 to be having this conversation today in a series of conversations around the country, which we will dive into in a minute or so. But I do want to inform you about something that's happening really, really exciting that started yesterday in Sacramento where I was for an Arts Advocacy Day joint hearing, the joint committee on the arts and curing on the impact of the arts in California. And we've heard some really amazing things, even amazing graduates, like one out of 10 jobs is in the creative economy. With 1.4 million jobs, it's 8% of California's gross domestic product, billions and billions of dollars, and the chair, Senator Liu of the committee, and his counterpoint, Ian Collarow from the assembly, both got so excited about these facts and the importance of our sector to California that they are offering competing bills to refund the California Arts Company. Yes! Okay, now we need to go ahead and ask one of the members of one of the assembly, and we also have a series of lawmakers who are pissed off that they could not be the primary owner of these bills. Never before has it been in this position that you're telling me about my recent memory. So, we will be getting back to you with more about how you can and must help us push these bills through the future of their houses and then on to the next day, the best bill win. But in any case, I think we stand the likeliest chance since the big cuts of 2003 to getting some real money into the California Arts Council so that you can be doing more of the work that you're doing. So, follow that, let's just end. So, and there's a great article about us today in today's LA Times, and I was just in the phone with some music from K3D, so there's a press that's picking up on it and we'll be hearing and reading more about it, and we'll certainly be hearing about it from us. But that's not what we're hearing today. We're here today to continue a conversation that we are, we are engendering around the country, theater Bay Area, and Theater Development Fund, Tori Bailey, the executive director there, and funded very generously by the Dork, the Dork Youth Foundation, Dork Funding. Sorry again. We're having, watching today, here at the Bay Area, New York, coming up next, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, examining this question or this concept of a three-way, kind of triangular relationship between generative artists, the theater companies that produce them and the audiences who come. And it's not so much a problem statement as it is an exploration of what does that relationship look like, what is that dynamic, and what can we all do as theater makers, generative artists, theater companies, those of us who support you, to strengthen that relationship and ultimately to increase an appetite for new work and for theater, all kinds of theater in society. And that's sort of the big, big purpose of what we're doing today. And over the next many months, we had a conversation this morning with a smaller group of people. This is enlarging that conversation. This morning's conversation was off the record. Mark was taking notes, but not attributing any of the comments by name. This afternoon's conversation is very much on the record and in fact being live-streamed on New Play TV. So everything you say can and will be used against you on and broadcast immediately out coast to coast. But it's just a different way of involving an even larger community in these conversations. And Mark will tell you in a moment about ways that you can continue to be involved in the conversation online and going forward. That's what, let me just say some other things. Yeah, just a couple of things to say first of all. Thank you all for giving up your time to be here this afternoon. And for those of you who've been with us all day, I think there's a lot of really good work going on, all sorts of places about audience engagement, right? I mean, all funds have done a lot. TCG is doing re-evolution, talking about audiences, the thing that's a little different about what we're trying to do and kind of where this came from was a realization that there, as you saw with the two studies you read, Allen is looking at theaters and audiences. And we owe a big thank you to both South Coast and Steppenwolf who said to Allen he could use that work to do some of what you read. Zion was looking at the relationship between the playwrights and the theaters, which we got into a lot of conversation during Outrageous Fortune about a lot of stuff, but the part that was on of interest to TDF with respect to admission was the stuff that had to do with the writers and the theaters. And there hasn't been a lot of, there are a lot of people doing a lot of really good work which Polly has surfaced in terms of bright lights, of kind of three-way conversation. But we're all in this together. And so how do we, in an era when we are still looking to increase the noise and the vibrancy that the theater has and as wide a community as it can have, how do we have all three of us talking to each other? And for TDF, which is an organization whose primary mission is building audiences and trying to create an appetite for the theater and make sure that folks who, we kind of fundamentally believe it's the birthright of everybody in New York City to go to the theater if they choose to. Service organizations have an opportunity to work on issues like this. And so it's really, that's where, I think that's where TVA comes in, I think that's where we come in. And what we're hoping to do out of all of this work is the next step will be some more research work in one shape or form when we don't really know yet what that is, engaging the audiences even more. There was a convening and arena a couple of years back as part of the New Play Institute that was, that was when Rocco gave the famous scarcity and abundance speech. And Brad and I looked at each other, we were both there and said the problem isn't that there are too many theaters, the problem is that we're not doing our job well enough in terms of getting the people to come see it. And then we had further sessions later that weekend and a number of playwrights said, why is it that we're always sitting here talking about the audience when we never actually put them in the room? And so the next piece I think is some research that we'll do this summer and we're using these sessions in large part to try and figure out what more do we need to know and talk to our audiences about? What are the assumptions that we bring to the table about them that we would love? And it's to hear from you guys what resonates, what's meaty, what you'd like to know more about. And so that's really kind of, that's where this comes from. So not just a desire not to be in New York kind of table, we're gonna kind of choose a snow. So that's where we are, so take it away. Yeah, just very quickly, if we could just kind of know who's in the room for you all to, and for these folks to get to know you a little better. If you think just, you know, your name and your, if you're with a theater institution or a student institution, say their names and your various hats that you may wear. You may be administrative, you may be a playwright and actor, I don't know. So we'll start in the corner and work away around, but quickly, so we have time for the conversation. You're a great company co-director, central works, we do all the new works, I'm a playwright and a director. Great. Chance Baisler also is central works, I'm central director, I'm also a director and a performer. And for my name is Suze, director of our Teacher of Old Foundation and a devoted audience member. Will Suze, he was perfect. He's Trevor Rallan, Black Box Theater Company, playwright and actor. Jordan Puckett, literary manager of the San Francisco Playhouse and playwright. And I'm the executive director of Frague with Ensemble, also a former director. Nina Meehan, executive director of Bay Area Children's Theater. Janet Harrison, ultimeater, actor, producer, director, slush. Hey, Deora and Eleazar associate artistic director of Pools Fury Theater, director and performer. Karen Autry-Campson, director of Richard and Romney. Lily Janek, listings editor of Theater Bay Area, theater critic for access to the play of power. Don Scott, director of manager of ECT. How about Peter Naughty, both playwright and Romney, rather than sensei states. You were really artistic director, great work. Kirsten Brandt, associate artistic director of San Francisco Art and Tourist Theater, literary manager and casting director. Margaret Melton, director of new play development at Vermeer Theater Company. Jennifer Welch, producing artistic director of Tide Theater. I'm Christian Hans, I'm the associate artistic director at Huff and Pies and I do shots. I think that happened. Jim Pfeiffer, artistic director of Playgrounds. Adam Sussman, I'm with the private wing and the literary manager of Theater Bay Area. Alicia Combs, company manager of Pools Fury and freelance job director. Paul Heller, I'm the literary manager of Indra's Mint Theater Group. I'm Patricia Bowman, I'm a playwright and a member of Three Girls Theater Company and also a audience member. I'm Min Conn, a playwright composer and a marketing coordinator and instructor at Four Bay Area Children's Theater. Nina Morita, artistic associate at Berkeley Rappertory Theater, chair of Rockland Players Board and director. I'm Rebecca Novick, I'm the director of artistic engagement at Cal State and also the director. I'm RobbExplival, I'm the marketing director for Berkeley Rappertory and I'm a TV board member. Kyle Serkis, I'm the marketing manager at Berkeley Rappertory Theater. Robin Dolan, audience services manager here at the Aurora. Suzanne Appel, managing director of The Cutting Ball Theater. Katie Fahey, associate program officer at the Kindergarten Foundation. Lauren Jigizori, I'm the founding artistic director of Golden Thread Productions. I'm Terry Lam, I'm an actor and I'm on the board of Golden Thread. Bob Miller, I'm on the board of Golden Thread. I'm Susan Caronore, I'm on the board of TheaterWorks and I write theaterplaybyplay.com, a blog about new works. Jill Medichow, audience member. Christopher Castor, I'm a playwright, I'm a director and I'm also born and I'm a piece of theater. I'm Christopher White, I'm an artistic director at Bugswampin and I'm also a director and performer at TheaterWorks. Grant Smith, I'm the producer of the Global Age Project which is the new works initiative here at Aurora Theater and I'm a theater director. Michael Pallor, I'm an entrepreneur at ACT. Ben Randall, I am the artistic associate of the Conservatory of Theater and a freelance director. James Nelson, freelance director and membership services for Theater Bay Area. Dana Harrison, managing director at Theater Bay Area, producer and audience member. I'm Ignacio Silueta, I'm a playwright, altered theater associate artist and the new Shotgun box office associate. I'm Mickey Goldhabber, a playwright and director and I'm on the prowl. Lauren Anderson, I'm a playwright, in the Mueller Artistic and Executive Director of Playwrights Foundation. I'm Mark Vogel, I'm a consultant with arts organizations and the funders who love them. You seem mad at me, I'm managing director for the Repertory of Theater. Great, so what we wanted to do was just frame a little bit about the conversation that we will be having this afternoon, a little bit about what we've been hearing already and conversations earlier today and also in Washington last week and then we're gonna split up into four break-up groups and spend about 45 minutes in each one of those groups asking you to choose one kind of question that boiled up earlier today that was completely left unanswered, that we'd love to kind of find out more about. We would encourage you to take that question, run with it, veer away from it as you will and then we will come back in for the final 45 minutes or so to have a larger conversation together building upon the conversations that you have in your four groups. So that's a bit of what we're going to be doing on this afternoon. Do you wanna maybe recap those four questions that we've got in this morning? Yeah, so what I'm going to give you are, as Brad said, these are questions that we're bubbling up at the end of the competition. We feel like, oh my God, we haven't solved theater yet, we'd have to keep talking about it. And let me say in a date that the language I'm about to use is not going to be as exact as possible, but hopefully even the language I'm using, if you wanna refine the language yourself in your groups, that might be fun. So one of the big questions that we were very interested about was, what do we assume that the theater is and why do we assume that anyone would wanna go and how are we telling audiences about those assumptions? But that makes sense, what do we assume that the theater is, why do we assume that anyone should wanna go in the first place, and what are we doing to communicate to audiences those assumptions? Another question that we had is, well this is, I'm gonna say we even though I'm not from the first place. Yeah, we were we, you were we. We, we meaning everyone in the group, I am speaking the royal, no, no, opposite. Yeah. How do we as artists in the Bay Area get our individual audience communities to go in and see the work of other theater companies? How do we get our audiences to come to us to go see the work of other people? At what point, well that's question two. Question three, at what point in the process of development and production should we get the audience engaged? Where in the process of development and production should the audience start to engage? And question four, at what point should an artist become engaged with promoting the production to the public? A playwright, a director, a designer, whatever. At what point should the artist become engaged at letting the public know what is happening and what is being used in contextualizing it? Does that make sense? So those are the four things that felt, yes. Just to clarify, number four, the artist becoming engaged is that the artist as opposed to the producer? I think the idea is like, if a playwright has a new play, should the playwright start from the second that that play is announced in the season talking to the marketing director? Should the playwright be out on the street running up audiences from the beginning? Should it never happen? The artist engagement is selling the thing. There's some conversations, even, one of the things that's resonated both days so far is some conversation about some of the, some people are doing really good work with getting artists. It's that thing where the audiences know the writers over time at a theater, right? What's the arc of time and how do you get them involved? If a playwright is coming back to a theater, having been there before, when are they coming into that conversation? So really, you hear a host of responses when you ask folks about when are they, when do they get involved, do they get involved? Should they get involved? Do they want to get involved? So all of that. But what do people feel like is the optimal, where on that timeframe should it be? Is there one answer or do you want a lot of, this is, you guys are just things you're gonna start talking about, right? Our feeling was that when it was time to end the morning session and those questions were like, there was a hundred or a hundred things left to say about them and we would just love to keep talking about them. But a little context, I think, because the first two questions come out of a lot of conversation and Alan's study about risk, right, and that whole risk continuum and that there's one kind of risk conversation that has to do with the risk taking that your audience that you already have is doing. And how do you move them along? And how far ahead of them do you want to be? And then another piece of the conversation is what's the risk for the people who aren't even in the room yet, right? What's the risk factors when we talk, I mean, the risk is in the bad thing, right? Someone was saying a lunch at the only industry in which we consider risk of bad things seems to be ours and a lot of other places, risk is, you know, that's how you break through. But, you know, so some of the questions about, the question about, you know, how do you talk to people who aren't there about whether it's, what do we do to help get people into the room, onto that regime, who aren't on it at all? And what do we do about the folks who are already there? So there was a lot of conversation back and forth about how you open up the door. Susie, you have your... Yeah, because it seems as though you're starting from a premise that maybe needs to be spoken, an assumption that we're, are we talking specifically about new work or are we simply talking about what is the audience's relationship to their work? Well, I think that's a really smart question. As we said this morning, a lot of this is messy. This is a second conversation. This started being about new work because that's where our religious fortune and Jewish impact were. And then as you start talking about risk, you realize that there's a lot of risk for people who haven't even been in the door. I think we're mostly talking about new work. I think we're mostly talking, but work is new to a lot of people, even if it's established when maybe it's the first time. And some people have said, you know, if I do a classic and I do it in a new and re-imagined way, so I think... I think check-out is new to anyone who's never seen it before. Sure. And I think that's where we're moving. I think that's where we're moving. And certainly it is where this morning's group moved was in this, so for this conversation, I think it's really about work that's new to the audience, even if it doesn't have to be new to us. It's work that's new to its audience. Is that... I mean, you were talking about the risk of doing a play written in 1200. I mean, that's a very new play, even though it's however many years old. Well, in piggybacking, though, what you're saying, Susie, and we're going to start to carry her luck about this a week or two ago, when she was saying, in her experience in ACT, that it's often actually easier to get people to come to new work, like the elevator, and it is for some more obscure classic works that are even harder for someone to wrap their arms around. But the difference, which suppose that one might, the newer works might be actually less risky, in a way, than an older work. But the difference about new work is that you have the potential of having the generative artist actually in the room with the audience. And that's not a possibility with... And for me, for me, it's a classic, you can have the director in the room. I mean, it's a conversation about how do we take advantage of the artists in the room, should we? How do we engage them in moving it forward? How do we talk about the work for the audience? What are those entry points that we need to help make it bigger? Okay, so that's helpful. But then my second question, before I go into a break up, is it sounds as though we're operating on the assumption that there is something that is deeply desirable about having people experience more than just the work itself. Is this something that we agree upon, or that there's data that's... Well, I think we should interrogate that. I mean, there is some data around that. The engagement piece that came out of the intrinsic impact work, and I think was reflected in this piece that Alan wrote around this, in that matrix that he created of less engagement, more engagement, and then propensity, risk aversion to risk seeking that he's proposing. And again, this is sort of retesting these ideas. Maybe they're flawed, maybe it's completely crap. But if there's something about being engaged around it in conversation, digging in more deeply, being literally in conversation with Lauren around her work, or with other people in the audience, does that, this is what the intrinsic impact work from, it does seem to, at least in our research, it did seem to make the impact deeper and less longer. So there was a way that those other ways of engaging in and around, and conversing around the work did enhance the impact. And for most folks that we were surveying. I guess we're pragmatically, at least from my point of view, a sense that certainly is what we see when we're working with first-time theater goers and doing extra community groups and stuff, that the more engaged or the more impacted or more thinking about, later the more likely to go back another time. And if you're trying to take really casual attendees, how we mix them in with our core, we have those folks that always come and are there typically a subscriber, what is it you do to increase the likelihood that someone will come back a second time or maybe a third time? And there was some really interesting, fabulous things this morning, stories about if you, they gave you free tickets so you could bring people who then went out and sold set, right? So how do we do that? Is that fair? Yeah, but I would certainly push on it. If you're, I mean, like, you take everyone, like interrogate these, these concepts and assumptions, because that's a big part of what these are. So for some folks who are here this morning, what are we leaving out and not capturing? Is there anything? Well, what Susie basically just broached or brought up, which are sort of the ways in which people are entering into a dialogue with the theater, you know? She's literally said, is it just the experience of being in the theater, or are we assuming a lot of other interactive? But I don't, and I think one of the things for me that's important is there's no right or wrong. This is not about these, anybody's doing wrong. It's actually about calling out a whole lot of things that a lot of people are doing really well and trying to figure out how we can share them and move them on and say these are things that in our experience are working. And they isn't, I don't think there is an answer. I think some of the norms. I'm just saying that that question is left off. Yes. It's not on these four. Right, but that's fine. So let me just try to frame the question. Robert can correct me, but we've done a lot of research with a very avid theater audience. Right. That has mostly said to us, don't give us more. Right. Don't ask us to do anything else. We come to the theater because we love going to the theater. We love the work that we do. We love the amount of information you give us. Quit asking us to do other things. And, but basically there's a contract that we have, that they have with us that says, what they want is theater. They're coming to the theater, they appreciate the fact that we're providing it to them. And that's great. Now there's a whole, we know that with newer audiences, people who have no context, that there's a different set of issues about them. But in a conversation that's framed as broadly as this, we could end up making a lot of assumptions based on a really broad question. Right. That we then use as not just apocryphal, but as actually sort of data that drives us in very broad directions. So I think this is great. So I mean, that is exactly perfect. Right, because it's actually, part of that seems to be suggested in Alan's research, that those who know more about a form, because he mentions ballet in there too, they just get more out of it, right? But those folks who know a lot about ballet, they don't need to sit down in a ballet 101 class before the ballet starts. They've got it, right? So it could well be that you're, I would not be surprised that Berkeley rep audiences who come all the time are actually really, really well versed about the form. And they don't really need it. And nor do they want it, as you're asking them. But another group of folks may, right? So they're not necessarily conscious, the two data things don't necessarily cause themselves out. But there's also about, this is an anti-anti-anti, right? No, and also I would say personally, it's really interesting, because I bet they didn't walk in the door that way 10 years ago. Or maybe they did, and that's who they are. Well, this is Berkeley's thing. But you're also asking this much broader question about audiences and the role of theater in society in general, and that to me said earlier, fan is pretty well known anyway. That theater has definitely, as an art form, become less significant to larger non-advanced people, right? And that for some theaters, many theaters, their audience participation is dropping to some extent. And so the bigger Uber question is what, you know, in the 21st century, what is our engagement with audiences in order to grow them? And to get people coming. So, you know, if that's the context, from that perspective, what's the engagement piece? So let's also just say this, no, sorry, Lorraine. We're not, we really are not driving towards, it's not like we've got the answer and we can't wait for you to get to the right answer that we already have in the envelope here, we don't. It really is honestly an exploration and we're really honestly asking the questions without already assuming we know the answers. Oh no, someone, I think Michael was saying that the conversation is for the health of the theater community at large, that it's not just new places to play, and how are we talking about theater as a whole and sharing audiences as part of that? Right, right. And that was a clear thing that we heard from you this morning is that here in this local conversation, that's, there's some people who say no. Yes, Joe. Well, I think just to use this point and to your point about the, I think other people would really turn about some points because you know your audience very well, you know what they're asking. And I think we were straining to do who's not in the room and how to get them in the room. And so that made me part of the focus. That's helpful. Yeah. Yeah, any other, from folks who were heard earlier, maybe just throw in if we've left that a little bit out there to sort of see the conversation that we started in a minute or two. Here in your room. Okay, so what we thought we would do is literally have you guys come up, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four so that you're split up into people that you came with and know terribly well. It's going to be with other people that you probably know terribly well but it will just be different than the way you've been in the room. We're going to have a group here, a group in the lobby, a group upstairs in the main room. And I think we can also use the conference room as a separate room. So one, two, three, four would be, where'd they go? So. Where are the rooms? Here's one. Yeah. Yeah. Two will be in the lobby. Okay. Three will be in the big part of the other room and four will be in the conference room. Where the refrigerator is. Okay. I don't do vector side. Lush conditions. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. Three. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, Oh my god. We'll let you go, and we'll meet with me at 3.25. Do you want to report? Yes, I think I can report. You should probably stay in here. Yeah. Okay. You guys can be here. I'll be here. No. I'm not organizing, I'm just staying here. Right. Should we sit on the floor? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Flash through the settings. Yeah. Yeah. Don't move. No, they're in there. They'll be in the wrong room a moment soon. They'll be in there for a day. Go! They're back in the office. You want to start more words and pray? Yes. They're in the wrong room. I'm not a cookie. I'm an appetite. Right. That's where I sit like this. I'm going to place four of the chairs in the room. So Victoria, you have a good question. Brad said we could take a question. I don't think it was clear, like 1, 2, 3, 4, I thought it was going to be difficult. No, no. Any question that you wanted, but we're the most interested. So it's... So somebody reviewed the questions? Can somebody review the question? Sure. Oh, good. I'm scared to death I was going to ask. What to me to assume theater is, and why do we assume that people go to theater? And how do we... This I was a little bit confused about. How do we communicate with our audiences about that? I personally would want to add to those, are those correct assumptions? Yeah, exactly. How do we, as theaters, get our audiences to go to other theaters as well for the health of the entire ecosystem? At what point should we get audiences engaged in the development of work? And at what point should artists get engaged in the promotion? And how much time do we have to do that? I think we probably have about a half hour. It's quarter of three. It's supposed to go until four. You might see it back about three-twenty. I think that's what Brad said, two-twenty. So it's just maybe like a half hour or so. So are we talking about all the... No, pick one. Pick one. Pick one. Pick one. I do too. Because it's such a ground, it sets the foundation for it. What are you like? What are you... There are two things that are really interesting. They're actually, these are probably only two big topics broken out. One, who else likes what else? I like the cross-pollination mainly because it also refers to who's not in the room. That's the question I'm actually more interested in. Who's not in the room and why? I second that. I third that. I think we can kind of do them both because I think it, and then I'm going to shut up, but I think it's... They're all the same questions. Do we want to talk about who's not in the room? Are you really working this? It's not working. Just curious. Yes, yes. You are. Your lovely cross-legged positions are replaced by a graphic, but we can hear you speaking. Just check. So how about if we phrase it as what are our assumptions about theater and... And why people go. What are our assumptions about theater in the context of why people go? Especially the people who aren't in the room and how are we using that to push them away. And do we have a scribe? I am the scribe. So who's going to report back to the room though? Oh, that's up to you guys. Someone should report back to the room. We can decide later, but when we come back we're going to... I can do that. Okay. Great. Just to throw out there because I thought it was an interesting conversation to start having, and I started talking about the wholeness slash sexiness factor as one element. And to sort of bring it in the context of getting people to go to other people's work as well. I think an element of that is that like if somebody is really attending your theater, it seems like they've lashed onto something that really resonates with them that they find cool, sexy, riveting, something like that. That isn't necessarily translating to the theater world at large. And we were talking about that in order for theaters to really have a lot of relevance just culturally to sort of like be bubbling up and fomenting through culture in general, it needs to sort of like have that energy under it that's going to keep things bubbling. And so part of that I think for me has to do with what our own assumptions are about what theater is and what can be. And then also really thinking hard about what assumptions audiences in the Bay Area are making themselves about what theater is and how we are fulfilling both the positive and negative assumptions about that and how we can shift our own thinking about making theater, showing theater, collaborating with other artists and with our audiences in a way that's really going to make that bubble up. Our conversation started with this like if you could re-brand theater as a whole and I think the probably obvious stereotypes are that it's for rich people and old people and how can we make it something that is accessible, something you want to just run and do and how also the assumption of we let reviewers use the fun words to describe our work which is like riveting, sexy, smart, fun. Like we need that in quotes with a hermit behind it. Or instead of when we talk about our play, we talk about plots, we talk about who's in it as opposed to like how can we say that theater is weird and crazy and like own that and make it the thing that kind of like a new bar where you want to talk about the cool cocktail. So like talking about the cool cocktails has a different vocabulary than like the pasta selection. But theater is never going to be a bar because there's a formality built into it. When you come in and you sit down and the lights go down and you're sitting in the dark and something happens in front of you, it's not the same thing as going to a bar and possibly making eye contact with someone who's cute across the way and getting an interesting drink. It's not that. We have to acknowledge the fact that regardless of what kind of theater you do it is not everything has that formality built into it, but that formality is part of a preconception and so it's really hard to rectify in somebody's head formality, crazy, sexy, cool. But you can go see crazy, sexy, cool and still have the formal, I'm sitting down and watching crazy, sexy, cool if we tell them that that's what they're going to watch. But we can because we interpret content outside of, we're used to the formality because we are theater goers already and I think a lot of theater goers are comfortable in the formality. But if we're talking about the people who don't go, it's intimidating to walk into ACT. It can be intimidating because it's big and it's grand regardless of what the content is on stage. The setting can be intimidating and it's I think hard to sell people on that idea that it's going to be fun and exciting and then they go into a place that is like this, formal. You sit in your seat and you sit there in your behavior and you watch the show in the dark and don't say anything. So maybe that's not the place for somebody who is intimidated by that setting to start a theater goer. I disagree a little bit from ACT. I think that it's about overcoming those perceptions and you know we're opening a new theater and central market and part of the idea of opening that theater is how do we design it and what does it say about who we are and how are we still ACT or ACT in the market and there's a lot of the conversations are like ACT is going to be in central market and it's going to be young and it's going to be hip, it's going to be cool. Maybe it's going to be very traditional and it doesn't mean that it can be kind and sexy and cool at the theater. And so a lot of it speaks to experience and the kind of experience you have and so we've really looked at broadening that experience. We just had a bite in that last night at the theater where you write a bite and it's out of the theater. It's about breaking down that theater palace and saying wow I can show up on a bite and my bite is going to be safe and I can go watch that show. So it's about how do you interpret what that experience is and get beyond the guilt of paint and plus sheets and times people have the experience. Sometimes you can just lie a little. Like it's marketing right? So you can say yes you're going to go and you're going to step. But you do that on a movie theater too and we don't think of movies as like for old rich people. It's like how do you go and you make it something where you say theater is a place where yes you're going to sit in a seat and watch someone do something but we can start calling it young and casual and all the opposites just to start calling it that and see if that changes. My job is just to moderate. Wow. One minute. We're talking about what is theater? I just feel like the elephant in the room is who's not in this room having this discussion right? And you sort of look around like who has a day job? Who is geographically distant? Is perhaps coming from a community of color or from another background that may be not. So I just want to say that we're making a lot of assumptions. I mean we as artists have adopted some might say co-op of the dominant cultures language when it comes to theater. We reach our own business. We have a brand. We have the market not advertised because that's madman, right? We're marketing. And we're calling plays work and performances of our spirits as playwrights. These are productions. Now we're being labeled as generative artists in the name of inclusion, right? To incorporate devised artists. So it's not just single vision. That's just a playwright in the here. But the idea that we produce any institutions control the means of production. Sorry to be Marxist. I am Marxist. I'm more of a groucho Marxist. I never be a member of but I'm a happy as a member. But the idea that ever since Citizens United said that corporations are people and this idea that in non-profits, like NFL is a non-profit, right? National Football League is a non-profit. And we talked about theater. This idea that theater is this monoculture. It's this thing. I can say I love theater. I can be passionate about theater. But it's like saying I love music. There's certain genres of music that I would die for. You know, you need to take this to a staying concert. I'm like, I'll put myself on that. But like, country music? No. I'm glad it exists. But no. So I'm starting to read this. But there was this moment when I was just like, we're talking about this corporate culture. And it's become such a pervasive part of our discussion that the art and the artists sometimes get lost. I want to have the discussion with the audience. I would love to be in residence. We're literally my job is to work with an audience, have a virtual residency. You know, do the thing where you're sitting at a desk and you're sort of watching me work that model. But I love the idea of like what Mike Daisy did. Now, whether you love or hate Mike Daisy, either one, I mean the extremes of polarization, what he did at Joe's Pub, sitting in the one place you could podcast because of union regulations and we have a frank and fearless adult conversation about that. It's the 21st century for fuck's sake. But when he sat there and had this conversation out into the ether and people downloaded it up and everybody has one of these and they put it in the sound club and listen to it or not, that was a discussion that was not about the public theater. It was at the public theater. It was in the bar, at Joe's bar. But that idea of having the one-to-one or one-to-many or many-to-many conversation that eschews the idea of what this model culture is, the sitting in the theater in a lort theater, shut up, sit down in the dark and watch. That's one kind of theater. I would make an observation that maybe as you think about this concept of what is, how we talk about assumptions about theater, I'm struck by the fact that, because if some of you are talking about the building and some of you are talking about what happens in the building and that's where some of the art and the quality comes from is that we... But are we talking about how we feel about these assumptions and other people's assumptions about people who aren't having this conversation? Because I think we can make that distinction as practicing theater artists, but I think audience members who are not as well-versed don't necessarily know how to make that distinction. Well, if we confuse it, imagine if you don't know who's female. Maybe. Right? It's struck by the fact that everybody who has spoken so far wants to be wanting to throw out some of what is unique about theater. There are companies like mine that do do away, actually, with the formality. We don't have seats that are riveted in the floor. You can move your seat and people do. People walking by in the street can look in and see what's happening. People are just very informally. It's very fun, accessible, visible, et cetera. But there's also something that we said for this experience. And we have a kind of theater that does allow this... I mean, this is magic. I'm just sitting here in this room. There's something magical about it. And why can't we communicate that? At my theater, it's a really great place. What's been very popular for us is intergenerational theater going. Because the stories that we take are diverse and are for a younger audience who specifically used to program for younger audiences. Our core audience were working people in their 30s and 40s. And our audience began growing because the people, the working women started bringing their retired mothers. Their retired mothers told their friends and suddenly were programming to 1649, but our fastest growing demographic is older women. And, you know, we have families of subscribers with three generations coming to our theater. This is still one of the few activities in America that crosses across generational boundaries. There are things that are special about theater, the way that we're doing it, and we're not talking about it. And instead, we're trying to reinvent ourselves to be something that feels like Baltimore State. Why do we have to lie about what's special about us? We're fucking special. I think we are too, and I think the lie is if the truth is that a lot of theatergoers still are 50 and up and we want what's successful about your company, then we have to talk about theater in a way that I don't think it's lying about the magic. That's why we're all here is because it's magical. And it's easy magic. It's simple magic. It's just imagination in front of you. But the idea that trying to not be afraid to continue to make the argument about why theater is magic and say that it's not just magical for people who've been going for generations and generations, but it's magical for six-year-olds and 16-year-olds and that if we can talk about it in a way that isn't, like, that's all we talk about. But for me, I look around and I'm a young writer and when I was 16 and starting to be a playwright, I would go and see no one my age there except for me, because I loved it, or when I was at school. But how do we get that, how do we get more of the needs to be that sort of thing I think about on a Friday night, is I want to go see a play, an ACT, or a Marin, or wherever, as opposed to I want to go see a movie or stay home and watch this or go out to a bar or, you know what I mean? Like, how can theater be the thing that isn't the theater but is the like, oh my god, it's the theater. Look, I mean, just trying to, and I feel like we can't do that in San Francisco with the kind of community we have here and the tech and the energy and the innovation and the sense of what's next, what's new, what that's what we want, then, like, we're doing it bad if we can't make the thing that is so creative and so new and magic popular. I mean, we can't do that. I don't know, like, we've gotta figure out how to talk about it in a new way. Oh, that's not for one theater. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like Trevor's actually saying something really important about the perception of theater that is a thing. And, like, what Magwampan does is, like, totally different from what ACT does which is totally different from what Golden Thread does, you know? And all of them are, like, amazing and worthwhile and there's something really, I think, exciting for audiences about understanding that there's a lot of difference there and a lot of variety. But, you know, I talked to my mom theater friends and there are definite ideas of what theater in the Bay Area is. And, honestly, most of them don't, aren't, like, and that's a good thing, you know? But if we're looking at, like, rebranding the concept of theater, if there's so many differences, how do we rebrand theater as a whole thing when the experience at each one of our different organizations is so different? How do you unify that brand magic? It's all magic. It's all like... Go ahead and then... That connection... I mean, this is, these are the conversations that we had when we were starting Algae Theater. It goes back to that unique connection between live performer and live audience member. However it's constructed, that's the single unifying thing among all our companies. Or a single unifying thing. Live performer, live audience member. But I think people who aren't in the room don't know that experience yet. So how do we make it obvious that they should? And I think that's... Does everyone know... Do you think that people... understand the differences between your theaters? No. I think they don't even understand the non-profit versus the commercial. No, no. I think it's our responsibility as theater artists and producers to help define those differences and enjoy them ourselves. So like... After tonight's did, waiting for Godot, ACT was opening their Beckett plays, and I got a call from ACT to talk to them and say, hey, we really want Beckett from the audience to see the show. When you've done it, can you bring some people to the show? That's incredible. I would love nothing more to have an opportunity to reconnect with the audience that came to see my show and take them with... like Jill says, in hand, and go see a show there. That takes knowledge of our community. It takes wanting to integrate our audiences, which is probably and, like, the ability to do that, just communication-wise and physically. But I think that's part of it. I don't think we have to rebrand us as an entire art form, but I think knowing what's out there for ourselves and then getting involved that way and being the audience person that says, hey, you really like the show that we're doing, Mugwok was doing something kind of like it, but way more extreme, and then going, you know? That's what... And I think, because I was saying earlier, I've worked in the music industry for a long time, and that's what they do there, and it's really effective. Labels talk to each other all the time and they present together, which a lot of companies are hearing now, but then they also, like, go out and support each other's record releases. And it sounds like a really simple thing, but I think it's a really high-impact way to build audience. Mm-hmm. I think that there's also, for similar reasons, I'm a little wary of the term rebranding, but also, I think it's not just rebranding, but also, you know, the assumptions that, like, it's for older, rich people. I think we actually need to look at our work and say, are we making work for older, rich people, is that what we want to be doing if the answer is yes, and if we're not, how do we communicate about that better? So it might not actually be just rebranding, but also, yeah, like, thinking about engaging with the audience, not as marketing. And maybe not even putting it into the hands of the marketing department, but rather, that we are here because we want to communicate with people, you know, that we want to have relationships with people, so, let's have relationships with people. I feel like people know when they're being marketed to, or lied to. And then people are savvy. Yeah, and it's not necessarily about lying because I don't think marketing departments deliberately go out to lie to audiences, but they're selling something very clearly. And the beautiful thing about when an artist reaches out is that it's not a sales pitch. It is pride about the work that they've created. So there's a, I think there's an interesting way to make that more part of the conversation. Because then it's about sharing your work, and it's not about selling a ticket. I think for best marketing is truthful and it is coming from a place of honesty and openness and sharing that experience of proselytizing to, not preaching to converted, because it's either either you're lying or I'm wrong when so many people have that like I've never been to theater, I don't know what this is like it's this big building what do you mean I can take my bike? What do you mean there's a play on stage with people who look like me, who are my age who have, you know, relevance to my life experience? Perhaps it's because theater barrier for eight years and went to many TCG conferences the barrier is unique a barrier boy we do tend to share and we say San Francisco, San Francisco barrier we're in Berkeley, I mean there's a sense that we do go to each other's shows, we do share this we do talk to each other and promote each other's shows because rising water raises all ships well part of that it's such a cliche but it's true that doesn't happen in other areas of the country that I've seen in a very organic and northern California Bay Area Tai Chi Fili Party way but there's this amazing added quality when people realize that for themselves and you go to your theater and you go, if you like this go check them out it's, I don't know it's just this cachet, it's a good housekeeping stamp of approval and I think that that was just part of the DNA of this discussion we believe this is true we've probably done a very bad idea of telling people about what theater is all they think it is is Broadway shows because that's the mainstream experience and they don't know that a non-profit community theater, a non-professional theater can be doing amazing work in a street mall down the street from there I've lived in San Francisco for 20 years I just moved to the L.A.O there's a small theater in L.A.O that's closing and it's funny, I just saw this thing about the sixth extension and let's talk about the we seem to be going through this extension in the ecology theater big and small theaters are just going away and okay it was the L.A.O music theater so they did Oklahoma but there were small communities of color that had their shows that rented the space out and that's gone and it just won't come back so something else has to take its place and the confusion between the brick and mortar building I sometimes think is it's endemic because people see the theater but oh that's a theater and if you talk about theater sometimes people say it's a movie theater it's a live theater oh it's Broadway, it's that stuff I didn't like about the high school oh wait no it's this amazing storytelling experience so maybe it would be interesting to try and understand what's the problem what's the problem do work class, I think there's as much negative as the responsibility well and the building versus the experience especially people who want to start a company I think it's a brilliant thing to do I mean some of what's so unique about alter theater came about exactly because of these conversations what's going on in the street and say hey do you go to theater do you go to theater this thing about rebranding because I think I agree with Christopher it's just an instinctive other thing about that I really love what I once had if you said it somebody said about the artists being ambassadors for the work and that wasn't exactly how it was raised but to me one of the things that's so special about theater going back to the assumptions thing is that it's the sharing of a piece of your soul and when an artist communicates and engages with the audience early on in the process basically what we're asking them to do is exactly what our actors do and our director and our designers do everybody on the stage and we're asking that playwright to share a piece of their soul with the audience and I don't think there's any other there's any more authentic way of engaging than for whatever it is that we're doing in our work either rebranding or whatever that is exactly in line with what it is that the work itself is what makes theater so special and if we can capture that in our marketing or rebranding or whatever I think that's a salvation and then the other reason that I draw back from this rebranding is that to me what feels so wrong about theater today is that it's very top down it's not artist driven it's not community driven it's top down and I love what Jill's been talking about about audiences being empowered to not have best words not have cheat sheets to talk about theater but to share a piece of their soul with their community and their friends about why this is meeting with them and the more that we can spread that out I think the better who cares if we're all using the same words who cares if we're calling it cool, sexy, crazy or formal and lovely and regal if everybody's talking about theater and if it becomes something that people are passionate about whatever form they're passionate about in that's revolution it's interesting though because I think all of that is true but I think there is a subjective nature to a lot of the stuff that you're talking about in terms of magic and soul and stuff like that that is great but it is hard for non theater goers to latch on to those kinds of ideas and there is something about qualitative things that people can attach to you know because like the sports metaphor I thought was really interesting how do we get people to talk about theater in the same way that they talk about sports success is when theater has as much AK sports but it's the same kind of idea in that sports fans are loyal and passionate and devoted to it's all these feelings but it didn't start that way it started with statistics and it started with team colors and it started with following all player and there has to be an entry point that's more concrete that the magic feelings can grow out of one of the most interesting experiences I've had was I the magic wanted to have the juicer status which I think a lot of places do to raise money so I remember getting the library so in the rehearsals and then I send out a message to everybody saying this one's special so one day morning the legal assistant just called you Saturday night and I counted about the deals we're working on you know of course you can do that I would rather hear about the disaster that happened Saturday night Saturday I'm amazing for 20 minutes she just told me what a glorious experience it was and it was in the first stage in the story it was so amazing and I saw all the other audience members and I was crying and they were crying I'm going to want to call all my friends and tell them I don't want to see them she said you should tell people you you just created marketing to work in New York it was just extraordinary she never been here before and she just went because I asked her to but she also went because it was your play and that's like so much the power of that connection you know earlier you were saying the rebranding thing but the egg commercial and all of that and it got me thinking about simple things like wide reviews and things like that and that's because we don't spend that money in advertising so maybe one of the things we should think about is some sort of group ad space that we collectively buy that's like a producer conversation but things like that should build awareness to compete with all the other arts things that are happening but the incredible edible egg right that's like the egg rebranding and how they sold the egg but by rebranding the theater not calling it something um no but the idea is like we know the depths of theater means but we're in a world where we have limited space, time, buzzwords and tweet lengths of things and visual images are how things become in our conscious that's how we know things like egg and all of the super old commercials have 30 seconds and a bunch of they pour into those images so that they're stuck in our brain and it's not about that and it's not commercial and it's not all that shit but we still need for people to think of us first we still need, all of us need it it's something about how we can create whether it's a huge ad campaign that is magically donated for all of us or billboards or images on twitter or something that we can all facebook or witty things with some combination of making theater the thing that has a sense of humor about itself that is relevant, that is something that we all think is clever that people can start just seeing, seeing, seeing and it's not about marinn theater versus altered theater it's theater theater, it's plays it's like the idea that jennifer said that thing why she's a theater director and a supporter of the arts that you were talking about too the miraculous ideas of take someone to the theater and you give them an experience not a gift that is what we can do that, you know, tiffanese doesn't you don't get the experience that tiffanese you get a ring but in the theater you get a night and you get a conversation you get a sense memory and if we can start talking about theater with those things the idea is it's good for all of us it's not like what theater is best is it devised or is it, you know, literal or whatever the hell, it's like when you go you know that when you go to the theater in this city that is about innovation and creativity and what's next and they think of that to not think of twitter but to think of a play and how can we make that the conversation and if we can be a test city we have all the ingredients here we have a lot of smart people that care about activism and have money and those people should be the ones that are coming to our theaters and bringing their friends that's the conversation that I think will help all of us if we can find a way to like just a few awesome graphics that would be lines that we need to get our down draper on and then we can make sure that people think about it in a different way and that's a little polyana I know but I think by not doing it we're missing out on free airspace I do want to ask a question first I'll allow myself as a cooking person so I'm going to go that's good and second you know, Lauren I think you're making a lot of great points but to me it sounds as if the world you're sort of describing is one where everyone is a theater sports and because you're a theater sports fan you go to any game with any pairing of teams in any area and I think the difficulty is that the lure of sports like Margaret was saying despite its origins you have your hometown team or you have the team that you support the game that you will watch any Sunday or any Monday any time of the year exactly and so how does it translate I think my first question is how does that affinity for how do we translate the affinity for what is typically one team or one activity to the broadest possible cut of that whole pie and I think the second question that's been percolating in my mind is we're having a lot of great ideas to get people into the theater for the first time but there's a spectrum that exists between the people who've never been to the theater before and those of us who sit in this room and go to the theater all the time and how do we propel someone from after they leave for the first time how do we get them to come back and is that through getting them to come back or getting them to come back and see the work of the same company in a different place or the same artist in a different place or is it getting them to go across town to the other organization that's doing something completely different but that's what I think for a lot of like my sister is 22 or something and she doesn't have that loyalty she doesn't have a TV channel a movie theater that she goes a TV show that she watch it you know she'll maybe have a movie star that she likes or something like that or like a book series but it's like I think that young people which who are more on twitter and more of the visual they're the ones that were I'm interested in them and the idea of go to any play I think is more what they would do than I'm going to every play that ACT does they may go to the one that sounds awesome to them and then credit fire do it something else that sounds awesome and I think that thing I'm not saying that's bad I'm just saying I think people are a little bit more scattered in their attentions than that kind of prescription subscription model thing is I feel like I think is going to get people coming back is if they have a really good experience which is different from seeing a really good show and I mean and I'm interested in sort of like doing a little brainstorming of like what that might be I mean one thing we try to think about like think about our pieces as experiences and collaborations but I also think about like I went down to Austin and saw the Rube Mechs and their space and something that's awesome about this piece which I wish that we had sort of a home base to replicate out in front of their they just have you know everybody knows the picnic tables and like they hang out at the picnic tables after the show and the audience goes and hangs out at the picnic tables and everybody cracks a beer and it's like you just sit outside and like maybe you're not even talking to the artist but you feel like you're part of what's going on and I think that that's really powerful and accessible and up here and then there I would just say rich old people has come up several times and I think sometimes we vilify rich old people and I actually aspire to be a rich old person that's a goal for me but I have to say two experiences I've had at ACT One Brad mentioned Step Elevator Step Elevator was a five cast member chamber, musical about a Chinese food delivery guy who stuck in an elevator for eight hours it's one of the most magical things I've ever worked on and it was not even a stop and we started doing outreach a year in advance so much outreach was really tough and you knew you were doing a year in advance and it was successful in fits and starts but it was a lot of work but I have to say the biggest champion of that piece were our subscribers our subscribers were the ones saying we're so glad you took this risk we're so glad you did this work so moving and so powerful we're so happy to be here and the other thing that we did was Black Watch at the Armory and that was something that we I worked on that project for two years and they heard that was signing the right space to do it and we found the Armory which is in the Mission which also has Hank.com we're like how is our what are our subscribers going to do they're going to freak out and so we really got out in front of it and we sent postcards to them saying this is how you get there, this is where you park this is the bar to take this is the cab services and share mailing list with kink.com we actually we did a survey we were surveying that spring and we surveyed Arcadia at the Erie which is a very sort of ACT beautiful show Stoppers are Red and Butter and we surveyed Black Watch and what we found is that the audience age skewed older for Black Watch those people were committed they were loyal, they were willing to go with us and take the risk and so I think we should not stop looking at that as a resource when we're talking about how do we talk about the work I think there are great resources so I was just going to come at it for me to go back to your point about the idea of younger people being loyal necessarily but also combining that with the experience you mentioned Tiffany Tiffany is a further on myself person and say that instead of just thinking about advertising I think a lot about experience as you sit in the theater and watch a show and hopefully we can get there after you leave I think the reason Tiffany is sort of the gold standard is because it's been delivering a quality experience because it's not just about the piece of metal that you're wearing or your figure or your neck or whatever but it's about the service that you get from the people who talk about the jewelry with you in the same way that our artisanal culture in the Bay Area you know, a lot of people when you go to the mission you're not going to see the people who are under 40 carrying around cups for a piece you're going to see them in revolution or you know different sort of artisanal coffee shop because it's as much about the experience of where you're going and paying twice as much for a cup of coffee because of it as it is about the beverage that you're actually choosing to drink so when you have something that's magical and that's not that much that it is and that is if that were all and it's bleeding and all of those things you know we spend a whole great deal of our time we love our artists we do absolutely we don't as much as we love our artists we need our audiences to love our artists and the organization because I think especially if you are attached to an organization it is the depth to your company if your patrons walk out and say wow that was a great show I'd much rather have an audience member leave a bad show a show that they experienced as bad clarify and say that wow I didn't like the show but I loved my experience you want to say something what is I feel like this rebranding idea is leading up a larger conversation which is around access which is about money and location and a lot of folks do not have the money to see a show I mean actually you know the ACT you can get the $10 and half price tickets at Berkley Rep but it's still that's expensive for some people and it's more expensive than a movie it's more expensive than Netflix and I also think just how you get to I would love to see everything that Bryn does I don't ever talk Bridges Bridges kill us it's really tricky so I feel like those rebranding is one thing but actually being able to get folks into the theater once they're excited about it is another in regards to what you're talking about the fact that people will pay some amount of money for artisanal things I think the thing that sells a $7 cup of coffee is the narrative of it that this being comes from wherever it's got flavors of this and this we do it in a certain way it's a tattoo it's worse than Brooklyn let's not talk about what's happening to Brooklyn Joe at the Delhi luckily theater is the art of narrative this is where we excel so it seems like if we can't figure out how to craft a narrative that is appealing to an audience around a show which gets into this idea of when you bring in the artist to engage with the audience if you do it from the beginning get the audience really excited about this artist and the fact that they come all the way from Sumatra or the parody equivalent of Sumatra you know I feel like that's a thing that people struggle with I think that what we we used to sell shows are capsule reviews and often not terribly compelling production stills but we aren't selling the show as an experience through the narrative I mean that's great I wouldn't say as a non-artist that is the thing that's surprising is that a group of people who are in the business of telling a story cannot tell a story I hope so I also just wanted to ask what you were just saying about the place versus the experience the play A, do you think do the artists can you explain that to the artists to the artists? It's very telling and honest to say you're right they've got to come back to you even if they don't necessarily come back to that play is that a do you think you think that way is that a subscription? I don't know if it's to be perfectly honest with you I think it's an attitude that is our single ticket marketing more than it does our single ticket marketing those are the people you want to have come back again and you know, subscribers you have three to seven chances to get them back if the first one doesn't go so well there'll be others I think as an artist I just may be a privileged position coming from perfectly right where I work but I think it's as much about being able to say to the artists that you are serving the broad range of work that we do and trying to have them work someday it's probably in our best interest to sell the experience as much as it is in the play yes you are losing one can I say one last thing about marketing Lawrence is lying and that's some talk I've tied with marketing I think marketing my wife is in marketing my wife is the most honest person I know so the idea and that the artist can work with the marketing department I think they are the best allies so far now yeah nope you know I have on this rundown I think they all have a very good dynamic too yeah yeah you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't oh you're kidding me why why by thisbin yeah I went to Tufts, yeah. My name's I, so nice to meet you all. Yes. I had no idea that you were here, so I said yeah. Yes. I've heard about you for a long time. Absolutely nice to meet you all. I really like the backdrop. It's like so fun. So, group one. You all actually assigned someone to report. We did. There you are. So, as is the case, the conversation was more like a cloud than a diagram. So, I'll just list some things off and see where it goes. We started with the question about assumptions about theater, but connected it to the cross-pollination question of helping bring audiences to other organizations, as well as tying those two together with who's not in the room because they both affect who's not in the room. A lot of talk about rebranding theater as a whole came up, particularly to this new crowd of Twitter-based folks who want something cool, sexy, relevant. How do we make that clear? How do we rebrand, especially in the face of formality as a preconception of theater that might turn others off, or that might turn that hit value off? But then we also talked about formality as a value in other cases, so that the question of theater as a monoculture came up because we're obviously trying to talk about theater as a single thing when really we're saying some theaters are formal, some theaters be justice community, that kind of thing. And then also bringing awareness about the fact that we were talking in a very corporate language, which happens when you're talking about marketing. And then these are some notes about terminology that theater can be viewed as a building, theater can be viewed as an art in the building. Somebody commented that theater is an intergenerational experience, theater is magical, and these terms we also discovered are very subjective, so even if we identify what theater is, that in itself becomes something that we can talk about further. For cross-pollination, I think we talked about getting to know our specific communities, or our specific theater companies, because we are so diverse in what we accomplish or attempt to accomplish, as well as knowing what each other is doing, so that we can then send other people to other theater companies with a full knowledge of this is the kind of work they are doing, or the kind of works they do. And a quote that I just wrote down was, rising water raises all ships. Communication to the audience, we wrestled a lot with what was marketing, and does marketing feel disingenuous, is marketing a relationship, and talking about how one of the strongest forms of marketing is connecting an artist or a personal experience to our potential audiences. What words do we send out to our audiences to prompt them to think about what we're doing? We talked about the analogy to sports, and how even the analogy there kind of breaks down because in sports some of the fans are really die-hard fans of one team, and in theater we're trying to talk about the fact that we are multiple teams and we're not really competing in a sense, but there are also newer sports fans who aren't necessarily going to have a lead to just one team either, and they might just kind of go from here to there and similarly might experience theater companies based on, oh, they're doing this show or that show versus a single theater company being the appeal. We talked about, we realized that the conversation was focusing on first time theater doors a lot and we should also be thinking about getting people to return after that first experience, talking about the good experience versus the good show and valuing the good experience over the good show. We talked about not vilifying rich old people because somebody very excuse me stated Some of us are getting old. Right. Somebody is doing, we stated that we aspire to become rich old people. We talked about the comparison to, a comparison to Tiffany's and at first it started as a conversation of how we offer something maybe more emotionally an experience whereas Tiffany's you get a ring, but on the same token Tiffany's has its value because it offers an artisanal experience and then we start talking about coffee and how there's an artisanal experience about coffee as well and this is, I think that's another conversation as far as there are some people who don't want artisanal things and actually back away from the artisanal things so that's a whole other conversation. And we talked about access and how money and location, we didn't really delve into this, but money and location are also factored. Wow. Okay. Let's move it through so we get to all four groups. So two, what's the best way to summarize our, do you want me to just do it? Yeah, I got some, we didn't make it too much past really talking about, you know, emerging new audiences and how to do it and how to cross pollinate. So a lot of it was focused around that. There is talk on the idea Fool's Fury does this kind of ensemble-based consortium where they and others and any other consortium. Yeah, exactly. So you were speaking about that and how that's a way to kind of bring people at the very beginning as artists and that brings your audiences closely up because you're sharing people or making and bringing during a lot of connections there. We talked a little bit about what happened in the big list and how that's, you know, something that's going to be used again. The idea that gold star is bringing in people in a very specific way. We talked about how that tool is used and the people it's bringing in and there's other ways to reach them. And a lot of it just generally talking about the kind of culture of theater, how to make theater cool, how to make it trendy, how to make it like food in which it has its own kind of connotations that people, you know, do when they come to the Bay Area, they want to experience the Bay Area theater just like you have in Chicago and New York scenes like that. And then we got into a bit of differences between the scenes being it's, you know, because we have all these, a lot of smaller theaters doing a lot of stuff and the diversity of the work is so great. How do we capitalize on that diversity rather than let that work against it? How does somebody, a first time theater going to Bay Area, see a show at a radically different theater and not take that to be the one thing the theater means as an art? And I think that is kind of a main point of ours that was interesting. Not to be, not to have people who don't know the depth of the art be stuck in one idea of what it can be when you bring in new audiences. How do we create community where we are and let that expand the art? Yeah, we talked about branding and how do we, you know, work on the branding of San Francisco Theater. And there's a good point made about the economic reality of all of us taking so much time in order to produce the work that how do we balance actually being able to, you know, balance that challenge with actually being able to work on the side that is expanding, you know, the definitions of expanding the audience in the theater. Things like that, those are vague and not necessarily well clarified that anybody in my group want to expand on those footnotes. That should have been me. Yeah, okay. The only one who was signed was you. I didn't just sign, I just said... I said those maybe on some people's individual comments, but... I'm sure, why don't you let them do it? Well, I would say don't. Okay, on the spot here. We all reintroduced ourselves. That was important. We focused on two things. I think the sports analogy came up again. The sports analogy came up with the what makes a bear very unique came up. We centered around the notion of trying to capture the... being a part of the economic engine that's driving this area and the privilege, but theater feeling sort of like the right-handed stepchild, still outside that. People did ask the question, you know, what is theater now? Why is part of theater sort of the general brand of theater? Why is that a little more old-fashioned? A little more traditional feeling? What are people doing in their individual institutions, large or small, to push away from that old feeling? Talk about this pressure to make theater either more bite-sized and accessible in observance of what, you know, what digital media is capable of now. But we also talked about growth on the other end, time-sensitive performance, the five-hour play, the ten-hour play, the 24-hour festival. We have a lot of really passionate statements on engagement. We've had a few good ones about words that people don't want to hear anymore or words that they hate. You have to share a little bit. Generative. It was a word that was called out with some fury. I think that there was a lot of frustration around the idea of the audience's sense of obligation, or if you were good for you and you're committed to us. That sense of, what are we telling the audience that they are supposed to do when we get here? And another thing that cost a lot, I'm sorry. No, don't keep going. I tend to get really worried and excited. Another thing that cost a lot of passion at the very end was the idea of, someone made a point that we do so much as artists to create the thing, but we only let the audience see this part of the art. And what if we, I wrote down, what are we already doing that's extraordinary that we can invite people to along the art and get us to the production itself? Anything else from you, sir? Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about whether you can truly have the broad appeal that you wish for or whether you just got to pick your niche and stick with it. Will you really get 15-year-olds next to 25-year-olds next to 75-year-olds, or are you just going to have to go for 35 to 45 is a very specific thing? What keeps your institution alive? What can you really do? Does anyone else in the group 3 have to feel like they're being passed over like the thing that they're really regretting their acts about? Well, I'll say this, at the end of the group, I had like five minutes of you just saying, ah, we didn't get to talk about engaging non-white audiences. And the notion of ambassadorship that occurs when a non-white theater artist is in a cast or is a playwright or a director or a artistic director, and the pressure that those artists feel to either successfully or unsuccessfully serve as ambassadors for their theater to the group that they are believed to represent. Okay, in groups 4, who wants to report? Will it? I will record as I check notes. One of the first questions was why would an audience go to the theater is a very different question from why do we want them to want to go? And there are very different answers. A lot of audiences want to go just because the storytelling is great. But we want them to want to get lessons on empathy and all of these great things. And there was a comparison to movies about how theater is different because in movies you can want to have the experience to all to yourself, but in theater nobody wants to have theater to themselves that what theater is cannot be replicated outside the auditorium. And there's... Are we responsible as artists to create both the entertainment and the profound experience, the bigger idea? Is there something wrong with going to the theater just to appreciate its beauty, the set design, a good performance? One of our presenters or one of our participants presents only to children and anything that that artist presents is new because they're children. Empathy isn't why they're coming in the door. Another person said, well we have to define what we mean by enjoyment. Sometimes for some people knowing all that dramaturgical material is what their enjoyment is but for others just getting the entertainment is what their enjoyment is. So then nobody wants to... How big and wide is our range of responsibilities and are we... Is it wrong to ask all theaters to do every single responsibility to preserve the canon, to expand the canon, to expand audiences, our obligations to artists and that we often all feel all those obligations but they're driven by multiple agendas and do we have... It's making a difference between our obligation as a field and our obligation as individuals and maybe everybody feeling all those obligations that moves us toward homogeneity. This perspective of what theater is is different from what practitioners is but that's great because then it's exciting to engage them and we can have a discussion about that instead of it being flat and not talked about. This was a great question. At what point did we decide that the audience should enjoy and have to be the guinea pig before the work even gets cooked? Why should they enjoy that? A question about munits. We are aware of when work is new but does the audience know that work is... This is a world premiere that has been done three times. Do they care and should they care? We talked about how this whole conversation dates back to outrageous fortune and maybe what we're doing now is trying to address both the issues artists have with theaters and the issues audiences have and maybe trying to answer them at the same time. We're combining those questions. Regarding one of the last questions about artists being involved in the process some artists are great communicators and others are terrible. Artists in a survey may all say they can help and really want to but would they actually be good at it? One excellent line was here's your Twitter account, artists go for it. Is that a good way to do it? In this increasingly transparent world however it's incumbent upon us to be more open as theater companies and so we'd be foolish at least not to ask the artist if they want to be involved. And so one person shared this line as what a theater does is bring the audience. That's what they do. They bring the audience which sounds both banal and quite profound. There's a tension between theaters who feel that artists have this strong opinion about how their shows might be could be marketed but it's not always wise but the artists feel like those theaters are saying they can't do my work because they feel like they know their audiences but it's my work and I know it will succeed. Those conversations someone felt it would be better we all need to start from the place of bringing our best selves to the table meaning we need to assume that we're all here to serve the work and the organization and that a lot of the time those conversations feel like they're starting from a hostile place. So controversial statistic from Berkeley Rep because it's very specific single ticket buyers have four to six theater experiences per year their subscribers have 12 and that's at any theater not just Berkeley Rep. So for them that was a huge like a paradigm shift in the way they shared or did not share their lists of ticket buyers. And so when there are these numbers when someone is only seeing four to six shows per year do you have an obligation to send audiences to other theaters and why would you send them if you know it isn't going to be good? And so a great response was about her at The Magic and New Conservatory and how maybe one reason that you would send them is that you can in exposing your audiences to more adventurous programming elsewhere you can prepare them to experience that more adventurous programming at your theater as well. Another issue though is people who only go to mostly or solely to one theater and an entire year are more likely to give more to that theater than people who go to many different theaters and might spread their philanthropy accordingly. So that is yet another incentive to perhaps not send audiences elsewhere but then there was the great point that can't it be a growing pool of the number of shows you see per year is it stuck in four to six shows if an audience member sees enough shows that are really good in those four to six shows won't that be adding and it's not her untilistic in other words. And especially with shows like Wicked and Mormon for the Book of Mormon in that case it's not oh I'm going to see this show instead of that show that will add to the total number. And then the question was posed is there a way for theaters to raise money like Obama instead of like Romney and the universal response was none of us have enough people to raise money like Obama. Oh okay. Communities of taste there's this idea that every person has multiple kind of taste circles taste communities like I like bicycling but also theater but also cooking gumbo so is there a correlation between if there's that correlation how do we find the gumbo cooking people and make them also become theater people. So So here's the next steps bear in mind that one of the things that we really want to do is figure out what we want to be asking audiences more and we heard some stuff just now about it's really interesting that last one to me about if I go to more stuff what is that how does that really does that really impact on how I feel about the home base place can I have a first and foremost here but when we get around to asking these questions and we're going to work with Alan to figure out what form that takes we're going to need your help somebody said in Washington well what you really need to do is come back and ask our audience is this and we're like yeah right you know that kind of money we don't have so we're going to need we're going to be reaching back out to you when the time comes about continuing a conversation if you're willing with some of your audiences in some way that's really easy this is not about asking everybody in the room to do more work this is just about watching this Karen it's all more work it's not about more work but it's just about trying to get to those folks and trying to have conversations in five or six different places so part of what we're going to do now is tease out what we're hearing about what people want what we need to know more about but as you think about what you the idea is that this you go away just like we hope they leave the theater that we go away and just keep messing around a little bit with this issue there's a lot that has come up about I think we want to have more conversations with marketing directors we had a marketing director in our group who was wonderful and outed him or herself as a marketing director which felt brave and led to some interesting conversations about I'm joking a little bit but led to some interesting conversations about is it about the play, is it about the place who's the person, how do I want them so we need to get some of them in the room because think about Zani's research where the theaters felt pretty good about the way their marketing directors were doing their work the work that they're doing and the playwrights didn't feel so good about that and so I think is that a conversational problem or is that a so those are things we're going to come back about we have set up or we will be setting up we have set up a place on our website at TDF we will be emailing you the link that's the right term right we will be emailing you the link to really continue the conversation so we'll begin we're inviting people to just keep having the conversation about you know it isn't about it isn't a conversation just about the point of what do we think about when we think about theaters really about what do we need to be communicating when we think about theater in order to ensure that there are audiences for all of the different kinds of work that we do going forward is that fair right and I just want to it came up several times this afternoon and I just I think it bears repeating that there isn't a right answer right and much less do we already know it there's not going to be one thing that we derive from this Eureka this is the the way that we will now announce to everyone in December when we get to Boston but how can we suss out and understand more deeply multiple different ways of bringing in audiences of attaching of connecting audiences and artists and the relationship that they have with each other and with their theater company and I think it is more about these multiple sort of ways and bright spots and understanding those better and then each of you being able to understand in your own work in your own theater company in your own writing and theater making and maybe we all come out of this with an enriched understanding of the diverse of ways of doing this not being able to boil this down to this is the thing now we discovered it this is really helpful I mean this is a feature dish as it works so thank you very much thank you Torm thank you all you want to they'll go we'll send you the link so thank you thanks