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Babysitters For Artist As Well As Audience

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Back in August I mentioned a partnership of organizations working with the Broadway production of Here Lies Love to offer babysitting services to people attending select performances.  What I hadn’t dug deeper into, but an NPR reporter did, was that one of the organizations, Parent Artist Advocacy League (PAAL), was started as a way to offer childcare services to artists.

PAAL founder Rachel Junqueira Spencer Hewitt characterizes the organization as essentially being staffed by artists for artists and says it started partially out of her own need for childcare.

Hewitt had struggled to balance an acting career with her growing family. She had to hide her pregnancy at auditions; once her child was born, she had to turn down work because the contracts paid less than a babysitter would cost.

“I saw my path to my career blocked because of the lack of support,” she said. “And I know that every industry has this dilemma of — if the child care costs more than my job’s able to pay, how can I still do this?”

PAAL advocates for parents in all sorts of ways, including giving grants for fertility costs to artists and presenting a Black Motherhood and Parenting New Plays Festival. But helping people in theater take care of their children is part of their core mission — an early initiative was hiring babysitters to watch children at auditions.

I had noted back in August that PAAL was opening chapters in other cities. From the NPR story, their expansion plans are based in facilitating the participation of both creators and attendees of different arts disciplines. (my emphasis)

Eventually, she would like to see the concept spread to orchestras, operas — even museums. She says it’s good for the organizations, who may see increased loyalty and gain new audiences; it’s good for the parent-artists who are supported; and it’s good for people who’d like to see an art exhibit or a play but can’t because child care is so expensive.

“People who appreciate the arts are engaged in the realities of life,” Hewitt said. “You say, ‘Gosh, I wish they would come to my show,’ without understanding, where are they right now? They’re in the car. They’re in the pick-up line [at school]. They’re listening to your ad promoting your gorgeous exhibit while they’re trying to schedule the soccer game.“

One Org Making Good On Covid Era Diversity Commitments

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A number of arts organizations made strong commitments to diversify their offerings and the composition of their staffs and performers as they emerged from Covid restrictions. Recently there was a story on Artsjournal.com about the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s (PNB) new dancer roster which is younger and 50% composed of persons of color.

The organization had already begun moving in that direction, including the composition of people whose works they were choosing to dance, but their efforts have accelerated since venues were allowed to reopen. The article cites a woman who wasn’t entirely comfortable being in the company in the pre-Covid era who is more engaged with the organizational culture now.

In addition to changing the face of who is dancing and whose works are being danced to, the company has also addressed the body type and costuming issues which have been a somewhat controversial element of ballet.

Even when PNB performs full-length classical ballets like Swan Lake and Nutcracker, the rows of tutu-clad swans or snowflakes on stage are no longer made up of identical white dancers with long necks, narrow hips and flat chests.

Now dancers wear shoes and tights that match their skin tones, and sometimes Black dancers free their hair from the tight buns that have been de rigueur for ballerinas.

Going into the article, I was looking to see if there was any mention of audience growth or diversity. I was partially thinking of the post I made about Dallas Black Dance Theatre which has thrived since the Covid shutdowns. While anecdotal evidence, if PNB also saw an increase in audiences, it might be a sign there was an undertapped, unmet need that was finally be recognized. I was interested to see the article’s authors didn’t just depend on PNB’s claims about a more diverse audience, but spoke to a media outlet that serves the local Black community.

TraeAnna Holiday of Converge Media, an outlet that covers Seattle’s Black community, wrote in an email that while it has yet to be a major topic of community-wide discussion, she’s seen more diverse audiences at PNB performances.

“People are noticing this shift in diverse representation,” Holiday wrote. “PNB is setting a precedent in the industry; it’s impressive and notable.”

There was paragraph in the article that jumped out at me which I wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret:

To an outsider, PNB seems to be evolving into a contemporary ballet troupe, but Boal politely declines that moniker. “We’re a company that moves, a company that can dance,” he says.

I wondered if the term “contemporary” was being used as a qualifier to suggest PNB isn’t a “real” ballet organization. I am sure there are purists who might say that regardless of the terminology, but those couple sentences made me question if the internal politics of the dance world employed labels like that to signal acceptable boundaries.

More Reasons Not To Use Contextomy

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I recently saw an article in The Guardian about a controversy that arose from misrepresenting reviews of a book by Jordan Peterson through the use of selective editing.

The Times columnist James Marriott tweeted an image of the cover featuring a quote from his review that appears to endorse the work. In the now deleted tweet, he wrote: “Incredible work from Jordan Peterson’s publisher. My review of this mad book was probably the most negative thing I have ever written.”

The quote attributed to Marriott read: “A philosophy of the meaning of life … the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has ever written.” The actual phrase from Marriott’s review is: “one of the most sensitive and lucid passages of prose he has written”, a description specifically about one chapter in an otherwise almost entirely negative review.

Other reviewers were likewise quoted out of context. The issue is causing one publisher to create a best practices document for their staff.

Nicola Solomon, chief executive of the SoA (Society of Authors), said that “quoting lines out of context isn’t clever marketing”, calling the practice “morally questionable”. Readers and authors “deserve honest, fair marketing from publishers. We can’t get that by undermining and misrepresenting one writer to boost the sales of another. It puts off reviewers from reviewing and readers from buying,” she told the Bookseller.

Solomon is later quoted as noting that this sort of editing of quotes likely qualifies as a criminal act under an English consumer protection regulation from 2008.

It may still be the case, but at one time this sort of creative omission was widespread in relation to movie reviews. I wrote a post about the practice, which is called contextomy, back in 2007. I basically wrote along the same lines as Nicola Solomon that the practice undermines confidence.

It also occurred to me that the growing push to use marketing language focused on the audience experience and needs is another reason to avoid using out of context reviewer quotes…or reviewer quotes at all. Quoting reviews that focus on the excellence of the artist and their achievements is often less helpful in making a decision to participate than customer focused language.

In the process of searching for my post on contextomy, I came across a 2006 post I made about how an obsessive focus on perfection can create an environment where anything less is viewed as a failure.

In there I quote a Juilliard professor:

“…an average graduate of law school or medical school can still have a decent career. But it is not possible, he said, for a successful artist to be only average.”

Shortly after, I quote Artful Manager author Andrew Taylor about the language used in arts marketing materials and grant reports:

Perfection, triumph, success, and positive spin. Their performances are always exceptional. Their audiences are always ecstatic. Their reviews are always resounding (or mysteriously missing from the packet). Their communities are always connected and enthralled. In short, they are superhuman, disconnected, and insincere.

In 2006 arts professionals were saying this sort of language comes across as disconnected and insincere, but it took another 10-15 years before this concept was embraced and repeated often enough for it to gain traction. Hindsight being what it is, that is nearly a decade of what could have been constructive marketing messaging that has been lost.

Though to be fair, social media platforms which are so useful in disseminating these conversations only became publicly available around 2006 (Twitter & Facebook) Linkedin was 2004 but wasn’t really hosting these conversations then.

Strength Of Intent To Return May Be Stronger Predictor Of Return Than Even Enjoyment Of Experience

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I recently received an email which directed me to a 2021 study funded by the Wallace Foundation called, What They Say And What They Do which essentially looked at whether people who say they will return to a venue actually do.

Bottom line is yes, the more strongly people express a desire to return, the more likely they are to return. However, as with everything, there are some interesting nuances.

A couple disclaimers, most of which appear right at the start of the presentation. First, this research was conducted pre-Covid. Second, the three organizations that participated were “large, well-established in their discipline and predominantly white.” (Goodman Theatre, Lyric Opera, both in Chicago and Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle.) So your mileage may vary.

The study was conducted across the 2014-2019 seasons. Single ticket buyers were surveyed about their interest in returning and then the organizations cross referenced that data with whether the people actually purchased again. The presentation also notes that people who fill out surveys are already engaged with the organization and therefore more inclined to return. Certainly there were many who didn’t fill out the survey that may have returned. I also wondered how many may have returned where a different family member purchased the tickets and used a different email or mailing address that might have been missed.

The finding was that the stronger people expressed their interest in returning on a Likert scale, the more likely they were to return – 49% of single ticket buyers responding as “definitely” and 31% responding “probably” returned within two years. Interestingly, while enjoyment and overall experience were also associated with an actual return, these factors weren’t as strong a predictor of return as stated intent to return.

Based on these responses, the Goodman Theater focused more expensive marketing efforts on those responding they would definitely return and experienced a higher return with that group.

While those 65 and older had slightly higher rates of return, the relation between strength of stated intent to return with an actual return held true across all age groups.

What I really found interesting was that what people said they did or didn’t like was the same whether they returned or not.  The presentation has charts which show responses to enjoyment of the performance and quality of  experience don’t vary a lot between those who do and don’t return. But the word clouds generated from the comments really illustrate how little difference positive and negative elements factored in to whether people returned or not.

I have seen a number of studies saying if you can only ask one question on a survey, it should be whether you would recommend an experience to a friend. Whether you will return yourself seems closely related to that question. While this data is definitely limited, there are hints that stated willingness to return may be a strong indicator that someone will.

Give A Kid A Culture Voucher And They Buy Books As Well As Experiences

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I have been keeping an eye on the cultural voucher programs various European countries employ to encourage young people to get out and engage in different experiences. The program differ in detail. There are some that provide rail passes to allow people to explore different geographic areas, including outside their own countries. Others are focused on arts and cultural experiences within the country.  I have written about Germany’s KulturPass before, but I recently caught a story about the most recent round of the program.

According to a recent article, as of August 9, in terms of units purchased since this year’s KulturPass program began on June 14, books and other printed materials have lead the way by far.  Then cinema tickets, concerts and theater, museums and parks, musical instruments, audio media and then sheet music.  In all, about 200,000 units have been purchased in the last two months. About 136,000 German 18 year olds have activated the passes worth €200 (US$219)

In terms of amount spent, concerts and theater lead the way given the greater cost. “….at something around or above €12 million (US$13.2); books follow with so €11 million (US$12.7 million); and cinema tickets follow in third place with €461,000 or more (US$505,900).”

Lest you think Germans are particularly bookish with 49% of voucher funds being used to purchase tomes, Italy has seen similar results with their pass.

“…Italy’s corresponding “18App”—the original “culture voucher” for young citizens in Europe. There, in 2021 specifically, the publishers association reported that 18-year-old Italians were spending 80 percent of their €500 vouchers on books during January and February of that year.”

Obviously, there may be differences in the design and implementation of the pass in Italy that encouraged larger purchases of books. The fact these numbers come from a period 10 months into the Covid pandemic when there were reduced opportunities for other activities likely influences the numbers as well. However, these programs are good examples of a tool to provide bottom up funding to provide a little stimulation to arts and culture organizations.

When Trying To Break Boundaries Threatens To Break Your Spirit

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Last week on the Association of Performing Arts Professional’s (APAP) podcast, Emily Isaacson of Classical Uprising talked about some of the frustrating experiences she has had trying to advance her goal of changing the context through which classical music is viewed and experienced.

One of the biggest impediments she has experienced was the view that she isn’t a serious artists because she is a woman and a mother. She shared, apparently for the first time publicly, that a family friend whom she had known since she was a child asked her to partner on creating a music festival, but when they got together to plan their second season, he dismissed her efforts and professionalism.

“He started to call me randomly to tell me that I would never be taken seriously as a musician that because I was a mom, I was distracted that if I thought that my degrees were worth anything, I was kidding myself because real musicians don’t care about degrees,. That I made, I was making a fool of myself on the podium.”

She said the conversation got a lot worse from there. She said she has run up against similar sentiments regarding other programming she has done:

So people wanna label me as a woman conductor, and that’s my whole soapbox. The other thing is they say, “Oh, well, the fact that she wants to do, you know, Hayden’s creation in a park must mean that she’s really not that sophisticated a musician. She’s doing it differently because she can’t hang with the big boys and the old club and you know, this, that, and the other thing.”

Or like, “Oh, isn’t it cute that she wants to do things that are not just four kids, but intergenerational because she’s a mom and so focused on being a mommy and mommy music”, …

I’m advocating for a different way of presenting and producing classical music, so that it is more social and more interactive and more casual, in the way that actually it was originally conceived.

The other thing she says she runs into is the echo chamber type thinking among different organizations. She talks about how when she attended the 2023 APAP conference, she struck up a conversation with the representative of an organization promoting a Breaking Boundaries series. She was somewhat disappointed to learn that their concept of breaking boundaries was presenting works by female composers one year and works by minority composers the next year. This essentially mirrored what so many other orchestra organizations were doing.

I’m good quick on my feet, so I pivoted and I was like, “Another way that you could think about like pushing boundaries, is by thinking about like who we’re performing for, how we’re performing and what, what are the things that we include in the performance that make people feel either included to be there or more connected to the music than they did before?” And I start giving examples from my programs about, doing Flight of the Bumble Beer where you do music flights alongside five-ounce pours of beer or doing Bach Bends Yoga.

Like really, here’s some like con this is not lofty ideas. Here’s some concrete ideas and this person could just not understand what I was talking about. That was so frustrating for me because it made me realize that the national conversation and the conversation that I’m trying to have is just ships passing in the night…

You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript to learn more. Isaacson starts the episode so her story is easy to find.

NYC TKTS Booth Turns 50

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On June 25, the TKTS booth in Times Square turned 50. I have written about some precursors to the discount ticketing booth The whole history is pretty fascinating, especially if you view it in the continuum of online ticket resellers.

The AP ran a story about the history of the booth. The recent $18 million renovation in 2008 resulted in the slick, glass enclosed booth with the amphitheater like seating area. However, the original booth was an abandoned trailer donated by NYC Parks Department placed with the goal of stabilizing the seedy neighborhood. I remember that original booth…and the seedy neighborhood.

Mayers and Schiff were given just $5,000 for the capital budget, and they rented scaffolding to go around the booth. They wove a translucent plastic fabric with the iconic logo among the bars and clamped spotlights on the frame.

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They thought it would stay up for a year or two, at best. Instead, it won design awards and lasted decades. Their influence can be seen in the abbreviated, vowel-less apps and company titles of today — Flickr to Unbxd and DNCE.

I get a kick out of the idea that this cobbled together structure won design awards.

If you have been to Times Square recently you know it is the riotous center of activity with costumed characters available for paid selfies and people urging you to buy tickets to specific shows. The atmosphere can tend to be a little off-putting. However, the TKTS staff are not permitted to advocate for a specific show, but instead can make recommendations of multiple shows based on the genre of show you might like to see. Or you can ask other folks in line for recommendations since it can take up to 45 minutes to get through the line.

Do You Remember Your First Concert Experience?

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Last week Washington Post contributor Theodore Johnson reflected back on the first concert he saw when he was 9 years old (The Fat Boys). He noted that due to Covid restrictions, this summer would a delayed first concert experience for a lot of young people.

Lest you think that my posts advocate for some niche arts and culture insider philosophy, Johnson, a retired naval officer and adviser to the New America think tank, writes much the same as I regarding the value of shared, in-person experiences.  He cites studies that have shown how people value collective experience concerts provide which is all the more reason to lean into those themes in marketing messaging.

And aside from how technologically advanced a major concert is now, I’m most struck by the diversity of the crowds. Maybe there is some social and civic magic to be found in our return to shared, in-person experiences.

Social scientists have identified four themes that help explain the attraction of concerts and the significance of attendance. The most prominent is the experience, followed by the engagement, the novelty and, lastly, the practical reasons.

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Engagement matters. Ours is a society that requires frequent positive community participation if it’s to be resilient against the forces pulling us apart. Scholars have explored the impact of attending concerts, and they’ve found such benefits as an increased sense of belonging and improved well-being. Concert audiences “experienced feelings of togetherness,” researchers report. Sharing a love for something facilitates a path to connection.

Bad News As Portland Announces Withdrawl From Regional Arts Group

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Some disappointing news out of Oregon. Portland is withdrawing support and participation from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), an independent organization that handles granting and arts education activities in Portland and three surrounding counties. I had written about RACC and Portland’s support of arts and culture before. RACC had been strongly encouraging groups to work toward diversifying their boards, staff and audiences years before it became more of a national focus.

The city has been developing their own arts office which will take up much of the work RACC had done. According to the article, the relationship between the city and RACC had been strained for some time now.

Over the years the city has displayed unrest over the regional approach, with complaints from the city auditor’s office and some city council members that RACC wasn’t providing them with sufficient financial information.

[..]

What will the breakup mean for the city and its metropolitan neighbors? It comes at a time when the tri-county area is in the midst of developing a long-term strategy, called Our Creative Future, for regional arts: Presumably, that strategy-in-the-making will have to take a sharp turn.

Writing for Oregon Artswatch, Bob Hicks suggests the timing of this announcement introduces less stability to the already shaky operating environment arts and cultural organizations in the Portland are experiencing as they try to navigate a post-Covid losses, inflation and audience reluctance to return.

How Will The New Albright-Know Be Received By Buffalo’s Working Class

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Bloomberg had an article about the renovated Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, now rebranded Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Prior to the renovation, the director said people would frequently tell him the museum was meant for the elites.  The post-renovation goal is to have the working class residents of the city feel comfortable visiting the space.

It was interesting to read that the director was insistent that the town square plaza not become a lobby. There will be play areas with Legos rather than admission desks and coat checks. They also looked at 12 other cold climate cities and took inspiration from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s glass enclosed atrium to design a glass enclosed space that  will act “…as a kind of snow collector when it’s cold enough and a place to watch the rain pour down when it’s not.” They engaged the community in focus groups to get ideas about how the space should be used when the museum opens again.

I was a little concerned about how well-thought out their efforts at connecting with the working class might turn out when I read that recent programming included a gamelan and Wayang puppetry dance. But in fact, Buffalo is apparently a center of gamelan and other Indonesian arts.

The crystal sculptural elements of the Town Square space are also a favored space for selfies:

Visitors gravitated to the base of “Common Sky,” and few resisted the urge to open up the cameras on their smartphones after looking up at the mirrored panels along what is now Buffalo’s hottest selfie spot. Giving it a run for its money is Lucas Samaras’s “Mirrored Room” (1966), one of the museum’s most beloved, aptly named pieces, which has been fully restored and given pride of place in a new (free) gallery space all to itself in the Knox Building.

The Bloomberg article acknowledged some of the troubles that the museum world in general is facing by wondering aloud if this public gathering space may provide a convenient locale for protests:

Buffalo is deeply segregated by race and class, while its destination art museum is run by a nonprofit institution dependent on the support of the region’s elites. How will the museum react if a protest of a board member takes place inside Town Square? Or a rally in support of staff unionization?

Covid Era Virtual Programming Continues To Be Successful For Some Arts Orgs

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Amid all the stories of arts organizations closing and scaling back, I saw a piece about a dance company in Dallas that has seen their situation improve with virtual and live programming during and after the worst of the Covid shutdowns. Public radio station KERA posted a story about the steps Dallas Black Dance Theatre took that increased their exposure and reach.

While many arts organizations – particularly those that serve communities of color – shut down or lost revenue during the pandemic, Dallas Black Dance Theatre Executive Director Zenetta Drew said the organization made $100,000 in net ticket sales in 2020 from online programming.

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Drew said the theatre’s programming has continued to net six figures each year and has also brought in new audiences from across the world. Since 2020, DBDT has reached 38 states and 35 countries outside the U.S. with paid virtual content.

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While virtual and in-person arts programming have been viewed as alternatives, Drew said it doesn’t have to be either-or. Instead, she said virtual programming “gives you a chance to really whet the appetite of folks to want to have that in-person experience.”

The proof? Demand for the company’s touring engagements has quadrupled since 2019. Drew said the increased exposure to art markets across the country led to paid gigs in spaces they’d never been before, such as Yale University and Seattle.

I heard that many performing arts companies scaled back on virtual offerings once live performances were permitted again. Perhaps the dance company’s approach of using virtual and live to complement each other and the framework of their content has been beneficial to them. They may have also hit a sweet spot with audiences who wanted/were interested in seeing people like themselves in performance.

You Can’t Measure The Value Of Arts In Dollars, But Not Having It Will Cost You

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A couple weeks ago in The Globe & Mail, Max Wyman wrote an opinion piece declaring the value of art and culture in Canada shouldn’t just be measured by economic standards. Long time readers know this argument is a particular interest of mine.

Wyman writes:

Typically, if you can’t value the outcome in dollars, it doesn’t count. And it’s hard to show the value of art and culture on a cost-benefit graph. Even when they do come up with more cash, it’s usually for economic reasons. Just recently, for instance, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a new investment of £50-billion ($84-billion) to “grow the creative industries,” in the name of adding a million extra jobs in the country’s cultural sector by 2030.

He goes on to note that arts and cultural organizations are becoming more adept at discussing related benefits such as making communities desirable places to live and contributing to physical and mental health and well-being.

He goes on to cite a study that asked nearly 2000 visitors to 11 U.S. museums to place a value on the contribution to their well-being the museum visit had made. While they got an interesting result, it is somewhat unfortunately couched in economic terms.

…to assess the way their museum experiences improved their well-being in four categories – personal, intellectual, social and physical – and to put a price on those benefits on a sliding scale from US$0 to US$1,000. They came up with an average cash value, per individual visit, of US$905. When the study’s authors extrapolated this information on a national scale, they calculated an annual economic value of US$52-billion in public well-being for museum visitors.

I know, I know: small sample, based on entirely personal valuations. But in an interview with The Art Newspaper, Will Cary, the chief operating officer of the Barnes Foundation (which took part in the study), said the research gives funders and policy makers “a compelling, quantitative argument that thriving, well-supported cultural institutions are not ‘nice-to-haves,’ they are ‘need-to-haves’ and that the return on their investment is significant and multifaceted.”

As something of a supplement to this article, I was listening to a Wisconsin Public Radio story, (probably saw it on Artsjournal.com) where a caller (~11:45) said a company was visiting their village to determine whether they would site their company there or in NC. The caller, who said he served on the village council, said the company rep said his wife was into arts and the community and she will never live here. The caller said they basically lost a company that was going to employ 250 because they lacked an arts and culture infrastructure.

You Wanna Be Where Everybody Know Your Name

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I am not sure when Culturebot fell off my daily reading list, but the last time I referenced a post was 2014. Thankfully Artsjournal.com linked to a piece by Andy Horowitz this week so the blog is back on my radar.  Andy wrote a relatively long piece about the need to focus on audience need and experience. While he has a TL;DNR summary at the beginning, the really good stuff is buried in the expanded version.

The broad strokes won’t be new to long time readers. Horowitz notes that despite the wake up call of Covid and all the money funders have provided for engagement and innovation, a lot of theaters are still focusing on legacy audiences and providing the same type of audience experiences as they had in the past.

He says arts and culture organizations need to be creating a sense of belonging and connection for new audiences. He uses a couple of personal examples. In the first, he talks about arriving in NYC and wanting to be a part of what was happening at P.S. 122, (now known as Performance Space New York), because so much great work was happening. But he couldn’t figure out a way in. Everybody already seemed to know everyone else. He started getting involved with other organizations and projects until he eventually cultivated the right relationships and started working at P.S. 122.

In another part of his piece, he raises a similar example of his 4.5 year old son changing pre-schools mid-year:

 It was a bumpy transition since at midyear all the other kids knew each other; some had started “going to school” together during the pandemic. …His teachers said he might not feel comfortable onstage and might prefer to sit with us; he came home from school telling us how he wasn’t able to learn the songs or the choreography because the other kids already knew it, things like that. As the day approached, we were filled with trepidation and uncertainty. But lo and behold, when graduation day came, our little guy sat with his class, walked onstage with his class, sang the songs, did the choreography, and behaved perfectly the whole time!! I have never been more invested in a performance in my life.

He talks about how brave people need to be to take chances in so many respects, including learning new things and trying to integrate into social settings in which we don’t feel we belong.  Horowitz reiterates what I have written before about creating an environment in which people can see themselves and their stories depicted and spend time with family and friends. Something I have overlooked is working to provide the sense you are among friends even if you didn’t know anyone when you arrived. (his emphasis)

I think that this is what every audience everywhere wants when they come to the theater. We want to feel like we are meeting up with friends. We want to see people we know in the lobby, we want to see people we know onstage, we want to know the person that works in the box office and the ushers, we want to know the people seated next to us and across the room in another section so we can wave to them and meet them at intermission for a drink. There is nothing worse than feeling like a stranger milling around with other strangers awkwardly avoiding eye contact, worrying about if you belong. If you run a theater and you aren’t trying to create that sense of welcome, belonging and inclusion with your audience, then you are failing them, it doesn’t matter what you put onstage.

As someone whose name is on an alcohol license, I am a little wary about encouraging people to literally replicate this exact scenario, but one experience Horowitz touts as bringing people together was a scheme in which an event made ordering a single beer as expensive as ordering a beer for 10 people. The result was that strangers organized themselves into groups to get the cheapest possible drinks they could:

I don’t remember the exact amount but a single beer was, I think, $10 and 10 beers was maybe $1? Like that. So as soon as someone got to the front of the line they immediately started talking to the people around them to get enough drink orders together to get the cheaper drinks. Never have I ever seen a group of strangers connecting and laughing and cooperating so quickly and joyfully as I did that night. I’m pretty sure that the bar was itself an art project.

Perhaps it was a lesson the TV show Cheers was teaching us back in the 80s and we just weren’t paying close enough attention.

Interesting History of Drag In Twin Cities

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As Pride Month comes to an end, I wanted to call attention to an interesting piece that appeared earlier this month about the history of drag performances in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area during the late 19th to early 20th century.

Despite laws prohibiting crossdressing, its use in theatrical performance was considered appropriate at the highest strata of society.

Minneapolis maintained a city ordinance against cross-dressing between 1877 and the mid-1900s, and St. Paul didn’t repeal its 1891 ordinance prohibiting people from wearing “clothes not belonging to their sex” in public until 2003. Theater allowed drag performers to evade these legalities in ways that individuals “cross-dressing” in daily life could not. Mainstream society allowed and accepted drag so long as performers were explicitly donning a costume, maintaining a “fourth wall” between themselves and the audience. It did not make these allowances for individuals not attired in gender conforming clothing outside of explicit performance, who were far more subject to policing….

…Popular “female impersonators” like Julian Eltinge, Karyl Norman and Paul Vernon performed in venues like the Grand Opera House in St. Paul and the Metropolitan Theater and the Orpheum in Minneapolis. The elitism of the venues reflected the “fashionable society” that attended. But even during this early period of drag, performers were not exclusively men; women performed and received similar acclaim as “male impersonators.” “High-class vaudeville” artists like Mary Marble and Margaret Grayce toured nationally, stopping to perform in Minnesota in 1897 and 1908, respectively.

According to the article, there was some uncomfortable intersections with blackface performance during this time. There is an implication that some of the drag depictions might have feed into similarly offensive stereotypes regarding gender.

It wasn’t until drag started to move to nightclubs and the illusion of the fourth wall was increasingly dissolved that the practice of crossdressing began to raise alarms socially.

By the 1930s, drag was written up in newspapers more as the cause of police raids than as a performance notice. Police interfered not so much due to the content, but rather because of the interaction between performers and audiences. Police told Variety that acts contained “nothing obscene or immoral in show … but (we’d) like it stopped anyhow.”

Despite police raids and attempts to close down established and widely popular shows, drag performances continued and became more diverse.

As the 1940s progressed, drag was not exclusive to white performers. Minneapolis’s Clef Club catered to Black patrons and featured Black performers, such as the singer Alma Smith and drag artist Carroll Lee, and the 1950s and 60s brought acclaim to Black drag artists like Stormé DeLarverie, Dodie Daniels and Don Marshall, featured in the Jewel Box Revue.

The Bar That Hosts Open Mic Operaoke Nights

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Fun article I think I found on Artsjournal.com.  There is a bar in Portland, OR called Mendelssohn’s, run by a descendant of composer Felix Mendelssohn who has some opera and classical music cred having been executive director of both types of organizations.  The owner has positioned the bar as a place to demystify opera and classical music by programming a wide variety of musicians and hosting Operaoke nights.

Every other Tuesday night, musicians are given the opportunity to step into the dimly-lit bar and take over the stage, enchanting the audience with their best arias and ballads.
[…]
“We spend so much time preparing and working on this craft,” Lipton said. “You don’t often get the opportunity to play or sing or do these pieces that are lesser known. So this is kind of an avenue to do that.”

In addition to being able to perform lesser known pieces, the a Operaoke host/performer, Alex Trull noted another part of the appeal was being able to perform in a low stakes environment in contrast to the audition/training/performance context that comprises so much of the classical or operatic artist’s relationship with the music.

Fix The Tix Coalition Makes Bold Demands To End Exploitative Ticketing Practices

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A little over a month ago, I wrote about the newly formed Fix the Tix coalition which is urging the US Congress to pass legislation to protect ticket buyers from exploitative ticket pricing/manipulation, ticketing scams, and use of bots to purchase high demand tickets.

Last week they released the details of what they are pushing Congress to enact. It is pretty much everything ticket buyers and venue operators have been praying for.

In addition to restrictions on just plain gouging, the plan calls for the end of speculative ticket selling by requiring sellers to legally have physical or virtual ownership of tickets.

● require that resellers and ticket resale platforms legally obtain each ticket and have each ticket in possession, virtually or physically, prior to placing it on sale.
● require that the ticket resale platform has written proof that a reseller possesses a ticket to sell.

Similarly, they ask that attempts to make a ticketing site masquerade as official outlet of a venue be made illegal.

● make illegal the use of deceptive URLs, search engine optimization, or advertising that improves the visibility of secondary sites over primary sales platforms and makes fans believe they are buying tickets from the venue or artist.
● require secondary ticketing resellers and platforms to clearly and conspicuously disclose:
○ a notice that it is not the primary ticket issuer and venue;
○ that a ticket may still be available from the primary ticket seller and link back to the primary ticket seller;
○ the original face value and fees of each ticket; and
○ a certification that the event ticket offered for sale is in the possession of the reseller or secondary ticketing platform.

Note, I haven’t listed everything they are asking to occur in each of these situations. Check out the full document for more info.

As you might imagine, they are also insisting on full transparency for fees up front during the purchasing experience.

In terms of privacy and safety, they are asking the secondary market sellers be required to provide venues with the contact info of ticket purchasers so they can be reached in case of emergency or rescheduling. But they also insist that secondary market buyer information be protected and not used for sales and marketing without purchaser permission.

As mentioned, Fix the Tix also want to prevent tickets from being snatched up by bots and to ensure secondary ticket sales are made at or near face value on a one on one basis rather than by corporations to individuals:

● ensure that artists, working with venues, determine how to get tickets into the hands of actual fans.
● prohibit companies that operate both primary and secondary ticketing platforms from forcing tickets sold for more than face value to only be resold on their platforms.
● encourage ticketing platforms to operate exclusive, no-fee, fan-to-fan exchanges of tickets as long as they are not exchanged on those exclusive platforms for more than the face value (or the original total cost) of the ticket.
● prohibit companies that are primary sellers and secondary resellers from offering secondary resales on the same web page or display where the primary seller also offers tickets for primary sale.

Questions of Relevance Not Limited to the US

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German arts colleague Rainer Glaap has been feeding me interesting articles over the last couple weeks. I was going to follow up on some content he sent earlier, but he hit me up with an interesting study today that I am moving to the front of the line.  The recently released Culture Relevance Monitor shows a number of parallels between general cultural attitudes in Germany and the U.S.  (Note that the PDF document labeled as the German version is actually the English version and vice versa)

I use the term general cultural attitudes because many of us in the US would be envious to read of an large overall expression of support:

People in Germany (91 per cent) believe it is important to preserve cultural offerings in theatres for coming generations. A large majority (76 per cent) is also of the opinion that these should continue to be financed from the public purse. The offerings are part of Germany’s cultural identity (82 per cent) and education (91 per cent)

However, German cultural offerings seem to be faced with the same generational challenges as those in the US. Despite saying they enjoyed their experiences attending these activities when they were children, a significant segment of the population doesn’t feel these offerings resonate with them:

Both in the population as a whole and in the generation of young adults aged between 18 and 29, two-thirds are not at all interested or are not very interested in theatre performances, classical music concerts, or opera, ballet or dance performances. Four out of five respondents stated that they did not make use of traditional cultural offerings like these over the last twelve months.

37 per cent of respondents had never attended a classical music concert or an opera, ballet or dance performance (for theatre performances: 10 per cent). Many 18- to 29-year-olds feel that cultural offerings do not cater to them (43 per cent); they feel out of place there (39 per cent).

A summary of recommendations on another site also sounds similar to conversations on the same topic in the US.

  • get to know and address their target groups better: There is demand for cultural offerings such as those that are specially directed at children and teenagers (85 per cent), that make people laugh (83 per cent) and that are easy for everyone to understand (81 per cent). The performances should also stimulate social and political discussion (61 per cent) and be new and topical (63 per cent).
  • be more open and network: Theatre venues should see themselves as a gathering place (80 per cent) and offer amateur theatre groups/orchestras or similar ensembles opportunities to perform (74 per cent). Social and habitual barriers to access must be removed.
  • carry out marketing in social and modern ways: The pricing structure should be socially fair (89 per cent), and 18- to 29-year-olds in particular need easier access to programme information (42 per cent), for example via social media platforms.

The survey also asked what would have to change to make them attend more frequently:

40 percent of respondents indicated that theatre venues would have to have more cultural offerings that interested them …. 29 percent would have to have more leisure time, and for 28 percent of respondents, the tickets would need to be cheaper or free … 20 percent would need someone to accompany them for such visits, 14 percent would like it to be easier and cheaper to travel to theatre venues. 11 percent say that their health would have to improve, and 11 percent say that the quality of the cultural offerings would have to be better.

[…]

A quarter (28%) of respondents say they would need easier access to information about interesting offerings before they would attend theatre venues more often. 13 percent would like to see more diverse and varied offerings in terms of the topics, 6 percent want more options for childcare during the events.

I found it interesting that childcare came up so frequently among the 2505 respondents. This put me in mind of the last pre-Covid CultureTrack survey I wrote about in 2017 which reported on barriers to participation for those who frequently attended and those who didn’t.

For frequent attendees, the top barriers were inconvenience, no one to attend with, and rather do other leisure activities, in that order. For infrequent/never attendees, not for someone like me, didn’t think of it, and inconvenient were the top barriers, in that order.

Providing Attendees With A Happy Ending

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About a year ago, I wrote about a post Colleen Dilenschneider made showing a link between museum gift shops and museum memberships.  She recently wrote a similar piece about how gift shops can help cement relationships and good impressions in museum-goers.

She presents data that shows people who visit museum retail spaces report higher levels of satisfaction than those that don’t visit those spaces. She admits there is a chicken and egg element to this data because it isn’t clear if people who are already satisfied with their experience are then choosing to visit the shop or if visiting the shop is generating an increased level of satisfaction for them.

Dilenschneider suggests that it may not matter which scenario is in operation:

If people who are having better experiences are more likely to go into the store (to experience one of the best parts of visiting a museum retail shop), then that’s fantastic. They are further heightening their experience and paving the way for positive endorsements – which are key for motivating attendance. Alternately, if someone isn’t having a good experience and they enter the shop and have a better experience as a result, that’s fantastic as well.

Even if you aren’t running a museum or have a retail element associated with your arts related experience, Dilenschneider cites some data which is very much relevant for you. She references studies conducted by behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman who

“…explained that “our memory of past experiences (pleasant or unpleasant) does not correspond to an average level of positive or negative feelings but to the most extreme point and the end of the episode.” …He discovered that humans don’t often remember much of an experience accurately. Instead, we primarily remember how we felt at the peak of the experience, and at the end of it.

Organizations with well-executed retail experiences may be grateful for the peak-end rule, as it means people who visit the shop before leaving the museum have a greater likelihood of departing with a more positive view of their entire visit. (Those with difficult parking situations, on the other hand, may be less enthused about the peak-end rule…)

It is not always possible to control the peak experience of the evening–it could be the dinner before they arrived, a pleasant/unpleasant interaction with another attendee as easily as it could be the predictable crescendo experience everyone else in attendance had. The end of the experience is more frequently within our scope of control –although as she mentions bad parking/traffic can be among those defining final moments. There is an opportunity to influence someone’s willingness to return by investing attention into the quality of experience as they depart.

Is There A Way Past Fighting And Bad Behavior At Shows?

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So either the disruptions at performances in the UK are growing increasingly problematic or the topic has become a favorite bete noire of news outlets because I continue to see stories on the topic. In the most recent one, The Guardian reports fist fights, loud singing, people talking on the phone, inquiring what type of sandwich friends would like to eat as they pass them around, and directly heckling the performers.

Those interviewed for the article attribute the problem to everything from the Covid shutdown, lack of education in etiquette, simple spite, and excess consumption of alcohol. While some suggest maybe actors have been coddled by behavioral expectations in recent decades which differ from the historical bawdiness of audiences, it is hard not to sympathize with performers who are being heckled while giving their all.

 Brunton has been heckled. “There was one venue where audience disruption occurred at practically every show and I just felt like I wanted the week to be over,” he says. “It’s so sad, to be in this position to play the lead in a brand new Disney production, I’ve had to jump through hoops to get here, and it’s just heartbreaking when you’ve got someone shouting at you inappropriately.”

This said, theaters have been scheduling dedicated performances specifically for sing-along and carving out moments for photo-ops like the Megasix section of Six I wrote about last week. Performing within that context has been rewarding for the actors.

Some productions known for attracting younger audiences, such as the musicals & Juliet (a jukebox show using producer Max Martin’s pop hits) and Heathers (based on the cult 1980s film), have held dedicated singalong performances during which fans were not just given permission but encouraged to join in. Erin Caldwell, who played Veronica Sawyer in Heathers, says the singalong left the cast “really overwhelmed”. “There’s a picture of me after the bows, head in hands, just crying because it was so emotional – I would do another one in a heartbeat … I wouldn’t be surprised if more shows do it in future.”

It would be interesting to see if venues increasingly schedule programs dedicated to providing custom experiences for different audience segments. There are already sensory friendly, audio-described and signed performances. Performances for sing-alongs, shared experiences for affinity groups (i.e. Black Out performances), could serve to engender a sense of belonging and access for those who haven’t felt the experience was for people like themselves.

Dedicated Performance Experiences Not Really Controversial Until Race Is Involved

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Over the weekend I caught a couple news articles out of the UK about a production which is carving out one performance in their run for black audiences only. The show, Tambo & Bones, which runs June 16 to July 15, is said to be taking a page from Jeremy O. Harris’ show Slave Play which included “Black Out” performances whose intent was to fill all the seats with Black identifying audience members in order to provide an environment in which they might feel completely free to interact with the artists and each other.

“The theatre’s website stresses that “no one is excluded”, but the accompanying promotional material hints strongly that white theatre-goers would not be welcome along on July 5.”

In answer to the objection that this constitutes a type of segregation, it was noted that theaters already provide dedicated performance experiences to various groups.

These include a “socially distanced and masked” show, one using British Sign Language, captioned and audio described performances, and a “relaxed environment” version, where those with autistic spectrum conditions are not expected to respect the normal theatre etiquette of remaining in their seats and observing silence.

Granted, most of those types of performances don’t emphasize an exclusivity in messaging as heavily as Tambo & Bones is. This seems to be one of those cases where there is no bad publicity. For one group, being emphatic that this performance is for you has a great appeal…and can create perhaps an even stronger, almost magnetic appeal for those who are explicitly being told one performance out of many isn’t for them.

Slave Play created a dedicated Black Out page to encourage and help others follow the example of the inaugural performances. Among the productions who have hosted Black Out nights are: Long Day’s Journey Into Night; A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet; What to Send Up When It Goes Down; Marie and Rosetta; Choir Boy; as well as Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play and Daddy.

While the page mentions that two of the Black Out nights for Slave Play were invite only performances, it appears tickets for other performances following this approach were more publicly available for sale similar to how the Tambo & Bones tickets are. (Basically, I couldn’t find any news stories specifying they were invite-only private events.)

Maintaining Relationships Has Been Key To Recovery Of Arts Orgs Post-Shutdown

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TRG Arts recently released some data showing that not all segments of performing arts have recovered from pandemic shutdowns at the same rate. Comparing four factors from 2019 to 2022:  Tickets, Ticket Revenue, Gifts, and Gift Revenue, they report that Performing Arts Centers have fared best in these categories. Ballet had done as well in terms of tickets and gifts, but had seen ticket revenue and donor revenue increase.  Theater fared worse with classical music doing slight better and showing signs of improvement.  The data is drawn from US, Canada and UK arts organizations.

TRG credits performing arts centers’ relative flexibility with their ability to start recovery in attendance and revenue earlier than other areas. Overall, they say the lessons to draw from this data is the importance of maintaining relationships with audiences and having aggressive retention practices.

Maintaining relationships with customers and donors, keeping their connections with the arts engaged and active—appears to be a key factor in driving organizational recovery from the pandemic. There were many creative ways this happened during the 2020-2022 period, from digital distribution to small ensemble performances to Zoom donor and ticket buyer gatherings to use of outdoor venues until going inside was permitted or felt safer.

[…]

Plan aggressively for customer retention. As your organization re-builds, do NOT think short-term, but instead make every dollar spent on acquisition go further by investing in customer relationship building and retention. We don’t have time or money to waste now…every campaign must include follow-up, invitations for our customers to join us again, and more.

[…]

Add to this reality the fact that by 2040 community demographics will be wildly more diverse than today. The result? Arts organizations will need to become expert at asking and listening, rather than assuming and telling. The art of the conversation with our customers—we’re going to need to get much better at it.

Symphonies Telling Stories Of Local Relevance

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A link to a great story came across my feed today about a Hawaii Symphony Orchestra’s production that was really focused on resonating with the interests of the community they serve.  Last month, they performed an original work, Symphony of the Hawai’i Forests for school children. (Instagram video here.)

The program featured new music performed by the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra (HSO) accompanied by new animations based on kaʻao (legends) that were created for this project that tell stories about how we can connect and care for our forests of Hawaiʻi.

Teachers were provided with online educational resources by the Mālama Learning Center about the forests of Hawaiʻi to prepare their students for the topics that would be covered during the symphony. Meanwhile, classes were encouraged to learn a hula about the water cycle so that they could then perform together en mass at the concert.

This was a significant undertaking that required collaboration with many partners, including state and federal forestry services, as well as those developing the animation, dance, and educational content. Programs like this will likely go a long way in showing students how a symphony orchestra can be relevant to their lives.

Following some other links, it appears they offer programming for adults along the same lines so it isn’t the case that kids intrigued by their symphony experience growing up only have the core classical canon as an option when they get older. In 2019, HSO presented an original concert paying tribute to the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s successful circumnavigation of the globe in 2017 using traditional navigation techniques on the voyaging canoe, Hōkūleʻa. (I wrote about the 40+ year effort to achieve that back in 2017) That too was a huge production involving over a thousand people between the singers, musicians, dancers, visual artists, etc. Again it emphasized the value of local stories to the community.

 

Striking While The Engagement Iron Is Hot

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I was scrolling through Reddit while waiting for a show to end Friday night and happened upon a post that reflects great engagement by the St. Louis Blues hockey team.  A guy discovering hockey for the first time and bemoaning his city’s loss of the Rams football team back to Los Angeles gets an invite from the Blues to attend a game.

When the nascent fan, Tony X. says he wants to buy the jersey of the biggest underdog on the team, a team member responds suggesting his jersey and later offers to sign it. The Blues apparently captured Tony X’s picture at the game as well.

Given the hashtags on this, I assume it all transpired in 2017 and it just bubbled back up on Reddit as so many topics do. It still provides a great example of how to really grab someone and keep them engaged when their interest is piqued.  Many of the questions Tony X asks are similar to those first exposed to a new arts experiences – Why is that guy doing that? What should I wear?

Note that even though Tony X was a sports fan, his focus was on football so even though he knew some of what to expect from the experience, there were still some aspects that would be new and possibly intimidating.

 

 

Getting Away From Treating People According To Their Donor Level

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Vu Le made a thought provoking post with suggestions to make fundraising events more community-centric. The subtext of his thoughts is essentially to avoid valorizing donors and literally marginalizing the presence of volunteers and clients during these sort of events.  It occurred to me that the environment at these events may be reinforcing the sentiment that non-profits need to run themselves like a business by positioning non-profits as hapless and helpless without the assistance of donors.

Many of his suggestions focus on making fundraising events more inclusive financially, physically and socially for all members of the community being served. He lists 14 in total, but here are a few highlights:

Mix up your seating arrangement: seats are usually reserved for major donors and sponsors, with the top tiers going towards those who contributed the most financially. This just reinforces the message that the more money you have, the more special and important you are. That’s silly. Mix up your attendees. Seat clients at the front. Or randomize it.

Treat volunteers thoughtfully: While donors of money are worshipped, donors of time are treated like an afterthought. “After you finish setting up all the centerpieces, feel free to scavenge through the dumpster for your dinner, since we reserve the gourmet food for guests.” OK, I exaggerate a bit, and volunteer food (usually pizza) is not bad. But if we’re going to be community-centered, then volunteers are an essential part of the community, and should be treated accordingly.

[…]

Skip the tiered sponsorship levels: Yet one more way we perpetuate the idea that people and corporations should be treated based on how much they contribute financially. The sponsors at the “higher” levels get more marketing, better seats, more recognition, etc. Let’s move away from this. Here’s a great article on this topic from our colleague Phuong Pham.

[…]

Be considerate how you use clients’ testimonies: There’s been the trope of having a client, often a person of color, go on stage and tell their painful story, often to a room of mostly white donors. Fortunately, I’ve been noticing a trend of this happening less frequently as nonprofits become more thoughtful. Ethical Storytelling is a good resource, along with articles like this one by Nel Taylor on the CCF website.

Not all his thoughts are applicable to events that arts and cultural organizations may host, but many are. Some of what he says dovetails closely with the sort of changes arts and cultural entities have been encouraged to make as part of their regular business activities such as pricing, dress code, engagement of diverse participants and suppliers of goods and services.

Near the end of his list, he encourages people to clearly and specifically discuss the intentional changes you have made.

Be transparent and direct about the changes you’re making: Before, during, and after the event, talk about why you’re doing some things differently. It’ll help guests think about things they may not have considered before. “Last year, while it was nice to see everyone dressed up in waist coats and monocles, we realized that it excluded many people from our community. This year, please dress in whatever makes you feel comfortable, within reason.”

The Folks Who Saved Our Stages Are Fighting For A Better Ticketing Experience

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It appears the folks that spearheaded the Save Our Stages effort during Covid which became the Shuttled Venue Operators Grant program are turning their energies toward tackling all the problematic event ticketing issues we have been hearing about recently, (but suffering for decades).

The National Independent Venue Association has been joined by 18 other national and regional organizations in the Fix The Tix coalition.  The announcement of the coalition popped up last week. They haven’t listed and specific measures for which they are advocating, but the website says:

….this coalition represents stakeholders who take on all the risk to create once-in-a-lifetime experiences and bring joy, employment, and economic impact to communities across America.

We are coming together to protect fans from price gouging and deceptive and predatory ticketing practices.

You’re Doing A Great Job, But Standards For Dissatisfaction Have Changed

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Colleen Dilenschneider made a post comparing what factors created dissatisfaction for attendees of cultural events in 2019 vs. 2022. She posted charts for both exhibit and performance based organizations. An important thing to keep in mind is that these are factors that dissatisfied people when they actually attended an event. These aren’t things that non-attendees reported were keeping people away.

Basically on both charts, everything bugs people more. Focusing on performance events, rude patrons and rude staff top the list. Parking issues and access issues (e.g. traffic) also saw a big increase. Cost of admission saw a small increase 2019 to 2022, but cost of everything else related to the experience (presumably food, gas, parking) exploded over 2022.

Phone policy (allowing patrons to use) saw an increase where phone policy (not being able to use) saw a slight decrease. Given slightly more openness to not being able to use your phone, it might be worth making the request since allowing people to use their phones is increasingly annoying people.

Restroom availability, crowding, Hours of Operation (big increase), Cleanliness (also big increase) were all higher in 2022 than 2019. Interestingly, performance quality issues were less of a dissatisfying factor. Length of intermission, which I would have thought was relatively neutral was also created less dissatisfaction in 2022. I assume venues haven’t really tweaked the standard intermission interval so either shows are doing better starting on time, intermissions are more fun, or audiences have made their peace with the 15-20 time period.

Dilenschneider notes that standards have shifted so that even if conditions are much better than before, the perception still might be that the problem is worse. She uses the example of crowding. There may be fewer people in venues and galleries, but the criteria about what constitutes crowded may have shifted where people feel more constricted even if they have much more elbow room.

Similarly, the standard about what constitutes rudeness from patrons and staff may have likewise shifted. Attendees may find your staff to be rude even if you have done a lot of work to be kinder and more considerate after you re-opened from pandemic closures.

The Pause To Refresh Employment Models

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Earlier this month, the Albany Times-Union reported that there won’t be much theatre occurring at the storied Willamstown Theatre Festival.  The reason is based on the staff walkouts and subsequent investigative reporting by the LA Times I wrote about back in 2021.

Recognizing there are many issues to address in addition to the complaints of exploitative overworking of staff and interns and unsafe working conditions, the Festival is planning on presenting different performing artists, staging readings and cabaret performances and partnering with neighbors this summer.

The reason for the absence of theater at the Williamstown Theatre Festival amounts to what is essentially a public atonement for how the festival treated interns, apprentices and other staff for decades and a commitment to finding a new model for producing a season of world-class summer theater, the company’s artistic leader said.

[…]

In Williamstown, the theater festival launches in mid-July with four performances over three days by the stand-up comic Hasan Minhaj, followed by weeks of cabarets, staged readings and workshops by artists-in-residence. Williamstown alum and Tony Award winner Laura Benanti will perform a concert, well-regarded stage and screen actors will participate in readings by known and upcoming playwrights, and the festival will contribute financial and artistic resources to assisting its neighbors at Barrington Stage on a revival in Pittsfield of “A New Brain,” a 1998 musical by BSC’s longtime associate artist William Finn (“Falsettos,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”).

Near the end of the article, writer Steve Barnes wonders if the festival can continue in the same vein as they have historically operated if they have to pay a large swath of previously unpaid interns given waning philanthropy and diminishing audiences. The festival for their part says they will be working to create a stronger relationship with audiences:

In another symbolic choice, most audiences this summer will join performers on the stage. Minhaj and Benanti will do their shows for crowds in regular theater seats, but for staged readings there will be rows of seating on three sides of the stage, and tables, chairs and drink service will accommodate onstage cabaret patrons.

Gersten said she hopes the new perspective for audiences will make an impact on them. “It was important this summer for me that people share our point of view, that they’re on the same level with the artists as we work toward these changes,” she said.

When To Belt Out In Song And Not Belt The Person Sitting Behind You

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By now most people have probably heard about the brawl between audience members at a Manchester, England performance of The Bodyguard because people were singing along to “I Will Always Love You.”  The more I read, the more I wonder if maybe opening the bars at the theater 1.5 hours before curtain might be as big a contributor as people having poor etiquette.

Assuming many have read their fill about the incident, I wanted to point to a different article in the Toronto Star which interviewed ushers at performances in that city about audience behavior. While they say they have also seen their share of rude behavior and vain attempts to keep people from singing along with shows, the ushers point to examples of productions leaning into the trend:

One way some producers have been able to satisfy audience’s cravings to turn the theatre into an enormous karaoke bar is to end the shows with a big medley — a so-called Megamix. The recent “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” tour in Toronto used that, and wannabe Broadway singers got to belt out the songs with the cast and record themselves doing it on their phones.

Aislinn Rose [artistic director of Toronto’s not-for-profit Theatre Centre] believes theatres could go even further and designate certain performances as sing-along shows
[…]

“I’m not advocating for every performance to look like that, but there’s an opportunity to build an incredibly loyal, live following of people who want to engage with live performance. I think we should find a way to support that.”

Apparently there was a time when some Toronto based productions were trying to get audiences to sing-a-long, and couldn’t so maybe there is an element of be careful what you wish for here.

Ironically, Mirvish Productions programmed sing-along performances for their production of the Queen jukebox musical “We Will Rock You” way back in 2008-2009. It didn’t catch on.

“We printed out lyric sheets and everything,” said Karastamatis. “But very few people sang along.”

But as the article suggests at the end, you generally don’t plan to spend a lot of money on a ticket to listen to the people next to you sing off-key. So unless you are doing a show like Rocky Horror which has a long tradition of audience participation,  having designated times or performances where people can sing along is probably going to be the best approach in the short term.

Is Ticketmaster Powerless Before An English Accent?

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You may have seen a rise in backlash against Ticketmaster fees coming from performing artists. Neil Young recently posted that exploitative ticketing fees were taking the fun out of touring. He also mentioned how the band The Cure had pressured Ticketmaster to refund $5 to $10 to ticket buyers who had been faced with these high fees.

Last weekend, The Cure took things a step further and announced 7000 tickets on secondary resale sites had been cancelled.

“approx. 7K tickets across approx 2200 orders have been cancelled.” The singer claimed those tickets were acquired with fake accounts and/or listed on secondary resale sites. “TM have identified specific locations from secondary postings,” he said. He then asked fans who think their tickets may have been wrongly cancelled to reach out to TM fan support (@TMFanSupport).

It makes me wonder how an 80s/90s era music group was able to pull this off while other more contemporary groups have shrugged at their powerlessness. Is it the English accent which we all find so charming and appealing? Is it the dark eye make up that makes front man Robert Smith look so brooding?

As I have mentioned in other posts, Ticketmaster’s customer is generally the venue and artist, not the ticket buyer. They have mentioned they are open to taking the heat for decisions other parties have made, likely because the higher fees are so lucrative for them.

Ringling Bros Circus Is Back With More Story And No Animals

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Via Artsjournal.com is a story on Fast Company about the return of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus which ceased operations in 2017. Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus is looking to return to the road with a trimmed-down, humans only performance that is less abstract than Cirque du Soleil, but more adult than Feld’s Disney on Ice.

The part of the story that grabbed my attention most was the decision to bring the circus back without animals. In 2014 the circus had won $16 million in settlements from lawsuits brought by animal rights organizations who alleged animal cruelty, but public perception was that animals were being mistreated. However, when they announced in 2015 they were going to phase out the animals by 2018:

“Immediately, ticket sales slumped. Despite public sentiment against the use of animals, dancing tigers and trained elephants proved to be a driver of customer interest, according to Mollica. Animal acts turned out to be synonymous with the very idea of a circus.”

As soon as I read that, I thought about how this paralleled the experience of some arts organizations who made attempts to heed warnings about diminishing audiences and tried to diversify their program offerings only to find ticket sales and donations almost immediately evaporate. The lesson here is probably to consider how you are going to execute and communicate the transition because not every effort has resulted in such a strong public reaction.

The Fast Company article does a good job examining many of the decision points that were part of the revamp. For example, while there will be video and technological enhancements not found in the previous version of the circus, the creators wanted to avoid any suggestion that the performers weren’t able to perform various feats without the presence of technology.

“We don’t need technology to allow a performer to appear like they’re flying from one end of the room to the other. They actually can do that.”

Much like other live performance experiences, the newest version of the circus depends on storytelling to generate audience investment:

The new circus will also be more story-driven than previous iterations, structured around eight characters who will drive its narrative arc. Feld Entertainment has cast a musical theater entertainer, Lauren Irving, in the lead role, pointing to a substantial musical element at work within the show.

Shipton explained that leaning into narrative provides other avenues through which audience members can engage with the circus, beyond pure spectacle. “Story equals emotional connection,” he says.

Emotionally Intelligent Ticket Purchasing Experience

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Being customer focused rather than internally focused is the name of the game these days. Drew McManus provided a great example of customer focused design in an interview on Dave Wakeman’s Business of Fun Podcast. Drew uses the example of his design process for UpStageCRM ticketing platform, (~6:30 mark) noting that they did interviews to discover what customers wanted their ticket buying experience to be like versus asking ticketing/venue admins what they wanted out of the ticketing platform.

Drew discusses how they created three user groups – experienced ticket buyers who are comfortable navigating myriad ticketing interfaces; infrequent ticket buyers who may go a year or two between online purchases; and complete newbies. They worked to make sure each group had at least one member of every age group and as much diversity in other demographic factors as possible. The challenge in designing a user experience (UX) for each of these group is that they each wanted something different. Experienced buyers want to be dropped into the ticket buying experience with as few clicks as possible, but less experienced people have questions they want answered.

Drew said that what they ended up doing was creating a narrative path particularly focused on newbie ticket buyers that would allow users to filter their experience based on their most pressing questions. For example, after you enter how many tickets you want, you are asked what is most important to you with choices related to things like price, location (close, aisle, sightlines, acoustics, etc). Among newbies, the conversion rate to purchase more than doubled.

Experienced core buyers on the other hand, Drew said, would ream them out about how unnecessary all those choice screens were. At least point, I should probably disclose I was an uncompensated guinea pig for Drew’s UX design. (Though some would say Drew’s appreciation and esteem is compensation enough.) While I didn’t ream him out, I did talk about how burdensome that flow would be to me. We had a great conversation about why his team was looking to include that path for inexperienced buyers. I am always interested to learn more and think about these issues.

For those core ticket buyers, they have an ever present “Back to Seat Map” button next to the narrative navigation menu so that people can immediately leave that experience to make their purchase.

Drew notes the importance of facilitating the purchase experience for the less experienced buyer lay in the fact they comprise the largest portion of your audience. You may see the core buyers frequently at performances, but they are generally only filling a small portion of your seats at performances. Most everyone else is going to be a less frequent visitor.

Drew and Dave talk about other issues, but focusing on making newer/infrequent purchasers feel confident in their decision to attend is at the core.

Will Augmented Reality For Cooking Provide A Successful Application For Opera Notes?

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Rainer Glaap recently posted a story about Deutsche Oper am Rhein’s (German Opera on the Rhein) partnership with Vodaphone to offer augmented information about the opera’s production of “Die tote Stadt” (Dead City) in April. (Use Chrome browser or pop the link into Google translate to translate from German.)

I have written about the use of augmented reality devices to interact with art as well as long running projects to provide commentary for classical music concerts and opera. There hasn’t really been any leading technology that has emerged and been adopted to provide these services, but I am always interested to see what people have in the works.

The opera house has set aside 30 seats in the 2nd tier, that is where the 5G reception is best, for people who wish to use the glasses.

Although the glasses look very dark, they only dim the optical experience minimally, assures Vodafone’s head of innovation, Michael Reinartz. The glasses will also display surtitles, optionally in German or English. Apps can be controlled with the gaze. A special camera enables views into the orchestra pit.

…Christoph Meyer, General Manager of the Rheinoper. It is important to him to experiment with the prototype in order to inspire a new, technology-savvy audience for opera and ballet and to pass on the experience to other houses. “We are extremely curious to see how this works and how it will be accepted,” says Jens Breder, Marketing Director of the Rheinoper.

According to the article Vodaphone has already used this technology for football/soccer games, providing insight into a chef’s kitchen as he cooks, and neurosurgery procedures.  Given the wide use of the technology across different industries and practices, I would think this product might have the best chance of success. They need to solve problems associated with providing supporting information and visuals to people viewing action on a broad football pitch as well as extreme close-ups in surgery. The equipment needs to operate effectively outdoors in weather and in the steamy chaos of a restaurant kitchen.

I expect they might be able to draw lessons from the different arenas of application to provide information people didn’t know they wanted. Information streams that football fans want by default may enhance the experience of opera goers. On the other hand, examining how people developed superb knife skills will be equally valued by those interested in cooking and surgery.

Got A Good Beat, You Can Dance To It…And It’s Taking Our Jobs

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I was listening to an episode of the Code Switch podcast this weekend while I was out walking. The topic was about how merengue was the basis for a culture war in Puerto Rico.  What, at first on the surface seemed to be a resistance to the introduction of a new type of pop music to compete with salsa gets entangled with cultural identity.

Merengue was essentially carried to Puerto Rico by waves of immigration from the Dominican Republic. The music had a different energy and was easier to dance to than salsa. One of the hosts mentioned her mother was embarrassed by how poorly her husband danced, but that he was able to do a passable job dancing to merengue rhythms.

However, in time there were violent protests and demands that merengue be outlawed because it was putting salsa musicians out of work. One merengue musician had his car set on fire. There was a lot of suspicion that it was salsa musicians, but the owner had no proof and so never filed a complaint.

The podcast hosts admit there may have been some nationalism and classism associated with the resistance since merengue was initially being introduced and performed by immigrants who may not arrived in Puerto Rico legally. Many of them seeking to use the island as a way to continue on to the U.S.  There may have been a sense that these folks from the Dominican Republic were interlopers who were not invested in advancing the future of the island.

The most interesting element is that in time Puerto Rican musicians made merengue their own.  The merengue song, “Suavemente,” which became ubiquitous in the late nineties was performed by a Puerto Rican musician. The guy whose car was burned was invited to the home of one of the prime suspects for the arson who admitted merengue ultimately made it possible to own the house he had.

I have been trying to think if there have been similar stories with other music forms. I know there have been plenty of protests about music being obscene or diverging from standard expectations, but has there been other instances where performers of an emerging music style have been accused of robbing other musicians of their livelihood by virtue of being more popular?

 

Unexpected Headline – Black Sabbath The Ballet Premieres In September

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In a case of “not something I had imagined”, the Birmingham Royal Ballet recently decided to create a ballet set to the music of Black Sabbath, who got their start in the city. Lead guitarist Tony Iommi described the show as a “rags to riches” tale will attract “both our fans and ballet fans”.

Say what you want about whether a ballet set to heavy metal music is appropriate, my first thought was that from what I know of Birmingham the concept is suited to the history and socio-economic dynamics of the city and it is population. Obviously, these are the very forces that gave rise to the band in the first place. It may be an unorthodox pairing, but it is aligned to the community rather than an attempt at shoehorning something presumed to be good for the audiences or that they will learn to like.

I don’t doubt there will be cries of sacrilege. I am just suggesting Black Sabbath is more closely aligned to Birmingham than something like Aaron Copland & Agnes DeMille’s “Rodeo,” which has more resonance with American cowboy culture.

My thoughts about the continued timeliness of the song “War Pigs” preceded me reading Ballet director Carlos Acosta’s parallel thoughts on the song:

“”War Pigs is so relevant today, how sometimes politicians and governments hide behind words. And all the wars happening at the moment… it’s timeless.”

Videogame Inspired Tourism

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I saw this tweet the beginning of the month and was engaged by the idea of video game inspired tourism.

I tried to see if there was a recording made of her talk, but haven’t been able to find it. Given that people have trekked to see the locations appearing in Star Wars films and episodes of shows like Game of Thrones, it isn’t surprising that people want to see these places in real life. What is a bit more interesting is that a video game about a post-apocalyptic world would take the pains to accurately depict real life locations.

Does this reflect a tension between the pursuit of creating fictional worlds and scenarios and a desire for authenticity? What drives the desire for authenticity, the gaming company, the players, a combination of both? With the emergence of AI created art, which can presumably integrate elements of real locations as well as generate completely new environments, will the drive for authenticity continue or will gaming studios and players be satisfied with AI generated worlds?

Not to mention, will those artist jobs continue to exist?

The fact that people are traveling to these locations suggests people have an interest/curiosity in extending their virtual explorations into the physical realm. This bodes well on many levels if game designers continue to actively seek new interesting places in the real world to translate into the games.

When Audiences Take “Best Party In Town” Marketing At Their Word

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The last few months I have been seeing a number of stories about audiences in UK theaters being abusive toward staff and other patrons. A week or so ago, The Stage reported that Edinburgh Playhouse staff had been punched and spat upon, moving the director to call out the bad behavior on Twitter, saying the abuse was affecting the mental health of staff.

“Where in the past we had very isolated incidents, we now have a greater number of incidents. But when people are asked to modify their behaviour, the most common answers are: ‘I don’t care.’ And when we tell them they are disturbing people behind them, they say: ‘I don’t care, I have paid for my ticket, I will do what I want.’ That seems to be the most common thing.”

[…]

“It is really horrible for them and staff can be scared to come to work. And what I hear from other theatre directors is that we are dealing with a mental-health crisis in our staff as well, and this is part of it, a part of what fuels it,” he said.

The bad behavior has become such a problem, theater management are reportedly changing their marketing messaging, asking that phrases like “best party in town” and “dancing in the aisles” not be used.

On Tuesday, Colin Marr, director of the Edinburgh Playhouse theatre, told the Stage that audience behaviour was the worst he had known in his five years in charge. “One of the main things we are trying to do is around messaging and working closely with producers,” he said. “We are talking to them about marketing. So, when we market shows let’s not have phrases such as ‘best party in town’ or ‘dancing in the aisles’ – the show has something much stronger than that to sell.”

[…]

An ATG spokesperson confirmed the company was working with producers on marketing. “We’re taking a multidisciplinary approach to tackling challenging audience behaviour, covering all points of the customer journey, including how we market shows. We want everyone to fully enjoy the experience of a show and we work closely with producers to create appropriate marketing material,” they said.

These stories raise an interesting point. There has been a lot of conversation about how many performing arts experiences used to be bawdy, raucous affairs and the current sedate, staid attendance experience has been artificially imposed relatively recently. But given that there is physical and emotional violence being directed at staff and other audience members, is a return to a less restricted environment the best course? Should theater staff step back and not try to impose a specific type of behavior on attendees who want to sing and dance along the show, thereby removing the point of tension and potentially leaving them in a safer place?

Creating Conversations Around Arts Reality Shows

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You may have recently seen that MTV and the Hirshhorn Museum are teaming up to create a TV series to find the next great visual artist. As soon as I saw this, I recalled that there had been similar reality TV visual arts contests before. The bottom of the article references Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist which ran for two seasons around 2010-2011.

But I had actually written about the show ArtStar back in 2006. Most of the links in that post don’t work, but the Slate article and Wikipedia entry both still exist.  There was a fair bit of criticism about both shows. The Arts world hated both, while Work of Art was generally popular with audiences. ArtStar was widely accused of being an extended self-promotional video for the gallery owner/host.

Art critic Jerry Staltz, who was a judge on Work of Art wrote a piece for Art News reflecting on the experience.  He notes that the show was never really about finding the best artist, despite the title.

I agree with the many viewers who said it didn’t reflect the “real art world” — although it was never meant to. It was intended as a game-show version of undergraduate art school where assignments are given, studios supplied, and people kicked out (without, of course, owing $100,000 in school loans). A lot of the challenges were inane …. People on my Facebook page invented far better challenges,…

[…]

If I could change anything about Work of Art, it would be how the contestants are selected. Clearly Bravo’s criteria were more numerous than mere talent, because the contestants simply weren’t good enough. I wish the judges had picked the competing artists, the way they do on American Idol.

Staltz seemed to feel like the biggest benefit of the show was the conversations it generated.

Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic. I responded frequently, admitted when I was wrong, and asked others to expand on ideas.

It made me think that his approach to reality TV arts competitions is a constructive one. Essentially use a conversation about the process being employed not being a realistic method for identifying a great artistic talent as a jumping off point that helps arts professional connect with audiences, validating their instincts and capacity to judge while gaining a better understanding of what about artistic practice engages people.

Boy, This Seems To Be The Month For Ticket Pricing Conversations

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You may have seen that the AMC movie chain decided to implement tiered pricing for their theaters with higher prices for preferred seating and lower pricing for less desirable front row seating and wheelchair spaces.

“The mega-exhibitor, which has already introduced sightline seating in select markets, is betting movie-goers will pay more for a better view of their favorite Hollywood titles, as do patrons of music and sporting events.”

They are testing this pricing out in select markets so I popped over to the site Lincoln Square 13 in NYC to see what the chart looked like. Below are the recliner and regular seating arrangements for the new Magic Mike movies. The tan seats are the premium priced seats, the blue are the discounted seats and the white are regular price.

I should note that the recliner seating chart is for the 7:45 showing and the regular seating chart is for the 9:15 showing. I looked at the 6:15 screening chart for the regular seating and there are only a handful of seats sold. It may be that time is not really convenient, but it seems like a lot of folks in NYC are willing to pay extra for recliner seating plus a premium on a Monday night. And I assume AMC realizes 7:45 is probably more convenient and makes sure the screening with the recliners is available so they can make a little extra money.

That said, another Hollywood Reporter article on the same subject noted that Paramount worked with theaters, including AMC to lower the ticket price for the movie 80 for Brady, just days before AMC unveiled this new premium seating plan.

” For years, some distribution executives have argued in favor of variable pricing, whereby tickets are lowered depending upon a movie’s target audience. In this case, Paramount presented evidence showing that older demos are more sensitive about ticket prices.

But no sooner had 80 for Brady opened over the Feb. 4-6 weekend to a pleasing $12.7 million then did AMC reveal Feb. 7 that it is implementing a hefty $1 and $2 price increase for many seats…The news quickly put the 80 for Brady initiative on the back burner since AMC’s plan goes in the opposite direction by introducing higher costs.

This has created a bit of a philosophical tension between the two approaches-varying price based on target audience vs. vary prices based on seating location. Paramount says it won’t have final numbers for another week or so, but preliminary data shows that admissions were higher for 80 For Brady than its other release, Knock at the Cabin. The latter ended up making more revenue than the former the first weekend of February, but by Monday Brady exceeded it in revenue.

There has been some criticism from some like actor Elijah Wood who says that these pricing schemes will exclude lower income families from an activity that has been relatively democratic.  Others are concerned that complicated pricing will provide an incentive to stay home and stream.

Hollywood studio executives, however, are concerned about the moviegoers who aren’t as eager to pay more, or who already have doubts about resuming their moviegoing habits. Notes one distribution source, “my biggest worry is that all of this pricing becomes too complicated.”

What Profits A Man To Gain Riches, But Lose His Ardent Fans

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I was not keeping close tabs on the topics President Biden was expected to cover in the State of the Union so it was a coincidence that yesterday’s post was about exorbitant add on fees on the same day he was addressing that issue.

It is probably less of a coincidence that another article from TicketNews came across my feed today reporting what I alluded to in the last lines of yesterday’s post. A Bruce Springsteen fanzine decided to call it quits after 43 years due to Springsteen’s decision to engage in dynamic pricing and slow release of inventory practices.

But for Springsteen, who built much of his reputation on the appearance of being a man of the people rather than interested in exploiting his fans for as high a value as he can capture, the reputational damage has been significant. The Backstreets closure is merely the latest, and highest profile, chapter of it.

“There’s no denying that the new ticket price range has in and of itself been a determining factor in our outlook as the 2023 tour approached — certainly in terms of the experience that hardcore fans have been accustomed to for, as Springsteen noted, 49 years,” reads one part of Phillips’ message to readers. “Six months after the onsales, we still faced this three-part predicament: These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result.”

Part of the issue is that some of Springsteen’s public statements seem to dismiss the concerns of his fans. The fact that ticket prices have dropped from $4000 in the initial roll out to $450-$1000+ with $61 seats available for some shows, does seem to indicate demand pricing theoretically works.

However, the article suggests that the damage is done and younger artists need to be cognizant of the current environment.

What will be interesting is whether or not younger artists – many of whom don’t have decades of good will from their fans to squander – will see what dynamic ticket pricing and openly fleecing your biggest fans can do to their future interest in your work and think twice about embracing the Ticketmaster/Live Nation model of “slow ticketing” going forward.

Keep An Eye On The Ticketing Uproar

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With people feeling more comfortable going to public events again, the travails consumers suffer when trying to purchase tickets are coming front and center. Last week TicketNews reported that President Biden is urging Congress to pass legislation limiting excessive fees and mandating transparency about hold back practices.

The issue of high fees that are often hidden until you are well into the purchasing process is pretty well-known and complained about. Hold backs on the other hand, are less obvious and more in the realm of a suspected, but not confirmed practice.

While companies like Ticketmaster and Live Nation regularly blame ticket resale or “bots” for the enormous spike in ticket prices consumers are paying, many believe that price inflation by hiding the true available supply through holdbacks is the biggest factor in that price surge, with the industry hoping to sell consumers and lawmakers on resale being the issue rather than their own deceptive practices.

[…]

Support for President Biden’s plan was also put forward by the National Association of Ticket Brokers, a trade group supporting ticket resale rights and consumer-friendly policy. Its statement specifically called out the “scheme called slow ticketing” used by Ticketmaster and Live Nation to hold back huge portions of tickets for most events without disclosure when tickets go on sale. Once the public is convinced that tickets are sold out, additional tickets are slowly released to the market, leading to a perceived yet artificial scarcity that convinces consumers to pay surged prices – referring to the process as a deceptive marketing practice.

Transparency and fair pricing may be a bigger issue in the attendance decision than we may realize. Among recent online reviews of my venue, comments about fair pricing and low fees appear multiple times.

It bears paying attention to public sentiment and how lawmakers move to resolve these growing concerns.

Perception of practices by some of the larger operators are so poor that suspicions may be raised about the entire event industry, painting everyone with the same brush. Engaging in relatively straightforward demand based or dynamic pricing practices may easily get lumped in with attempts at artificial manipulation, shunting tickets directly to resale markets and excessive fees.

Less Attendees=Increased Satisfaction

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Last week when I was writing about the ticketing trends being forecast for the coming year, I accidentally omitted an additional point from the article I found pretty interesting.  Apparently, during the pandemic, many attractions like  zoos, aquariums, museums and theme parks found that customer satisfaction increased when capacity restrictions were in place.

“Guests readily adapted to new procedures, which does not surprise us because it is consistent with what we have seen in our practice for many years,” Digonex’s Loewen says. “[Operators] also realized some of the business benefits. For example, when you limit the number of folks that can get into the attraction at a certain point of time, they saw all their guest satisfaction scores go up, and many of them saw all of their other per-cap revenues grow significantly. When it is less crowded, when people are having a better time, when they are feeling better about their visit, they tend to spend more on food and beverage and at the gift shop and on ride tickets.”

There have already been signs of these trends. Disney has apparently indicated they won’t go back to pre-pandemic attendance numbers. Similarly, the Louvre Museum is reducing admissions from 45,000/day to 30,000/day ““in order to facilitate a comfortable visit and ensure optimal working conditions for museum staff…”

Some US National Parks are requiring timed entry reservations from April 1-October 31.

So there is a good possibility other entities may start to use restricted admission as a customer satisfaction strategy in coming years. For some there may be a benefit to positioning their organization as an alternative activity for those who can’t gain admission to such places.

Friendly Fraud And Other Ticketing Trends To Watch

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Last week there was a post on the INTIX website listing 19 trends for 2023.  The list contains prognostications from people handling tickets for both arts and sports events so your mileage my vary on some of the thoughts, but I wouldn’t totally dismiss those that don’t align with your favorite industry.

At the top of the list is being able to identify all the ticket holders and potentially cultivate relationships with them rather than the ticket buyer. Because the ticket buyer will often distribute tickets electronically to family and friends, it will be possible to identify who those people are. You may view this news with with anticipation, dread or both.

Unsurprisingly, staffing issues were also near the top of the list due to the stress of dealing with customers and low pay don’t make customer service roles attractive. What also won’t be surprising to find on the list is an anticipated increase in fraudulent purchases, including what the article terms “friendly fraud” where customers initiate chargebacks on ticket purchases.

“I think that we will also see an increase in what’s called first-party [or friendly] fraud, where if a lot of ticket buyers do not get the refunds that they want, they will file a chargeback. I think that will start to happen as well because people were so used to refunds happening for so long during COVID. I think people still want to be able to get refunds, and especially, unfortunately, with inflation, people might be looking at how they can get their money back, and they might go that route of chargebacks.”

Related to this is the need to provide more flexible purchasing arrangements as people move away from subscription purchases. So not only flexible subscription packages, but targeted discounts. And flexible refund and exchange policies.

“We saw such movement during the pandemic of adapting away from ‘no refunds, no exchanges.’ It was such a hard line in the sand, and we had to blow that all away because we needed to change things … due to health concerns and restrictions,” Spektrix’s Nothstein says. “I think we are going to continue to see flexibility in that perspective.”

“We had to offer things that we would not have previously considered offering because of COVID and what it meant to the return to the venue,” Ticket Philadelphia’s Cooper says. “I don’t know that it’s practical or advisable for us to try and revert to what we were in the days before COVID happened … Ultimately, the goal is to retain the customer.”

The Director of Service and Retention for the Oakland Athletics, mentioned that people were buying on a very short horizon rather than season ticket packages or single tickets months before opening day. They structured a very targeted, short term ticket sale for the celebration of 50th anniversary of the A’s 1973 World Series title.

Ziegenbusch continues, “So, think shorter, getting your patrons to make these micro-decisions along the way. Present offers that are deeply discounted and value-rich but for a short period of time.”

I have seen Collen Dilenschneider offer similar advice to arts organizations on her website.

The article also raises the need for accessibility both to allow those with physical disabilities to participate in events, but also as accessibility relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. This is both in terms of programming/how an experience is structured and how it is priced.

Also listed were broadening the media and channels through which people can learn about your organization and make purchases, including facilitating transactions and empowering self-service.

I am obviously skimming over a lot so if the ticketing side of your operations is a central concern, give the article a deeper read.

What Did You Change In Yourself To Memorize Those Lines?

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I know a lot of people in the performing arts literally or figuratively roll their eyes at the inevitable question, “How do you remember all those lines.”   However, Stephen Colbert reminds us that you don’t have to always answer the exact question as asked. In a tribute to former teacher/friend/mentor Frank Galati who recently died, Colbert recently shared a commercial break conversation he had last October with John Lithgow where he discusses Galati’s thoughts on that question.

“He said, ‘how do you remember all those lines? Let’s not take for granted that there is something magical about that. You’ve changed something in yourself. People don’t sit down and memorize two hours of text. You did. Why did you do that? How did you do that?’ He goes ‘What are you when you go on stage? What is that other thing that you are becoming? How are you presenting yourself. What are you willing to become this person who wants to present ideas and emotions to an audience. How do you become beautiful?

And that the beauty of the world we see all around…and when you go on stage you answer the accusation of the world which is that you are hiding your beauty.  The beauty of the world accuses you of hiding your beauty. When you go on stage, whatever you are, whatever part of humanity you are, you are just as much a part of the world that you find beautiful. And therefore, when you’re on stage, you’re as beautiful as an statue, you’re as beautiful as any sunset. When you allow people to see you, beautifully…”

Colbert goes on to relate how Galati cited a story about choreographer George Balanchine instructed a dancer to raise her leg beautifully, which is different from gently or lovely, but that she did so beautifully because the instruction had meaning for her.

The beginning of that story where Colbert cited the idea of changing something in yourself to be able to accomplish the memorization resonated for me. Often the act of memorizing text is only one small part of what is required to memorize the character you are going to portray. That character is different from you as the actor so you have to recall a 1000 little things, including the text, to bring that person to the stage.

That is different for every actor and every part. Thinking about it in that context allows you to respond differently to that oft asked question.

Perhaps this clip resonated with me because the morning of the same day I heard it, I heard a story about a woman who made the 2,744 step ascent of the steep Manitou Incline 1003 times in 365 days. (First woman and fourth person to ever do that)  If you were to ask how she did it, she made a similar remark to Galati’s about changing something in oneself:

“I felt like it was something that I would have to level up in every area of my life: physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially … to be able to accomplish something like that,” Jones said.

It might not be a big surprise that you would have to change something about yourself to accomplish a physical feat, but a similar recognition doesn’t really exist for acting. There may be an assumption that is can all be accomplished by sitting in your living room chair. Providing a more complete answer to the question of how lines were memorized may shift that perception.

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…Reach Out

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For about a year now, I have seen Dan Pink post on social media about his survey of people’s regrets and how it can be healthy to embrace them. Finally, I decided to read about what he had to say when I saw some interview links toward the end of the December.

The interview with him on the Behavioral Scientist webpage was pretty interesting just in terms of how quickly people responded and how eager to talk about their regrets people were. They initially received 15,000 responses from 100 countries and are now close to 23,000 from 109 countries. Of those initial responses, 32% provided their email addresses and opted in to be contacted for further conversation.

Something he mentions is that younger respondents pretty much equally regretted things they had done and things they hadn’t done, but as people got older they were more likely to regret things they hadn’t done.

While it is mentioned in the Behavioral Scientist article, a separate piece on the Inc website focused on Pink’s #1 lesson to reduce regret – “Always reach out.”  Essentially, if you are wonder if you should reconnect with a friend you lost touch with or a family member with whom you may be estranged, Pink says the answer is yes.

A team led by University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business marketing professor Peggy Liu conducted a series of 13 experiments with nearly 6,000 participants all designed to gauge why people don’t reach out to friends or acquaintances and what happens when they do.

The study design may have been complicated but the results were straightforward, according to a writeup of the findings in the New York Times: “Across all 13 experiments, those who initiated contact significantly underestimated how much it would be appreciated. The more surprising check-ins (from those who hadn’t been in contact recently) tended to be especially powerful.”

As I read this, it struck me that arts organizations can use people’s willingness to discuss their regrets as the basis to create experiences for their communities. Maybe it is a storytelling topic. Perhaps it is a pop-up exhibit of artifacts from your regrets similar to the one Nina Simon discusses hosting for failed relationships in a TED Talk. Or perhaps it is the driver of a dialogue between generations similar to many of the recordings made for the Story Corps project.

Make 2023 The Year Of Library Advocacy

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Right at the end of the year, New York City based columnist for The Guardian, Moira Donegan, wrote a loving piece about how she is thankful for US public libraries.

One of the first things she mentions is that the architecture and design of many libraries is rather intimidating and makes her feel under dressed. She says when she works at tables in New York Public Library’s iconic 42nd Street branch, she is always nervous that someone is going to chase her away. I have written about how people can have a similar experience with arts and cultural organizations. Though many theaters, museums, and libraries are not as grandiose as the 42nd Street branch.

Donegan opines that the US is fortunate to have had the spate of museum construction when it did because it would be difficult to generate public will behind such an effort now. But citizens have garnered immense benefits as a result.

If the public library did not already exist as a pillar of local civic engagement in American towns and cities, there’s no way we would be able to create it. It seems like a relic of a bygone era of public optimism, a time when governments worked to value and edify their people, rather than punish and extract from them. In America, a country that can often be cruel to its citizens, the public library is a surprising kindness.

[…]

The majesty of library buildings is matched only by the nobility of their purpose. The public library does not make anyone money; it does not understand its patrons as mere consumers, or as a revenue base. Instead, it aspires to encounter people as minds. The public library exists to grant access to information, to facilitate curiosity, education, and inquiry for their own sake. It is a place where the people can go to pursue their aspirations and their whims, to uncover histories or investigate new scientific discoveries.

When I saw a tweet that NYC Eric Adams was requiring the NYC Public Libraries system to cut “cut their budgets by $13.6 million by the end of fiscal year 2023, and another $20.5 million over the next 3 fiscal years.” My first thought was that he does not truly understand the vast number of social services libraries provide to their communities. They metaphorically serve as the wetlands which buffer communities from the onslaught of hurricanes. Creating an environment where their role is diminished will only serve to magnify the manifestation of social problems throughout the City.

If you don’t know, this year make an effort to explore all the services your local libraries provide to communities from classes, computer access, tax help, shelter from the weather, social services access, counseling and, yeah, books.  Likewise think about your own value proposition for the community and increasingly communicate that outside the framework of selling tickets.

 

Ticketmaster Serves Its Customers. The Customer Isn’t You

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I am sure most people are aware of the clamoring anger about ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s concerts, mostly blaming Ticketmaster for screwing things up, but also potentially being complicit and profiting off of high secondary market sales, plus ever increasing ticket fees.

Those who have been around while know that the anger at Ticketmaster’s fees and monopoly has been something of a cyclical topic with outrage peaking every few years. In fact, the intervals between periods of outrage seem to be decreasing of late.  You might wonder why Ticketmaster never seems to respond to ticket purchaser complaints and make the experience better.

The reason, according to an article by Mark Dent on The Hustle, is that ticket buyers are not Ticketmaster’s customer, performance venues are.  Ticketmaster’s business model prioritizes venues, artists and promoters, not buyers.

Rosen believed venues, not concertgoers, were his company’s real customers, and flipped Ticketron’s model:

  • Instead of charging venues to use their ticketing system, Ticketmaster offered to pay them with a cut of the service charges.
  • In exchange, Ticketmaster became their exclusive ticketing platform.

[….]

Many concert promoters eventually wanted a piece of the fees, too, and, years later, some top-tier artists started to negotiate for a share, according to Rosen.

The article posts numerous receipts from different concerts people purchased recently to show the type of fees people are paying. The best apples to apples comparison of fees where you can start to see there may be more hands asking for a share is Taylor Swift’s March concert in Las Vegas where you pay $5 for order processing, $8 for a facility fee and $70.40 per ticket for service fees compared to her Atlanta concert a month later where you pay $5 each for processing and facility fees and $23.20 for service fees. Base ticket price is $265.14 and $109, respectively.

Fred Rosen, former CEO of Ticketmaster is unapologetically indifferent to the complaints of the ticketbuyer.

Rosen said he didn’t care that the system annoyed fans, noting there’s still high demand for concerts, fees and all.

“When you bring that up, it’s irrelevant to me,” he said. “The fact that no one shared in the service charge was idiotic. No one thought that ticketing was a business. I thought it was a business. I’m not ashamed of that.”

Dent writes that breaking up the Ticketmaster monopoly may not do much to solve the problem. Competitors like SeatGeek and AXS subscribe to Rosen’s philosophy and likewise offer payments to venues in return for exclusivity. And that money comes from fees levied on ticket purchases.

The solution instead may be breaking up the exclusivity arrangements, though unlike how the exclusivity of telephone companies and some utility have been broken up in the US, it may be difficult to force diversification upon venues who had apparently entered into the exclusive contracts of their own freewill.

That said, Dent cites the example of Great Britan in terms of what non-exclusive arrangements might mean for consumers:

Budnick says the Great Britain model may provide lower service charges for consumers.

  • British venues rarely have exclusive ticketing platforms. When companies don’t try to gain exclusivity, they don’t have to offer as large of a cut of the fees, bringing down the amount charged to concertgoers.
  • Fans typically see fees closer to 15% of the face value of a ticket.

Sharing Time With Family Is Valued Regardless Of Political Affiliation

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Apropos to my post on Monday about how gift recipients value experiences over material gifts,  Pew Research Center recently released research finding showing that spending time with family and friends was considered meaningful and fulfilling regardless of political affiliation. So taking a marketing approach that emphasizes that aspect of arts and cultural participation can be compelling to people regardless of political affiliation.

Another article provides additional context to the chart, mentioning that:

More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (83%) say spending time with family provides them a great deal or quite a bit of meaning and fulfillment…

[…]

Similar but smaller majorities of Republicans (64%) and Democrats (68%) say the same about spending time with friends.

The share of Republicans and Democrats who say they draw a great deal or quite a bit of meaning and fulfillment from being outdoors and experiencing nature is also nearly identical (72% and 70%, respectively).

Obviously, there are differences between political parties in other aspects of life that provide a feeling of fulfillment. Research results discussing that was released about a year ago in November 2021.

Post-Covid Touring Sees Cancellation Due To Inflation Infestation

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Wired recently had an article about the challenges facing independent artists when it comes to touring. Many are facing a combination of higher costs, a flooded market, and limited resources. Companies with touring equipment and vehicles report having all their inventory on the road. Not only is it difficult to find more equipment to purchase/rent in order to deploy it for tours, there isn’t enough labor to go around. Everyone from skilled technicians to bus drivers have left the industry for other opportunities that don’t demand so much of them.

Gas is pricey, batteries and other vehicle parts are more expensive, and drivers are harder to find, with many of them having switched during the pandemic to package delivery, garbage pickup, or other trucking jobs with less interpersonal contact that don’t require them to leave their families for months at a time.

While prices for hotel rooms, food, transportation, and gear have gone up, the fees performers are paid have remained flat. It appears this is due to there being more artists out there wanting to tour making supply outstrip demand, but also due to uncertainty exhibited by ticket buyers.

“There’s way less advance sales than normal. And I’m hearing this from everyone across the board,” she says. “[Fans] don’t wanna buy a ticket and get sick and have to eat it. So people are doing week-of, day-of [ticket purchases], which is tough for the venue and tough for us, because we obviously want to see advance sales.”

Because many artists need to cover a lot of these costs upfront out of pocket, there have been an increase in cancellation of dates as touring appears increasingly problematic. The prospect of going through a refund process contributes to reticence of consumers to buy tickets too far in advance..

Who Is The Seat Choice Process Serving?

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Here is a fun little conversation for performing arts venues because there is a fair chance you have a different point of view as a venue operator than as a consumer.

I saw this tweet last week. Apparently the venue set-up their online ticket sales criteria to make sure there weren’t any orphan single seats left open. It hit a minor nerve with others replying they had the same issue at other venues.

I swear to you that a couple hours later, we got a call at my venue box office from a guy complaining about the opposite problem. A nearly sold out show only had single tickets left and he felt it was our responsibility to shuffle people around so he and his girlfriend could sit next to each other.

I wondered how many venues out there had their ticketing system set up so that people couldn’t leave orphan seats? What sort of feedback do you get from that?

Honestly, unless you have been really good about making sure all your rows have an even number of seats, it is almost guaranteed that there will be orphaned seats unless you have a party of odd numbers insert themselves into the row somewhere.

This approach tends to value revenue generation over customer service. Note that you are only asked to leave at least two empty seats together. So if you leave three empty seats, the next purchaser of two tickets may not be able to complete their purchase. Likewise, it may not prevent four different purchasers from leaving an empty space between their parties if there are still a good number of seats left in the row.  I actually tested skipping a single seat on a Ticketmaster site and was able to do it, but wasn’t willing to get on multiple computers to try doing it in the same row a number of times.

I definitely understand the desire to maintain effective revenue generation. When we get close to selling out, I start to scrutinize what holds we might safely release for sale. When I go to performances at other venues and movie theaters where I can choose my seat, I actually scrutinize the map and pick seats with an eye to leaving even number of seats in the row because I am sympathetic to the need for optimum seat usage.

But I also don’t want to throw up barriers that disincentivizes patrons from choosing to attend a live performance. It is really the patron’s responsibility to work out how to make seating choices that are best for the venue?

What are other people’s thoughts?

Not All Excellence Is Rewarded, Not All Who Excel Can Lead Others There

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While I try to write posts about the arts in general, the fact is the content of my posts tends to orient toward performing arts rather visual arts. That said, there are a lot of parallel experiences that crop up across all disciplines. I caught a Hyperallergic post today by Paddy Johnson who was offering advice to visual artists about career viability if you don’t make art for art fairs and the value of insider/outsider feedback.

The first artist was concerned that by not participating/being invited to some of the big art fairs currently occurring, the opportunity for media coverage and recognition necessary to advance careers was being lost. I saw parallels with performing artists who don’t focus on musical theater/Broadway type content or popular trends in music in their practice and felt marginalized.

Johnson points out the oft stated sentiments about niche genres not representing the whole art world and bemoans the fact that such a narrow focus will end up stifling creativity:

The trouble, of course, is that fair art is only one form of art making, and within that environment, it’s pretty easy to forget that other types of art exist. If the main opportunities for visibility center on blockbuster events and sales, outrage, and influencer fodder, then yeah, the people forging unique paths will be perceived to have less value and fewer avenues for visibility.

And that has real consequences for art because it means less diversity, less experimentation, and ultimately a culture where innovation can’t flourish.

However, she also reminds us even outside the arts, performing at the highest level of excellence is not financially rewarded. While some have day jobs to support their creative lives, for some day jobs can preclude being able to attain the highest levels.

In professional distance running, even successful athletes often don’t earn enough from their work to make a living, and taking a job to pay the bills is discouraged. Most runners do not make enough money to cover health insurance and maintain a full-time job, despite running up to 130 miles a week. Most have little to no name recognition despite working at a level almost no other humans can match.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The exploitation of labor looks roughly the same in the arts, where most professional artists don’t make enough money to pay their bills and work in relative obscurity despite enormous talent and visibility within their field.

Johnson answers a second question in this post. I was almost going to omit it but I feel like it raises a common issues that doesn’t get a enough discussion in every creative discipline — whose opinion about the quality of your work should be trusted?

People without a lot of experience interacting with your discipline provide effusive feedback, but the artist doesn’t value it highly viewing the commenters are too inexperienced to provide insight. However, the highly informed insider just makes brief, vague, enigmatic comments that imply something but equally lack insight.

Johnson’s answer here suggests questions to use to draw out better feedback. But what I really liked was that she points out that just as not every highly accomplished person isn’t suited to teach excellence in their craft, every insider isn’t skilled at providing useful feedback.

If you want better feedback from your visits, you can ask questions like, “What is it about the red in this painting that works well for you?” or “What places are you thinking I should take this?” If your visitor is not a dealer or curator you want to show with, you can try inviting criticism. “Does [xyz thing about the art] seem like a problem to you?” A supportive studio visit isn’t defined by complimentary feedback so much as it is valuable feedback. If you have areas of an artwork you’re unsure about, this is an opportunity to discuss!

That said, potential collaborators who engage in your art superficially may not be good partners. When their responses bother you, don’t ask them back. Even bad work can evoke thoughtful feedback, so the art is not to blame!

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

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