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This column is a response to Alex Rediger, "Learning Boundaries at Festival," Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 14, 2005, which is reproduced below.

There are so many things wrong with Rediger's argument that it is hard to know where to start. But let's start with the most basic points: Students can purchase tickets to the Shakespeare Festival for $15, and those who volunteer to usher get in free. Many students and citizens take happy advantage of these options. The ushers who Rediger disdained as "shoe salesmen" were volunteers, probably fellow students, whose task is not to assuage his very-temporary non-middle-class status anxiety. And the yellow plastic tape Rediger dubbed a "barrier" of "shame" is a city-ordained marker that demarcates the private space in which Riverside can sell alcohol from the public space in which Rediger was standing.

The core issue

It is the distinction between public and private that moves us beyond technicalities and into the core issue. If Rediger wishes to call on the taxpayers of Iowa City to fund free theater in the park, fine. Instead, however, he directs his vitriol at the Shakespeare Festival itself for not letting him view a show for free. But the festival is not "public theater," it is run by the Riverside Theatre, a private, self-sustaining professional company. The RiversideTheatre, not the city of Iowa City, foots the bill for this summer festival.

As a social work student, Rediger should be painfully aware that there are limits to what taxpayers feel they can fully subsidize in their communities. In Iowa City, the taxpayers' representatives on the City Council voted in 1998 to support theater by constructing the physical facility in City Park that could house the Shakespeare Festival (and any number of other events, both public and private). Taxpayers, however, did not provide seats; the Riverside Theatre raised more than $100,000 from individual donors to buy the seats Rediger thinks are public, and the Riverside Theatre then donated those private seats to the city for non-festival use. More important, the city of Iowa City does not provide the Riverside Theatre with any of the annual budget to stage the festival. The Riverside Theatre must raise more than $100,000 every year to provide its own lighting and sound equipment, pay its own technical staff and pay the professional actors, choreographers, directors and designers who come to us from all over the United States. These professionals devote many weeks of hard labor to rehearsing productions that Rediger felt entitled to view for free.

Not 'public' theater

Were this a "public" theater, were its costs borne by the taxpayers, then it would be like the public library, public schools or public parks -- free and open to all -- and Rediger would have an argument. But that is not the situation in this public-private partnership. The Riverside Theatre has to pay its own way in this summertime festival, and it must do that through ticket sales, private contributions, grants and volunteer assistance.

Rediger said our annual Shakespeare Festival is a "unique" feature of our civic life, and he's right about that. It is a unique public-private partnership; the city provides the space and the theater pays for everything else. Those of us in the community who want to support this unique cultural event do everything we can to keep ticket prices low. My husband and I, along with many others, house two actors every summer, providing free lodging for eight weeks in our private homes, so we can cut that cost from the budget. Others provide necessary services free or at reduced fees. In all sorts of ways, members of this community chip in to make the budget for the Shakespeare Festival as lean as possible. But quality, professional theater is not cheap, and if it is not paid for by taxes, it must be paid for by tickets and contributions. As a citizen who wishes theater were free to the public, I don't like this situation any more than Rediger does. But if there is any shame in this story, it does not belong to the Riverside Theatre's Shakespeare Festival.
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Victoria Bissell Brown is a resident of Iowa City and a professor of history at Grinnell College.

The request is a little bewildering, given that it is available at other locations, including that of the newspaper to which he submitted it for publication, and where it was in fact published. http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050714/OPINION02/507140323/1018/OPINION It is referred to and quoted from at yet other sites. And it is no doubt in cache and otherwise available on servers around the world.

Moreover, to the extent he is concerned about how it was interpreted and commented upon by Victoria Bissell Brown, above, it seems to me his interests are better served by putting forth his side of the story, in his own words, than by leaving the matter solely in the hands, and words, of his critics.

It was for the latter reasons that his piece was originally reproduced here as a courtesy to him (someone I did not, and do not, know).

But it is not otherwise essential to the contents of the Coralville rain forest site's discussion. The Brown piece was, because it described how a successful Iowa City attraction project came together administratively and economically.

That being the case, however bizarre and self-defeating the request, I saw no reason not to grant it.

-- N.J., September 5, 2005