Taking Intrinsic Impact to the Next Level

This morning, in You've Cott Mail (which if you aren't subscribed to, you should be!), Thomas Cott highlighted an article from the Guardian UK about some work being done there on measuring the emotional response of audiences to theatre. What was so interesting about the article is that it mirrors some major research we’re about to launch here at Theatre Bay Area and in six cities across the US.

The article is a summary of a new effort in the UK to measure the emotional response of audiences to art. Working with WolfBrown, the research firm that piloted a lot of this intrinsic impact research (as it’s called), we’ll be building a similar survey and doing follow-up research with 25 theatre companies in six cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Charleston). Throughout the 2010/2011 season, we, with arts service organization partners in each city (LA Stage Alliance, Theatre Puget Sound, ART/New York, League of Chicago Theatres, League of Charleston Theatres), will be working with the theatre companies to set intrinsic impact goals for three productions in a season, measure the effect of each of those productions using the survey, and then generate a final report for each company and work through, with the artistic, administrative and marketing staff, the implications of the research and how it matches (or doesn’t match) the company's hoped-for goals.

In addition, as part of this work, we’ll be developing a web-based interface that we hope will eventually allow any theatre across the country access to an affordable, fee-for-service program in intrinsic impact. Companies will be able to produce the survey themselves, learn how to set goals for the various axes of intrinsic impact, and then log the results themselves and see how they stack up. They’ll be able to develop a portfolio of their impact on their audiences, with a lot of possible implications as more companies participate. Over time, by making this an affordable service [which it currently decidedly is not – this research project, with projected generous funding from three national foundations and assorted local foundations (more news on that once the contracts are signed), will have a total budget upwards of $400,000], we hope to provide companies with a new way of measuring the effectiveness of their work on audiences. In addition, we hope these measurements eventually will become an alternative way of demonstrating worth to funders, audiences and trustees.

Our work will begin over the summer as staff from Theatre Bay Area and WolfBrown begin traveling to the partner cities, identifying theatre companies with the partner ASOs, and beginning the induction process. We’re incredibly excited about this new work – especially now that we see that there’s a parallel effort going on in the UK. We expect to be able to report out on this, at least preliminary results, in time for our Annual Conference next spring, and plan on doing final reporting on the project at TCG and NAMP in 2011.

P.S. As some of you know, we did a pilot of this project a few years ago around Free Night. The results of that pilot are available here. It’s the report called "Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program."

Is This The Future of Ticketing for Small and Midsize Performing Arts Organizations?

Yesterday, I sat in on an all-day design workshop (in New York!) for a new product called AthenaTix, which is currently in development via the national service organization (formerly mostly know for its services to individuals) Fractured Atlas. The program, like Project Audience, which I wrote about earlier (and which I’ll be writing about again shortly), is funded in large part by the Mellon Foundation. AthenaTix, which is targeting to launch Version 1.0 about a year from now, will be an open-source, free ticketing software specifically designed for small and midsize arts organizations. V1.0 will allow for fairly mundane, but important, things like an easy sales path, robust show information, quick processing, printable tickets, etc. But, in later versions, it also has the potential for a lot more--notably shared attendance data across multiple companies (as more organizations start using the system), customizable logins, advanced customer tracking capability, and perhaps even (though likely not in V1.0) dynamic ticket pricing that would respond to set variables like percentage sold, length of time from performance, ticketing variations from night to night and seating area to seating area, and maybe even aggregate review response (via traditional media and social media) to maximize profits. And Athena (which is actually an extremely hard-working acronym for Advanced Technology Hub and Extensible Nexus for the Arts, but is also conveniently named after the goddess of wisdom) is actually envisioned as a modular system that will eventually cover everything a small organization would need in the way of technology, from constituent management to donor software to content management. The system, which, according to Fractured Atlas executive director Adam Huttler, will take up to 20 years (!) to complete, has the potential to revolutionize the way small companies interact with constituents and dramatically level the playing field between variably sized arts organizations.

To be clear, the product that comes out in a year will not be nearly as robust as that--it will probably function only for general admission houses of under 100 seats, with limited runs and a single price point for any given performance (i.e., no discounting). Given all that, perhaps it’s easy to see why what’s got me excited is what’s coming after V1.0--the high potential in V2.0 and onward for substantially benefiting small and midsize organizations (at little or no cost) is extremely appealing, even though V1.0, in the current formulation that they’re talking about (which may, I should point out, change as the design process continues), essentially replicates services that are already available with almost nothing new on the docket.

It seems, too, that when it rains it pours. PatronTechnology, the for-profit company behind PatronMail, is currently beta testing a similar product called PatronManager in Los Angeles. While I can't speak about specifics because the product is still very much in development, Theatre Bay Area staff and members of the Theatre Services Committee were recently presented with a half-hour demo of the product, and what we saw was very exciting.

In both of these cases, the goal is to create a low-to-no-cost solution for ticketing (and donor) management for small and midsize companies. Fractured Atlas, once AthenaTix is finished, will offer it as open source code to whoever wants it, but will also be launching a national ticket vending site built on the AthenaTix platform and collecting ticket processing fees as income. AthenaTix, and the entire Athena program, will be radically transparent--they're currently sharing everything at athena.fracturedatlas.org. PatronManager is still in beta, and so is somewhat under wraps. If you're interested in learning more, email me and I'll connect you into the process.

All of this is very much still in process, but we’re really excited here at Theatre Bay Area to see not one but two fantastic products coming down the pipeline designed to directly address a major field-wide need.

Developing Audiences the Gay Way

I have a new theatre audience development crush, thanks to my cousin who lives in Chicago. She works as the development director for a music organization there, and was at some sort of organization fair sitting next to a theatre company called About Face.

About Face, which is currently running a production of local fave (and hometown boy) Adam Bock's The Flowers, is devoted, at least in part, to "disproving the old model that says the arts are a frivolous extra, the LGBTQ community is 'other,' and that neither are relevant to the real business world."

So what does this have to do with audience development? My cousin sent me the swag that About Face was distributing at this event -- a postcard for a show called Queertopia, and a fabulous magnet that says in big bold letters "Theatre is so gay." What really got me, though, was when I flipped the Queertopia postcard and discovered that it is part of About Face's "Activist Youth Workshop" series -- essentially, it's a class in which young people "study acting, movement, circus arts, drag performance, anti-racism and anti-violence models, self-defense, story collection and playwriting."

This is a fantastic step in audience development -- both for theatre and, I'd argue, for gay rights. About Face is creating an environment in which youth are deeply immersed in the creation of art in a variety of ways, and which is uniquely intertwined with LGBTQ issues.

About Face's card goes on to discuss the goals of the class, saying:

"Join the cast to help create and perform in a new play about the true stories of violence against LGBTQA people in our city and our schools. In addition, we will be documenting true stories of peace, progress and acceptance in our communities."

Teasing out the LGBTQ stuff, which I think is great, I'm still left with a great respect for the larger scheme behind Queertopia -- About Face, through clever marketing and an open mind in terms of what constitutes theatrical performance, is giving every kid in their class myriad ways to connect with the artform -- multiple doors to walk through in order to become theatre consumers and makers as they grow. That's fantastic, and it's something I'm afraid I don't see nearly often enough in our community.

Do you have other examples of great, innovative audience development via youth programs in the Bay Area?

Social Networking as art? Or the rantings of a 40something and technology...

A NYT article published 8/16/09 details the Twitter success story of Broadway's Next to Normal. Apparently this past spring the show's creator, Brian Yorkey, began sending single tweets that were more than just marketing quips or lines from the show. He adapted the script for a Twitter audience, sending character lines that were intended to happen when that character wasn't speaking on stage. By the Sunday morning of the Tony Awards in June, when the tweets stopped, a complete shadow script was in existence.

It's apparently hard to gauge the success of this technique as a marketing tool. Did the surge in sales happen because of the tweets or because of the show's 11 Tony nominations (and eventual multiple wins)? Who's to say. But it certainly speaks to the creativity possible in the world of social networking. I will let you read the specifics of the article yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/technology/internet/17normal.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Play special attention to the link for the compiled text at http://www.nexttonormal.com/twitterperformance.pdf.

I, for one, historically have doubted the "power" of social networking for the arts. It's not ignorance that says that. I have certainly heard people's marketing successes. But I guess I have always been underwhelmed by what the various sites really offer when push comes to shove. This is probably a reflection more of the fact that I am not necessarily the traditional web 2.0 audience. As least my perception of what that means. And my degree of frustration with the various mechanisms ranges from mild annoyance to rage. I have tried for weeks to figure out how to subscribe to some of my favorite blogs. I have yet to succeed on most of them. More often than not, as a general non-particpant in the blogging world, it mostly seems like an excuse for people to be snarky. And my Facebook inbox is so flooded with invites for shows and events it has reached the level of white noise (and no, that isn't an invitation to un-friend me. I love hearing about everyting, really). None of this stops me from having a FB page and sending out invites for my own theatre company. And yes I have dipped my toe in the world of Twitter (the only tweet I have ever sent was some interesting stats on tweeting (Sysomos report on Twitter. 85% of users post less than once/day , 21% never do, 5% account for 75% of activity).

I guess I have always wondered: How long would it take for someone to take this social networking thing to the next level? Admittedly as you can gather from the ramblings above, I am not the most plugged-in person in the world, but my Mom still calls me from Ohio when her VCR blinks, so compared to some I'm a guru. So maybe this Next to Normal thing isn't entirely new. But it's certainly new for a Broadway show and it does get the brain jumping about the possibilities. Can social networking "create" art as well as market it? I certainly don't know the answer, but I hope we take advantage of the possibilities available on the mechanisms available to us before the next thing comes along and we have to start all over again.

And thanks, Susan (Theatre Bay Area membership associate and fellow N2N fan) for letting me know about the article!

The Facts Are These

I've never paid attention to Theatre Facts, the 35-page audit of American theatre as a whole published each year by TCG. Before I started here at Theatre Bay Area, I worked at Z Space, which wasn't a TCG member theatre, and as such the national service organization barely touched my radar. And last year I was swallowed whole by Free Night and the run-up to the intrinsic impact study. So I'm a Theatre Facts virgin, and I've got to say, it's quite the piece of work.

For those of you who don't want to take a wander through all 35 pages, I'd at least recommend reading the first page, which includes a very helpful "Inside this Article" summary. But if you want to delve deeper, there are a lot of numbers and some potentially disturbing trends.

One thing to point out first--while Theatre Facts was just published, it actually only looks at the period between October 1, 2007 and September 30, 2008. This is because it takes almost a year for TCG to do what it does in terms of verifying numbers, pouring over audits and 990s, and crafting the article. As such, it cuts off just before things got interesting with the economy. As you can imagine, I can't wait to see what it shows happened in the year they're auditing now--but alas, we'll have to wait until next August, by which time (one can dream) this whole financial downturn might have flipped back to an upswing. (An aside: this long timeline has inspired the currently-running Pulse survey, which we encourage all arts organizations, TCG and non-TCG alike, to take. The Pulse takes a much more cursory, but also much quicker-to-process, look at the state of the field.)

First, some of the quick takeaways from the study, and then some futher thoughts on meaning:

• Theatres presented the creative work of 83,000 artists to 32 million audience members.


• More than half of theatres ended 2008 in the red.


• Subscription income rose 2.6%, but 8% fewer subscription tickets were purchased and the number of subscribers fell by 10%.


• Overall attendance was up 1.9% and the number of performances offered was up 5.2%.


• Earned income dropped over 7% from 2007 to 2008, and supported fewer expenses per dollar than in any previous year.


• Of all earned income, ticket sales represented 76% of money earned in 2008, but covered 3% fewer expenses.

The main thing that caught my eye is this ever-rising discrepancy between income and expense--even with earned income on the rise, which it surely won't be in the next edition of this report, growth in expenses (19.1%) outstripped growth in earned income (6%) by a large margin over five years. Essentially, even as we continue to raise our prices, the cost of producing theatre continues to be a losing game financially.

I don't know where this leaves us, especially since of those five years referenced above, five were in a positive economy. And I'll be honest, I'm not really a numbers guy, so my eyes kind of glazed over around page 15, so I've got a lot more to process. But this is a start--and it leads me to ask, how can we as a community generate new models that allow our income to balance, if not exceed, our expenses? Admittedly, my numbers don't cover the development income/expense lines, which are a bit more positive, but still don't really even out.

I find this especially interesting in light of the discussion occuring in the comments on Rebecca's post "Growing versus Thriving" and an earlier post by Sabrina about the NEA funding coming under attack. TCG's survey looks almost exclusively at budgets over a million dollars (in many cases, far over a million dollars) because that's who TCG primarily serves. What would happen, I wonder, if we were to look at this same level of detail for companies like Crowded Fire or Shotgun Players? Is theatre morphing into a situation in which smaller is better, more sustainable? Additionally, some of the comments in those earlier entries have been discussing the assertion by certain Republican Congress members that the government shouldn't have the onus for supporting work that hasn't succeeded in the public sphere (i.e., hasn't made money on ticket sales). With this new data--that almost no one succeeds to that level, at least in the aggregate--where does that leave us as a field, especially as government and foundational funding wane with the descending good fortunes of the people whose money they redistribute?

So, Theatre's in Trouble, Eh?

Victoria Nguyen has a fairly substantial article in this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian (on newsstands now!) on the state of the theatre community in the Bay Area, specifically looking at small and midsize companies. It's interesting to see the article in finished form, as Victoria has spoken to me and other Theatre Bay Area staff at least three times in the process of writing it. Verdict? It's about what I thought it was going to be.

I've got to say, the picture she paints is not necessarily pretty, and I sort of knew that was coming. In our discussions, Victoria particularly requested that she be pointed towards companies "struggling to stay afloat" and employees "suffering from 'burnout'." While I took some time to let her know that hunting out those stories doesn't make them the standard for the community right now, she seems to have continued on that path and written an article that paints a bleaker picture than I think is really representative of the current situation.

This is not to say that her article is inaccurate--as our Pulse Survey (which she references in the article) shows, things are not all sunshine and lollipops for companies right now, and it's a little unclear whether companies are reacting as proactively and forcefully as they might. And she highlights some great realities in the field right now, like a potential over-reliance on ticket income and a potential dearth of large-cast plays because of the financial realities of mounting them. I can nitpick that she claims that companies of all sizes are seeing reductions in ticketing income and individual donations, which doesn't actually seem to be true across the board (see this mention on PianoFight's blog and this article about DC's Arena Stage, for example). Anecdotally, two of the companies mentioned in the article (Impact and City Lights) have both told me that someof their shows have actually seen larger audiences than predicted, in some cases record-setting numbers.

Ultimately, while I'm a little sad that the positive stuff (the increased cooperation within the community, the new innovations occurring every day across size and scope, the new spaces being created by Z Space, Intersection and others) didn't make it in except insofar as it was mentioned as a direct effort to stay afloat, I am absolutely thrilled that the Bay Guardian spent five pictures (including the front page) and two pages talking about some of our best and brightest small companies.

And there is one bit of wisdom that is always good to remember. In the last paragraph, Victoria quotes Z Space AD Lisa Steindler saying, "We're artists--we're a smart group of people. We've just tightened, tightened, tightened. And who knows? Maybe we just caught it in time."

Here's hoping.

In other news (and running counter to my relative optimism), the Magic officially announced today that they're exiting stage right (okay, actually exiting the stage on the right as you go up the stairs to their venue in Fort Mason). They're dropping out of the Sam Shepard Theatre at Fort Mason and keeping only the thrust. The space is available for rent through Fort Mason, if you're interested.

Photo: Anne Galjour in Z Space Studio's upcoming production of You Can't Get There From Here. Photo by Clayton Lord (hey that's me!) Find out more.

Smackdown: Audiences Vs. Donors! (Maybe)

A report out a couple days ago from Barclay’s Bank, reported on in the Daily Telegraph and brought to my attention by You’ve Cott Mail (click on “You’ve Cott Mail” in the left menu) presents an interesting picture of what’s happening with high-end individual donors across fields. And as they say, there’s good news and there’s bad news. Click here to download the whole White Paper (PDF).

Essentially, Barclay’s surveyed 500 wealthy donors and found that 75 percent of them have not reduced their charitable giving in the past 18 months--and that more than 25 percent have actually increased their charitable giving during that time. Per the Daily Telegraph:

“Now that governments are overburdened with debt, the rich felt it more important than ever that wealthy individuals did their bit for charity, the report said. When asked where they would make cuts if the downturn continued, respondents said they would be more likely to stint on luxury goods, holidays and eating out than curb their donations to charity.”

Good news, right? Well, maybe.

The bad news is that Barclay’s also reports that “traditional recipients of charitable donations”--the arts and religious organizations--are falling out of favor with these same donors in favor of more concrete causes like health care, children and environmental causes. In the words of the report, “This trend [will] accelerate over the next decade if the causes in question [Hey that’s us!] [fail] to engage in a meaningful way with the next generation of givers.”

Suddenly, the question of relevance is no longer an esoteric debate (if it ever was)--but now it has to be argued from both the audience development side and the donor cultivation side. Recently, this blog has had items (and very insightful comments) about what relevance actually means, specifically centered around the ability to develop new audiences. That discussion has primarily been fueled by representatives from smaller, more innovative companies who are reacting against exactly the comforting long-term sameness that I would argue most major donors (yes, a grand generalization) are drawn to. And many of their arguments, I think, are going to be hard to scale up to the larger companies, many of whom, as it happens, are the cultivators of more major donors. This is not to say that the “next generation of givers” that Barclay’s references will also be drawn to the traditions that are wrapped up in theatre, but I do think news like this begs the question: How do we both engage new audiences (new segments, people who are not looking for your same old presentational theatre experience) while also revitalizing the high-end donor base that (at least in large and some midsize companies) is supposedly the steadiest source of income over the long term?

Trends during this downturn locally (via the Pulse survey and anecdote) seem to indicate that loyal donors are indeed staying loyal, at least at a higher rate than foundations, corporations and non-donor attendees. I hope that continues. But that gets me to a quandary (which I realize is at least partially based in a stereotype of who those backbone donors are and what they enjoy): how can we innovate our way as a field into the hearts and minds of a new audience (more diverse, plucked from more distractions, used to on-demand everything and less appreciative of presentational cultural modes) while also continuing to court those staider, more traditional and, yes, more loyal would-be donors? Especially when competing (a sad word in this context) with things like poverty, heart disease, cancer, global warming, AIDS, etc.?

On Theatre Etiquette

The LA Stage Blog posted a link to a fascinating little article in the London Times online edition called The 15 Golden Rules of Theatre Etiquette. It's neat, but it left me with a bit of an odd taste in my mouth, given how gung-ho I am on trying to bend our rules to incorporate new audiences into the fold.

As some of you may have read, I’ve been engaged in a pretty active conversation with some of our smaller companies about changes in theatre etiquette--and, really, changes in expectations about theatre etiquette. Of course there’s a fine line to walk, but one thing that has come up which I think deserves some merit is that, by sticking with all of these rules over time, we’re actually hurting ourselves by not adjusting to changes in audience demographics, attitudes, etc.

For example, this one from the Golden Rules:
“If the child you’re bringing is chatty, gag it. If it’s fidgety, handcuff and shackle it. And if you’re altruistic enough to bring a school party to a Shakespeare matinée, threaten potential wrongdoers with tickets to the next revival of Timon of Athens, to be followed by a ten-page essay on the ethics of Apemantus.”

Rebecca Novick wrote recently on the Chatterbox about taking her daughter to a National Dance Week performance--her first live performance ever. All the kid wanted to do was get up and dance (it was a dance performance), and Rebecca was told that she had to get the kid to calm down, quiet down, and sit still--or she had to leave. The girl, unfortunately but not surprisingly, lost interest as soon as she wasn’t able to engage the way she as a child would.

I totally get that there need to be levels of propriety. But I think we as a community really need to start thinking more outside that box, allowing for new ways to experience/interpret/participate in live theatre, or we’re going to get left in the dust….

Theatre, Relevance and Hush Puppies

The back-and-forth between PianoFight head Carl Benson and me continues, having migrated from Chloe Veltman’s lies like truth over to the PianoFight blog. And now it’s getting interesting--we’ve essentially set aside Free Night of Theater (which was how the whole thing started: I think Free Night works, Carl doesn’t, and never the twain shall meet) and have moved onto ground where we more or less agree about the problem, if not the solution.

Our discussion now (as you’ll see, if you take a look at the initial post at PianoFight and then the subsequent comments) centers around what is driving down theatre attendance--essentially, what is precluding people from considering theatre to be a good way to spend their free time. In my mind, the issue is actually a series of smaller issues on a continuum, namely:

- People don’t get exposed to theatre in formative years
- They develop methods of interacting with other media (TV, music, even visual arts, to some degree), but don’t learn the (rather complex, if you think about it) mores of being a (even passively) participatory audience member at a theatre event
- When presented with an option to attend a show, they not only feel disconnected from the need for live performance, they feel at least somewhat worried/nervous about fitting in and/or acting correctly
- This feeling, coupled with the cost of attendance and what the WolfBrown intrinsic impact study is showing to be a significant lack of social networks interested in attending live performance, keeps people out of our doors--even though there’s a good chance they’d both fit in fine and enjoy the performance once they were there
- Rinse and repeat.

“This is absurd,” you might say. “Who doesn’t know how to behave in a theatre? It’s just like watching a movie.”

But it’s not, not really. People don’t dress up (not even a little) for a movie. They don’t mill in the lobby beforehand. They don’t pay an average ticket price of $35 for a ticket (which raises expectations of what’s going to be offered). There are no people that breathe on stage, and say the words, and change things up and forget lines and sweat and spit and move about. Movies are voyeurism at much more of a remove than anything theatre has to offer.

I remember seeing a production of Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC (photo of that production at left) when I was in college. It was a school assignment, and I was there with the 15 or so students from my class and my hippie-dippie teacher. This is a space with maybe 100 seats, surrounding a thrust, and here suddenly are these two nubile, prancing, very naked 20-somethings with all the bits and pieces out on display--and here’s a man nursing on a girl’s bare breast, and yes, here’s some witty Albee-esque repartee, but who can remember that.

Of course, it’s not just nudity. Helen Mirren in The Queen was great, fantastic, all the accolades you can think of--but look at the words they’re using for her current turn as Phedre at the National in London. I can just imagine the energy, the crisp static energy that must be running through the theatre there--it’s something that is absolutely irreplicable anywhere except live on stage. And I would bet for someone who didn’t have much experience, it would be both electrifying and off-putting all at once.

More mundane differences--there’s no intermission in a movie (unless it’s Gone With the Wind, and jeez-oh was I glad about that). What’s the appropriate thing to do there? Do you sit? Do you go out and mill? Are you allowed to talk about what you’ve seen--should you judge it in progress, or are you expected to wait? When can you clap mid-show? What level of verbal reaction is appropriate, and when do you need to muffle? What if you really like something, but you’re the only one who gives it a standing ovation at the end? Is everyone just sitting there judging you? And why, oh why is everyone sitting around me so damn old? And after, what if you hated it, and everyone else is ecstatic? What if, as I’ve heard more than once, you “just didn’t get it?” Do you talk about it with your friend, or do you keep it quietly to yourself?

What is the acceptable reaction/interaction/action after, for example, seeing a man die on stage in At Home at the Zoo? What is the acceptable reaction to watching a dying woman give up and walk into the light in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer-winning Wit?

Carl, in his latest comment, makes a great statement, with which I agree, but to which I must add a caveat. First the statement: “Theatre has got to take at least some of the blame for this drop in attendance, awareness and relevance. If we do not collectively take a long, hard look at our art and our business, Free Night of Theater won’t save us, it’ll just prolong the death spiral.”

I think there are theatres that are already working to address these issues--theatres, actually, like PianoFight, where, in Carl’s words, the audiences are “loud, raucous, and quite frequently (though not always) inebriated.” Not that drinking’s the way out of this particular hole, necessarily, but the sentiment is there: break all the boundaries, examine everything, and see what’s left. This, however, is the realm, mostly, of small companies, who are flexible and nimble enough to sample the latest Hot New Thing. Sure, ACT can allow drinks in the theatre, but it traffics in opulence and, somewhat, in familiarity. If you take the dress-up out of the affair, it loses something irretrievable and essentially valuable to that particular type of theatre. And even Berkeley Rep, the new-play-presenting brother company across the Bay, may do new organic work drawn from the community. They may even commission the stage version of American Idiot, complete with punk-rock craziness and the director that brought Duncan Sheik to a stage near you. But I promise you it’ll be a different (not quantifiably better or worse, necessarily, but different) experience from the inebriated experiences of PianoFight.

A study by Theatre Development Fund in New York (runner of the TKTS booth, but also a substantial research engine for arts nonprofits) recently noted that while theatre attendance is on the decline, overall audiences are actually more likely than ever to pay the exorbitant price of a Broadway ticket--once or twice a year. It’s a special event, often done at the same time every year, wrapped in amidst splurges like a nice dinner and a dress-up date. It is theatre as an event, and I think that’s fabulous. The downside, however, is that theatre as an event is special in the same way that the hush puppies I experience when I visit my parents in North Carolina are special: delicious, decadent and available for a very limited time. If I had hush puppies every day, well…you get the idea.

Where Carl wants to get to, I think, and it’s a noble place to be searching for, is a place where some portion of the theatregoing audience is going for a more, dare I say, minor experience--a little after-work way to blow off steam, less a full entrée, more an amuse bouche. There are only so many momentous events one needs in a day, a week, a year. Carl talks about how Shakespearean plays were originally done before rowdy restless groundlings.

I should also say, unequivocally, that I don’t think theatre is in a death spiral. I just think it’s changing. The rumblings in the rising generation of leaders are all about relevance, pertinence, theatre for the people. The Neo-futurists, the Civilians, the Rude Mechanicals, the (now separated) Tectonic Theatre Project (and here in SF, individuals and groups like David Szlasa, Banana Bag and Bodice, foolsFury)--we’ve had companies playing with form, function and relevance for years. And now the presenters are starting to follow--gay nights, young nights, pre-talks, post-talks, in-show texting, drinking, audience-driven narrative, Twitter plays…phew. Theatre’s not going to die, it’s just not going to be how it was. And that’s okay.

Drinking the Night Away - A Cautionary Tale

So, I'm sitting in the Geary last night, watching the first half of At Home at the Zoo, and I keep getting these random whiffs of scotch in my nose. Very confusing--I wondered if someone around me was simply at the performance so much against their will that they had to get drunk first, or what. But it turns out the explanation was much more mundane: there was guy with a full-on two inches of scotch in a glass two seats down, sipping it nice as you please.

It made me wonder, in this era of trying to break down barriers to attendance (things like allowing people to bring drinks into the theatre) how do we identify and deal with the unintended consequences? Not that the guy was belligerent or unpleasant in any way--not even that he spilled or broke his glass or whatever. Simply that snorting scotch in the theatre wasn't something I'd envisioned with my Albee, and it took me just slightly out of the experience every time I caught the smell. As a marketer, this unintended consequence gave me pause--I'm a big proponent of things like drinks in the theatre, texting during shows--anything that is, generally speaking, a relatively minor change to theatre etiquette--but how fascinating when a "minor change" so directly and unexpectedly affects others.