 a perfection manager of 10,000 Things Theatre Company. And so what that means in our tiny company is I'm, I stage manage the shows and I go on tours and I'm the community partner. So that's kind of my big umbrella of what I do. And so just to start out, I have too much time and like we could spend hours on just like the details of like exactly like the steps to find a partner and I don't have them nailed down by any sense but here's my, here's my ideal of what's up around, of how I approach sites and think about finding partners and we'll just kind of like, so first I'm gonna go through this and then we'll get to the point. So for 10,000 Things, you'll see it as we get started and then a lot of words will just be written right away. And then later you can be like, what was that? I wanted to go there and slip this out or you can be like, I don't have that to take right away. Just to start out with like some of the places that we bring shows to as our partners because that's how I do it. They are like Michelle said, you know when they're not there, you're missing a character. So our partners are a huge part of what we do and we can be really great theater in the round but we don't have eyes to share that with. It doesn't matter too much. So some of the general work that I do breaks down my like exponential spreadsheets of who we have and who we go to. Actually facilities, community centers and churches and that can be, that's a really wide one. So the neighborhood community centers can be immigration, like immigration community centers, progressive churches for a lot of great, multiple denominations, churches, synagogues, whatever it is, welcoming to the story. Education centers. And generally we think of that as adult education centers or alternative like high school. The way we kind of frame what we do is our preferred audience is fortunate enough because we are specifically not a theater company. And so I do when I approach partners I would specifically say we're not a children's theater company. Let's find the daycare company. Maybe we have a little money here, but I'll get there. And then treatment facilities. So we have centers. After I wrote this and printed out, I was like, hey, wait a second. It says warning could be a highly medicated population. That's not a printed out population. It's just important for you to know when you're booking a tour to tell your actors if you're going to a facility that's potential for the audience to be highly medicated and they're just not gonna respond to the same. That doesn't mean that a whole lot of things are happening inside of their bodies. You just might not see it and that can be a little join. And then the senior moving facilities. So sites that 10,000 things would love to reach. You have a way, if you have a magic way, I'd love to learn it. We'd really love to figure out how to get into like union halls and the FVUs and really that blue collar place. And the audience is that every theater has a really hard time reaching that. We have 27 to 42 or so. Those are completely random numbers. But that like family time, when you don't have any money and you don't have any time. How do we reach those people and make an exciting time? So that's something we're trying to do here. And then we're also more rural communities. Here in Minnesota, we domically we're in the metro area. We do make trips, what we call greater outstain Minnesota. But I would love to, if you have any insight on how to really effectively reach more rural communities in a larger capacity. So that's what I want. And then I think the rest of this is, feel free to read through it. If we touch on these questions in the session, that's awesome. But just take this with, I have it in a document so I can share it too. But I just want to start, the first section I really actually want to talk about. So things to look for in our partner site. But I think they're really important for the most effective partnerships. And how you were talking with the elementary people that we walked out with, right, what happens sometimes? You know, like you have an immunity and you're like, I want to go here. I want to be in this neighborhood. I'm the only partner in our town. But it's an end to that community that happens. It happens. And I love what Daniel was saying too, about that beautiful community in the men's treatment house, which was a house, so you're performing in a living room, right? For many theaters, that might actually not be an option because it's funding. You have to have X number of people in the room in order to make it possible. But I try my best. Like if there's a community that I know or just would love it, and there's only going to be 20 people, I'd go many ways. And then what we tried to do on the other end is open that up to a few members of the general community to come to so we can kind of reach our like 40 goal. But the things that you're really looking for in a partner is a dedicated staff. And David was saying that of true north, you know, like you have this dedicated staff, and they're great, they're great, they're great. And then the week before the show, they kind of jump off the planet. Totally possible. The thing that I try to remind myself over and over as I'm constantly trying to communicate with a million people is that this programming that we're doing is extra to whatever the rest of their life is, their work life, their personal life, all of that. So I do my best to be the return, to not expect people to come home. But in saying that, you really do want to find the most dedicated staff that you can, people that are really gonna be your active allies in securing spaces and audiences. Here with 10,000 Things, because we're so small, I think I do my best, but I don't, because I'm stage managing the show as well, I can't be as active in making those partnerships super, super personal, because I'm in the HRSA room in HRSA, making phone calls and things like that. So you kind of navigate, I'm sure some of you have similar staffs, and you understand that. But, so dedicated staffs, number one. And then, number two, is a built and easily accessible population. And this, it's kind of a no-brainer with correction facilities, because they're there, the captive audience donor. But some other audiences that seem like they would be really great partners, would be like your local public high school. It could actually be a great partner, but A number one for us that we found is that we always try and make sure that the people in our audiences choose to be there, because you're just gonna have a lot more fun, and they're gonna get a lot more out of the two. So, if you do partner with, like say a local high school, that is just the local public high school versus an alternative center or something like that, really be active in asking them to make the audience like a choice participatory. When it's mandatory, it's difficult for everybody, and especially your actors, and we wanna take care of them. And then the, actually the third thing I look for, which maybe doesn't seem right, but the third thing I look for is the space. So, yeah. It's always great if you can build a lot of people, but if you have a community and the funds to reach that community and it's all space, go for it, try it. It might be one of those excruciating stories but we're gonna try. But that being said, like a gymnasium space, and be creative when you're thinking about spaces too. So, sometimes you walk in and like, this is a lot of space, but there's a lot of stuff in it. Talk with the staffs to see if there's something where that stuff can go for a few hours. Maybe, maybe you guys can come in and help move that stuff, move that stuff back and make it all possible. So, that's just super quick. Yeah. The fourth one that I've kind of started working on my head is a sense from the organization of, we're not, a sense of connection between us bringing this play in and how it might advance their organizational mission. So, that's been really helpful for me in going to these places with a sense of being a guest rather than a sense of bringing you brilliance. But here's how we're connecting to what you guys are already. And I find that has been, that's really been helpful in kind of getting that sophisticated staff member and somebody who's really excited about being there. So, I think we can start with this. It's going to help you rather than just. Yeah, yeah, I try and shy away from when approaching a community, I, and I've done it in the past and it always kind of feels a little bit weird to try not to think of what we do as a gift. I mean, for our free performances, they really are, we're able to have funding and support to make them free to the communities that we're going to. But it's really an exchange, I think. When we talked about it this morning, we get so much from these audiences and these communities. Yes, we're bringing you a show and yeah, it's pretty expensive and yes, we hope that you follow through and bring audiences and stuff, but what we get from you is incredibly valuable too. So, thinking about it as a partnership and approaching that in a way to find that true connection is really great. Excellent, so I'm just going to kind of dive in a little bit with some, some, it sticks to about 10,000 things, which is really exciting. So we, this is all we do. We just tour like this. We do three performances a year between six and seven weeks each performance. So that's around, somewhere between depending on weeks, around 98 performances, half of which are free. So that means I have 50 partners that I need to reach every year. Last year, I, 38 performances, so there's 53 shows and we reached 38 separate partners. So that means there's a couple of facilities that we go to for every show, a couple of correctional facilities and then a couple of community hubs that we've started. So we go to those all three shows a year and then I would say that about a third of the performances are new partners every time. So that's something I want to talk about too. Finding new partners is something I am continuing to do. I do have a list of about 50 partners that I reach at least every other year and then another like list of six years of potential that I try and tap into as much as possible and then a whole big old list of people that we've tried and have a great deal. So it really is a lot about trial and error but you're looking for those connections that really work. So in that, thank you for starting that, David. I'd love to jump back and say for those of you that have been doing this for a while, like how have you found some of your most successful long-term partners? I'll start, yeah? Since we, I'm Stephanie from the public and the mobile unit has been going for seven years and they're strong now and I think over the years, I think this is maybe more, I don't know if this is more applicable to like institutions that don't just do this or not but a strategy has kind of emerged and has been really helpful in that our partnerships absolutely exist on a hyper-local level but they also exist on a municipal level, on a state level and in case of our federal prisons on a federal level. So NYC Parks, which is the municipal orange that sort of oversees all of the outdoor parks and the rec centers, has been our most sort of steadfast partner throughout the seven years and what we've been able to do in working without the city level in New York is really show up to NYC Parks and say, how can the public theater in general that specifically this program, the mobile unit, how can we be of service to you? Where do you need us to go? So whereas we started initially being like, well, the public wants to go to Washington Heights or the public wants to go to the Bronx, we finally got it together and said, dear New York, where do you need us to go? And the answer was super surprising. So I have been, this is just like a quick anecdote to illustrate the sometimes the difference between what we think they need and what they actually need. I've been really anxious about going to our Harlem community center and opening it up to the public. Like we used to sort of lock down our community performances and our marketing partners. Like, can we tell our audiences we need not because they don't want to go colonize Harlem or the Bronx or or or. And that was my assumption. When I actually talked to the parks department, they said, we need you to go to Washington Heights and to Harlem and to the Bronx and we need you to shine the biggest light possible on these community centers because people don't know they're there. We need you to transform the way the community centers are being used so that people think that it's more than just for basketball. And we need to increase foot traffic inside of those community centers. And we're so, so we immediately, like, I love the Park Center, our community department to do their best. And that was a hugely transformative moment inside of the partnership with the Parks Department. And so now we, you know, we go over and over and over to the same parks sites and our building audiences, you know, twice and sometimes three times a year, but that kind of like strata, but working at different strata inside of the city at with the Parks Department and the Center Manager to say, wait, what is the best time and what items do you want to reach has been the magic combination. So we're sort of taking that model and applying it to the library systems within New York City and public housing systems within New York City. So just very broadly speaking, that is a strategy that's worked really well. Have you had performances in the libraries? And have they been successful? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, you want to talk a little bit about Queens? Because we do two library performances for the first is in Manhattan at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library in a very, like, closed sort of like cafe moment. After hours, after hours. Yeah, so we, there's three branches of the library in New York City depending on the borough. So Queens has its own system, Brooklyn has its own system and Manhattan has the same system as the Bronx and Staten Island. So we had gone to Staten Manhattan, the Performing Arts Library in a very, you know, closed room after hours. They had infrastructure to run their own RSVP list on an event break, RSVP and we have been going for a couple years. So we got into Queens and we were talking to their programming people and they were like, oh, you have to go to the Central Branch, you have to go to the Central Branch in Jamaica. We don't have, we've never had a theater there, we've only had music. And the atrium, it's like, okay, the atrium, middle of the day, that's going to be different for us. And I made the mistake of not doing the site visit at the time we would perform. Because during the day, there isn't, and there isn't any programming in the libraries. The foot traffic is very low. If there's a school group, they're going to a different part, it was very quiet. It seemed what I thought perfect to start. Always knowing there are things that I don't know. And so we got there, this was like two weeks ago, it seems like a lifetime ago, around 6 p.m., that's when they really wanted us to start. That's when their programming starts. They only have a certain amount of hours before they have to kick in over time. So we had to be out of the room by like, I think, nine o'clock, something like that, so we had to start at six. And then we got there, and this place was completely full of life. And it almost felt as if we were displacing stuff that was going on. With checkers in the corner, we had new stuff happening. There was so much traffic in this central place, which for them was like, duh, great, we're going to get an audience. And for us, it was like, is this the right time for us to actually be in this, and we're still questioning, asking that question. It was successful, the audiences were great. It was great for them to go to their local library and see the winter skill. But it was just a very interesting moment of like, yes, success in so many ways, but there are also questions we need to keep asking. I love, is their potential to perform after hours over that few? And yeah, I'm just kind of continuing to ask the questions of, all right, what are we going to do for next time, I think? That brings up a really good, on your little sheet you'll see later, if we look at it. One of the things that we look for is the assembled audience, right? It's always easiest to come in and do a show when there's already a built-in audience, but also asking yourself, what am I displacing by being here? Because sometimes that can be a really important thing. So in a lot of our facilities, we feel like, oh, there's A groups or NA groups, come to the performance for them. Yes, and that's a really clear, very real time for those people, and they are going to those meetings because they need to talk to one another in a private setting, and they need that time to put together, that's why they're there, that's why they're choosing to be there. So that's always been like, this is a great idea, but I don't know if it's actually ever been successful to bring those people in there, because that's their time that they need, and they're not there to see the other, they're there to talk about what they need to talk about. So it's a really great thing to ask yourself and think about, because at the same time, if you go and you do a show on a little day and it's dead, then you don't have that. So having the earner that will work with you and figure out what the best time is is awesome. And we have not done them with public housing and various non-profits. We've looked at things that way and different common bond is a public housing non-profit in Twin Cities, so we've connected with them at various sites, but I love the idea of going to recreation centers and figuring out what that is. Great. Does anybody else have anything to share about some successful partnerships that they've had? I don't know that maybe, but we're talking about accessing rural, redder parts of the area in Northern Indiana. So we're in a bit of a democratic fashion in South Bend, but the outline's very concerning. And what we found when we're touring is when you're first visiting a community, because then, I mean, we don't have a centralized municipal government that we're working with. We have all these towns and villages, so it gets more and more complicated, is find us usually an arts series in the summertime. And for that first visit to that community, get yourself in between this country rock concert and this high school play or something, this high school musical they do, but on that stage, that that audience feels safe coming to, develop the relationship then, because you have come to their front door and you've entered their space, then start developing those relationships with the rec centers, the community centers, those people in that community, so they feel like, oh, that donating thing is coming back to town. I'll go to that weird theater place that I don't normally go to, where that weird community center or whatever, it takes with the intimidation factor. I was gonna say when I first started working on an art tour, one of the things that I did was to go around to a lot of different communities that have, they have monthly meetings with service providers from different social services and resources that, and I started off then just doing some listening in those areas and it should be to pretty much every corner of San Diego that you could imagine. And then over time relationships, you started seeing the same people in different parts of town and then they started getting curious about why it was even there. So then that helped open up the door, but being there and being present as often and as regularly as it could, whether I was there to talk about a show or an opportunity or just listening to hear what's really going on in that community. This year with art tour, one of the things that we did, because of San Diego, the arts funding was on the shopping block big time. We just passed spring and so, we've already had sort of a general idea of what happened in San Diego, you know? And now we're kind of like, okay, we really need to be everywhere in San Diego because when this conversation comes back up, it's going to come back up again in the next year, we need to really find ourselves in every district in some way, shape or form. So it's absolutely a little bit of a layer of pressure, but it's also been a little bit easier for me to focus in now on where we go to and to really find the pockets that are really needed in a specific area of town. So that when we're sitting down with those council people, explains them why they should be supporting us, we have something, you say we're theater, we're heroes, we're partners, we're partners in that partner. Some of my sites are local partners. So I'm kind of just able to tell you to be the partner who is the venue, who's housing a show, then I may have two or three other partners who are also bringing people in to come and see that show. So it's no longer just a partner and us who's our host for the location and community, but they are now also opening up their doors to a larger community. So we're talking to the library system, library system, city of Cali for us has become really fantastic partners. And we go to the programs in addition to our tours. So that's really enabled us to, and they have built in mechanism marketing-wise. So you don't have to, you don't have to do as much. Sometimes however, I find that there's a lot of overlap between our regular audience and libraries. So sometimes that's why those other partners are still important. So I'm still bringing in other people who may or may not work out it, or we don't really really go to the library or whatever. So it really is a little bit of a multi-layered approach in many ways, depending on where we're going. RecCenters will be trying to work with us last year. And I was like, until we get into the world that you guys are, where we're actually up as a team at the point with the RecCenters and the city of San Diego, if you know, I'm dealing with the guy whose job it is and he doesn't really care. So it brings it back to finding dedicated staff and people that we have. And I think that this is something that really matters to the American community. Our second, we had Delbert Shakespeare's second year of our tour this year. One of our partners was a ministry of care which has multiple operations around the city in different types of situations. It helps one of the directors as the husband of our board president that they very much bought into what we were doing. So when we went to do the show at the senior center that they operated at the senior center, they were also able to bring in some people from the men's shelter. They operate separately. And the Nades Clinic that they operate separately came in and we just happened to bring a group of from our children's art center. Have one of our shows, the closest ones, we love it. So in a moment that lives in infamy, you've been asked to roll with it, the opposite of infamy. In a moment that lives in the great memory of our actors when our track police got up to do this having just a man's speech as she realized these seven ages of men were present in the room. And so for each speech, she went out to some of the audits and brought them up. A child, a young boy, they went all the way up to the end and was able to illustrate this speech in a way the actors should still talk about that we'll never see that speech done that way again. I think what it really solidified us aside from having a good partner stay was exactly what you were saying, suddenly we're interested, what if we help curate some of these experiences a little bit by engaging multiple partners in a space, which we hadn't done before, we didn't go into one of the other, and that fits so interesting, fits how the audience is different. But are there opportunities to bring the community together even within those communities more to all experience the play? And is it richer if there's a diversity of experience? So that's our thinking capture next year is, yeah, you have your venue partner and is that venue partner open and is it easily accessible for some people and all the parts of the community coming in? For both of you I'd love to hear more about the non-venue partner in my crew. Were they, I don't know if any of you have any. Yeah, you know, kind of late actually, I came home and started elementary school. What I had learned for doing show at elementary school was, we had done it before and the partnership was there, was with the community service organization who was part of the federal funded program around a group of schools. So we had gone to this other school and partnered with the middle school and the elementary school first year, but it was being really organized by the service provider organization. So that rescue really worked well. This year they've expanded to some of the other schools to fill the audience, to give more people that are part of this program access to see our show so it would mean just the audience just being from the one school. With Camp Hamilton, I didn't have that, it was just us trying to find a venue on the panel that didn't work, right? So we have not come back there until we figure out what that relationship can look like because it will have to be probably several partnerships from different facets of the military that's there. The rest of it has worked, we're both full partners has been, we in Lemon Grove, we go to a Lemon Grove Academy which happens to be right next door to the Lemon Grove County Library and then we have a really great influencer and advocacy through the Lemon Grove Historical Society. So that's our, the great triumvirate of, for that program is because I'm kind of getting the older retired, generally white person from the Historical Society, but who's really heavily invested in seeing the youth in that community, very, very diverse and their families get to come in and then it was the backbone of having the library which now is also an additional mechanism to help advertise and get the word out to the larger community. So it's those three things are a really happy marriage group for that site. Now, I will also say that this year we're putting a amazing turnout at this location, but that was because in part because I find out later that one of the teachers of the school decided to offer extra credit. All of a sudden, I got a lot of money, this is the first time we've been here, I've never seen this many people show up, rumor, rumor later on, oh, okay, they got extra credit, so now I go back to that part and be like, maybe don't do that. You know, let's really work on creating an authentic experience in relationship with the kids and the parents so that they're coming together as a family and I'm not getting half a seventh grade not as a part of my audience, but in any direction, the mayor of Lemon Grove is really highly interested now in watching what we're doing, so there's a lot of other layers that have really happened because we went into that community working with more than one partner. So we're getting much wider attention, people are interested in different ways and have now are just really excited it's insane like the kids come in and they're like, what did you order for food for us this time? Please be able to advance sometimes and so, you know, like, well, this time is better than last time, you better drink this time, I mean, they will tell you, so it's been really cool to see that. From the perspective of a very, very small organization, our organization was founded by five people who are all actors by training and by trade and we've built this together and we're administrators and artists and always, and thus far have been administrators and artists at the same time during shows, so shows that I've performed and I've also been our venue scout and coordinator and organized several contours, which is a really tremendous challenge but also a really tremendous way to build partnerships because I also have tried really hard to make sure I got community meetings, if there's a client meeting at a shelter, if there's a residence meeting at a senior room facility where we often perform to show up, introduce myself and welcome them both as someone who's organizing and an artist who don't meet on the day. We really try to think of our, as I think everyone in this room does, our performances as both community events and artistic events and opportunities for as much human connection as possible so that before and after is so important when we're speaking to the audience and speaking to the people who work there so when we've come in advance and had base time, there's someone that was at the residence meeting and we can say, oh, Sylvia, we met and this was so tremendous and a lot of those have been our most successful partnerships and to bring any additional artists who are available, other cast members who could come as well, that gives us a strong impression on the staff too and then communication gets much better and suddenly a circle is moving in a really good, fluid way. We've also found that because we are a smaller organization, there are certain venues that aren't working for us as well, right now, community centers are really challenging, it's hard for us to impress upon them, the staff, in a way that we would like to, that we really need an audience to come. And we've also tried to work really strategically when we're at shelters and we're at assisted living facilities around things like meal times when we know a larger percentage of the population will be gathered, that provides certain challenges as well. Meal times push back start times for us a lot and we want to be respectful, so tremendous respectful of the people who are just trying to have their dinner and you're now standing in their space waiting to do a show. So that's something we're still navigating but those partnerships really, really helped us. I think that's important thing to go to on the level, so I've been with the company for 11 years and when I first started, the managing director, well, when, way back, Michelle did everything. And then the managing director wrote to the show, wrote to the tours and then I stuck around. So I'm like, hey, you can go to the tours because I was going on a tour so it made sense for me because I was the person, I was their goal too because they saw me and I was trying to go to the tours and maintain his relationships but then it becomes difficult when I'm not being connected but I'm also trying to run the show. So there's some like staff shifting and figuring it out. So as you're starting, it's a lot, be prepared. So in thinking about that too, I would suggest, Daniel from Baltimore Center Station, it's a slightly bigger institution but it's still just kind of him. He started his touring with 10 venues, which is a lot, like I would really encourage to kind of focus in and think a little bit smaller, get some footing under you so you can have some, like, success doesn't feel really good and then it's pretty well over. But it can be tricky as far as time and how many did you have? Well, I was going to say, the first year we did, we started with 12, 12 minutes and they were calling Michelle. I was like, yeah, we're doing, we're doing 12 and you, and then as we looked forward to it, then Michelle goes, you would have my blessing if you did less. And it was a lot, but for us, it was strategic and we, this product, how do you fund all this thing? We felt it was, we needed to kind of make a big initial splash of the rump work to say like, hey, we're doing this. We felt like we couldn't really do that but just saying, we're doing four shows and we felt like we needed to be a bigger presence to be able to say, we're doing this, funders come help us kind of thing. But it was certainly, it was a lot. I think also it's a chance to have a great, exhilarating moment. Oh, yeah. And if you do three of these, you might end up with three excursions. Oh, sure. And then that could be again. Quick question. I was wondering if anybody, I'm green, so I don't really know, I'm still like, hopefully, but I don't know. I'm wondering if somebody could speak on making sure that partnership is really too beneficial to both parties. I can't remember who over here said, no, you know how it does work, how advanced it is, you know the institute that you're partnering with, or the idea that you're working with, or that. I'm thinking specifically as it relates to funding. And we all know that productions are expensive. And, you know, we're fortunate if we have the funding to begin with, just to do the work. I have talked to folks on my board and they were like, oh, you should partner with this entity because they just got this big grant. They have money. But you know what to do, that really feels, that feels superficial and wrong on so many different levels, but at the same time, we do need the support in order to even engage in our partnership. So, I'm just trying to figure out how in the world do we make sure that this partnership is mutually beneficial in a really sincere and authentic way. Well, when we were first trying to figure out who we were in before, Laura, I started about a year ahead of time, I would just go around and meet people and you know, kind of give them the five-minute version of, you know, what this would be and what it would be like. And my first question to every person I went to is, does this sound interesting to you? And kind of why, you know, what would kind of, how would this be useful to you? And that was tremendously, just great information for me to get so that we could also then share that with our artists and our actors getting ready to get to do this. Because each, we thought of the different people who wanted us to come in for different reasons. Which was fascinating. The Psychiatric Center really just went in there because it was a way for their patients to have human engagement. Whereas the prison reentry program, what is there because a lot of their men had never been able to take their family to a place where they were excited. It was just really helpful to kind of learn, oh wow, there's so many different points of why people want this. Some of the money hauled, just to say that, I don't think we've ever gone to a place because we knew that they could pass. But some who have money like it so much to pass. So, I mean, sometimes it, you know, some of this was very intentional with the state, Psychiatric Center, they were able to give us a grant that worked out. One library over to this year just gave us a profit of all check on the way out. And the friends of the library said, our friends were so happy to have you here and they wanted to give you some money. So some of it's just kind of sort of, I just forgot to add words, but it hasn't been as substantial. What's the partnership that's not happened because of the money? What kind of money is following the, it's a possible result of the, of the, of the, of the money? Hi, I'm Millie from DCG. One thing that, and we give away a little time, because she's got us in these types of projects. One thing that's worked for a lot of organizations is to create a run around of understanding. And it doesn't have to be, you know, when you hear that it sounds like, I was going to be legally as if it's going to be a contract. It could be just a very simple mutual agreement because the thing that's going to make it work, this kind of work, or any kind of audience engagement with the development board is equitable partnerships. And there are very obvious power dynamics that we're going to be talking about a smaller organization and a larger organization. So it's going to be different for every purpose and different for every set of partners, but to have really clearly walking in what this is like and having to talk offline about any of that. Just jumping in on, just in terms of looking at partners, you know, and figuring out potentially the official, when we, when we first started, I wasn't there the first year, so I'm telling somebody else's story, but basically our producer, Eric Queen-Louis, went on the internet and started looking at things like people who do this work, you know. And he found the senior center in an African, productive African-American neighborhood who did line dancing. And he was like, hey, those people look like, I mean, it was kind of that simple. It was like, they look like they might be interested in something like this. And then he takes off the phone and he had a conversation. And now every year before the show starts, those ladies line dance. And this year, they pulled in the production team who was prepping for the show, and it has, and anybody who was willing to swear, was filled in with a beautiful blend of our community and their community, and seeing as all sort of this sort of a family of people and it's just the thing we do now. But you know, I think that that's sort of the thing, is I look at, what else do they do? What is their mission? Like literally just reading their website, and then having a conversation. Going to the library, what programs are they having? When we went to those, I mean, the libraries here, and we went out for the show, the libraries had gone and done a big, display of all of their Shakespeare books, and plays, and like you know, there was a little dry race for someone to take in our poster and redraw it on the whiteboard, get her. So, eventually, I mean, I think it's just, you start to figure out what really matters for discipline, what they're doing, and that's what you tell me, why was that? And it gave me heart too, so what we are dealing with right now is a long time partner, longer than I've been with the company, the Hennepin County Corrections, we haven't been able to get in there for a year, because somewhere, somewhere, somebody somewhere down behind the hierarchy decided that only programming that directly prevents recidivism will be done. That's it. I have not been, so I've been like, okay, so we'll go into your education, we'll try that, but then they can only get us 12 guys at a time, and then you have to do workshops and the show, so then there's only six guys. So, we're really trying to figure out how it is, so in that case, we're trying to figure out how we can improve, which we don't. I mean, we do, in a lot of ways, we build empathy, we tell stories, but how does community do the show reduce recidivism? I don't know, but we do know that we benefit that community, so kind of bear on how to do that. There's a lot of like, she has to be at the prison thing, but if we're not doing the workshops, it's fine for us to prove that point. We have a day after you. Really? Let's do it. Yeah, I'm so glad. Yeah. Oh, see, I can't understand that. We have a, well, I've been with 10,000 things for two years, so I'm really learning a lot as I move forward with the organization. One of the things that I'm really interested in seeing and understanding more about are some of the intangible connections that happen with our partners, and they're not so intangible, but we just don't talk about them as much. We talk a lot about the cross-pollination between our audiences and our artists, which is fantastic and really wonderful. But there's also this really great cross-pollination that happens with our patrons and our donors and our partners. So as Nancy said, in some of our partners that we perform for, we may allow 10 seats in our consumption of the amount of space that there is in the room for patrons or donors to be able to come and see that performance at a rehabilitation center or at a prison or so on. Nancy can speak more to, and Amy can speak more to what that algorithm is to make sure that the balance of the room doesn't tip into being another show for a wealthy audience. However, I'm really interested when I hear our patrons and donors and our artists talk with a really nuanced perspective about these partner organizations over time. And I'm interested to find out more about how often and if and when it happens that our donors become donors to our partner organizations or our patrons become vested in those partner organizations because over time they become interested and start to even care about those organizations as well as our work that's happening there. Yeah, and another thing that you can speak more to but we have various levels of giving to some of our dragons or both is 1,000. So then what we offer then is so your donation is sponsoring the show. So maybe take the community that I already have encountered that they wanna make sure is brought so that they feel more connected in the community too and that's another way that, but that's a different decision. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, one question about the green thing. I kind of tell how I was able to kind of solve the dilemma that we faced was that initially when we were first starting to produce shows we kept running into this wall of like the exchange was you can use our space but it's gonna cost you $300 an hour, you know. Instead of like, well, you've got a community. Can we bring you show your community? It was like, well, yeah, it's gonna cost you $300 an hour. I'm like, well, the problem is we can come in. You have no need to get your community here because you've got to check from us, you know. And then, you know, we come and we may not make that money back, you know because now we have to sell tickets to probably our friends, you know. And that had become an issue it was kind of hurting us until the way we found around it was at least in Pittsburgh every neighborhood has its own citizens council. And so I just started reaching out to these citizens councils. I kind of narrowed my focus to like a specific part of town and said, you know, we want to show you, you know, what's your calendar look like and how was this something you're interested in. And suddenly we got the interest and the community started getting excited to see us, you know, and so this year was our second year coming back to the community. And so they're like, oh, you were here last year and this is great, so I'm bringing my friends. And, you know, so that's been this really valuable partnership because then I can go to these community meetings and say, hey, next week we're gonna be doing the tempest in the park. So come, you know, come down and see us. And actually doing, you know, kind of getting outside of the idea of a tour like staying in that community for the duration of the run, rehearsing in that community, we saw, you know, the numbers got better for one year to the next and, you know, we're gonna be doing our Christmas show in the same community. So we'll see if that's, you know, we're gonna do a venue like how that's gonna work. But that was great. But I would love to hear, you know, how people kind of get over this, you know, what we call it in our company, we're walling it as, you know, you kind of rent the space and, you know, kind of do your best with it. So if anybody has insight on that, I'd love to hear it. I mean, I put in the same problem and at times I just hate it. Not because I wanted it, but because I know it's important for me to be there in my case. Yeah. So I've had to actually just say, okay. But then also, we actually had a different way of partnering organizations. I had another organization who was gonna get it to help me get the bodies there, they just didn't have the actual space, you know, to do it. So, and then that's what pushed me into thinking it was just, let's just pay it and then let's work with them, see, you know, how we can get it down or whatever. So, but I'm not gonna go back there because I did find out the way to get around it is that I have to go to the city council and go and talk about it and get them to vote, you know, against, you know, just to know if I had to weigh the fees. But that was gonna be a really big process and I didn't have the time at that point to go through the process. So, yeah, that's why I saw it that way. So these are relations like, think you were there for a money making purpose? I guess we've never, I guess so. Never have based it like, because we've always started by like, hey, the whole purpose of this program is to take the year that don't normally have it. Yeah. We'd like to share this, it's totally free for you. Yeah. And we've actually never had anybody ever go. I'm not sure. Pay 300 bucks for a space. Really, it kind of began like in the search phase like, where can we go? And, you know, an initial thought was like, there's all these old Catholic churches in Pittsburgh and they have these schools connected, all these schools are closing now. I'm like, well, you've got to have to build it. You know, wouldn't you like to have something in here? And then there was this whole process of like, well, if you wanna do this, this is gonna cost you this much. And, you know, so we did have some success but then a whole other issue of like, just working with religious organizations and coming into conflict. With our mission and we had to kind of move away from. But yeah, that was a lot of our initial searches going, okay, let's see if this community organization, this community center wants to host something like this partner with us and you get on the website and there's a whole application and pay the fee. That's like, ah. So like, it just becomes this kind of defeating thing where it's like you have a few instances where you're doing that and then when you're finding that's the wall you're hitting and you just have to go, okay, not here. Yeah, and taking back a little bit, I'm curious, so we've run into that as well. How we've kind of worked around it is, so let's say there's a community that I really wanna work with and really benefit from a particular show but they don't have the space. So then I ask that partner, okay, who were in your neighborhood? Would this community feel comfortable? A number one, comfortable going to? Where would they feel welcome? And then, so showing you that partner to approach that space. So the space knows that we're not there just to bring in any Joe Schwell. Like we are specifically wanting to work with your community and we have a population here and getting the space for free is kind of the only way it's gonna make it happen but we'd love to highlight your organization as well, meet your members, see how it can be mutually beneficial in that way as well. Everyone's from our, we still have to split the rent or something like that but usually not by the $1, we haven't run into that for a while but that's kind of my circumventing is to find the population and they don't have the space to work with them to find the space. Just to tip it, it's really like what you guys just know what you got here your first research was really finding the advocate in the community and not the venue first. First I'm kind of a partner and sometimes I'm thinking about the space with the venue but usually I would find the space through the partner and so the relationship to me is way more important than just finding the space. Jim, did you? I just relate to what you're saying. I'm bringing them really to the various stages as I'm even looking for organizations on the platform to start but I relate to the every space. I'm coming from a very small town, conservative town in California actually and I'm really trying to develop as a base there because it doesn't really exist. My biggest issue is getting anyone interested in just letting you use the space for the community. They all want to target me like I'm from Broadway. So I just relate to that as a big obstacle especially because I have very few advocates right now so I'm creating these connections but I find it also because I've been going through surrounding world communities on my accord just because I'm trying to figure out this puzzle in these mobile places. Space usage, they just charge crazy amounts of money and they really don't understand that idea of doing this for your community. And rehearsal space. Rehearsal challenge. Yeah, I use my dad's waiting room in his dental office. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think 16th Street is, I'm also created very new to this kind of work but what we've been finding is that the more clear the why is for the partnerships the more these problems just sort of are going to actually melt away. Like I just kind of wait for them to disappear. So like this year we did nine performances in non-traditional spaces and it was a little ambitious to teach them this different play. Oh, sorry about that again, you guys. But the partnerships, because we did that the partnerships were able to be really specific and thematically like it was, we want to tell this story and who do we think is going to really want this story and we're really able to like find partners who are excited about this project, this moment and this story that we're telling and then sometimes they would say I didn't usually charge this in non-traditional space and they'd say yeah, we don't have to mention that and then they would say okay and the problem would just go away and that doesn't always happen but I think when the why for the partnerships just really, really strong and clear and that's where it starts from. It starts from, so we have this play and we think that this story is really important for this moment. What do you think about it? And then they'll say well yeah, that's something. If the conversation starts from the play then sometimes the other obstacles they're just not there anymore. I have a question for, I was thinking about what it means to you know make it to be a good partner and the way that my mind immediately turns into that sort of reciprocity of like the exchange but it's still, whether it's tactically or sort of strategically, it's still feels like operational in nature. Even when they're, I guess I'm thinking about the idea of we have a play, like we sweet have chosen a play and I'll say to the public in the fact that we've only done Shakespeare I repeatedly hear our communities ask for more than Shakespeare and I'm not talking about like the old white thing. You know, this is the part where we continue to fail in not being accepted to or not even asking the question of what stories might you want to hear. And I'm curious if anybody in this circle has had experience with actually not starting with the play. Yeah, starting with community when they want to. Yeah, and we kind of do that in that we do all of the new work. So all of the new work that we choose comes out of what our tentacles in the community are telling us we need to do. So while we're not actually, I mean, there are people who take this to the extreme where there's like a holy process and they actually like really get the community to like tell you specifically which play they want and that's really cool. We haven't gone there yet but we definitely like the programmatic choices that we're making are coming directly from the community and then we're coming back to the community with an array of things that feel relevant because they came from there secretly. And just to keep getting off of that, I've done similar work where we started from asking, asking what do you need and the answer to what you need is not only the play which is really, I think, critical to this and just staying right from like maybe a theoretical framework that's useful is that one thing that I think is really helpful for the question you just asked was Michael Rowe talking about bringing things down into three specific things like studio practice, social practice and civic practice and civic practice being that question starting out with just asking the partner what do you need, social practice being a lot of what I think is talked about here which is the artists are in the studio working on what they work on and then they're trying to bring it out to a specific community group or a specific shared mutual purpose and the studio practice obviously being redeveloped and the studio has been presented in its traditional art setting. And I think that for a specific practice question point that you're looking at here, of the one you need, thinking about how to answer that question very organically and in a way that might be mundane you have to see yourself starting maybe sometimes from municipal points is really useful for that. Like I know a story that in the work they're not involved with, the city of Baltimore this is in the 70s, you know, the theater came to, which is the theater project called the theater project and started, came to the city of Baltimore and said, oh, great, we're in a theater partnership. What do you need? And they were thinking big themes of culture, power, violence, these big questions and the city of Baltimore came back and said, we have a big problem with rats. Wow, can you do something about that? And so, and he actually built this thing where they said, okay, and he started by listening and saying, what is this problem with rats and what would help? Right? Not what we'll do a play about rats, which is eventually actually what ended up happening, but he started out with what he needs. Okay, well, the problem is with the rats in Baltimore City is that sanitation, procedures, people are not taking out their trash. That's the problem. How can you solve that with art? Right? And then the question was, well, who takes out the trash? Who's our audience? That's the actual audience, right? Because that's the problem we're trying to solve. They figured out the kind of chore and then actually from the data, right? The kind of people who take out the trash while off in middle schoolers, that was the chore that was appropriate to that level. Right? No, seriously. And there are smart people in civic and urban and regional planning who are the people who have that in the data who actually know the type of people who take out the trash in middle schoolers. So from there, he thought about, he was like, okay, he developed this fun play that was like this crazy thing called the rap squad where it was like these detectives solving an adventure and they took it to middle schoolers in a tour and they ended up ending out with the students taking the rap pledge about how they would, you know, change their things. But it wasn't starting in that session. How can we bring some interesting great play about what we think about all the time to you? It was like, just what do you need? How do you start with the problem? And is there a part-based application that could help you solve that problem? So the question, has the rap come to that? Well, this is a long time. So this is like the place, it's in 1978. They did actually find an immediate impact because they did, is that go back to the urban and regional players to be able to continually measure that out. So I don't think rats are as much of a city problem as the most city thing there are. I don't know as it was back then. I think that, but I think that there's a lot of technology beside rats. I'll tell you about that. Not just specifically with our tour, but among the same thing that you do with the net, they can go to other programs that we have. We started a year ago, a community pilot marketing program essentially. And it came out of really that question because I really wanted to take the tour to the specific areas that today we'll host tonight, which is a very, very diverse piece of the Latinx population and then also a lot of refugees. And I knew this was an area, so it was just not leading your community at all. It's also an area that there's a lot of heavy philanthropy happening in, people trying to learn how to address the needs of the community. And I was not going to go in there waiting my wife's life here. And so instead, I heard about their annual David Depp Festival. And I went in and was like, hey, can we be part of this? And here's what I was thinking we could do. If you guys would be interested in it, but we'd love to create something for your event with you. So I'm going to create tools, but you guys are going to find a story as people. And we can find professional artists to actually do the work once it was created. And so we did that for the first time. It went off, it was pretty good. We could find individual little pieces that would form this part of their festival and their community. And then with that this year, again, the second year, showed up at the planning meeting and they said, hey, great, do you guys want to do this again? So the first year was me going, yes, yeah, I don't know me. But the second year, we wanted us to come back. And then they said, and here's what we'd like to do this time. So that was what was different. So this time, when I brought in Director Deviser to come in and we held workshops with the community and the community told shared stories, talked about the things they wanted to talk about and then he helped frame it in a presentation that is now, this year was a 25 minute pledge that was part of the day of the festival. And I also would say that I brought in a director who was like, I'm not going in to do this, right? I brought somebody in who has a very reference for mine to really connect. He was a native speaker and a fan speaker. He had created other work before that was not similar exactly, but that was the thinking. So I had to get out of my box a little bit and really go to the community and be like, what's interesting to you and do I have the tools to do that? And so instead of just coming in with a gun play or we want to create a play, based on what you told us, I invited them into the process to create the play. So we had people from that community who performed in it. It wasn't just, it was made by professional actors, but it wasn't just us coming in and saying, we're going to show it to you. Now, do you have those people yet to show up to my tour? No. But do I care? No. And they might. And they might someday because we have a relationship and now they are here to serve. You know, the other thing might be is I invited them to come to us, to our institution and show us how to put together a traditional day-to-day alter because you have to have on this part of the festival. And so, you know what I mean? Like, starting to create the reciprocity there. What matters to you, what matters to them is that all the people, the providers that showed up at that festival had a traditional alter. They didn't want people coming up with, you know, weird random things. They wanted people to know and understand and respect what the festival was about. And so that was the kind of reciprocity that you try to create over time. I think a really quick point. One thing I try not to do with talking to people outside of these funders or else is, so it's what you've been hitting on, is say this is audience development because I don't think it. I don't think the point of this is to create the next generation of people that have been coming into our theaters. The point of this is to create art that goes everywhere into the communities. The end point is what we're doing. It's not a means to an end to a future of what makes true. This, in the moment, is the most important thing. It could be iconic that people are exposed to art and you want to do that with this professional community. Yeah, and that's the important thing that I learned that might prove that they've been having to wake up to lately is we are not, like a lot of these places aren't devoid of all art. They just might not have theater. So respecting the fact that every community that you're coming into has art. It just might not look like our art. So I love that you asked them to come and share what they have because then it's a beautiful, beneficial. I did a little bit of a difference between, I'm going to call theater with faculty and theater with a lot of people. Everybody that's in Korea's theater or art in some way shape or form. It's just not what we can traditionally practice in our field. So going in and thinking that you're going to be committed to rocking the world is absolutely wrong. They're going to teach you things. They're going to show you things and change the way you think about theater. And it's the thing that we find in the tour, that we are changed, we are evolved just as much as we hope to help people, other people. And so always going into that mindset. You're not rocking the world, but adding to it though. So we don't have very much time. So I just want to spend, oh yes, okay. Oh yes, sorry. I just want to add as from an art producer who's brand spanking new to this methodology for myself and the theater that I've been here with People's Land in Pennsylvania, a value that we have that would hold, that would serve us well in this work is just the priority for long-term relationship and not entering into anything. Thinking we're just, you know, finding you as this one-time partner, you know, that it's really staying the course in anything we carve out for ourselves and making sure we are able to continue this on for years and you're in it for the long haul. And I think that will open the doors for your venue. Once, if you find yourself in the room with others who you're trying to convince you, you want to use your space and they're like, hey me. Then eventually, just by being around and doing the work, that will speak for itself and then those partners will come out and it would work. And also, as you can mention, some under-resourced communities who have, you know, foundations, looking at them and trying to help in all these different ways where it could be a lot of cooks in the kitchen trying to help the community or whatever, that by you committing to being up for the long-term and the long haul makes such a difference when you're genuinely in that invitation and when you're genuine in listening to kind of what are the needs and opportunities and who are the partners doing the work already that you can be enhancing and supporting rather than just saying, here to save the day, which you're absolutely not doing. So I'm really excited to kind of put to you some of our wheelhouse in this new way. So that's a really beautiful segment, our same way to a little bit of the opposite of where I was gonna go, but a beautiful thing to recap. So far we've been talking about what makes a successful partnership, but sometimes partnerships are not successful. And I think it's actually beneficial to talk about what happens when it's successful and then how to end that relationship, right? So the goal is always that this will continue, we'll keep coming back, we will maintain this, we will evolve as we keep going, but what happens when it's not super successful? And I'll start. So two examples for us, we were at a men's shelter. We showed up and Michelle was there and myself was the stage manager. They didn't want me, they didn't want to let me in. They didn't show up, but they didn't want to let me in because I had a woman, this was all male versus a rich of a third. They didn't want to let me in. And then like this little high school girl because we had 10 folks from outside came and there was a couple of girls that didn't want to let the women, the young women in, we can just come to do it. That was obstacle number one. Number two was where the performance was, it was actually where these men sleep. So, you know, we came in, we just got into space. It was before me that I could have made this mistake too. Not thinking about asking all of the questions of what this space does, how do we respect the space that we're coming into? So we come in and it's a pretty small space to begin with and normally these guys come in at, you know, X hour, they put their mats down, they have their dinner and they have to be out by five a.m., like this is how they stay in the morning winter. And we're coming in and we're going to show in their space. So to navigate that was really difficult and they were on mats, there was some chairs. So there was a lot of, there was a lot of news. The show happened, we probably had about 30 guys that actually watched the whole show, another like 30 or 50 or so in the canteen being really loud around it, but whenever there was fight scenes that was really significant. A couple of really great conversations came out of there. I met a veteran who was an awesome man and I hope he's doing really well and the show really affected him. So there was some success within that show, but it's not a place that we're going to go back to. We didn't ask the right questions going into respect to the space that we're going to. So that's really important. The second one that just didn't work for us and we come into this a couple of times so we're still trying to figure out how to best communicate sometimes at senior living facilities. It's actually a nursing home, they're not calling it a nursing home so you're going to get people on costs and really just not cognitively there before. We've had at this one particular show, there was a woman who was wheeled in and placed in the front row and we learned later she's blind. So there's all these people talking and it was actually a two person show. And so she was going crazy and so during the show she was like, will you shut up? I mean she said this multiple times during the show, which is a little jarring for the marketing. She shouldn't have been there so there was also a communication breakdown on our end of like who's the most appropriate audience to come to this. So not every partnership works. So does anybody, we don't have very much time, does anybody have a quick story about a partnership that did not work? Yeah. I can just say it feels like an uphill battle too if you're convincing someone of the thing, they may just not be in a place, maybe it is a perfect partnership and at some point down the road I can see the potential and all kinds of things and I am ridiculously impatient so it can make it really hard for a partner but I see where this could be and if they're not there it just don't bark up that tree when it's mutually reciprocal then it'll go, it'll catch fire a lot of times. Totally. And the inverse too, you can get a really excited dedicated staff but they want to see the show because they want to see the show they're not necessarily thinking holistically about the community and what the whole community means. So if you have the capacity to dive a little bit deeper and maybe connect with more than one staff or connect directly with the community or community members while you're there that's kind of visual too if it's possible. I think staff partner for happens a lot and so for long term partners it's important to make sure that your content is also managing up and managing around so that that partnership isn't just living with that staff person because when they leave you need somebody else to know what's happening. Definitely. Again, we're doing a tour but with one of our partners we're reaching the tour too and we were doing classes and we were doing a presentation of a play that was written by members from the community and it's similar to Shelter's and we had some violent things happen in the middle of the class and when those things happen where's the partner? And we ended up deciding to pull out from doing programs inside of that shelter because they were over-taxing and they didn't have a staff. Never mind. We have a great partner and she's still there but she wasn't the person who's gonna be on the ground on the day of with that particular program and we used to be walking with no pants on one time. There's a lot of weird things that can happen and so you then have to start thinking about the safety of whoever's working there that you're responsible for and having that hard conversation with your partner being like hey I don't know if this is the right time for you. I mean it would be something really cool for your being and getting the people interested but you're not able to actually provide the staff to identify those problems that are dependent on the door, so. So with respect, totally I wish I would have started with this and then we could talk about all the great things but I didn't hit the highway. So what I do want to end with is even if a partnership is not the most successful and it doesn't work here there's always somebody in that audience that you've touched on. There just is and you can't always see it. Sometimes you can look around at some of those excruciating shows and say hey did it, I'm completely non-responsive but the thing that I love to look for at every show is you come in and especially men's facilities. Men's facilities and women's facilities are very different. Often women are a little bit warmer ready to engage but the men generally start out like this and then they get back to each other now. And then by the end they slowly start to come in. So what you're looking for in a partner is that wean in. You're looking for that wean in staff. You're looking for that wean in audience. You're looking for that person whose heart is open enough to really engage. That's why we do it and that's why they come.