 Hi, I'm Tori Bailey, I'm the executive director of the New York Development Fund in New York City, and we'll explain in a minute how and why we're here. But first, I want to extend a huge thanks to Lloyd for hosting us to Howard and Jeff and their team who really have been great. This is the first stop in a series of conversations, because it's really important that we got through it first, I believe, where it's about a lot of stuff that's new, and it's okay to be a little messy. So, anyway, here we all are. This project really has grown out of a series of pieces of work in conversations that both TDF and Theatre Bay area have been having for a number of years. Some of you probably know TDF. We did a piece of research a few years ago about the production of new American plays, and that led to the report that ended up being the book, which was Outrageous Fortune. And a lot of outrageous fortune had to do with issues around the lives of playwrights that weren't specifically on Mission for TDF. TDF is an organization that is committed to building and developing audiences. But one of the pieces in that research that we kept hearing about in conversations were issues that revolved around playwrights and theaters in their conversations about marketing and building audiences and figuring out who was coming to the theater. And so there was a piece of that that seemed worth probing further to those of us that TDF related to what we're supposed to do. Like similarly, Theatre Bay area was involved in a piece of research. Right, which some of you might know about in Clare Lorre, who's with us today, he used to be with Theatre Bay area, now he's with the American Theater Arts, was very active in, we commissioned research that we did around the country, actually two different rounds. But the first round was in Six Cities, 18 theaters, looking at the intrinsic impact of the theater experience on the audience. So what is the intrinsic impact? In case we didn't come to the time that we had here a couple of years ago, it is that deeply felt experience by the individual person who is engaging with a piece of art that's not in theater. It could be something where we were looking at theater. And audiences engage with a piece of theater in many different ways and are impacted in different ways, emotionally, intellectually, socially, ways that you're growing, maybe aesthetically. And we, working with Allen Brown, we've discovered ways to both interrogate people about that and they're eager to tell you about it, to tell you the truth, and then to actually plot that and measure it and put it in charts and graphs. And really the point of it was not just to find out some wonky data, but really to help theater makers and both the artists and the companies find ways to deepen and lengthen that impact. And some really, really interesting findings came out of that from our subsequent research. So Tori and I were at, there was a convening here at the arena a couple of years ago and it was looking at new work and new work development around the country. And there were a number of really amazing conversations there. But one of the things that we realized while we were there is that we were talking a lot about the relationship between the artist and the company. But we were including this idea of what about the relationship between an artist and company and the ultimate recipient of the work, the audience. And we were never talking about audience, it was actually in the conversation. And that was the point of where this idea came from. The last time we did that conference there was a series of circle conversations and a couple of artists who said, why are we always talking about the audience and we never put them in the conversation. So really we had wanted to look at a kind of three-way conversation. Where is the audience? Where is the artist or the generative artist? And where is the theater? And we got funding from the Doris Duke Chair of Trust and we all did thanks to for making this possible. And then we done some research and if you had any time, you may have looked at some of what we sent out. We also owe a thank you to Steppenwolf and South Coast Rep because they allowed Allen to use a bunch of work from work that they had commissioned at their theaters. So this is step one. We got this research and it's got some findings and we're really interested in people's responses to it. Where this is the first of six cities we'll be here. We're in the Chicago, Minneapolis, and the Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. And after those conversations, our hope is that over the summer end of the fall, we'll have information to be able to go back and survey audiences more directly. What resonates, what doesn't. What do we need to be asking them? And then it's pointing towards a larger conversation in Boston next winter. HowlAround is another partner on this project. And so what we did is this morning, Willie helped curate. We put a group together of folks from very diverse organizations, which we're going to talk about in a minute, to try and unpack what was a lot of material and figure out what were four or five things out of all of that that resonated for the group. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. And then they'll share some perceptions and then we're going to turn it wide open. So we're going to do a little bit of talking, not us, but our colleagues, whom I want to thank, a little bit of talking. And then we'll turn it over and we'll have a larger conversation. And before we do that, we wanted to just get a little bit of sense in the room because this morning, when there were fewer people, we were actually able to go around and introduce ourselves that might pick up both of the afternoon. But wanted to get just a little bit of a sense and please feel free to raise your hand for every single thing for which you might self-identify. So just like I knew that you are not like each but each are on the Bay Area. So like, I don't know, you might just looking at you. Who in the room would identify as a playwright or a generative artist? Okay. Who in the room would identify as a theater administrator? Who might be the same people? Okay. Who in the room would work with or for a large institution theater? And who for a small, I guess, would be people working with them. Great. Thank you. And who in the room would identify or has ever been or will be an audience member? Ah! Okay. So that just helps set the context for the ways that we are going to be coming at and the perspective that you might be bringing to the conversation at the moment. Yes. So, before we get started with the big piece where we ask all of you to talk to us, we're going to quickly just give you some of the big, most exciting talking points that came from what happened this morning. And my name is Mark Blankenship. I am TDS Editor of Online Content, which at the moment means Theater and Dance Magazine as well as two film products. It's not even there for today, but there you go. And joining me also are a group of four artists who were passionately involved in the conversation this morning. And I'll allow you to briefly introduce yourselves. Woody and Sullivan. I'm a playwright, theater commentator, co-founder of The Welders and product director at the National New Play Network. I'm Adrienne Alice Hansel. I'm a literary director at the Studio Theater, so I have a hand in audience engagement, have a hand in programming. My name is Anu Vyadav. I'm a playwright in Akron, Illinois. I'm an independent producer. My operating organization is called Theater from the District and I'm working with Anu Vyadav, Vanishing Productions, dubbed with 20 DC, in transit lounge. And I'm just going to quickly vamp as I run over here to one thing and come back over here to one thing. I'm going to turn this into a timepiece. Yes, it's a timepiece of very valuable. So first, Ronnie, if you would, just talk a little bit about the story of our conversation from this morning. Yeah, so one of the first things that we talked about this morning was trying to get our hands around the kind of inclusivity factor of the conversation. So one of the papers really created this triangle of audience, theater, and artist. So we wanted to really embrace the fact that sometimes the theater and the artist can be one and the same, especially in the case of smaller organizations, in the cases of ensembles, it can actually be less of a triangle and more of a direct correlation. So that was one way. And also one of the articles really, there was an arrow of, here's our new work audience and we're kind of bringing them from one end of this spectrum to the other. So we were thinking a lot about that and realizing that a lot of this conversation is not only about the audience that is in the room, but the audience that is not inside of this room. So that when we're talking about audience here, we're not just talking about audience when we work, we're not talking about the audience that is currently going and just not happening to come to this particular show, but the audience that is not yet a theater audience. We're thinking about them too and embracing them in that conversation as well. And the third way that we wanted to make sure that we defined scope of it was in inclusivity in terms of diversity, making sure that we acknowledge that of all of the millions of people in this country, there is this narrow sector that is currently coming to the theater and we acknowledge and want to make sure that we're thinking about those that are not coming, those that are making sure this will come up later. We want to make sure we're giving them an invitation to the work. So really that rather than get locked into the notion of the institution is here hiring the artist and here is the audience that we're open to and thinking largely about the universe of work and companies and kind of artists who are making work and engaging with the audience in ways that are different from that triangle as well. So don't feel like, you know, as you're kind of thinking about that, that you're locked out of the conversation because you're not an institution or a single artist getting hired by an institution. So I'll do that. Great. So again, what's going to happen is we're just going to touch on the three big topics and then we'll ask you to respond to all of them at the end that way none of the topics will get short-shrimmed. And I just want to interject which I forgot to do earlier that a lot of the reading and the survey stuff was conversations about risk and where your audience is in their appetite for and part of what we figured out this morning is we started talking about risk and risk tolerance was, you know, we're talking about new plays or we're talking about plays that are not new but are being done in a different fashion, right? It can be, it's a whole host of things, it's not just new, it can be risky and then it's a new way of looking at stuff. These were topics that grew out of a conversation and the statistics about, you know, this conversation about how do you move people along the continuum? How do you make people become more actively engaged in the work and it very quickly moved to it's not just this, as Strani said, not just the people in the building, it's the people who aren't even coming in. So this is, this was kind of what emerged out of a set of kind of statistical work and kind of so from risk came this stuff. So William, would you talk to us a little bit about the triangle? Triangle, so, you know, we talked about this three-corner triangle of artist audience and institution and as we started to examine it, we realized that, you know, for a lot of us, the triangle looks like this and the point at the top is the institution and institution is mediating a relationship between artists and audience. You know, we select these artists to perform within the Walmart institution and we invite this audience to come in there and the only engagement between artists and audience is culturally mediated by the institution and what we started to get to is that we're feeling like there's a culture shift where that triangle is inverting and the institutions of the present day are embracing a second way of existing in which they serve as more of a platform at the bottom, holding up and facilitating rather than mediating a relationship between artist and audience. They are doing what they can to actually shrink the distance between artist and audience and between art and audience so that those things are more proximal, more immediate, more relevant, more meaningful and more impactful both for the artist and in fact for the audience. So that was one broad theme that emerged for us this morning. Adrian Ellis, would you like to talk about the two audience models that we discussed? Sure. So this might take a slightly longer to break down but when, as we were talking through audiences who are on the room, audiences who are on the room work that we do as artists, as administrators, as fellow audience members, because you're only people to come to the theater, it emerged that we were talking about two separate ideas of an audience and one is what we've decided to call our sustained audience. So those are sort of habitual theater goers. They might be subscribers, they might just be frequent offenders around the number of theaters but they're people in the habit of going to the theater and then there's what we've called event or play specific audiences so that says we have this play, it has this content, we think it has resonance with a particular set of people or a bunch of different kinds of people and we're going to gather them together to get occasioned by this play and a couple things that came up in thinking about the balance between play specific and sustained audiences. One is the question of where the sort of generative artist is in conversation with an institution about finding that audience, cultivating that audience. We may call out Karen Baccaras who is somewhere in the street but he's right there. And a really interesting, wonderful story about working at the Denver Center and discovering that in fact she had great information about the particular set of potential audience for a play of those that actually the institution didn't seem to have. And that story has a happy ending. But it took that cast and that writer to say I think there might be an audience for this that will actually enrich everyone's experience. And so that's another piece of what we talked about is thinking about how having an audience that might have a particular connection to a play, get the inside jokes or just who might, for whom that play might be specifically resonant actually affects the whole audience's experience. So affects your sustained audiences as well. And then one of the questions that I think we we leave open that we discussed is how different stakeholders might balance the ideal mix of a dead specific audience and sustained audience. An artist might think I want people who just want to come to my play. For instance, they might not think that. And the institution might think it's great to have those play specific audience members but I need my sustained audience. And artists may be all over the place and audiences may be all over the place. You're someone who's very used to going to the theater you may not want to sit next to someone for whom this is their first or second play or likewise if you are someone who's performing this is the first or second play you may have to feel more comfortable or less comfortable to be next to someone who has clearly done this many times before. So that that was the nature of that conversation of the two audiences. Great. And would you like to talk to us about the invitation? Yeah, please do. So yeah, we talked about the invitation. The idea of who are we as theater makers, all the people involved in this. Who are we inviting to the theater? Who's actually who is and versus who's actually being invited? And this idea of what's the purpose of why we're reaching out to different communities? What we want to see in the audience what's our purpose there? Do we see them as are they consumers or clients? Are we a part of building the community and engaging with the community as a part of like a civic you know institution of sorts? And this idea jumping on the idea that this diversity however you choose to define that can make the experience richer for everybody. And one example in addition to the example of Karen's play which that makes you talk about is with with Forum Theater that produced my play Mina's Dream which I also performed in and we decided to engage in some of the community organizing principles that I had some experience in prior to and so we organized a street team of passionates, volunteers who were excited about the themes in the work because they had been at a reading and connected to it personally. It's about healthcare and having it and not having it and done it in a fantastical way. And so they just went out we made an Excel spreadsheet for the group connected to this where are they what are the contacts and you're going to reach out to these groups you're going to reach who are you comfortable reaching out to what are your strengths as a volunteer what do you want to do what excites you do that and so we did that and reached out to a broad base of people and that helped who was in the room and then it helped the post-show discussions after because you have a broad squad broader squad of people from different socio-economic you know it increases the IQ of the audience you have more it's just richer it's more interesting so that was exciting and in talking about the invitation and extending them really extending So just to summarize one more time before we go back to work in this sense of discussing the idea of investigating and honoring an audience's sense of risk and curiosity about work we are currently very interested in the question of who and who is being invited and how are they being invited how does that relates to their sense of risk and curiosity and when we are inviting them what type of audience are they are they a sustained audience or are they an event or play a specific audience and at the end of the day what kind of organizational structure has been created that allows those invitations to those various audiences to have the most impact with regard to these general audiences sense of risk and curiosity So with that I now pass it back down this way and you guys can facilitate well and just I don't know if you guys want to talk for a few minutes about a couple of these things and then to just what did the the triangulation for instance we talked some of us ourselves about the freedom that that really didn't open up about evening that out do you want to unpack that a little bit you guys All right I don't want to think we were talking just to say one of the things we were talking about was was also sort of I mean it's not even saying for honoring but not all or not all institutions see themselves as made up with anything other than artists that you know that in any distance it's definitely you're saying that you know in thinking about this triangle you know if it's actually you know with the institution and for the artists you know the audience is actually it's a very different it's that bad I think it's very specifically that the image of flattening out had something to do with it Yeah we talked about like the wellers you know working artists are the administrators that we talked about this not being a pejorative way to imagine an institution like that right this is the model that we've inherited and it's the institutions have become stored out of a cultural knowledge and they keep us in the flame in a lot of ways I mean they serve us proudly I think we're talking about enhancing that model with this model we're talking about institutions learning to flexibly work that they both mediate exchanges between artists and audiences but also facilitate them as well sort of learn new ways to be in relationship and for their brands really to be in relationship to the work there please and yeah right just a little jump now I don't want to a little bit we were also talking about the different ways that large and small organizations work in inviting audiences to their shows so with in the word stakeholder that used action in two very interesting ways so with some small organizations or ones that are structured differently this we realized that you know this idea of artists and stakeholder became very important you know with a company like you know Dog and Pointy DC that sense of personal investment of going out into the community and doing that work of reaching out to people to come to your show is very different than well not very different but it's a different kind of engagement than the kind of way that we'll use is the term stakeholder with the connectivity initiative of finding stakeholders in the community who are the taste makers who you know is the desired audience that's going to you know kind of complete this conversation so the way that the artist of stakeholders is important in the way that you find stakeholders in the community is important and they're two different ways of getting at the same thing and a lot of times organizational scale becomes important so we're really interested in other things that people are doing in terms of this you know what is this is trying to resonate for you how are you because a big part of this work is bright spots a big is what Polly calls bright spots things that folks are doing that are working to help you know what do you think is is the theater the mediator is it more this way does this range true this is all same stupid is any of this any of this thoughts anybody you're talking a lot yes sure hi I guess I was struck in the reading and in your conversation about if it's a triangle we seem to be focusing the risk of tolerance on the audience an awful lot it's really it's an ecology of risk that everybody in that network is taking a risk financial credibility personal time money all this sort of stuff and I wonder if it's really about convincing one point the triangle to be more risk tolerant or if it's about finding a way the whole system mean to understand and mediate risk in more effective ways that make sense what I said yes it does it does I mean those of you who are are running bigger small organizations what are I mean where where is your feeling about your bodies right whose whose job is it to figure out who's sitting there and what's scary about doing that yeah I think this is an answering question my apologies if it's not that's okay so for me the first thing that I think of is I hate the word audience like I hate it it's just a super technical term that doesn't mean what I think it should mean I don't why don't we build fans I'm a fan of wrestling I'm a fan of comic books and we are a fan of that I buy t-shirts and I support them and I spend money on not only the creators but also the product and I feel like I'm a part of the industry even though I'm not an actor participant in it and when we talk about the audience and this technical and distant ways and when we start creating a fan base and people who have a demand for our work is either institutions or audiences so we don't ask permission all the time and try to figure out the risk is instead build up people who have an excitement and want to see us and support us because they actually want to buy our t-shirts and they want to put our brand on their bodies because they're into it I see it happening almost every other industry but we keep a giant distance in terms of wanting to just talk about people and some of us and our work putting our first work saying our company like has this actor and this actor so they're also we're gonna publicize them front and center for everything and build up a little bit of a mini-celebrity culture around the fact that for my company Aaron Plyte is amazing at music we're using it also for these shows so you can check them out just like I buy that kind of action Can you do that? Yeah, we try to work more and more You know we're young and this is something that I've only become obsessed with in the last like six months so I can't tell you what I'm saying but I think so people know us as the company that says be awesome a lot so that's something more than I think other companies maybe have sometimes but again it's just a matter like I see it in all the other parts that I participated and it just really frustrates me Other thoughts? Yeah I think there's something to be said about creating a total building on that sort of fan idea but sort of creating an experience for people so there's an experiential sort of mistune for a visit to see something whether that's pre-pop born a beer or whether that's some interactivity in the lobby just I don't think it's all about immersive fear or sleep disorders which I think is a huge trend and I think it's something to sort of engage and even if it's simply so a state to state something that sort of takes the wall down a little bit and creates a little bit more of a connectivity to the audience I know it's you can't do that with every show but I think I see a trend in many theaters doing that kind of thing trying to sort of get I mean it starts as simply as the yes you can take yourself into a theater which four or five years ago there were a couple theaters doing that and now it's kind of widespread and people sort of sort of put away the whole clean up mess on the floor thing and tried to sort of open up the experience people are that are not regular theater goes or having elsewhere with sporting events and build and trying to sort of make it almost comfortable familiar atmosphere to sort of take some of that risk out of what am I doing here if I've not been there before yeah yeah I think it's also important to recognize that not all audience members participate in the same way but some people are fans and some people are interactive and some people just want to sit back and experience playing and participate the way they participated for the past 50 years of their life so when we talk about these relationships it's not just about building a single way of connecting or explaining the work that we're doing or connecting the artist to the audience but creating a dynamic system that can be used by people who have different needs what role do you do both do we see different and I'm just the thought about you know where where does the artist live in the conversation about the drinks in the theater and I mean I know artists go crazed about that stuff because that's not you know they feel like they've created work and it needs to be said and so where's the conversation between the theater whatever it is and the artist who says wait a minute you know this is not a picnic this is right and then right so I'm curious what people think about that and how you put all those people together and what is that conversation thoughts about that people not in their heads well a lot of it's about starting it from the beginning of the evening to the end too you need to think about everything from the dining experience the shopping the parking you know a dirty bathroom you know but do you mean the water factor in the playwright when you have that I mean I was just curious there's no judgment in this I think some of it is if it's the food relation the food and the theater thing because I think that does sort of affect a very somber toned piece that you don't want candy wrappers and things like that and you want to sort of have the like five versus a comedy where it's kind of like free for all for most where it doesn't matter but I think that's about the institutions sort of cultivating the audience experience from buying a ticket on so that they sort of help that be a better experience from reliable making a comfortable thing and building and then sort of enjoying the space as well as the show and the staff and all that I had a I was wondering you know would this be a moment that would you'd be up for sharing a bit of your experience Karen with the oh oh and I'm going to put you on the spot because of the answer now oh just what happened yeah yeah because it's about audience and audiences and how they yeah hi everyone my name is and I'm and I'm a playwright I just had a play at the Denver Center that was based on a policy book about immigration and um yes anyway so it seemed a little bit unadaptedly felt that this was a civic issue that they needed to talk about with their constituents and I I did a a reading and then after the reading two things happened that I've never heard before one was the artistic director and slash director said I need more actors in this and the second one is immigration is moving so quickly on the floor we're going to push the play we're going to do it eight months sooner than you expected it to so that was that I never heard that before that was the other thing that happened was they were putting it in their main stage a kind of scene theater where they usually do Shakespeare's in classics a brand new play about immigration and um they of course wanted to sell tickets and what was becoming clear is that they really wanted a diverse Mexican or immigrant population to come in but um they were doing both ways of marketing and suddenly the actors and I we all went in and talked to both Kent and the marketing director said this you will not get a diverse population that come in doing the things the other way you need to have as the ambassadors we need to speak on the Spanish speaking news we need to have things in Spanish we need to have a code that people have so they can get reduced price tickets because it's better to fill up every seat with a lot of people than have you know really expensive seats and have the half audience full because having a diverse audience will actually improve experience for everybody and they did it I mean towards the end we had sold out performances with the largest Latino population plus a lot of the immigrant population that wasn't Latino because the play corresponded to them but it was a really interesting experiment we were the old ways of marketing were working but it really took the artists talking directly to the staff and about why the play was important it was like it was it isn't about being an immigrant it's about being an American what is being an American in these days and I don't know what that means for their marketing later on and for return return customers and I'm going to Denver tomorrow so I can ask but it really was an eye opening it really was about really having a dialogue with the audience and the audience changing because of that and one of the things I'm curious what people think is that was in Simon's work that where she looked at what is the theater sink and what is the the playwright sink one of the questions was about how how adept is the marketing department at creating excitement and engagement about new work and the theaters all felt pretty good about that and the playwrights all thought that the theaters were doing a really not so successful job about that it was pretty big broad and I'm curious what people's thoughts are about why that dichotomy and the opinion exists and there was some conversation this morning about the pressure that marketing folks are under to do what they know as opposed to try stuff that might so I'm curious to hear about people's experiences either as the theaters with the artists and audiences and marketing platform for the playwrights in the room the extent to which you have an experience that Karen talk ownership of and went in with her actors and said this is if you want to get that churn in the house this is what you're going to have to do so other experiences with that? Yeah Well I'm currently acting at the Elevator and I wondered I wondered how established theater that had their own perspective how they were going to grow that audience and um and I just talk about risk and how risk and rating in audiences I feel like there's a direct correlation between ticket price you know I'm actually really sort of kind of going in with their product even though we have to have some reduce again you know and um you know of course collision we did something in a nautical yard throughout the meeting and they were they were preaching and we looked at some problems together and we got we loved that they came out with people's leather to watch people and laid out you know I mean it's interesting and I and I I wonder for these theater companies like I feel a lot of hunger for theater companies and I would say theater companies to grow their audience to do work working and I also I think that's the final constraint so no and that was there was a big separation in the research about that when the they asked the theaters to define the best audience for the new plays and it was audiences they were kind of describing think a lot of them were describing their own bodies but they were regular theater goers frequent attenders well educated upper income and they asked the playwrights who's the right you know who do you think are the best folks to see new or risky stuff and it was young middle income not necessarily I'm going to theater goers so again you know those are new folks how do you how do we balance exactly that problem yeah so one issue is that we're describing new plays as a genre as opposed to a wide sort of genre within medium which is a problem that most people outside of theater already think about theater they think of theater as a genre not a medium they have a mental idea what theater is new plays I mean a new play that's going to happen you know kitchen sink drama is going to be completely different in every single way it's a new play that's going to happen as a giant science fiction as a panther there's not much risk in that first one well there might be it depends it's the art yeah if you're doing something for somebody you have to definitely not be doing something for somebody else and it's about owning who you're making work for and who you're what work you're making yourself and being comfortable with the fact that if you're really getting something out of the park in a specific stylistic way there's probably a lot of people that are into it rather than try and get more of those people who aren't into it find the people who are into the sort of things you are into but just might not be aware that theater is an experience that they enjoy and rather not go after the theater people who are interested in what we do and I'd rather find people who like meaning music and comic books because chances are they just kind of have that experience they have a little playing to their content so in that respect for us kitchen sink drama is a terrible risk of course that's not what our audience wants for our fans yeah one of the things that you had in the article was the discussion of risk itself and how it's a perspective that the kitchen sink drama is just as much a risk to someone as the sci-fi adventure or whatever is a risk so everything is risky in some way shape or form what seems to be pinpointed is the targeting which doesn't always connect both by the artist and the institution together they may have two different perspectives on where that targeting is actually happening and that's actually what's happening and a lot of other like YouTube and video and film is that they're target focusing their marketing their audience more which is what a lot of the years are trying to do like flying being smaller ones like worship is target focusing it's audience based by saying we're doing this play with this playwright let's talk to them about what the themes are and how this works let's target audiences that will be interested and connect to those things which was what was in the paper as well is that the connection to an idea or the connection to a theme or the connection to a playwright or the connection to a title is what's bringing in more and more of the audiences but the disconnect is happening between what's perceived by the artist and what's perceived by the institution and that seems to be talk about that a little more well it's what was in the paper right the the surveys that you had had a disconnect between where they thought the marketing part was doing marketing part the artist thought the marketing part was doing versus the artist or the institution itself so it seems that there's a disconnect in the discussion of who's doing what and where and bringing all those people together earlier on seems to be where we are right now but it takes more time more energy more effort more funds it's a longer process than we're talking about it gets to the tension that we talked about this morning and that you reflected in our intro comments if a cultural institution has a congregation then its job is to choose the stories that that for that congregation but we as artists I have a story and I want you to find the audience for that story not for you so this so this inherent tension goes on and I don't I don't know that there's a easy resolution there but if you came up for us in several different ways this is more I'm just saying super quickly as a person who's you know at an institution but part of what you do when you're curating a season and pick stories that you are passionate about that you will be able to resonate with a sustained audience and that's part of your hopes with a particularly with a you know also may have interest to other people as well so there also needs to be you know some thoughtfulness and honesty between the artists and the audience and the audience to not at all float it's not to not to again not to be pejorative I'm saying that it's not your it's not that you're doing it wrong that you should be doing you know it's just there's a tension I'm just sharing this one I'm just going to pull out the thread that that I came up earlier I think I think it's still running through this and forgive me if I'm stating the obvious but I'm going to anyway which is that when we talk about risk and its association to new plays and audiences particularly for larger or mid-sized institutions a part of what we're talking about is just the difference between known and unknown comedies and the fact that really the reason larger institutions struggle with the moment of presenting a new play to an audience is because their audiences just don't know what that story Aquidian that you want to tell is and I think you're so right that how you get that marketing and Karen's story gets to this how you get the marketing and you change marketing into the connecting the connection to the audience happening earlier so that when they walk in it's the unknowns are diminished yeah yeah I'm sorry there and then I was just going to jump on what Michael said and what Woody said I can't remember how long ago but there at the conference the TCG conference in Denver was the first time that which had to be 10 years ago where they parted and started talking about audience engagement that was sort of the new thing and to me that sort of went along with the idea of the way technology was evolving and then pretty soon they weren't going to be in need for place because everybody's going to listen to their phone and their iPad and their and make their own movies right so so to me at that point I was terrified because I thought well that we have no reason to exist anymore because nobody wants to listen to our stories as an institution or an artist they want to tell their own stories and so I'm very interested that you know when I read that paper and I see that risk aversion is less when audiences are more engaged which means they want to tell their own stories so it is our job to sort of figure out what stories they want to hear and how how do those intersect from the stories that you want to tell and that's really really hard but it's a challenge and I think that's our challenge you don't want to vote for those thoughts the reason movie trailers are so long like when you finish watching a movie trailer you feel like you've seen the entire film it is because the producers know that you will not come unless you feel like you know what you're going to expect that's why all the best jokes are in the trailers that's why all the best moments are in the trailer so that you feel safe enough to buy a ticket I don't know how do you do that for theater but that's why it's a game so yeah yeah I was going to take office to be at a point so the National Movie Network had these conversations with artistic directors and it's many of our theaters don't do exclusive new work but in one of our recent conversations there was an artistic director talking about what the difference is between marketing new workers and non-new work and there were a dozen theaters all of whom do almost exclusively they do like three-fourths of new work and they said that there was absolutely no difference to their mind because what they branded for their audience is that you come in and you may hate it but that their audience would come back again I think we'll be successful at this and we'll work it out that's why you guys don't work it and the idea that that it's not an isolated experience that one play doesn't make or rate an audience member that they're with their season curating their journey for the audience and through ten seasons curating through deeper engagement with their audience along the way that it's not which isn't to say that doing new work isn't risky because I think it certainly is and the people's talk a lot about that but that it's it's a different perspective on how the market did work one of the observations we could pick you back enough for that one and the observations that came up this morning from the paper was that someone thought that that Allen's work seemed to seem to imply that there was sort of like the audience was sort of this set theme and that the the goal was with this findings to sort of incrementally moving along the path and so that was sort of one way of thinking thinking about it you know that that thing of like that proximate learning and that you would you would present something that was almost out of their reach but then they could grasp it then you could go on to the next thing I mean maybe if you were an artistic director and you wanted to do this play you got to think maybe maybe five years before I can get my audience into a place that they can grasp it right and then someone else will send me up but where does that or do you find for each play that audience for which or show or whatever device work that is for that specific group of people it's that sweet spot just beyond their reach right and so it's not a monolithic monolithic thing the group you know moving this these 1000 people along this maybe it's that but maybe it's finding a different thousand people at a different place and what is that and that's that's an interesting sort of your balance or tension I um I want to first say that it's interesting to me that when we I'm a theater day and we've gotten this response about doing to a long play as that's a risky endeavor for a Jewish year to produce an Asian American writer it's interesting to me because he's the most known playwright we're producing this year and I almost soon he you know he did him out of play last year those writers are the only vaguely I mean household things that we produce and yet people are still saying that's risky I mean this idea of we've found that we are finding ways to be successful to bring in more diverse audiences and for all the reasons that Karen has spoken about last year doing plays examine race primarily African American themed this year it's Asian American and and to the I guess the biggest risk was that we would do these plays and play to an audience of of older white Jewish people which which is not only our audience but our typical audience the audience the audience the most many of you know in this city and that was pretty disheartening that that vision fortunately it has and how did not happen well I mean I think you didn't spoke to some of the the outreach we can do certainly the cast and the uh both both last year with of doing a play that you know 75% of the cast was African American and and and you know with the black play right and a lot of conversations about how to do outreach into a community that we've always been trying to do outreach to and have varying degrees of success and and this year you know really publications Asian American publications that I didn't know anything about but have been extremely responsive and very eager to again to see themselves on stage to to see questions that they're very interested in dealt with on stage I think the long-term question will be whether these audiences continue coming along and the other question I have to care's point is what are you getting pushed back from women how's the house doing right you mean you're on like typical long-term so yeah you're typical so our our audiences actually are are you know they're really into identity questions right so so they say it is part of a continuum they don't see it as like why are you doing a play about the Chinese Filipino American Filipino American they see it as oh this is I mean for the most part they see it as this is interesting in our compact did they get there on their own or did you help them thank you definitely much there on their own I mean they're they're a pretty socially engaged audience for the most part yeah thank you thank you but what I think there is doing so great I what if I think already had I think he was just pushing I think the conversation with audiences lots of great talk back something that we also do a lot but you can go ahead and talk to them while you get here talk to them and then that's what we call it you know that you're well they're like trailer or video trailer or the show and like wow it's starting I mean if they're thinking they're thinking and these are not I mean a lot of companies do that but they're not like no but they're obviously more surfacing we're learning a lot of different things and I feel like Ari is it's working to kind of prepare and stretch his subscriber base that they're willing to take on your work with that article I'm gonna talk about so he's he's very very sorry about it and can I I'm kind of going back to audience feedback things the audience talk back I like to just say it's funny do you need the term audience they like the term fan I've seen the term fan I've seen that especially when you're doing the I like to do the dialogue not only between the audience the institution that you put it also in the audience I would be here back when I was do I look I hear what people are saying I wonder that there hasn't some sort of effect on audience and what is this working that's not working although it's like theater day audience because they're critical you know there's there's a dialogue and I feel like it's a fan of congratulations it's not a thing I think in your regard if you want to I change it you also want to be changed if I do the chance month I might be that might be a something because when I think of fan I actually don't think of that I think of people on the internet having conversations constantly on message boards and people who think of what they do as a hobby not something that they just do on Tuesday night talking about the idea of like playing going as much of a focus of our hobby is mentality as playmaking and having publications online that are geared less towards professionals and more towards fans and people that want to engage and commentary about that and finding ways for to actively create a fan community because I think in this room we know a number of individual audience members but there's probably maybe only 20 or like two three hands actual like theater fans in DC people who like talk it up to their friends bring tons of people want to talk about it all the time and want to blog about it we don't really have an outlet to build more of those people right now we have a lot of sites that give a lot of positive reviews to everybody but we don't have like a big bell like a chat room yeah we don't have a place for like you're one of those near it's horrible but yeah I didn't think of the worst place in the room in some respect but they're where people go to build a community of people who just like going to see work together and talking about it I never want to step foot in a wrestling chat room at all and I'm glad that exists so people watch wrestling because they have it and we don't have that we have in the summer in the tent for that to happen that's exactly what it is for those of us who don't know what that is can you explain what it is well they're here but the there's a tent for the bar and between shows and hang out and talk about theater and I think that's something that we are missing in the scene I like the idea of fans too I think we have to be careful about generalizing the theater into one experience because no other forum does that I can say I like music but if you really get down to it I like about three different styles of music very much and another three kind of and there's three that I won't even I would never consider going to see a company music show I'm glad it exists but I won't go so when we talk about theater as oh do you support the theater it just seems like we've created a thing that doesn't actually exist there are theaters like Jason there are theaters like ours there are theaters like studio and we may not have the same audience that's cool that's fine but I think having a space where people can hang out is very important and I think the tent contributes to that most of the time when I go see a band I get to have drinks after the show and talk to my friends and talk about other shows that are coming up you know that's great when I go to the theater when the curtain comes down I am shoved out the door as quickly as possible and I would like to hang out I would like to chat you know well now is one of the things that shows up in the research it does seem to have to be just after the show people want to talk they're happy to talk later it was over here and then there and then there yeah I was just going to say just the same example that you asked about a while ago when I was working here at Wolleywood you know you said a lot of things were very important but just one example I mean there was a documentary that was about the experiences of these but I know that was out we kind of we engaged a couple of screenings out on the local movie theater and also here again just to try to present the different experience whether and I think I think any organization that I've worked with that I reached out to that was not used to sort of promoting something theatrical was very excited whether it was an email list for a particular community or a spoken word event or a concert venue or a movie theater we're excited to sort of get that into the mix to share with our audience especially if it was we reach out to the community and it worked well to sort of just open another door in that wasn't about the stuff that works that you know the press hits and the interviews with Larry and the pop-backs and the you know pre-setbacks or panels those are all good and they still do work really well but there's other outlets that you know one takes down whatever it is trivia night some other way to sort of bring a familiarity function but connected to what you're doing to sort of open the open venue open going off of this we talked earlier about the idea of the center and the artists at the center the audience at the center and this idea of hanging out you know this tent for thing which is great I'm in addition to being at center stage I'm also a freelance dramaturg and over the summer I went to Mexico City for a collaboration and something that was really interesting that I noticed was most of the theater like storefronts or even the big theaters had restaurants that were attached to them and so this idea of the lobby I mean the architecture in Latin America is just very different to begin with but there were always actors directors and then just random whether their audience members are just people off of the street that wanted a coffee there are always people in the lobby because it was also the restaurant and so this idea of the talk back I guess is more exciting when it's talked with not audience talking back to you like you're just now it's your turn to listen to what they think or for them to listen to you explain what they just saw exactly so rather than a formal setting right is this idea of an open lobby being an informal setting but housed within the formal institution so problematizing that idea of the talk back and then going more with a dialogue that is really truly artists and audience at the center being able to hang out at any time of the day or night thought it was really interesting when I went to Mexico it's one of the first things that I noticed boy these are all things to really chew on so I'm I'm thinking about the practice of which I've been a part of many times in which we've talked about here which is we have this certain play let's find a certain audience to come to this certain place so they can see themselves on stage but have we developed some side effects that are negative in doing that because what we're doing is siloing things when actually and it's probably this risk averse and risk tolerant or risk seeking but have we gone so far down that path because we we get that idea that people want to see themselves and reflect on that that it has become we've siloed things so what about seeing this play and going to the audience that has that knows nothing about this experience that may be on the stage and it being an eye opening and marketing it in that way just finding some because I just see the conversations right it's happened many times in ccg it's like what's the African American play in the series well let's find that African American churches and let's go and and all of that is valid but are we then the conversation is do is that going to be our practice and why can't we blend ourselves and our seasons a bit better to have conversations just with interesting audiences that aren't coming in and figure out a way to communicate to a very specific audience you know if it's an age situation like if we want the 30 year olds to come to to the gin game I'm just picking something Rand it's like is there a conversation that we can have to show that not seeing yourself is the way that that's what theater is about am I making any sense I think for the last 100 years if we had a different 100 years prior history then maybe but I think we're we are inevitably making up for some you know a pretty shitty history oh absolutely and I love her I don't know I'd love for someone else to speak to that because I don't even think I'm the person to speak to that but I think that's a little bit of a that's reductive up to me what that idea you know there's there's the it's one two three okay I'm sorry you agree my mother always said don't point so it's horrible that I think that fridge so I don't we don't have discussions about but one of the things that I do for budget for the artists in the audience who really isn't and in that I think sets up environments where they are able to come together and actually talk to each other as like like minded people that are seeking like minded things instead of having this sort of barrier and then but I mean I would say a hundred percent of what we market is risk that we tell you that you're going to come and you're going to see something really horrible you're going to see something really great and both are okay but if you're not able to like sample then you're just like then don't come then don't come and I think one of the things that's hard about doing that in DC is we have gotten a fan base for a large following for a lot of audience members as we've been going through this for the last going into the ninth year and what do those people do outside of the festival and how how do other like minded events or like funded companies whether it be music dance whatever like how do we how do we keep it going so that's yeah if I could sort of jump back even to what Shirley was saying that you know I think there's a big difference between when you sort of reference the the February African American play it's a lot with that issue but I think there are entry points into the spirit of the theater that's very different than pandering I mean an audience member can smell pandering from a while away and so you know I think just given my experience before on theater and to jump in this where we're surely even talking about in the yellow face that you know the the last four shows we've produced the most common response that resonated with me is so many people saying I never thought I'd see my story on the stage but with Clementine and the Lower Nine which sort of the low-income family struggling the Tea Party this summer which was about stories of DC's transgender community I actually think talk about immigration and this current show about a lot of people who live in this dream that that was always the common response and then we've also added to you know we would see those people come back and those people really stood out to me and we would see them come back because I think what was happening is that we've created a spirit of welcoming and an opening of a the diverse group of audience members so that it's not about we're just working for the show and then we're gonna bring you in and then we're done with you but that it's a spirit of bringing those different people together but I think it's a very different dynamic than that this show is about this group and then we're done with them and I think I think what show is right is that there is a bit of an opening up because I think those groups are people who may not be normally going to the theater and they need that entry point to say oh this is a theater and these aren't for the artists who are interested in my story and engaging with me and there's that do you know any specific follow-up to encourage you know the recidivism rate or are people just coming back to kind of going to the theater going to the recidivism because I don't want to talk about addiction I mean I don't know I kind of was just thinking it's going on out of it also yeah I mean that's a big part of it I mean I said in our past two shows we started this program called 4 on 4 all and the major component of that is that most of our tickets are available if they we want so trying to eliminate economic barriers which we know is such a big thing I mean even before that our tickets were 25 dollars but for a family of four and five that's a big deal and so I think that was that was the so it's working backwards that was the system of what are the different things that we can do to make everything within the theater accessible so that we can at least eliminate those ideas we know that it's not this we know that it's not this and I think that does help with that retention rate because I mean you know the different levels of spectrum of risk that we're sort of hitting on one of those is I can launch one of those is ticket price and taking that out of the equation has changed quite a bit for you know going to see if you know we were talking over lunch about this idea that everyone keeps talking about the standing ovation in the broadway and people are compelled to stand because well we just paid 200 dollars so we didn't damn well like it we didn't hurt ourselves a little bit like that it's really long like when you're the only person that's and so taking that out of the equation people can say I'll go see something that might not work but I'm much more likely to see it and not have to do make the investment part of it Michael covered a lot of what I was going to say but I also wanted to want to pronounce this in my small theater but I think that part of what we should be striving for in reaching out to diverse audiences and reaching out to multiple people whose stories are on the stage is both the by telling the specific story we are telling a universal story that anyone else can have an entry point into as well as the and now you get to see yourself on the stage and if I think you're curating your season in a responsible manner then you're providing opportunities for both and you're saying here's one person's story or here's one entryway into talking about this issue or this type of story and then here are four other stories that are specific to this individual or this time period and you are welcome into all of them and your voice is an important part of how we discuss them and how we process them one of the things I don't believe in Sami's research and I'm curious about the rest of you this came up in the last one and stuff is when we asked she asked we asked the theaters when you're programming this season do you think about the audience and the majority of them said no and I don't know what that means does that bring truth to the poll of you yeah yeah I mean from my perspective being in a very small company I find that we don't market or we don't choose the shows and truly it affects the marketing of the shows we don't market the shows as let me think about it I find the where we get our most success is people attaching to the company itself the group of artists as opposed to the individual shows that people come to our shows and they say we came because we know that this group is doing this work and it doesn't necessarily matter whether we are doing a jazz show or a ballet the content of the shows isn't as important to our audiences as the fact that we as a group are the ones who are making it and I don't know how that translates into the bigger institution model because certainly the how can you how can you brand yourself as a company if you're not taking into consideration the work that you're doing so I think that there's something intriguing in that the work that you choose to do isn't always the isn't always the indicator of how the audience is going to think of your company not like people think of our company because of our our particular style we do puppetry and so people associate a particular style of performance a particular style of theater as opposed to a content of shows we're doing a show about this this particular type of audience is that something that says to their friend do you want to come see them they're much more likely to say oh this is a theater that does puppetry not this is a show about exactly that that I find it really interesting that a lot of our audiences we don't even really know exactly what the shows are going to be because we're always devising them we're always creating them as a group so oftentimes we have trouble marketing shows that we don't know how to sell it so instead we sell ourselves we say come see the work that we as artists are going to create and as opposed to come see this story about facts you know yeah I think too terms arose from me in hearing that comment and one has to do the status quo and I feel like the other has to do with maybe privilege and as much as if we say that we don't think about the audience perhaps we're saying we're comfortable with the audience that we've got so therefore I don't have to think about anything I already have an audience they come and they hate it about things so the environments I think about that and so then there's something to me that registers a little bit about status quo so then I also think about how privilege sort of plays into that and for some reason this of course also leads to conversations about race and things like that right and as much as and but that's an aside so I think I want to throw that into the conversation as well right and it's interesting because the first first time I thought about they don't think about their audience is a part of you that thought that's really good because it's the artist the person writing should figure out the place and then I thought no that's not good because they should be think right and I'm completely torn about this one right should you so it's anyway I mean these are two thoughts about it one is it strikes me as something aspirational not I think that's so smart I mean I think what you've said is like so dead on so many ways but I think there's like kind of pre-recession dream that we once lived in it was that we could just be what we wanted um and I think and that becomes self-perpetuating if you're right right if you're yeah and I think that's not true right right right um but I also would say that certainly uh speaking as someone who works in a larger institution we absolutely think about our audiences we just don't always know what to think you know we just don't always we talk about audiences instead of an audience and we try to talk we we try to predict and yet we know that we cannot predict their reaction and they constantly surprise us and so that's exciting and terrifying and wonderful and really horrible there's a handle in the back there's a handle in the back there's a handle in the back oh yeah we certainly think about our audience um with the plays we choose one of the things that we're thinking about all through the conversation is that you know artists and institutions are not monoliths and we have artists like Aaron who would come in and say like this is the here's the thing you need to do which is sort of the dream and then there are artists who don't care and say they don't care who their audience is they say that's your job um and then there's audiences who say we want everyone to come see the play which as a marketing director is you know a whole different kind of challenge so I guess I mean the thing that strikes me is how do we build up the sort of trust level or the conversation between artists and marketing departments or you know institutions as a whole where you can say okay can you sort of trust my expertise to know my area and I will trust your expertise to know who you're you know who you're telling your story to and sort of build a conversation around that that's a really popular question the way you just said that I love that you trust my expertise to know my area and I trust your expertise to know who you're telling the story for and that those are not am I getting that right I think so those are the things we talked about this morning was bringing artists into the institution in different ways that they've been brought in and somebody this morning talked about just throwing a chakka money at the playwright to say to say playwright will you spend four or five hours over the course of the marketing campaign be collaborating with our marketing department personally as an artist I would love that you know sign me up tomorrow because I'm I'm passionate about my story I'm a great interlocutor for my story and I want to help you of course you're the expert in your audience you're also the marketing expert I'm an expert in my story and those two expertises are how we build a community rather than an Aussie I don't like to work band I don't like to work audience I don't like to work community and I think so the community around the story and a conversation there's a lot of community around the story and that community can be members of the you know you know aligned by you know we're talking about defining an audience by whether they're going to see themselves on stage or not and I think there are certain obvious demographic things you can look at when we're when we're defining on it that way but we can also think about psychographics as well right these are the kind of people who like this kind of experience or the kind of people who like this kind of subject matter where they kind you know so I think I would love to be closer to the marketing endeavors that are supporting my work because no there's no there's no hand we're just not talking about it and now is your turn all right thank you for talking for a long time just to make up for that it's good stepping back a little bit in in what the conversation has been however and thinking that one of the things that we I don't know that we always take into consideration is where we came from where did the American theater as we know it now in the 21st century where did that come from and how did that and are we still able to stand on the ground that was where the foundations of our art form of the American theater came from and even going back to the European traditions that we borrowed from can we still stand on that and say this is a valid thing that we're doing when we can look at everything that's gone on in the world since then and see this is not the same this is not the same moment is Moliator or Shakespeare or point to any of the the agents that forms we admire and we continue to replicate or try to replicate and one of the primary things I think that is that state was it well it's kind of like evolution in a way we would you know that that when human beings stood up and it seems like we thought that everywhere we pissed along to us and from then on anybody else who went across that territory had to pay homage to us because repeat there first and instead of well no you know who cares that other things happen in the meantime and how do we evolve how does this art form evolve how does the delivery system of the art that we love evolve and not how do we keep it the same as it has been and I think that's what the efforts tend to look like all of the things even the things that we're describing and for the most part not every single one that we're trying to figure out how do we go back to that initial model you know Zelda and arena and how do we recreate that in a 21st century kind of context you know and to another image that comes to me about it is that it's like when when you confront a body of water at first you know you try to figure out how are you going to cross the body of water and then maybe then you say okay we'll go the boat and we will and everybody grows and everybody helps get across the boat then if you more and more people want to cross so you build bigger boats and you build bigger boats until you got the fucking Titanic and which is so big and unwieldy that it cannot maneuver when faced with issues with faced with a changing sea and then you know and then what do we do who do we we can't who do we blame it's not the ocean's fault it's the it's our it's our nearsightedness it's our narrow-mindedness it's our reluctance to let go of previous models and say well maybe that just doesn't work anymore and come up with something new we've got all you know these hundreds of MFA people flooding out of colleges all over the country who have no place to work and yet they feel that they are entitled to work because they were sold on this model that you get an MFA and you become a professional and whatever design or whatever the thing is you save in poetry and writing is it feel like they're entitled to have a book published because they got an MFA but where we what are we doing what are we doing you know we we can it's like we we we I don't know if I feel like we've got a water balloon somehow and we keep we just keep putting chewing gum on the little holes pop and say oh no we'll try it this way instead of saying what if we rethought and some young companies I know there are you know there are things like the fringe and other companies that are doing this where they're they're don't they're not necessarily beginning their work thinking that they're going to last forever you know they may maybe they're only going to last while they do these two shows that they're passionate about this the the welder's model was a very fascinating model to me too and it's no they're not the first ones to do this where they you know five writers are going to divide lives and that's it you know instead of that we're that we have to build something that's going to last forever because we don't last forever and I I you know I get a little annoyed sometimes with the the the sense of of intended permanence that is implied in the conversations we have about what we're doing with theater theater how is theater even still relevant that you can match something on your phone you know and every be in a room with 30 people and everybody be looking at something different and you know I'm a theater person I'm not saying that I don't like theater but I you know I just I feel like we have we that's why I don't I just stop coming to things like this because I feel like we just well but rehashing and what I'm hashing the same things and we and what we're doing is is spinning wheels and staying in the same place part of what I part just to part of what was useful earlier with and I think it's a couple of folks from small theaters said why are we here and what was clear is the reason they're here is they have approaches and methodologies that are what some of the other folks want to hear and learn and do from and that's for me anyway that's I mean for us that's part of what this is about is that it's got to move in this direction because I think if you drill down on the research I think you can drill down on the the sustainable audience versus the specific audience you're coming to a place where the new sustainable audience is going to be a totally different kind of audience in the audience it was and it's time to say that's what's happened and I believe you can say why are we talking about a sustainable audience why we know why aren't we thinking that audience is the audience that it is for each to be that sustainable huh like we're with this vocabulary I'm saying but the same a different audience 20 times is a different version of sustainability okay that's what I'm talking about it's a whole different concept then you know then what we generally think of and I've worked in a tiny tiny theater and the the distributor in town or one of the the distributors in town and and the conversation we have been the same conversations for 40 years oh yeah there's a hand oh way over there that's it that's it get it back to you um so one of the things that I we're talking a lot about the message and what the message is but I haven't and so I think there's it's one thing to be welcoming and to open your doors up and say come in but I think it's another thing to go outside of your doors and go and have a presence in the neighborhood that you live and work in and it's another thing to you know say we want you to come and see our theater but then to say that instead of sending it through an email knocking on people's doors that's something that's old that's you know and what makes theater special is that it is live and in person and it's you know I understand the feeling that we need to compete with the internet but but that's not what theater is that's not the point so why would we try to become that when what we have is actual live people yeah Oh well I was just getting excited about some things that Jennifer said particularly when she invited us to go back to the origin of these sort of models right with the we know what they were comfortable when I was thinking about the emergence of the subscription model in the late 19th and going from century it actually arose sort of in response to you know various censorship and things of that nature and became a way for companies to do challenging work because there wasn't a medium where work could get done right so you form a private club and you fund this thing so that we can do work that was challenging or provocative or that no one else would pay for and you wouldn't need your shirt right and you can kind of keep doing it so it's interesting that we start with the subscription audience and sort of you know that happens private clubs so that we can do the craziest thing possible we can break all the rules we can be wacky and it's okay and somehow then it's grown to the point where now it's safety and we no longer are interested really in breaking the rules we just want to maybe keep getting bigger and bigger I don't know but it's interesting to sort of think about where we started versus where we are yeah and that's the question is like what's the notion of success right like what's your definition of a successful theater it is is it to kind of keep amassing of fortune or there isn't really much for it you know like do you want to like get more people that can pay $50 seats do you want to you know what's what's the purpose of why we're doing this and I also think the question of like you mentioned of like privilege and entitlement and who are we inviting who are we not inviting who by the nature of the work that we're going and the cast that we're hiring are we excluding from from the theater to begin with and I think it's not just a question of that person looks not like it's also a question of is that an experience that I relate to in any way and I think that means that maybe people have to give me give up this kind of notion of control that is this artistic vision yes that's great but like if you're not considering your I mean I mean you're not considering your audiences in and how you're programming that's a problem so we've got about we're coming not we'll get half an hour so there's a couple things you want to do first of all I want to hear from some hands from people we haven't heard from so see this hand and here and here right so I want to hear from you for you for sure and then maybe begin to kind of come back to it for you to say why are we here and begin to not close this down but kind of maybe coming in for a little bit of a landing so fill in ahead yeah no I mean I'm just responding to a couple of a couple of things that have been set I mean so I'm coming from a small theater company that is starting to grow at this moment and um we're at a point where we are you know we're looking to grow we're looking at maybe like 10 to 15 extra audience members in each show so we're at a point where we can go and knock on doors and that's something that we're we're doing we're starting to talk about more about how to grow our audiences and at this point in time we're um we're not necessarily thinking about our audiences as we program we've been you know we choose work that we're excited about doing and the ways in which we've been starting to talk about how to grow our audiences has more to do with um you know how do we how do we establish loyalty like how do we make sure that someone from the ensemble is always in the lobby like you know every night so that we're having conversations with people we're thinking about it in terms of growing our community but I also wonder you know if we continue to grow is that something we're going to be able to continue to do you know or you know is if we continue if we turn into a kind of that is that going to change you know um so it's seriously yes it will yeah yeah so I think what I just think is it is interesting that there are smaller companies in the other companies and we're just we're dealing with different types it's interesting because I feel like we're at this topic really far downstream in that we're talking about community or fans or audience why why are we as artists not in the community to get people where they are and to ask them what stories they want to tell us that you know we're it's you know and I understand that we need to go and say you know who in this army how do we get people to come to us how do we get that our community to come to us and say we have these stories to tell we want to engage with you I mean I think of Teacher America of Peace Corps or you know something like that artists are part of the community and go out and see recede ourselves I have a friend who's a director who says you know nobody ever forced anybody to take hockey appreciation lessons and it's and you know I mean you know I come from a working class background you know by all accounts I should you know I should not be a theater person but my parents instilled that is because to them it was a way of being a good human being and I think we've lost that by not teaching you know by teaching art in schools and so I you know it's part of the curriculum you know I'm not talking about teaching arts to go in so I wonder if there you know I have no answer but it's just a question I feel like when we do this we're coming we're coming far we're coming way too late I think that that that it all needs to get a lot further a lot earlier than we've come it's just to say super super quickly there are of course theater from time there are a bunch of right spots across the country that do audience and you know that sort of do co-create with their audience I know there's a actually sort of interesting partnership that's just starting out at People's Light outside of Philadelphia I was doing yeah commissioning commissioning writers who propose to work with different communities in their area so if you're passionate about that so I don't if none of them have none of the place I've been written yet but it might be interesting varying the stage is doing that as well yeah as president playwright in the lobby yeah go for it and uh every so often at center stage I'll sit in the lobby before the show and I'm very interested in collecting People's Stories and we have we have this thing called Right Right Now where I'll talk with audience members as they come in for I don't know a minute five minutes and hear a grain of a story their story that they're really interested in sharing and then by intermission or the end of the play they have their own personalized new play that they can that I have written for them while they're sitting in the performance it's kind of like it's kind of like a food truck model what was what what was the what was the what was the I want to have my dream is this like story food trucks sort of like story cord that I don't have a name for it so I'm looking for it it was the it was like the plays on demand or whatever it was place to serve to damn it there was a good it's on the screen it's great they know do they know you're there before they get there no sat sat where we're gonna in that yeah I think there's an email that goes out to the it's in our newsletter yeah it's in our newsletter because I I would think otherwise goes up and says I'm gonna write a story about would you like tell me something I can write a play about well there's there's also a fish bowl there's some problems so there's some problems but risk sometimes right well the interesting thing is though that there's there are prompts but so often audience members are intrigued by the prompts and pick one up but they don't go with the prompt they're like oh this is so dumb I should tell you this instead but I think it's interesting because it speaks exactly to some of that stuff that was in the study about people what are the characteristics of people who are more lack of a better term risk time and it's people who are do have things they want to say and they are so they are motivated and so this is a way of glomming on to that and saying okay so you tell me and I'll yeah okay and then yeah well go ahead I'm from a company called Baltimore Rock Opera and we are a very community centered on we we exist within this we we have a community and the ideas get generated within the community and the plays you risk within the community and then the production happens within the community kind of extends out and out and further further we've been doing something called a pitch party for the last few years it's kind of a difficult idea but basically we ask our community what they want us to produce and uh we're not in a position that a lot of the companies here are in we're we're working in very different ways but I that's kind of my question to a lot of people here is like why not ask the audience is what you want them to produce as a way of kind of finessing some of those it's very difficult to try to get people in and try to build work with them and that generative kind of process really hard and cumbersome why not just ask them what they want you to produce and what you produce some some business are doing ideas you'll have your head up for a long long time I'm interested in this conversation of audience particularly Ronnie something you said in the very beginning of the discussion about the audience because I work with a puppetry company that in part makes new puppet work for a thing to market and when we ask for advice how to mark what we can go to the family are you two different companies? we're different companies oh right we're friends um yeah with Ronnie Blockers you know this is the advice that we get and the fact is that they do come out the kids come they see the work they enjoy it so we're in a situation where we have a group of artists who have made work for their peers and perform it for a group of 10-12 year olds the artists are doing the work they want to do with an audience they're enjoying it but it doesn't feel like a success because we're not reaching the people that we had in mind and that also made me think of is from the paper the question about marketing and playwrights thinking that oh institutions aren't as successful as they should be at marketing is it funds and the seats or is it writing or reaching the audience that the playwright had in mind and is it even okay for the playwright to have that audience in mind? you know is it wrong to say well if the 10-year olds show up that's not the right audience if they're enjoying it why is that wrong? I mean look there and then there yeah well just two things that have been talked about today that say something things that I learned from my wonderful mentor Joyce Inamon who created studio theater one is flattening the triangle that you talked about the outset that she was always committed to the idea of artists managers not that every artist has to build the institution and every manager has to be on stage designing performing but although there were cases where that happened but that managers need to understand the artist and what's going on and artists shouldn't just be going to the marketing director and saying find an audience for my play but should understand enough about marketing that they could speak knowledgeably not run a marketing program but be able to work with a marketing manager and inform that person that help them make better choices and help them guide them second thing talking about the limits of subscriber audiences and programming to your audience is studio always led it was the belief of the leading by doing the art that the institution wanted to do and what's interesting is for every every time there was a play the play that got the most outraged letter letters from subscribers swearing they would never come again and never renew got even more new subscribers so that over time the theater developed an audience for the art that we wanted to do and then we could do the things we wanted to do knowing that that's what the audience was coming to see and they found you right along with a lot of effort from marketing people to reach out to them I'm sorry can I just you know for a second there was a period in the late 80s where I was called from studio almost every week for the entire summer so no I'm sure it wasn't you but but I'm just saying like it's not it's not I don't mean to throw this at like it's not something I'm challenging or whatever but it wasn't always that I did like like like they actually aggressively saw it an audience in the late 80s and I remember receiving those calls and going I already go it was interesting wasn't selling single tickets it was going to people to our audience to our existing audience and trying to get them to commit to a season and if they didn't commit they would at least come to more shows and talk to other people because it's your core audience the people who are committed to your work who are going to then find other people bring other people in did you ever subscribe? no because I never paid for theater I always hand it with a friend or like I just want to say two quick things speaking to the audience an old audience of public tree I think you're noticing something that those of us who've been here you know 10 to 15 years now have recognized that we as a community are learning to be more open to risk our audience is a community and that's a big part I think because of the Fringe Festival and I think we're all really glad about that but we are still defining what is a play it has changed substantially in the past five years with the amount of device theater and non-traditional theater I think they're getting there I think audiences continue will continue to get there because for a long time I think we were following a very traditional this is a play and this is how we do it model in this city much more so than New York and I just want to say one other small thing you guys have been successful in doing something that very rarely happens which is bringing the Baltimore community into the same room as the DC Thank you for being here It's very cool and I'm excited to see that happening here Well thank you Jeff for being here to listen to someone else so Hi Just based on something and also working advising work with your institutional among all of us are individuals fear of audience or sort of not giving them the benefit of the doubt risk and money except risk and people within our community and it's this work too much for them or too big for them or too is it gonna afford them and and then whenever at a store at you know like I'll say like at the cobbler or at whatever place oh that you know I can say you know there's nudity and cursing and then things blow up and it's crazy and there's no real pot and there's no timeline and they're like yeah I saw something like that driving Russia I saw something like that in the street got something like that's the kind of theater I used to see all the time with my family and there's an audience out there who's like in some ways way more progressive and ready for this than we are and also finding with audience participation in developing new works everyone's like audience participation they get scared if you ask too much or expect too much and we're finding ways of doing it that where they continually surprise us of how much they're there waiting like thirsting to participate and we just have to meet them halfway in many cases if they're there they're waiting for us to join them and so I don't know like risk and our you know can our audience take the risk I think they can it doesn't matter whether we can and you guys over here so there's been a lot of direction that this conversation is going on so I'm trying to focus myself just touching on the silos and the pandering and the large institutions as flexible small institutions flexibility one of the things that and a conference for content creators of movies and film that was in a couple of years ago had a similar conversation of where's our audience going and what's going on with it one of the things that they found really successful for them was a large organization that is inflexible the Titanic gathering and giving support to a smaller organization that is much more flexible and we found that at Warshack which is one of the companies on part of as well at Atlas that they have a relationship together and one of the things we're seeing is that audiences are leading over between other things that they produce and things that we produce and you see it at the fringe constantly is that that conversation that happens at the tent is that the audience has started leading over from one company to the next company so as larger as organizations such as like Paramount Pictures puts together a microfilm budget for a small creator like Louis C.K. to make his film it only has to make X amount of money to be successful but it brings in a new audience for Paramount to be able to tackle onto and we're seeing that as like a great break point as a lot of things are doing but we need more a lot of times people talking different ways about theater being similar to dating and I don't think that's an accurate thing but you can't expect people to know who you are if you don't like you have to have a very strong sense of self in order to be what somebody wants to spend time on really doesn't I don't think that's different than organizations if you know what your values are and your goals are and your aesthetics are and you know what are not you want to become the next arena or if you're fine being women of like a cable network whatever the thing is and you know exactly what you're going after I mean with line B I created a bullet point of aesthetics from when we started that every show that we do has to hit some sort of like for critical mass of what's on this aesthetic bullet point I like things that are on that aesthetic bullet point but it wasn't what we at this company were going to do hopefully the goal is when I think it's happening we stick that's a big enough thing how lots of cool stuff to do it's a small enough thing that we keep doing it we know exactly who we are the people who like what we're doing they find us it turns out and not the people like what we're doing and that's what we want to do then we don't do it anymore because we couldn't find the people that we like to do it but we stick with high quality thing that we really do because that's the other thing that I sort of have seen is that the shows that have been the least successful for us can be the ones that I look at as an artist and go that and just fuck that and B they don't hit that critical mass so they're A not at the level that people want to talk about it and give their recognition because that's going to the capital people have high taste and they have a lot of pride in their taste and they go to other people and they say what I recommend this to you I really hope you like it because then I have a higher taste than you would describe that so I'm going to be super careful about what I put on Facebook and they'll be super careful about what I recommend to you even more careful about what I go to because I want you to think that my my recommendation is about you so the word has to be an exceptional level and it has to be really understood of who you are and what you do so that people can become to begin a relationship with you where they know who you are you're not Tanner you're not saying who do you want me to be because that's not who I am and eventually in every relationship when you find out that someone's black then you give up so and I assumed a response that Jason said really the first thing he said and then I have three quick things that I would love to see moving forward and what Jojo was saying about the survey that you all did weren't the theaters we did like 50 percent new works that there was no difference but I'm hearing here is a sense of a really strong brand and you know I know lots of artists don't like to think of theaters business but we need to get paid for the work that we do so we think of ourselves as a business all good businesses and corporations the best ones out there have really strong brands and brands aren't just logos they aren't just colors it's not just your typeface it's not just the work you produce or the product that you produce but it's how you do to your customers as well so it becomes a complete brand experience you guys can think of stores like Starbucks you can think of companies like Target and Amazon and Zappos those companies would really great and Apple of course do a really great job at that so when I launched a new product like an iPad if I'm Apple I can do that I don't need to tell you all the great things about what an iPad can do for you you trust me because you trust my brand so if you're an organization that produces predominantly new plays or has a really strong brand like this is where you come to have conversations about social identity this is a place where you come to do really cool shit in the lobby like this is a place you come to like have like more disability or whatever then you can get away with more as long as it's on brands which in the translation for theater which is on mission so I just thought that would be an interesting piece and three things that I would love to see sort of moving forward they're not really great spots and I hope they don't sound like recommendations they're just ideas one is correct one is the thing that I keep getting cut off from this putting in and Aaron Posner was saying earlier like what if you were to find some money to pay a play rate to come in and be a consultant to the marketing staff great idea I would love to add to that idea funds for a meal maybe at an offsite location where the two people can leave the actual venue and for a temporary staff person to pick up the slack before it's not being done yet not to say that they're doing the director's work but maybe they're helping else out on the staff I think what I just brought up earlier in the morning was a lack of time and what can we get rid of from the place guard administrators to allow more time to converse with artists so there's one simple ish solution to be great at funders could find out a way to make that happen two is I would love to hear bright spots in marketing I've heard really cool things come out of conversations with artistic directors but I would love to hear bright spots moving forward about conversations that play rates or other artists or artistic directors have had with marketing directors and how that collaboration has specifically worked well and I totally said I had that third and I don't remember the third but I'm going to remember within the next 10 minutes and I'll be right back in again in a minute what do you think? so first of all I want to thank everyone for the generosity of the time so I think we were more to help friends everybody was to help them they were like well they were like oh wow so that's really good and it's really helpful as we go forward um secondly this is not the end of the conversation this is actually the very beginning as I said of six this is the very beginning of phase one and one of the things that I've been trying to do is that the listening is thinking about what we need to know from the audience when we start asking them this summer can I come back go ahead and do the third one it was the one where I said earlier this morning about challenging Alan to survey audiences who don't comment so oh right yeah yeah but but I'm hearing things that we have disagreements amongst ourselves did you want to put the websites like that yeah yeah I'll remember okay that we don't know what the relationship is between needing to see your story and what the invitation is and what the we're making a set of assumptions in the midst of what's an old it's a fraught conversation for all of us and so one of the things that would be really interesting would be to actually finally see what folks say about that and what do I have to when's my entry point once I have my entry point what else where else am I willing where else do I want to go forget willing that's a majority term so that's to me as an example of something that I am hearing that I really would like to learn more about it we can talk to the audience there are other things that we already heard today and what but that's when people say what's this really about it's this you know we know a lot about the two parts of the triangle we know because we are the theaters and we are the artists but as someone we are we are so not the typical audience because either we don't pay for our ticket or it's our friends or I mean it's just you know where it has to be really really frankly it's got to be really different and good sometimes to even get us excited right so we're not the audience and a big part of what's the impetus for this project is is let's stop guessing we're going to get into this equation so as you think of stuff we're going to um you know a little disagreement this morning about our current capacity but within a week or so the tdf website is www.tdf.cork and there will be a link that gets you to the magazine that Mark edits which is stages where we will have a place where we are going to continue this conversation so and that'll are you inviting audiences into the study? we're trying to it's really hard because you have to we're trying to and we were trying to today and I didn't it's how we so as you have colleagues in other cities like where we're going let them know that it really would be okay for them to bring in some of their audience because we'd like to get those people in the world even now because we get a different kind of pushback and we don't know how to do that so if you have ideas about that please either that you can just email us right how do we we get those people in it's the daytime how do you get them to take time off or what blah blah but that would be really helpful right so that's the next piece this is really beginning and the focus I mean when both of us where this comes from we it's interesting that it's resonating a lot of conversations a lot of us have had over the years but you know I go to bed and get up in the morning I'm supposed to and I think about actually how do I get people to go to the theater that's the that's the main thing we do in our mantra is it's the birthright of everybody who lives in the city of New York and that's I mean you feel that way same and that's what we do and that's what this conversation is about because it'll make everybody's it'll make everybody's work better because you know we aren't the titanic we just have to figure something out so that's that that's the next step I think more than anything else yeah so do stay in conversation with us and we are going to San Francisco in Los Angeles and Minneapolis and Chicago and New York so for your colleagues who live in those cities or nearby those cities would be great if you know involve these people if you have any ideas about how to find get some audience people in the room in the beginning that would be really helpful yeah may I ask a question so in thinking about audiences that are not showing up or audiences that are not being reached or spoken to or who traditionally don't have their stories told how are you going to go into those communities and make sure that you hear from my the underserved my thought is and I'm just totally I'm gonna put out a call to everyone came in these conversations who's in particular who's an artist and say or and mark and say who did you go to to find people to bring in right when you were doing work to get the people not in the door not in the room in the room where did you go but but if but if the survey says that most and again I don't being at a theater company I kind of blows my mind to hear that some do not think about their audiences but if if survey says most don't think about their audiences and how is going to them and asking that question we're going to I'm not gonna ask that one but okay what I was saying was if you do if you if you're working with community organizers right I mean gotcha who are the folks that so going to the artists rather than with and how we how we get to those groups and when you're endorsed and say you don't feel the sound would be really interesting right it's that it's the same it's we we need the help of everybody's room to get outside the room sure great thank you and let me just reiterate you will within the next 10 days be receiving another an email from us that tells you how to continue to get to us we just want to create an environment that allows the conversation to happen rather than just giving you like my we're one of those really big organizations that we haven't told the it folks yet that they're going to say so so they're going to say this so so that's that's our dish dish so that we aren't saying these those people what why why not have those conversations with audiences after a show yeah not just go into a theater and say stick around audience we want to talk about well what part of what we're going to do is realign some of the funds we had budgeted in this in this project that we really discovered from reading Alan's paper and like in talking with Alan we got very excited about this actually about creating asking him and commissioning and creating what was called to do that so that this is a piece that you know this this project is evolving and that was something really just in the last week that we're like you know what we really need to do this we need to do a protocol to really get in more deeply with these audiences so that's that would be something new that and time and funding being what it is we may also ask some of you guys if you would do that right so that you that's part of the you know you meet us we meet you and it's like when you do that at your theater for a month afterwards so it would be better right so so oh um wow all right yeah personally it's so the things that I would call up to is this this idea the evolution of theater and how we need to evolve ways not only that we create theater but we are are the audiences into theater and also artists at the same time as this conversation well for an hour at the same time as this conversation was happening the raising representation conversation was happening power out so literally she was like she was like is this I was oh yeah the question and it's it's unfortunate that that happened at the exact same time in the way that it did because it should have been a cross conversation right so I told all those people hey raise representation get out or the triple play because the reality that we all have to face which is people in the Baltimore DC urban areas is that in 2050 we're gonna have them when they're already majority right so the conversation around who is your audience who are you inviting into your group has got a little bit different than it has for the 2000 plus years that it has right and you've got to be able someone said to be afraid to have that you'd say Allah I do not know how to talk to you right new people who are entering the community that I live in who I want to program for and we've got and just get leave, leave, leave we are because we are experts we got it in a phase we've worked for 20 years I'm a player I know like doing it with them necessarily but you can speak to your experience so to not have an informed engage that's why I want to just put out there is that the diversity conversation is it itching its way in here but if we're talking about growing this thing in our audiences we have to have that conversation we have to talk about different and how we're bringing the inclusion into that conversation thank you it's before but