Anatomy of a media fiasco

To begin with, the story wasn’t “widely circulated,” it was locally circulated.

Nicole Kidman

When I received the Google alert on Saturday afternoon that Nicole Kidman had made an impassioned plea for the rescue of Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, New York, I thought it was peculiar. To my knowledge, Kidman has no connection to Buffalo whatsoever, and little connection to American regional theater of any kind. I had seen her in David Hare’s The Blue Room on Broadway many years ago, but as far as I know, that was her only brush with the live theater since she was a kid in Australia.

The item was surprisingly pointed, with Kidman calling on a litany of celebrities from Selma Hayek to Bernadette Peters to kick in $50,000 apiece to help out.

At first I was tempted to call Studio Arena artistic director Kathleen Gaffney to ask what she knew about it, but, then I noted that the only online reference to the story was on “PR-Inside,” an obscure public relations Web site in Great Britain. Moreover, PR-Inside takes unsolicited press releases anonymously, and cautions readers after each press item: “Disclaimer: If you have any questions regarding information in these press releases please contact the company added in the press release. Please do not contact pr-inside. We will not be able to assist you. PR-inside disclaims contents contained in this release.”

This seemed like a highly unreliable source to me.

In addition, the language sounded fishy. The statement “I can’t imagine Chicago without the Goodman and I couldn’t imagine Houston without the Alley,” sounded especially unlikely, coming from the mouth of movie megastar Kidman. How did she become so familiar with Chicago and Houston that she cannot imagine either town without these particular theaters?

I decided to wait. I reasoned that a story coming from a press conference attended by “a handful of reporters” dogging the set of the film version of the musical Nine would be picked up by other news outlets. But this story wasn’t. I forwarded the Nicole Kidman link to the editor of Artvoice at 4:45pm on Saturday, chalked it up to so-much internet noise, and thought no more about it.

What happened next was sort of like one of those 1930s comedies in which a glamorous Hollywood star gets stranded in a rural community and the small-town folk make fools of themselves.

I was startled, first, to see the entirely unsubstantiated story picked up as news by WGRZ Channel 2 on Sunday night. It was then used as the featured headline in a story written by Tom Buckham of the Buffalo News on Monday, bumping the closing ceremonies of Olympics and the Democratic National Convention out of the top spot with the headline “Kidman joins fight to save Studio Arena,” complete with a pull quote in which Kidman reportedly said, “Six people need to step forward with checks for $50,000, and the problem is halfway done.”

Caught up in the thrill of it all, other news stations also carried the story, and local Web outlets followed suit.

The giddy euphoria didn’t take long to implode. Just a few hours later, the backpedaling began. The Buffalo News removed the item from their online homepage and printed that there was reason to doubt the veracity of the report. In fact, the story was entirely fabricated.

The statement, “I can’t imagine Chicago without the Goodman, I couldn’t imagine Houston without the Alley” was actually from a July 20, 2008 article in the Buffalo News, written by arts writer Colin Dabkowski, who was quoting Iain Campbell, the Studio Arena managing director. Campbell, apparently, did not recognize his own words when attributed to Nicole Kidman, a little more than a month after he first said them. Neither did the editors at the News. Nobody had checked the facts.

This is precisely the sort of slipshod, believe-anything-you’re-told reporting that allowed Studio Arena to run itself into the ground in the first place.

At one time, Studio Arena was a powerhouse in the American theater, a trailblazing regional theater with a heavy schedule of programming, world premieres and major names. The golden age was the 1960s and 1970s, but as government funding eroded and as the personality of visionary producing director Neal Du Brock became more of a liability than an asset, the situation at Studio Arena changed.

Tellingly, during the heyday of Studio Arena Theatre, the publicist had been Blossom Cohan, a diehard theater person and a model of integrity. She worked in a city with two daily newspapers at a time when those papers had knowledgeable theater coverage. She worked hard to keep those journalists well-informed.

There was a time when a major star might come look at a play at Studio Arena Theatre. Faye Dunaway came to take a look at Beth Henley’s The Miss Firecracker Contest; George C. Scott attended the opening night of A Moon for the Misbegotten. Tennessee Williams attended performances of his play A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Jon Voight. Those were the days.

After the Neal Du Brock years, this connection to the larger theater world eroded, and the slow decline of Studio Arena began.

Long after they had actually lost their national profile, Studio Arena began to tout itself as “Buffalo’s Nationally Recognized Theatre,” a phrase never challenged by news media or by funding organizations. They were never held accountable for lackluster artistic choices by journalists with little expertise in the arts, who were oblivious to the larger theater world, and couldn’t tell the difference between fact and wishful thinking.

The notion that a Hollywood star like Nicole Kidman would call on a litany of A-list actors to save Studio Arena seems to be an extension of that fantasy.

During its decline, Studio Arena’s major public relations efforts involved currying favor with the Buffalo News. Former artistic director Gavin Cameron-Webb was charged to befriend the entertainment writer for that paper and actually sat at his feet during the intermissions on opening nights. Artistic organizations need to appeal to their audiences, not to journalists. The Kidman item is an appeal to the worst journalistic impulses and is a denial of the current state of Studio Arena Theatre (which is sorry) and of theater in Buffalo (which is robust).

The question that lingers is, “Who planted the Nicole Kidman/Studio Arena Theatre hoax, and why?” Someone must have tipped off the local media to the item on an obscure British Web site. It stands to reason that the individual or the parties involved must have some vested interest in Studio Arena or in those who do.

The affair becomes somewhat like a game of Clue. Who did it, where, and how?

Individuals at Studio Arena—and there are very few remaining—deny the involvement of the theater in the hoax. Roger Shea, husband of Studio Arena artistic director Kathleen Gaffney, was the first to contact Artvoice on Sunday in an effort to draw attention to the item. His reputation for Web communication puts him on the short list of suspects, but is inconclusive. Gaffney herself, with her “This is for real!” quotation to the media makes the list as the lady who perhaps doth insist ’tis real too much, methinks. So does Iain Campbell, who didn’t recognize his own words, almost verbatim, and who insists, after the fact, that the essence of the fabricated message is “true.” Who tipped off Tom Buckham? Who tipped off the local television stations?

Please note that he item was not picked up by the New York Times.

Or, on another track, assuming he was not its author, how did Roger Shea become aware of the item? On the surface, the piece seems geared to raise awareness of the plight of Studio Arena. It represents the biggest boost in press they’ve received since they went bust. But could the item have been planted maliciously by someone who knew it would eventually be exposed as false and cause embarrassment? This scenario seems less likely, but is possible. Studio Arena has made any number of enemies in the local theater community over the years, and show folk are endlessly inventive—and mean. Of course, the plan might have backfired. Nicole and Bernadette might actually have written checks!

One thing is clear. Someone close to Studio Arena or with a vested interest in what happens there planted the fraudulent item. Perhaps that party thought they were helping. Perhaps they intended to do harm. Perhaps they were just goofing around.

For the record, the Buffalo News reports that Nicole Kidman’s press representative says the star is unfamiliar with Studio Arena Theatre. Assuming that paper actually spoke to Miss Kidman’s publicist, that unsurprising revelation speaks volumes.