The Ohio Arts Council has released its 2001 State of the Arts report, which took three years to complete. Here are some of the eye-opening findings:

        • The average respondent has lived in Ohio for 38 years, supporting existing data that 74 percent of Ohio residents are born and live in the state throughout their lives.

        • Half of the people surveyed had yearly household incomes of $20,000 or less (a figure that closely mirrors income figures compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau).

ARTS VOLUNTEERS

Do you know someone who is an unstinting arts volunteer? Somebody who took on a special project this past year for love? Someone whose sweat equity deserves to be celebrated?     Our annual recognition of the region's arts volunteers will be printed Nov. 18, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We need your help.     Please send nominations and their stories to Jackie Demaline c/o Tempo, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202, fax: 768-8330; e-mailjdemaline@yahoo.com. Color photographs would be welcome. Deadline is Oct. 31. Questions? Call 768-8530.

        • The average Ohioan spends some or a lot of time watching primetime television, on recreational reading, and in outdoor activities such as biking, hiking or gardening.

        • The average Ohioan spends no time participating in organized sports, singing or playing a musical instrument, working on crafts or on creative writing.

        • 62 percent believe that visual and performing artists play an important or extremely important role in society.

        • The majority of people responding do not volunteer in the arts and do not make financial contributions to any arts organization.

        • When people say family obligations prevent them from attending the arts, the majority don't mean children but aging parents.

        Put all of this — and many more pages of findings together — and what will matter is what performing and visual arts organizations can do with the information.

        If arts professionals know what people do with their leisure time and how they spend their money, can the arts turn non-attendees into audiences and maybe even advocates?

        Sue Cohen, Ensemble Theatre's marketing/public relations director, sighs, “I'm dismayed but not surprised” by the findings.

        Ms. Cohen has been a regular Annie Oakley at targeting audiences for ETC's wildly divergent offerings. She aims at what she defines as grass roots, selling productions show-by-show.

        Last summer's Hedwig and the Angry Inch attracted gays; Fully Committed brought people in from the suburbs; the just-closed Love Child gave ETC a significant African-American audience.

        The questions: Can a cross-over be created? Will niche audiences return to try something outside their preferred zone? Next up for ETC is family musical The Adventures of Pinocchio.

        While ETC is pondering that question, the Ohio Arts Council is also doing some considering.

        Report findings include that Ohio has the second highest attendance in the nation for festivals and fairs and that many citizens (a k a taxpayers) take part in arts and cultural activities through faith-based institutions and community festivals.

        With the publishing of the report, the OAC announced it will evaluate and revise its programs to reflect the study's findings and increase public access.

        The OAC will announce details of several pilot programs throughout the state next month, funded by a $1.1 million grant from Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds.

        The State of the Arts report took three years, and it will likely take at least that long to see results as arts professionals find the best ways to use it.

        Also to be factored in are findings from a report earlier this year (from Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds) that found people listen to friends and family when making leisure decisions and to an American Express-sponsored marketing program under way in the region spearheaded by Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts.

        The results when it's all mixed together could be potent.

        Browse the entire report at www.ohiosoar.org, then click on to Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds' www.arts4allpeople.org.

        More money for program: The Fitton Center for Creative Arts' SPECTRA+ has received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support the program for three years in Hamilton. SPECTRA+ is one of only 11 applicants to receive fuding for a Model Arts in Education Development grant.

        “This is a huge grant earmarked for an equally huge project,” says Jackie Quay, program director. The project: continuing to research the impact arts have on student learning.

        SPECTRA+, a comprehensive, schoolwide approach to arts in education that places arts in core curriculum, was introduced in 1992.

        Since then it has been one of the most honored education programs in America. It's been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has been recognized by the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the Kennedy Center, the Ohio Alliance for Arts in Education and the Ohio Department of Education.

        Part of the new grant will go toward creating a SPECTRA+ handbook, for print and on the Web.

        New theater company: Downtown has a new theater company. Queen City Off Broadway is specializing in “one-act plays, sketches, musicals comedies and dramas” partnered with cabaret Upstairs at Carol's (825 Main St.).

        Queen City's first outing, John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo paired with a cabaret set by Shannon Mullane Kramer, continues at 8 p.m. Friday and 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday.

        Producer is Lyle Benjamin, who has been acting about town for a few seasons. He'd been looking for just the right space since coming to Cincinnati, had his first look at Upstairs at the cast party for Cincinnati Public's Love! Valour! Compassion! a couple of years ago. It was an instant click.

        Things have been in the talking stage for about a year until Mr. Benjamin and his co-conspirators, including Carrie-Ellen Zappa, Amanda Monyhan, and Gary Robinson, decided, “Now!”

        Queen City's motto is “Theatre in your face!” and Savage is a good place to start. The “concert play” is about search for purpose, the setting is a slightly seedy bar where thirtysomething regulars banter and wait for change.

        There will be a season of offerings, Mr. Benjamin promises, and soon there will be food service as well as bar service. Next up will be The Eight Reindeer Monologues, Dec. 7-22.

        Tickets $15, $12.50 students. Call 542-2776 for reservations.

        This and that: Theatrical this and that: Playwright and Northern Kentucky University theater professor Ken Jones will see the world premiere of his Thy Brother's Keeper Thursday through Nov. 4 as part of the NKU theater season.

        The tale of emotional, physical and mental abuse in a family catches a pair of brothers as young men and in old age. Box office: (859) 572-5464 ...

        Good news from and for Know Theatre Tribe, which should benefit from a transfusion of proven talent to direct upcoming productions. Actor/fight director Matthew Pyle's intensity seems like a custom fit for a revival of Sam Shepard's rawly emotional True West (April 12-27).

        Cincinnati Shakespeare's Rebecca Bowman (she helmed last season's Compleat Works . . .) will try her hand at musical satire with Ruthless! (about a little girl who will do anything to star in the school musical) next summer. . . .

        The newly formed Cincinnati Black Theatre Company will hold auditions for the Midwest Black Theatre Festival from 9 a.m. to noon and 3 to 8 p.m. Nov. 3 at Arts Consortium, 1515 Linn St. Call 381-0645 for information. The festival is scheduled April 3-14.

       Contact Jackie Demaline by phone: 768-8530; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jdemaline@enquirer.com.
       
       

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