From President Marla Carlson: Why ASTR Is Having an In-Person Conference

I hope that you and your communities are well. ASTR’s work is continuing behind the scenes as we plan for the 2021 conference in San Diego, analyze the results of the membership survey, and complete a number of other initiatives. I’d like to remind you that the application deadline for the next round of Research Grants and Travel Awards is July 16, including the first iteration of the Jessica Berson Dance Research Assistance Fund to support scholars specializing in dance-based work in theatre who do not currently have tenure-track employment but are no longer students.

The past year has been busy for ASTR leadership and staff during the pandemic. When we postponed the conference, we invested money and labor in facilitating virtual participation in the “pre-conference” working sessions and field conversations. We offered membership on a pay-what-you-can model, so that people could retain access to Theatre Survey and other member benefits during this time of economic uncertainty. Many members did take advantage of this option, and our income dropped significantly. We still provided awards, publication prizes, and research grants. And staff supported all of the massive labor involved in negotiating hotel contracts and training for health and safety protocols, all while relying on volunteer labor to keep the organization alive during the pandemic.

The main focus of this quarterly report is to explain why the Executive Committee decided to go ahead with an in-person conference in 2021 and why we cannot afford to accommodate requests for virtual participation. First and foremost, I deeply appreciate the ongoing work of the conference planning team—both our staff and our member volunteers—and working session conveners. We offer a visual snapshot of conference expenses, but I will also explain it and answer some questions that I’ve been asked via email including details about our contract with the Westin San Diego Gaslamp Quarter and about how the hotel contracts work in general. This may well be too much information, but I’m offering transparency.

How hotel contracts work for annual conferences: A standard hotel contract specifies a minimum number of “room nights” that an organization will reserve; that is, sleeping rooms booked by those attending the conference. The 662 room nights for our 2021 conference might mean 220 rooms booked for three nights in a row—or another breakdown of room reservations over the course of the conference. (We were able to adjust the contract earlier this month from its previous requirement of 860 room nights, taking into account difficulties in travel caused by the pandemic.) This contract ensures that our conference attendees can book a room in the hotel, but it also provides the hotel with the majority of its income, and the contract makes us liable for lost profit, charging ASTR for any unsold rooms. Let me give a concrete example: If only 290 people were to attend the conference, and their room sharing and other arrangements were similar to what occurred in 2019 (Arlington), then ASTR would owe the hotel $40,000.

Minimum expenses: We are also contracted to pay them at least $60,000 for food and beverages, including associated fees and tax. We spend this money on the awards luncheon, coffee service, and receptions. With this guaranteed income, the hotel provides meeting rooms at no charge. So we’re always working hard to make sure we spend that money but also that we don’t spend any more that we’ve promised. Your registration fee covers this minimum food and beverage expense, along with audio visual services ($28,000) and the very small part-time, year-round staff that we hire to plan and run the conference ($23,000). Registration fees do not always cover the operations expenses related to the conference ($15,000), and we pay the travel grants ($7500) out of an annual 4% draw down from our investments. That draw down is how we can continue providing grants and awards to our members even during times of serious financial constraints such as the past few years. As you may be aware, these unusual conditions include not only the cancellation of the 2018 conference, postponement of the 2020 conference, and the drop in membership income during the pandemic, but also significant expenses incurred in restructuring management without disrupting the 2019 conference. ASTR is not sitting on pots of money but, rather, has been forced into deficit spending that cannot continue.

Cancellation policies: This year's hotel contract was initially negotiated and signed in June 2016 for a conference in 2018. When we cancelled that conference to avoid crossing picket lines during a strike, ASTR was contractually obligated to pay the hotel $91,287.00 for lost revenue. We eventually negotiated an arrangement whereby we signed a new contract with the same hotel for 2021 and paid no cancellation penalty beyond the $11,298.66 that we had already paid as a deposit for 2018. If we had cancelled the 2021 in-person conference and convened virtually, we would have again been liable for lost revenue. The amount specified in the contract, $78,948, was reduced to $74,000 with the adjustment in the minimum room block. After July 1, that figure increases by 20%. This liability is a factor in the Executive Committee’s decision to reject the virtual conference option for 2021.

Hybrid conferences: The costs of a hybrid conference are different from the cancellation fee, and the infographic shows how these costs would impact registration fees: software and streaming services would significantly increase our audio-visual, operations, and part-time staff expenses. These expenditures would be required to create the sort of virtual access to working sessions that members would find fully satisfactory in exchange for paying a registration fee to participate remotely. But because ASTR does not have an extra $60,000 available, the hybrid conference would prompt an increase in registration fees that would itself prove exclusionary.

In-Conference Zoom: The question that remains is why we can’t just authorize working session conveners to bring their laptops, use their institutional Zoom (or similar) accounts, and facilitate remote participation on their own. This is a question I’ve raised myself, and I am also frustrated by the answer—but accept it. Our contract specifies complimentary basic wireless internet service in meeting rooms with a limit of 20 Mb/ps per day, which is sufficient only for web browsing. An upgrade adequate for remote participation in sessions would cost approximately $10,000, and this partial solution would still likely result in an unsatisfactory conference experience for those paying to participate remotely. Similarly, we cannot ensure that cell phone signal inside the meeting rooms will be adequate for remote participation and do not have the staff capacity to investigate and advise on this matter. In addition, offering virtual attendance as an option for NON-virtual working sessions (the bulk of the sessions) might leave ASTR significantly below the minimum number of room nights required by our contract. We know that some working sessions have come up with asynchronous approaches that allow for remote research-sharing, and we encourage session conveners to pursue these forms of inclusion outside the conference itself. Similarly, working session conveners who cannot travel can work with their group in advance of the conference and designate another member to lead the in-person session.

Meeting at universities: We began meeting in hotels early in the 2000s, around the same time that the Society made the transition to professional management and also began to actively encourage a larger and more diverse membership to attend its conferences. Prior to this, a volunteer committee was responsible for making local arrangements that combined university and hotel locations, and graduate students at the host university provided significant labor during the conference. Our recent conferences have been too large for universities to accommodate, so a return to those venues would also entail a more exclusionary approach to programming. A return to graduate student labor would also mean a return to limited participation by students in conference activities. A return to the fully volunteer local arrangements committee seems frankly untenable, given the increasing workload that comes with academic employment and the increasing precarity of scholars in our field.

Future Planning: The Executive Committee has begun conversations about a sustainable vision for ASTR’s future, informed by recent experience, your emails, and input from the member survey. I ask not only for your patience and understanding as we navigate the later stages (hopefully the ending) of the pandemic but also for your active collaboration with the incoming and continuing leadership in shaping the next phase of the American Society for Theatre Research.

Marla Carlson
ASTR President