Canceled or Renewed Next Season?

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My audience is starting to see the writing on the wall. From one of the surveys we received after a performance this weekend, it seemed a patron looked around at the low attendance and started worrying. On the survey she wrote that if we brought the group back again along with a number of other prominent companies in the field, word of mouth would fill the seats.

The thing is, attendance to shows in that performing field have been dropping recently. One of the colleagues with whom I block book dropped out of this company’s tour because she is seeing lower attendance for these events. The irony is that the attendance that my patron thought was so low is actually what I expected. By reducing the number of these events I do each year I jacked attendance up from abysmal to low. I still lost a huge amount of money, but not as much as I would have had I presented more events from this genre.

Alas, name recognition and word of mouth doesn’t seem to do it any more for this field. We had a rude awakening last year when a group headed by a charismatic and fairly famous leader which had always attracted substantial crowds drew a minuscule audience.

It had been about 4 years since last they visited and neither the quality of their work or source of the leader’s fame had diminished. In fact, just last weekend a man approached me and said they had seen the group last year and was the group we were bringing in this week nearly as good. The company set a standard by which those who follow are judged. People eagerly flocked to workshops and master classes the company conducted last year.

Their wider appeal, and I fear that of their chosen genre, has apparently waned.

What was interesting about the survey form was that this is the first time in my experience an audience member has expressed concern that low attendance might mean the absence of a favored art form from future seasons. People have feared a venue will shut down due to low attendance, but never worried about the exclusion of a genre. I’m sure people are aware that it is a consequence. Television shows are canceled all the time because of lack of interest.

I am wondering if it might be beneficial to recruit her in the future to spread the word about events. By which I mean, I wonder how large her specific social circle is. I have had modest success in using word of mouth for ethnic events, but haven’t identified as good networks for performances that don’t have a specific ethnic appeal. I wonder if concern that an area of interest would disappear from programming provides a motivation similar to that of a person wishing to promote an event representing his/her ethnicity.

This raises an interesting question. Do you tell people that you are considering cutting back or eliminating a programming area? If you do it poorly it will come across as manipulative. Especially if you make an announcement from stage that because there are only 250 people in the audience, next year Shakespeare will cease to appear on your stage. Even if you find a way not to sound manipulative, there is a temptation to use such pronouncements to cause panic and fill the seats.

On the other hand, administrators often get up in front of their audience and get articles placed in the newspaper that tell the community without their help, the performance space will close. Surely you are asking much less of people if you tell them that you know they love Shakespeare, you love performing Shakespeare but without more interest, you can’t justify doing Shakespeare. You are willing to provide posters, brochures, talking points, photos, etc to the Shakespeare supporters if they would mention it to their friends and talk about how the Bard’s work isn’t as intimidating as it might first appear.

Yes, this is exactly what social networking sites like Myspace.com make it easy to do already. Most of your audience probably isn’t on Myspace and don’t quite realize the power of a quick email referral. On the positive side, once you mobilize them they will probably make more impassioned pleas for their friends to attend than “Zomg! This show rox! See it!”

Thanking the Community That Supported You

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One of the moderators of the Emerging Leadership Institute I attended, Rosalba Rolon, is the Artistic Director of Pergones Theater in Bronx, NY. She spoke briefly about the organization during the institute but it wasn’t until I read her brochure that something had caught my eye that synched with the stories she told.

She spoke a lot about the support the theater had received from the neighborhood and how indebted the organization was to their neighbors for their survival. Now things are looking up and the area, formerly one of the most crime ridden places in the country, is becoming gentrified. (Apparently, there is talk of changing the name from South Bronx to Downtown Bronx to support the spiffed up image.)

Many arts organizations target mailings to zip codes with affluent neighborhoods because they are more likely to be comprised of a demographic that is inclined to attend events and hopefully donate funds. Pergones uses zip codes to cultivate a different kind of currency.

The theatre remembers to whom it is indebted and offers 50% discounts (scroll to Zip Tickets) on tickets to anyone living in zip code 10451 up until 30 minutes before a performance. At first I misread this as a type of rush ticket available at 30 minutes before the performance but this anytime prior to 30 minutes before the performance.

As rush tickets, I thought this was nice, but when I realized this was a discount on advanced tickets, I thought it was great! This goes to creating a sense of investment, value and good will in the immediate community.

And even if you don’t live in the specific zip code, the theater has negotiated a reciprocal agreement for its members giving them a 40% discount at a theater in Manhattan, one in Washington, DC and a festival in Coral Gables, FL. Maybe few will ever be in a position to redeem the discount in the other cities. Still, they have an incentive to experiment and attend while they are away from home rather than doing something else.

The immediate message to the member is that their theater is working on their behalf to give them privileges when they are away from home. The goodwill generated from that is probably more valuable than any discount they might realize while on the road.

Away Damned Blog!

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Since I have been invoking the idea of assessing technology and only using what is suitable for you instead of jumping on the latest trend, I need to issue a mea culpa.

At various times I have suggested in my entries that organizations should have the artistic staff blog about their rehearsal experience. I still think this is a good idea. However, of the few organizations I have seen who have had their artistic staff blog, I have to say I have been really unimpressed.

Many of them start out the first couple days of rehearsals and then either come to a dead stop or don’t pick up again until just around opening night. The entries that are there are pretty predictable. They start out talking about the great group that has been assembled and how exciting it all is. Then often nothing more.

Certainly one could get more entries generated if one made it a contractual requirement and set aside time each day during which performers and the creative team were to scribe their musings. After reading the experiences of a college professor who required her classes to blog, I am not sure this is the most constructive or productive tack to take.

Frankly, the blog postings I required my students to write were just not very interesting. Those students are bright, insightful, frequently opinionated, and, as a whole, a pleasure to be around. Their blogs were not.

I imagine that if you assembled the most brilliant group of performers and artistic collaborators the world could imagine, you might find that their brilliance was less apparent in what they produced for the blogosphere.

So I take it back. If you can do it well and your audiences will benefit from it, blog away! If not, turn the creative energies toward creating a great performance.

Leadership Exercise

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Neill Archer Roan posted an interesting leadership case study/exercise yesterday. What I really admired about it were the questions.

I appreciated that they didn’t specifically ask who was at fault and how could the person(s) handle the situation more constructively. The questions don’t even ask how you would address the situation with the development director or the board. I am sure any group discussion of the case would probably result in blame being assigned, but I like the fact that the questions don’t necessarily imply that removing a person is part of the solution.

Too often we imagine the solution to be simpler than it is and decide “if only X were to happen, we would be all right.” The X factor is usually just a symptom or a quick fix for a symptom and doesn’t address an underlying cause.

The entry is worth taking a look at just to think about. Some of the questions Neill poses may not have any significance to any situation you are in. You may never ponder “What behavioral or cognitive patterns are in place?” for example, unless you are really interested in organizational behavior.

Even though he places the reader in the position of Executive Director, one need not take that point of view to consider any part of the scenario. In the best situation, you will come up with some questions he hasn’t posed. Moving beyond what Neill suggests shows that your brain is really churning away and exercising your problem solving muscles.