Several years ago, I did a show on a Sunday afternoon in late fall at some library in central New Jersey (nope, can’t remember where). There were a couple of hundred people there – a pretty good turnout for a library. The show went really well. I had a great time, and so did the audience.
Still, as I drove home in the late afternoon, headed up the New Jersey Turnpike, I lamented that there weren’t more people there. I was sure there were people in the area that would have really enjoyed it if they had bothered to come.
I thought these thoughts as I approached the Meadowlands stadium. From the highway, I could see the lights were on. The Giants or the Jets were playing. I could almost hear the roar of the crowd from several miles away. Seventy thousand people, some of them so far away from the field they would need good binoculars to have any idea of what was going on down there.
What’s that about? Stupid football, I thought.
“Surely,” I said out loud to no one, “there are five hundred people there who would have had a better time at my show. Somebody there is miserable and cold and hates football and detests the drunk person next to them. They should have come to see me. It would have meant more.”
I know it would have meant more to me than to whomever the tight end was for the New York Jets.
I’ve often thought that about the arts – why don’t we attract audiences like sporting events? How do we get people in the seats?
The issue of getting audiences into arts events is a very large question with many different aspects, but as far it relates to the question of why arts don’t get the crowds sports do, I got a little bit of an answer this week at Fenway Park.
My wife Debbie got me tickets for the Red Sox for my birthday. We go to, maybe, one game a year. It’s expensive, it’s a hassle. I can watch it on television. I’m annoyed at the hoopla and adulation and egos and expenditure of public funds. Sports fans can be real idiots, mistaking their team’s victory for some personal accomplishment, and thinking it actually has something to do with what God thinks about.
But…
But they were great seats. The best seats I’ve ever had for a Red Sox game. (I don’t want to know how much they cost – it was my birthday). You might have even seen me on TV – I was wearing a clown wig and holding up “John 3:16”.
Just kidding.
There were, as usual at Fenway, over 37,000 people there. As there were the night before, and the night after that. Eighty two times a summer – 37,000 people.
It’s just a baseball game, for Pete’s sake!
But…
But it was a great game. The crowd was a huge living thing and I was part of it. In spite of myself. What struck me about the crowd, too, was how expressive and emotional they were. More so than at any arts event I’ve been to lately. We talked with everyone around us. We laughed. And we sat at the edge of our seats. We all rose as one when Ortiz hit a HUGE home run, and stood as one when Papelbon, after almost blowing a save, struck out the last batter. It was, while not of great importance, a cathartic experience, and we left completely satisfied.
Of course, it helped that it was close and the Sox won. Some games are realllllly borrrrrring.
But I think this is one of the reasons that many people go: We don’t know what’s going to happen.
I am struck by the notion that athletes don’t know what’s going to happen either. They are acting out a drama to which there is no known outcome. They don’t know if they’re going to get a hit, or if the catcher will throw them out when they try to steal second, or if the game will go into extra innings and they won’t finish until two in the morning. They are trying to do things that are hard to do, and they might fail. In front of 37,000 people.
And, maybe even more interestingly, they are not trying to make the audience feel anything (and the arts is about the communication of feeling and ideas). All they’re trying to do is succeed. And we watch and feel ourselves. While the game (or agon in the Classical sense – from which we get the agony of defeat!) doesn’t matter – the striving is real. We sense their tension and anticipation and despair and joy. And we feel it, too. And all those other people feeling a similar thing encourage it in us. We are, after all, a group animal. Suddenly, we care.
I’m not saying this never happens in arts – it’s what performers are always working towards – when a group of musicians reach some kind of communion that raises their performance to another level, or an acting troupe presents something in a way they’ve never quite done before, the audience senses and is deeply moved. But it’s harder to reach it, and there’s a critical aspect of our minds that must be dealt with and overcome.
As a performer, I’m always aware, challenging myself to be so present, so much in the moment, that I bring the audience along. And I want them to experience something together –as a group.
Sports has an easier time of that.
Yeah, Springsteen can fill the Meadowlands with 70,000 people. He’s a great performer – maybe, to my mind, the best performer out there. But even the Boss couldn’t do it eight times in the space of three months.
There’s a lot of reasons why, but one of them is that the drama of sports is real.
Darn.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my job.
But second base for the Red Sox would be good, too. Let me know if Pedroia gets hurt.
Have you tried AAA baseball, Bill? There might be an opening with the Portland Beavers…
But seriously you raise a lot of good questions about our priorities in American culture… Sure, baseball is sort of “real,” but I think music is just as real and valid. Nothing else can make you feel so good – or so bad.
Interesting, the contrast between real life unknowable drama in sports and semi-predictable drama in ‘arts’.
As a child I became an instant convert to live theatre when at a community production of The Fantasticks (don’t ask me why I was taken to that show as a child!) an actor knocked over a stool. It hit me like a ton of bricks: he didn’t MEAN to knock over the stool; he didn’t do it every time they did the show! Holy cannolis it’s really live and anything can happen!
For the rest of my life I have been drawn towards that unpredictable alchemy of live performance. Unlike in sports, the audience is the unknown factor in the arts. A sports game can happen with no spectators whatsoever, in fact a whole season could, and records could still be made and broken, games won and lost, championships awarded. As those of us who work in the arts know, a performance without an audience is just a rehearsal, and while it can be fun, moving, interesting, even have a bit of magic you couldn’t grab in a real performance… the audience is what makes it a show.
There’s something really ironic here. I don’t mean to turn this into my own, less-well-written, essay at the bottom of yours, but you’ve struck a chord with me, touched off a train of thought.
Well, now that’s very interesting – and you’re right. LIke people in improvisation say, “Yes, and…” Thanks for the comment.
Bill
Maria-
you said: “A sports game can happen with no spectators whatsoever, in fact a whole season could, and records could still be made and broken, games won and lost, championships awarded. ”
this isn’t really the case. a sports game can happen without spectators, just not a professional sports game. professional sports are, at the base, a form entertainment which exist in order to generate money. The same goes for most high school and college sports (most schools only have sports teams that can either generate $$ or be supported by the $$ making sports teams).
you can’t have a sports game without spectators, which is another reason so many spectators feel ownership (right or wrong); they know they’re a cog in the machine. I understand the same goes for the arts, but it is misleading to assume a sports game can exist without spectators. in both the arts and sports, spectators are critical.
Great piece, Bill. “the audience doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.” Maybe if kids shows weren’t so perfectly timed and exactly the same every time it would be like a good dramatic baseball game. One big difference is when the home team is losing or playing badly, 37,000 people don’t get up and leave but if the venue sound is bad or your having a bad day (and it’s a free show) families will. Sigh.
Dave Matthews and the Bonaroo Tour pull in 10’s of thousands. Our over 50 hardball games draw a few bored (yet supportive) wives.
I don’t think the issue is so much art v. sport, but spectacle v. the routine. The unobtainable v. the approachable. Big Papi does things I couldn’t even dream of doing. And facing a Bard fastball at 99+mph? Yikes. But I’ve played guitar duets with Mary Flower, even tho’ I am in awe of her, she’s just a step or two beyond the rest of us, not light years.
Does this make sense?
I’d be honeored if folks here would take a listen to my attempt at blending my love of baseball, with my love of music. I recorded Evan Harriman’s song, ‘If I were a Ballplayer,’ with some of my own lyrics that satisfy my sense of baseball history as well as the sense of participation the song evokes. The youtube address is:
Great discussion. Hope you enjoy the music.
I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment on sports in the traditional sense. I’ve loved climbing and canoeing for years and have had the privilege of watching true artists perform in these areas, but have never really “gotten” sports, in the commercial sense.
Sports are by nature senseless in that they serve no purely objective function in society (much like beauty?). This may be why we are so involved in them. Tomorrow I’ll drive for three hours to hear a concert at Tanglewood. The prices involved are high for me, but trivial by sports standards. Those musicians, at the peak of their profession, make a decent living, but will never be rich from their work and I have always had the sense they loved what they did. I don’t get that feeling from most professional athletes (My profound apologies to the exceptions!).
I’ve never been a performer (at least not past the performance any teacher needs to do) but, as someone who has spent his life working with kids, I find artists/performers a better example for kids. There’s more love there.
Great discussion and observations, thanks for the topic Bill and the invite to add my input. Having been an athlete and a musician I have a love for both. Sports helped me understand the necessity of sacrifice (practice) which my guitar (and audiences) appreciated.
The dichotomy between Art and Sport is an old one and is anchored, I believe, somewhere between inherited gifting, values and learned behavior. The patrons of each endeavor choose to participate for various reasons with some common to both. Support and entertainment are obvious ones, but I prefer to focus more on the (perceived) personal experience of the event for some insights.
Living “in the moment” many who attend will experience the event differently. Why that happens is left to philosophers and psychiatry.
Lastly I’ll pose two questions for good questions often reveal more than answers. Does the size of an audience indicate the competence of the “performer(s)”? Does the amount of money earned by the performer(s) reveal their values or validate their worth?
Bill, you’ve struck a “home run” of recognition with me on this topic. I am constantly dismayed that the “arts” never seem to carry as much weight in the public arena as do sporting events – at least here in the U.S.A.
That being said, in Europe, parts of Asia and in Venezuela, it is a much different scene – musicians, even those who play “classical” are highly revered and I do believe much of that has to do with their educational systems in those parts of the world.
Appreciation of the arts has to start at an early level, and I’m afraid in our country, funding and availability are relegated to the back burner, which is indeed a sad statement, as nothing nurtures the soul more than music.
The timing of this article is funny to me. This fall I will be teaching drawing technique and the creative life and I’ve taught this class a number of times before. One of the key components to teaching this class is a drawing “curriculum” with a competive aspect. The 30 fun lessons have”tests” for drawing quick sketches, competing against a timer and your classmates. I’ve seen so many kids on the first day of class, languishing in their chairs and saying that they already know how to do this, it’s too simple, it’s so boring or trying to look all artsy and sitting up straight, paying attention, with their art box open and ready for business, until you pull out the stopwatch. Then suddenly, you have animated kids, trying so hard to beat their time, scribbling page after page of sketches, using drawing techniques over and over, yelling, pulling their hair, running to look at how their friends are doing, cheering on the slower ones, boasting when they beat the time. *Sigh* I can’t wait to start this year.