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Audience Relations

Substitution Blues

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Ken Davenport posted some interesting information about the impact of absenteeism in Broadway shows on Producer’s Perspective. He was curious to learn if the need to have an understudy stand in was having an impact on audiences so he commissioned someone to study the question.

The impetus for this was the increasing rate of absenteeism in Broadway shows, particularly West Side Story. I had read the NY Post article Ken links to back in August and I couldn’t believe there was such a high rate of absences given that there are no lack of performers who are just as talented waiting to step on to the Broadway stage. Cameron Mackintosh did clean house on Les Miserables when he felt the quality was flagging so it seemed pretty risky for actors to appear to be slacking off. In retrospect, I suppose there is always the teensy little chance that the Post sensationalized the problem beyond the reality.

While some respondents to the survey liked the idea of an understudy having a chance to surpass the star, absenteeism was generally seen in a negative light. The perception was that it is becoming more prevalent and that the quality is not the same. Some respondents felt that they had to apologize to the guests they asked along or advise their friends not to attend the show. On the whole, people said they are becoming more cautious about their ticket purchases.

Davenport suggests the Actors Union and Producers get together to explore the problem. It should be noted that his survey results said people thought there was more absenteeism, but there was no study done on the question of whether there actually is more absenteeism over all. Though as a practical matter, the truth has little bearing if audiences have decided the problem is widespread and are acting accordingly. As Davenport suggests, better training of understudies may begin to reverse the perception that understudies are offering a vastly inferior product.

One of the commenters on the entry suggests that the understudy notice in the program book may have a psychological effect prejudicing a person against the show before the curtain rises. (Though I have attended a show where there was a small flurry of the notices falling out when I opened the Playbill. That certainly didn’t help my confidence.) Of course, eliminating proper notice probably runs afoul New York’s fraud laws.

While reading the entry, I recalled Holly Mulcahy’s September column on The Partial Observer about substitutions in orchestra programs. I wondered if the practice of changing up a concert offering was undermining confidence in orchestras as much as changes in casts are in Broadway shows. And has anyone ever done a study on that?

More Tales From the Furniture Store

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So last Thursday I had a really excellent dinner at a furniture store.

Long time readers will remember when I blogged about the opening of this store about two years ago. I was a little skeptical about a situation where a high end furniture store had a wine bar, high end restaurant and theatre in it. I have actually been to a couple events at the wine bar and theatre before but this was the first time I had dinner at the restaurant. It was really quite excellent. The highlight for me was an intermezzo of wasabi and apple sorbert. Just when you thought the wasabi was going to be too much, the coolness and sweetness turned things around and left your mouth with a taste of honey.

I was there lending my support for a fundraiser a performance group partner was having in order to raise money for a production we are premiering next October. The meal was preceded by a piece from the show we are putting together. It was my favorite situation. I got to have people tell me how wonderful and inspiring the show appeared to be and congratulate me. Followed by a really good meal. I didn’t have to worry about organizing the experience. I’ll find out how successful the appeal packets were in a few weeks.

But aside from that there was something that caught my eye about the activities at the facility. One of the women at my table mentioned her daughter said the bars and restaurants were a hot place on the weekends and there were lines out the door. I knew they kept the theatre busy with fashion shows and other events. One thing I didn’t realize until that evening was that they have a game night one Tuesday each month. They bill it as a “netplaying” opportunity. As an alternative to normal networking events, you attend and play board games or Wii video games at one of 12 stations set up around the theatre. (I should mention it is something of a black box theatre space with no permanent seating.)

It is free though you need to purchase at least one drink or something to eat. I am guessing the program has been at least marginally successful because they are advertising a new time and new sponsors. I am not sure if the sponsors help provide the games or the prizes (or both).

I saw this netplaying program and started thinking about the networking/attract new audiences type events that arts organizations sponsor. The approach has had mixed results from what I have read and thus has been of dubious value. My suspicion is that those who have had poor results have been doing it solely to increase their audiences rather than provide something that is needed and valued by their community.

I have no doubt that the social side of the building is designed with the intent of having attendees patronize the furniture side. I am not going to attribute high ideals to the business. The bars and restaurants are designed to appeal to young professionals. At the moment, they may be spending all their money on the clothes to wear to the bar and the wine they consume there while their apartment is a dump. It won’t always be that way though and when the young hipsters are ready to furnish an apartment, they are likely to at least look through the store there. In the meantime, they are in the building having fun and bringing their friends.

The arts organization which isn’t quite sure if it will make its budget from year to year may not have the institutional patience to take such a long view. In their heart of hearts, they may be whispering “If you build it, they will come and they will donate money” and hope it will all happen in the course of a season.

If you look at my previous entry and then look at the events they have running each month now, you will see that there is a pretty significant difference in how they are using their space. No jazz or film nights, not really too many family oriented events, few seminars on topics like micro-enterprise.

They started out with an idea of what might be useful to the community and then made adjustments over time. They built their facility with the intent of providing services to a clientele that would purchase their furniture. How much more difficult must it be then for an arts organization to do the same in a facility that wasn’t built to enhance the lifestyle of a demographic that isn’t patronizing events held there?

And since the purpose of the organization probably never included providing ancillary services to woo new audiences, there isn’t likely to be a staff dedicated to that purpose who have been provided the support and resources to adjust programming to find the combination of services which is most appealing. The fact that some organizations experience success at all probably has as much to do with luck as sincerity, devotion, excellent planning and execution.

Probably the best approach would be to contract with external vendors. While it would require staff to monitor contracts and process payment/revenue splitting with the vendors, at least staff isn’t faced with fabricating services whole cloth. You also have the opportunity cancel those services which don’t seem to be valued and replace them with new ones. Staff will still be needed to coordinate experiences that are appropriate to the tenor of the organization preventing them from working on something more directly related to the core purpose. Leadership needs to recognize this when committing to what is likely to be a long term development process.

The Uninvited News Release

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I think I may have previously mentioned that one of the local daily papers has started allowing people to submit stories to be posted on its webpage. I recently encountered a situation which that emphasizes the need to monitor and control your message and image on the web.

Last week I noticed a strange headline on a reader submitted news story for a local university theatre. The headline was poorly written and the word choice wasn’t the sort of thing you would use to promote an event. Even a mundane “Theatre performs X In October” would have been more suitable. Upon reading the whole piece, I figured perhaps the department was having the students write press releases to get experience. Then I realized the show it was spending most of the space discussing had opened and closed already.

I contacted a colleague in the department to discover what had happened. If the story was submitted late, that was one thing. However, since this was the same newspaper that had inexplicably omitted our events from a recent review of Fall Arts Events, I was concerned that maybe their approval process for web stories had a backlog that was delaying their release. If that was the case, I wanted to take that into account when submitting releases. Regardless of what the answer was, the delayed story damaged the organization’s credibility a little.

It turned out that a journalism student decided to be helpful and submitted a story unbeknownst to anyone at the theatre. (Though the student waited until her journalism professor reviewed and graded it. I hope the professor wasn’t aware this outdated story was being posted.) This news caused me some concern. Because there was no verification procedure in effect, someone who had no connection with the theatre was able to represent themselves as if they did and had a story published under the imprimatur of a major newspaper.

Certainly it isn’t news that the internet allows people to misrepresent themselves. About three years ago, Drew McManus bought up a number of alternative web addresses for orchestras around the country. It takes a lot less effort to submit a fallacious story to a newspaper than it does to create a spoof site that looks like that of the Asian Art Museum. This event represents a new variation on the problem because newspapers are still generally seen as a dependable source of information (at least in the non-political arena). People may not yet be distinguishing between the links to reported stories and those to submitted stories.

Sometimes You Can’t Choose Why People Love You

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Arts administration blogs such as mine frequently chant the mantra of relationship building. Success, we say, is incumbent upon you getting your community invested in your organization.

There have been a couple incidents in the last few weeks that serve as reminders that you don’t always get to define the parameters of your relationship with your constituents. Sometimes what people value about your organization is unrelated to the product you think you are offering them.

The first is the boycott of Whole Foods for CEO John Mackey’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal stating the country can’t afford the Obama Administration’s health care plan and suggesting something similar to the way Whole Foods provides health care to its employees. You can find a summation of why people are upset on Huffington Post.

I am talking about this situation first because it is the weakest of the two examples. I could say that Whole Foods product isn’t health care and that most of the employees likely hold a view closer to that of the customers than the CEO so why boycott the store? However, it doesn’t take much effort to see that Whole Foods is selling a healthy lifestyle. In fact, Mackey pretty much suggests you won’t need health insurance if you patronize his stores. Even though Whole Foods’ health insurance looks to be fairly decent, health insurance for those who don’t have it is a hot button issue. Though I suppose there is some irony in the fact that people refused to shop at Walmart for denying health insurance to many of their employees and now they are going to boycott Whole Foods which pays 100% of the insurance premium because the CEO is encouraging everyone to follow his company’s example.

The furor over IKEA’s font change on the other hand, is a little puzzling. While font choice is part of the company’s brand identity, the font has no bearing on the quality or design of the furniture being sold. It is hard to understand why customers of a company whose products have been described as the vanilla choice of the furnishings world are upset because a more ubiquitous font has been chosen. And yet people are signing a petition urging them to change it back.

I’ll agree that font choice is central to creating an impression and identity for a company. Would you frequent McDonalds if their font screamed Soviet gulag? Short of a favored store making a similarly extreme change, I can’t say that my continued patronage hinges on font choice. I could perhaps understand if IKEA discarded their naming conventions for something generic like Mahogany chair style 3. The quirky naming thing is characteristic to them and kind of endearing. The font choice being central to the enjoyment of a furniture buying experience I can’t really see.

It’s almost enough to make you wary about making changes to any aspect with which people might identify your organization. There are a bunch of us praying we can replace our carpet some year soon. I would be bowled over if people found the worn out areas charming and objected to changing it out.

Presumed Disappointing

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Adam Thurman at The Mission Paradox made a great blog post yesterday pointing out that, unfortunately, when it comes to the question of whether they will enjoy an opportunity to interact with the arts, the default assumption many audience members hold is “no” until convinced otherwise.

“Most people, when given the option to attend a performing arts event, are more scared that the performance is going to be disappointing then they are excited that the performance is going to be good.”

He goes on to say:

“This is the thing we have to remember:

We are in the trust business.

Not the theatre business.

Not the museum business.

The trust business.

When you are dealing with a risk averse public the only way to get them to do a risky thing is by earning their trust.

How do you earn their trust?

By building a relationship with them.

My observation is that most of us in the arts are very good at putting up programming, but we aren’t good at building relationships.”

It put me in mind of an entry I did about three years ago where I cited an entry on Neill Roan’s old blog (oh why, oh why did you shut down that blog!), titled “How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.”

In the entry I talked about the efforts I was going to inform people about performances since they often commented they hadn’t seen anything about the show. Reviewing the entry, I realize now that the problem we likely face is that people’s primary expectation is to receive notice in the newspaper or radio because that is where they traditionally have gotten the information. The problem is, people aren’t using those media in the same way they used to. Their expectations don’t align with their practice any longer.

In that entry I spoke of using electronic notifications, word of mouth and opinion leaders to help disseminate information about performances. One thing I missed that Adam speaks about is relationship building. It is true that people need to view the information you provide as credible, but they also need to believe that you will provide an enjoyable experience even if they end up less than thrilled about the performance.

Just last week Drew McManus cited a situation where the non-artistic elements of an evening combined with a partially disappointing/partially sublime artistic experience with the net effect being negative. Some of the non-artistic elements were entirely out of the arts organization’s control, others could have been ameliorated to some degree.

Certainly people aren’t coming for the parking and an easy ticket office experience. You gotta deliver the goods artistically. The relationship building comes when people know your artistic quality is pretty dependable and can trust that you will make an effort meet their needs and expectations and reduce problems that arise.

A Folding Table, A Jug of Water and Thou Sweating In The Parking Lot

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I am reading a book about customer service right now. My intention is to report some observations on the text as a whole at some point. However, I saw an illustration of one of the points made in an early chapter today. The book had noted the veracity of “time flies when you are having fun” pointing out that a well designed wait that is 30 minutes long can actually seem shorter than a poorly designed wait that is only a third as long. Because human perception is involved, you can ruin a relationship with a customer in the latter situation even though you significantly reduced their wait time.

Our campus is in a situation with many strikes against it. Budgets have been cut so staffing is down but enrollment is up adding an additional 1500 student to our commuter campus. Alas, the heretofore un(der) used overflow parking is now inaccessible due to long delayed construction projects.

There wasn’t much to be done about the parking unfortunately, but someone got organized this year and had information tables distributed about the campus with all sorts of hand outs and big coolers of water. There were also large color campus maps that someone slapped up on the sides of buildings so people didn’t have to seek out kiosks to figure out where they were.

I looked around wondering why no one had thought to do this before. People had always volunteered to serve an hour or so on the welcome committee but it was never this organized or welcoming. People stood around smiling, answering questions and engaging people who looked lost. Now there is a table identifiable as a source of information from a distance that is stocked with information—and most importantly after trekking in from that parking space in the hinterlands you stalked for 30 minutes–water to drink.

While I walked around comparing what I was seeing to previous years, I realized that tweaking your customer service up a level or two doesn’t just help your relationship with those you serve. It also sends a message to other employees about the commitment of the organization. Memos about improving service are useful and identify areas for improvement. In this case, there were no memos that went out about how things were going to be done better—it was just done.

I am obviously someone whose business it is to think about improving customer interactions so I notice such things. But I have to believe that others noticed the improvement, how it fit in the context of other recent changes and what it all says about the direction of the organization.

I also had some insight into the issue of providing volunteers with opportunities to feel they are doing important work. I have never really had much desire to volunteer for welcoming slots before. Today when I witnessed the increased effort at hospitality, I had a desire to participate next time around. (Just have to remember not to schedule sending the brochure to the printer, interviewing a ticket office clerk and starting internet sales on this day next time.) In previous years, my impression of the job was that it provided a pleasant first impression of the institution and directions to buildings. With the addition of tables, maps and water jugs, suddenly it seems like an important contribution to relieving anxious new arrivals.

We are planning a volunteer luncheon/training in a few weeks so perhaps I am in a receptive mindset on the subject. We have been thinking about how to design the volunteering experience so people have a greater feeling of doing something of value. We have been discussing increasing volunteers’ scope of responsibility and authority. I believe we also have to consider if these duties will allow them to feel they are providing a service patrons find valuable. Though certainly, people volunteer for different reasons and more authority may be a bigger motivator than being useful.

Manufacturing Spontaneity

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Via Marginal Revolution, the Wall Street Journal has a story about a girl who was paid $1,800 to reference an upcoming movie in her high school valedictory speech. The movie did rather poorly and the “amateur” video of the graduation the movie studio posted on YouTube failed to achieve viral status. I doubt that will stop anyone from trying something similar again.

One of the things I wonder is if this sort of thing might not be pursued as a funding source for cash strapped non-profits. Will it really be in the non-profit sector’s best interest to engage in something like this? We bill live performances a authentic experiences with an opportunity for the sublime (as well as screw ups and catastrophes) that television and video don’t provide. If people discover the evening has been peppered with scripted “candid” moments, will we risk losing credibility and what’s left of our regular audience.

The counterargument might be made that if we don’t cash in on the eyes and ears we have assembled, someone else might just hijack our events to do so. The school district in the story had no idea their graduation ceremony had been co-opted for this purpose. In truth, there is nothing to force marketers to deal with you at all. In fact, it probably will be less trouble to circumvent you since an arts organization will want to draw up contracts and have lawyers involved.

It would be so much easier to arrange for an elderly person to disrupt a sold out performance and have a concerned adult child wring his/her hand over the fact the parent had neglected to take their Aricept. The visceral concern your audience feels having witnessed how Alzheimer’s can cause social disruptions is a much better selling point than any television ad and pretty much guarantees dissemination by word of mouth which I suspect has a higher trust ranking than a YouTube video.

It would be much better if non-profits didn’t get involved in these efforts in the first place. Then at least if people have a negative reaction upon discover an occurrence had been planned, they won’t automatically suspect the collusion when there wasn’t based on past revelations of the organization participating in such efforts.

More Roused Passion

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Well I am pleased to learn that my “best of” revival of my April 2005 entry about Neill Roan’s handling of the antisemitism in Bach’s St. John’s Passion has moved Neill to repost the talk he had given on the subject. If you were intrigued by the coverage I gave the incident in my entry, you will likely find it worth your while to read the entire thing. It is really an excellent study in engaging your audience amid controversy.

Unfulfilled Calls To Action

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You Got My Hopes Up!
I received an email through my blog Friday about an audience study that has recently been completed. I was elated because generally these emails, which are essentially press releases, are on topics I have no real interest in writing about. Many are on show openings and I don’t really cover those sort of things. Unless there is some experimental marketing initiative involved, I am not terribly interested. But finally, here was something I was eager to write on. I followed the link provided and….Nothing. I followed the other link to the research organization that did the study….nothing again. I decided to wait until today and try again thinking the press people may have gotten ahead of things a little. It is now a couple hours after quitting time in both organizations’ time zones and the promised reports are still not up.

Answering A Call To Action
This goes to illustrate one of the basic tenets of advertising and promotion–Don’t issue a call to action without providing your target group an ability to act. If you have an ad for a performance saying tickets on sale now, you better have a way for people to buy tickets available or you risk losing your credibility. This can be difficult if you are doing broadcast advertising and the radio or television station is giving you free air time on an “as available” basis. If you are going to have an ad running at 6 am, you may catch a good number of people during their morning commute–including your ticket office staff who haven’t gotten in to the office yet. If you can’t provide a web address to purchase tickets at, you can at least make sure to append your ticket office number with the office hours. Technology has increased the number of hours people expect to engage in transactions so the least you can do is be specific about the hours they can actually expect to contact your organization.

In any case, I am disappointed the announcement of this report preceded its actual release by so much time. I am motivated to read it so I am likely to return to the page on a couple more occasions. Others for whom the information might be useful, like arts leaders, may move on to other things and never revisit the link. Thus a valuable opportunity is lost in a sector where a large percentage of leaders do not keep abreast of the latest literature.

Cart’s Before The Horse And Speeding Away
I thought about this issue over the weekend. While I realized that as a tool, the press release was poorly used, I also recognized that technology induced expectations are outstripping our ability to provide our constituencies with the ability to act. I have recently decided to use Twitter to support event promotion efforts at our theatre. In keeping with my philosophy of not adopting the newest technological trends as they emerge, I only decided to use Twitter when I felt it was a good tool to accomplish a goal I had and knew the story I wanted it to create for our organization. But that is a subject of another entry.

Because we really don’t have a subscriber base to speak of, a formal season announcement really isn’t important. I started posting on Twitter every time we signed a contract with an artist figuring the little informal announcements of our season had the value of putting our followers in the know early on. The tweets also serve as the first of many reminders about our season that I want entering people’s subconscious. The problem is, due to myriad factors ranging from end of fiscal year wrap up, summer vacations and general logistics, we aren’t able to make the tickets available at the moment.

Only The Freshest Tweets, Please
We don’t have a lot of people following our Twitter feed right now because it is new and I haven’t made its existence widely known while I experiment and evaluate it’s use. I don’t think I am losing a lot of sales, especially given people’s propensity of waiting until the last moment to buy tickets. But what about this time next year? Every ticket sold is important these days. If I can’t figure out an alternative and get people on board, by this time next year I could be announcing performances I am not prepared to sell tickets for. Sure, I could wait and post about them when I am ready to sell tickets, but Twitter is all about immediacy–“What are you doing right now?” Months old news is stale and moldy.

Even if I could make delayed updates work without losing any credibility, the way things are moving, that option may not be viable with the next generation of technology.

Sturm und Drang on the Bus

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A bunch of Carnegie Mellon graduates took their act the the mean streets of NYC last week. According to a NPR story, Bus Stop Opera made their Broadway debut–on the sidewalks of Broadway. The students spent time interviewing and listening to people’s stories while riding the buses of New York City and used the text to create a libretto for operatic performances set at the very stops they conducted those interviews. They tried it out in Pittsburgh first then took it to NYC.

While listening to the NPR interview, it first sounds like the group proves what we have already learned when Tasmin Little and Joshua Bell took their acts to the streets– nobody will stop and listen during rush hour. As the day progresses and the group moves to other locations, some people do pause.

As with the Bell and Little experiments, the importance of time and place when interacting with art is underscored. This isn’t just in regard to intangibles like being in a proper mental and emotional state to receive an experience but also very practical concerns like…acoustics. Not being able to hear is one of the most frequent comments made during the interview. A strong voice is no match for New York City traffic–especially the buses. The canyons of New York are also no substitute for the amphitheaters of ancient Greece when it comes to reinforcing the voice in an outdoor setting.

Bus Stop Opera gets my approval where the Bell and Little experiments didn’t. The Bell/Little events were about testing people’s reactions to great performances in their midst. Bus Stop Opera is specifically designed to be accessible and appropriate to the target audiences. An earlier approach was discarded when audiences had an averse reaction. Even though the group encountered the same indifference Bell and Little did, I suspect the results will diverge should Bus Stop Opera continue to pursue this project.

Collective Action Report For NPAC 2008

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Last week Andrew Taylor posted an entry about the release of a report for which his students were involved collecting information at and about last summer’s National Performing Arts Convention. The report examines the capacity for the arts disciplines to engage in collective action.

As you might imagine, I found much of it very interesting. If you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, mores the pity. It is worth jumping to page 59 of the Acrobat document. The following 20 some pages have ideas for collective action on many fronts that came out of the brain storming round tables. These are not the same ideas voted as top priority items by the attendees and may represent fresh directions for you and others to embrace at national, regional and local levels.

One aspect of the convention attendees felt was lacking was a clear sense of who was going to follow up and pursue these priorities. What will likely be helpful at the next convention is if people show up to talk about their attempts to implement some of these priorities at different levels.

Plea To The Reader
If you don’t think you will read the report, at least consider reading the rest of this entry. I often include fair sized quotes that jump out at me from reports and studies because I know people don’t feel they have the time to catch up on all the reading they think they should be doing. Part of the mission of this blog is to present some concepts that perhaps you can think about during your commute if no other time presents itself. Not everything may seem that significant to you, and that’s fair. This report contained a lot of meaty observations including some things I suspected but have rarely heard discussed. So please, read on…

Boundaries
The report began by tackling a basic question–what constitutes the performing arts? In answer to the question, “When you think and talk about the ‘performing arts’ in your region, which of the following organizations do you include in your thinking?” over 50% provided answers that were “arts-focused and primarily organized as tax-exempt. Alternate venues and commercial enterprises were identified by fewer people as part of the performing arts—yet still showed up in significant numbers.”

Lest your take away from those responses is that there was a sense of exclusivity to people’s definition of the performing arts. The report notes that the subject of what constituted the boundaries of the performing arts community was frequently debated and discussed.

Internal Divisions
But heck with those perceived to be on the outside of the performing arts boundaries. There was plenty to contend with over the perceived differences between the disciplines clearly defined as being part of the performing arts.

“Despite the common ground of the nonprofit arts leaders attending the Denver convention, our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in
our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

The observation team also saw many sessions peppered with misunderstandings and different interpretations of words and concepts that are fundamental to a collective action effort. Most of these went unnoticed by the group, and unresolved by facilitators of caucus sessions….Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “….I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”

Expectation of Cross-Disciplinary Learning
That said, the report notes many went to the conference with the intent of learning about other disciplines and cultivating cross-disciplinary relationships. People were eager to learn about best practices and common challenges from other disciplines. “A full 86 percent believed that the problems and opportunities faced by a small dance company are shared more with a small theater company than with a large dance company.”

Respect to Trust
The next step toward collective action, according to the report’s author’s, is to go from respecting the other guy to trusting them.

“A full 81 and 82 percent of respondents believed leaders in the nonprofit performing arts respect each other at the national and regional/city level respectively. A lesser majority, 56 and 60 percent, believed that such leaders trust each other at the national and regional/city level. This distinction between respect and trust reinforces the distinction between acting for individual and organizational interests, and acting for the benefit of the larger community.”

Things Not Often Discussed
Two of the areas covered in the report that especially struck me were some frank discussions about diversity and the perceived role of government. Everyone talks about the need to diversify audiences and performers. In fact, most funders are interested in collecting information about racial, geographic and economic diversity of audiences and performers. What emerged in the discussion wasn’t as idealistic.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Community Engagement Approach
While some people may not be prepared to actively engage in addressing diversity in their organization, I was encouraged by the comments of one person who wasn’t talking about diversity per se. He/She did seem to embody the mindset of an organization that could achieve diversity without actively pursuing it.

“One leader notes, “That’s been one thing that we’ve been most proud of. Our whole organization takes this community engagement approach. It’s not outreach. Outreach doesn’t take into consideration who you are, what your background is, what your context is, or why people should care. That’s the fault of the old outreach concept, is saying you should come hear us, maybe we’ll come to you so you’ll come hear us. That’s missing the point, saying, ‘Where do we connect?’”

Government’s Role
In relation to the role of government (my emphasis)..

“In one intriguing disconnect, respondents in the post-convention survey hope for future NPAC connections to include elected officials from local (57 percent), state (64 percent), and national (70 percent) government. Yet not one believe such officials would influence if and how they might take action on the selected agenda items. The disconnect suggests, as we will later discuss,
that while participants see elected officials as potential focus of advocacy and engagement, they do not see them as a source of insight and knowledge—even though these actors drive the decision and governing systems that inform local policy. They are eager to talk to elected officials, but not inclined to listen

…Interestingly, some constituents with relatively greater perceived power also had relatively lower perceived knowledge of the field and its challenges (political leaders at federal, state, and local levels, for example.

From my point of view, there is a whole lot to be addressed. Quite honestly, I think this almost sums up the attitude arts organizations have toward most sources of funding. There is an eagerness to talk to funders and make your case but not a lot of willingness to have them involved in your business. Except for foundations with an arts focus, those representing funding sources don’t understand the field too well because of a desire to keep them on the fringes.

Some Tunes I Have Sung Before
There were a couple topics the report touched upon that I have addressed quite a few times in the past so I won’t get into them at length.

Lack of Knowledge
One observation that was made of convention attendees was how little knowledge people had about available resources and about how laws and policy affected those resources. The report notes that a lot of time was spent discussing how helpful it would be if some source would provide resources when in fact that very situation existed.

“These indicators suggest a systematic issue around knowledge dissemination in the field. Arts leaders either lack time or incentive to discover and use existing knowledge resources, or effective knowledge dissemination mechanisms do not exist to get this information out.”

Lack of Sleep
Which goes hand in hand with the fact most arts professionals are already over worked and may not be a wits end about how to participate in collective action.

“We have a lot of passionate and highly productive people that all tend to over-extend themselves as it is ‘for the love of their art.’ I think it is difficult for many of these same people then to prioritize what they may have to stop doing in order to thoughtfully and actively participate in this ‘national dialogue’.”

Lack of Succession
Finally, there is the issue of emerging leadership. According to the report, 79% of respondents to pre-convention surveys were worried a little to alot about identifying new blood and succession planning. At the convention however, “it was striking how little conversation focused on the discovery and development of future leaders, and the skills and abilities they might require. There were a few specific sessions that touched on the topic, but the issue received little traction or attention elsewhere.”

I imagine it comes as no surprise that the performing arts sector has quite a few issues to address. You need not have attended the convention to come to that conclusion. But since the report notes that one of the major historical hurdles to collective action has been that the various disciplines don’t sit down and talk to each other, the fact they did so and produced quite a few pages of ideas for collective action likely represents a valuable first step.

Connecting To Your Community

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The arts blogosphere (or at least a small corner thereof) is abuzz with joy with the news that Scott Walters received NEA funding for his <100k Project. As noted on the <100k Project site, the purpose "is an attempt to 'bring the arts back home” to small and rural communities with populations under 100,000.'"

I come from a rural town and have something of an interest in the project's success for sentimentality sake, if nothing else. I think I would be pleased for Scott regardless of my background. The <100k Project has been percolating in Scott's head and on his blog for quite some time now. I am glad to see he is able to move forward toward implementation. (The grant he received is to convene people to address the issues he wants to tackle.)

One of the things I hope to learn by monitoring his progress is strategies for reconnecting one’s community. I am currently in a small city/suburban setting and every community is different so I don’t expect to take things whole cloth. It is just that the late arrival/early departure issues that lead me to opine on an audience’s responsibility to a community continue and are ever irksome. Mostly it is due to this being the time of year when we have a lot of events where performers’ friends and family attend. Most stick around for the whole show but a large number, 50-80, arrive late and depart early.

Friday night I saw a group departing where one woman energetically exclaimed that the piece that just finished was surprisingly good. I noted there were still more high quality pieces to come. She shrugged, said “meh” and continued out with her friends. I don’t discount the influence of the group over the individual. Had she been alone, she might have stayed. It should also be noted that the event hardly fell in the “sit quietly and appreciate the cerebral high art” category. The audience was energetic and expressive.

I mention this because while I do believe an audience member does have a responsibility to the whole, I don’t believe the behavior necessarily has to conform to a traditional status of sitting quietly in a dark room. Attending a performance is a communal relationship between the audience and the performers. It should be approached with the intent of arriving on time and staying until the end. Various factors may conspire to thwart this intent. I know that in the early days attending was a social event and a place to be seen. That doesn’t mean today it should be viewed as a party where you arrive late, stay long enough to be considered to have made an appearance and depart. If a person is going to a performance, it should be with the intent to stay. It represents a commitment to the entire community assembled there.

None of this is to say performing arts organizations shouldn’t meet their audiences part way. From everything I have recently described about my experience, the reader can rightly point out that expectations about the attendance experience are changing. Opportunities for greater interactivity can and should be explored. There are plenty of scenarios where one need not commit to sitting immobile or staying the entire time.

I don’t want to wax too poetic while idealizing the relationship between performers and the audience and among themselves as a sublime sacrament. I think it is that sort of thinking created the idea was the audience’s place to sit quietly and receive.

Yet in a time when people mediate their day to day experience through phones, texting, iPods, computers, televisions and the like, a communal gathering for a shared experience becomes more precious and can verge on the sacramental so the items of distraction should be laid aside. There is nothing wrong with sitting quietly and absorbing an experience be it at a performance, in a gallery or a mountain top. The key difference is that the audience should want to do so rather than be expected to do so. I think the time is past when arts organizations can directly tell people how they are supposed to behave and cultivate a constructive relationship. People don’t want to learn how to be poised and cultured too much any more.

I believe success will be a matter of reinforcing certain values in a more indirect manner. It will be phrases used in speeches, press releases, program notes and brochures. Hopefully it won’t be the same phrases in every community because every arts organization and dynamic with their community is different. I will be working on formulating ways to deliver these concepts. It is also the sort of thing I hope Scott Walters’ project will generate.

Sitting quietly in the dark doesn’t necessarily have to be a passive experience. If you know what you are looking for it can be very exciting and intriguing. Before I go any further, let me just say that nothing ruined the experience of attending a performance like knowing I had to write a paper about it. Audiences need to be informed so they can process the experience but their education can’t leave them paranoid about analyzing every moment to find some answer.

Having gotten that out of the way..

Live performances, as with movies and video games, have had the lighting, sound, costumes intentionally designed in a certain way. How aware you are of these elements and how they affect your experience can enhance your enjoyment. The same with the decisions made by the director and performers. Was that pause for dramatic effect? Were lines forgotten? Are things so disorganized back stage, there is a long empty moment? Or is it a trick to make us think things are going wrong?

It doesn’t require years of education to ask these questions, just an awareness that these factors play a part of a live performance. Recognizing these elements, but not knowing what the reality might be can make any performance experience, including those in movies and television exciting. But the uncertainty of live performance combined with the inability to rewind and scrutinize makes that experience all the more engaging. And there is the added opportunity of tracking a live person down after the show to ask. Making people available to illuminate the situation, even if it is by email a day or two later, is added value for audiences. Good performance discipline requires you don’t acknowledge a flub during the show, but there is no need to grin foolishly and own up to it afterward.

But as an audience member if you arrive late, leave early and spend the interim texting you can miss these things and keep your mind from processing and pondering what is happening. So yeah, for you it is probably boring. But this is a communal experience you are likely also keeping others from doing the same with all the motion. Or maybe the whole thing is poorly done and incredibly boring or bad and you are within your rights to get up, leave and do something else.

Before you do, be sure you aren’t confusing something you don’t understand with poor quality. I think Kyle Gann said it best in his entry for Take A Friend to the Orchestra Month back in 2005. Insert whatever you are seeing for classical music references.

…At the same time, keep in mind that there are lots of different kinds of musical enjoyment, some of them perhaps unrecognizable as such simply because you haven’t experienced them yet. What I always noticed, starting out, was that if a piece bored me, it was likely to always bore me, but if it irritated me, something interesting was going on.

Probably the reason I became a musician was that I kept going back to the pieces that irritated me to figure out why anyone would write something that’s irritating..

It is not the composer’s job to come up with things that you like (because who, working in his studio, can predict that?), but it is his or her job (though a lot of
bad composers deny this) to be clear and communicative. If you get the idea of the piece, the composer has succeeded, and the idea is yours to like or not. Again, watch your reaction – but don’t assume that your immediate reaction is the only important one. As far as I’m concerned, a forgettable piece is bad, but one I’m still thinking about three days later must have something going for it.

More Economic Alfalfa

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Back in March I linked to a story about how Philadelphia was trying to revitalize its South Street district by arranging for artists to temporarily take over empty storefronts.

Artsjournal featured a story from The Guardian today about a similar effort in London which seemed to be designed a little more constructively for artists. My concern about the Philadelphia initiative was that the artists’ tenure in the spaces was rather tenuous. In London’s case, the project is arranged by the South London Gallery who has secured a three year lease and will place artists in the stores for six month residencies. While this may ultimately be a much shorter time than the participants in the Philadelphia program will enjoy, at least the parameters are known from the start.

In fact, The Guardian piece acknowledges just how unstable such an arrangement can be. Referring to arrangements like the one in Philadelphia where landlords are persuaded to offer storefronts for free or low cost, Stroud Valleys Artspace director Jo Leahy notes,

“The downside for the artist is that they’re welcomed with open arms during the recession, they help to regenerate an area – and then they get tossed out when they’re no longer needed, because the economy picks up and the rents go up. So it’s worth having eye on the future, and trying to insure yourself for when times improve.”

And the good the artists’ residencies did for the city of Gloucestershire was measurable. Leahy notes that the 25 storefronts her program utilized in 13 years rented easily when her organization moved out. Even more importantly, it warded against the encroachment of negative influences.

“Leahy adds that the estate agent she works with has reported lower rates of vandalism in shops used by artists, as opposed to those that are left empty. Art in shops puts the feelgood factor back, she argues. “It’s another way of judging a town. We’re used to measuring a place by how busy the cash tills are. This is about measuring somewhere by its ideas, by the things that people are making happen here.”

What I thought was most constructive about the project South London Gallery is spearheading is that they are not merely content to plant artists in the storefronts and hope something grows. South London Gallery, which has an outreach manager, is hoping to bring arts exposure to the neighborhood in which they are located but whose residents they rarely see enter their doors. While they hope the people do one day come to the gallery, their immediate goal is to “demystify the process of creating art, taking it away from the private studio” and locating working artists in the familiar space of a business people used to patronize.

Does The Audience Serve The Community?

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Performing arts organizations are very much aware that they are increasingly at a disadvantage offering entertainment in a single location at set times in an environment when it can be obtained on demand, paused and continued. This weekend I really started wondering if we are ceding too much ground without a fight. Today, Artjournal.com happened to link to a piece on The Guardian website by Mark Ravenhill where he expressed something akin to my thoughts.

“But on one subject there does seem to be an almost universal consensus, and that is that you – the reader, the listener – are bored, most of the time. Look at any contemporary guide to making art, or working in the media, and the assumption is that an audience’s natural state is one of restless ennui. Our job as writers is to provide a sort of espresso shot. Grab them quickly, grab them hard – otherwise they will change channels or walk away.”

What I was thinking this weekend is that while we always talk about arts organizations needing to better serve their communities. We often hear how we have to change our processes and our thinking to acknowledge the changing expectations of our audiences. This is absolutely correct. We need to evaluate the ten thousand things we do every day in the context of shifting expectations.

But I got to wondering. Are our audience members serving their community very well? Don’t they have a responsibility to the larger group and are we complicit in letting them get away with shirking it?

This weekend we presented our annual dance festival where invited groups of students and professional companies perform short pieces. I have sort of resigned myself to the fact people are going to walk in at 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 minutes into the show. I think that perhaps I have started ceding too much in the way of lowered expectations to our audience.

We do close the box office 30-45 minutes after the show has started when it appears the trickle has finally abated. We still end up turning 10-15 people away who don’t have tickets but admitting that many or more who do. You know, the people carrying the pieces of paper with the time emblazoned across them who should therefore know things started 75 minutes ago?

Over the last decade or so I have trying to shift away from the disapproving figure looking at his watch noting just how late people are. It used to be that you ended up watching television monitors or wandering around the lobby if you missed the last late seating interval. Recently, I have begun to wonder if the kinder, gentler, forgiving approach in hopes of making the attendance experience of a dwindling audience feel more welcome may be counterproductive in the long term.

What really annoys me isn’t so much the late arrivals but the early departures from events after friends have performed. I have addressed this in the past. When there are children involved either as audience members or performers, the message this conveys is that the arts have no value outside of an acquaintance’s involvement in them. For older people, it further socializes the idea that the live experience is disposable.

The dance pieces this weekend weren’t lengthy or based on some abstract concept. Each group had about seven to nine minutes to perform so if you didn’t like what you saw, it was over shortly. The first piece of the night was a satire of ballet. Even if you don’t know enough about ballet to get some of the jokes, a lot of it was just physical comedy. I can think of a number of reasons why people might choose not to attend in the first place, but once one is in the theatre, it was fairly clear one need not be an initiate to enjoy the performance.

Lest you think I am attributing poor intentions to people who had other motivations for leaving, a few groups told us outright they were leaving because their friend was done dancing. (The same thing happens with our choral concerts.)

Getting back to the idea of the individual’s responsibility. Attending a live performance constitutes a relationship. It is a relationship between you, the audience and more importantly, the performers. This is the case even with those you don’t know personally. These performers can only be at a specific place at a time which dictates some of the constraints of the performance. Even though you seem to be one of possibly a very large group in the audience, how you conduct yourself has a definite impact.

This is the message the arts need to convey. Not in an explicit lecture, but in the subtext of what we communicate be it in person or via the technological tools we employ. Last week I was musing about what back to basics value the arts can embody. I am starting to think maybe it is personal relationships.

People are beginning to become disenchanted with a situation where they have 10,000 Facebook friends, but no one to bring them chicken soup when they are sick. While we have grown tolerant of it, I’ll bet people would prefer not to be placed on pause while someone answers their cellphone or displaced by a texted conversation.

Half the battle can be won by heeding the advice we have been receiving for years–provide places and opportunities for people to socialize. In some respects that is the easy part because it just involves money for renovations, furniture and staffing.

The other part of the equation is communicating the values of responsibilities to the community without preaching. It is a fine line between encouraging people to arrive promptly and remain, and adopting policies which make them feel like they are being punished for breaking the rules. For those with little experience in attending performances, it may sound contradictory to tell them not to feel inhibited about expressing approval for a wonderful performance even though people are glaring at them but that they should heed the glares when they start screaming and whistling as their friend appears on stage. One calls attention to an excellent performance, the other calls attention to you and your relationship with an individual.

Printing guidelines in programs and on your website counts on people taking the time to review them. Also, at first glance they appear to be the hidebound list of rules which intimidate some from attending in the first place. Curtain speeches can be more personable but….is preaching the the choir of prompt people.

Surely, something should be said otherwise you miss the opportunity to reinforce the value of the experience you are offering. The repercussions of not doing so might not be immediate but manifest in the next generation (or absence thereof). If you stay positive, you can be explicit and thank people for valuing the experience of live performance unmediated and insulated by technology. You welcome the opportunity to discuss the performance in person with the audience in the lobby or coffee shop after the show. And if they need time to digest the experience, you would love to read their comments on the organization’s web forum later.

Interacting with the late comers/early departers in a constructive way is tough. They already know they are breaking a convention and are prepared for any conversation, including directions to the restrooms, to be instilled with some degree of disapproval or scolding. The one approach that comes to mind leaves a lot of opportunity for patronizing tones to creep in.

My thought is that the ushers in the lobby be gracious and say he/she will escort the late comers in since it can be difficult to get ones bearings in the dark. While awaiting an appropriate break in the action, the group lingers near photos of the performers. I haven’t worked out the gist of the conversation yet because everything I think of can easily slide into the wrong tone. Essentially using the photos to give a face to the performers, the discussion touches on how long the rehearsals were and how much concentration is needed to perform before a live audience. How much the late comers will hopefully enjoy the performance and how important their approval is to the performers.

As you might surmise, the subtext is about how the performers and audience interact. While the artists are professional and will give their 110% performance regardless of audience size or reaction, things are likely to go to 125%+ for a good audience. I don’t want the performers to be vague and distant in those people’s minds, especially if their seats are indeed far from the stage. I want the late comers to feel a connection between themselves and the performers, seek them out on stage, realize the importance of their presence and hopefully, of their responsibilities, relative to those assembled in the facility.

The opportunity to actually see and interact with performers at some juncture contributes to this goal. I have made plenty of other entries about aloof artists and administrators so I won’t get into those aspects of the experience.

I am going to continue to think on the whole idea of reminding people they have a responsibility to the community rather than believing we need to passively accept shifting expectations. I would like to hear other people’s thoughts on this matter. Remember, I am not suggesting this stance be adopted to rationalize not changing. I merely propose that faced with millions of people Twittering everywhere they go, it doesn’t automatically follow that we need to accede to the expectation of Twittering being permitted during performances.

I am also intrigued by the idea of the arts embodying the values of personal contact and would be interested in seeing if anyone has any thoughts along these lines. I think much can be accomplished if we avoid declarative statements like You should/shouldn’t, must/mustn’t… Something as simple as, “(Discipline), It’s All About Contact” on a poster and ten thousand images can immediately be plugged in below the caption and a campaign begins.

My TAFTO Favs

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Next week the entries for this year’s Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month (TAFTO) begin. I have always enjoyed reading this series, even before I had any association with Drew McManus or joined Inside the Arts. There have been a couple entries from the past that have really stuck in my mind. While you are waiting for this year’s installments, I thought I would post a couple links to some of my favorite entries.

Nothing should be read into the fact that I haven’t included entries from 2008. These are my favorites and I make no pretense at being egalitarian. Nor am I being modest by excluding my own contributions. This is a list of the entries that popped out at me and remained in my memory over the years. Last year’s entries were just fine and whet my appetite for the 2009 batch.

2005

I really enjoyed some of the earliest entries because they focused on some of the rules for attending the orchestra. Really many of them can easily be applied to attending any arts activity whether it be performance or visual arts experience.

For this reason, Kyle Gann and Sam Bergman’s entries back in 2005 are among my favorites. They approach some of the intimidating aspects of attendance with honesty and humor.

One of the entries that I immediately associate with the whole TAFTO initiative was the WNYC interview on Soundcheck when Drew took Soundcheck host John Schaefer’s brother, Jerry to a Bartok performance at Carnegie Hall. The interview, which may be downloaded here, requires RealPlayer to play. In my view, the interview constitutes the most effective entry in the TAFTO effort. Jerry speaks with complete candor about how he only liked 2/3 of the experience. If I only had one entry to choose to help me convince someone to attend an orchestra performance, this would be the one because the listener can be most guaranteed that they are receiving an honest appraisal, realize they probably possess the capacity to evaluate and enjoy the experience, and recognize they have permission to be bored and not enjoy every moment.

2006

In this batch of writing, I liked Jerry Bowles account of how he and his wife had cultivated an appreciation of culture in general in his nephew by treating him like an adult. His entry serves to remind all arts people that appreciation of our products is a gradual process rather than an instantaneous event. Also, getting to that point requires communication, patience and trust that people will find their way rather than needing a dumbed down approach.

Kevin Giglinto’s entry traveled along the same lines, except that he spoke about his personal interactions with music that took him from Led Zeppelin through Husker Du and Sonic Youth to working for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). When he first encountered Led Zeppelin, Husker Du and Sonic Youth, he had no doubts about his relationship with the music. Even though each initial experience challenged what he knew, he believed in his capacity to comprehend it.

The prospect of working for CSO intimidated the hell out of him though.

“I probably felt the same perceived barriers that people have in their minds today that stop them from entering the doors for the first time. I asked myself the same questions I know they are asking:

“What if I don’t understand the music?”
“Will I appreciate it less without that understanding?”
“Is this music really for me, given what I usually listen to?”

Then came the first performance I attended. On the program was Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony…When the music ended, and the audience erupted with applause, I realized that all the questions I had in my head prior to the experience were irrelevant. It was the music. It took me over with the same incredible rush that I experienced with The Who, The Clash or whoever else occupied my musical drive. It was the music.”

I can’t leave 2006 without mentioning Alex Shapiro’s “screw the rules, let them wear party hats” post which I believe is still one of the most commented upon entries on the Adaptistration blog. The entry remains a must read. Alex’s point is essentially that one generally doesn’t prepare to go to a rock concert being overly concerned about hearing the lyrics much less grasping the whatever imagery and metaphor they invoke but we are pleased if we do. Going to a classical music performance should be approached in the same anxiety free manner.

And if you are thinking, yeah but at a rock concert, part of the excitement is hoping some hot guy/girl will bump into while screaming “Wahooooo!!!!”, Alex is right there with you wishing it would happen in our symphony halls.

I also enjoyed Pete Matthews recounting of his visits to three different classical music events with the same friend in the course of a month. It was just a nice, comparison of the types of music you can hear and the sort of places you could hear it. I was most encouraged by the quality experience they had in a high school auditorium given they also attended at Avery Fisher and Carnegie Halls.

2007

James Palermo, General Director of Grant Park Music Festival caught my attention with his vow not to apologize for loving classical music. I think a lot of us have found ourselves falling into the same mindset and needing to pull ourselves out.

Then I read a quote attributed to the great soprano Leontyne Price about the value of the arts. I’ll never forget it:

“We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it’s time to show us at our best.”

When a President dies, at the funeral we feature the hottest opera star singing Amazing Grace. When the media wants to associate something with class or value, it invariably uses baroque or classical era music. If a marketer wants to conjure up grandeur or power, it’s Verdi’s Anvil Chorus or Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries.

So, I vowed to stop apologizing for loving and understanding classical music. Whenever I hear negative comments from friends or colleagues, I remind them that the music is enjoyable, revelatory and full of great things for anyone who is open enough to experience it without prejudice, regardless of social class or race.

One of the most singular posts in the TAFTO was produced by Bill Harris who engaged in an extensive analysis about whether Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month was a worthwhile endeavor. His work is so insightful and unlike any other entry in the TAFTO series, it is impossible to ignore.

Hope you took a look at some of these past entries and will join the fun over at Adaptistration next week for the new installments!

Is Your Price Right?

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Via Bill Byrnes, Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Southern Utah University, I recently became aware of a company called The Pricing Institute. Their services seem to focus mostly on optimizing the pricing structure of arts organizations.

My initial thought was that price does not develop relationships. If I am going to have a consultant come in to help me improve my organization, pricing while important, isn’t going to solve my organizational problems over the long term. But what isn’t valuable to me as theatre manager has worth to blogger me because I know it may be of interest to my readers.

An observation made on the Pricing Institute website bears noting. Price may not develop relationships, but it can ruin them. “Excessive or irregular discounting practices can leave customers confused and even resentful,…”

Taking a look at the case studies, it is clear that they don’t just emphasize retail price points. One of the problems they saw with Huntington Theatre Company’s approach was that the “marketing messaging was focused on pricing vs. value.” For Philadelphia Live Arts, one step they took was creating a separate identity for the Live Arts performances versus Fringe performances.

Reading through the website, I can see the value of the the services they offer. I didn’t really doubt the importance of making wise decisions about pricing. Given that fund raising is becoming more difficult, effective generation of earned revenue becomes crucial. I readily admit that I could certainly use some guidance in making prudent pricing decisions. But as I said, I can see this sort of a examination as part of a larger consultant visit.

I suspect that most arts organizations would be of the same mind. They probably don’t hire a consultant until there are so many areas of concern that guidance in just one area isn’t enough.

Come to think of it, that might be why the Pricing Institute is structured the way that it is. It is a joint venture between three different consultant firms. The structure may allow them to give stand alone pricing guidance to those who just want that while also enabling three different consulting organizations to provide great pricing advice when addressing organizations with larger concerns by calling on the expertise of their partners. As I said, I don’t know if that is how they operate, but the ability to offer a sort of “value added” service could be advantageous to all.

Time To Review

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I am feeling a bit under the weather so I am not of a mind to blog very long today. However, while I was having trouble sleeping last night, it occurred to me it has been awhile since I revisited and revised our front of house procedures manuals for house managers and ushers and more importantly, our emergency procedures. The latter is especially important since we just had an Automated External Defibrillator installed on the lobby wall.

While I ask the house managers to refresh their memories every year and we review procedures with our ushers at the beginning of every season, we are actually operating on instructions I wrote when I first assume my current position. Those instructions in turn were adapted from a manual I used at another place of employment. There is nothing unsafe about the procedures I initially generated, they just may not be the most appropriate for interacting with our community in our specific physical plant.

My suspicion is that practice has diverted from the letter of my instructions. The next step is likely to be bringing the instructions more inline with reality while injecting bits of structure where it might be lacking so our service to audiences is a little sharper.

I have given the task of revising the instructions to our assistant theatre manager. He deals with front of house staff and their activities much more frequently than do I. He also hasn’t had a hand in writing any of the procedures where the rest of the staff has so he has no investment in any of the work. I have suggested he might want to call meetings to discuss revisions.

So I figured I would encourage everyone to consider reviewing and rewriting your procedures both for safety sake but also to ensure you are meeting your audience’s current expectations for their experience with your organization.

Wheels Begin To Turn

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I had a really productive meeting today to plan a site specific performance on campus for next Spring. We have never done this sort of thing before so I am starting conversations as far in advance as I can so that I can uncover problems and answer questions early on.

About six weeks ago, I approached a woman about putting a performance together than would involve our students and perhaps people from the community at large. She was excited by the prospect right out of the gate. I think what piqued her interest even more was my vision of having other members of her group conduct workshops starting next fall whose work would feed into the Spring performance. For example, we will probably have workshops in mask making and mask work and stilt work and perhaps revisit the fabric climbing tissue workshops students participated in last fall. My hope was to have these workshops open to the general public as well as our students.

What I felt was most productive about today’s meeting was that I managed to get one of our professors to agree to involve his acting class in this project instead of creating the regular spring drama show for our lab theatre. When I proposed this idea to him, his only concern was that the project didn’t replace his class or displace him as the instructor. My vision was that he would spend his class periods as he usually does, except that he would be working with his students to prepare part of a larger piece.

The academic concerns answered, he was really energized by the whole vision that the lead artist and I laid out. By the end of the meeting, he had actually negotiated another slate of workshops for his students. Not that he is a person who craves control, but I was fairly impressed by how willing he was to cede control of a project he traditionally directs.

There are a few more people I need to bring on board and a million details to resolve in the next year. This is one of the projects I was thinking about when I wrote yesterday that were there special funding or tax breaks for employing 100% local creativity, I was confident at least one of our shows would qualify every year.

Also, even though I would have likely worked on generating this partnership regardless of whether it existed, I have been inspired by the Creative Campus project. I think our program is too small to qualify for participation, (though I just realized upon linking to it, that the program is open for another round of grant applications), but I am encouraged by the efforts of other campuses around the country who are attempting the same sort of things.

You Know, For The Kids (And Everyone Else, Too)

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February was a real busy month for me so I only had the time to bookmark The Nonprofiteer’s epiphany about the value of public funding for the arts.

“Of course you’re indifferent to public funding for the arts, you dodo; you live in Chicago, where major performers and exhibitions will show up anyway. Public funding for the arts isn’t for Chicago–it’s for Bloomington.

And she remembered growing up in Baltimore, which is not a small town but which waited for months between visits of major dance companies; and she remembered the thrill of seeing those dance companies for the first time. And she realized (0r remembered) that that’s the real point of public funding for the arts: to make available to everyone the thrill of exposure to first-rate art. Everyone: that means people who live in Bloomington, and International Falls, and Arroyo Hondo, even though the free market would not support a stop in any of those places by the latest tour from the Joffrey or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Met.

I thought she made quite a few good arguments on behalf of funding the arts. They seem of particular value given that she finds them compelling as a person who is not particularly supportive of public funding for the arts. It isn’t often that a non-politician who has not drank deeply of the Kool-Aid takes the time to provide considered commentary on behalf of public support of the arts so it behooves us to take note. As might be expected, I am not entirely in accord with her suggestion that support should only be in presentation rather than creation of new works. Though I certainly do see her point:

“…you have to accept another, equally painful truth, which is that no one can actually determine what’s “art” til at least 25 years after it’s been created. Probably the Nonprofiteer doesn’t need to remind you that people threw things at the stage the first time they saw and heard The Rite of Spring, now part of the musical canon. But what she probably does need to point out is that this doesn’t mean the public should accept and/or fund every objectionable thing it sees in hopes that it will ultimately turn out to be art. Rather, it means that support for creation is a mug’s game, a gamble at which most players lose, and that the public should instead put its money into presentation.”

I hadn’t initially assumed she was saying that public funding of the arts was needed to bring culture to the hinterlands. All the same, I was glad for Scott Walters’ comment to her about the importance of enabling local groups to develop works that emphasize and reinforce the value that can be found in their communities. For me that is the strongest argument for funding the creation of new work. I am not as vocal as Walters is on his blog about how the concept that artistic success originates from NY/LA/Chicago is robbing the rest of the country of talent. But I am certainly in agreement with him that there is no reason those places should be held as a standard of quality and be viewed as the only destinations for achieving artistic success.

Public monies and tax breaks are offered to attract and retain industry, perhaps the same should be done with the arts. The argument can be made that state and municipal support of the arts is doing just that. What the public support is not doing though is generally providing incentive to “buy locally.” In some cases, there has to be an equal investment in encouraging people to create locally as well. I have mentioned in a number of posts lately that while it would be much more economical for me to present local artists, there aren’t enough of quality to sustain the effort very long. There are a fair number of talented people in the community, but most (though certainly not all) are expressing themselves via Broadway plays and musicals or covers/derivatives of other people’s work.

Still, if the criteria for receiving public monies and tax breaks was 100% of the concept and execution by local artists, I could take advantage of the support at least once a year and guarantee my audiences the quality they have come to expect. That sort of confidence constitutes a good starting point in my mind.

One last bit of the NonProfiteer I would quote is her view that we need to get public support for the arts as acceptable a concept as public support for education.

Yes, yes, the Nonprofiteer knows: education isn’t well-funded either; but relatively few people argue that public funding for education is just a plot to spread disgusting lies, or to keep teachers from having to work. Let’s get the discussion about public funding for the arts to the level of conceptual agreement we have for public education, and then we can engage in any further battles that might need to be fought.

In other words, brethren in the arts community: stop talking about public funding for the arts as if the point were for the public to support YOU. No one cares about you. What we care about as a society is US, and how exposure to what you do will improve us.

I think there is a distinction between what she means by “how exposure to what you do will improve us” and the message the arts have been communicating along those lines. While improving test scores, reasoning skills and developing geniuses in the womb are probably part of what she is suggesting we talk about, it can’t be the entirety for the simple reason that it excludes anyone who is not a child. People care about their kids, yes, but everyone will only be persuaded when they perceive they are included in the benefits. I think it is pretty clear that the reasons we give can’t be about what we want people to experience but what they want to experience.

We want people to experience transcendent moments and there is a good chance the first time they sit down to hear a symphony play, they won’t have a transcendent experience. The measure of their satisfaction with the experience that night may simply be that no one caught on to their utter cluelessness. Transcendent experiences should certainly always be a goal and are absolutely attainable on ones first interaction. I just spoke to a woman today who had a group of students who did just that, though they probably couldn’t have identified it as such.

There is a difficulty in asking people what they want out of an experience with which they have had limited interaction. About 18 months ago I linked to a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about how when people were asked what kind of spaghetti sauce they liked, described the sauces they were eating. However, when presented with samples of different options, expressed strong preferences for sauces that no company actually made. When asked, people may say they like car chases and gun battles not realizing what they really may value is dramatic tension and once they get past the arcane language, a lot of Shakespeare really suits them.

If trying to draw responses of value from your audiences sounds like an intimidating process, well sure it is. There are big companies sinking millions of dollars into marketing and research trying to figure it all out too with limited success. The advantage you have is that you only have to figure it out for the community you serve.

Under Pressure To Find Value In Live Performance

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Thanks to YouTube I have been thinking a lot about the experience of live performance. A couple months ago, for reasons I can’t remember, I watched this cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” done by David Bowie and Gail Ann Dorsey.

I thought their rendition was great and a couple weeks later, I wanted to hear it again and ended up with this version.

It was soon clear that it wasn’t the same performance. I liked the first version much better. One of my first thoughts was how interesting it was that the same song, same performers, same tour could have a vastly different quality. It seemed to me a good argument for seeing live performance. Often people say they don’t want to see a play or hear a piece of music again because they have already seen it. People in the arts generally counter that different groups render different interpretations. If that doesn’t work, we break out the old opportunity for disaster option noting that you never know what will happen at a live performance. Even better in this case with almost all things being equal, one performance is so much more exciting than the other which proves another degree of value for live performances. I started checking to see if Bowie was coming to town soon.

Well, come to find out it is not quite all things equal. The second video is from 1997 and the first from 2003. (In my defense, not all of the copies are well dated.) I imagine part of the reason I like the 2003 video is that the sound is much better. I also believe Dorsey got more kickass in that time.

Which brings me to the second revelation about the experience of live performance–the importance of reference points. My sense of where the videos fall on the quality continuum is based on my experience with the original version by Queen and Bowie vs. 2003 Bowie and Dorsey vs. 1997 Bowie and Dorsey. What I have no ability to judge is the relative value of a piece of classical music played by the NY Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, much less the same piece by a single ensemble now and six years ago.

From my perspective, no symphony would allow themselves to take the liberties in interpreting Beethoven Bowie and Dorsey took with Queen’s original music. But I could well be wrong. I have no experience upon which to base that assertion other than my belief that symphonies are too tradition bound to do so. This lack reinforces the importance of regular and repeated exposure to the arts. It also reveals why the belief that people will become enamored of the arts if only they will step through the door is erroneous. People can only judge something is good if they have a basis upon which to make the judgment.

The general implication of making a statement about exposure to the arts is that it has to be in schools. Students are a captive audience and unformed vessels ready to receive. The parents are lost to us. They are too old and too busy at work to pay attention to our lessons. Yes, that is mostly true. But when they take breaks from work they go to things like First Friday’s downtown where they will stop and satisfy their curiosity about Southeast Asian dance if the opportunity presents itself in a easily accessible place.

Cheap dates are important in this economy so First Friday type events may present an opportunity for increased exposure. Expose people often now and maybe they will be prepared to pay for the experience by the time the economy turns around and increases their disposable income.

April is Take A Friend To the Orchestra Month (TAFTO) and provides a good opportunity to position events and opportunities that encourage friends to experience an event together.

(You don’t actually have to be an orchestra to take advantage of April in this manner. Just don’t tell Drew McManus I gave you permission.)

Looking For Shows In All The Close Places

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Last Friday I went to First Friday downtown. My main motivation was that my assistant theatre manager and his wife were performing at an outdoor stage. The theme was Asian performance so there were performances of gamelan, kulintang music, Balinese, Cambodian and Thai dance and a couple of fusion pieces.

While I came to support a friend, I was soon evaluating performances for suitability in upcoming seasons. We have been told to expect that we are all but guaranteed to lose $20,000 from a regular source so I need to identify generally inexpensive quality performances. Ultimately, I didn’t think any I saw that night were quite right and a couple, pretty awful. Before I made this determination I started to ponder how I might structure future seasons.

I started to wonder if it might be possible to follow Numa Saisselin’s example and announce a shorter season in my brochure next Fall with the intent of adding two or three performances as the opportunity presents itself. There are always a few shows that do well and a few shows that attract a third of what the best shows do. My expenses are generally the same for all of them so if I can reduce my costs a little, I will be doing better. What contributes either directly or indirectly to my costs is distance people have to travel so I can realize some significant savings if I can control those expenses. Since people are making their attendance decisions extremely close to the performance dates, I don’t think I would lose anything by having some events absent from the season brochure.

I often have a general idea of which shows will have a lower appeal but pay the price knowing that the work is worth seeing and if I don’t bring them, then no one else will. The smaller audience appreciates the opportunity no less than the larger one. Unfortunately, that idealism may have to be indulged slightly less often in favor of discerning whether there are local/regional performers who have the quality but haven’t had the opportunity to be seen.

Outside of my uncertainty about such groups existing, one concern I have is that if I don’t set my schedule early, I will have to really control what dates I rent out. We have a fairly strong facility rental program and can have most of the year rented out almost immediately after releasing the dates we don’t intend to use.

I would most certainly make more money renting instead of presenting on those same dates but I don’t want to reduce our offerings even in these financially tenuous times. I believe we would lose momentum with our community. While precious few seem to have any loyalty to us, I suspect their numbers are greater than we imagine. There is also the issue of slipping out of the collective consciousness if there are fewer mentions of us in the media.

So for the next few months I am going to be doing a lot of pondering, talking and consulting with people on our direction. There is no option before me that I want to fully commit to –fully a rental house, fully produce local performers–but the fiscal realities before me are likely to mean exploring these options to some degree.

Living The Fantasy..Sort Of

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One of the reasons I enjoy my job is because I get to live my fantasies. One of my favorite involves standing in front of the ticket office having ticket holder praise my acumen in contracting high quality performers while those who did not purchase in advance wail in lament at seeing the sold out sign in the ticket office window.

Of course, being a fantasy, it doesn’t live up to reality. In my fantasy, the show has been sold out for weeks or showing clear signs of doing so for some time. The most recent reality is that ticket sales were steady, but few for months. At week out we we barely had 150 tickets sold. Then things started picking up 3 days before and exploded the last two days before the performance.

The people who showed up having not bought tickets had spent 6 months telling me how excited they were this performer was coming. They worked two buildings over, had a poster for the event right next to their office doors and received two emails exhorting them to purchase tickets.

It is hard to be savor being pleased with oneself when you are stifling the instinct to smack people upside their heads.

Granted, it is inevitable that a popular show will require dealing with a few disappointed souls who did not act quickly enough. My real reaction was more to roll my eyes in exasperation than to enact the V-8 forehead smack.

My real concern is that with people making decisions so close performance dates it is becoming harder to discern between a show destined to sell out and a flop before the actual performance date. In the context of the proposal of my last entry to allow presenters to cancel when ticket sales look dismal, I might have canceled had I been engaging in that practice. The article I wrote on came into my hands in a timely manner. It not only got me thinking, but it connected with a situation I was experiencing.

Numa Saisselin’s proposal to allow presenters to cancel includes proving diligence in promoting the show. In this case, I can pretty clearly trace the surge in sales to media coverage for which I did not pay. I probably need not have bought any advertising space at all. One story on the local NPR station I knew would probably happen because the interviewer asked for a contact name. The second, a feature story in the newspaper, was totally a surprise to me. The writer, who usually asks me for contact information didn’t in this case so I had no idea the story would run.

I feel confident in saying I wouldn’t have needed to advertise in this instance because I believe a lot of people knew and valued the performer. The stories were merely a kick in the butt to get them to start buying. For the rest of my performances, it can be difficult to make effective decisions. I am fairly certain advertising and electronic reminders during the week of the performance is effective for one portion of my demographic and that periodic exposure of the information over a longer period of time is effective for another segment even though both groups are buying their tickets at the last moment.

Other than the brochure and email, we aren’t quite sure what is most effective. When we ask people where they heard about the performance, many times people can’t decide through what form of media they heard it much less what station or newspaper. (It can be quite interesting to learn we are advertising on radio or television when we haven’t.)

In any case, I could have shown an investment in promoting the show through various media and promotional campaigns and asked for a cancellation based on awful ticket sales–and geez I would have been wrong. Yet there have been a few times when I would have been oh so right to cancel based on identical circumstances. Hopefully most people don’t operate in a market in which such nebulous conditions exist, but I suspect a great many do or will in the course of a few years.

And I begin to think the agents already know this and have been monitoring the situation for years. The last couple places I have worked, agents periodically call to get ticket sales counts even though the artist is guaranteed a set amount rather than a percentage of the gate. I can’t recall any agent or management company directing promotional resources to our market if tickets weren’t selling well. Yet at times the agents could be pretty relentless about getting the attendance numbers.

Saisselin’s mention of the unofficial procedure for cancellations made me think that perhaps agents may have assembled quite an in-house database of artists’ average sales X days out in cities with Y demographics. They may have a fairly accurate idea of when a cancellation request might be in the offing or perhaps when it might be prudent to either drop an artist from their roster or work with the artist to improve elements of their performance.

In spite of my sold out performance fantasies, the trend seems to be toward committing to attendance later and later in the process. If agents are in fact compiling information for decision making purposes, they may find the predictive power of their stats to be increasingly less dependable any distance out from a performance as reality confounds their expectations. (Or maybe they have really good statistical models.)

It Might Not Be Entirely Dead Yet

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The president of my consortium went to a Western Arts Federation meeting and returned with some materials for the membership to read. One of the more provocative pieces was written by Numa C. Saisselin, Executive Director at the Count Basie Theatre entitled “Arts Presenting Is Dead.” (Full disclosure, I once interviewed with Numa for a job at the Count Basie.) Unfortunately, the document isn’t online. I would have to make some inquiries to get permission to store it on my blog.

Numa’s basic premise about presenting being dead is that the practice of offering “serious work” like “theatre, dance, classical music, and maybe the occasional folk singer” and being successful focused on doing only that is no longer viable. What has eroded this situation are elements of which we are all generally aware: The low barriers to entry of the presenting field means there are more people doing it in the general vicinity; competition comes not only from other performing arts organizations, but sporting events, television, computers; costs are going up but earned income, drop in corporate support and other economic factors make it difficult for presenters to break even; organizations aren’t doing new things to attract new audiences; “every market is different, but by and large we all compete for the same programs” and “every market is different, but by and large we all employ the same generic marketing strategies.”

Saisselin does a good job tracing the direction things have been headed and giving concrete examples of how his organization has faced each of these essential areas. The way he has found success is to become more nimble in his programming focusing less on establishing a concrete season for people to subscribe to and more on taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves in the short term and then communicating these new developments with his mailing lists. While they take the long view on some things, he likens his approach to that of a concert promoter rather than the traditional definition of a presenter.

He notes this approach may not work, and should not work, for everyone given that every market is different. He also acknowledges that his organization has to ask granting entities to have faith in them since they don’t have a concrete idea about what they may do with the money at the time of application.

One of the benefits of his approach is that it allows him to take advantage of opportunities where an agent is offering an artist at a lower price in order to keep them busy between performances. Saisselin feels that presenters need to move even beyond this and educate themselves more about artistic fees rather than blindly accepting what is asked. There are databases of artists performances all over the country that can allow you to compare yourself to similar communities to get an idea of what attendance was like and what ticket price was charged.

Now I know none of this sounds terribly provocative. I included most of this narration so you could get a general idea where Saisselin was coming from. What I am told has quite a few people up in arms and calling him irresponsible for suggesting is that presenters be able to cancel a performer 30 days out.

If the artist can cancel a date on 30 days notice to take a more important gig on a TV show, a feature film, or in a Broadway production; or a more lucrative gig in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Reno or Tahoe; or in some cases for any reason, then the presenter should have the option of canceling on 30 days notice if ticket sales do not warrant proceeding. If the artist has the option of canceling to enhance their overall career or make more money, then the presenter should have the option of canceling if it’s going to lose money, or at least if it’s going to lose a lot of money.

From the artist’s and management’s perspective, not allowing presenters a cancellation option protects the artist from bad presenters. In other words, if the presenter does not do their job, the artist should not suffer, and that makes sense. But if the presenter does do its job, and tickets still do not sell, artists, agents and managers should accept at least a measure of responsibility. If we’re really all in this together, we should share the pain as well as the rewards.

He notes there is already an unofficial process one can follow to achieve this that generally ends up with the presenter paying 50% of the artist fee as a cancellation penalty. He suggests making it a formal part of contracts. While the presenter will still realize a loss, it won’t be a debilitating one

The presenter would be required to jump through some hoops to make such a request. When booking an artist, the presenter would have to submit a marketing plan, and satisfy management that the plan is reasonable, and has worked in the past. When making a cancellation request, the presenter would have to document that they had followed through on the marketing plan, without achieving the desired results…

…Artists would not be forced to play for half empty (or less) houses to collect their check, but in the event of a cancellation would still be fairly compensated for reserving the performance date. Agents and managers would be saved from having their artist develop a reputation as a box office loser, and would have the opportunity to revisit and revise their own strategies, perhaps getting their artist into smaller rooms, and building or rebuilding their artist’s career in another way. Presenters would be saved from throwing good money after bad when they already know a show is not selling.

He goes on to make some good points about improving standards for arts managers and boards of directors which I hope to address in later entries. For now I just wanted to float this idea. I am not quite sure how I feel about it. Assuming the practice moved in this direction either through active efforts of presenters or by default as tough economic times make the unspoken procedures into the standard, is it a direction we want to head?

It is easy to get angry at ever increasing fees and being left in the lurch by artists and talk about leveling the field in the abstract. There can be some unwanted repercussions though. I have been to the booking conferences and there the dynamic is one where the presenters have all the power. Artists and agents complain that presenters won’t acknowledge them or meet their eyes as they pass. I suppose if more people moved to act as promoters as Saisselin has, then fewer arrangements will be made at conferences and more will be made as a result of emails and YouTube videos. Not to imply artist cancellations for a better gig is revenge for the conference snub, but maybe it will be good if that uncomfortable vibe was removed from the equation.

My concern is that the money factor becomes a larger issue and emerging artists get further marginalized if 30 day cancellations become standard. Is an agent or manager really going to invest time in cultivating someone who is yielding them a percentage of 50% fee or are they going to go with the known quantity that dependably fills seats?

Certainly, the internet allows people to promote themselves fairly well so they don’t have to rely on an agent. For those like me who already get a constant stream of artist availability emails, more virtually unknowns adding themselves to the mix only makes things more difficult. As evil as agents may be made out to be, the good ones develop relationships with you that enable them to provide appropriate advice to presenters. Saisselin mentions his appreciation for an agent that invested years in a relationship with him before he actually booked an artist.

One road to success I can see is if the economy gets so bad that presenters turn their attention to seeking out low cost regional and local performers. Sasselin mentions how the record single went out of vogue only to come back again thanks to the iPod. Perhaps the impresario will make a return of sorts as people with theatre facilities turn their attention to cultivating the careers of regional artists as agents drop them.

Sasselin’s proposal is certainly something to consider in some form or another in order to relieve the pressure on presenters. I don’t think it can be applied in as straightforward a manner as he suggests.

**One thing that did occur to me as I was writing is that it would be great for the small touring artist if someone would create a piece of online software that integrated communications, scheduling and maps. That way a person could email, IM, etc about a gig, have the mapping feature tell them if it is actually reasonable to drive/fly that distance in the time allotted between gigs and then place it in a schedule they can access while on the road. Heck, if it could suggest flights, car rental places and hotels, that would be great too. (Except I imagine the top suggestions would be positioned there by paid advertising and may not be the most affordable for our struggling artist.)**

Actors Locally

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About a year ago I started thinking about doing a project that involved our organization’s immediate artistic community, artists throughout the county and as much of the public at large as we might be able to entice into becoming involved. Bringing different artists who don’t normally work together is one goal. Second, I was thinking that as much as I talk about how groups should offer audiences alternatives to sitting passively in a dark room, I should really put my money where my mouth is. I would also like to break down barriers members of the general public have about their artistic abilities.

When I originally began considering this I was thinking of bringing out an artist who was well-practiced at taking volunteers with little or no experience and producing a show in two days. My thought was to have a site specific show developed over the course of a week to ten days and then have a final performance. The assistant theatre manager suggested a local artist who could spearhead the same sort of effort. Suddenly the necessity of having someone who had experience putting a show together in a short time was less relevant.

It also has the benefit of being less expensive since I don’t have to house, transport and feed guest artists. Ultimately, I may end up spending the same amount of money, but it will be over a longer period of time which will hopefully allow a greater number of people to be involved.

I didn’t really plan it this way, but I think I may be presenting more local artists in the near future. I suspect when I attend my consortium meeting next week, I am going to find that my partners are really scaling back their activities. I will probably have fewer opportunities to partner with them due to scheduling conflicts and differences in our respective audiences’ interests. Buying local won’t be sustainable over the long term because there are few local artists I can present that people can’t see more frequently closer to the city core and drink alcohol while they are doing so. The strength I have is an ability, limited as it may be, to encourage and cultivate some new works.

None of the three artists I have spoken with over the last month about developing performances are new acquaintances. We have had relationships over the last couple years and we have reached a point where broaching the possibility of collaboration was logical. The tough economic times weren’t really a motivation. I haven’t suddenly decided to make due with the local talent because it has become tougher to bring people in from afar.

Anyway, I spoke with the artist today and she was just thrilled by the prospect. I could see the wheels beginning to turn inside her head. I presented the whole concept to her as pretty open ended. I know who I want to have involved, but until we have a core idea I can’t go convince them to sign on. As we spoke today, we realized we can really expand this project out a little bit. There is a possibility to have the produce of workshops, continuing ed courses and street fair craft projects created over the course of a year integrated into the final performance. Some possible workshops might even be designed to begin eroding anxiety and make people comfortable with expressing themselves with the aim of involving them in the final effort.

For example, we talked about mask making classes/workshops. Masks can be fun to make and wearing them allows people to be less self conscious. The artist related a story of how she brought a group of visual artists together to help her with a performance piece and they all protested they weren’t performers. Then they began to tentatively approach the masks and play with them. By the end of two hours the biggest problem was that people couldn’t decide which of the characters they had created for the masks to use in the performance.

Right now I am pretty optimistic about the future of the project even though I don’t know when it might start or finish. The woman with whom I spoke isn’t letting any moss grow on her and wants to get right to planning. We have a meeting on Thursday to look at possible locations around the grounds. I intend to post on the progress we make in the planning and implementation of our little scheme and share some of the challenges we face so that others might avoid them.

Interesting Thoughts From Other Places

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Read some good stuff today on two blogs that really can’t be improved upon by any commentary I can offer so read on—

The Nonprofiteer had some sage advice in a recent entry regarding recruiting people to fill volunteer roles be it a board member or ticket taker — recruit in pairs.

The two-by-two recommendation is most often made about Board members, and specifically about minority Board members: don’t ask someone to be the only African-American or the only woman in the room. But it’s equally true of any Board recruit, or in fact of any volunteer: bring in 1 person, and you’ve got a 50% shot at keeping him/her. Bring in 2, and you’ve got an 80% shot at keeping them both.

Why? Because misery loves company, and being a newcomer/outsider is always misery. And because unless your Board or volunteer program is truly astonishing, anyone observing it from the outside will think it could use a lot of improvement. The prospect of trying to improve something unaided is usually daunting to the point of not bothering.

Seems easier to do with board members who tend to be actively recruited as opposed to volunteers for other areas which are often self-selected. You don’t want to turn someone away simply because no one else offered their services this week. It is possible though to orient people in pairs or small groups to facilitate bonding among them. If the 80% retention stat is correct, it seems prudent to arrange the situation so people’s initial volunteer encounters are in multiples.

Over at Producer’s Perspective, Ken Davenport relates an answer Sandy Block of Sernio Coyne gave to the question about why producers attempt to mount Broadway productions given the enormous challenges. Block stops the class in which the question was asked and queries those attending how many remember the first movie they saw and then how many can name the first Broadway show they saw. Few people raised their hands at the first question but everyone raised their hands at the second.

Says Davenport:

There’s a highly emotional experience connected with Broadway; a passion that can be turned into profit . . . Now the real question is, how can we capitalize on that?

Davenport then asks his readers to take Sandy Block’s survey and record the first movie and first Broadway show they saw in the comments section of the entry. If you remember, go on over and write it in.

Segmenting Mass Appeal

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More and more often these days at work are segmenting our message to audiences and I have to say, it is a pretty labor intensive undertaking.

In the last week I have:

Contacted Newspapers
Sent out press releases and images for our upcoming shows and discovered the newspaper arts editor who was there in November took the buy out package and is no longer there. The features editor who oversees the weekend arts section has stated she is taking things in a new direction. Considering that the last direction was more pop culture oriented and away from the arts, I am reluctant to learn what this new focus might be. In any case, this means shifting the language of my releases yet again to make our performances seem to resonate with this new theme without misrepresenting the shows.

It would be great if the rival papers, seeing the shift in focus figured the main daily was on to something and copied them. The problem is that the alternative weekly defines themselves as an alternative to the main daily. We get a healthy portion of our audience from the alt-weekly. Where the main daily wants to write stories on shows with the widest appeal, the alt-weekly wants to tell people why a select niche go to these shows. Their readership is pretty savvy so a lot of explanation isn’t necessary. However, I did make a note to the editor observing why people might, on the face of things, underestimate a couple events.

The main daily paper has also started to emphasize user generated content which makes me think the days of the editors that remain may be numbered, too. We already lost the editors who did stories for the neighborhood inserts a couple months earlier. For the moment, it gives me another avenue of communication with the public. Although this means essentially writing a press release that appeals directly to the general public rather than one that tries to convince an editor the performance is worth tasking someone to write a story about.

Contacted Schools
Because it is the start of a new semester, we emailed information to many of the area colleges suggesting professors add us to their syllabus as supplementary material or extra credit assignment at the very least. I email the theatre, dance and music people, of course. However, thanks to online course listings, I am able to contact history, education, religion, anthropology, literature and philosophy professors when the subject matter of a performance aligns with course topics. Some shows are more suitable than others. Although it is fairly labor intensive to cross reference course titles with the descriptions on other web pages, we get enough professors giving positive responses to make it worthwhile. At the very least, many of the professors attend even if their students don’t. Since these academics are from other campuses, this helps spread the word about our venue to a desirable demographic.

Contacted Our Email List
Every month I send out emails about the performances for that month. Because this group is so large, we know the least about how to effectively pitch to this group. Our approach can be similar to the material we use on the newspaper’s user generated content. Except these people know us and have a relationship with us and we can’t talk to them as if they are entirely anonymous entities. We also have the benefit of controlling the timing and content of what we release. This is the group I am most anxious about contacting because I don’t want our communications to come across as spam.

Back in November, Adam Thurman at The Mission Paradox touched on this subject. I am indeed the Joe who made the comment on the entry. I am concerned about find a balance between telling a compelling story about our organization and saying so much people consider it spam and don’t read it. Every month we have a few people who unsubscribe from our list. I keep a list to make sure we honor their wishes and don’t resubscribe them at some point. I rarely know why people leave our list. Why did they chose this month to leave and not last month?

Today I actually received one answer to this silent question. A woman emailed us to tell us she was leaving the list because she lived on the other side of the county and no longer drove at night. She urged us to keep up our good work offering people great performances. It is encouraging to get emails like this. I don’t have the capacity to ask people and allow people to explain why they are unsubscribing when they do so. I am looking into a technology which I believe might actually facilitate this.

Adam Thurman’s answer to the questions I had about balancing selling with creating relationships was a suggestion to add a couple interesting tidbits into the email. He noted that if an item needed more than a tidbit in length to explain it, a link to a page expounding on the item should be provided for those interested in more information.

The performance schedule for the next six weeks really lent itself to this practice. One event, the performers encourage people to bring hand held percussion instruments for audience participation. . Another event we are able to offer an opportunity to attend a master class so suggested people mark the date. We will follow up with another reminder next month.

We Also Did Everything Else
We were also working on PSAs and print and radio ads making changes appropriate for each audience as we went. You pretty much have the idea of how we were working so I won’t belabor the point with each of these.

The thing that is intimidating is that as much as we have crafted our message for each of these audiences, we could be doing more. Technology allows us to collect and process information more readily than in the past. We only have a small portion of our total audience’s email addresses and attendance histories because so many people are buying tickets at the door where it is difficult to both capture contact information and serve everyone on line in a timely manner.

Still, I have quite a bit of information with which to work. I can target all people who attended dance performances with a custom message about an upcoming dance performance. I could subdivide them and target people who attended sub-genres of dance similar to that of an upcoming event and further customize my message to make note of that similarity. I can toss in other criteria like frequency over a set period of time if I wanted.

Just as there can be a Tyranny of Choice with consumer goods, so too can the plethora of options paralyze your marketing and promotional plans in an attempt to find the perfect permutation of elements to generate the most effective appeal.

Great Performances, No Ads

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So I went to see Slumdog Millionaire last night. Terrific movie. I am a little puzzled why with all the national ads running for this movie, a county with 115 first run movie screens and 800,000 this movie is only playing on one screen. The movie has been running here for about a month and the theatre was still pretty packed last night. But that is an entry for another time.

What I wanted to gripe about a little is all the freakin’ ads. I know that you all know about them so it isn’t news but I have never seen so many ads before the previews even started. By the time the movie began to run, I realized, I was no longer interested in seeing it. Fortunately, the story started to appeal to me pretty quickly.

My point is, the movies are hobbling themselves from the very start by running all these ads. I wasn’t in a receptive frame of mind when the show started so the film had to start winning me over right from the beginning. If the movie had only been mediocre or designed to start slow and build, it would have been over before it had begun. No chance, no way, no how. Because movies aren’t live events, the producers and performers can’t sense the audience getting restless the way a person giving an overlong curtain speech can. (or should be sensing) So the ads keep going on and on heedless of how the audience feels.

I am thinking my next wave of promotions for our productions should have the words, “Great Performances, No Ads,” using the absence of ads as a selling point.

Tough Times Follow Up

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Arts Presenters posted the audio from the conference call I sat in on two weeks ago.

At the end of my last entry, I referred to cryptic notes I had made to review information. One of the notes was “write about the Boston organization.” This was in reference to Sandra Gibson’s discussion of World Music/CRASHarts in Boston. The organization is sort of shaking up the type of events they offer and how they market them. According to Gibson, they have been cutting a lot of programs over the last 10 years due to increasingly constrained budgets, but they knew they had the ability to expand their reach to younger audiences. They hired a young man who started them on the road to adding back programs. One of the things they have done is began to collaborate with other area organizations and have added 50 concerts in the last year.

This new hire was the impetus for the programming but the fact he has been promoting the events in unconventional ways is really causing conflicts in the organization. The marketing department is anxious about not knowing how to message the events. They feel they should be doing press releases and making other promotional efforts. World Music/CRASHarts lists eight different venues around Boston at which they have events so it is understandable that clear and organized communications would be highly valued. The executive director has started conversations about the situation and the staff has decided to take a chance and market these 50 concerts employing Facebook and other alternative means.

Gibson says they are seeing 60% sell outs (not sure if she means 60% capacity or 60% of the 50 events have sold out. I assume the former.) close to the performance date. As a result they are changing their income projections to reflect an expectation of cash flow later in the process. They are seeing a crossover of audiences who usually respond to subscription campaigns and mailers who are getting their information from these alternative online sources.

In the context of my last entry, this seems like a good example of an organization that has questioned their assumptions about their programming and promotion methods. World Music/CRASHarts hasn’t gotten a huge infusion of cash, yet they have expanded their programming rather than contracting it as they had in the past. Though it was a source of anxiety, they also put some effort into less tested methods of communication to promote their events. At the end of the season, the new direction may turn out to have been unsuccessful. With some luck and discernment, it may provide lessons about how their approach should be refined as they move forward. The former process is unlikely to be sustainable, especially as it apparently involved an increased series of cuts.

What A Great Show. Please Pass the Pumpkin Pie

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I tell you, there is nothing better for your digestion on Thanksgiving Day, nothing better at waking you up from a carb induced doze, than someone praising your last show and insisting people go see one of your upcoming performances. That’s what happened this past Thursday. I was having dinner at the house of a friend who has no connection to the performing arts at all. One of her guests, clearly intelligent and possessed of good taste, praised the most recent performance and then went on to talk about how excited he was that a particular artist was scheduled in the next couple months and that everyone should go see her.

While this gentleman was talking about how exciting the most recent show was, I had a reaction very similar to one that Inside the Arts neighbor Holly Mulcahy describes in a Partial Observer post today. In her second point, she talks about the importance of not allowing our hyper-awareness and intimacy with a performance get in our way of accepting a compliment.

As we are wont to do, my staff and I talked over the strengths and weaknesses of the performance casting a pretty critical eye on the production. While I was happy that the dinner guest hadn’t noticed any of these things, I was a little disappointed that he was focusing on the spectacle and not really talking about the actor performances or at least things about each character that resonated with him. I tried to steer the conversation in that direction a couple times but what I really wanted to do is throttle him while screaming “Stop talking about the spectacle!!!”

Now I have to admit, achieving the spectacle took a lot of hard work and those who executed it deserve a lot of praise. I have absolutely no problem with people noticing and complimenting the beauty of the set and lighting design since those folks rarely get enough recognition. The performed spectacle occurred just a few times in the production so it didn’t overwhelm or really define the show. But that is what impressed him most. That is what he remembered best. That is what he talked about.

But as Andrew Taylor notes in a talk posted on his blog today (around minute 20), the producers of an experience don’t get the final say in how the experience is processed. Something happened that was meaningful for him. And he had it in my venue which is a small victory for both of us since my preference is for people to be here than elsewhere. Despite all the flaws we may have seen with the show, I knew that overall we offered a quality product to our audiences and there was ultimately no shame to be associated with the show.

I really didn’t have any problem accepting the compliment. I am sure the delicious pumpkin bread helped make it taste all the sweeter. My comment about choking him was a bit of hyperbole, especially since I probably would have knocked over the gravy. I don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting your audiences to speak a little more confidently after every visit and it is part of our job to help them get there.

We Got Answers, You Got the Questions?

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Everything Needs A Little Organization
I learned a semi-important lesson about injecting a little organization into seemingly low key events. We had a large group make an advance request to meet the cast of our current production after the performance. The group organizer didn’t think the older people would want to interact with the case, but was pretty sure the kids in their group would want to. I talked to the director and between us made all the required arrangements with the cast.

Essentially, the plan was to have the group come down to the edge of the stage after the show and the cast would come out to talk with them. We were open to any other members of the audience coming down to speak with the cast as well but didn’t announce the opportunity.

Before the show the group leader came to me again and double checked that their group could meet with the cast. She told me how keen they were to meet the cast. I went backstage and verified the arrangements with the director and stage manager.

Come, Talk To Us!
Well come the end of the show, the cast came out and some people came down to talk with them but most hung back and talked with other friends in their group. The cast had come out prepared to answer questions about the production and ready to interact with young people and were disappointed that the interest wasn’t as advertised.

I began to suspect that perhaps the group leader and a few others were excited at the idea of their young people meeting the cast but hadn’t actually measured or cultivated any interest in the kids. Nor did they really encourage people to come forward. It seemed the group leader was happy with the experience because those who wanted to talk and get autographs had the opportunity to do so.

My thought is that I should have talked to the group leader a little more to learn what she expected and to express how we envisioned the encounter taking place. With kids involved we obviously desired something more spontaneous than a “raise your hand Q&A” but still wanted some effort expended to corral people in our direction.

Questions Are The Hardest Part
Ultimately, I think the whole concept of a Q&A with audiences may be flawed. The majority of the time it the experience seems to be a disappointment for the artists involved. The source of this disappointment seems to be the questions being asked which tend to revolve around the basic discipline any performer must cultivate; things like how they remember all their lines or movements.

The source of this problem is that people generally don’t know what to ask. You can probably trace this all the way back to the lack of arts education in the schools without too much effort if you had a mind to. It is a matter of lack of exposure and understanding about the process. Audiences ask how long people rehearsed. Performers are dying to talk about how things evolved and were decided over the rehearsal process.

Why Does That Sound So Familiar?
Unfortunately, that conversation often has no meaning for audiences. In a Q&A for a Shakespearean play, an actor remarked that the choice was made to perform the show in the standard North American dialect. Even though the patron had just heard it for a couple hours, she asked the actor to say something in the dialect and was rather disappointed at how unremarkable it was not comprehending that the “standard” label referred to how common it is to hear people speaking that manner.

We Will Answer Your Questions…
One of the easiest steps to take would be to list possible discussion questions in the playbill for people to ponder while they watch the performance. Of course, there is no guarantee people will read that part of the playbill or will think at all. I have seen a couple theatres include these questions in their programs. I only remember attending Q&A sessions at one place. It didn’t eliminate questions about learning lines but the quality of questions seemed higher. I can’t say if it was a result of the discussion prompts or the general quality of the audience members being better than at other places.

Perhaps one of the elements integral to making people feel more involved with performances is really, really, really pushing them to ask questions. This means having someone with answers. Given that designers and directors move on after a show has opened, stage managers, actors and technicians are busy wrapping up after the performance any not always available, this may mean having a separate person with an intimate knowledge of the performance available in the theatre or lobby immediately after the show to fulfill patrons’ desire of instant gratification.

..But Please Don’t Text During the Show
They may also be tasked with answering questions via online forums later as people digest what they have seen. Or perhaps they are following up with answers to questions they didn’t know the night before. They may even end up fielding text messages during a performance. Not the ideal situation from the performer’s point of view, but perhaps highly valued by the patron.

Come Early And Watch

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I really love watching productions come together. Last night I was watching a dress rehearsal for a show we are opening on Friday. I always do so around this time so I can spot any audience related concerns that didn’t occur to anyone to tell me. I usually watch for things like strobe use, characters entering from the audience that will necessitate holding late seating or people returning from restrooms. I also keep an eye out for things that might offend audiences despite assurances that there is nothing offensive in the show. (Yeah, right)

I give feedback on the production. I don’t engage in any of the meddling for which producers are stereotypically infamous. Generally I just talk about things that confused me because of costuming, point out some overacting that went on while the director was looking elsewhere or note that people were bumping the scrim during backstage crossovers.

A recent development I have been pleased to see is the migration of staging techniques from our smaller experimental Lab Theatre space to our Mainstage. In that space activity begins as people are being seated prior to the performance, segues in the performance proper and through the intermission. What I have liked is that the action has been appropriate for the performance and has engaged the audience’s interest. Seats are filled well before the show begins so there is no need to chase people in from the lobby or wait while stragglers pick up tickets.

Beyond guaranteeing order and promptness, I appreciate that this is a step away from the pattern of arrive, sit quietly during the show, leave. People can talk during the pre-show and intermission or watch as they please. It also gives the performers an opportunity to create something original within the bounds of the production circumstances. They can develop their character a little more. Infrequently seen characters can get a little more performance time.

My hope is that something more evolves out of it and takes theatre to the next stage in engaging the audience. My fear is that the practice will move from appropriate to gratuitous as people decide it is a cool thing to do and attempt to include it in every performance. Not only will it be ill considered artistically, but it can also halt the evolution I hope for if people get stuck in the rut.

The mainstage production we are opening doesn’t actually incorporate original work but rather uses a song from the script as a musical interlude during the intermission to lead back into the show. One consideration in attempting what I have described here is that inclusion of original work before and in the middle of a performance may run counter to the intent of the creator and invalidate your performance license. You may also run into copyright infringement. Our Lab space has done out of copyright works or added the action with the approval (and some times participation) of the playwright.

None of things mean it is a bad idea. I am sure this not a unique idea and other theatres regularly use these techniques. In fact, I am pretty sure at best it may be a new take on a very old idea.

Fear Of The Fundraiser

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Hat tip to Seth Godin who reproduced Sasha Dichter’s Manifesto in Defense of Raising Money which begins “I’m sick of apologizing for being in charge of raising money.”

It seems to me a must read for anyone who is in the position of raising money which includes pretty much everyone in an organization since theoretically everyone must be part of the organization’s narrative. As you read, don’t get side tracked with thoughts about how his cause is so much more worthy of donations than your own. There are many elements that contribute to personal and societal health.

Dichter basically feels people approach fund raising from the wrong perspective seeing it as a chore rather than an opportunity to evangelize about the change you want to effect. For me the third point he makes after asking why people are so afraid to ask for money seems the most salient.

“…wealth is associated with power, and not having wealth can feel like not having power. So going to someone who has money and saying, “You have the resources, please give some of them to me” doesn’t feel like a conversation between equals.

How about this instead: “You are incredibly good at making money. I’m incredibly good at making change. The change I want to make in the world, unfortunately, does not itself generate much money. But man oh man does it make change. It’s a hugely important change. And what I know about making this change is as good and as important as what you know about making money. So let’s divide and conquer – you keep on making money, I’ll keep on making change. And if you can lend some of your smarts to the change I’m trying to make, well that’s even better. But most of the time, we both keep on doing what we’re best at, and if we keep on working together the world will be a better place.”

One of the other points Dichter makes is that storytelling is more a skill than a talent and I think communicating the sentiment in an effective manner would take cultivated skills. There are already organizations using this approach except they are saying, you make money, you keep giving me the money and don’t pry too much about what I am doing with it.

It occurs to me that if you are approaching fund raising as evangelizing rather than as a necessary evil, you aren’t waiting for people to ask but rather reporting back before being asked. I am certainly in a better mood when I am writing to our donors about our successes than I am filling out the final report forms for a foundation. The format of the first allows you to tell people what events you perceive as progress. The format of the second forces you to try to recast your success according the the criteria by which the foundation is measuring progress. Something tends to get squeezed and lost when you try to stuff your excitement into the box provided.

View From The Other Side

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Where Are These People Coming From (And Why Aren’t They Attending My Shows?)

Being around theatres for so long, it is easy to become jaded and forget just how wondrous the on stage perspective of the audience seating area can be for people. Over the last few weeks we have had an inordinate number of tour requests. I have easily given more pleasure tours (vs. perspective rental tours) in that period than I have in the previous three years.

Don’t get me wrong, as I have noted in previous entries, I relish any chance to show the facility and brag about it. I certainly welcome the opportunity to increase awareness of our activities. It has been a great time to have tours due to all the activity surrounding our upcoming production. Actors, props people and carpenters have talked to tours about their backgrounds and what they were doing for the show. Even when no one else was around and I had to go turn the lights on in preparation for the tour, there has still been so much hanging or laying around to point to and ignite imaginations.

So Strange and Exotic

But what has never failed to impress people is stepping out on to the stage. As we move from the scene shop on to the stage people catch sight of the hemp fly system which seems strange and exotic to them. If the wings are filled with props and equipment, they catch sight of this as well and get a chance to see through the illusion of what appears otherwise from the audience.

At some point, they end up seeing the audience seating from the stage and for many, this reversed perspective is the most exciting part of the tour. I usually make sure to take people out into the audience area so they can see how much of what was apparent while standing onstage suddenly disappears from their view. Again the realization of how much of the illusion is preserved by distance and limitation of sight lines is often intriguing to people.

A View From The Bridge

Then there are a few choice groups who get to clamber up above the stage to the loading rail of the fly system, across the catwalks over the audience seating area and up above the lighting gird to look down 70 feet to the stage below. That introduces a whole different set of sensations for many people.

Two years ago our technical director took people up on to the roof of our stagehouse and showed them the expansive vista available from that vantage point. Ever since then one of the tour participants as been looking for an excuse to get up there again. A recent conference he organized gave him that excuse. While most chose not to climb out on to the roof, just about everyone was intrepid enough to climb above the grid. The conference organizer pulled me aside yesterday and told me how everyone appreciated the opportunity and how excitedly they spoke about their experience.

I guess it says something about how interesting the experience is that someone would schedule a break in a meeting include a tour of your facility. With that sort of investment in my theatre, I am going to make sure I keep lines of communication open with this guy so that he is always able to advocate and talk about us whenever he is so moved.

It’s Also Greener Over the Septic Tank I Hear

Certainly it is partially a matter of the grass being greener in your neighbor’s yard or one person’s garbage being another’s treasure. For those of us working in these buildings, the space represent challenges. There isn’t enough room in the wings or on the fly system battens to accommodate everything we need to for the show. On the other hand, we would love if the building were smaller so we didn’t have to go so far to change the lamps and gels in the lighting instruments.

For visitors, ours is a mystical land. I know from conversations with the groups, for many it is their first time setting foot in a theatre much less on or backstage. They hardly have any context by which to process the experience much less recognize the limitations we deal with everyday.

Monkeys to the Left of Me, Monkeys to the Right

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I usually talk about the activities of my theatre in vague terms but I am really getting excited about the way an event is unfolding for us. This November, the drama department will be performing a version of Journey to the West adapted for the stage by Mary Zimmerman. If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you will know that the drama director is quite enamored of Zimmerman’s plays. This will be the fourth we have done in five years.

Journey has been a play he has wanted to do for a while now. A few years ago he was accidentally (we assume) put through directly to her agent who gave the director the impression that Journey was his favorite of all Zimmerman’s plays. Whether the agent said that or not, the director resolved to do the show. The problem was, the play was not in print so an appeal to Zimmerman directly was needed and much to our delight, she granted permission.

If you aren’t familiar with Journey to the West, it is essentially as much a cornerstone of Asian culture as the Odyssey is for Western cultures. Nearly every Asian country has their own name for the central figure of the Monkey King. The influence on popular culture is vast. This year’s Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li and Jackie Chan is based on it. In 2010 a direct interpretation of the book is due out. Countless anime and manga stories draw from it. At the Charleston Spoleto Festival this year, a stage version was presented with music by Blur/Gorillaz member Damon Albarn. There have been numerous television series based on the story. Just go to YouTube and type in Journey to the West. There are so many options, it is pretty difficult to discern between them if you try to watch contiguous episodes of one series.

What makes the story so appealing is that it is both a tale of rollicking high adventure involving the heroic slaying of fantastic beasts and demons and a medium for discussing Buddhist philosophy. Since we did the Odyssey last year one of the parallels I saw immediately was between Odysseus taking 10 years to get home and the abnormally long time it takes the Monkey King and his party to make it to India. When the monk, Tripitaka, who the Monkey King is accompanying comments on this, the Monkey King points out that their progress is tied to Tripitaka’s ability to cast off his hang ups and approach enlightenment. It occurred to me that Odysseus probably had much the same problem.

In any case, there was a fair bit of excitement brewing about this production. One of the contributing factors was the decision that the show would involve tissue work–essentially the fabric climbing that you often see in Cirque de Soleil shows. One the hope of being cast, people were taking tissue workshops this summer on their own dime. Once people were cast, they were required to complete a minimum amount of training if they hadn’t already.

This is pretty serious work so people are training and working out every day for the next two months to strengthen themselves and refine their technique. The great thing is, this is adding to the excitement and energy backstage. It was too appealing to pass up so I asked someone to start taking candid pictures of the process so I could put them up on the website and in email messages to subscribers.

Here’s a little of what we got-

goofy.jpg

swing round.jpg

monkey hang.jpg

All photos, Julia Dunnigan

Must…Listen..To..Classical…Music…

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About a month ago I was attending a cocktail hour with other arts professionals a gentleman expressed concern to an orchestra administrator over the fact that he didn’t get classical music. He figured that as he got older, one day classical music would click for him but it hasn’t and he didn’t know why.

The answer the administrator gave didn’t really impress me. It is a tricky question to be sure, but she didn’t seem to be trying to convince him to attend or even offer suggestions for how to prepare ones self to attend. But I think a lot of arts organizations, regardless of genre, fail in this regard. That wasn’t what I wanted to address today anyhow.

Even though his comment carries the implication that classical music is only for older people, it also suggests that he sees enjoying the music as a sign of maturity. He seems to feel it is part of his development as a person and is a little concerned it hasn’t clicked for him. That he wants to like classical music may be reason for optimism if it is an indication of a sentiment that permeates the culture.

If it does, then that means there is still something that classical musical organizations can appeal to if they can figure out how to address the unease of not liking something you figure you should. The guy I was talking with was only 40 something so addressing the concerns he and his cohort have can go a long way in skewing median audience age younger.

I really don’t know what the answer is. I am essentially in the same camp of wanting to like the music more but not really able to get invested in it yet. Not finding the answer will represent a missed opportunity. This assumption that one should become more involved with classical music as one gets older may only be generational and a result of values passed to us by our parents. There is no guarantee that this idea is sitting as a subtle compulsion in the subconscious of the next generation.

Fuzzy Definitions

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During his talk prior to the design charette for Performing Arts Center Eastside, Alan Brown cited the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown apparently has access to the raw data which is not listed in the NEA report. The answers Brown lists from the survey may cause you to question the results of the surveys you conduct.

Brown lists an admittedly small excerpt of the verbatim responses to the question: “What was the last “classical music” concert that you attended?” Among the answers listed are Tito Puentes, The Stompers, Showboat with Tom Bosley, Music Man, King and I and Oliver.

For the question, “What was the last “opera” that you attended,” Phantom of the Opera appears five times along with Les Miz, Brigadoon and “It was on Broadway” (remember, these are recorded verbatim).

Not having access to all the raw data, I have no idea what percentage of the answers these represent. As I suggested, it does make you wonder when people answer surveys that they enjoy and want to see more classical music or opera, if your concept of classical music/opera is the same as theirs. These results are from 10 years ago so I wonder how much less significant these categories are to people these days.

I also wonder if there isn’t a constructive way to make use of this situation. By and large people attending a performance have absolutely no idea if the hosting organization is for profit or non-profit (and a foggier notion of what that may mean). They aren’t there to support their favorite non-profit, they are there because they enjoy the product. They may feel a loyalty and trust in the organization but it might not have any relation to the tax status.

With this in mind, would it be a benefit to arts organizations to de-emphasize classical and opera and focus on the idea that they produce great performances? You wouldn’t want to abandon the label altogether or misrepresent what you were offering because you would alienate people who did know the difference between opera, classical music and musical theatre (or ballet, modern, jazz; Shakespeare, Miller, Godot, etc) The Philadelphia Orchestra isn’t going to get away with advertising a concert as their latest remix of that rockin’ composer of the 20th century, Rachmaninoff. Unless, of course, they do treat his music to a remixing, the nuances of their interpretation vs. another orchestra’s will hardly constitute a remix.

Acknowledging that people don’t care how performances are categorized as long as they have an enjoyable experience changes the way you market performances. If the definition of classical music is rather nebulous, the fact that the violinist received a Pomme Rouge when they were 17 is nearly bereft of meaning. (As it should be, my mother was giving me pommes rouge before I was 5 years old.) Marketing has to focus on why someone will enjoy the performance and not overly concern itself with convincing someone they like the organization’s definition of classical music or whether the recipient likes classical music at all.

This probably sounds strange because the performance is of the organization’s definition of classical music. But what I am getting at is that the focus shouldn’t be on telling everyone what a great and important guy Beethoven was. Certainly, mentioning Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 is a waste of column inches in a newspaper for all the influence it is likely to have. Telling people they will enjoy it because the opening motif is one of the most recognizable phrases in the world and has been appropriated and integrated in numerous compositions since can be convincing. The idea that it is Death knocking at Beethoven’s door is certainly compelling.

I know that this is pretty much discredited but that is the story Pat Conroy tells students in The Water Is Wide. I first read the book 20 years ago and that fact has stuck in my mind since. If the piece can inspire excitement in poorly educated students who were entirely unaware of classical music, what impact will it have on people who are marginally or generally aware of it? Even more importantly, the kids didn’t know classical music to know if they liked it or not. I’d bet they would have categorized Beethoven alongside any other piece of well played music they came across.

Of course, the water flows both ways in regard to this sentiment. When asked if they liked opera, someone might say they liked Phantom but didn’t really care for The Magic Flute. A good experience with what they think is opera, classical music, Shakespeare (but really Oscar Wilde), won’t guarantee liking the “real” thing. Nor may it inspire experimentation even if they equate Phantom with opera due to simple lack of name recognition.

So what I am saying is, just put the information out there telling people why they will enjoy a performance and let them decide if they will or not. In some respects, if people are defining what might traditionally fall in a Pops concert (Marvin Hamlisch, Burt Bacharach) as classical music, it could help, however marginally, to gently dissolve the barriers of definition and include familiar pieces like Beethoven’s 5th. The 1812 Overture certainly hops back and forth across this fence. Bugs Bunny helped turn classical music into pop music. Perhaps there is something to be gained by tossing the Blue Danube Waltz into the pops. I still associate that piece with the cartoon of swans swimming behind their mother (starting around 4:15 in this video) And who can forget “Kill da Wabbit” and “Spehwur and Magic Helmut” from “What’s Opera Doc?”

Opera Has Sex Fiends? Sign Me Up!

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This week the readers of England’s Sun tabloid got the opportunity to attend the opera for between $13 and $52 where the tickets generally run around $175. The Sun announced the opportunity back in July. People had to buy the paper one Sunday to get details so they could enter a lottery for tickets. At the time, there was a bit of negative reaction (note this one is on rival paper, The Guardian) with people decrying it as an ineffectual move since those who normally read the sensationalistic Sun were not the type to return to the opera at regular prices. Some opined that those who liked the regular misogyny exhibited on Page 3 would hardly appreciate high culture.

But the opera in question, Don Giovanni, seems ready made for those who read of the peccadilloes of young lotharios on a daily basis.

In something of an inversion, the unrefined masses got a night in Covent Garden while afficiandos had to satisfy themselves with a simulcast at a movie theatre chain…or wait until another night. (Actually, this characterization makes it sound like a reversal of the usual. In fact, unlike the Metropolitan Opera, this was the Royal Opera House’s first simulcast.)

If you watch the video accompanying the BBC article , you will see the reactions were mixed. Some had a wonderful time and will come again. One woman said it was a nice evening but she wouldn’t hurry back. Another woman listed her concerns over the high cost of attendance (transportation, food) even with the reduced prices. Then there is the guy at the end who proudly proclaims he read the The Guardian.

This illustrates that even when offering reduced tickets, you have to be prepared to answer concerns and motivate people to attend again above and beyond the quality of your product. There was one man quoted in the article as he left at intermission because the seats were uncomfortable.

“We left because it was rather cramped,” said Mrs Tweedy.

“It’s not a reflection on the opera – it was amazing. The voices were great and the lighting was fabulous, but there was a gentleman who decided to share half my seat with me.”

Mr Tweedy said: “It was my first time at the opera – it was ok but after an hour and a half sitting in a cramped seat it was getting a little bit too long for me, but I’d go again.”

This put me in mind of the Urban Institute study on arts attendance I cited a couple years back which found that the two elements that people said would cause them to decide not to attend a performance at a venue again were not having a good social experience and not liking the venue.

It is impossible to say now whether the man will indeed attend again or not despite his experience. Covent Garden has a certain cachet which can’t be overlooked. If this had happened at a less famous facility, perhaps the judgment would have gone against the opera.

Audience Theory

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As wonderful an opportunity it was to influence staff workplaces, those of us in the PACE advisory group still understood that the success of the building would be in how comfortable audiences were interacting with the space. When I was preparing to travel to Bellevue, I was mindful of Andrew Taylor’s observations wandering around the streets of Denver at the National Performing Arts Conference that

“block after block of glass or stone walls at the street level, many of them without a door (at least an open one) for hundreds of feet at a time. As a result, there are very few people populating the street, stopping to talk with each other, people watching, lingering, and realizing they’re in an urban streetscape of diversity and energy.”

I approached the facility design with the intention of insuring the building appeared engaging to foot traffic since there are quite a few residential complexes being constructed nearby.

The importance of physical design was actually reinforced for me as we walked to the meeting with the architects. About four-five blocks from the future PACE site, we passed a small area next to the sidewalk with hedges and benches. There was a sign noting that the area was open for public use. I would have never known that because of the way the hedges and a short set of ascending stairs lent it a sense of being private property. Because of this they had to essentially grant people permission to enter.

But to back up a little…. I had mentioned earlier that Alan Brown made a presentation on the value of live performance. Obviously, it is in relation to the audience’s experience that his thoughts are most applicable. It wasn’t until after his presentation that I realized how significant a moment in the design process it had been. The architects and project manager had never really had these ideas addressed in connection with their work before and so were pretty attentive and taking notes. The same was true for a couple board members who were present.

Of the concepts he covered, a number of them caught my attention. The first was his suggestion that interactive experience the Nintendo Wii offers predicts one day being able to virtually perform with Pilobolus. Since he is the first person I have met who has advanced this idea since I began promoting it in 2004, he instantly endeared himself to me.

He also addressed the situation where people were waiting longer and longer to buy their tickets. He spoke of a focus group where he basically discovered young people were afraid to buy a ticket until the last minute because committing to one option closed the door on all the other possibilities. I wondered if this was an element of Generation Y’s problem with decision making.

He said he asked them to describe what they would envision as a perfect jazz club. They said it would be a coffee house during the day but a bar at night with a separate room where those who wanted to be full immersed in the music could go. However, there would also be an anteroom where people could talk with friends and still listen to the music and still another anteroom where people could interact with friends more and listen less.

It seems like a tall order to design a building to provide this experience. However the impression I took away from what Brown had to say was that people at every age really desire an experience at an intermediate stage between listening to a recording and fully attending a formal concert. He described this as a place to drop in and hang out and get more information. One suggestion he made which he certainly did not represent as encompassing all possibilities was having kiosks in the lobby where one could try all sorts of new music. (I imagined something like the listening stations in record stores.) Having a DJ mixing in an area surrounded by comfortable lobby furniture.

Alan Brown’s presentation had a tangible effect on the discussions that followed. The building design already allowed for many of the activities he mentioned so conversations revolved around the possibilities. This is fortunate because if Brown is right, there might be an increased necessity of having such a space as venue for value added benefits. Acknowledging that there are some people who are voracious for an educative experience, Alan Brown proposed that while arts organizations gave education away for free as part of their mission, he suspected people would pay a premium for a private, executive briefing on events.

I have read and heard suggestions that were related to the core idea behind this. There are some complexities to this that I haven’t fully considered so I don’t quite know what I think about this. I suspect for some communities and organizations, he is right on the money with this idea.

As you might imagine from the thought the PACE administration put into the staff work areas, there had been some investment into the design of the public areas as well. As I already mentioned, the layout lends itself to sponsoring some of the programs and features Alan Brown suggested. Some other notable concepts they had were arranging the ticket office so one’s experience was more akin to interacting with a concierge than a reinforced security checkpoint. They have also looked into situating the restrooms so that the lines at intermission don’t become the half time show.

Our advice seemed to be viewed as insightful and even viable within the overall plan and budget. I am demurring on many of the details because so much is undecided at this stage in the game and I don’t want to create any unwarranted expectations about the ultimate result. Participating in the process was very exciting and engaging. While our status as outsiders lent some weight to our observations, Alan Brown’s occasional, but well timed comments lent some reinforcement.

Believe it or not after all this writing, I still have some additional observations to make! My next entry will have some really basic suggestions for those who might want to replicate this exercise.

(Details of this entry have been altered since the original posting to comply with confidentially agreements)

Media Using The Masses

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It appears as if the mainstream media has gone from glaring at bloggers to embracing some user generated content, perhaps at the expense of their employees. I am beginning to suspect some outlets have realized they could tap in to people’s desire for 15 minutes of fame as long as things ran through an editor for quality control. About a year ago, I started seeing the press releases I sent to the arts editor appearing verbatim in the neighbor specific inserts of the newspaper. I would still get a calendar or photo listing in the paper proper and maybe even a feature story if I was lucky. I have had my releases appear verbatim in smaller weekly papers, but this was the first time it was happening in a major daily.

A little later a mechanism appeared on the newspaper website encouraging people to submit stories of their own. Then a heck of a lot of people were laid off at the paper. I don’t know if there was a casual relationship or not, but I began to wonder if my attempts at promoting my events was contributing to pink slips being issued.

Last night I saw a promo on television announcing a new program the station news department was starting involving citizen contributions. There was nothing on the website despite their encouragement to check it out for more information. I think it had something to do with weather. I wouldn’t be surprised if some point in the next five years they started soliciting people to submit video reports.

Last month Salon.com started Open Salon where they will actually pay people for creating content.

What does this mean for you?

Well first, people may expect more opportunities to interact and contribute in your events.

Second, you may never know when the newspaper critic is coming because it could be anyone in the audience and a totally different person from last time. On the other hand, if you have a popular show you may hear from 10 people who intend to review your show for the newspaper and want free tickets (and still have an unknown 11th person’s critique printed).

I also imagine that some artists will anticipate expectations and you may find the type of shows they create/offer for performance at your venue beginning to evolve. I have spoken about how people may not be content with the passive experience sitting quietly in a dark room watching a show any longer. As much as I expect audiences to demand more, I also expect artists to start to provide more. As always, some will do it better than others.

In the short term though the implications of media outlets using exactly what you send them are that you better be making a compelling case for attendance. No longer are you trying to convince a writer your event is worthy of a feature story or review and depending on them to conduct interviews and recast your event in an interesting manner. Now what you write has to do both these things. You may not have the alternative of writing two releases, one for the editor and one for publication as is. I have had an editor take a single press release, assign a reporter to follow up to generate a story and forward it to be printed verbatim by the newspaper. It happened at least three times last year.

If you don’t know how to start writing compelling entries, you may want to check out my entry here. Because Artsjournal.com has changed the way they address their archives, those links to Greg Sandow’s blog don’t work any more. However, if you go to the May 25 -June 15, 2005 entries on his blog, you can probably find them without too much effort.

What Value The Compact Disc?

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Occasionally it is healthy to revisit daily rituals and practices to evaluate if they are still pertinent. For example, every time I go on a trip I clean all my CDs out of car and leave the little door on the CD holder open to show that there are no CDs in my car. It recently struck me that in the time since I bought the car several years ago, the value of CD as a format has dropped so precipitously that no one really wants to break into my car to grab them. In fact, they probably didn’t want to when I bought the car either but the iPod has gone from competing to almost default format in that time.

Realizations like this make me re-examine stuff in my professional life including policies we have set for ticket purchases/exchanges, seating, volunteers, rentals and whatever else comes up. Because we have always done it can’t be the default excuse for continuing to do something. In many cases, because we did it last year might not be valid either as behaviors and values change so quickly.

On the other hand, just as there are still people desperate enough for the few bucks they might get for my CDs at the local record exchange, the cost of someone abusing the lack of a policy might still outweigh the benefit of eliminating it.

There Are No Secret Codes

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I received an interesting report in the mail this week created in partnership between the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA and Jacob’s Pillow Dance. The book, Presenting Dance, written by Mindy N. Levine discusses conversations that transpired at the National Dance Presenters Leadership Forum at Jacob’s Pillow between 2002 and 2006. Unfortunately, none of this is online for me to link to or even cut and paste from putting us all in danger from my typing skills.

As always, there were a number of things that piqued my interest and few, if any, could be exclusively applied to dance. A large part of the book was devoted to audiences and how presenters and dance companies could promote and design their offerings, including activities ancillary to the main of a performance, to better serve/connect with them.

It was decided that there are four curatorial approaches when it comes to exposing audiences to new works as a presenter; “A to B”, “A and B”, “A or B” and “Mini Festival”. A to B is essentially starting with accessible works and building toward more challenging works over the years. A and B is referred to as the loss leader approach, letting the more popular show cushion the loss of the less popular. A or B assumes people aren’t familiar enough with dance on the whole to discern between challenging and accessible. In this case, you just program what you find compelling and essentially do a lot of work promoting and educating. The suggestion here seems to be to have a sense of how you want to position your organization. The mini-festival approach is where the presenter concentrates dance events along with promotion and education efforts within a short period of time.

I want to back up to the A to B approach. Some of the problems the book points out with this approach is that sometimes the presenter underestimates their audience and thinks they are never ready to be challenged. Likewise, the audience may actually be more receptive to the challenging work than that of presumably more accessible pieces. Finally, some commented that sometimes the community never evolves past the starting point.

One of my first thoughts when reading the A to B approach was of a post Neill Roan made back in 2006 about the high rate of churn arts organizations experience with audiences. Even if the overall attendance numbers look stable, those attending this year may not have been attending two years ago and so may be at square one in their dance/theatre/visual art/music experience whereas your programming is at square five the planned progress.

There was actually one other type of approach discussed, “More is Better.” Related somewhat to the festival approach, it involves programming as much and as diversely as possible (of dance in this case.) The hope is that familiarity will breed attempt and people will be more willing to experiment.

“People don’t decide never to eat out again because they have one bad meal in a restaurant,” said a participant. But audiences often engage in a kind of “one-for-all” thinking with regard to dance; they see one dance performance they don’t like and, in the absence of evaluative context, dismiss the entire discipline.”

There is a quote from John Dewey at the beginning of a chapter in this book that probably should appear at the top of the page or as the first slide of a power point presentation for people who are intimidated or anxious over their ignorance of any art form.

“It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing anything about flowers theoretically.”

One participant in the discussions suggested turning things around on people and asking them what they do for a living. “Make them realize that you probably know nothing about their job, but that doesn’t necessarily make you feel globally stupid.”

The participants came up with a list of ways to help audiences engage.

-1) There are no “secret codes.”
-2) Trust your instincts and the work.
-3) Ambiguity can be a source of aesthetic pleasure – Essentially, people are used to movement being intentional and dance frequently is not. Enjoyment can be derived from interpreting for yourself.
-4) There are multiple ways of understanding
-5) There is value in aesthetic dissent- You don’t have to like everything you see.

One of the most valuable sections in terms of making dance more intellectually accessible to audiences is in the “Tools of the Trade” in the Cultivating Aesthetic Literacy chapter. This is really where I wish I could link to this online because there is far too much to cut and paste much less type. But I will try to give a taste here.

The chapter suggests presenting different ways for audiences to approach a dance piece, with a Journalist’s Eye, Anthropologist’s Eye, Linguist/Grammarian Eye and Colleagues and Conversation. Now I think using these terms with audience members probably will add to their anxiety but the suggestions in each area are geared toward getting people past “I liked it,” “I didn’t like it,” or “I didn’t understand it” and on to discovering why.

For the Journalist’s Eye, they suggest Who, What, Where, When, How questions to help lead to answering Why or Why Not it was good. Some examples deal with what body parts are moving, how speed changes over time, if movement is synced with the music, what connections to everyday activities can be made, how does it make you feel emotionally and physically, what is known about the choreographer and company?

For Anthropologist Eye, the audience approaches dance as if it were an unknown culture being discovered. An attitude which may actually fall closest to the mark. Questions suggested in this area might be whether men move differently from women, if movement is in isolation or groups, are their forces that bring people together or separate them, are there rules applied to the movement and if so, are they flexible or rigid?

When Linguist/Grammarian Eye was used as an exercise, participants wrote adjectives about how they felt, verbs describing the movement and adverbs about the quality of the movement. The book suggests that this exercise can be useful for people involved with the arts to “generate evocative and specific language with which to discuss work.” If people start moving away from using “electrifying” to describe their work, that is all right with me.

These approaches aren’t necessarily prescribed for novices and can be used at different levels of experience with an art form. Colleagues and Conversation is listed as a tool in professional development among people in the dance field where they talk about performances among themselves to help cultivate their own aesthetic literacy.

What I have severely summarized here is only the first 18 pages out of about 50 pages of observations and ideas. Some of the other chapters deal more with the challenges dance companies face in developing and performing their work. And of course, the challenges presenters face supporting and employing dance companies are also addressed.

Tonight I wanted to cram some of the audience development issues in my entry because tomorrow I am handing the book to my assistant theatre manager so we can have a conversation about what practices might be viable for our community. I hope to come back to the text at a later date but really wish it was available online so I could continue to comment while the ATM reads it.

My Butt in the Seats of Your Neighborhood Stage

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This weekend I was a guest on the Your Neighborhood Stage podcast. (July 14 episode, number 3.21). The folks over there let me talk for a real long time on a lot of issues. In the course of the conversation, I promoted the iPod idea I had blogged on before. I had listened to some of their earlier podcasts to get a sense of what I was in for and one of the on going issues they have discussed is inverting the idea that “all good things must percolate down from Broadway.” They were trying to find a way that things could be developed at a local level and percolate up in much the same way niche interests suddenly explode into popular consciousness via YouTube.

It occurred to me that while local theatres couldn’t really hope to get anything on Broadway via the current development path, they could be the place where the innovations that reinvigorate the performing arts are cultivated. As I note in my interview, the stakes are pretty high on Broadway but somewhat less so on the local level. (Not to understate the impact of even small financial losses on local theatres.) But with the rise of Pro-Ams (Professional Amateurs) who have both passion and increased access to technology, there exists the potential for great things to result from unorthodox approaches and experimentation.

There were some other issues we discussed like censorship in a production of Ragtime near Chicago, copyright infringement in an Akron production of Urinetown (the earlier case from the 90s I refer to is L! V! C! in Boca Raton- covered in NY Times, 8th paragraph down) and whether bloggers who review can be sued for defamation.

If ever you wanted to hear my voice, albeit a little distorted (my fault, mostly) or simply just want to sip at the fount of my wisdom in audio form, give it a listen.

Oh, I just also note. When co-host Staci Cobb was praising me and said “Go You!” I thought she said “Go UF” and was tweaking me as a Florida State University grad by cheering on the University of Florida. It is only as I listened to the podcast that I realized I misheard her. I am sure both hosts were a little perplexed when I joked about her razzing me.

Suffering Your Own Penalties

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Via Arts and Letters Daily, there is an intriguing article in Reason Magazine about how penalties for undesirable behavior can actually result in more poor behavior if people perceived paying the penalty as license to continue.

Citing a study in Science, Ronald Bailey gives the example of six Israel day cares who instituted a fee to penalize people who pick their children up late. Instead of solving the problem, this made it worse.

According to Bowles: “The fine seems to have undermined the parents’ sense of ethical obligation to avoid inconveniencing the teachers and led them to think of lateness as just another commodity they could purchase.”

The same thing happened in an experiment in Columbia. Researchers were conducting a game where people were involved with divvying up forest resources. The results of many scenarios reflected concern for the resources and other users until a situation that simulated government control fined those who overused their alloted share. People felt paying the fine justified pursuing their short term interests rather than the interests of the whole.

I tried to think of ways the arts might be providing disincentives for their audiences to act in the interests of the organization, audience or community through what they perceive to be penalties. I haven’t really thought of anything but maybe something will occur to you readers.

First thing that came to mind were the ticket fees we charge for buying tickets online or over the phone but might not charge if people come to the window. Or that we charge a lower price for subscriptions and buying single tickets before a certain date.

But neither of these things seem to create an incentive for people to buy early. I don’t think it creates a disincentive either. I think people are just busy and have changed their buying practices.

Next I wondered if holding people in the lobby for late seating hoping they, (and those they annoy when they are seated), are discomforted enough that they arrive promptly next time might have some unintended consequences. It is easy to foresee that both late comers and those seated are likely to be annoyed by the timing of the late seating interval even if it has reduced 14 potential interruptions to one. No surprise there.

It is likewise easy to anticipate reactions to policies like; No food in theatre, no exchanges or refunds, no video taping and no cell phones. Perhaps no cell phone policies and signal jammers may have caused a rise in texting, (I seem to remember jammers don’t impact texting frequencies, just voice) but even that is not unforeseen. As annoying as the glowing screens can be, it isn’t as bad as having someone pull out their cell phone and say, “Yeah, I am in the theatre. No, no, I can talk,” in the middle of a performance.

So does anyone know of a policy that was meant to control undesirable behavior that has essentially reinforced it? Drop me an email or comment below.

Lots of Summer Fun In The Backyard

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If you were a canny arts administrator (or are a leader of a particularly nimble arts organization) you may have foreseen that high gas prices would be forcing people to engage in staycastioning this summer. If you don’t know what a staycastion is…well good for you. As far as I am concerned it is a sign that most mainstream media outlets don’t have any original ideas or the fortitude to resist parroting others. A staycation is a vacation you spend at home. When I was a kid that is what we called a regular vacation. To listen to the MSM, you would think it was a new cultural movement.

Fortunately, we have the Daily Show to make fun of their silliness.

My grumbling rants aside, the fact people are staying at home provides a good opportunity for arts organizations and communities in general to make citizens aware of the enjoyable resources available in the area. What better time to convince people how convenient seeing a show is during busier times of the year than when they have taken the time to slow down and look around?

So if you had the foresight to realize this window of opportunity was opening maybe you have created incentives to get people in the door or launched a campaign to make people aware of your services. If you haven’t, maybe you are as nimble enough to take advantage of this trend. Sure gas might be just as expensive next summer so you think you can wait. But people might be inured to the cost after a year and be looking to get away.

Or you could be like me and are working in an empty building as everyone takes the vacations and comp time they have earned toiling throughout the last 10 months and would be in danger of having heavy objects fall on your head if you suggested adding new programs over the summer.

Personally, I think that if you are going to have some sort of summer program, it shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. Working cooperatively with the local arts council, chamber of commerce, municipal government, etc., to make people aware of the pleasurable encounters they can have right at home just seems like the most logical step. I think attending a picnic where there is a band/orchestra/puppet show/miscellaneous performance happening as the sun sets and the baseball game wraps up embeds itself deeper in the memory as a pleasurable experience than attending a slew of First Night performances. Ah, I am feeling a little laconic just thinking about it.

Next summer isn’t really too late. I pretty much said that in order to motivate those who can mobilize this year. Start working on next summer now. See if you can get local government involved. It is a great PR opportunity for your mayor to stand up as the winter starts to break next year and say, “Hey, we know you ended up hanging around town last summer. This coming summer we are going to make you happy you did and proud of your community by offering you X, Y, Z activities in cooperation with all these organizations and businesses in our community.”

Heck, there is an election coming up. If the people in office aren’t helpful, talk to the people running against them about your idea. They can get up and talk about how they empathize with those facing high gas prices and how they planning programs to enhance the value of living in the community.

Donors With Baggage

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There was a short piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website about fund raising (subscription required). What caught my eye was some of the insights it provided about how people money and the act of donating it. The story cites Laura Fredricks, a former fundraiser for Pace University and Temple University, who addressed attendees at Fund Raising Day in New York 2008 last week.

Much of what I read and heard at conferences about fund raising primarily deals with strategies for developing a relationship with a donor and convincing them to support your organization. In some respects, much of the advice has been similar to what is given in regard to dating. Some of the advice is a little aggressive and cutthroat and some advocates a more practical and sensitive approach. (Of course, there is also the “be content being single” camp but that philosophy doesn’t quite work in fundraising.)

In any case the advice generally focuses on a somewhat formulaic planned approach. Just as dating tips rarely acknowledge that other people have the baggage of past dating experiences which will impact the relationship you are trying to cultivate, I rarely hear/read a similar acknowledgment in connection with fund aising.

One of the anecdotes mentioned in the story was about a wealthy developer who never gave more than $1,000 at a time to Temple. When Fredricks asked why, she discovered that even though he could afford to give more, he harbored fears about running out of money that went back to his childhood.

She recognizes that the people who ask for money like presidents and trustees also have varying degrees of comfort with the subject. “They should be treated the same way donors are—as individuals with different emotions about money—and given simple requests, she said. Instead of giving a reticent board member a list of prospective donors, Fredricks suggested starting out with the names and biographical information of two current donors and then asking the trustee to call them to say thank you.”

Back when I was fresh out of grad school I remember having a conversation with someone about fund raising. I don’t quite remember who it was but the comment was made that you couldn’t ask someone to make a large contribution of money until you had made a large contribution yourself. The idea was that if you had done so you could empathize with what motivated someone to donate that much to something they believed in and could also understand how making such a donation impacted their standard of living.

At the time a $50 would have had dire consequences on my standard of living so I really wasn’t ready to do serious fund raising at that point in my career. Some of the other advice given at the Fund raising Day in New York meeting actually revolved around this idea. One person suggested requesting large donors make the ask for similarly large gifts.

One last tip that caught my eye which might be rather difficult for some arts organizations to embrace given perennially precarious financial straits. “Don’t show your desperation, no matter how far you are from hitting your goal. You’re not raising money to keep your organization from going out of business.” Yeah, right! That little bit of advice came from Michael Margitich, senior deputy director for external affairs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The approach he said he used while at Columbia University was “he was raising additional funds to ‘maintain our level of excellence.'”

Sometimes I Feel Like A Fatherless Color

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I don’t know how it found its way to my backstage, but I came across a booklet from Apollo Design that really show the company has a sense of their customer’s needs and seek to add value to their products. They have what they term Playbooks which provide a scene by scene break down with gel and pattern suggestions of some of the most popular plays high schools and community theatres perform.

They admit that the options they offer are among the safest choices a lighting designer can make. They also can’t offer guidance about placement of instruments and intensity of light since they can’t know the needs of every theatre. But for the high school teacher who has volunteered to direct the fall play and knows nothing about choosing gel colors, the booklets can remove quite a bit of anxiety. Even if you aren’t directing any of the plays they cover, you can get a sense of how the design theory you might read in a text book has been put into practice in specific instances.

You can download pdf versions of specific Playbook sections here. As an example of the general guidance they offer, for The Glass Menagerie, the notes state:

“Smoky, red glow” – mentioned in the Amanda and Tom argument scene. The colors should not be malevolent or suggest violence. It should be a subtle indication of frustration and tension”

Another example is in scene 3 the booklet provides guidance for different colors on the fire escape, living room, bedrooms and dance hall.

Although their skills far outstrip those of the people who would use these booklets, my technical crew thought the booklets were a great idea and have been thumbing through them for the last week.

We did get a little chuckle though from their political correct renaming of Bastard Amber, one of the most often used gel colors around. It was created by mistake when a guy was trying to create a batch of regular amber. Bastard Amber ended up being generally a better color choice and more widely used than regular Amber. The two leading gel manufacturers, Rosco and Lee both have the color in their swatch books.

Apollo on the other hand calls the color Fatherless Amber. Given that they have a Dominant and Submissive Lavender, we can’t imagine they are complete prudes.

If you want to have a bit of fun, ask your tech director if you can see their gel swatch books. You can find some amusing names for colors in there. Given that Rosco and Lee have created proprietary colors that the other hasn’t been able to reproduce, you can have fun looking through both. Like some famous painters who have created their own paint shades, lighting designers have asked that unique colors be created for them and so you will find some colors named after notable theatrical folks. Be warned that there are also a lot of mundane boring colors in there as well though you will probably wonder at the contradiction of shades like No Color Blue.

All The Kids Know It Is More Fun To Sit In the Back

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There is a great illustration (in my mind as least) for why arts people need to value learning and be cognizant of what is happening elsewhere in a story out of Orlando. It seems the Orlando Opera Company and Orlando Ballet have decided to try to bump their subscribers out of the balcony and into the more expensive floor seats in an attempt to make that area look fuller and increase revenue.

The subscribers are none to happy and are resisting. Just like the subscribers at the Honolulu Symphony did when the balcony seating prices were both raised and that section closed until the floor section was filled. Just like the subscribers at the Boston Symphony Orchestra did when that organization increased balcony seating prices by 80% in one year. Both Honolulu and Boston backpedaled and admitted the increases were ill advised. I suspect the opera and ballet in Orlando may end up doing the same.

Fortunately, the Orlando Philharmonic hadn’t received the advice the opera and ballet did about changing the pricing structure or this entry would make it seem like orchestras were the only ones making this poor decision. Or at the very least, weren’t doing a good job presenting this new policy to their audiences. I am not sure there is a good way of making such a large change in one year’s time palatable without investing a whole lot of time and money in the campaign.

The Orlando Sentinel article mentions that the opera and ballet had received the results of a study. I wonder who did the study and how they came to the conclusion that subscribers would tolerate this in acceptable numbers. I could believe a study that found people would tolerate a price increase of X amount over what they are paying now. Likewise, I could foresee people grumbling but generally acceding to moving their seats to the floor for the same price if they were told it was a cost saving measure. (Don’t have to pay the ushers for the balconies, perhaps.) It would be a sneaky way to get people out of the seats and raise the prices the following season when you reopen the balcony due to demand. People would probably be rather angered at such a move when it emerged a couple years hence.

I would be rather incredulous at a study that found it would be productive to both displace subscribers and place them in a situation where they were paying more than the previous year. (If anyone knows of a case of the decision succeeding, I would love to know!) I would ask to see the research that back that up and if it didn’t include a fair sampling of my ticket purchasing base, I would be rather skeptical. In other words, I am wondering if they even talked to anyone in those seats. (Or researched how similar decisions played out.) I don’t expect any of them would have answered yes to a question that flat out asked if they would be willing to give up their seats so some extensive communication of the rationale would need to transpire. Which would be a pretty good opportunity to gauge the most effective way to communicate the rationale.

There are obviously too many factors of which I am unaware to make a real judgment about why the decision was made. I feel secure though in stating that their case doesn’t appear to have been communicated well.

Art, The Government Prescription Program

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There is a piece on the online journal, Spiked from Frank Furedi decrying the English government’s prescriptive use of music in their sponsorship of the Music Manifesto. My first thoughts were that this is what comes from positioning the arts as having all these benefits when asking for money. This is further evidence that the authors of Gifts of the Muse in saying the arts were ill served emphasizing these elements over the intrinsic value of the arts. I also thought that it should come as no surprise that governments would be employing music to advance an agenda. This has been happening for centuries from the Medicis to the current day where popular music is used to sell everything from cars to presidential candidates.

Perhaps I have been exposed too much to commercially motivated music, but I had a difficult time envisioning music as a vehicle for seeking and serving Truth. Perhaps it is the lack of this connection to Truth or my inability to see it that can be attributed to what he cites as “impersonal force of the market impinged on the development of art and culture.”

My initial cynicism about his complaints aside, there were a number of observations he made that I hadn’t really considered. For instance, he notes that by valuing who will be attracted by the experience over the art itself, “what really matters is the audience rather than the music that the audience listens to. The question of who sits in the audience, rather then what they hear, shapes official thinking on music today.”

I have seen this myself. Every final grant report I fill out regardless of whether it is privately or publicly funded asks me how many K-12 students were served. Many ask about the racial make up of the audience and if my program was designed to serve specific races or K-12 students. Some ask how the programs reinforce family values and self-sufficiency. I am occasionally tempted to ask how a particular government policy is actually reinforcing these things. The arts shouldn’t necessarily be looked to in order to patch what has been rent.

I do think that arts organizations should be paying attention to who is attending. I am happy not to have to break down my audience into all sorts of demographics for my grant reports. One should always be assessing who is attending and how they are receiving it. Though the identity and number of people attending shouldn’t form the sole measure of success.

One of the toughest parts of Furedi’s complaint to tackle is the idea of accessibility equating to dumbing down. He criticizes music classes.

“Instead of providing an opportunity for pupils to study and learn about music, ‘music-making opportunities’ are often about involving kids in playing around with digital media and pretending to be djs…But frequently the ‘music-making’ approach is praised because it allegedly removes the ‘barriers’ that prevent children from ‘making music’.”

and suggests that the real elitists are,

“the educational and cultural establishment who have so little faith in the ability of children to appreciate and learn about classical music. Their anti-elitism is a populist gesture designed to flatter ordinary folk and reassure them that not much is expected of them.”

The question that emerges in my mind is how to structure an introduction to theatre, music, dance and art to people whose experience with these disciplines has come from movies, television, MTV and Photoshop? Are the activities you intend as a bridge between these experiences and the creative/performing arts underestimating your audience or does it provide necessary context? A contributing factor to activities that do indeed dumb an experience down is the receipents may not view the relevance in the same manner you do. So the bridging activities become the whole program rather than just the initial steps of a larger plan.

For example, does all the art and literature about the transitory nature of life have the same poignancy for people who can create and destroy a visual representation with a touch of a button? How do you cultivate an appreciation for an artist’s technique in mixing colors or composing music when there is software that will correct those flaws? How do you instill a desire for preservation in someone whose criteria for doing so is based on the amount of room left on a memory card rather than what ever quality of composition is apparent on the tiny digital camera or cell phone screen?

I don’t doubt that you can cultivate appreciation and understanding of art in people amid all of these influences. But if they don’t feel it to the same degree or manner as you and your contemporaries do, you may never move beyond a certain point and allow them to develop a more sophisticated understanding. On the other hand, if you don’t take into account that people experience the world differently than when you were their age and proceed to present the discipline in the same manner it was presented to you, you risk alienating people with your insensitivity and general cluelessness.

What is the balance then between presenting an accessible context that is intellectually challenging? It is easy to say that is your goal and just as easy to be diverted from the plan by what seems to be a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism.

Hey You, Why Aren’t You At The Concert!?

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I came across a link last week to a study the League of American Orchestras did. The freshness of the referring page and the fact that my monitor resolution didn’t require me to enlarge the pages too much initially hid the fact that the story came out in January 2004. Thinking it had been published in 2008, I was wondering why Drew McManus and the other bloggers at Inside the Arts hadn’t picked up on it already. For awhile there, I was excited that I might actually be scooping them on their segment of the arts.

Even given the time that has actually transpired since the publication date, the article, Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender, is quite pertinent. One of the toughest groups to survey is the non-attender so the results of any survey of these people are highly valued. And they should be given that it is difficult to find people who don’t attend who are willing to respond. It isn’t as simple a matter as going out during a performance and asking why people aren’t at the show. (Though that does seem like a good place to start now doesn’t it?)

While the results of the survey the story covers are in relation to orchestras, the lessons learned can be applied universally. The median age of these smart, aware people tends to be lower than those actually attending which makes them valuable for that reason alone. They believe they would enjoy attending a concert, but never get around to doing so. Some of the reasons are advertising design which is intimidating to those not in the know (though theatre advertising gets higher points.) Though to be fair, some of the most accessible methods of communication suffered from perception. Said one person who didn’t know orchestra’s had websites, “I mean, they’re playing 18th-century music. I guess I never thought they’d need
a web site.”

In addition to being uneasy about how to dress and act, the Non Attenders are also concerned about not understanding the performance. It isn’t just a matter of not having the experience and vocabulary to comprehend what appears to be a dense, complex work, but also not being as enraptured by the work as everyone else seems to be.

I think this is an important distinction especially in relation to music. In most people’s general experience, not understanding music is not an impediment to enjoyment. Getting lyrics wrong is practically a rite of passage. Listening to music in a foreign language is quite commonplace and the unfamiliarity of the tongue not terribly distressing. Perhaps it is the attendance format combined with lack of reference points, but it appears people tend to feel more at sea attending a symphony. I cite the format as a contributing factor because even if a contemporary foreign language music performance is in a concert hall, there is often an opportunity to groove along with the music and establish a connection that is pretty much not an option in the presence of an orchestra. Or at least the glares will be quick in coming if are feelin’ it enough to roll your shoulders and wiggle a little in your seat.

The article notes that one of the most important groups to an orchestra are the people who initiate the excursion. Though the percentages may be different, this is true for all the arts disciplines. There are always a few who get the ball rolling and organize the outing for rest of their group, even if it is only one other. Making this task easy for that person can go a long way toward filling the seats.

A sidebar that appeared within the article directed me to a website the League has set up to make people more comfortable with the attendance experience. This is something I have been a proponent of so I was glad to see it. Meet the Music helps you find a League orchestra near you. It also offers advice about approaching your first attendance experience. Among the things I appreciated about the site was that while they instructed you not to clap between movements, they also tell you to ignore the people who shush you if you do and acknowledge it is only recently that the practice of not clapping at that point has emerged. I also liked their advice about how to listen to the activity while the musicians warmed up.

The biggest fault I would find with the website is that it’s existence isn’t widely promoted. It has been around 4 years and this is the first I have heard of it. I took a look around at the websites of the members in 15 states and few people include a link to it or anything like it in their education or ticket purchasing sections of the site. In some cases, it is the less prominent orchestras in a state which do a better job linking to the site or have a similar FAQ that is easy to find. The NY Phil and San Francisco Symphony though both have FAQs that were either modeled after or the models for the guide on the League site. (I am having a real hard time finding something on the Philly site though.)

The Way It Used to Be

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We (meaning bloggers and various and sundry arts writers) often talk about how the arts attendance experience was a lot less like the staid and proper process of sitting in a dark room facing a stage. However, other than a few generalizations, we didn’t have much to offer in the way of concrete specifics.

Or at least that has been the case here at Butts In The Seats.

Fortunately, blogger and arts critic Terry Teachout comes to the rescue with an article about the good old days in Commentary this month. Since he addresses piano concerts people who perform or attend such concerts probably have a better idea about some of the things to which he refers. It is clear to the general audience that things were a little looser by today’s standards. There was more embellishment and improvisation even from the composers themselves.

“…British composer Charles Villiers Stanford heard Johannes Brahms play his Second Piano Concerto, he observed that the composer ‘took it for granted that the public knew he had written the right notes, and did not worry himself over such little trifles as hitting the wrong ones. . . . [T]hey did not disturb his hearers any more than himself.'”

Liszt apparently had a urn placed in lobbies and would sit at the piano reviewing the suggestions placed within by audience members and would chat with them between pieces. Audience members, for their part “…thought nothing of applauding not merely between movements, but in order to pay tribute to a particularly well-played passage in the middle of a piece.”

It is dishonest in a sense to talk about “how things used to be” because the reality was that these gentlemen were the popular musicians of their time and everything Teachout cites is no different than attending a contemporary music concert today. Musicians improvise on their own work knowing that the audience is aware of the more perfect version produced in a studio but don’t care that they aren’t playing it exactly like the album. The audience will applaud during the opening notes of the song, after the solo and will sing along. Unless you are the only one singing and are out of tune and drunk, no one generally cares.

Teachout says he is not encouraging a raucous free for all, but a general loosening of some aspects of the experience. I am familiar enough with classical music to be certain, but I imagine I would agree with him. I wouldn’t necessarily want people walking through the aisles hawking oranges while I am watching Shakespeare. The language is so complex and delicious that you need to devote a bit more attention than you would at a Mamet play which, truth be told, has a complexity and deliciousness of language of its own.

It doesn’t take much effort to imagine someone associated with an orchestra would say the same thing about the product they offer. It may have been popular entertainment at one time, but it does require more attentiveness to appreciate these days.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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