Grace and Organizations

Note: My lovely wife says I should put a disclaimer that the first part is graphic.

A while back, a friend was talking about having to decide whether to put one of her animals down. It was a cruel thing to kill it, but it was a cruel thing to keep letting it suffer. She asked what I would do.

"How is it suffering?" I asked?

"She's just having a really hard time walking around? I don't know. Have you ever had to put an animal out of its misery?"

"Well, yeah." I answered.

"When was the last time you had to do something like that?"

I told her a story that shocked her. Not really that shocking to me, but I come from a different place. When I was in college one summer I dated a girl who came by to visit. About five minutes after she left to go home and sleep, I got a frantic call.

This was before cell phones were an accessory, so something had to be really bad. She had to walk up to a strangers house in the night and ask to use her phone. About a half-mile from my house, she had hit a deer with her car and it was lying there. She didn't know what to do.

"Call the police and they'll come out and fill out an accident report for your insurance. I'm on my way."

It only took me a couple minutes to get there. It was gruesome. She had hit the whitetail, but not killed it. There was blood everywhere, but it was not dead. It was still bleating, trying to get up and run away, but it couldn't. You could hear the deer's lungs slowly filling up with blood, as each bleat slowly mingled with gurgled blood.

My girlfriend at the time and the woman who came out of her house to help started to go up to the deer and it got more and more freaked out. I told them to stop.  Deer's hooves are really sharp and they could be seriously hurt. I asked if either had any rope. The girlfriend had some in her trunk and I grabbed it, lassoed the deer's head and dragged it off the road into the ditch. It wouldn't be long I thought.

It was. It couldn't move, it was going to die. Just a matter of time. It was suffering. Not in a "dog having a hard time walking around and making it inconvenient for the owner" way. Slowly choking on its own blood as it gasped and tried in vain to get back up, suffered. It would take a while for it to  drown from it's bleeding lungs.

I was taught since I could remember to never let an animal suffer. After about ten minutes of bloody bleats, I went back to the trunk--grabbed a crowbar; took a deep breath; and delivered a coup de grâce.

As we go through our days debating minutia, reciting sound bites, dealing out high-fives and props to those we agree with and refusing to listen to those we disagree with, I wonder. How many have seen a living creature suffer? How many have watched a loved one suffer and had to make a difficult decision regarding life or death?

Often it will come up, as it did in the comments to one of Adam's recent posts, that there are (some say way) too many theatre companies. Too many companies are fighting for the same resources, the same audiences and are canceling each other out.  In order for some to live, some have to die.

In Michigan, where I grew up, there are millions of deer. There are no natural predators. The deer population is difficult to control. Without hunters, two of the main causes of death are cars and starvation. 

We're at a time of massive change. The world around us is evolving, and evolution is not a pretty sight. Things start competing for resources and if they cannot find them, they die out. It works its way up the food chain until the largest are dead. The only survivors are those who are able to evolve and adapt to the new world.

Arts organizations are heading to that point. More and more competition for fewer and fewer resources will force an evolution of sorts. Some organizations will die.

When I hear talk that some organizations must die for others to live, I think it's misplaced. Small ones, usually the ones that folks think there are way too many of, die all the time. New ones begin and die out all the time. They're not really using the same resources or attracting the same audiences though. Those that do usually have adapted and changed how they find sustenance. They're not eating the same food as it were.

Many large and mid-sized organizations are the ones suffering. The appeals almost always state how important they are. Not because of what they are doing, but because of what they have done. How well they did before the world changed and they started having a hard time finding food. Or how well they did before they were hit by a car and lie on the side unable to keep going. Or because they were able to build a really nice nest when times were good. Or they've managed one great show every couple of years.

A lot of theatres are suffering. How much should a theatre be allowed to suffer before being given a coup de grâce? Is there a point when we are willing to let them go? Stop the feeding tubes and let nature take its course? See if they are able to adapt and survive?

When the dinosaurs finally died out, there was a boom in new thriving species--who didn't require as much food to thrive. Will the same hold true when a few massive institutions go under?