 Wait, why do you have to come inside? It's just not easy. Is that sort of serious? Yeah, no, it's a book. It's just not easy. Is that a book? Oh, so let's, let's read at least. Yeah, well we also have a book out there. Right, which I don't think we've done before. Yeah. Sure. We're going to say that the baddest note in the show, everybody's going to miss you, sir. So we'll go around your house, naturally. I'm not sure. I haven't tried some chocolate by now. I'm at the same class. I think we can get a foot at least for this chocolate table. You guys do it? Yeah, we're too far away. Are you in? Okay, ready? One, two, three, let's see if we can go that far. I'm not Union, but I might plug something in. Okay, that's enough. That's better. Yeah, that's better. No, I'm sorry, that's just better because we're too far away. Okay. So I'm going to have to give them a couple things, each other, right? Yeah. One and all. Back to our future. Okay, Tyler, let's go. Okay. Hello, everybody. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Hello. Hi, I would say at this point a friend of TVS. I would say so. That's the friends of TVS squad over there. I just want to thank you, everybody, for coming to this. This is a really, it's an important project that they're doing along with the array area. And I feel that particularly because I did work with Tia along with them. I used that for something like five years. At least. At least. Almost as long as it took to build the booth. Right. Like a lifetime. With the project that he had at his portion. And one of the things that we discovered immediately after, almost immediately after that report came out, is that though underlying conditions and perceptions take a long time to change, that actually practices change very quickly. There's often a lot of alteration, change, temptation in the field. And I believe these things are regularly not seen because our perceptions are so fixed that we don't notice the changes there. So one of the great things about this project is building on, and they'll tell you all about it, but building on array dispersion on one hand and TVA's, the other. They're really both digging deeper and moving forward to find out more about what he meant and what his study of intrinsic impact and how he is doing that. So it's a really important thing that you'll be able to convey to Eric some of what you should hear with us. And I'm going to tell you everything that helps with every part of my knowledge. Thanks for coming, guys. Thank you all for joining us. As Todd said, and I'm reminding you that we are also live streaming. And so we were asked by some folks, got a note to make sure, to run howl around and to make sure that when you guys talk that you, as Brad says, use your active voice because they want to make sure that they can hear you as well. As Todd said, this really came out of the two pieces of work that our two service organizations did. Both of our service organizations are committed in large part to strengthening and building audiences and supporting the theater by doing that. Although Brad, unlike TDF, also has producers and artists as members. And the two of us were at the famous from scarcity to abundance convening with some of the rest of you. In the District of Columbia, when Rocco gave the famous speech about it wasn't that the scarcity made his scarcity in abundance remarks. And Brad and I, at the time, looked at each other and went, we're not doing our jobs because the problem isn't that there are too many theaters, there aren't enough people engaging with those theaters. And that's kind of what we're supposed to do. And at the end of that weekend, there was a breakout session or a session in which people kept talking about the audience and a playwright, and I confess, I don't remember, who I said, why do we always talk about the audience? I mean, I've never put them in the room. And so this is an effort to really, this project funded in large part by the Doris Duke Charitable Trust of whom we owe a thank you. A big thank you. And this project is really a way to start to look at, as I said, as we said in the email, not just, you know, intrinsic impact looks at audiences and theaters. And in Outrageous Fortune, we looked at theaters and playwrights and we actually don't look at those things in a circle. And then, so it really comes out of a kind of, a desire for us to put our minds together. A, highlighting best practices. B, all of you who are here are doing really interesting stuff with your audiences and with your artists or you are artists who we've interacted with over the years who care about this stuff. We also have a few marketing directors here, which I'm really pleased about because this is also a conversation about marketing. And this is a conversation about how we interact in those parts. And I don't know if you want to talk it all more about intrinsic impact and where that relates. Yeah, just a little bit more. It really wasn't that arena convening where I think really was the birthplace of this idea. And for me, a breakout session that I was in, there was someone who was a presenter, a large presenting organization who said, you know, what we bring is to this process, we bring the audience. Wow, what a really cool idea. And a couple moments after that, someone said, you know, it's interesting because you would think that the institutions would be the bridge between the artist and the audience, but too often, inadvertently, there might be me adding that, they're acting like a wall instead of like a bridge. And how, like, what was that and how can theater organizations actually act as someone said at Willie a couple weeks ago as a platform for bringing together, literally bringing together the artist and the audience and what would that look like. So that's part of what these conversations are about is really trying to understand what we're calling a triangular relationship between the artist, the audience, and the theater organization that hopefully is bringing them together in some way. So what it looks like is we did the commission, small research which we shared with you. We're going to, this is the third of six cities that we're having conversations around the country talking to people and getting their perceptions and reactions. We are going to do this summer, we're going to commission another piece of research which we'll really talk directly to audiences. And one of the things we're trying to do is build a community and hope that we get you guys engaged so that then when the time comes, you might actually help us disseminate that survey. So one of the things that we're trying to tease out today are if you could actually talk to folks about this stuff, what would you want to learn? What would you want to know? And one, and again, to Todd's point, this is about practical considerations. It was something that surfaced a bunch when we were in San Francisco was a theater that for instance is worried that if they send their folks to other theaters and there's a kind of cross and they, you know, if an artist works one place and then another and so you would want to move to that place with them, well then they might lose them as a donor. I hope that's interesting, right? What is that about with an audience and people giving stuff like that? So what, before we start, because Brad is visiting us from the other coast, he thought it was really pretty this morning. Slowly, you're like, ooh! It's like, you are so not to say that. But because he's visiting, I thought it would just be really helpful people. I know all of you, but you don't. So if you guys could just introduce yourselves. Starting with Todd. I'm Todd. Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm Emily Morse, I'm the director of... I'm the Marin Artistic Director of Intar Theater. Susan Bernfield, producing artistic director of New Georgia. Kristen Martin, artistic director of here. Damon Tron, a playwright currently working here. Tisa Chang, founding artistic director of Pan-A, John Diaz, artistic director of New York Theater Company. Kristen Parker, an associate artistic director at Intar Theater Company. Jeremy Walker, managing director of New York Theater Workshop. Mandy Greenfield, I'm the artistic director of... What's your name? Ben Esmer, co-author of CDF Outweigh Sports and program director of Ventures Theater Company. Shannon Lacek, director of marketing at Kovac. I'm Tom O'Connor, I'm the director of marketing and audience development and around the world. And there's Winnick, I'm the director of marketing at Paris. Go ahead. And all three of you are banded together, but I promise... It's really a fine conversation. Paris got your back. Not exactly. I can just... Sorry, I can just hear us talking. It was really weird. And you should introduce yourself. I know some of you. I am the editor of TDF Stages Theater Development Funds on my magazine and the producer of Meet the Theater, a series of short films about interesting theater companies here in New York City. And over there, please. And she's been emailing all of you. I'm Connie Hall, the manager of institutional giving at TDF. Mike Norman, I'm the managing director of TDF and the director of education. And I'll just share with all of you that we have a gala on Monday, so I'm a little nervous that so many people are here, but that's okay. Hi! So let's get started. It's really scary, but it's really okay. It's Wednesday already, right? Uh-huh. How do we need to sell about 50 more tickets? Anyway, so, thoughts, first reactions. I mean, we had two very different kinds of research. One of which is, was really Zanni's work, and we're still executive summary at the time, but really was looking at the theaters and playwrights and how they thought about kind of parallel questions. Alan's work is really looking at risk. As I think I said in the email, we're moving beyond playwrights. We're also thinking about directors. We're thinking about who's the artist and how they talk to the audience, how they're involved in their work, and then with risk. You know, it's pretty clear. New plays are sometimes really risky, and sometimes new plays are about not the least bit risky, and sometimes classics are totally risky. So to think a little bit, just kind of what were some of your thoughts and responses, or as you read stuff, what resonated, what didn't seem true? Yes? Well, I actually underlined that some new work, for instance, has no risk attached. That was in your email. And I wondered how new work has no risk attached. I actually wondered what was the underlined assumption that something that is new, when we're creating something from nothing, when does it perceive that there's no risk? What do you think? In the painting work. Well, yeah, I was going to say it doesn't accept anything. There was something in the study, right, that talked about the audience member's approach to any experience as being inherent in risk. And you don't know what a production is going to be like until you've sat through it, which doesn't, I think, it doesn't matter if it's new or if it's interpretation, even if it's just a production of a classic that isn't reinterpreted. Talk a little bit about what you see as risk. What is the audience perceive as risk? Yeah? Probably a fairly new play, right? His name is not as recognizable as many of you that we know. I'm thinking content. I think obviously there is something that is a traditional, or let's say, comedies, a romantic comedy that might be perceived to be safer than certain. So I think content and certainly the playwright's name. Mm-hmm. He's a triple-edit, he's a new playwright. I mean, a playwright with no life experience in the past. What's the other? Our specialty. Is that something? I was going to say, risk is an equation, whether it's a factor, an equation of all the different levels of what you do, whether that's content, whether it's a task, and I think we have a tendency to try as only one. We really think it's very likely. That was my, I was having a similar response to, too, because I thought maybe I'm not, maybe what I'm learning about my theory would not be helpful to this, but we just did a production of As You Like It, which did make, come close to being our goal, so it was a huge risk for us to use Shakespeare. I find that astonishing what it happened to be true. Did you know ahead of time that it was? Well, a little bit. Just anecdotally, hearing people talk about being afraid of Shakespeare. So, okay. But what was interesting, one of the very first things, I've only been in the theater for three years, one of the very first things in my program this season was to put in a new play to be able to develop it by a completely unknown writer with real fear of the risk of doing that. And it was astonishing. It was one of our best-selling things we've ever seen. So it's... And why do you... Do you have any idea about why it worked that way? Looking at some of those statistics that you guys have done, I just thought, you know, so it depends on who you're talking to. So about individuals, like what is an appetite for risk? And a sense of adventure. And we depend a lot on our subscribers. And there was one thing that you guys found in here that I found through, too, which is subscribers are generally more likely to take risk of what I find. That was surprising to me. I was surprised with a lot of the old people. And they signed... We didn't think they would sign up in the year when the program was to be played. It was the first time that fear had done when they played in the subscription. We just didn't think they would sign up, but they put a lot of them to sign up. It was always surprising to me. Oh, so you offered it to them as a... That wasn't part of the subscription series? It was. The first year that the theater ever put a new play in this... Oh, I see, I see. And just to piggyback on about names that are not familiar to American audiences, because patterns and repertoire in theater, of course, as I mean, we could use many playwrights from the international community and demonstrate in the world originally. In 2012, we had a new first-time salvation playwright, Mayankeshavya. So names like, I'm saying, unrecognizable, unfamiliar names, sometimes the sense is, do you perform an English one? And the other is, what is the theme of our... So I think for us, we sort of have a double whammy because we're trying to introduce these very exotic names and themes to American audiences. Done? No, I was really... I was really struck at... I don't remember the name of the name, but how much this notion of both perception and context... I mean, I actually find that analysis that the specificity of the breakdown and what means really provocative, and I don't know much about it, but that notion and I seem to remember this in one of the maybe some times reports that more artistic directors are aware that the subscribers were the long-term ticket buyers who really loved the theater and wanted different experiences are more whatever the opposite of risk-averse, they're riskier whereas playwrights' perception that it's actually their long-term subscribers that mitigate the gaps between them. And that to me was really provocative. The other thing which I'm thinking about and only now we're just in New Orleans this past week to see the closing of a production of a playwright who's been working here and with the National Play Network The Anarchy who's the San Francisco Bay Area and here's a lot of you know foul mouth, crazy cartoon sort of pop comic playwright and I spent the two nights watching the older people in the audience and seeing what were my assumptions that the older white ladies in front of the New Orleans audience were going to be horrified when they started talking about anal penetration and the flux just started flying some of the things that are risk factors and it was funny. Plays you wouldn't take your mother to the Bay Area. But in fact it really was different from row to row person to person. So those same older white ladies in the front row on the floor with laughter behind me that didn't crack a smile and then there were young people that didn't crack a smile and others that were all over. So I kept being sort of thrown both by the context of a different city a different theater a playwright who in New York would not seem shocking at all except in so course and then putting in a different context and thinking about that at all and z-space versus and so these factors that are so changeable from this I was thinking a lot I think it's very hard to think about defining what represents risk to your audience because you can't actually you can't make them into a model that they talk a lot about this every time we start this conversation about our program and we're trying to think about what they would experience when we're sweeping the normalizations about people that are actually diverse in many ways and not in all the obvious ways and I think we started to talk about more the Atlantic in terms of habit not risk I mean what have we habituated our individual customers and what are our habits in programming that are reflected in the taste of our audience so because I believe that we need them to an appreciation of whatever whatever risk that I need to them I don't actually think most people think about that word when they're buying a ticket into a flight they feel excited or an opportunity to presumably purchase a ticket but we're talking about how do we habituate them and how do we reconstruct their theater going habits so that the things that we perceive that are a little out of the box for us are possible without massive financial risk Sharon? Well, to jump on I think we underestimate anything we underestimate our subscription base because we all have older white subscription bases we do but you know they're also very smart bases and I do think we sometimes sell them short but I think the playwright sometimes perception is off here come those old people who aren't going to like it and I think we've done a couple of riskier things recently at Playwright I don't think normally we would be programming Mr. Burns if you could just say a certain thing are those older subscribers going to like that and I think it's been great you know and it's been rewarding for them to some of them loving it some of them saying painting it but like I'm here for the ride and you know okay it wasn't my favorite those of you who are artists or playwrights or have worn those hats or deal intimately with them I think this issue of the different perception is a big one when we were in Washington there was a little bit of the playwrights were very much on the side of what the playwrights and zoning study felt and the people from the theaters were very much echoing as you are and it seems to me that's one of the places that we need to figure out how to unpack and I wonder if any of you have had any success either understanding that as a writer or navigating or a director navigating that fear and or as producers I mean you know I remember Randy when we were it was a conversation we always ran away from I certainly always ran away from it when the playwrights were like up in arms about who the writers were and it was like I never quite figured out how to have that conversation and convince anyone that in fact they were there and they were hanging in and they were there for the ride and I wonder if other people have I think we had to become far more willing to engage because it also I think this conversation with artists also shapes how we make the piece right who in the time that I've been at MTC the biggest clearly definable risks that we take in the people around us who might actually call our risks by the way I think it's very fine I have a pretty controversial feelings about this I've been doing Snow Geese on Broadway by Char White with Mary Louise Parker is a big risk others may not but world premiering a new American play is a big risk at an actress with a very high profile creating a role is a big risk well and if you look at some of the work most people don't care about who's in the work anyway right so you know both I accept that there is you know a wide range of so take for example I'm one into the spectrum just you know in our recent history murder valid or Matthew Lowe has this play the play of Living Man plays that or Blackbird plays that seem to be kind of outlierish in their content or form to what is expected at the Manhattan theater engaging with the writers and the directors and frankly with the actors about what are we going to do to lay bare that problem has become part of the sort of foundational work that we're doing as we develop the piece as we think about you know aspects of designing the piece I mean it really has become part of the artistic dialogue in some ways in some of the most extreme in quotation marks there's large changes so you would say that's a conversation strategy you have conversations with the artists about the issue absolutely how to deal with it how not to deal with it how to embrace it how to fix it it really has become sort of foundational in some instances to getting the artist to do it with the Manhattan theater do you do things particularly to prepare the audience for that or to help them process it afterwards I don't think we've gone that far I'm really only answering the question at sort of the a priori piece of it like here's a piece that we internally and the artist acknowledge involves a kind of aesthetic risk let's leave it as aesthetic risk what are we going to do given what we know about who we are and who comes to see it to acknowledge that in some of the choices we're going to make both about the piece itself and how it comes to life in our theater and about how we get the right people but how the audience digested I don't know that we've gone very very or we have made that we don't work with subscribers I'm curious to hear from you and we don't because the work is so vastly different because we work with so many different disciplines there is no monolithic anything I don't want besides me and Kim who want to see everything we program it's just too much weird stuff but I think the thing that we do think about is a long-term development process and we start thinking about who is the community you're making this work for at the beginning of that process and when does it begin when they're starting their development with us which could be three years before we're going to produce it so we start thinking about who are you making this work for who do you want to talk to and how do we start a conversation with them now so when you do your first work in progress it would be good people to be a part of that and to give you feedback and then we're going to do another one in six months what organization might we ally ourselves with because that's going to help the piece down the road so we think about the strategic steps that we can take to build a community that's the right community for the show because our audience isn't one audience it's different audiences for every show to make so we think differently almost from scratch what we do is somewhat similar all of us go and we're doing things that are different and we're very interested in contextualizing work and we've really been trying to bring the audience early into the process I think that the obstacle that we come up against in terms of that is people's time and whether we're inviting people into a process to see something earlier or to meet the artists which always has a huge pay off because they're always very interested in the artists later on and it allows us to know how do you know there's pay off because they keep asking us about those artists there's another event that we're bringing the same artists in in terms of artistic community there's just this interest that we know create the kind of investment we want there always feels like a risk to us if we bring them in this early well then they would not show up to the show they would not show up to the next thing because the premium it seems at least in this city is time and because our audience is a little bit younger and we have children all these sorts of other things going on so that intent is there and I think that the thing that's interesting is the conversation with the artists is we really want to bring that same conversation about risk to our audience because all we do are like untested unknown things that seem risky and so we show up and we've always tried to contextualize them on paper and on our web the way that people can read about things but how can we contextualize it in terms of what communities want to make them work is the next question because I know that that people are interested in how we play but time our time to the community source we have time about audience Ben and then I just wanted to say that it's interesting to me to think about how risk is being find in this conversation and in the documents that we read which are terrific you know, many of us use the term aesthetic risk which I thought was great because most of the conversation before that seemed to be about essentially boss office risk that we would play in a box or whatever and obviously that's you know, boss office is an issue for all, for most theaters but I would imagine it's very different for a New George's kind of environment which has a completely different kind of audience than in T.C. when I say kind of audience a little bit demographically but I mean how they buy their tickets what their buying patterns are and then also I wonder about what the artists perceive as risk since royalty, I mean you know they're not here anymore expecting to make a really good royalty so much you know, what are the what are the aesthetic risks that pertain you know, to the writers and what are the risks for and I don't mean to involve you but you know, you made a good point about producing a play by a new writer with a star on Broadway so there are risks involved in that too from the company's point of view risks in terms of the perception of their work you know, whatever, I don't know so those are important kinds of risks too and I wonder whether you know, it's hard to look at the survey data and see how much of it plays in I have, and I'll talk about this later but I have some observations about what theaters tell me they think risk entails which I haven't heard anybody talk about later but like what? I don't tease us I think somebody who asks theaters to propose risky projects this is through the funding source, right half of the plays that people talk about are plays either by writer of the color or stories about people of color and to me I don't think that those plays I think that a lot of those plays themselves are risky in that they have large hats and that they lead to difficult ways I don't think those are really conventional plays that happen to be written by the writer of the color but to me there is an association the risk of the people who I have been talking with most of whom are in the establishing theater community where we run college and industry and theaters there is an association in the mind of those producers with both works and risks I just offer that Other thoughts Kearn? One thing that another sort of slippage in this notion of risk and I was struck by what Kearn said is the the one shottedness of risk constantly over and in some way but we talked about a state of risk so I mean I was really struck because you were talking about I mean, frankly I think before that's rising it's been a phenomenal job of kind of cross the borders Do you know what I mean? And then talking about here like New Georgia or Columbus or something you're everything is new everything you do is in some way new which is really different than as you were singling out Mr. Brent I was thinking you don't really need to sing a lot Mr. Brent is in the season with the black and you know all the various things and you know all these things you know but suddenly the baseline is different and so it isn't like will my audience accept Mr. Brent it's kind of like we've changed the frame and so I do think part of it is like being really precise I was talking about seasons of risk and cannons of risk which I'm hearing that a risky play here you know as you like it in the context of all the new play as opposed to next season you're going to do fall shakes here that would be a context you know I think risk also has to take into consideration the ways of storytelling for instance some of the many case history that we're practicing theatre in a very alternative fashion taking it from the streets into the parks but really breaking down that fourth wall risk I think certainly encompasses the ways music, poetry so many different mediums are intersecting and I think that sometimes it's almost hard to describe what is theatre a right definition and just I do have a little question I don't want to digress but I have a question about all of these alternative ways of theatre making taking it into community engagement and what does it do with our traditional definition of excellence or standards of training or standards of excellence or certainly the union aspects actors I believe and SDC directors in Koryak and of course playwrights for instance collective communal creation who then owns the property who owns and are these are these valid questions to ask because I find that very interesting so I don't know I open it up to people the issue of community and I'm just saying to Brad that one of the regional differences that at least surfaces sometimes in conversations and then that we have before is that I think this the New York theatre community sense of its community is a little different than a lot of other places and so I'm interested in this I mean a lot of the reading that you do on building audiences and opening up the process and building connections to the artists and where does the institution fit into the community have to do with ideas of community engagement and by and large we don't talk so much about that here in the city but I'd be curious to know people's thoughts about that and playwrights and how playwrights feel about the community and talking to reaching out and knowing who the audience is and are you part of the community and you've now gone out of the city I mean I'm just, it's something to think about you know there are a lot of arts organizations that are trying to kind of band together with other arts organizations to kind of create some sort of audience sharing a coalition to cross-pollinate between us and Joyce and the Institute of Art and the University of New York Arts now or the kitchen or you know capitalizing the diversity there and it doesn't work but I think it speaks to the fact also that the people who live in New York City don't really love the community in the same way either people who live in Chelsea can go up to the net go over to the east side or wherever they want to go so that the locality of theaters in some ways outside of New York where there are fewer options and where there's a different kind of mobility affects the way that audiences can do what they want to do we would love to do but we've got theaters on our side streets and it seems like a perfectly charming neighborhood of things to do we want to encourage people in the neighborhood to go down the street and look at our nice old church and tell them they have ox office but I do have ox office but I take this one we haven't figured that out and I don't but not we won't keep trying but we definitely have thought about it but I think it isn't just the organizations that are we're running out of the same automatic assumptions the similar assumptions in the community itself they're not looking to stay in Chelsea okay Shannon and then yeah I'm just going to go back to the original thought about risk and you know it's almost that it's not just a one time thing it's an equation and it really is I mean to me it's not so much sorry it's not so much about people assessing why they're going to the theater but what they're coming out of the theater there and it's almost more a you know it's that feeling that you get going through a show and it's so intangible in a lot of ways but I think that surveying people as to how the effect on them afterward is a big part of this that we haven't really touched on yet but I know that's part of the studying the surveys and the other thing just to talk about audiences and the risks we play is we were talking about plays by you know artists of color and then from the audience side the expectation of artists of color to see an audience that looks like that because we as marketers are constantly in pressure to create an audience that reflects the playwright and I don't necessarily know is that the most important thing or the important thing like the reach and the change in the effect on people where does that pressure come from to put you on the spot a little bit come from artistic to have this playwright and has to contain this many people that look like this so we're kind of thinking like is that the most important factor or yes of course we want diverse audiences and that is something that we work really hard to bring new people in and engage people in the theater and I mean honestly as far as the artist audience connection the biggest thing that we've done is design our idea was to use more parks as an idea to do watch me work and has people come in and sit around her while she's working and then you know do they talk to her so there's a period where they don't talk to her they do their own work and then they come in and put on their laptops or their iPads or whatever and then they have a conversation afterwards and then you know here she's been doing they're a year and a half now and now we're producing her show so there's this sort of she has delved into some of the people that are coming into this building why do they matter to me what is their interesting name how does it affect my work and as an artist that's very interesting to us as marketers too which is her sort of trying to get across that bridge and not a wall but she built that bridge it wasn't us saying you have to go sit yeah that's fascinating and do you guys talk to the artists to the playwrights about who the audience is the design the audience of course they have a large subscription audience so how much of it is actually designed but they design the rest of it or you know they're trying to around what the playwright actually wants to see in the room we do not are we listening to them John? we look very much at both tracks Carol the existing audience of subscription is a reality we have to live a long side the audience develop an opportunity so we can't necessarily be looking at how can we change this entirely the more opportunities exist parallel to what we already have to share or our profile I have a question about the whole need for New York art organizations to focus on community engagement I guess it's a very simplistic way of looking at it from a marketing perspective but as a reality there are hundreds of thousands of arts goers in New York City those don't necessarily exist in other markets at the same level but just for theater alone there are hundreds of thousands so the necessities need not necessarily have been there historically to get out and do that kind of work to get out and cultivate a demand for our work in the same way I've been talking for a large period of time so I don't really know but I just think that the challenge in front of us looks very different and starting to look here and I was picking up on Tisa's issue though there's also a kind of when you start reading stuff about what's really working or where there's vibrancy and what's creating new vibrate audiences and you look at cornerstone and you look at a lot of places where there's a lot of work that's engaging the community but the flip side of that which I hear in New York a lot is but what does that mean about this what does it mean about excellence what does it mean about training what does it mean about those things and I wonder what we communicate to our audiences about that I guess is part of what I'm thinking about because I'm really stuck with your idea what we think people expect I feel like there are these small slices of people that are the the right people for this project and it's about how you reach those right people it's strategic in New York I think it's like we have a lot of choices but there's also a lot of competition and we have to find a way to distinguish who we are for those people who are looking for what we have to offer so for us like adventurous is one of the things that we have on everything because if you like adventurous we're the place for you and so it's about how you are who are the right partners strategically for this particular project who you can ally yourselves with and so you borrow those names for that one project but the next project it's not going to be those same names so the community has to shift based on the project how do you figure that out or how do you think about that we do that with the artists I mean we sit and we brainstorm like what are shows recently that happened where artists you know who work that you think are related to your work who are theaters that you think are making similar minor projects and it's on all different levels and so sometimes the artists that they list are then artists that we say hey will you guys do a talk back with this artist about this work because then people who know that artist work they go oh I love that artist so I don't know this artist but I love that artist so I'm going to go check this thing out we do a version of that we do a show that we do short run shows in small theaters we talk to the playwright and directors to isolate people either people within the field who might be particularly interested in this project and other collaborators writers groups and others sometimes it's like oh you're the other parents on your kids baseball team whatever it might be and you try and find kind of like a social way leader for each of those and how do you come in do you charge them do you charge them no because it's interesting one of the things we heard in Washington right they're really cheap so it's okay but some people still yeah but it's really I think part of it because there isn't really there's so much overlap in our audience and our community and our artists impact that a little bit more would you you know in so many ways there's an nature factor a very high percentage of our audience is somehow in the field or was or will be and our audience is pretty young and we do all of our producing in like rapid succession and it's a bit of an event so we put a lot of thought into the social experience and going to the theater in like school and enjoying going to the theater together who will not put up with the plans to go to the theater because their friends are going to the theater or their members of their whatever little subgroup who isolated are going to the theater that night and we try to make sure that the sort of pre and post show experience is as well as the show itself so I mean for our audience and our community and our artists it's less about explaining the material either helping them adjust it afterwards or paving the way beforehand because a lot of that's not something that our audience has poised when we try especially self-attempting that I'm the first person to learn if I see that the talk back is happening but people say in the lobby forever early and you know it's built out all over the street so I mean for us it's similar also like our theater selection we try to make sure that we're in places where people can have that together that we create that environment for them we're not necessarily dictating with the terms of that conversation I'd really like to say something to this question Shannon about the playwrights of color expecting and what the audience should be comprised of I think playwrights of color would like to have audiences that can really appreciate the work and very often there are nuances and reasons that can speak perhaps then to an African-American playwright would welcome perhaps a reaction from an African-American audience I think that I found it interesting that you use the word pressure rather than let's say commitment because I think of what larger theaters who don't usually do playwrights of color want to produce such a playwright I think that you take and I find that that's a great opportunity exactly to not only try to expand your audience reach but also to give a different kind of perception to the kind of work so I just I would take it as a welcome opportunity to embrace new people I'm just a little burst to the idea of teaching people how to be theater lovers that has always like you know that like we'll show you how sort of mentality rather than an opportunity to engage people for the right reasons as opposed to trying to just that audience which is what we're sort of tasked with where we do want to rather take the opportunity road which is more of like is it appropriate, is it appropriate are they at one time deserve and we're done or is there some way for us to build that and have people come to other shows well one of the things and then one of the things that's interesting that we heard in Washington was this word pressure in the context of marketing directors and the marketing director from Washington said I sometimes feel like we are charged with solving all of the problems that the artistic staff and their artists haven't worked out for each other and so I think that may be where the language of pressure comes from is it's I so let's come back to that maybe at the end a little bit of conversation about what are we asking the folks that in the large institutions and the small institutions where the staff is not that deep but you know what's that pressure to say I'm imposing this and you go fix it Jeremy and then coming from smaller institutions I just like to say the staff is pretty long I met lots of people we are incredibly shallow hey I think more seriously partially out of self-interest I would expand the conversation about who's reflective in the audience beyond just ethnicity or race and add age to that mix and add socioeconomic status to that mix and the fact of the matter is I just went from a theater where the top ticket price was $30 and the theater where the average ticket price is $75 and the idea that we're going to cultivate an audience that doesn't have resources to bring their laptop or their iPad to sit in the middle of the day we're talking about a pretty rarefied set of people so I think that if you want to be seeing another set of people reflect in the audience I think it's far less about the marketing of the play far less than about the content of the play and I sat in on a round table of off-broadway theater producers in my first six months I don't know why I'm here and then we started talking about young audiences and I was like, I know why I'm here now and the difference that I said to that group and that I still believe is that a theater like Ars Nova a theater potentially like Club Thumb is working with not only young artists in Club Thumb's case but it's an incubator and they're developing new work and so you're going to see younger audiences both because the work is cheaper but also because the work reflects them and their lives and their stories now the best of that work also appeals to a broader audience and the same thing can be true for anybody telling a specific story whether it's set in a different country or whether it's people of a different ethnicity but as long as we are producing predominantly and I don't mean any one institution but as a group plays about wealthy white people on the upper west side or on the east side or any place that has a side you know, you are Brooklyn now yeah, sure, I could just call my name that's it those are the people we're going to see in our audiences and if we're going to charge $75, $85 a ticket even if we're going to charge $50 or $60 a ticket you're only going to see people who are willing to shell out $50 or $60 and I think that there is and who can and for whom that is nothing but yeah, for whom that is that is nothing because it's not a risk and I think that goes back to the thing that just going to the theater is a risk and you know, it's a risk that a lot of us get to take for free or discountedly through various means and that we sometimes are compelled to take because we know people or whatever but that we are used to taking and individualized you know, that is an ongoing habit for the people in this room and is it even for the most ardent theater girls at our theaters it is far less a habit than it is for us and there has to be not just one one play with an African-American cast to develop an African-American audience and that audience is going to come and they're going to see that play and then they're not going to come back and it's not because they have failed us it is because we have failed them and the same thing is true of audiences who are young and the same thing is true of audiences with fewer resources you know, if you do that one young person play in a season you'll get that one group of young people to come and see it but you are not going to develop a younger audience and the same thing I think is true across all of the audiences we talk about wanting to develop I guess as a playwright of color there's a lot of issues here I don't necessarily write a piece of work for a specific demographic I don't write an Asian play I write a play hopefully with a good story so in that sense I'm not expecting my audience to be Asian or to be anything other than somebody who will appreciate a good story so I think that's important to note and actually I'm a member of the emerging writers so I'm working with them at the same time I think the engagement between a playwright and a community can be much tighter I'm not so familiar with New York because I'm still new to this community but I lived in LA for 10 years and I feel that there's much more of an interaction between the playwright the creator and the community I work with a small theater over there and they faced a huge problem the theater went away and they were trying to start a completely new actor three years of inactivity and what they decided to do was to create a group of diverse artists and playwrights and then starting to reach out to various communities like during the Black History Month they will stage a black play they will do during Christmas maybe they'll do a more Latino play maybe it's issue-based decision playwright so in that sense they were able to create community involvement for the audience and in that sense they have been very successful there's very little crossover you have to build a community from start every time but that only happened for the first couple of years I was with them for four or five years they realized that they could bridge the different communities by having a short play festival where different communities can count and witness different ethnicities doing their work and then some of those people then came back and how long did that take would you say two years? two to three years and it was a short play festival that allowed that crossover that's amazing what was the name of that company and how many angels Todd, Mandy, Christian I hear that you know also in the context of the story there's already been a person in you know things that we've heard a lot now they're just scorching processing who never who go into a theater they want to know how to get their audience in and I keep going back to that statistic which I vaguely remember from Zani's paper which is the difference in perception between the leaders of the theater and the playwrights about how integrated they are I don't know if you all remember most of the theaters of their marketing directors were totally integrated with the efforts and most of the playwrights said that the marketing directors knew nothing about them and that's been so powerful because your example is that the direct relationship of the artist to his or her audience just sort of like a suitoring or anything about the lead and so I know that's what you guys are going at also in some way the bridge not at all but I just wanted to circle that perception of difference is a place to add pressure one of the things that was so interesting to me and we've touched on it a couple of times was that another point of difference in perception was the playwrights thinking that the ideal audience was younger and more diverse and the theater companies were saying they're older and they're more Caucasian which we were like isn't that exactly like your subscription audience and then why are you afraid of doing your work if the best audience looks exactly like your subscribers but where that perception difference was coming from was interesting it's important to note that the audience stuff and Alan's stuff which I should have said at the beginning was based in large part on surveys done at Steppenwolf in the south coast and we owe them a thank you for sharing letting him use all that stuff but it was places where really skews towards a certain kind of right and so I think that's when we do more this summer I think if you dig deeper you may get a different but anyway did you have something? Yeah I was thinking that whenever the stuff you said the thing that jumped out was that discrepancy about the interaction ones and I thought yeah with my experience I'm always like hey let me help with the audience getting let me be involved and Susan Laurie Cox has been a brilliant enough to bring a new idea but I've always sort of felt like hey can we brainstorm and actually that's not maybe people were interested in because I don't know I mean I've been mainly listening because I'm thinking well I want to learn something here because I don't know what it takes to fill a theater especially a big theater but but I usually end up just being a matter of oh great you were able to do an interview I can't say and I told you but don't be on that but I also put that on you as well that I'm not maybe I need to bring children to myself and bring them ideas but I do want to be a part of that process because I have not quite as much at stake maybe in a practical sense later there's a lot of jobs on the line but on the other hand my life is on the line you have a lot of stake you have a lot of stake so I'm not interested when you write the title what will sell tickets other than they're flying to get one across but I can't say about that I think that if I wasn't in the theater I don't think I would go to the theater because there are so many barriers and what are some of those do you think this is the thing you can take this as a very nice point of view because I've never had to try to keep people's jobs by selling tickets but I wish when I have my daydreams about starting a theater I wish that it was as simple as going to the movies you say to somebody hey, let's go see a movie it's not necessarily about there's a movie you want to see it's an experience you feel like having on the moment and you walk over to the box office and you buy a ticket and you go in and the ticket isn't expensive and you don't have to try to change your month on the day and that's what it feels like because it's hard because it's taking water it's like it's what you do but what's the difference if you take out the ticket but some of the barriers does it change anything John? well now that I'm just saying you can do that in New York we can isn't the same theater but is it go ahead Jimmy it takes me all the way back to when the survey said that people say they don't care that actors are in the show the reason that we think about movies as a form of entertainment I mean there are many many reasons but that can be spur of the moment we are exposed to movies all the time and part of that is because they're on TV and part of that is because they spend more than half of the budget on movies so if there is a level of common bees in our automatically going to a movie as an idea and then specific movies like I don't know if anybody or anybody has seen 12 Years of Slave and I'm not actually analyzing the movie but it is a difficult movie and more people will have seen 12 Years of Slave than what's it all about which is I will tell you though I think beautiful and so there is it's about like honesty in the conversation that's because there was you know we spent as we always do which is an insane business model we spent somewhere south of 100,000 dollars launching a new idea in the world whereas 12 Years of Slave not really an independent movie but would have spent at least 10 times as much if not 20 or 30 or 40 times as much so many it's going to be a lot easier to think about the idea of going to see a movie than it is to go see a play even in London even in cultures where theater going is more regular and you know putting stars in something isn't necessarily about convincing you or the audience and your family at a survey that they are that's their reason for buying a ticket that oh Denzel Washington isn't that so I'm going to buy a ticket obviously that is a factor but another factor is the press covers it you know they get on TV the name of that play is put in front of audiences 50 or 60 times more because Mary Louise Parker isn't it because you know an equally talented actor who doesn't have a program isn't it and that again ease of recall needs people to buy a ticket with less resistance I can't keep talking about the question of barriers so you don't do whatever our program is we're not doing a great job of making an experience for somebody who actually might be already predisposed to seek the theater as an opportunity we're not doing a great job of presenting them with a hospitable experience from the moment that they have that thought which goes to articulation systems our art sites are behind the times and ugly and hard to navigate and I don't believe where the theater is that's my point we're not going to show it our art materials contain too much and they contain too much about too many things you know when you get to the theater it's a small whole body and there's no way to put your coat the food you bought is more than it would anywhere else you know we're not thinking about talking about barriers but I think we're not also in the conversation about risk and the conversation of perpetuating audiences to an experience we're not thinking about the totality of the experience I think you're absolutely right the content has to drive it you're not going to generate an excited young audience but producing a play by young people were buying and created by them every year sometimes but we're also not going to you're not going to say anything if they don't have a pleasurable experience of a military think of the idea of a military I don't know I feel like we always have about 10,000 things to say but I just wanted to go back to one thing that I wasn't thinking this way until we used this thing about the movies but the liveness of it in some ways I never thought of it that way because of liability because we can't do a one o'clock three o'clock, six o'clock and make it convenient to whatever you can go that's just me but I've always thought it's our greatest virtue I think that's why we do it but just to go back I just wanted to loop to this conversation about bridges versus walls it's really fascinating I think I am the only person who's fascinated but because I spent 20 years in New York most of my time in the public theater I go to this theater in Red Bank of Jersey 40 miles outside of New York and I'm thinking my New Yorkness with me and some of that is great and many of that is really problematic and then I'm trying to figure out how to make pay out of what's problematic a lot of it has to do with this bridge versus wall I never understood we didn't talk about this in the public theater Susan Laurie's idea is a new one and actually she inspired me down in Red Bank I feel like the thing that I'm trying to figure out how to do is I got there and I said this thing I'll never probably get big celebrities to come and be at my little theater in Jersey so I'm going to make celebrities out of people and this is what this has been my big project and it can happen in a place like that it couldn't happen in New York to have a playwright come to a gala is a very different thing in Red Bank than what it was in New York it means so much different they come there from residence we're doing this thing with Maria which we just started last year residents get artists down there they came down last year we live by the beach they came down which is great for the artists but what I'm going to insist that we do next year is that they now are going to take a role in being part of our community and connect up with our audiences and for these audiences to start to see that I'm going to make somebody out of a human being that I'm going to invest in and I'm going to celebrities and therefore I'm going to start to want to come and be part of what we're doing it's it's something we're trying to do all throughout the year with all the things that we're doing it's interesting because until like I never thought of bridges and walls I thought we were all bridging that's what we're all doing but now I see because I can feel like we are actually making bridges that's possible and productive and leads to it's a little bit leading to some people coming so I don't want to shut down back and forth it's hard because everybody wants to talk but anyway I was going to say something and also what I was going to say before Maria spoke obviously we're very similar but in terms of this idea of community and that it's very hard to find a community in New York City in terms of geographical community because we all flow between them so much I think that our portrayality has been that the theater is a community we're building and of course our community has always primarily been made up of artists and friends of artists who come to see our shows the challenge becomes how do you bring more people into the community than what I was saying before about them meeting the star artists or who we consider to be star artists and city stars and doing something kind of very similar on how do you bring more of those people so that they will follow us to and and do those things and that kind of you know for a long, long time I thought that because I was always very jealous of the idea that other people have these communities that felt geographical and people needed something but I think that what we're thinking I mean I always look to this food thing and everyone's obsessed with food because they want to be together and they want to be something that's pleasurable so Christian is there and so you can have this fun and you can have this thing centered around the thing that we love and put forth why we love this thing that we love because there's a different sense of community on that because they're making a community for me and I'm in this vast city trying to find a community that speaks to me Yeah I mean I was thinking about this barrier issue too about access and Moscow every night the theaters are full and I realized what happens every night is right before the curtain there are all the job students and the theater students outside waiting to get in because if there are entities they get them for free like every seat is full because there are all these kids who are desperate to come into these theaters and so I was like that's brilliant so we're doing it now but we have to work really hard to spread the word you can see tickets, you can see shows for free any night of year if you have student ID but we're trying to spread that word and it's starting to happen now that every night we do have students coming but it's been very slow to catch on because it's not part of our culture so this thing about it being in our is that oh it's worth the risk to go see if I can get in and so now it's starting to happen but it's interesting that it's we've been doing it for like almost three years now it's only now that every night we're starting to get people I have no idea how many seats are you filling now three years in like you know last week we had something like 30 students come for one particular thing but usually it's like just 5 or 10 but that's cool 5 or 10 students come is the biggest reason here is our base of 150 is our base here so it's 10% more but that's a huge but it's overcoming those that feeling that can we get in, can we afford it do you have access to it but getting people that accept that they do well I would suggest that I mean and I'm curious what some of the marketing folks are anyway I think part of what stands in the way of it's like a film is that we do part of our definition of success is that it's hard to get it to right I mean we don't we don't want to and I think that's more true here than some other places right we make it if there's access then it must not be good right but we define successful as really hard to get into and so then folks think well I can't do that right and we usually don't have to seat stone and further to that you know when you look at the cultural phenomena that are taking off there are things that are inherently shareable and we don't encourage in most of the you perhaps just call learning traditional you believe in sharing these things with your social channels your digital media media not only you don't encourage it and so we're missing an opportunity there we're not only we're hoping for scarcity of tickets we're also making the experience more and more rare more and more scarce by not allowing people to broadcast I'm not saying we should be up in every actor's face flashing camera-wise but at the same time the ability to even photograph a set before a show is completely off-limits and that's the in the 21st century well this is not necessarily a longer topic but it's just free kills me free just kills me I feel like you would never think let's go for free to the movies you know we don't do that so why we have to take on the sense that free on us is okay it makes me nuts and it just like I know I'm middle-class and I can think about paying for things but most of my audience is at least middle-class currently and yet I have a big struggle with people about trying to get them to pay something like a full price you know this is probably the thing marketing people really should really do but also even like we do lots of events at the theater and try to get invite people to come to other things and try to do this engagement and I was walking behind heading towards the room where we were going to do this other thing and they said in all seriousness should we go I'm not sure I hear they have free cheese and so they went early bird special free cheese notice the train of cooking that was so I think what Tom said about free it is very profound and I think that it's interesting to talk about giving students to play students in for free the question is does that encourage theater goingers that just seems to be a good conversation but I'm also interested in is the experiment that the larger theaters are doing and I think that was going on the representative here of the $25 ticket for the new play I know that I'm saying the larger theaters which normally charge $117 or whatever are doing $25 tickets just for the new play either way down in the basement or in the case of Lincoln Center way up on the roof but nonetheless I have done that I love spending $25 I love spending $25 and if I didn't have to stand on the line which I've done for the last $20 not that too that's my home I still don't know I wonder and again I'm not at the large theaters I know the smaller theaters but I wonder what that experiment what has been learned from the experiment of doing the new plays sometimes the mystery of these plays in the smaller space with the lower theater I know I can say it sounds like an incredibly nerdy marketing talk nerdy marketing talk is part of this conversation the price is not overwhelming it's an anti-immigrant if somebody wants to go see a show the price might determine whether they can afford to go or not but having a free ticket or a cheap ticket doesn't make someone want to go to the shop and secondarily I would say the audience for our shows in the underground for example does not currently look tremendous and different from our audience not like by offering a lower price ticket you're automatically changing the demographic of our audience the outreach that we have the opportunity to do when we have that data crisis looks very different doesn't necessarily mean that the people who are attracted to that show looks tremendous we just have to strategically we have to look at our strategy and how we communicate the presence of that show very different doesn't just happen to the price so a nice kind of question for anybody who has a small theater really how do you market that in there for the small spaces relative to the large spaces we actually try very hard not to market in all of our shows really in a different way than we market the bigger shows sometimes it's much more we do the same amount of effort I just want to emphasize it's not that I don't want to diversify I just don't want to have to sort of dress that house in a way that's not going to be authentic and for us part of being a public theater and what we really start to do is we hold back tickets for every show including the rush tickets we hold back tickets knowing that the show is sold out and sell them for $20 a day so we specifically try hard to always let someone have access some way somehow to all of our shows that's a driving factor I want to share something that we heard in Washington from a playwright to speak to your point John that one of the most effective things for her interaction with a theater where she had worked was that they actually gave her X number of tickets to give away to people she selected it's kind of another it wasn't woolly where they curate ahead of time but the people she selected so she had like 10 or 15 comps then those people because those people then went out and said this was really cool and they really liked it and their friends bought tickets so I'm just curious whether other people have experimented with targeted which is different than what you're talking about which is devaluing the equation but actually we've actually done it we have this big project that we call project through the takeover and we identified towns that didn't have the right representation of the theater we thought we made a big party on that and we tried to keep selling them and are they coming back do you think? yeah and we actually do it with our students too they go and are in the restaurants in the town and we give them these vouchers to go and if you'd be a friend at Friday please get her to come and see your show oh that's interesting we've done it it's a little harder after how we sort of get to follow through to happen and we'll talk with you and make sure those people spread the word that they like your play well you're taking a risk that they like it yeah that's right so normalizing it is you know but we supply those well I think this play was she was only going to invite people who were going to like it because she knew well she thought it was a pretty good guess you're right and obviously they were going to tell her that they did but there's a certain amount which is different than just papering Christian? it's really a question there's some underlying assumptions that we're making on the theater about audience behavior of spending and how we value the work in order to get people there that ignore the fact that the same people who think we want who say that we want whether or not they are wealthy or middle class spend the same amount when we go over other forms of entertainment easily whether it be going to movies more often whether it be going to sporting events whether it be going to live music the same people who will mock at $50 a hit or $75 to get to the play don't mock at any of those other things and probably cumulatively spend way more than we think they can spend or with our willingness to spend we tend to feel a little bit embarrassed on what we're doing I wonder if we're not devaluing our own work ourselves somehow in trying to strategize how to get people to spend money on it there's some fundamental questions about our own relationships to the work I'm not actually sure about that Jeremy and Mandy both seem to have a I've been thinking about the intersection of just that and where we started the conversation and it's that you know, artistically aesthetically, right, everyone here I think probably believes he, she, they, their institution is taking enormous risks I mean that's good at their job in New York whatever defines what your theater does if you're at the top of your game and you're doing it well you are taking risks at least some of us have become really expert in covering up just how risky those risks are in order to behave like the film industry and sell a lot of tickets and entice people to come see the extraordinary risks and I guess part of what I've been thinking about is like are we meant to be lifting the veil on our thinking or should we be doing an even better job you know, with the 12 years of slaying the story is hilarious, why? because 12 years of slaying got made when Brad Pitt signed out to be our, the executive producer and again, I know, I met with the writer I know that that's how that film got written and in Germany where they launched the film they launched it with big billboards with Brad Pitt's face it doesn't matter, it's called a record and a huge controversy broke out because how can you sell that film on Brad Pitt that's crazy and they had to revamp everything and then behave more I don't know, responsive but they had to sort of expose their wrists a little bit more and stop, you know and let it show a little bit more that they made this incredibly difficult very, very dark piece of extraordinary cinema and hope people come because, you know, it's not so important to Brad Pitt's international aid and so it really is actually this it feels like we've been having a conversation about that apparent contradiction, right we take enormous risk pay attention to us, but we take risks, you know actually, behave when you go to the box office like, we're not taking any risk at all and I think that that's a kind of weird contradiction that, you know, maybe you need to art industry I don't even film executive and other theaters actually writes what you just said I mean, I don't know I don't know and New York is different part of what they're selling we're doing this crazy ambitious thing with these new artists and that's why you should come and buy a ticket but there's a different habituation which is if you wanted to do something not crazy for some reason you would be outside the comfort zone and this is used to adhere I think some of this is a conversation about comfort zones and it's interesting because this has come up part of what you guys are talking about I think is how do we how better do we communicate to the audience what this experience is and that's what the veil is about the thing that kills me year after year I think we tend to do an American job of communicating what we do and I think we can always do better I think we can do better to communicate communicating our mission to the audience thereby managing expectations to some extent but I think that if you purchase a subscription or even a flash past or even if you purchase a membership a young membership which is $20 which is what you're getting into and Mr. Burns example that Carol gave is a very good one because yes there were subscribers who were God I loved it but you would read those comments and you'd see those blockout rates and it was astonishing sad because no matter how much you tell people that you're about risk discovery, reward, whatever the numbers are that you want to use there are still going to be people out there who I don't like what you do I don't like this show this show and this show therefore I'm not coming back in other words I bought into your mission but you still let me down well what is our mission if not to challenge you to redefine your expectations of risk and new and it's just it's confounding and I think Carol and I said you know year after year we think how do we manage that expectation with that do you engage Tim in that conversation absolutely Jeremy and Todd I can declare this is a pretty good job managing that expectation actually I I'm going to say something because I was called on Todd's ready to talk to what maybe and Christian was sort of talking about yes I think you know I knew about the Brad Pitt thing because it was in the movie that in Steve McQueen's what you call profile in the back of the movie they talked about how nobody wanted to make a movie until Brad Pitt decided he wanted to make a movie and I think it's absolutely right that we hide our decision making processes and we hide our artists and you know God forbid an actor is asked to do a second press avail like in a movie that would just be a joke I mean I think there's a certain amount of pulling back the veil on everything that we do and providing more information that is would bring us more in line with other forms of entertainment and the other thing I would say is sure somebody is willing to drop 85 bucks to go see or 150 bucks to go see Beyonce but they curr Beyonce's the whole album they've heard everything that she's going to do they've seen the YouTube videos there's a lot more access to what that thing is than you know that's currently providing for love and information where how would you if you didn't work in industry how would you see the script how would you know would you know anything about the playwright who's unwilling to talk to the press there's just like a huge amount of difference between the access that sports I'm now stealing from that camera but that you know sports or film or television or any music or any other media is putting out there about what it is that they're offering so yeah they might be willing to spend a little bit more they might be willing to invest on slightly less information than we perceive we're giving them but actually they're getting a whole host of information and a whole host of exposure and their risk is being hedged by having experience down to it yes you're right but they we tend to act we tend to think that they maybe I should speak to myself but they don't want to spend that money or that they don't really have it or that parting with cash for entertaining purposes or cultural enrichment purposes is somehow inherent in this than most people actually perceive it to be especially in New York people spend tons of money on that we don't live in our apartments Jeremy can I follow up with one thing and it's putting you on the spot a little bit but when Carol Churchill doesn't want to do interviews do you go to an actor, a director I mean is that do you think about that? I mean I think we went to every actor in fact we went to the director for sure we pitch every paper in every outlet 6 or 7 different ideas please please please cover the show and obviously much more than your professionals of life they're down we have to generate the same in this instance more recognition than I think we've done for a piece that is the size that this piece is in addition to being Jesse Green people are commenting on chat boards that this is like a weird play it's like you're coming to your theater workshop for a Carol Churchill play what did you think you were getting but on top of the content it's huge and a huge financial risk on top of whatever aesthetic risk Carol is taking in making that show and because she's Carol Churchill she can say to a theater and does to every theater it's not just us I'm not willing to do you can do my play but I'm not willing to do press events it's in my country well and that speaks to one of the issues that comes up there's some artists who want to be totally engaged with them and there are other artists who want nothing to do with it and how do we have room for both of their sides Todd maybe we can respond to that because I don't know gentlemen I'm seeing this is so fascinating I keep getting buffeted by agreeing with everybody I'm just saying maybe it's a stupid or simplistic question but I keep on writing playwrights just oh if playwrights just want to have the theaters and playwrights just want which is a question that isn't really about risk per se and that's what was so weird because there was so much sort of agreement there was a strange amount of agreement in these studies until you got to those demographic questions in the 90s and I think you know it's that thing that theaters know that maybe the least risk of risk people argue over subscribers parents are not writing playwrights those are enough but I wonder if those perceptions of demographics aren't wishes but I want a more diverse I want a lower economic strata audience you know I think my play even my plays on fields that's what I want to see in the theater of my generation of my own and so we want it too don't we want it too well I didn't know John I mean yes but you want the audience also that will support your theater I have the one I have the one though I'm happy about it it's not younger and more diverse audiences I'm not that but I wonder if it's I wonder if it's the same kind of want you know you want to diversity do you want to keep the good you know I'm imagining I keep thinking about this Douglas turn award one in sufficient players you know it's kind of what Tisa was talking about to nuance and understanding you know and I think playwrights tend to actually you know if they're still in the field they tend to be a little younger than the theaters that are still in the field the same like the time you know and I think they imagine maybe I don't know I'd love to you guys to walk away from that imagine talking to different people you want those other people too this is where it's like what Liz saying you know maybe I don't have as much at stake but you absolutely have everything at stake I want an audience with everything in me but I don't ever die like that so can we do something very unscientific but actually ask the playwrights in the room to respond to that I think it really depends on the theater company that you're working with because I do know you're not going into a theater company with no idea of who their audience is and you you kind of know this theater company this company this is the audience and so you know I'm for me if I were to be working with a theater company I wouldn't go into a theater company and say oh no I'm going to work with you but please change your audience I'm not going to do that so I'm not sure if that answers the question maybe what I should do and what I have been doing is to select the theater companies because I do appreciate that what it is Liz? a couple of thoughts a couple of years ago I had a meeting with San Francisco a magic theater meeting that was at the Jewish Cultural Center and so about half the audience were theater people and friends of mine and a full half of the audience were elderly Jewish ladies and in the discussion afterwards they were spectacular I mean they I asked him at the open ended I was curious to see what was coming through it was a historical play but it was reflecting and they jumped right in on politics and it got so heated that one woman swummed out she made a dramatic exit slam the door and everybody was shouting really I was with my elderly mother to see Toche and Barbie in Cambridge by Christine Evans and she loved it and Christine Evans was very pleased with her I mean it doesn't sound about me at the same time I you played by the group of Brab students that you met you just got defined to start a new play I was the first to see her here so excited with the youngs the youngs are digging my work you know I don't know I mean it's not of course you don't want to be all elderly wealthy people elderly wealthy white people I love them too but you just don't want to be only them and not only because you feel like you're really connecting on all possible levels you want to have a broader conversation but also you know for a sense of am I engaged in something that matters to the culture we understand that we're in a niche area of the culture we're not part of the main stream necessarily right I mean so that's cool we're cool with that nevertheless within those terms that there's a you know an exciting bigger conversation not just a cultural marker a certain classic person that goes to the deer because that's the kind of thing that they do not because they're really excited about those lines from a marketer's perspective what artists and probably are looking at is attracting a sensibility to the profile of everyone a type of person who will benefit from doing that story if it doesn't fall along with demographic lines people get often very frustrated when we know that this is a significant amount of reach going on but it's focused on that attitude or that idea not so much the profile of the people to see or look at and I think we're interested in crossroads now as marketers are waiting for centuries in the market to target people based on what they do and see and believe in as opposed to sending your money off to New York Times and just pray it it's a very different mentality because the granularity of which we can target people perhaps creepy some but tremendously advantageous when you're trying to get at a very specific idea so I think it's a really exciting time to be able to really get at the heart of what we're trying to do there's only a lot of demographics because that's what's worked in the past to sort of find that nature find that cross-section of the market but now we're going to have to rely on that term I think from an artist and an artist advocate perspective I think about this a lot in terms of aspiration in terms of artist aspiration and the idea of moving up and I think that when we had our theater it was very much about when we launched we realized that actually we had the right audience for a lot of this place because we saw them go forward to other places where they were received differently potentially even the same play when they were with our audience when they were with other audiences and you heard that from the writers the writers are from sitting in a house and so is there something I mean certainly there's a way that we talk differently about the work in terms of where it wants to go where the artist wants to go and I think in terms of the choices the artist is making the in itself-ness of working with us is different from this aspirational thing and to me that becomes a great divide when we're sending artists out into the world and also in terms of who is interested in the kind of work we do or what sort of the thing in itself one of the things oh, Tisa, sorry well I wanted to clarify a little bit I'm sort of hearing that throughout the afternoon that there's a perception that audiences of color might need special accommodations or price discounts and I think that all of the theaters here are some really large ones and I see everything at MTC because of phototonics and I don't think Snowgeese is really that risk-taking however I could see why you might think so going back to my point is for instance Pan-Asian our audiences are really quite diverse I think Asian Americans are also fairly affluent so our discounts are best for the students in school mathematics at $12 or something and of course immigrant groups are something else I'm very, very sure of all of that but I was just sort of hearing all of this I would think that all of the theaters here, no matter what your mission or your theme and your content is, you want to have as many diverse or different audiences audiences that would really appreciate your work that understands the work so I think that in a way the large theaters are getting kind of a bad wrap also because there's a lot of thinking of who you you know reach and focus on and I don't think that really is so so this thing about the risk is really sort of within the theaters own definition and did I make a point about diverse audiences I don't think it's necessary that we need to give them any particular special accommodations it is true on Broadway that some of the black plays with black themes acting on these things they do tend to attract a lot of the ladies church ladies that keep coming on bus loads but I think that's also kind of a different template of what we're talking about but I would like to think that all the theaters here are very interested in just embracing people who are interested in their work I think TC you just said something really important and it's the same thing that Mandy is saying which is that when we think about risk for every organization risk has a different connotation and one of the things that I wonder whether it's helpful to share with audiences as you're talking about your plays is what's risky for you and that's the thing and one of the things we haven't talked about that's in Alan's piece that we both responded to is this idea that Howard Shawlitz at Willy talks a lot about that if my audience is here and I want to get them there proximate learning means you go one step at a time and I thought that was also interesting I don't know whether that resonated with anyone else but this idea that you shape them and move them along is there a continuum along which you can move people and what happens when the beginning point of that continuum is I'm not in the theater at all and how do you even get them into that continuum that then keeps them moving farther and farther I'm really intrigued by this thing that you're speaking about going from the risk aversion over to co-creation that there's this spectrum that people are traveling along because I think about it as a New York problem that so many of the people who come to the work are makers of theater or in the industry in some way I think of that as our problem as you do this deeper study of audiences how many people did theater when they were in college or they did it in high school so that they have an affinity they feel an affinity to theater differently and that's the reason that they come I'm really curious about that it also holds to I worked with the NEA they did a series of comedians I'm sure you guys have looked at the study about how art works and how it integrates into their lives and there's a similar thing in the chart that we came to that was about how many people are they make art and that's the way that they as a hobbyist or as a professional which circles back to the pro-am thing also about how much in the theater do we encourage that so I'm really interested to see how that holds to our industry is that truly how we fit into it one of the things that was interesting to me in Alan's piece was that at least in the theaters where he was looking at the South Coast and Steppenwolf was that they had a number of people who were engaged as theater makers themselves they were acting in community theaters or maybe they were theater students they were studying that or something at some point along the way that did not make them more predisposed to risk what made them predisposed to risk taking was if you were intellectually engaged in some way so that was not what I would have guessed if you were making theater then you but you know maybe it makes sense if you're in your community theater and you do lots of you know standard musicals that's your taste probably so maybe you're not so into like taking the risk but if you're intellectually engaged and you're reading everything and you're blogging then you are so just like who's already what that proximate learning thing who's further out along the way Christian and Anir I'm really interested in in terms of the proximate learning you get people on continuum the implications for that potentially particularly for institutions that have a large infrastructure in the short term at the very least if you are actually trying if your role is actually to transform your audience if you're not in the act of if your audience isn't stable if you just have decided or you need to change your audience then the implication of that trajectory is potentially short term restructuring or shrinking of the organization and the amount of work that it might be able to do not necessarily for that potentially for a long term gain but it seems to me that if you want to think about it that way is that you might have to look at it and say well actually this is going to be a financial risk and it might not pay off in a way but actually if you're going to do the thing we're leading the content and you're looking towards the audience and walking six years or four years, whatever it is you may have to look at what the implications for the institution might be and whether some people are actually going to have to do it or you change your behavior because John in a way what you are doing with the playwrights is a kind of proximate learning and you're saying to your audience I'm going to introduce you to this next piece of the equation it's not just I hadn't thought of that before or maybe there's an intentionality of at least articulate where you want to go then you don't have to shrink it you don't have to shrink it you have to change a modus operandi for our potential structural changes in these organizations which are not especially the large ones they're not necessarily simple you may have to make in order to accommodate those goals which are actually saying what do you want Eric you had a thought one thing that makes me sad is that I feel like I'm even curious to see the other large computers to respond to this is that I feel like a lot of times we spend a lot of our time catering to the younger set by setting low prices that are moving a barrier of price for them as well as catering to the older set that has the time to go to the theater so what you're doing is you're focusing a lot of times on two ends of the spectrum while you're missing what's in the middle but that's not the theater's fault all the time I feel like as Tom and I were just talking a lot of times once people hit 30 they do kind of their life they go into this transitional phase in their life I mean I'm in my 40s I have a small child in my life I don't go to the theater nearly as much as I used to and that's really the case for a lot of my theaters but I know that once my child grows up I will probably start going to the theater again and you know, Carol and I have talked a lot about packages and how do you really feel like packages so that you can accommodate the people who do have the time to go to the theater all the time and the people who may just want to pick and choose so as a result Eric's arise and says wound up with several different kinds of packages to accommodate those people I think that's right because those people are the number one the largest audience group on Broadway is 42 to 52 but we're not they're not being asked probably because they're only being asked to go once or twice maybe I mean they don't slice and dice it that way I just think that's what I think we need to figure out how to I don't have an answer to this and I'm just saying that I think there is a drop off period but then they come back and it's bridging that gap and creating that continuum so as you're saying I think there's a drop off period but then they come back and create that continuum so as you're saying so that once we start them out at one point because I really think we get those people to theater they will be less risk averse than the people early down the line I mean one of the things we're hearing that is an unintended or an unanticipated thing as we're having these conversations is it's the real difference in possibilities between I'm maintaining a base of subscribers and my organization is constantly it's all single ticket buyers because it's all different I think something that will be a focus of some of the questions this summer is where's the drill down or sweet spot of how do we accommodate both and how do some of the places that have relied on that person who comes five times during the year how do we switch that to be able to accomplish more with and then what's the role of the artists or the playwrights or the directors because in fact we can't afford to aggressively advertise each and every one so if you have to get repeat people this isn't a form of thought but how can the artists help get those people in and do you create a fan is there a way if you work with someone one year and then you work with them three years later make sure that those people are coming back they're with you and then they're with you and then how do you share that is a thought and the other thing that we've heard a lot about that I'm curious about is time when you first that's why I asked three years out some of the most successful kind of intersections I think between artists and the places they work are when there's a lot of time as opposed to the everybody arrives two days before the first rehearsal and then you're just jumping in and it's oh yeah I should meet the oh yeah you should write and there's no there isn't so I'm curious some of you Christian when do you guys first talk to a playwright if you're talking about the work no about audiences if you do or marketing or when do you pull the marketing out of the library but sometimes that's a year advance and sometimes it's a year after we have a couple of projects that we are committed to for next year that aren't going to happen until late next year and so all of those conversations are actually happening now there are also examples of things that get slanted into a season and there's two months to turn around and all of a sudden there's they can do it just get up there if there's not a third of the system right right Tom? I've only heard about that last minute last minute but I but I went on to think that the mentality shifting the time of which we engage an artist or playwright or director to start talking about marketing is typically done on average and that's what we're doing whereas now we're starting to think about a much longer lead to a better time and so the minute that there are units that we've announced them we're engaging our panelists maybe about the content of the show we're having a long-term conversation as opposed to just thinking about it so we're definitely shifting we're doing this thing that we've totally stolen that a lot of people are doing about this audience and trying to I mean many of us have talked about this about this notion of finding a version of marketing and artistic there's only this other force that is being called party engagement and we've done that so we've tried to systematize around every single play that we do these events we call them side-tier which means set of 10 to 12 events that involve the artists and others in some way there are these other events leading up to and around and when did they start? no but I mean as soon as we can we try to have as many different ideas to get at different sectors of possible people so we'll be doing stuff at the beach this summer throughout the year next year because that's a big part of the beach I think the beach is a big part of a lot of this it's a big idea a big idea one of the things that was fascinating to me in Zani's piece was in something like 80 plus percent of the playwrights that she surveyed and they were some of the more pretty well known playwrights too were saying that they wanted to have a direct access to the audience a direct exchange with the audience I don't know that they're all wanting to be in the talk back session where the audience tells you how to rewrite the second act maybe, maybe not but the 80 percent plus wanted to be in a direct relationship with the audience in some ways was to me really surprising and then how is that made possible and what does that mean because many of them say they don't like it right, so then but no, no but I wonder what that means to an individual playwrights, I'm sure it means a lot of the 80 percent has a lot of statistics what are they talking about what are they talking about I mean originally they were talking about the language I think it was actually we can look at it but I'm pretty sure it was really like this way in real life with the audience I can understand New Yorkers not understanding maybe the same thing I'm going to call Shannon that too because she is in Florida but it's fascinating because and I think it's fascinating because and there are things to do in other places maybe we could do in New York but I mean the Duke is actually going to talk about something that we're doing but the Duke is funding this thing for us wonderfully, fantastically now I met this playwright who I didn't know she kept doing some readings in this festival that we do, we'll call Tanya Sriracha who is this amazing writer and I just got to this place where I just kept loving her plays and we do them in front of our audience and I could see it was going to be a hard sell and so I sat down with her and I said I want to do your work what can we do? and we come up with this idea that she would come and be in residence in Redback and because she does these things with women's groups which she's done in Chicago for a long time we figured she'd do that in Redback and she'd meet women's groups and children's groups and she'd go into workshops and writing workshops and spend the course of a whole year getting to know our audience but I feel like then I refuse to speak to our audience but it also does all kinds of community engagement stuff for us it gets a few audiences but she really wants to do that she's excited and thrilled to do that and they want to, I don't know, writers I'm noticing people who want to be there these writers want to come to this place probably we give them nice apartments and we feed them and they go to the beach apparently by the beach she goes to the beach you should let people know where you were so I was the effective director of the Orlando Shakespeare Theater I was the director of the theater since I was two years and there it is a different thing it's not I don't know how to describe it exactly except to say that someone was talking earlier about making playwrights and celebrities we at our theater interacted with audiences in such a way that everyone was a celebrity who was involved in the show like our cops master and our costumers our favorite thing to do is give people access to the costume shop and to tell people it took 6,000 man hours to mount the show and give people like really cool down the veil of like here's what we're doing back in the stupid corner don't look behind the curtain we're doing this production but it was more about that sense of interaction which wasn't so much like a curated discussion or we're going to educate somehow it was more about like hey we need these people you guys really like each other they build funky props things you love to take the funky props things it was more about wine and cookies and conversation but not really a purpose driven we're here to educate you it was more about this is who the people are not just the playwrights not just the producers not just the people on stage who are very very important and obviously get a much greater reaction but also who are the people in the building and in the community who is that costume designer that's working with four different theaters at the same time and that is really interesting people who love theaters who love the craft of the art those are the people that will never get a chance to meet unless we put them in a room together with the audience and that seems to be really effective for us in creating loyal people who understood and want to come back not only to our theater but to other theaters in the community okay Todd yeah it's crazy here I mean I feel like I have a lot of stuff I'm always surprised that people who are not in this world just automatically know and it seems special and it seems magical and even in New York I'm sure oh they don't know and the other thing that this is I guess about your point about time you know I just started to think it's such a theater it's an adoration we've never had a moment in history like the last 30 or 40 years in the American theater where I writes, don't write a play in the audience theater has almost been made locally and so it's like how you get back to that when the writer usually doesn't even know what it's going to be produced or they do or the theater that's going to be produced so I do think all of us, as you're talking about they're almost foundation well and if you really act in it it's not no I love her plays and if we do them in it I could see the audience just not quite and I was like I'd get it but they were quite and I thought if she got to be people more a little bit more I know she could write for them I love to hear them talk about this too it's like you've never seen common plays in New York years of humor plays years of Puerto Rican plays increasingly Dominican but in LA you don't see Puerto Rican plays it's all a bit wrong so why is that do you think well I think for Intar when I first took over four years ago and they said to me so are you going to make it a human theater? and I'm not being human that was totally odd but I want to do that and B what do you mean and I think Intar like every theater and it has nothing to do with our cultural background it's sort of a sieve of whatever the political story is of the day we respond to our world around us and so Intar having a focused mission I think was specific in the sense that it's Latino based went with the immigration so when it begins in Intar it was the American and the Cuban and then the Dominican in the late 80s 90s very Dominican based so the Mexican population coming in and then the Orient and the Colombians it just changed that is why Chicano is a way the Mexicans went that way and they began the Chicano from here and that's how or in Chicago next week we'll see some I it's going back I have the dubious luxury of not actually having an audience which is kind of nice so I get to run by the seat of my pants I really do get to fly by the hip and when I say I don't have an audience I mean I don't have to I have not had to really think that forward even in a small house my audience by choice as an artistic leader it's going to always be my personality is going to be my artists so my risk taking is always in response to how are my artists going to respond and that's where my big risks I think I'm doing plays the big risk for Intar would be producing at a rap I would get it on but what I've done because I also think that we need to I do look for access to writers such as that so it's created another program to so that we can bring in non-alternatives to work on our stage and that is what's transforming my audience by not by targeting my ticket buyers but by targeting artists that are not that are not normally on my I hate to do a pipeline today but I don't know what that word means but they're not usually on my radar by targeting audiences of artists and bringing them in to work on my stage and forcing them to then work with my artists that cross-pollination has brought in their audiences right and they're now like what's going on there and that's what's working for me so the risk is taking in artists that are not in my machine and trusting that to work with the artists that are with the audience on my stage right I think we're at a logic of course unless anyone has anything else we want to talk about we promise to be done by 4.50-4.30 so if you think of other things I mean the real question is what do you want to know and we've teased out some good stuff about the training stuff there's a lot of stuff about I think we've heard about other things to ask audiences but this is an ongoing conversation and we'll be back to you when we're ready to survey those of you who have theaters and some of you who don't so that we can keep at it are we live yet on the website do you want to explain that then? On TDF stages which is our online magazine I've created a special story on the magazine but it's really just for people who are participating in this conversation and we will send you the link to that story but really it's just there so you can comment and talk to each other we've created a forum where you can leave comments for each other and if you want you can send me things that I can put on there as well like you should check this link out go to this resource so it's an online forum where we can continue to talk basically can I ask one then somebody used the word the monolith of the understanding of the audience and I'll get you into those statistics I wonder if there's a way of breaking down the monolith without sort of dismissing the provocative nature of what the screen said which is to understand a little bit more what the monolith is and I think it's come up a couple of times in conversations about in San Francisco there was a lot of interest in talking about how as artists you can make theater cooler and sexier and this realization that there's a monolith when we say theater there's a monolith when we say audience and we have all these monoliths and we're not really you know and that it's now a couple of times running the only thing that's essentially the same was the likeness right and so I think getting underneath that is important I'm not sure how we're going to do that but that's important maybe just a little bit of where this is going since there's a lot of we heard afterwards from in San Francisco where is all this going so we continue on actually just in the next couple of weeks we're going to Chicago and then to Minneapolis because why not go there in early March because it's well better than early January I guess okay so we continue these conversations through the six cities that we were looking at as Tori was saying we will be commissioning some new surveying that you know hopefully some of you will be involved in in the fall we'll have a we'll wrap this up we'll look at you will compile and others will compile all these conversations and we will gather in Boston at the November or December to kind of consider what we've learned so far and pull all of that together into a written report at least it would be made available to the field so this will be ongoing and it might live on further than that we'll let you know as that goes but this is these conversations Mark has been writing and we've been taking this down they don't just go up into the atmosphere but we are moving forward with it thank you a lot it's been really helpful thank you thank you very much