Home Page

Where Did I Go Wrong?

December 20, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So today, just a few days before Christmas, I end up interviewing 3 people for the position as my assistant. As you may or may not know from past entries. We had a little problem with the first round of the search and have had to reopen the position. There was some urgency connected with the search as I am told if we don’t fill it, we will lose the position to another department. It got me to wondering how many unqualified people had been hired into a position just so that the position wouldn’t be lost.

I am sure any reader who has had any interaction with state employees anywhere will answer with–pretty much all of them.

One thing that happened during the process caught my attention. At the end of the interview, during the “Do You Have Any Questions For Us” phase, an applicant asked us what areas of the job was she least qualified for. This pretty much took me aback since it not only put me in an awkward position, but also placed me in the role of emphasizing her unsuitable qualities in my mind rather than leaving me with a good impression. That being said, she was probably the strongest candidate and will receive our strong recommendation for hiring.

It did get me to wondering if surveying people right at a performance is premature. Typically you balance the questions asking what they liked and didn’t like so that you aren’t unscoring a particularly bad experience in their minds. Also, surveying immediately ensures a higher response rate than one done later.

I can’t find it, but I could have sworn Terry Teachout had a column that talked about needing time after seeing a performance to digest ones feelings about what had just been seen rather than succumbing to the demands of one’s companions to opine immediately once the lobby is reached.

It could be that people would give better feedback if they had time to mull over exactly why they did and didn’t like a performance.

Ah, but how to reach them?

One way would be to send surveys to attendees after the fact inviting them to respond on paper or online. (The festival I once worked for actually approached a 50% response rate which is absolutely phenominal for surveys) Another option is to email a sample of the audience, (hope you don’t hit a spam blocking shield) and direct them to a link on your web site where your survey resides. If you really have the money for it, there are actually sites online which will host your survey and do all the tabulation of results for you automatically. (Google online survey services)

I imagine that the response rate will fluctuate depending on how strongly people felt one way or the other about a show, but I bet the quality of the responses will be much greater and show more thought invested in them.

On the other hand, according to research, there is a perfect one question survey.

General Musings

1 Comment

Great Idea!

December 15, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

Today the person with whom I had been discussing the state of arts education a week or so ago, sent me a great article about how some local schools were exposing kids to art while meeting the “No Child Left Behind” requirements for science. (For those of you wondering what Yu Gi Oh is, go here)

At Nanaikapono, Peralta’s class is focusing on two-dimensional art, drawing and painting fanciful creatures in various habitats where they face threats from man or nature. Each student researched the science of three different animals, studying their physical characteristics and habitats, before melding those traits to come up with a new animal.

Last week, they wrestled with how their creatures would overcome threats.

“This is when you guys can tell the story, instead of having the television tell them to you,” Enos told them, with his irrepressible smile. “This is when you can use your ideas. Who needs TV anyway?”

Ultimately, the class will create a game together, featuring the 28 creatures they have designed on cards.

“How many of you have played Yu-Go-Ih?” asked Enos, prompting peals of laughter.

“Yu-Gi-Oh!” the students corrected him in chorus.

“Usually you have a winner and a loser,” he went on, with a wink. “We’re going to change that whole dynamic. Everyone who sits down to play this game needs to work together to stop the threat.”

The goal of the game, Ali explained, is to create a balanced ecosystem. The rules will be up to the kids.

….Halfway through the six-week program, the class has learned how both artists and scientists rely on observation, prediction and trial-and-error, and how they must have a deep knowledge of their materials and their settings.

The program is a pilot project that will be expanded to other schools in the spring and mostly incorporate the efforts of visual artists who might work in anything from bronze to clay or fibre arts. I have to say, this really sounds like a great program. I am always at a loss to think of ways to integrate arts and subjects like science and math, so I really applaud the creativity of whomever came up with this.

State of the Arts

No Comments

Misc Thoughts

December 14, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So just a few thoughts since visions of Nutcracker dancers and Mall Santas are prancing through my head too much to have any real significant ideas these days.

If the median age of the population is getting older as the mass of baby boomers enter retirement age, what does this mean for the senior citizen discount at theatres? When the average income for a show starts to drop below the median price because there are more seniors than “adults” in your audience, do you reduce the difference between the regular and discount rate, eliminate the discount altogether since your regularly paid price is the discount price, really revise your budget projections?

My other thought has to do with the other end of the spectrum. Is there an age that is just too young to put kids on stage? We have a pre-school that has rented the theatre since the beginning of time to have their 2-5 year old students in a Christmas pageant. After hearing many of these kids scream with terror about going on stage, I wonder if this is really a health activity for them. Another unsafe element is that until this year, members of the theatre staff had to stand at the front of the stage and run back and forth catching kids who saw their parents and started walking toward the four foot drop at the edge of the stage. (This year, the pre-school finally got a group of people together to catch the kids.)

Although I would lose the rental income, I can’t help but feel that these kids would be better served by being part of smaller events in less formal and intimidating surroundings (where the floor didn’t suddenly fall away). As much as I am for exposing kids to the arts, this seems too much too soon.

General Musings

No Comments

Block Heads

December 13, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So I didn’t post often last week because I was engaged in a time consuming, sensitive decision making process–Christmas shopping!

However, today I met with my compatriots in the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii to continue our block booking process. When last we left our heroes, we choose a slate of performers we felt we wanted to present. At the time, we had sketchy information about how much the artist fees might be and how many people we might end up transporting to the islands. Since we more or less knew who we wanted to present, different members went off to gather more information which bring us to today…

Today we met to discuss our selected slate and try to fit them in to a rough schedule. Some highly desired artists could only come at certain times, others had more open schedules or were not as desired. There was a lot wrangling of schedules to find a series of dates to proposed to each performance group.

Among some of the impediments were the fact that three of us were college presenters with student productions of our own to work around. Some of the other presenters had already contracted other performers that they knew would not be appealing to the whole group and set dates with them. There were also considerations of Hawaiian holidays or community events that entire islands geared up for during which times the public wouldn’t be interested in attending shows.

Also, since snowbirds (people who lived in Hawaii during cold winter months on the mainland) comprised larger audiences on some islands than others, it was tough to schedule some performers in the early fall when there would be a smaller potential audience base.

And of course, we worked against ourselves thinking we had found the perfect date only to have someone pipe up, but that is the weekend we already agreed to host Group X.

In the end though, we hammered out what will translate into 80% of my season. There were still some performers that members had to talk to either by phone or at the annual APAP convention next month (which was also one of those scheduling impediments for 05-06 seasons) and more perfomers may be added for future consideration. However, I can now look at perhaps putting a slate of people with smaller financial requirements together myself to flesh out my schedule too.

A couple interesting observations I made:

1) The person I was asked to research came in with a higher rate than other members expected, even with a reduction for block booking and one person had wanted to defer them in for 06-07 any way.

2) On the whole, the slate of acts we were putting together this year had much smaller fees than the current year which is somewhat reflective of the fact that we aren’t getting the size audiences we want despite the good economic climate on the islands.

3) With all the research and discussion we have done about some of the acts, there was a little bit of competition amongst people on the same island to be the one to present some of the perfomers. However, when I showed the list of those we would probably be presenting next year to the office staff, they were underwhelmed. It just goes to show the job I must do to communicate what is exciting about some of these performers to my audience.

When I mention the idea of “what is exciting” I don’t mean in some esoteric sense like the work communicates the mythical archetypes common to all cultures through music. (Which, as a fan of Joseph Campbell could be interesting to me). Some of these groups are not my cup o’ tea at all, but by doing research on them, I found I would be interested to see more of what it was all about.

Now considering most audience members don’t engage in the depth of research I did, how to communicate all of this in a radio or newspaper ad is another thing altogether.

Management Philosophy

No Comments