Universities have long been venues for the performing arts. Regular SNLC readers (all 6.52 of you) know that 3CM is more than a bit of an arts junkie. One local university performing arts series is at Washington University, namely the Ovations series at the Edison Theatre. Wash. U. has had this series since 1973. However, as announced last May this season is the final one for the Ovations series. Self is going there this evening, to this performance. More (sort of) below the flip......
To be honest, even though self is a self-proclaimed arts junkie, he hasn't been to all that many events at the Ovations series in the past few years, perhaps something like one a year. The obvious reason is that most of the performers aren't of any particular interest to me, not necessarily that they're sub-par. Looking at this season's offerings, some names recur, like the Reduced Shakespeare Company, Doug Varone & Dancers, and Scrap Arts Music (the Liam Otten article even describes Scrap Arts Music as a 'stalwart' of the series). Ironically, from looking at the schedule, there's something like 4-5 events that I would be interested in checking out this season, much more than has been the case in recent years. Admittedly, knowing that this is the last season for this series is a background motivation in wanting to catch more of their offerings, even if it is too little, too late.
This does raise the question of why Wash. U. is discontinuing this series. Being a loser, 3CM doesn't have the answer, of course, but he is capable of highly speculative guesswork that might have little basis in reality. (Just like an incredibly delusional, unsubstantiated diary on DK a few weeks back that said that the Democrats will hold the Senate in the midterms. The difference here is that I know my limitations.) For one, Wash. U. is definitely top of the line in terms of prestige of local universities, not to mention financially in terms of its endowment, reported last year at $5.7 billion. Of course, when spending funds at a university for major projects, you're never, ever supposed to spend the endowment funds (i.e. the seed corn), but rather the interest and dividends earned off the endowment. And there's plenty of spending going on, if the construction cranes near the social work school and the big pit near the athletic complex are anything to go by.
One other behind-the-scenes situation at Wash. U., in terms of expenses, is one where I have no particular evidence, but simply the word of people affiliated with the campus. I've heard that unionized employees at Wash. U. are guaranteed annual pay increases, regardless of performance or merit, year after year. This has come from people I know on opposite ends of the political spectrum. If this is indeed the case, then having one particular class of expenditure that can never be cut or controlled is clearly an unsustainable expense. Or, playing the zero-sum game, if that particular expense always increases, then something else has to be cut to offset that.
On a more 'artsy' level, in general, however, regarding arts performances, though, they've historically not been money makers, to put it mildly. At the few Ovations series performances that I've been to in semi-recent years, the hall has been far from full. So sub-par ticket revenue obviously hasn't made them look good that way, although it's a given with nonprofit arts groups that even selling out the box office would never cover all the expenses of bringing in outside arts groups for a very limited run, like one or two shows, such as with the Arabesque troupe from Vietnam tonight (and last night). Likewise, the fact that certain groups tend to come again and again may betray something of a lack of imagination on the programmers' part, although you can counter that by saying that bringing in groups that are unfamiliar shows more daring. Bringing in unfamiliar groups, of course, is a huge risk, since unless they've gotten good advance word of mouth, marketing them to bring in folks to try something new is hard. It's also the fault partly of Wash. U. students themselves if they don't come to the events, as student rush tickets are normally available for $10, quite a deal (even if you have massive tuition debts to deal with later).
So looking at it from a purely financial POV, it's not hard to guess that the Ovations series has been more of a monetary drain rather than a contributor, or at least a "break-evener", to Wash. U. over the years. The series hasn't been too good at keeping its archive up to date, as you can see from their History page that their last update of past artists was in the 2011-2012 season. In terms of the bigger picture, however, the end of the Ovations series is clearly a step backwards, precisely because Wash. U. is the most prestigious university in the region, and ending this series pretty much sends a message about how the performing arts are valued, or not valued, by the Wash. U. higher-ups. University-based groups can continue to give their shows, of course, but in terms of bringing outside artists to campus, this move is a huge blow.
The next STL university that has any sort of regular presence of visiting arts groups is the University of Missouri Saint Louis, which presents visiting artists and events at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. Maybe they'll see this as an opportunity to fill in the space that the end of the Ovations series will leave. Or maybe not, if they have their own budget issues that I don't know about.
If there are any comments by intermission, I might even be able to follow up during intermission. Emphasis is on the word "might". We shall see. With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week.....