Mile wide, inch deep

I have faults. I know. I know. This comes as a surprise to many of you. But, it is true. In fact, I have more liabilities than one blog has time to reveal (just ask my wife Shantel). Let's just tackle one. In directing the Performing Arts Alliance, one fault particularly rears its ugly head. I love to serve and see our arts and culture community grow. That isn't the problem. The fault lies in my desire and belief that I can do more than resources allow. If I can see how something could progress and ultimately work, then ergo I should be able to accomplish it. Problem is within our emerging cultural community, we have so many needs that I don't know which hole in the dam to plug first and we start to drown. I am extremely confident that we have answered the right call and are headed in the right direction with programs like Red Chair Project and Orlando Arts Getaway, designed to advance our community's awareness and eventual audience development. Here is where my fault comes into play. We haven't let go of so many programs from the past, so we are spread way too thin, not allowing us to go deep into greatness with any one thing. All of the programs are "needed" on some level, but the choice lies in what has the greatest impact when resources are minimal. We still are facility managers for example, acting as landlord over the Theatre Garage and as a mentor to many young performing companies new to producing while using the Studio Theatre. We birthed the Downtown Arts District and should have given all facilities-related programs over to them at that point. We didn't. We did stop producing the Spotlight on Theatre convention, but we kept some of its guts like the Unified Auditions and Play-in-a-Day. We made the decision last year to not produce Play-in-a-Day as it Shakespeare's Playfest is a better place for it. We have attempted to be all things to all people. I take the blame. The adage is that you can't fix a problem unless you first confess that you have a problem. Done. The fixing is in progress and couldn't happen soon enough. Be on the look out for a new vision and mission, along with a new name and branding from the Alliance. We are going to eliminate some things to focus deeper on others. We asked for feedback late last year and much of the feedback from constituents echoed what I am saying. I'll continue pushing our arts and culture community to work together in a positive and solution-based format, but I am also going to be a lot more frugal in accepting what we can do with our very limited resources. Stay tuned.