“Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.” George Carlin
Jackie* and I became friends at a long ago ACDA national conference and have stayed in contact for several decades. She directs a community chorus two states over and recently emailed me about a situation which came up during her summer audition period. She thought it would illustrate why we all need to be aware of Choral Ethics and to encourage our singers and board members to follow our lead in behavior toward others and other choruses.
Like many of us in the community sector, annual auditions are very important to the health of Jackie’s organization. She has a savvy board with plenty of ideas on how to advertise their auditions, but also still go with the tried and true methods of announcing them. One method is taking posters to various places in the community such as local businesses, restaurants, libraries and, believe it or not, grocery stores.
Posters are handed out to board members during the last board meeting of their concert year in June. They are told not to start putting them up until after July 4. Each board member is given instructions and a list of kinds of places to bring them as well as any known protocol businesses may have, such as bringing it to a particular person or on a certain day of the week. Most businesses are happy to put up their posters and encourage Jackie’s people to bring anything else they may have to post as they want to support local arts organizations.
As usual, Jackie’s board members began to bring ‘round their posters after July 4. Soon after, some of the board began to notice something peculiar; their audition posters at one local grocery store chain were disappearing. This particular chain has community bulletin boards at each of their store entrances and anything, with the exception of political posters, is encouraged to be put up. There are pianos for sale and painting services offered and babysitters or guitar lessons advertised. Audition posters for a community chorus would not be out of the ordinary.
Jackie’s chorus has always put up posters in the grocery stores and have auditioned a good number of singers in the past as a result. They were confused why suddenly they were being taken down. Jackie, herself, went to her own local store to talk to someone as to why the posters were being taken down. The Store Manager told her they have no restrictions, other than nothing political, as to what could be posted. The son of the chain’s owner cleans up the bulletin boards about once a month but other than that, he was confused as to why only their posters would be taken down. It soon became clear who was taking them down.
On her way into the store that day, Jackie had put up a poster but on her way out, it was no longer there. As she was walking to her car, she noticed one of her former singers, now a board member of another chorus, loading his car with groceries with her poster in his hand. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing and left. The first thing she did when she got home was to call her board president. They decided they would keep aware of what was happening with their posters at those stores and keep replacing them. During the summer, two other board members had a similar experience to Jackie’s; replacing posters and then seeing someone walk off with them, usually someone they recognized as belonging to that other chorus. She doesn’t know if the director of the other chorus knew about his singers’ antics and Jackie doesn’t care. She thinks it’s beyond petty and with his blessing or not, it shows what kind of group they have.
You will be pleased to know Jackie had about the usual number of singers audition for her this summer and all is well. But her chorus will be watching their backs from now on.
It seems bizarre to be writing about the stealing of audition posters, doesn’t it? And yet, it is a symptom of a greater problem in our choral world; silly competitions and lack of ethics. Why would you take down another chorus’s posters? Does one group’s viability diminish yours? Isn’t there room for more than one good chorus in the world?
*Name withheld
Sharon McKinley says