Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1973 - 34

Reiss' enthusiastic endorsement of United Arts Funds in
print; for, in my professional experience, United Arts
Funds are generally discriminatory. Funds collected by
one Establishment, the local arts council, are in turn
distributed to the 5, 6 or 8 local Establishment arts groups
with little, if any, of the financial fertilizer getting down
to where it will do the most good: the grass roots.

able portion of what is chronicled here has got to be
credited to Reiss as direct and/or indirect stimulator/
evangelist/journalist. Part of the phenomenon is that Reiss

Now the moment we bring in local arts councils we've
ultimately got to track to the Associated Councils of the

A further manifestation of organizational mis-management (given that public relations is a facet of administration/management) is reflected in the fact that USITT is
referred to in the book only once. This, despite the fact
that, in the period 1970-72, USITI accumulated a set of
service experiences relative to both business & the arts and
the arts at the neighborhood level of which any organization would be proud, and which entitled USITT to greater
coverage in the book. But even as peripatetic and knowl-

Arts (ACA), and here it gets a little tricky. One need only
reflect on past ACA leadership to see how tricky. On the
basis of its track record to the time Culture & Company
was put to bed (early 1972), Reiss was extremely kind
to ACA, and it may be that he was tacitly acknowledging
that ACA had yet to realize its enormous potential. For
there was no way for Reiss to know in February, 1972,
that by mid·Summer 1972 the dynamic John Hightower
would be the full-time paid President of ACA, ably
assisted by Michael Newton. There was no way for Reiss
to know then that an ACA turnaround would be amply
manifest in the fact of an ACA-sponsored two-day
symposium on "Neighborhood Arts Programs", Philadelphia, March 2 & 3,1973. ACA? Neighborhood Arts?!!!
The omission of any lengthy treatment of the critical
role to be played by alliances between the arts community
and the educational establishment is notable. To be sure,
Titles I & III of ESEA (now largely dead as far as the arts
are concerned) and the JDR III Fund (still puzzlingly
insular and publicly equatable only with Project IMPACT,
whose evaluation and public report we all wait for eagerly)
get their just share of space. But what of increasing
examples of neighborhood arts groups and local school
boards collaborating on extra- and non-curricular programs to their mutual advantage?
I had hoped that Reiss' book would provide a badly
needed definition of "arts management". The unattributed
quote from the now almost 8-year-old Rockefeller Panel
Report will not do now, any more than it did in 1965.
This book has two heroes: one a gentleman by the
name of Amyas Ames, President of the Partnership for the
Arts (now an adjunct of ACA) and Concerned Citizens for
the Arts, both groups established to affect legislation in
support of the arts on federal, state and local levels; the
other is the author. I will say no more about Mr. Ames,
since the sections of the book dealing with his activities
are some of the most exciting to be read on this issue,
and you must read the book.
Skip Reiss deserves some attention here because, as
this book demonstrates, he is that rare phenomenon:
immediate and simultaneous cause and effect. Such a
statement may be prompted by this particular reviewer's
advantage in watching him doing his thing for almost ten
years now. For the book does not (perhaps should not)
reveal the extent to which it is, in many respects, a
personal/professional journal. To put it simply, a consider-

has become an acknowledged expert in the field of arts
management without having once, to my knowledge, ever
held a professional position as an arts administrator or
manager.

edgeable a journalist as Reiss can't be expected to second
guess an organization that almost compulsively insists on
hiding its brilliant light under the bushel of bureaucracy.
On th is score, however, the pu bl ishers of Culture &
Company deserve some kind of a mis-management award.
Has anyone seen the book advertised anywhere? Tell your
friends. Tell your colleagues. The effectiveness of this
book will be directly proportional to the numbers of
people who read it.
I submit that the USITT National Commission on
Theatre Administration will find enough in this book,
implicit and explicit, to keep it busy and productive for
a long time to come. Read it!
Thomas P. DeGaetani
School of Art & Design, Pratt Institute

THEATRE LIGHTING
By Louis Hartmann
New York: Drama Book Specialists Publications, Inc., 1970
138 pp., $7.50
What can one say about a book published more than
forty years ago wh ich has not already been said many
times over and probably said better? The fact that a
publisher felt the book to be significantly worthwhile to
merit republication after four decades is perhaps indicative of the universality of this "classic" in the field of
stage lighting; but why not let the author speak for himself, for among the many truisms found with in the pages
of this slim volume he tells us, "There really is nothing
strictly ne'vv happening in the theatre; it is all repetition".
(p.85)
Aside from an historical interest, then, in the methodology of Belasco/Hartmann's lighting of such early
twentieth century productions as "Madame Butterfly"
(1910), "Girl of the Golden West", "The Return of Peter
Grimm" (1911), and "The Rose of the Rancho", the true
value of Hartmann's work is to remind us that notwithstanding the astronomical technological advances made in

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

FEBRUARY. 1973

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1973