I have a fairly regular standing appointment on a radio station to talk about upcoming events at our performing arts center. Often the host will ask me to talk about the process we go through to book shows. Since I talked about it the time before, I am surprised he wants to hear about it again. But I also realize that what seems pretty repetitive and boring to me as someone on the inside might be fascinating to other people.
It got me to thinking, should we be revealing more details about our process than we are? Will the public be more engaged by an open discussion of the challenges we face?
Mostly I am thinking about the programming area. We generally don’t talk about our upcoming season until the last show of the current season. Partially, this is a matter of making a dramatic reveal. I don’t know that there is as much anticipation and fanfare about that sort of thing to make it as valuable a tactic as it was 20-30+ years ago.
The bigger rationale for not giving details about what we are considering is to avoid creating expectations in the community that we ultimately are unable to deliver on. Often it will look good for a top name for 6 months straight only to have the plans fall through at the last minute. As disappointing as that is for programming staff, at least they don’t have to deliver the news to 15,000 people waiting for the on-sale announcement, potentially damaging organizational credibility.
In a way, it is like the stereotypical horse race where one horse is in front the entire time and then ends up losing completely in the final yards. With that image in mind and with so many past comparisons about how the arts are like sports or should be promoted/covered like sports, I wondered if discussion about upcoming programming should be handled like speculation about a team draft.
Even if plans to have Wicked appear next season fall through at the last minute, does it create excitement and drama for people to know that is what you are trying to do for three months? Or does it make the replacement show look worse by comparison and potentially sour people on attending a show they would have been excited to see if they hadn’t been yearning for Wicked?
Maybe Wicked has too much notoriety to be a proper example. It might be better to evoke a musical group that is replaced by an equally notable group after the first group had been mentioned regularly for a number of months.
While contracts often state you are committing to the conditions if you announce before contracts are finalized, I am not suggesting a firm announcement, just an open discussion about what the organization is thinking about for the coming year. Because even if things fall through, you can provide assurances of your sincere intent to pursue the opportunity again in the future.
That’s one benefit to this approach. You don’t have to guess whether something will connect with the community because people will mention their approval to staff at religious services, at the coffee house, supermarket, etc throughout the planning process.
Of course, they may also express their displeasure just as sports fans do over draft choices and other decisions sports teams make. So staff will need to be prepared to discuss the philosophy behind pursuing a type of programming, including the concept that not everything the organization does is meant for everyone in the community. An ongoing conversation about plans may require developing a greater tolerance for criticism.
But even in the face of criticism, you can recognize people have some degree of investment in what happens in your organization.
(And by the way, this idea is hardly new. A version was suggested 15 years ago in the article I linked to earlier and is worth a read.)
Thoughts?
I think some of the anticipated negative aspects like Wicked vs. “any other option you would normally think was great” assumes that the program decision making and new season communication process wouldn’t change. I think change would occur either organically or of recognized necessity. There would be few, if any, cases of stark disappointment because the community and arts organization understood each other a little better.
I also think it also underestimates the tolerance and understanding of disappointing outcomes from people who are used to release dates of anticipated movies, books, albums and tech devices being delayed for another year.
Post title inspired by REM. But I was also thinking of evoking an appropriately similar line from “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” “Have I said too much?/There’s nothing more I can think of to say to you/But all you have to do is look at me to know/That every word is true.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PWO11ilSYc