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Civilizing and Selling Spectators: Audiences at the Madison Civic Center

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Stacy Wolf
Stacy Wolf
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the departments of English and Theatre and Dance at George Washington University. She has published articles in Theatre Journal and Modern Drama She is currently writing a feminist study of American musicals.
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Extract

Virtually every city in the United States now has a Civic Center. In large cities, this site functions variously as a convention center, a hockey rink, and the locale for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus. In smaller cities, it frequently serves as a venue for performance. Civic Centers host touring productions of Broadway shows, national dance companies, and local symphonies and operas. In addition to providing local access to a variety of performance forms, a city's Civic Center also signifies “the arts” and so implies the city's commitment to art and performance.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , November 1998 , pp. 7 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1998

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References

ENDNOTES

1. I would like to thank Sally Banes, Matt Bliss, Jill Dolan, Kari Kalve, Susan Koenig, Jack Kugelmass, Elaine Marks, Tracy McCabe, James Moy, Michael Peterson, Nicola Pitchford, and Phillip Zarrilli for their criticisms of and responses to earlier drafts of this essay.

2. See Bellah, Robert N., “Civil Religion in America,” Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 168–186.Google Scholar

3. Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Nice, Richard (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

4. Gould, Whitney, “New Civic Center Looks Like a Winner,” Curtain Call 1.1 (March 1980): 3.Google Scholar

5. This slippage was evident in the transcripts of the Arts Survey telephone interviews, which I discuss below. Several hundred people were asked, “What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘the Civic Center’?” Most people answered something that was actually about the Oscar Mayer Theatre, including, “bad acoustics,” “seats too small,” “the touring shows,” and so on.

6. A double meaning also applies to the Civic Center's smaller space, the Isthmus Playhouse. Although technically the Civic Center, as landlord, simply rents out its space to the Rep and CTM, audiences perceive those groups as integral parts of the Civic Center. Through CTM and the Rep, the Civic Center denotes a commitment to the local, to the civic. And since both the Rep and CTM have national aspirations, as evidenced through the Rep's Equity status and both companies' choice of season and production values, they also legitimate the Civic Center's national profile.

7. Brill, Michael, “Transformation, Nostalgia, and Illusion in Public Life” in Public Places and Spaces, ed. Altman, Irwin and Zube, Ervin H. (New York: Plenum Press, 1989), 8.Google Scholar

8. Brill, 23. As Deutsche, Rosalyn writes in “Art and Public Space: Questions of Democracy” Social Text 33 (Fall/Winter 1992)Google Scholar, “The presence of the homeless in public places today represents the most acute symptom of […] conflictual and uneven social relations” (38).

9. I would like to thank Reynold Peterson for providing me with information about the Civic Center's season and revenues.

10. Deutsche, 37.

11. Trescott, Jacqueline, “Survey: We Care About Arts But Don't Do Much About It,” Capitol Times, 22 February 1993, 1B.Google Scholar

12. In her comparative study of cultural values and uses of upper-class French and Americans, Michele Lamont shows how Americans tend to be suspicious of high culture, preferring to be a good neighbor more than a cultured person. She underlines what she sees as Americans' anti-intellectualism, anti-snobbery, and excessive practicality (122). See Lamont, Michele, Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper-Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Zolberg, Vera L., Constructing a Sociology of the Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 31–35, 139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Blau, Judith, The Shape of Culture: A Study of Contemporary Patterns in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. McWilliams, Wilson Carey, “The Arts and the American Political Tradition,” in Art, Ideology, Politics, ed. Balfe, Judith H. and Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane (New York: Praeger, 1985), 18–20.Google Scholar

15. McWilliams marks a shift in the moral status in the arts during the Jacksonian era when Shakespeare, was appropriated as “a teacher of citizens” (28).Google Scholar

16. This was the approximate site of the recently completed Madison Convention Center. which also had a long history of debate about the necessity of its existence and then, about the specific possible site.

17. Lamont, 88–128.

18. By analyzing the presidential addresses of George Washington and John F. Kennedy, Bellah underlines linguistic and conceptual slippages through which American politicians have configured patriotism as a religious practice. He notes, for example, the presidents’ frequent invocations of “God” in alliance with America, and Kennedy's likening Abraham Lincoln to Christ, and the United States to Israel. According to Bellah, these references are attractive to many American citizens because of “certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share” (171). Civil religion “is concerned that America be a society as perfectly in accord with the will of God as men can make it, and a light to all nations” (186). Also see Bellah, Robert N., Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swindler, Ann, and Tipton, Steven M., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985).Google Scholar This is a group-written sociological study of American values in the late 20th century.

19. Bellah's work has its supporters and detractors in religious studies, who focus on the question of civil religion's existence in the United States. For an excellent historicizing and critique of Bellah and civil religion, see Hughey, Michael W., Civil Religion and Moral Order: Theoretical and Historical Dimensions (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983).Google Scholar Also for four retrospective views on the influence of Bellah's essay twenty-five years after its original publication see Porterfield, Amanda, Hammond, Phillip E., Moseley, James G., Sarna, Jonathan D., “Forum: American Civil Religion Revisited,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 4.1 (Winter 1994): 1–23.Google Scholar For responses to Habits of the Heart, see Reynolds, Charles H. and Norman, Ralph V., eds, Community in America: The Challenge of Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).Google Scholar

20. Hughey, 159.

21. Program, Madison Civic Center Grand Opening Performance, February 1980.

22. Kalberg, Stephen, “Cultural Foundations of Modern Citizenship,” in Citizenship and Social Theory, ed. Turner, Bryan S. (London: Sage, 1993), 98.Google Scholar

23. Hughey, 159.

24. Sandier, , “Civic Center Annual Report,” Curtain Call 3.9 (January/February 1983): 5.Google Scholar

25. Sandier. 5, 7.

26. Sandier, 5–6.

27. Goldberg, Michael, Director of the University Union Theatre, Public Meeting on the Arts, August 1993.Google Scholar

28. Kroupa, Gene and Associates, Dane County Arts Study, 1993.Google Scholar

29. Hughey, 100.

30. Hughey, 75.

31. Kroupa, 2.

32. Hughey, 159.

33. I have cited the focus group discussions according to their organization in the published transcript of the survey, by (P)articipants or (Non-p)articipants, (M)oderator, age group, and the specific page of the discussion.

34. Urry, John, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990), 10.Google Scholar

35. Hughey, 159.

36. After this comment, the moderator said, “He just might be kidding,” but the point is that he is not kidding, and that while few people would say such a (resistant, demystifying, immoral) thing in this context, this is how “the arts” make some people feel.

37. Interview with Anne Scott, 16 June 1993.

38. Bourdieu, 68.

39. Urry, 14.

40. Interview with Anne Scott, 16 June 1993.

41. Post-Fordist consumption, Urry explains, characterizes late capitalism with its emphasis on a proliferation of seemingly unique products “chosen” by consumers, who create individual (consumer) identities through their collection of goods. Post-Fordist capitalism has replaced an earlier model of Fordist mass production and consumption, which is producer-driven and trend-oriented. Post-Fordist consumption requires producers to differentiate among more and more particular markets, to attract (a mass of) individuals rather than the masses. Urry also points out how, in post-Fordist consumerism, activities and events are consumed as well as “real” material products (14).

42. Naremore, James and Brantlinger, Patrick, “Introduction: Six Artistic Cultures,” Modernity and Mass Culture, ed. Naremore, James and Brantlinger, Patrick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 1–23.Google Scholar

43. Zolberg, 144.