking Maria for the location of the men's room -- I was encouraged to leave for lunch. I was also asked to visit human resources for a photo ID to be taken.

By 1:40pm, I was in the office of human resources, where the clerk confused me with a new hire. Boy, was I ever tempted to let her confusion reign! But diplomatically, I explained that I was a temp. It meant a slight paperwork change.

My photo taken, my signature on confidentiality agreements, the human resources person warned me that an ID might take a few days to generate. How would I get into and around the office? Have a nice chat with my old pal in security, she said, and ask him for an "extended pass."

Security, alarmed to see me again, was just relieved not to have to make more phone calls. But alas, there was no such thing as an "extended pass." He did allow me to return upstairs, though, where I now learned that Maria's department would be moving in 48 hours. So we decided I would call her in the morning to get into the office, and would borrow her ID when nature called.

By 3pm, the real contours of the job were crystallizing. The job description had also included phrases like "handling blog requests" and "processing blog requests," but these were euphemisms, clearly, for "tech support." Unfortunately, beyond Maria's 30-minute grand tour at 11am, this was the extent of my training.

I should add that during Buehler's 25-minute speech, he also mentioned "creating documentation" as a secondary focus of my work. What this meant was also fast becoming clear. Each blog contributor is emailed a PDF file with instructions on how to write a post; the document was not just incomplete, but horribly written, with two-letter words like "or" spelled wrong all over the place. Inevitably this led to all kinds of nutty inquires. For example, one internal blog contributor emailed to complain that she forgot her user-name and password and didn't know what to do. Consulting the PDF, I saw that no recovery instructions existed. My job -- as Buehler proclaimed in an email at 3:30pm -- was to write any and all missing documentation by the following Wednesday, when I would take over his job. (Buehler and Maria loved to remind me of this.) I had never written documentation before -- and, very diplomatically, I said as much. But I was game.

Buehler and Maria had yet another definition of "documentation." Decision-makers at this company, it seems, are obstinate -- cheap might be a better word -- when it comes to adequately staffing for 20 or so blogs with more than 1,000 contributors. Every action in the office, from the smallest to the largest, must be accounted for, they said, so their jobs wouldn't be in jeopardy.

In other words, I had to document my documentation with documentation.

No doubt you can sense where this is going. The company's unwillingness to staff appropriately left Maria with a half-dozen jobs, from customer service to tech support to meeting with editors who, she said, handed her lists of people every day that they wanted her to recruit as contributors to the blogs, and she desperately needed help keeping up with legal paperwork and back-end registration issues.

Worse, she told me, there was a chronic issue of blog contributors not actually blogging. I asked her if anyone worked with the contributors to generate ideas. She said she had never thought of that. I asked if any contributors were trained on using the blog. Basically they receive the PDF file, she admitted, and wished good luck.

Like Maria, I am accustomed to going beyond the boundaries of a job description. And the chance to gain a host of new skills is exciting. But I also had to proceed smartly. So, in an email, I asked Buehler if the PDF file was the only document of instructions that blog contributors receive. Not one, not two, but three emails passed between us without him ever answering the question. Sigh. There is always day two, I thought, so I went home at 6:10pm.

And all night I was concerned.

The next morning, 9am, I called my temp recruiter to express those concerns. My resume includes WordPress skills but fundamentally, again, that's not what I do. Even Buehler, in his 25-minute rant, noted that he had read my resume thoroughly. When he email me about contributing to the blogs, he mentioned my reporting background specifically. This job was really about tech support, however, and I feared it was beyond my realm. Without training, I would be sunk. The temp recruiter told me not to worry: Maria had sent her a "fabulous report" on my first day of work.

In the office at 10am, I read an email from the same internal blog contributor who complained the day before that she couldn't remember her user-name or password and didn't know what to do. Now she had another question. This time, I guessed the PDF file might contain an answer. To be sure, I double-checked with Maria, who agreed. Her advice: Send the person the PDF file and say "look it up." After all, she said, Buehler had issued an email dictating that bloggers needed to become "self-service." Leery of writing anything undiplomatic, I asked Maria if maybe, in addition to emailing the PDF file, I could also paste the relevant instructions right into the body of the email. Good idea, she said. Please cc Buehler.

At 10:10am, I received an email from Buehler, but not about the PDF. Visit the project-management software, he said, and start "creating documentation" for the tasks that were "piling up." I took a look at the tasks, quickly. One consisted of three words in quotation marks. That's it. After a quick chat with Maria, she suggested that I call Buehler and ask what the three words mean. I decided I would also convey my concerns to him about "creating documentation."

When I did, Buehler said the following: "Your lack of industry and your lack of initiative is disturbing." I was stunned and apologized. He hung up. Maria, overhearing my call, called Buehler. I called my temp recruiter. Buehler now sent another email: "Nice answer, but you answered the wrong question." This did not exactly reflect well on Maria, who by now was standing beside me and reading Buehler's email. Clearly, she was embarrassed by the whole thing. "We did a terrible job of communicating what we needed," she said. At which point we each agreed this was not the right fit and we shook hands before I left.

From a vague job description to confusion about what day I was working; from zero training to zero direction; from human resources thinking I'm a new employee, not a temp, to the "extended pass" boondoggle; from a rave first-day job review to being attacked for sloth -- what a dispiriting adventure into corporate America this had been. That the corporation in question is in financial journalism made it even more perplexing.

In America, can't we do better than this?

If I were this company's managing editor, I would reevaluate full-time staffing for the 20 blogs and also look at how people communicate. In this case, bad communication wasted time and money.

If I were this company's managing editor, I would also weigh the costs of giving people no training.

If I were this company's managing editor, I would look at other companies that have created bigger, broader, more efficient blogs that can drive revenue and learn my lessons from them. Fast.]]> Thu, 20 May 2010 13:18:11 EDT 575180 <![CDATA[Arts Leaders Blast NY Gov. Paterson's Proposed Slash of Culture Funding]]>
Part of what is driving Paterson to institute the whopping 40% cut is the terminally dysfunctional state legislature, which is more than one month late approving a budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

In a phone interview, NYSCA Chairman Danny Simmons, a noted abstract expressionist and brother of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, told me that Paterson's cut -- knocking appropriations to $25.2 million from $41.6 million -- could force untold numbers of New York arts nonprofits to close, and will cost jobs both at the arts agency itself as well as across the state.

"Unlike other agencies facing cuts that have unions and can organize," Simmons said, "individual artists don't have unions -- they need to really speak out and let their voices be heard. Organizations need to come to the forefront -- they're the ones largely to be affected by the governor's cuts."

Also known as a co-founder of the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, which gives disadvantaged urban youth significant exposure to the arts, Simmons said he would not resign even if the embattled lame-duck Paterson went ahead and gutted NYSCA. "I don't think stepping down is the right thing to do -- Council appointments are made at the governor's discretion. But I do think all Council members need their voices heard on this." Simmons also said he would consider calling the governor directly if he thought Paterson might actually listen.

"I think the governor is in a hard place with the economy," Simmons added, "but I've also heard him speak many times about the arts, so this devastating cut confuses me," he said. "Two years ago, after I became NYSCA Chairman, he spoke at my fundraiser, Art for Life, in East Hampton. I see what he's doing now as diverging from all the things he said."

Two NYSCA vice chairs have joined Simmons in issuing a statement: Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, a legendary historic preservationist and cultural activist, and Jeff Soref, a PR consultant and Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee. The statement reads as follows:

We have just been made aware of another cut that Governor Paterson has proposed to make to the New York State Council on the Arts' 2011 grant making budget, and are coming forward to voice our strong opposition to this disproportionate cut, which will only make the State's financial woes worse. The arts provide over $25 billion of economic impact to our State, and are historically part of the solution when it comes to community and economic revitalization. Powerful examples of this fact exist in every county of New York State. From Brooklyn to the Bronx, from Lower Manhattan to Harlem, from Westchester to Schenectady, from the Hamptons to Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester, the arts drive tourism, enhance quality of life, and create economic stability. The rich diverse culture that NYSCA supports is what makes the state unique in the nation and is often cited as a reason why people and businesses locate in New York. We understand that the current state of the State's finances is dire, but cuts of this magnitude will severely impair the State's arts communities and dramatically reduce the general well-being and vitality of the State and all of its citizens. We are also extremely concerned about the proposed furloughs as they will cause economic distress to NYSCA employees and their families and further weaken the Agency's already small and overstretched staff.

We urge Governor Paterson to reconsider these dramatic proposals for the good of the State.
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