The big question at the League of Chicago Theatres’ annual conference last Saturday went something like this: How come people like sports better than theater? It wasn’t the only thing on the communal mind at “Theater Town, USA Act II”–there were also worries about lack of money, lack of audiences, and lack of diversity–but it was major. In spite of League president Marj Halperin’s protest that more people attend arts events than sporting events in both Chicago and the nation, the perception that millions of Americans are streaming into ballparks and domes while most theaters struggle for every measly butt in a seat was a persistent theme. Even the day’s most compelling news story seemed to speak to it. “In Russia they storm a theater, because that’s where the action is,” observed Organic Theater artistic director Ina Marlowe during a question-and-answer session. “Can you imagine that happening here? Here it would be a sports stadium.”
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Could the problem be, um, journalists’ fault? LCT staged its own sporting event around that possibility, a debate between San Diego Union-Tribune senior editor Chris Lavin and Chicago Tribune theater reporter and critic Chris Jones. Lavin got national attention in journalism circles recently when he suggested that arts coverage could take a lesson from the sports section. Now he came out swinging. “A dying friend told me, ‘If I had it to do all over again, I’d ignore sports,’” he said. “‘I spent too much time on it, but you get addicted.’” This confession started Lavin thinking about how good the “sports czars” have been at getting us all addicted and how sports coverage tells the full story, “warts and all, including heart monitors on some golfers.”
The sluggers agreed on one point: the arts community wants publicity but likes its privacy. Lavin talked about the feathers ruffled when his paper ran an interview that had classical pianist Leon Fleischer referring to his piano as “Bitch” and dropping his pants to show off Spider-Man underwear. Jones concurred that “people in the arts are not necessarily good at knowing what kinds of stories will work, and it’s not necessarily the positive ones.” But to Lavin’s suggestion that the arts (and arts coverage) have “become too comfortable with an elite niche–a sort of ‘I’m here for people who get me’ attitude”–Jones replied: “Why should we dumb down what we do? Not everything is going to reach everybody. There’s a clear outcome in sports reporting. Much of the appeal is the clear sense of winners and losers. Arts don’t provide that clear delineation. [Tribune theater critic] Michael Phillips and I resist the thumbs-up or thumbs-down; we’ve resisted stars or ‘deeply recommended.’ People look to us for context.”
