Audience Relations

Came across an article today reporting the Rhode Island legislature is considering a bill requiring that breast feeding infants be admitted to theatres for free. The impetus for the bill was a mother who told her representative that “she was required to pay an additional $75 to take her child to a show.”

I found the link to the story when I came across a debate of the story on Broadsheet. The debate is interesting to read simply because the commenters aren’t necessarily those who visit arts sites and thus offer insight into the minds of potential patrons.

And it turns out that…most of the responses are pretty much what you would find on an arts related site. Generally the responses fall into a handful of categories. Some feel that if you are going to an event costing $75, you should know that audience members will insist on having no potential disturbances at all. There is also the view that exposing babies to loud noises, foul language and adult subject matter is inappropriate.

Some feel that mothers need to escape from home from time to time and should be trusted to handle interruptions are they arise. In opposition to this view were people who said they had never considered even tempting fate and did not ever attempt to bring their children to shows. And there were a couple people who pointed out that parents increasingly seem to show bad/lack of judgement about reining in their children’s behavior.

A couple people suggested that theatres build little baby rooms like churches have. The first thing that came to mind was that I didn’t know too many venues with the flexibility to knock out seats in a place appropriate for new mothers (not up a lot of stairs). They would have to be non-prime seats with fair sightlines where the room wouldn’t obstruct other seats (and was soundproofed like nobody’s business). The second thing that occurred to me was that if you have to watch a show through a window frame with the audio piped in, you might as well be watching television for all the experience of live performance you are getting. Of course, that is a matter of an individual’s perception.

A related thought that came to mind- I was wondering if there were any venues out there that charged people for bringing “babes in arms” for any reason other than to provide an incentive to leave the child home. Other than that and insuring the child that was supposed to occupy a lap doesn’t end up in a seat you sold to someone else, I can’t think of any other reason. I imagine that there might be other reasons so I am curious to hear some.

Finally, for those who hate cell phones going off during performances, Marc-Andre Hamelin has created the “Irritation Waltz” which you can hear here courtesy of NPR. (I believe it requires RealPlayer to play.)

I do a lot of talking about what arts organizations should do and what policies they should adopt. People probably correctly assume the truth of the matter but I want to make it clear that if you were to walk into my theatre after reading my entries, you won’t see half of what I suggest being implemented.

Some of my ideas aren’t appropriate in this situation and others we lack the resources to effect. A few are gradually being developed. This year I managed to grow the volunteer corps large enough that I didn’t have to worry if enough would show up for the performances. Our first volunteer thank you event is this weekend. Next year I start my plan to arm them with info about the performances and instill the confidence to employ the material to answer patron questions.

I am not trying to fool myself or anyone else that I am completely walking the walk that I talk. I was clearly reminded of that this past Friday. As I noted earlier, the weekend before last essentially ended the presenting phase of our season. We spent last week changing the website and box office voicemail to reflect our current state. In the process, I had forgotten to mention the student production in the lab theatre on the ticket line voicemail.

A gentleman called my office to complain that if we had performances in the lab, we should have information about it and not have a message saying the season is over. While I know better, there was something about his tone that put me on the defensive and before I knew it, I was saying “But that show isn’t part of the season.”

While this is technically true, I obviously should have listed the performance and would have had I remembered to. The guy on the other end gave a grunt and was silent. I thought he hung up and as I started to hang up myself, I said damn if he isn’t right and I am a stubborn idiot.

Fortunately this was an inner dialogue because I suddenly heard a voice from the receiver. I raised it to my ear and beg his pardon and the gentleman says he will see us the next night and then actually does hang up.

I know it sounds like a 12 step program to say it is okay to make mistakes and try to do better one day at time, but you know it is true. Better to recognize it, develop a thicker skin and give the right answer the next time.

To give credit where credit is due, I thought that the inspiration for this mea culpa entry came from within as I drove home Friday night. I believe, rather, that it was planted subconsciously in my mind. As I made my daily visit to read The Artful Manager, I noticed last week’s entry on The Power of Flaws staring right at me. I didn’t remember reading it, but apparently something sunk in.

I guess I try to do a little practicing of some of the smart thing other people preach, too.

It has recently come to my attention that there is a college course called Audience Connections at Drury University in which my blog is required weekly reading.

After considering the grave danger inherent in my ramblings being used to shape the nascent minds of artists, I was rather pleased and honored.

Ron Spigelman who teaches the class and is also the music director of the Springfield (MO) Symphony, has graciously granted me permission to post some of his thoughts from correspondence we had following his comments on my blog entry.

The purpose and goals of the Audience Connections Class are:

The Audience Connection:
Music, the organic art form that can give a life purpose and fulfillment for the performer and the listener. Right now, little more than about 1 in 10 people in America listens to Classical music, and even less attend live Classical Music performances. This class is an attempt to address this problem directly.

COURSE GOALS:
1. For students to begin to be able to reach out to audiences of all ages with music in a way that makes the art form accessible, fulfilling, visceral, and most importantly, relevant.

2. To understand and implement advocacy and activism through performance and explanation, to audiences who are on the whole without musical training.

3. To learn skills by which to encourage individuals or groups to attend a fine arts performance who have rarely or never done so.

So how does my blog come in? As you might imagine, it is because blogs like mine deal with current events and influences. (They also apparently read Adaptistration and Greg Sandow’s blogs, but I am sure mine is their favorite since it deals with something more than just classical music. And I am sure this little shout out to them won’t hurt either.)

I heartily approve of his integration of blogs and news from Artsjournal.com into class discussions. Of course, it is easy to admire his technique because it is exactly what I would be doing if I were teaching right now.

The way he is conducting class sounds really productive, if only to get students thinking issues inherent to their art and trying to apply it in a manner that will facilitate a relationship with the audience.

We range from arts funding, politics, the argument over the intrinsic versus the instrumental and thanks to the internet our examples are global and most importantly …are happening now!

The students each perform to the class and are coached on connecting. They have to justify their favorite works of art whether they be Pop songs or Paintings and do it from an audience perspective focusing on the personal rather than the analytical.

After Spring break one of them is actually going to cold call some elementary schools and play to the students and interact before he does his jury performance. I am of the firm belief that if all music students did this…then they would appreciate and learn the art of true communication instead of playing 4 years of juries to professors…

The next big challenge for his students is to practice what they have learned in the real world. It is one thing to discuss these subjects among people with whom you have a shared vocabulary and set of values and another to do it with anxious patrons who may loudly declare that classical music sucks because they resent mom for dragging them along.

Ron didn’t mention it, but I would imagine with all my references to Drew McManus’ docent program, (I mean, I mention it so much do I even have to provide a link anymore?), he may decide to have students gain some real life experience and fill a similar role at some Springfield Symphony or the Springfield-Drury Civic Orchestra performances.

My thanks to Brendan Glynn Marketing and Communication Director of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for his comments on my affinity entry from last week.

I had emailed a list of questions to the communications coordinator at the center last week. I don’t know if he passed them on to Brendan or if Brendan just happened upon the entry since he says he is jumping in to the conversation. In any case, he answered all my questions an more. His outline of the plans for the new position in affinity marketing are very interesting.

What was really unexpected were his plans to adopt the approach Santa presented Macys in Miracle on 34th Street and send patrons to his competitors.

“If they are lovers of modern dance, traditional thinking would say not to let our patrons know about something going on at another venue. I disagree. We cannot stand in the way of an enthusiast finding out about a performance in another venue, so why don’t we take the high road and be the first to deliver that message to them. If there is a way we can bring value by offering up their interests to the table, it just helps to build our relationship with those patrons even further. Eventually, some can look to us as the source of information for their theater and entertainment interests.”

Is this sort of idealism foolish or is it going to work like it did in the movie and endear the center to the public? If I am a philanthropist living in Miami, I don’t know if I couldn’t help but be impressed by their boldness.

Also, if other performing groups start sending their seasons to the center for dissemination, it gives the center a better sense of what is out there so they can plan their offerings accordingly.

I will try to remember to check back in a year once they have an affinity person in place and see how things turned out and what changes they are planning to effect. It’ll be interesting to see.

As I continue to ponder and decipher what people are really telling me on their audience surveys, I came across this entry on Neill Archer Roan’s blog, How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.

In his entry, Neill says:

An effective info-mediary must anticipate the informational needs their customers require, then provide it: on-demand. Effectiveness in this role requires not only substantive and informational expertise, but also a clear understanding of the form in which consumers want the information delivered and the channels through which the information feels most accessible and credible.

(He also makes a lot of other valuable observations so go read it. I am just focussing on this idea though.)

Neill’s point here cuts right to the heart of a comment I am trying to figure the answer to-“Why Didn’t You Advertise This?” Now given I get this comment most from people who have attended the event for which they are bemoaning the lack of advertising, obviously something worked to get them in the door.

Often they did see/hear an ad or a story or heard about the show from a friend. The problem they have is that they learned about the show close to performance time and had such a great experience, they are concerned that having almost missed it, they will lose out on something equally great in the future.

I usually try to find out what communication channels are best for reaching them. I ask it on the survey and of course also interview the commenter in my lobby. Many times I discover they read the newspaper/listen to the radio station where the ad ran but they missed it amidst all the other ads and stories in the paper or because they were concentrating on driving or talking on their cellphone when the radio spots ran.

What the patron wants is to have known about the show earlier. The problem is, most of my audience doesn’t make a decision until the last minute so it doesn’t make sense to spend money to promote it earlier. (I often suspect that is the method the worried patron uses as well, but if giving the benefit of the doubt will sell tickets earlier, I am all for it!)

The free publicity opportunities, like calendar websites, I take advantage of in July and list my whole season. The information has been available there and in my brochure since then. The newspapers have also had my calendar listings since around then too, but they don’t list the events until closer to the date when it is actually news. Because the information is categorized so well, people often get information there first even if they missed the ad on the page before.

So how do I communicate effectively with the highly interested person who is not on my mailing list? I have no definitive answers.

It appears my efforts at using opinion leaders in the community as word of mouth advertising has been slightly effective since attendance has been nudging up slightly. But I admit, it is a precarious situation. It is the method I can exert the least control over (which means it probably has the highest level of credibility with the public) so I can’t direct who is reached.

My marketing campaign for my last show was almost entirely word of mouth supported by ticket giveaways on radio shows that played the genre of music of the group I was presenting. I figured I would sell it out so I didn’t plan any print advertising.

We were doing a pretty steady business based on the brochure and word of mouth from August to January. Nothing big, but a steady trickle. Things got better in mid-January when the radio giveaways started. Based on this surge, I expected the show to sell out a week or so before the show. A week out we were only half sold and there were days where almost no one was buying.

Now what I think happened was all the folks who planned ahead had gotten their tickets and the procrastinators were holding true to form. I panicked a little and took out a print ad in the free alternative weekly.

As you might imagine, I need not have bothered. In the last couple days we were deluged and then had people turn up early the night of the performance in hopes some seats would open up.

Just as the word of mouth method was precarious, but ultimately rewarding for me, it probably seems even more so for the person who hears about it at the last minute and fears missing out in the future.

It is upon such fears large mailing lists are built. I still don’t have a dependable channel to reach the other heretofore unreached people to let them know what they might be missing. I am pretty sure no one does or they would be trying to sell it to me. I suspect each community is different so the best solution is cobbled together from existing technologies and methods.

One of the primary rules of surveying people is that you shouldn’t ask a question if you have no intention of acting upon the results. With that in mind, one of the questions on our audience survey asks patrons to make suggestions specifically on areas that are within our power to change.

The specificity of the question doesn’t seem to impede suggestions wholly outside the scope of our abilities to address. A recent suggestion in that space was to have an off-ramp added to the interstate near our building.

Another woman commented that she would have liked to have the opportunity to purchase materials from the performers. I am 98% sure this was written by the woman to whom I explained prior to the show that unlike most of our performers, the group had not brought materials to sell.

While my initial reaction is usually exasperation, I try to figure out what the audience member is really trying to tell me. In some cases, the artists people suggest reveal the fact that people don’t quite understand our mission or that we would have to charge $1000/seat to afford performers and their technical requirements in our small theatre.

The interstate off-ramp is understandable because the theatre is 300 yards from the interstate but the exit is a mile away. You would think an institution of higher education would warrant its own exit, but the campus wasn’t set up with one, alas. (What’s worse, because the interstate is lower than the campus, you can’t see the theatre from it. So while 80% of the population is stuck in traffic in front of the theatre every morning, few could tell you where it is.)

I can also understand the impulse of the woman who wanted some merchandise. She had just seen something she had never seen before, (Indian dance-Nrityagram Dance Ensemble- They are really quite above the level of other Indian dance performers), and felt the need to have something to help her continue processing the experience when she went home.

For all the notes in the program book and the research on the dance form that had gone into our informational lobby display, there was probably a great deal she did not know or understand about what she just saw. I had read all that information and more and many of my assumptions about traditional Indian dance were destroyed in a 20 minute conversation with one of the group members.

This woman didn’t have the benefit of any of that so I can understand that she may have felt a little lost at sea and asked for the only thing she could imagine we could provide that might help her out.

I didn’t get to speak with her as she left though. Maybe she was just an idiot and obstinately refused to accept the fact she couldn’t by a souvenir. Making assumptions like that doesn’t drive me to provide a better experience though.

I was looking at Ben Cameron’s Field Letter over on the Theatre Communication Group’s website today. (It may be replaced by a new letter soon so you may have to click on the Archives link, search for field letter and find the one dated Jan 15, 2006). As I read I began to recognize some ideas that have been bandied about blogs recently appearing in practice.

A couple of examples he cited reminded me of Drew McManus’ docent idea.

“Geva Theatre Center’s (Rochester, NY) pre-talk sessions with actors. An actor is paid a stipend to do this before every performance, as I recall, inviting the audience into the creative ideas of production before they see the play, even giving them ‘teaser’ moments to look for in the play.”

I know that I often come back to Drew’s docent program in my posts, but it really seems like good audience relations to offer guidestones to patrons who may might be experimenting with attendance for the first time.

Another good related example Cameron cites had a couple points that really caught my attention. (My emphasis)

Associate artistic director Sean Daniels of California Shakespeare Theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area writes, “I had at one point thought that marketing Shakespeare to 22-year-olds was nearly impossible, but we went from 1,000 to 3,000 ‘under 30’ tickets in our first season.” This was made possible through a multi-tiered strategy:

–the creation of a group of ambassadors, empowering them to speak for the theatre;
-organizing events marketed towards and created for younger people (‘shindigs’), featuring drinks before and dancing afterwards, but with the play always being the centerpiece of the evening, “not a great evening with a play smushed in the middle”;
-using marketing muscle, through blogs for all artists, so people could have personal conversations with them;
-creating a comprehensive intern program to train 18- to 35-year-old administrators;
-recruitment of under-35-year-olds to the board; and finally, and most importantly,
–making sure “that bringing in young people was not a marketing initiative, but an artistic one'”a shift of the conversation from what young people want to ‘how do we create more points of access to the work we’re doing'”a viewpoint that informs the strategic plan, the board work and more

I included the whole quote because many organizations are desperate to attract younger audiences. There are a couple good strategies here for doing so. I wasn’t sure many people were going to click through to Cameron’s letter so I wanted to present them here.

My first emphasis of course links back to Drew’s docent program.

The second emphasis locked right into Andrew Taylor’s entry yesterday where he cites Neill Archer Roan whose study of audience trends shows that nearly half of an organization’s audience is lost every year replaced by new people drawn to performances by good marketing.

Andrew quotes Neill

“the course of our work, our client organizations have discovered that their marketing departments have effectively acquired new accounts (some in the range of 60% to 70% of audiences as new or re-acquired) while the rest of the organization — most of which has held itself harmless in this dynamic — has failed to retain the audience that marketing has acquired.”

It is great that California Shakespeare Theatre gets the concept that everyone has to work to retain the audience because the turnover numbers were a surprise for me. Though as a point of focus for organizational committment, it does make sense to adopt this approach.

One last note from Ben Cameron
“But these articles raised for me an additional question-are we connecting artists and potential audiences outside of the performance event itself? I’d love to know more about what people are doing in this way. If your theatre is undertaking new strategies, please let me know I’ll report back about what folks are doing.”

If you got something to share, let him know-his email is bcameron@tcg.org.

If you aren’t sure you want to bother a man as busy was Ben Cameron must be with your strategies, email me and I will share here. You are actually likely to see your good ideas posted online more quickly with me after all 😉

As promised, I am addressing some comments from my But Do You REALLY.. entry. Actually, it will be one of the comments today, but that should be enough.

Mitch from the McCallum Theatre makes some provocative statements in the comments section.

A couple of things about the business we are in: 1) 90% of everything that is offered at WAA or APAP, in other words, the arts “marketplace” is crap. 2) 90% of arts administrators can’t tell the difference between what is good and what is crap.

While I wouldn’t completely agree with the 90% figures in both cases, I would say that yes, some of the conference offerings are of a poorer quality than I might expect and there are a lot of presenters out there who aren’t as discerning as they should be.

However, I would say that the quality of performer at conferences is largely due to the fact that many big names don’t have to show up–you will solicit them and technology allows smaller names to make an effective pitch to you in your office. DVDs, faster internet connections, streaming audio and video, email, etc. can showcase performers far better than, well, a 20 minute conference showcase where they lack control of most elements.

While a DVD is no substitute for a good live performance, (otherwise, why book the live performance), it may make more sense to people to forego the expense and time of making a trip to a conference and invest in a quality electronic media package.

As for the arts people with poor eyes for talent, well the self-same technology that makes it easy for performers to solicit bookings from presenters also makes it much easier these days for people to set themselves up as presenters.

What is actually dangerous about this situation isn’t so much that they have bad taste as the fact they lack an understanding of the business and the costs involved. In the last few months I noticed that a group I had engaged last season was returning to appear at a place about 12 times the size of my venue with the expensive union crew to match. We easily sold out our performance, but I had my doubts about filling this new place. On the other hand, the concert was capping off a week of festivities so I figured these folks knew what they were doing.

Yeah, not really.

I found out this week that they were bigger on dreams and assumptions than experience. Some of the coordinators at the venue apparently made some attempts to ground the presenters but they went full steam ahead with the confidence born of ignorance and lost a lot of money.

Anyhow, back to the comment section there. What Mitch writes a little later is most interesting.

That said, it is entirely possible to engage the public in intellegently purchasing tickets to arts events they will enjoy and will be happy to pay for. Once you have the ability to determine what is good and what is crap (and remember only 10% of us can do that), then the rest of the job is just marketing.

Know your market and respond to the needs of your market, and you will be successful…Listen to your customers and you will learn what they want. Program the good (not the crap) from the artists your audience wants, and you will be successful.

Without getting into a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance type discussion of quality, I would argue that good and what your audience wants aren’t necessarily the same thing and many times are mutually exclusive. The aforementioned conferences don’t have to offer good stuff, just what people want to see or can be convinced they want to see.

Just look at Broadway. Most everything there is a retread of an existing story or a revival. Phantom of the Opera just passed Cats as the longest running show earlier this week. I really don’t think the show is all that good. It has its high points, but generally drags through the second act until the sewer scene. The sewer scene itself is only interesting for the spectacle of the fog and rising candles until you get to the confrontations at the end. Yet this is what people will pay to see so that is what is programmed.

I took a look over at the McCallum Theatre to see what constituted good stuff. Right on the home page was Lord of the Dance which has often been the butt of many a joke. Really the strength of that show is mostly the spectacle of seeing 40 people Irish step dance. Having grown up in a highly concentrated Irish community, I can tell you under normal circumstances, watching that sort of dance gets pretty old fast. Honestly, more power to Michael Flatley for finding a way to make it interesting.

It is clearly something people want to see, too. Lord of the Dance and performances of Broadway shows are the only shows scheduled to run five nights. (Correction, I see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme run longer.)

It may sound elitest and cynical, but I have sometimes despaired the fact that I have been involved with productions that are reinforcing the idea that a particular performer is talented rather than just easily marketable. All arts organizations go through that of course. They present the easily sold performances to help underwrite the better, less likely to be attended shows.

Often people know they are buying tickets to the happy, fluffy show with lots of wow and little substance. However, other times people may not be familiar with an artist but they know that the arts center has offered some truly great people in the past and trust that this performer is of that caliber.

This is the situation I hate because these trusting people come in and see a performer whose draw is more image than ability. They don’t quite like the show, but they figure if X arts center is presenting them, and the show was sold out, they are worthwhile and maybe they should buy the CD, etc. This sort of thing only reinforces the whole idea that mediocrity wears the same face as excellence.

In a couple weeks a beauty pageant is renting my facility. I got a call from a faculty member saying her friend wanted to see the stage. It turned out, the friend was the mother of a contestant who wanted to try out her talent piece on stage. The young woman is a figure skater but lacking ice is doing her routine on inline skates. Given that plastic wheels on wood is different than metal on ice she was wise to want to test the surface. (Especially since the stage is 30 years old, riddled with traps and not as smooth as it was in its youth.)

There are obviously some ice skating techniques you just can’t execute on a stage. However, it was interesting that the contestant’s mother was encouraging her to do certain showy things that she acknowledged would have disqualified her daughter in a skating competition. She then asked me if I knew who the judges would be in the hopes that none of them would know ice skating rules.

The question that came to my mind was–are you honestly exhibiting your skill if you would be disqualified in your arena of expertise for doing something simply as a crowd pleaser and not based on practical safety concerns?

It is a tough question to answer since in the arts breaking rules is known as mapping new ground, collapsing preconcieved notions and engaging in activities that will have people calling for your NEA grant to be revoked. Doing crowd pleasers is referred to as responsibly attending to the financial health of your organization.

Don’t you just hate it when your idealism recoils in revulsion at the same time your heating oil company fills up your tank for the winter?

I recently came to the realization that there may be an attitude out there about the arts which is nearly as detrimental as viewing them as elitist and intimidating.

The director of my division resigned so all the area coordinators recently met with administrator who would be essentially overseeing us until a replacement is hired.

The other two coordinators spoke at length about the challenges their areas faced. My turn came and I mentioned the difficulties geography and competition posed for us. One of the other coordinators told me that the solution was simple, if I could get people to come see one show they would come back for the others just like when many students came to take motorcycle safety, they decided to continue with digital media courses.

I was a little annoyed because I seem to constantly have to explain to people the Field of Dreams situation while once true, is not quite so valid any longer. I tried not to sound too exasperated while I pointed out there was a lot more competition for people’s time and income than there used to be.

I also pointed out that her example was a little flawed because motivations to take motorcycle safety and digital media differ. In her terms the only product I had to offer was different varities of motorcycle safety.

In retrospect, I wondered if I shouldn’t be at least grateful that she felt my performances were of a quality that people would naturally want to come back for more. Then I realized, she hasn’t really been to a performance in the last 10 years or so (and she lives on the far end of the theatre parking lot).

So then I am thinking she may just attribute all performances with a sort of mystique and power. This seemed okay because the arts are always trying to convince the public that the arts have value in their lives.

And that is when it hit me–that doesn’t do any good if people aren’t actually adding arts attendance to their lives!

It sort of reminded me of the Just Say No drug campaign of the 80s. Kids would shout “Just Say No” on command, but since that is as far as the campaign went, the kids didn’t internalize the concept and make it a part of their lives.

I am starting to think maybe I need to go back and look at all those surveys I have recently cited where there was a nice response among people saying they they felt the arts were an important part of their lives. I want to go back and compare the percentage of respondents to that question to the percentage of people who actually attended. (Taking a quick look back at my entry on an Urban Institute study, I get the impression they actually scrutinized that.)

To some extent, arts people only have themselves to blame because “the arts are good for you” is a major reason given when people don’t want music cut from the schools or don’t want funding cut for an organization. Certainly, these claims are usually accompanied by statistics showing things like how math scores improve for kids who take music.

On the other hand, sometimes arts people don’t back it up with evidence or are the worst purveyors of this attitude themselves. One of my predecessors in a job I have held told me the story of how she had the opportunity to have a great choreographer’s company perform at the theatre. Wondering if this person’s work might be beyond the local community, she asked around to gauge interest.

She was told how what a coup it would be to have the company, how wonderful to have the opportunity, etc. Dance people especially were quite enthused.

Performance came–dance community didn’t. When my predecessor asked the dance folks why they were so excited and yet didn’t attend, the answer was essentially that it was important for the public to see this choreographer’s works, but they personally weren’t interested.

So two lessons from this-

1) When you ask if people are interested, you gotta explicitly ask if they will show up.

2) If you find they are really more excited about other people seeing the show, you ought to revisit your cost/benefit ratio calculations.

I was reading about a recent Urban Institute study on attendance at cultural events in the Chicago Tribune today. Many of the results weren’t surprising–people go to live performances to socialize and go to museums to expand their knowledge.

What made me want to read the study more indepth was the report that “…attendees at music and dance performances, plays, and fairs were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the art.” Yet at the same time the article mentions that “…people who go to art museums, dance performances, concerts, plays, or arts and craft fairs find the experience less emotionally rewarding than they had presumed.”

I understand that quality of art and emotional reward can exist exclusively of each other, but the suggestion that people didn’t have high expectations of the quality and yet looked to have a larger emotional pay off didn’t quite make sense.

A short newspaper article can hardly explain all the intricacies explored in a 48 page report of course. Even though the article warns that the report’s author, Francie Ostrower, forms no opinions about why there is no emotional reward, I had my own theory.

My theory being-People view live performance as high art, full of meaning and power. The report of the performance exceeding expected quality is actually an expression of relief at understanding what is going on. However, there is an assumption that if one comprehends the work, one will be enriched with the meaning and power of high art. Walking out with out a profound understanding of the nature of the universe results in an emotional let down.

But that is just the theory with which I started.

In the process of reading the report-The Diversity of Cultural Participation, I picked up some other interesting tidbits.

Interestingly, many people did not go to cultural events that they say they find very enjoyable…Many people who said that they most enjoy dance had not gone to a dance performance during the previous 12 months. The same was true for plays and concerts. On the other hand, this was far less common among those who most enjoyed museums and galleries.12 These findings suggest it is easier for people to attend certain types of cultural events than others…(e.g. because museums do not require advance tickets)

-“Frequent attendees are likely to be civically engaged.” People who volunteer, go to church, belong to associations, vote.

-“Frequent attendees are more likely to donate” Not really surprising.

“Frequent attendees were more likely to have gone to multiple types of events and to have attended each type of cultural event. Thus, frequent attendance at cultural events is associated with more varied attendance, indicating that multiple art forms would benefit from increases in overall arts attendance.”

Don’t know if this result implies that it would be beneficial for organizations to pool their resources and perform at a central location thereby offering the public variety at a familiar location. Other results of the surveys show the people who attend plays are more likely to attend dance, live music, and museums/galleries.

Among the reasons people attended the arts were socialization (it will probably come as no surprise to learn that the survey found people most often attend in groups), wish to experience high quality art, gain knowledge, support a local organization, learn something about ones culture and to have an emotionally rewarding experience.

Interestingly, the more frequent a person attended, the more reasons they stated for attending.

“Frequent attendees also cited a greater number of strong motivations for attending cultural events during the past 12 months. On average, they cited 3.5 major reasons, compared with 2.6 major reasons given by moderate attendees, and 2.2 among infrequent attendees.26 This strongly suggests that frequent attendees’ active engagement in the arts is driven by the very multiplicity and variety of positive experiences they derive from the arts.”

It would seem then that whatever approach one takes in marketing and advertising performances is likely to appeal to one of the motivators for a frequent attendee. Of course, if a competitor offers a similar product in a way that appeals to more of these criteria, you may end up back on square one.

According to the report, attendance at different event types is strongly motivated by the aforementioned reasons in varying ratios so the elements that promotions highlight must change as well.

Minding your audience surveys is very important:

“Interestingly, even substantial percentages of those who expressed a negative judgment about some aspect of their experience said they would attend a similar event again.”

So you get a chance to make things better the next time around. However, there are some deal-breakers right from the beginning-

“The two negative experiences most likely to result in respondents saying they would not attend again were not liking the venue and not having an enjoyable social occasion.”

In regard to the whole emotional reward question, I think the way the Chicago Trib article was written somewhat overstated it as a problem. According to the report, people who expected to get a rewarding experience, got it. In fact, pretty much everyone got what they came for:

two-thirds of those who said that a major motivation for attending was to experience high-quality art strongly agreed that the artistic quality of the event was high. Likewise, most (56 percent or more) who were strongly motivated by a desire for an enjoyable social occasion strongly agreed that they had one; most who were strongly motivated by a desire for an emotionally rewarding experience
strongly agreed that they had one; and most who strongly wanted to learn something new strongly agreed that they did learn something. And almost all who did not strongly agree, agreed.

It made me wonder if this was another piece of evidence for the suspicion that the plethora of standing ovations today are a result of people convincing themselves they got what they paid for.

There were some variations by event type though that need consideration by arts administrators.

“Fifty-seven percent of those who attended a play said a major reason they went was that they thought it would be emotionally rewarding–but only 43 percent strongly agreed that it was.

Forty-six percent of those attending music performances said a major reason was that they thought it would be emotionally rewarding–but only 37 percent strongly agreed that it was.”

It was in terms of high quality that numbers went the other way, few people entered performance halls expecting high quality and a greater number exited feeling they had experienced it.

Since it is tough to know if the people who said they didn’t have an emotionally satisfying experience were some of the same people who had a quality experience, I can’t say if my hypothesis (which, granted was more of a semi-educated suspicion) holds any water. (Though the percentage of change in attitude on both topics is quite close.)

As poor a job as a newspaper article can do summarizing a 48 page report, my blog entry is hardly an improved transmission of all the valuable info (and I haven’t tried to be.) Give it a read! (Especially since the meat of it is only 27 pages long.)

Back in July I posted an entry about how internet sites were limiting access to their content through various means. At the end of the entry, I promised to think upon it and post a follow up later.

Well, here I am posting a follow up.

I had hoped to do a little more reading on consumer psychology before posting, but it doesn’t look as if that might happen any time soon. Since I posted last week about how new media entertainment was taking a page from live performance’s book, I figured that was enough reason to post about how we should steal a little bit from them.

At the end of my entry in July I had posted that the only way I could see arts organizations doing something similar was if the first part of the show was free and then re-entry after intermission cost the ticket price.

The more I thought about it, the less crazy it seemed. (Though granted, was still crazy.) Performing organizations frequently have free performances to try to lure people in, why not partially free performances? Also, there are a number of performing arts companies that have fundraising appeals that point out that the ticket price only pays for the show until intermission. This turns that around so you can claim the sponsors paid for you to get in the first act, now the rest of the show is up to you.

Will people go home at intermission feeling they have gotten their fill? Perhaps. Performances with a plot of some sort would probably fare better than a collection of repetory pieces. A novice theatre attendee is probably more likely to feel a need to go see the end of Death of a Salesman than a novice symphony attendee might feel compelled to hear a Mozart piece based on the Bach he heard in the first half of the evening.

On the other hand, reading the psychology of decision making scenarios Andrew Taylor presented back in May, I could see a newbie deciding that after getting a babysitter, driving and paying for parking, maybe it is worth paying for the second half.

Museums, I am still at the same place, sorry. Best I could suggest is a small exhibit in an antechamber with the ability to pay to enter the exhibit proper after getting a taste of it.

For performances, this sort of suggestion opens big cans of worms, even for those who might experiment with it only once a year to see how audiences like it.

First of all, there is front of house-instead of letting the box office and part of the usher staff go home after the show starts, their fun just begins at intermission.

Also, if you have reserved seating how do you handle that? Subscribers and those who know and trust the quality of your works will have purchased their tickets for the whole night’s performance in advance. But say that only fills up to the tenth row.

At intermission, the guy who got row Z is the first one out of the theatre because he is closest to the back, runs to the box office and buys tickets in row K so he can get closer. Guy in that seat in row K for the first act is annoyed. God forbid and people actually enjoy the show so much they start leaving during the first act to secure tickets closer to the stage.

A lot of theatres use bar code readers now so people can print of tickets at home. While you could use this and only charge people who scan in after intermission, you would then have to force people to scan in by 5 minutes to curtain so you could sell the vacant seats to people waiting at the box office before intermission was over (and of course, most empty seats will be singles and most people wanting seats will be in a party.)

Something like this would be best used either with General Admission audiences or for shows you know will be 80% sold so that you can set aside specific seats for this program and have no need to worry that you might end up with a gulf of 10 rows between your full night buyers and the half night taste testers.

The other issue is artistic-Do you end the first act with a bigger bang than necessary in hopes of luring people back for the second act even though the second act isn’t as exciting as the end of the first act lead them to believe? (I am looking at you Phantom of the Opera)

Then there are shows that are so short, an intermission makes no sense. Some shows are structured in a way that an audience loses its involvement in the momentum of the action if an intermission occurs.

Still, I have to think that there are some organizations out there for whom this sort of scheme might be just the thing they need to excite a community and provide an introduction to what the company does.

I have just started the first fundraising campaign the theatre has had in about three years. Prior to assuming the job, the temporary theatre director was also the executive director of another arts organization. Because of the conflict of interest with soliciting donations, he didn’t run any campaigns.

At the 1.5 week mark, we have had some modest returns though we have also seen donations from people who haven’t previously contributed which is always good.

Because the current thank you for your donations note has been used for many years, I have been working on a new thank you letter. Now it may seem like an easy thing, but I had a theme I used in my appeal letter and wanted to complement that theme with my thank you letter.

Essentially, I am trying to educate my audience about what sort of things their money is going for. It always seems to me like fundraising campaigns underscore the sexy aspects of what the money goes toward and downplays the less prestigous stuff. Either that or the appeal is so vague, you don’t know what the money is going for.

I take my inspiration, in part to a post on Artful Manager from two years ago where Andrew Taylor suggests arts organizations have a discussion about “worst practices.” My letter is a long way from mentioning mistakes we made, but that entry got me to thinking that references to less sexy, but essential needs, over time will more broadly inform my audience about elements beyond the curtain line that they can impact and feel good about.

My aim is to let people know what sort of things the money supports without making it sound so unsexy they don’t see any worth in giving again. While we aren’t buying reams of people, we are making purchases that are important to the safety of our operations and contribute to hospitality for our artists. If you aren’t in the business though, it is difficult to appreciate the significance of the materials and how grateful we are to have the funding.

Thus why it has taken me seven hours across three days to write the dang letter. I had a lot to say and then distilled the concepts down to a shorter letter, rewrote that, showed it to people, rewrote some more, rewrote, rewrote, etc, etc.

I did much the same thing with the appeal letter. But of course, I was asking for money at the time so my incentive was obvious, right? My thank you note is part of what I hope will be an ongoing relationship with my donors and ticket buyers so it is just as important as the appeal.

I want to take every opportunity I have to tell them the different aspects of my theatre’s story while attempting to avoid cliche phrases and common platitudes. I want to set my organization apart from the letters they are getting from the other non-profits by writing something different, something interesting…something brief…something sincerely gracious. And it all has to look effortless.

But it ain’t.

I was climbing a sea cliff this weekend when I noticed a lighthouse I had been looking for fairly close by. Even better, from my vantage, I noticed the trail that lead to the lighthouse as well. I descended and walked back to my car for water and sneakers (I know I am becoming more local because I am doing bizarre things like clambering up cliffs in sandals rather than “proper” shoes.)

As I was making my way across a field toward the trail, I had to walk over some loose chunks of basalt. Despite testing the stability of each rock, one tilted beneath me and I ended up scraping up my hand, knee and a good portion of my lower back. Undaunted, I pulled myself up, washed my wounds with my water bottle and continued on…until I saw a tour bus pull up and disgorge a horde of folks.

I have already established that I am rather anti-social so regular readers may not be surprised to read that human company stopped me where wounds dripping blood didn’t. It was more than that though.

We have all read or had experience with people with poor cell phone etiquette and that is annoying enough. But I have really come to believe of late that people are afraid to be alone with their own thoughts and feelings. I was over at the Kilauea volcano last Christmas and as my mother and I approached the awesome vista, a woman behind us pulled out her cell phone and related moment by moment to a friend.

Perhaps she was just being an idiot, but many incidents similar to that make me wonder if she and other people just don’t know how to process magnificent sights like that without the insulation of a television or computer screen. In order to cope with the swirling emotions they are experiencing, they need to distract themselves with technology.

There is a safety in movies and television. Even the roller coaster in an amusement park has all sorts of safety mechanisms. But you can walk right up to the edge of the Grand Canyon and there aren’t any safety rails (or at least there weren’t the last time I was there.) While it isn’t the mythical abyss staring back at you, it is pretty overwhelming and frightening to stand there with nothing but your own caution and restraint to keep you from falling in.

It makes me wonder if as many people have attention deficit disorder as seem to. It may be more the case that rather than deal with reality which brings creeping thoughts of economic, social, personal, spiritual, educational, etc., woes and concerns, people are seeking solace and distraction in phones, PDAs, computers, video games.

So what does this all mean to arts management? Why did I choose to categorize an entry that starts with a story about my bloody knee as Audience Relations rather than General Musings?

As I drove away from my hiking excursion, it occured to me that arts people trying to educate new and existing audiences about what they do not only have to instruct people about understanding their art form, they have to make them comfortable with the personal silence needed to process the experience.

The idea that you have to stop and think about a work probably seems self evident when you teach people what to look/listen for. But it may be a false assumption these days. In days of instant gratification, if you have taught someone to look at an artist’s use of light, he/she can deal with Rubens even if they had no previous exposure to Baroque art. However, if they come in contact with an artist who has no concern for use of light, the viewer, having no familiar point of reference may quickly pass by. Even if their teacher constantly used the phrase “what is the artist trying to do”, they may not stop to consider that question when faced with unfamiliar elements.

It may not be enough just to “teach a man to fish” anymore. Now you have to teach the person the critical thinking skills to recognize they are in a situation when the goal of getting fish from the water remains the same, but the fishing tool provided is not appropriate in this situation.

The bad news is, this probably will take a major shift in mindset and way of life rather than the intermittent interaction with the arts to achieve. (And that isn’t even acknowledging that this is even more to do with less funding available.) It has to be schools, arts people, Oprah and Dr. Phil and then some talking about it.

The good news is, recently groups have started to really advocate getting away from technology (but is it enough?) I have seen TV ads in the past week or so for the Take Me Fishing website and read an article about a book titled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.

These efforts obviously don’t address contemplation of the arts directly, but do advocate activities where people have to spend quiet time with their thoughts (lets hope the lake has poor cell phone reception) and critical problem solving skills (like alternative routes that avoid crossing a field of jagged basalt) that allow people to formulate alternative criteria with which to assess a painting.

Drew McManus over at Adaptistration anointed May as “Take a Friend to the Orchestra Month” He has devoted many of his blog entries this month to following people’s experiences.

Since he listed a concert by the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra as one to see, I thought I would try to take it in. I was coming down with a cold so I wasn’t sure if I was going to go so I didn’t try to get a friend to come along.

Since he provided the impetus, I will probably send my impressions along to him first before deciding to post any of them here. Also, I have gotten sicker since I attended and don’t have the stamina to write much today.

However, Drew took Jerry, brother of WNYC host John Schaefer, to Carniege Hall to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Jerry had never been to the symphony before and today they met with John to discuss the experience on air. Check it out here. There are a lot of great observations made by Drew and Jerry about the experience and about the larger topic of classical music attendance. (And John congratulated Drew on getting Jerry into the symphony where his 40 years of effort have failed.)

Check the radio show out and the entries that fall under the Take a Friend.. topic on Drew’s blog.

There is a really great speech that Neill Archer Roan made to the American Symphony Orchestra League about dealing with controversy.

The point of contention was a decision by the Oregon Bach Festival to perform Bach’s St. John’s Passion in a season themed “War, Reconciliation and Peace.” A local paper asked “How can reconciliation and peace be represented by a musical work whose text has been an incitement to genocide?”

The problem, according to Neill, was that Passion Plays were performed in Nazi Germany to incite anger against Jews and even before that, the worst pogroms always coincided with Easter. (The time during which the plays were historically performed.)

Even worse, the local temple was vandalized by skinheads who shot up the place with guns and spray painted hate filled slogans not nine months before the performance of the piece.

To compound things, the temple’s rabbi was on the Bach Festival’s audience development steering committee. In addition to the Passion piece, they had wanted to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the end of World War II by exploring the works of Jewish artists who had been interred in concentration camps. The rabbi’s guidance about how to handle it with sensitivity was fairly key.

As people learned more about the controversy surrounding the Bach piece, the rabbi and Neill had long conversations about it. The rabbi eventually removed his involvement with the festival because of their resolution to perform it.

What Neill says next really caught my attention because I think it something every arts person embroiled in controversy needs to remember (emphasis is mine):

Any person or organization whose artistic work engages in raising issues which engross our minds, hearts, and polity must expect-even bless-the exercise of conscience, even when that exercise takes the form of withholding support, fierce and active opposition, or even condemnation. As artistic organizations, we may own the work, but we do not own the issues. We may hold the match, but nobody holds a conflagration. We should not be surprised that someone we view as principled enough to be invited to serve on a Board or Steering Committee might also be principled enough to withhold the imprimatur of their good name in affairs that they cannot, in good conscience, support.

What the Festival decided to do though was engage the community in a discussion/debate about the work, “about the dynamics and origins of bigotry, even when that bigotry seemed to spring from the dominant culture’s holiest of stories.”

“By opening up the matter to the community at large and inviting their reflection on the matter, a situation that could have seriously damaged our organization wound up strengthening it. During these times, when people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with institutions, there is no better lesson from my experience that I can offer you today than to trust your public if you want them to trust” you

Much to Neill’s surprise, the local Christian clergy were very open about admitting the anti-Semitic history of their faith and lent immeasurable support to the discussion effort. This support was sorely needed because everyone, including Festival donors, long time patrons and board members were angry, frustrated and confused by the controversy. It was only through continued discussion that people finally began to understand the entire situation. In Neill’s mind, short efficient statements are too abrupt and alienating to be effective solutions in a controversy.

The churches got on board and condemned anti-Semitism from the pulpit the Sunday before the piece was performed and again the night before at a Reconciliation.

The night of the performance a rabbi and his wife handed out flyers asking people to stand and turn their backs on offensive passages. People stayed away and donors withdrew their support.

Says Neill:

Personally, I felt buoyed. In a society where the arts are often thought of as the “toy department of life,” at least on that evening we were no longer on the periphery of community life. We performed the St. John Passion, but in a new context. A deep and principled discussion of meaning, history, and accountability had occurred. We had not only talked about reconciliation, but lived its possibilities.

I am sure the experience was nerve wracking at the time and not something one would wish on oneself ever. I think it is a mark of a good artist though to not only recognize when one is in the presence of great art, but to also acknowledge that it has provided an opportunity for growth and transformation. (Granted, those of us who have gone through puberty can attest that growth and transformation is more exciting in the abstract than in reality.)

I had a meeting today with all the other theatre managers in the University of Hawaii system about emergency procedures. It was very informative in many respects.

I discovered I was in better shape than I thought because the Director of Administrative Services had requested I make up emergency procedures about 9 months ago. Other theatres didn’t have as strong a plan as I did and didn’t make fire exit announcements at the beginning of each show. (It isn’t a law in Hawaii as it is in places like NY. Some people make announcements directing people to the restrooms and were a little embarrassed to realize they didn’t think about fire exits.)

On the other hand some of the other theatres had stronger usher training programs than I currently do so there was a lot everyone could learn from the session.

While the organization that accredits community colleges doesn’t accredit entire systems, one thing they noted in their last report was that there is no top down guidance from the university on important policy areas. While they didn’t specifically mention safety, the meeting we had today was an attempt to standardize minimum general plans each theatre in the system should have. (Evacuation plan specifying who makes announcement, from where is it made, how often to test emergency lights, etc.)

It was very interesting to learn that the different campuses have vastly different emergency response personnel. The security people on the main campus have portable defibrillators in the golf carts (of course, they are a residential campus too), the guys at my campus are state employees with para-military ranks like police officers. The security folks on the other side of the island and a neighboring island are contracted from an outside security company and rotate through so often, they don’t inspire much confidence.

There was also a huge difference in the process people had to go through to get first aid kits. Some had to buy them outright from their own accounts, others got in trouble if they bought them on their own.

There was debate over whether to have emergency announcements played on a recording or done by a person on stage. The recorded announcement allows you to attend to the actual emergency. However having a person on stage 1-is a visual signal that an announcement is going to be made whereas a recorded announcement might get lost in the chatter of speculations about why the show stopped and 2- is more comforting and assuring than an announcement. (After all a certain suspicion might arise that you have already left the building after pushing play on the CD player if you aren’t on stage.)

One of the biggest lessons that came out of the session was that any emergency plan should specify exactly who is the top person in charge. While key people might supervise large segements of an emergency plan, there should be one overall person who makes final decisions. And everyone in the building should know who that person is.

An attendee at the conference told the story about a promoter who was standing backstage before the show. The police came in and asked who was in charge. He said he was. The police informed him about a possible situation and told him he had to make a decision. Instead of speaking with the event manager for the facility which he was presenting the show in, he went out on stage and made a very alarming announcement to the audience. The house crew having been well trained, immediately acted to open evacuation routes so that the audience did not injure themselves in the abrupt departure.

Had the facilities management been informed at all, they would have been able to better assess if the situation was an actual threat to the audience or if they would have been safer staying in their seats.

A couple interesting stats and facts to present in closing.

1-The chances of someone becoming injured in an emergency evacuation is actually rather high. Be sure you correctly assess a threat to the audience and have a very comforting presentation for them if you are going to ask them to stay put. This is especially true in the case of a power outage. Unless there is an electrical fire that caused it, it is better to keep the audience in place and then evacuate them in a very controlled manner if it becomes clear power will not be restored.

2- The National Fire Safety Protection Association guidelines for evacuations is 1 person per every 250 guests. So if you have a 750 seat theatre, if you need to have at least 3 ushers helping people leave. (Though check with your municipality, some places have adopted other fire codes that may be different.)

Lots and lots of great conversation going on over at Artsjournal.com’s A Better Case For The Arts. It is somewhat heartening to see that so many people agree that the attitude arts professionals have about what they do has to change as does the approach to attracting and retaining audiences in this day and age. (The disheartening thing of course is that no one has the answer.)

It is tough to comment on the breadth of the discussion at this point, but since part of it had some significance to the experience of the last couple days I have had, I wanted to cite them. (They are also among the more interesting discussion and commentary) One of the post and accompanying commentary is titled The Public View. The other came under the heading The Enemy?.

The latter was very interesting because it pointed out in the changing political landscape that seems the harbinger of a culture war, people who have not been exposed to the arts may no longer be uninformed with the potential to be an attendee once introduced to it, but instead may be pre-disposed to be hostile to the arts.

A sobering thought, but still, education and exposure is the best solution for a great many of the world’s ills. (Though some will point out there are plenty of people out there ready to spin your education to reinforce what you already believe.) The Public View promotes this idea of education and exposure. Writes Jim Kelly:

I don’t believe the “case for the arts” can be made to the general public. Our duty to the public is not to explain to them why they should enjoy the arts, not to tell them the many ways it will improve them as individuals. Our duty is to involve them in the arts on some level in the belief that they too will experience the benefits of the arts first-hand and will become new advocates for the cause. In other words, we have stop talking about the arts and start doing art.

We have limited public dollars at our disposal, but we’re constantly asked to support another study, plan, reseach project, etc. Instead, my agency made a conscious decision to support art projects that increase audiences exposure to and participation in the arts. Most of us agree that you will never appreciate the intrinsic value of the arts if you’ve never experienced the arts. So let’s dedicate ourselves to increasing people’s exposure to the arts in all their permutations.

There were some great comments to this entry, but the one I liked best came from Jane Deschner:

Yes, you’re exactly right. I find people are often “afraid” of their own creativity and imagination. If they can become engaged in some way (whether by performance in a furniture store, embellished fiberglass animals on the street, musical performance in a hospital lobby) in a quality experience, they may develop an interest and gain the confidence to participate. But it has to have substance, be good. Who said art has to be on in a theater or museum or concert hall?

The bit about people being afraid of their own creativity really rings so true in my experience.

So how does this all connect with the events of my last few days?
Well, I have been trying to set up outreach programs for a performance group coming in during the next few weeks. Problem is, they arrive right in the middle of most of the local school’s Spring Break! Eek!

I did find a couple school who were in session and offered the opportunity to them. A few turned me down, but another couple never returned my multiple calls. The unreturned calls were surprising because these were schools that actually had well funded arts programs and would have been able to pay (and often had for similiar groups) for the program I was bringing in even though I was offering it for free.

Just today, I discovered all of my plans for outreach programs to the at risk schools with few or no arts classes are sort of falling apart. Because I schedule with the state booking consortium, the tight travel and performing itinerary leaves one group with no time to do a lecture/demo outreach and the another with only a Sunday afternoon. A third group wants as much for a one hour lecture/demo as for a performance (about $10,000) so that is pretty much out. Though, hey, if you can get that sorta money, more power to ya!

This is rather distressing since I actually wrote letters of intent at the request of some agents so that a funding group that supports outreach to my type of community would provide money to support their touring. Now granted, this is all a year away, things change and I am looking to do some out of the box thinking to put together a program to make this happen. (Perhaps go to churches that serve this sort of community?)

I am also starting a conversation with local arts groups who haven’t really thought about organizing enough to do joint performances about doing some and perhaps hooking up an outreach on there too.

Though I will probably be able to bring rewarding experience to local populations in the end, it is rather frustrating to be having such a hard time bringing free programs to my community. There is no real financial reward to it. The grant monies it will yield for me are pretty negilible and hardly cover the additional fees I am paying for the outreach (not to mention the extra day of lodging). I would get more work done in the day if I wasn’t trying to make all these arrangements.

But damned if I don’t believe it will actually have a beneficial impact on a fair number of the lives I am trying to serve. I am not quite sure if it will bring audiences in to theatre, gallery and museum doors. But I do think at some point in their lives, the people who see the programs will stop and contemplate truth and beauty in their lives, if only secretly, if only for a few minutes.

I had some people from the state disabilities board come visit my theatre at my request today. When they visited last about 6 years ago to provide input into renovations, there were apparently some miscommunications. I was told that my predecessors were told we couldn’t have reserved seating in the theatre because of ADA standards. The people from the board told me the only reason they would advise that would be if people with disabilities couldn’t order reserved seats and everyone else could. Certainly that is not the case with my theatre.

They also came to assess two locations on row E that clearly appear to be seating for people in wheelchairs. Six years ago we were told that we couldn’t have people in wheelchairs there because it wasn’t up to code. Unfortunately, it was a verbal comment so no one knew how the problem could be fixed. In addition, because it appears to be a place for wheelchairs, is closer to the stage and doesn’t require a slow ride up on a chair lift, people really want to sit there.

The preliminary comments of the gentlemen who were assessing the space was that it can clearly accommodate wheelchairs without fear of them falling to the level below. However, other people in the row might not be able to pass them. This was sort of disheartening because my theatre pretty much has the widest row of any theatre on the island.

If they are right, it may require knocking a couple seats off near the location and building an extension so that people could pass in front of them. I would really consider losing the 2 seats on either side of the theatre because the locations really make it easy for everyone involved, theatre staff and customers both. We rarely have to use the chair lift because we only have 2-3 wheelchairs at any one time in the theatre. And we haven’t sold the theatre out so often that we would be wishing we had those last 4 seats to sell.

Now I just have to wait for the official report. At least if they say I can’t seat people there, I will finally have it in writing.

Of course, while they were there, they noticed a few other little problems. None of them were really serious and a few of them are fairly easy to fix by simply moving some signs a few inches. One of them ironically was a very specific fix that their office had suggested 6 years earlier.

Interestingly enough the ADA standards are a little racist and sexist. A lot of them seem to be based on the size of white Anglo-Saxon males. As a result, to be in compliance, I have to move some Braille signs to a place that is natural for someone of my build to read, but could be a little stretch for the generally shorter Asian and Polynesian population which comprise the majority here on Oahu.
It never occurred to me until the guy pointed the spot out and I realized it would be above the heads of quite a few of those who use the restrooms. He commented that the standards were based on Mainland norms.

I also learned that there is no grandfather clause exemptions for ADA requirements. While age of a building will exempt a building of other architectural requirements, the best you can do with ADA requirements is meet them to the fullest extent possible.

Overall I felt good about having them come out. For every little flaw they found, they also found an element of our set up which most other companies did not have.

Also, it is probably good to have an assessment like this periodically so that one can be a little proactive about making changes and show good faith effort if someone accuses your organization of being deficient.

I found an article from the Rocky Mountain News noting that a local PBS station had chosen to air the controversial “Sugartime” episode of Postcards from Buster.

In case you have missed the hordes of articles and news stories on the subject, Buster is a cartoon rabbit who travels the country sending back reports as it were on different activities around the country. The episode in question depicted maple sugar making on Vermont farms headed by lesbians. Though there is apparently no mention or appearance of any sort of romantic relationship between the women, the Secretary of Education applied pressure to PBS to yank the episode. A number of stations have chosen to show it anyway.

What made this article so interesting to me was that one station on Channel 6 chose to show the episode at 11:30 at night so parents could judge whether to allow their children to see it. (There was an implication that it would air again at some point) However, PBS channel 12 (KBDI) which is apparently the other Denver PBS station chose to air it at 7 pm and follow it with a 90 call in panel discussion show.

Thinking that perhaps there was a lesson here for arts organizations to perhaps use controversy to move regularly scheduled talk back/Q&A sessions away from mundane questions like “how do you remember all your lines” to more gripping discussions, I visited KBDI’s website to see how the Feb. 9 experiment turned out. I figured being a PBS audience there might not be the explosive confrontations one would find on Jerry Springer and some good discussion might emerge.

There wasn’t any video footage to be viewed, but they did have a comments board. Most of the comments fall between Feb 9-11 (just so those of you visiting in a few months can get a sense of how far you may have to scroll down.)

The biggest lesson that one might derive from the feedback is that when hosting an opportunity for discussion about a controversial event so that you can convince people you don’t champion the causes of a perceived liberal elite — you should actually include people on the panel that represent both sides of the issue.

It is not entirely clear whether the host was berating people because of their views or if he was always like that and people who complained hadn’t watched the show before. It does seem like the views represented by the panel itself were decidefly one sided.

It is tough to be yelled at in ones own house to be sure. It seems to me that in an age where the public can change the channel to one that expresses the views of the niche to which one subscribes, there is an opportunity and perhaps duty placed upon live performance venues to provide a forum for intelligent discourse since their settings are not so easily escaped.

But–it needs to be well-balanced and moderated and I imagine that would be tough to do these days. When you see and hear people relentlessly berating each other on television because that holds the ratings, you think that is the way one engages in discussion about topics with which one disagrees.

I am sure our Founding Fathers were not as cordial in their dealings as we imagine them to have been. (Just think of how many must have muttered something about going Aaron Burr on someone’s butt) I imagine they might have held themselves to some level of civility though.

This could be a great service arts organizations provide to society. Live discussion doesn’t allow you the anonymity of the internet or a phone call in. Done with the proper respect and care, arts events could become a welcoming venue for people who don’t necessarily view themselves as arts intellectuals, but who crave balanced intelligent conversations about issues of the day.

Doesn’t this happen on college campuses one asks. Well, currently Ohio is considering a student bill of rights to ensure those with views that conflict with those of their professor aren’t intimidated into keeping quiet.

Besides, as much as tickets to arts events cost. It is still cheaper and more accessible to a wider portion of the population than paying for college credits.

Okay, an abbreviated entry today. I wrote a fairly long entry detailing why I was researching the Americans with Disabilities Act but my web browser decided to cut out leaving me to start all over again. I was going to wait another day, but tomorrow I am going to see Dana Gioia, Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, speak so I most likely won’t be able to make an entry tomorrow.

So any, the resources I cited in my disappearing entry were the National Endowment’s Design for Accessibility: A Cultural Administrator’s Handbook which was extremely complete. It not only had information on the act, but had illustrations of dimensions of theatre seating, ramps, placement and lighting of signers in signed performances. It discussed training of staff and volunteers and even included a suggested format of a meeting to discuss accessibility issues for facilities. As the title suggests, it also gives guidelines for planning for a facility to be accessible if you are building or renovating one.

Each chapter includes helpful links and references books one might want to read. I found this helpful because I didn’t feel that their guidelines on interaction with persons with disabilities was complete enough. The ironic thing is, I judge it incomplete in comparison with a list of guidelines I once had that the NEA itself had put out.

The links, however, direct you to the San Antonio, TX city website that has a good list of terminology to use. A link to the United Cerebral Palsy Association had a good listing of basic etiquette. The Community Resources for Independence, while not listed in the NEA document, also has a good site for interaction guidelines.

Okay, that is about it right now. I will let you know what I think of Dana Gioia on Wednesday.

Okay, here is a good dilemma for all you arts manager types out there. So good that I have been encouraged to post it on my blog by my faithful readers (and you know who you are)

Since things resolved to my satisfaction in the end, I may just name names if it gets too tough to refer to the principals in oblique generic terms. (Also given that people can look on my theatre’s website and figure things out very quickly.)

Last week, I got a call from a performer’s agent saying that principal performer in a group of 11 would not be able to perform in Hawaii due to his doctor giving him an ultimatium. Now ignoring the money already paid out for non-refundable airline tickets and hotel rooms, this presented a number of problems. The group was named after the gentleman in question and I was just about to send out print ads with his picture on it. Conferring with some other people, they suggested putting a tiny disclaimer in the ad saying he wouldn’t be performing in Hawaii.

I wasn’t sure if this was really the correct tactic for two reasons-1) I would essentially be paying a couple thousand dollars for an ad that was saying “Come see the show! (by the way, there is teensy flaw in the show) and 2) I wasn’t sure how much of my potential audience really knew who he was and identified strongly with him. There were also some aestetic concerns as well. The best picture I had was of him, the other two images were not only of poorer quality, but also very wide horizontally and wouldn’t really work unless I changed the orientation of the ad. I had the option of calling the newspapers and inquiring if I could change my space reservation after the deadline had passed, but the redesign and university approval process would probably put me past the deadline for when the art was due.

Other members of my booking consortium were concerned as well. One of the other theatre managers had seen the group perform and felt that even though the front man had been phasing out actually playing with the group, he was still the charismatic showman whose absence would make the group just another really good set of musicians in their particular genre. She sent an email to the agent asking if anyone else in the group could rise to the occasion and exude the same magnetism. Ever practical, I sent a follow up one asking if they were going to replace him with another person who could play the instrument or should I cancel the hotel and plane reservations.

I also noticed that the force majeure clause in the contract actually implied that if one of the musicans couldn’t perform due to illness, a pro rated portion of deposit would be refunded. I asked the other members of the consortium if we were going to pursue this avenue and suggested that his absence constituted more than 1/11th the value of the entire group.

I also noted that on Broadway (though it may be an urban legend) if the actor listed above the play title in the playbill and marquee doesn’t appear that night, you are guaranteed a refund if you ask for it. I wondered if there was a similar common law precedent where we might have the right to break our contract if the person who the group is named after doesn’t perform.

So there is the case–as an arts manager, what do you do when the person everyone is potentially coming to see ain’t coming?

Well here is what I did. I let the ads go as is without inserting a disclaimer. I did it for the reasons I mentioned above–I didn’t know that too many identified strongly with him, the image was the best one to attract people and from our box office surveying, I wasn’t sure anyone actually saw our newspaper ads anyway.

I did however, come clean to the radio DJs who were promoting the show for me because 1) They serve a niche audience who are likely to identify strongly with him and I expect that I will be programming to that niche in the future and it would be a big breach of trust if they learned I knew he wasn’t coming 10 days prior to the concert. Better to lose the ticket sales and fight the battle for their hearts another day. 2) One of the DJs wanted to do a phone interview with a member of the band so there was a 98% possibility that they would mention the big guy wasn’t coming. Although I could shrug and say I didn’t know much earlier than she did (which would have been absolutely true) one of the first rules of damage control is to make sure that you control how a story breaks.

Now 12 hours later, I get a message saying the gentleman is coming. It is a little bit of pie in the face for me to turn to the DJs and sheepishly tell them to forget I said anything, now he is coming. Had I been less ethical, things would have actually turned out okay and no one else would have been the wiser so I suffer a little loss of face for being honest. Ultimately it is a gamble though. Had I waited and tried to figure out how I could manipulate events so that the bad news wouldn’t be discovered until later, the situation could have turned around and bit me on the butt.

Hopefully, I won’t have to face that situation again or one where I find out the star isn’t coming as the rest of the band deplanes at the airport. However, these events have made me aware of the need to plan for just such a contingency.

Way back in my second entry I pointed out that I had a letter posted on Artsjournal.com’s letter section and in the Artful Manager blog. One of my suggestions was that arts audiences and church audiences share some commonalities–faithfully joining a communal activity on a regular basis being one.

Well, I actually have a church doing services in my theatre which you would think would combine the best of both worlds. I have a large group of people coming to my theatre, moving my display about our 30th anniversary and staring at our large set filled with water during their services. (Yes, they wanted to do baptisms, but we wouldn’t let them.)

Thus far when we ask people how they heard about the show, no one has mentioned that they attend services there. Somewhat disappointing, but we still have a lot of time to seduce them.

One thing they have been doing is providing us with volunteers to clean up our backstage and usher during the shows. They have been really dependable and efficient. One thing that is sort of disquieting to me though is that many of them are doing it as part of their service to the church and not because they enjoy live events.

I love having the resource of volunteers, but I guess as a person who has his own “religious” experience in the arts, I would really like to have people coming who are doing it because they enjoy an arts experience. I don’t want to convert them into subscribers or arts lovers. This is certainly an opportunity to expose people to the arts who never thought of it as an experience to be included in their lives and maybe they will ultimately benefit from it.

It is just a strange experience for me telling the church volunteer coordinator that I appreciate the help and don’t want to put anyone out so she should only include people who have a genuine interest in participating. She talks about how volunteering is important for rounding out their spiritual lives. The people who do help out may very well be curious and interested in the arts, but that doesn’t seem to be an important criteria in their selection when I talk to the volunteer coordinator.

On the other hand, they aren’t compelled into service either. Apparently, people aren’t allowed to commit themselves to volunteering unless their personal lives are in shape (and there is a support network that helps them get to that point.) I am sort of envious that they have such an organized volunteer network.

That is another problem for me. I really want to build a corps of volunteers so I don’t have to ask the church for help. Since the church has the contact information for their volunteers and I don’t, this makes it hard for me to solicit their services on my own behalf. I don’t aim to poach volunteers, but it would be great if some were interested in the arts because it would increase the likelihood they would approach me independently of their church association to volunteer.

Guess I am going to have to do it the old fashion way and build the volunteer group one person at a time.

Some real interesting reading over at Artful Manager these days. I am especially interested in the feedback he is getting regarding his statement that the arts are overbuilt.

Today’s entry has comments from one of his readers about how community arts organizations might be feeling pressure to professionalize their operations.

“More generally, it seems to me, anecdotally, that our industry has pushed professionalism (by which I mean professionally structured non-profit orgs) as an indicator of quality and sustainability, leading amateur (some community theatres for example) organizations to professionalize without need, causing undo strain on the organizations, and diverting and spreading thin available arts and culture funding that feels compelled to support professional level organizations. ”

In the past I have mentioned that all arts organizations don’t have a god given right to exist, nor should they automatically expect to be funded. (Which admittedly is hard to accept when you are going through hours of grant writing.) I never really thought about the fact that these folks might be affected by subtle pressure to professionalize.

There are “rewards” as it were, for professionalizing an operation. You can get larger grants and donations (and the burden of tracking and reporting), you get the prestige of being recognized as professional, including willingness of newspapers to cover your events (though that happens with less frequency these days). Of course, there are increased expectations as the writer mentions that put a great deal of pressure on the organization.

The thing is, you can be really successful doing amateur work. Groups rent out my theatre all the time and present absolutely awful shows. But much to my chagrin, they have larger audiences than my regular season shows do because of word of mouth to friends and family. People don’t see great theatre, but they leave with a sense of joy having seen a loved one.

The group just has to be organized enough to organize a show, get themselves to the theatre and open the show on time, not oversell the house and then take their belongings with them when they leave. As long as they pay me, they have no further worries. I have to handle the water and power, maintain instruments, gather supplies, clean the theatre, worry about budgets, bugs, equipment failure. We supply the technical knowledge for running a show and processing an audience.

The theatre is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and we have had 4-5 groups who have been doing annual events like this at the theatre for at least 25 of those years.

The problem might be as alluded to in The Cluetrain Manifesto that Artful Manager listed earlier last week–businesses take themselves too seriously. People who started out doing art to have fun suddenly decide they need to organize and get some respect for the work they do.

This, of course, is bad for everyone involved because audiences don’t need to have their introduction to an art form be at the hands of really awful performers looking for strangers to repeat the sentiments of friends and family that they have talent. If you admit you are not that good but have fun doing it, that is one thing, but if you believe that everyone shares your mother’s opinion about how talented you are and should fund you, that is another.

Now, to be fair, the professionals in a given performance field suffer the same malady. If you have read my blog on a regular basis, you will see that much is true. They can have a tendency to get too serious and believe that everyone ought to pay a premium for what they are offering because it is good for them.

Therefore, it is difficult for me to say this with any absolute certainty, but…running arts organizations by and large should be left to the professionals. If anyone should be making a mess of the arts, it should be people who have the resources and training to do it full time. Botching things up is not an appropriate activity for people who can only devote themselves to it part time.

But seriously, as many poor decisions are made by arts administrators, they are still better equip in many instances to do thing in a quality manner. When they endeavor to do something with the patina of professionalism, they have the experience and knowledge to anticipate the implications of decisions in ways amateurs don’t.

The comparison has been made to death, I know, but in many ways arts and sports are similar in this respect. People go to a Little League or soccer game with their kids and forget its all about the fun and socializing, drinking lemonade and enjoying the weather. There is such an expectation that their kids perform like professional players and that the volunteer referees be infallible, that the game get forced into pretending to be something it can never become.

This isn’t completely analogous of course. There is a better chance of a theatre evolving into a successful professional house than there is of a kid becoming a professional athlete. (Freddy Adu notwithstanding) In many cases, it is probably better to just let kids be kids and amateur arts organizations just have fun doing what they founded to do.

Well I have been really busy the last couple days and have met with some limited success in my objectives. One of my projects for the last few months has been to get secure online for patrons that didn’t require paying a large service fee for the luxury like Ticketmaster charges. Despite being a part of a university, the many IT offices I contacted all said they couldn’t support my modest needs.

I have been exploring many options from outside vendors. Many of them were dead ends and those that weren’t, were rather expensive solutions. Finally I found a local provider that had a store front as part of their offerings and the monthly fee was really quite reasonable.

Of course, it was too good to be true. The storefront they had was not really customizable at all. I would have had to list all my shows with no way to differentiate between them or link directly to specific listings. And what was worse, I couldn’t have 2 prices for the same product, in this case a show.

So, I upgraded to the next package which was essentially double the price, but did allow a bit more control. The solution was equally disappointing though. I still couldn’t have two prices for the same product, even if I had separate sizes or colors (two aspects I could customize with my own terms)

I worked around this by having separate catalogs, each with 2 “products” for each event–in this case, adult and student tickets. This works a little better, but is still unwieldly since people have to add adult tickets and then click the back button to add student tickets.

Another good thing is that I can link directly to the event in my online store from my website so patrons only have to deal with navigating the show they are interested in.

But as I said, the utility is limited. I can’t redirect people back to my webpage or to my thank you page. I can’t change font sizes so the titles of the shows are really tiny and in the left hand corner. If anyone has a suggestion for a provider with good storefront packages or good software I might get my provider to load on my account for me, I would love to hear about it.

The interface was unwieldy and frustrating to use properly so the whole process was extremely time consuming.

However, I definitely think this is something people want. Even without really promoting the fact we offer this service to our audience base, we have already started doing a fair bit of business averaging about 20-30 ticket sales a day the last three business days.

If you are interested in seeing how I set it up, you can go to here

Believe me, it is incredibly rough and basic. If I wasn’t desperate to offer the service, I was really tempted to keep looking. Obviously, I am not satisfied and will continue to seek alternatives, even given the fact I may only need the service for less than a year while I wait for the university to integrate me in their centralized ticketing.

One area I have been involved in either directly running or indirectly supervising nearly everwhere I have worked is the front of house. Depending on where you are, this phrase can encompass both the box office and house management or just house management. Today I wanted to focus just on house management.

Because box office handles money, the area is usually given the attention it is due. In the course of attending performances though it has seemed that the whole concept of house management is limited to instructing people to smile, hand out programs and point to the restrooms. This may be okay for the spring high school musical which only happens once a year, but anyone doing performances on a regular basis owes it to their audience to have formal processes in place.

Some theatres I have worked at have required the front of house staff to be certified in CPR and First Aid. I believe in certain categories of theatres in New York City it is required by law. This is one of the best indicators of how important the training of a house staff can be. If there is an emergency, they are in a position of being the first representatives of the organization on the scene. How they act and what they are able to do reflects most on the institution.

Even if it is not feasible to have all your ushers trained in CPR, there should be a procedure established to deal with emergencies. If there is problem who should be called? This doesn’t mean just dialing 911, but if you are on a college campus do the campus police need to be called, do you call the managing director, etc? Where is the phone that is used? Is it accessible? In some theatres the box office is closed up by the second act. If that is where the phone is and no one has been given a key, lives could be in danger. How do you communicate with the stage manager and performers that the show needs to halt to allow paramedics to enter in the next 3 minutes?

If there is a fire who makes an announcement? What doors are opened and where are ushers stationed to direct people outside? Are there enough flashlights on hand to address this situation?

If the power goes out who goes on stage with a flashlight to make an announcement while someone else calls the power company to determine how long the delay might be. What do you tell people about the refund policy if the show can’t go on?

In the course of my career I have been fairly lucky and had no fires, a couple heart attacks/strokes, a number of trip/falls and a few power outages. In all cases I was glad that I knew the procedure of handling and reporting these problems.

House manager and usher training is, of course, not all about emergencies, but the more mundane task of good audience relations. Knowing who to call to adjust the heat or air conditioning isn’t as crucial as calling 911 but it is important to the audience. The same is true of knowing what house seats are available to alleviate ticketing problems.

Their role of the front of house staff starts before the audience even arrives. Among the things they should be doing before the theatre opens is checking the cleanliness of the facility.

Even if you have a cleaning crew, it is useful to have ushers checking the lobby, restrooms and seating area for garbage that might have been dropped since the cleaning people were there. Burned out light bulbs should be noted, cigarette receptacles checked, trash emptied and bags replaced, front stoop swept, banners and signs fixed so they hang straight, etc.

It is very important that the front of house staff has access to cleaning supplies. It may be a revolting job, but often they are the ones called upon to wield a plunger in a toilet and a mop to clean up toilet overflow or vomit. Unfortunately, I have been faced with these types of emergencies far more often than heart attacks and power outages. I mastered the manuever of holding a can of air freshener at my thigh and spritzing as I passed through a crowded lobby by necessity.

Once the audience arrives ushers should be attentive to patrons and not focussed on talking to each other. Those who look lost or confused should be approached and aided. In many cases there isn’t enough seating in the lobby and folding chairs need to be brought out for people with mobility difficulties while they await the opening of the theatre.

Once the theatre does open ushers need to be pleasant, attentive and know how to accurately direct people to their seats. There should be a sufficient number of ushers stationed throughout the theatre to aid patrons. (I always found a minimum of 2 ushers per door with and additional 1 per every 100 seats in the theatre to be a pretty good rule of thumb. It provides a little flexibility if some people don’t show up.)

Once the show does start, ushers with flashlight should be strategically placed around the theatre and near the doors to aid in the arrival/departure of those needing to use the restrooms. This is one of the most difficult things I have tried to implement because inevitably the usher becomes involved in watching the show even if it is the 80th time they have seen it and miss the fact that someone is stumbling up the aisle and crashing out the doors.

There should also be a sufficient number of ushers in the lobby to help with late seating after the show starts. Before the appropriate interval for seating arrives, they should instruct the patrons about what is going to happen when they enter the theatre. I don’t know how many times I have been watching a show when the usher started instructing people after they entered the dark, quiet room.

If there is a particularly large number of people to seat, they should be lined up in reverse seating order (People for row M followed by those for J, G, E, B, A) so that the people can be “dropped off” as the group makes their way forward. Again, seems logical, but I have seldom seen it instituted unless I suggested it. I think it is because the ushers themselves share a perception that the job they are doing doesn’t take any thought.

After late seating has been taken care of, ushers in the lobby should be watching for people returning from the restroom so they can get the door for them. Not only is it a sign of good service and attention, but it prevents the door from making too much noise as it closes.

Intermission and the end of the show people are attentive, open and close the doors, etc and then help clean up at the end of the night.

One of the most important tools in Front of House Management is the end of performance report. Copies should be distributed to the administration and maintenance. Often stage management receives a copy as well. This is the way incidents are recorded and the status of the show is communicated to people who weren’t present. Often it lists what ushers didn’t show up, problems with the physical plant that need to be addressed, time the show and intermission started and ended, audience complaints, medical emergencies, if actors are wandering the lobby during the show, if there are a large number of people consistently arriving late, etc.

All this information helps people make decisions about how general operations and performances need to be run. Does the theatre need to recruit more ushers and train them better? Should the thermostat be moved away from an exterior door? Should alternate directions be provided so that people can avoid traffic congestion?

The front of house area is integral to the success of a performance venue because the response to emergencies and audience concerns rests so heavily upon this area. Providing at least key staff members with the training and information they need to address these concerns is essentially a necessity.

A lesson from the big boys in the for-profit world. My sister works in the new business department of Deutsch Inc. (as seen on The Apprentice) In the last couple months they have lost two accounts because new people took over management positions and simply decided to move their business to agencies with which they had preexisting relationships. There was no attempt to meet with the folks at Deutsch to discuss anything, just a call saying the business was being moved elsewhere.

It wasn’t a matter of poor results either. The first company, DirectTV had actually seen the largest increase in business ever since those godawful ads with celebrities reading half-literate testamonial letters began airing. Yesterday, Snapple became the second company to dump the agency and Deutsch did everything for them including designing the bottles and labels and writing those fun facts that appear under the cap. (I actually contributed a couple!) Deutsch would like to replace them with another beverage account but it is tough finding one that Pepsi or Coke doesn’t own.

A less or two here for non-profits. The first is obviously not to take your customer’s loyalty for granted. This is not to say Deutsch did. By all accounts they served their customers well. However, as you can see, some times it doesn’t matter how good a job you do and how much value you offer a customer. It just takes one opinion leader to turn a large segment of your customer base in another direction. Obviously, this can make your job easier in some respects if you can identify the opinion leader and harnass his/her influence for your own ends. But you can also encounter an easy come, easy go situation too.

Another lesson that isn’t necessarily illustrated by the Deutsch example but bears discussion is not to take your audience for granted in general. One of the things that constantly annoys me, and I am sure I am not alone, is seeing lucrative offers for subscribing to a service or magazine. Unfortunately, I can’t take advantage of these offers because I have been a loyal customer for a decade. I really resent the fact that companies will do all sorts of wonderful things to entice me to be a customer but they don’t do anything to reward my loyalty much less entice me to remain a customer. Even worse, when I originally signed up, they weren’t offering any incentives so I missed out entirely.

The only time I get offered special deals, it is to buy something I don’t need from a partner. This makes me strongly suspect they are getting a cut of whatever I buy due to their referral. Do companies really think they are rewarding me by giving me a deal on something I may or may not want when they know for certain I value what they offer?

It is so much more expensive to get new customers than it is to retain current ones, it is worth at least recognizing a person’s loyalty. Given the power and ease of use databases provide, it would be so easy for arts organizations to reward loyalty. If person buys X number of single tickets in a year, they get flagged for a free ticket or a discount. They have been buying tickets regularly for 10 years? Their tickets are mailed in a thank you card with a gift certificate for dinner.

Certainly, you may do all this work and they may still be seduced away by an impulse to do something different. An arts administrator’s job is to make it easy to at least partially ignore those seductions.

A short entry today because I had a job interview.

I came across an article recently about a study done on multi-tiered ticket pricing for theatres. The concept is similiar to how airlines price their tickets so that some people are paying a premium while the person next to them paid next to nothing.

A study was performed by Phillip Leslie, a professor at Standford University’s Graduate School of Business. He looked at the 1996 Broadway run of Seven Guitars to determine if the production’s 17 category pricing structure was beneficial to consumers or not. He found that it wasn’t particularly beneficial or harmful to consumers on the whole, though the producers did realize a 5% larger profit than they might have.

The article goes on to discuss the benefits of some decisions the producers made and how they could have made some more money given consumer purchasing habits. There were a couple sentences that caught my attention in the piece:

“Price discrimination is a practice used by companies that generally don’t know a lot about what consumers are willing to pay. “It’s something firms do when they lack good information about customers,” says Leslie.”

When a performing arts organization sets their prices, they are essentially setting a maximum price they feel their regular audience will be comfortable paying. They do surveying and communicate with this group directly and indirectly so they know at least a little about them. However, they don’t know much about those who don’t attend and they are the people multi-tiered pricing would be structure to.

In an entry last week I referred to the PARC survey that discovered the people who find price to be the biggest impediment are those who actually attend performances with some frequency. It might be beneficial if arts organizations could find a simple tiered pricing structure (airlines need a lot of computing power for their categories) that didn’t ultimately hurt their bottom line.

Those who are frequent attendees will be more familiar with the process of getting discounts and thus receive a “reward” for their devotion. Those who are not as familiar will end up paying a more premium price. Some people may end up paying as much as the market will bear rather than the top amount the theatre assumed the audience will pay.

This may be the structure which replaces the waning popularity of a subscription series. In order to make a tiered pricing structure work, especially one based on market demand, organizations would have to stop publicizing their prices. The only way to learn about discounts would be to be in an organization’s database to receive brochures, email, etc. where the discount prices were published. The core audience for an organization would then consist of people who are loosely interested in the production series rather than the devoted subscribers.

A multi-tiered system would put more responsibility on the shoulders of the consumers. Instead of knowing that they can always get half-price tickets the day of the show and knowing what half-price will be, the price might be half the current top price.

If tickets start out being offered at $25 and the show isn’t selling well, the theatre might email their core that tickets are now $20 two weeks out, if it still doesn’t sell well, 3 days out they might drop it to $12.50.

However, if the show start selling well, the theatre might raise the price to $35 and two weeks out email their core that discount tickets are $30, but then three days before might be selling the discount tickets at $40. Or perhaps they email their core a week out that it looks to sell out so get tickets now. (A claim they have to be very careful about making lest it appear to be hype to drive sales when the seats end up only 2/3 sold.)

Since people are making decisions about entertainment at the last moment these days, the only way it seems an organization can respond is by providing audiences with the information they need to make decisions. If the changing price structure drives people to your website so they can check which way the pricing is going, it provides the organization with an another opportunity to communicate additional information to them.

Changing pricing is a delicate matter and is as much public relations as maximizing revenues. The person who attends 2 productions out of 12 and barely gives a thought to the organization’s well being might become mightly offended that you are charging so much for a last minute ticket after the loyalty he has shown in the past.

In an early entry, I noted Ben Cameron’s observation that we may be entering a time when there is a shift in the social contract. This change in pricing structure might become a reflection of this shift.

I am afraid I found another subject to preempt the articles I bumped yesterday. Last night I was watching Looking for Richard on the Sundance Channel and realized it was a good illustration of how arts organizations can make their offerings more accessible to the general public. (It is playing about 5 more times this month.)

The movie stars Al Pacino making a documentary about filming Shakespeare’s Richard III. I was really excited to come across the movie because I realized it was a good example of everything I have been writing in regard to letting people see/know about the the production process.

I had never seen Shakespeare’s play, nor did I know much about it other than Richard’s physical deformity and the “kingdom for a horse” line. Since Pacino’s purpose was to make the play and the process more accessible and transparent to general audiences, test then was how well it communicated this information to me.

I was rather impressed by his efforts. The movie was sort of a stream of consciousness mix of explainations, casting and rehearsal scenes and portions of the actual play. The pacing and shifts were probably well suited to the short attention span of audiences.

They did a good job explaining the play. There were people discussing the historical perspectives and voice overs commenting on hard to understand changes in the plot. There was commentary by Sir John Gielgud and other notable British actors about why Americans actors are intimidated by Shakespeare.

The movie provided opportunities to see rehearsals where the actors discussed and sometimes argued about the play and the choices each was making about their character. It also offered insight into the variables considered when deciding what actor would be best for what part.

They also got into the language, how to act Shakespeare, iambic pentameter and what it sounded like. They talked about how audiences have difficulty with the language and essentially said people are not required to understand every single word as long as they got the gist and understood the power of the words.

For the most part, it was well done. Even if you didn’t know Pacino has a history with the play, his manner clearly indicated he was asking questions for the benefit of the audience’s comprehension. Theatre’s don’t have the resources to offer such a slick presentation prior to opening night (though could certainly film and edit a similar piece to offer as a resource). However, the film does illuminate the general elements that would be valuable for an audience member to know. This means more than just covering these topics in a study guide, but also in blog entries and perhaps thinking aloud in rehearsals that are open to the public. Obviously, some of the material would best be covered in a discussion prior to or after a show or rehearsal. It would probably sound stilted for an actor to be musing aloud about the challenges of the text in a postmodern world.

Speaking of educational resources, I found this website maintained by the Richard III Society which contains a viewers guide and lesson plan for the movie.

Since I was talking about the PARC survey yesterday, I thought I would continue today with a discussion of barriers to attendance and give a few thoughts about dealing with these problems.

The top three cited barriers to attendance were: Hard to Make Time to Go Out, Preference to Spend Time in Other Ways, and Cost of Tickets. However, there were some interesting lessons from nearly all the barriers.

In regard to Cost of Tickets, the survey found (bolding is mine):

We draw three conclusions about cost of tickets. First, as might be expected, the cost barrier is associated with household income level. In short, households with lower levels of income are more likely to cite cost of tickets as a barrier to greater attendance. This relationship is strongest in Sarasota. The relationship is weak in Boston, where a quarter of respondents from the wealthiest households still say that cost is an inhibitor for them.

Second, the tendency to claim cost of tickets as a barrier to performing arts attendance is substantially unrelated to education level, age, or whether there are children in the home…Oddly, the positive sign indicates that respondents with more education (who are also those respondents who tend to have higher incomes) are slightly more likely to cite ticket prices as a barrier than their less educated counterparts. While the low level of Somer’s d implies a weak relationship here, we nonetheless suspect a complicated
association among income, education, and the attitude toward cost of tickets in explaining attendance at performing arts events.

Third, unlike most other barriers, cost of tickets is cited by a greater percentage of attenders than nonattenders or frequent attenders. This generalization is not true in Sarasota, where frequent attenders are most likely to cite cost as a barrier, but it is a clear finding in the other four communities.

I found it very interesting to learn that people who attend often and have higher levels of income and education are more likely to cite cost. It almost makes me think that people who enjoy attending performances might come more often if the price was lowered except for the barrier of hard to make time to go out.

The study found that hard to make time to go out was “Overall, attenders and frequent attenders are almost as likely as nonattenders to say that hard to make time to go out is a substantial barrier. The main factor that makes this a big barrier for more people is the presence or absence of children in the home. Whether the children are younger or older, respondents in households with children are much more likely to say that time keeps them from the performing arts.”

These results might suggest that a daycare (or nightcare) center might remove this as a barrier for some people. The Utah Shakespearean Festival ran one in conjunction with their performances when I worked there. Satisfying older children might be more difficult. While programming can certainly be aimed at entire families, adults occasionally want to be engaged by more mature subject matter.

In a related question, family obligations was cited as a big barrier to attendance by those with children and hardly at all for those without. The ages of those indicating it as a big problem fell between 25-44 which may partially explain why mean audience age tends to be around 50. That is the time when the nest empties and people can indulge their inclination to attend.

Parking, as one might imagine was cited as a bigger deterrent in cities where parking was a problem. Unsafe and Unfamiliar location was cited as a big impediment less than 10% of the time. However, the researchers noted that the least educated, least wealthy and oldest respondents were more likely to rate this as a substantial factor. “Washington, D.C., is notable because more than twice as many nonattenders cite this factor as a barrier than attenders. This suggests that the issue is substantial enough to keep some people away who otherwise might be inclined to attend performing arts events.”

Some of the results here were very interesting to me. It was no surprise that older attendees might be turned off by unfamiliar or unsafe locations. However, the results also suggest that people with the most education and most to lose if they were mugged or had their car stolen were less aware of the danger than those with less material wealth, but apparently more practical education in the matter.

The response of Insufficient Publicity or Information About an Event was very interesting. The survey found that the older the respondent, the less likely they were to cite lack of information as a barrier. This suggests to me that dissemination of information over the internet, email, cellphones, pagers, etc may be important to attracting younger audiences. Younger demographics don’t get their information from print media as much as their elders do. Certainly, they aren’t listening to the same radio stations as the long time patrons are.

While advertising electronically and moving ads to the hip stations won’t automatically bring youthful hordes to the seats, these channels can support a campaign that communicates the value of attendance to this demographic.

One of the other big response categories was related to enjoying other things. The survey makes a sort of “no duh!” statement that “a big reason why some people do not attend the performing arts is that they prefer to do other things.” It is one of those questions that has to be asked if you are going to administer a valid survey, but which doesn’t yield earth shattering answers.

The response that there was “No One to Attend With” wasn’t a major factor overall in not attending. It was a big problem for those with lower education and those who did not attend. Lack of Appeal and Feeling Uncomfortable and Out of Place as barriers were also tied to education level and non-attendance, though the relationship to education level was slightly weaker. This information made me think that an offshoot of the docent program Drew McManus suggested might be helpful for this demographic. In addition to providing a relaxed format of education, assembling a group who are all nervous about attendance could be enabling as it eased their anxiety and provided a source of companionship for the future.

I came across some articles with relevance to ideas I expressed in earlier posts. Before I get into them though, I wanted to add a quick aside and direct people to an additional article I came across on the increasing influence power of blogs.
The first article I came across in an old issue of Fast Company is actually a review of Taking Care of eBusiness, by Thomas Siebel that makes a number of good points that are applicable to arts organizations. The first is in regard to knowing the different channels through which your patrons want to communicate with you.

“Customers with an order or a complaint don’t just call a toll-free number or wait for their district sales representative to arrive. They may turn to email, a Web site, or a host of other channels to do business. If companies can’t make each of those channels work well or can’t integrate information throughout each piece of their sales, marketing, and service systems, well, it’s never been easier for customers to say good-bye and take their business elsewhere.”

The article goes on to say:

“The lesson is clear: Smart businesses coordinate their sales and service efforts across multiple channels, moving information around so that customers’ preferences and history are accessible no matter whether the next interaction is online, in a store, or via a call center. That’s not an easy task, but Siebel argues that the payoff is immense.”

If you have read any of my earlier posts or speech on Arts Management in an Age of Technology, it probably comes as no surprise that I should zero in on this article. The importance of making it easy for people to make a decision to visit your organization and deliver the information they want in the manner they want it is pretty much my mantra these days.

The article continues in the same theme–noting customer preferences and taking the initiative to act upon them and anticipate a patron’s desires. (“Ah yes Mr. Smith, I got your voice mail message. Even though it was garbled as you drove through a tunnel, I saw you usually like seats in row G around 15 &16 so I placed you there before the show sold out.”)

It also talks about having all relevant data available to your front line people. Many a performing arts organization probably knows the value of this since inevitably your newest ticket office attendant will take a call from the biggest donor and tell them there is absolutely no way they can get into the show. Having a field from the donor database that feeds into the box office database noting that the person in question falls into the Super Angel category can avoid such embarrassment.

A few other articles I read reminded me of a Harvard Business Review article on the perfect one question customer survey. The perfect question was how likely you would be to refer the business to someone else. I found a couple more articles that discussed it in theory and practice.

The more theoretical talked about establishing referral programs. It put me in mind of a blog on orchestra marketing in which the author, Drew McManus suggested a adaptation of the Amazon referral program using discount vouchers. Mr. McManus’ suggestion is just one option of the many ways to execute this concept to help increase attendance.

The article that showed someone putting the referral idea into practice illustrated how Stoneyfield Farms got their yogurt promoted by word of mouth. What they did was allow people to adopt the cows who provided the milk for the yogurt after they bought a certain amount of Stoneyfield’s products. This not only increased sales but also gave them the publicity and demand they needed to get placement in supermarkets.

I have seen acting conservatories do a similar thing where people donate money to provide a scholarship for a specific student or just simply choose to adopt a student or two without any monetary commitment. The only bad side of this program is that even though there are students studying design and management, everyone wants to adopt the actors because of their visibility and the other students feel slighted.

Still, this is a possible program for arts organizations allowing people to adopt actors, dancers and musicians across a season. Perhaps money is involved, perhaps not. Certainly a whole club or families might pool money to adopt a performer or director and would get to have dinner with them once during a season or a run depending on the adopted’s availability. (A starving artist is sure to have plenty of availability for free meals!) The larger the group adopting, the better of course because more people have a sense of pride and involvement with an organization and therefore are in a position to boast about their adoptees to others and have an incentive to continue to buy tickets.