 Together, with an eye towards, we're going to do some surveying this summer, talking more directly. So part of what we want to get in this last minute is we'll have some conversation towards the end about if you could ask either people sitting in the theater or people not sitting in the theater, then it should be in the theater anything you wanted to ask them, what would that be? What are the assumptions that we bring to our thinking about audiences? So that's a, we're going to do some work on that this summer and then immediately in the fall or the early winter at Arts Emerson, where we will take a bunch of the things that we've leaned in on and put them together, put different lines on it and help disseminate the project. It was funded in large part by the Doris Smith Chair of Trust Fund for National Projects. We also want to thank you to the Southwestern Council, who let Alan use their research, research that he had done for them on my stuff. And of course here in Los Angeles, I want to thank you to Tarence, the State Alliance, and to the Center for Hosting us today. And I get a couple of chairs for our meeting. Yeah, let's just spread out a little bit and then a couple more chairs. So really quickly before we get on to some of our drill down in the morning, it's good to just not be afraid. But this is bigger, bigger. I'm Alex Levy, I'm the managing director. I'm sorry, I'm Alex Levy, I'm the managing director of the Los Angeles Theater Company and director of the Center for Hosting. I'm Joy, I'm the literary associated artistic engagement strategist at CTG. Hi, I'm Katie Hilton, I work in institutional giving at CTG. My name is Amika Abe and I am a theater management student at Yale School of Drama and I'm also currently doing a management fellowship at CTG. I'm Jenny Webb, I'm a playwright. I'm a kind of playwright and I also run the new play-developed program that has theater for botanical and the LA Theater and Playworks Initiative, which is about supporting students who are different. I'm Sean Todd Rodriguez, I'm the programming director and literary manager at the Los Angeles Theater Center and I'm the director of the Professor of Theater at Loyola Marymount University. Hi, my name is Fernanda, I'm a playwright, resident director of the Latino Theater Company and I'm working with a lot of writers at the Los Angeles Theater Center. I'm Jessica Kuzanski, I'm the co-artistic director of the Theater of Hosting and Work, which does a lot of new work at CTG. I'm John Boyle, the associate director of the Center for Hosting and Work and I'm a co-artistic director at the Los Angeles Theater Center and I'm also currently doing a playwright at the Los Angeles Theater Center. I'm Kuzanski and I'm the artistic director of Los Angeles Theater Center and I'm the director of the theater company and I'm the head of the M.I.T.A. director of the program at Los Angeles Theater Center. I'm Jessica Hanna, I'm co-founder and managing the super director of the M.I.T.A. Hi, I'm Michael Sheppard, I'm the co-artistic director of Sunbridge Theater and is there a hashtag that we should be using today? Yes, this is a great opportunity for me to remind you all that you are being broadcast on HullRoundTV right now, so hi. This is your camera. And the hashtag is triple play only without vowels in triple. No, that's not what I'm saying. Tee, hashtag T-R-P-L play. Thank you for asking. I'm Gator Pia and I'm the director of the M.I.T.A. Brian Hullback, I'm a playwright and I'm the marketing manager at Boston Board. I'm Nick Salomon, I'm a playwright and an actor. I'm at the C.L.M.I.T.A. director of Boston Board as well as the chair of the leadership council for the Asian and Christian Theater. I'm Jenny Bird, I'm the executive director of River Street Theater Company and I'm also a leadership council for the Asian and Christian Theater. Hi, and I'm Jackie Goldberg, the big lady. I've seen the staff how production looks during theater year-round theatrical production of C.L.M.I.T.A. I'm Sandy Sackler, I'm the marketing director for C.L.M.I.T.A. I'm Leslie Thomas, I'm a playwright and an avid theater goer. I'm Richard Johnson, I'm the former artistic director of the Malibu Stage Company. Hi, Sandy. And now I'm going to assume a repertory of theater. I'm an actor, producer, director. I'm Catherine Nude, I'm the artistic director of the Ghostrow Company. We do all ensemble devise collaboratively created work. I'm a director and an actor and I am an associate professor at the Willamette University Theater Department. I'm Henry Murray, I am literary manager and one of our playwrights and residents of Rogue Michigan Theater in Los Angeles. I am Mark Blankenship, I am the editor of an online magazine and a couple of film projects at the Theater Development Fund in New York and today I am your scribe. Great. So, yes, two more. Two in the back. One lady, I cannot see, there you are. Hi. I'm Tiffany Moon. I'm the general manager of O'Haglin's conference and a calcium repertory. I'm John Flynn, I'm your artistic director of Rogue Michigan Theater. Okay, thank you. And thanks to everyone who was here this morning for coming back. Thank you all too, who are coming in fresh this afternoon. In the material that we sent out to you, and hopefully many of you had a chance to look at it, there was a piece of research that we asked Alan Brown, who will Brown to do, Alan's a pretty well known researcher, looking mainly at the way audiences engage with the arts of all kinds, all around the English-speaking world, really. And we had asked him to, not to do new research, but to take data that he had already collected either from the intrinsic impact work that Peter Bay Area had commissioned, and literally we had well over 20,000 surveys that he could pour through to look at there and also work that he had done with Southwest Web and with Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago to see what he was finding there. And all of that work, we had not really filtered for new work specifically, and that was where we were starting with this. So Alan thought that the closest thing that he could see from where we did look at and ask specific questions around was with quote unquote, risky work. So that's where that whole analysis of risk picking came from because that's where we had more of a filter. And I think you will see, and Alan was fascinated to find some things that were unexpected for him. First of all, he posits that there is this sort of spectrum among audience, individual audience member around their propensity for risky work. Right from, I'm going to go from left to right. From sort of risk averse. I really don't want to see anything that's pushing my envelope. I want to go to things that I'm comfortable with, and that's what I want to do. To risk tolerant, like, well, right if I have to, well, maybe, to something more in the middle and then to risk seeking. Actually, this is fun. I want to try something that's going to be new to me. Blow my socks off all the way over to what the, on the far side of the spectrum, sees as being sort of co-creative in the work that the audience member has some feeling that they're engaged in some way in the creation of work. And none of this is about, this is not a value judgment. One of the things that Alan and this work around intrinsic impact that we're finding is that we each have a section of a column called aesthetic growth, and really we're finding it's more about aesthetic enrichment, that there's a reason why people keep going back to the Christmas carol year after year, year after year, or to the nutcracker, or why they want to go here, and Mozart for the upkeep with Zodiac time, it's because they are reconnecting with me. It's meaningful, it's really rich, and that is not to be where we should none of us take anything away from that experience and there's real validity to it. And of course, all of us, you know, my trying time in that field is really wonderful and a time when we want to go have our socks blown off, but there are some people for whom that is where the conflict zone is and what they want to do most of the time, and others who are way over here on this sort of other end of this factor. So that was one thing that he found and that he posits that there might be kind of a matrix that a lot of what we were talking about this morning around audience engagement techniques, that there's something to that in the more engaged people are in different ways of approaching the work, of processing the work, of pre-show work, post-show reading about it, that that makes you runnier and have a greater propensity for risky work. So for instance, one of the things that was surprising to him and to us was that the people who have a great propensity for risk-taking and fear are both people who make fear, sort of, yeah, but even more than that, people who read plays. Like, who does that? People who are called reading plays on their own for fun, those people are by far the likeliest that you can fill, come in and watch anything you can blow their side-self, right? So that, and they're also, this makes sense, they're also probably going to be the ones who are coming to your readings and to your workshops because they have they have just a dexterity with the form itself. So there was some, some sort of a matrix there that he was finding, and then the other thing that was interesting to us that he feels that there's some sort of connection between the two is this idea that exists in the education world of approximate learning. So that what they're finding in the education world is that we, we as students, we learn the best and the thing that we're trying to learn is just sort of just beyond where we currently are. Just beyond that place of knowledge where we already sit. And so he is wondering if this is the same the same sort of thing would be true in risk-taking fear, right? So that if you as, as an artistic director the one who fell out of his place and said, I just do this from time to time and it's true, like if you're wanting to do this kind of work way over here but your sense is your audience is over here can you move them over a period of time by providing them with this sort of approximate learning so that it actually moves them along the scale of readiness to be able to receive and process riskier work or as they posited when we were in Washington is it really better instead to simply read to create a new audience for each new piece or whom that approximate learning is that's their thing, right? It's just beyond their reach to do. They are in the sweet spot for that play and if that's so what do you do with those people who keep coming back whether you call them members or whether you call them subscribers or just sort of regular folks for you. We wanted to just have you respond to it and for the playwrights and artists in the room many of you are wearing. So think about where does your work lie as the other companies where does your work lie when it comes to taking risk is just doing a new play and also what other lens is for whom is your work risk is different depending on and how do you think about the audience but the work that you're either creating or the work that you're presenting and how do you bring them in or make them prepared for the work that they're about to see or help them process. And does that help get more people and does that help engage more people in different kinds of cheaper in the world. Thinking about the audience thinking about the work that you're either creating or producing. I think we left off in this session this morning with voices and I think that that's a great place to be in. And that idea, like I just said and I just want to say that I think a lot of times how we assess risk is by experience so if we've seen a lot of examples of something being successful and the next play kind of looks like that, we're like okay that's successful and I think that's the place in which I'm really interested in that question of your assumption about your audience and who are you leaving out of that. I think that becomes really important because I do feel like the history of this theater is dominated by white male voices. But LA is 70% non-white, it's 50% lady and so I do feel like there's a lot of things that are happening in that unconscious calculation of the assessment of risk that have to do with what we're familiar with that leave out that audience. And I think that can sometimes be reflected in the way that we talk about our work. I mean I notice nationwide when I look at the way that shows our market at theaters I notice sometimes there's this pernicious thing that I think is very subtle that is very common where you see a work that's by a white guy as being touted for what it says about you whereas there's subtle cues sometimes in the way that we promote or talk about works that are from people of color or the ways where it's like a window onto them. It's a very subtle thing that happens that I think finds our audience and teaches them how to really like if I'm going to see Shack-Off that 19th century landowner Russian landowner no more renewable to me than the middle class and teen home family. No, I mean if you had in fact some artistic directors who took exception to the beginnings of the idea that new play would risky, what was risky for them was classic in the pan because their audience was expecting something else so I think that's exactly the case. So that's kind of what this is we're interested in is what's risky and issues of diversity is the risk in moving outside whatever you have into whatever is not in your theater is it an age diversity? Did we talk some about economics this morning? I mean where are when you think about it what helps you as a producer you as a writer or a director or a general artist move across the line to a place that's a little scary, right? Because that's what we're trying to tease out here and make that leap a little bit not so much a leap it's just again moving along that continuum so I'm curious what kinds of things other folks might have done, yeah. One of the things which I also got from the morning session is a little bit discouraging I guess what we're talking about research but it harks back to the William Goldman line about Hollywood which is nobody knows anything. You really have to try the approach you can take because Michael Shudder was talking about creating things and making them into events. Other people were talking about having like a circus atmosphere at times in the lobby others were talking about academic talks with playwrights beforehand things afterwards and you just really don't know what's going to work on a general scale because every play is different, every theater is different and so you've got to really I think approach each on a case by case basis and say what can we do that will liven this up what can we do that will make this an event happening something that people will want to come to, they'll want to talk about afterwards they'll want to be friends with. Yeah. Because the my company does all on mumble device work so it's a long process we're more focused on process than product and what we have found that's because it is hard to get audiences because they don't know what they're coming to see, it's nothing's tried and true it's all an experiment could be a big giant flop but what we have found recently that has been really helpful is engaging our audience and new audience in the process of development so that they are sort of they are every step of the way, I don't know if it's always spoken of this morning, they're every step of the way and they give feedback and they come back to see how if their feedback is made a difference so they end up having some sort of ownership of the piece by the time it's done so that at least for us that has been a new wrinkle that has really been helpful. Has there been enough people though in that process to sort of increase your hatred base? Yeah, there has, I mean that being said it's not huge but it definitely has increased exponentially from when we started doing that and then we've started offering workshops about twice a year and we get civilians in those workshops because we're curious about how the pieces are developed so that further sort of engages them more in a buy-in into feeling like they're part of something and that's been a big difference and it has been excellent. Can I just say for the gentleman in the back we have chairs over here over here. It's interesting because I work with a theater company in New York that does classical stuff and God bless them, I'm trying to push them a little bit more experimentally with their approach to the classics but they tend to have a fairly traditional approach but we do the same thing because we're working in sites specific places in Central Park and Valley Park and our entire reversal process is completely open to the public and we find people that have an hour free in the park while we're reversing the following along that has really helped us in terms of audience building. So that sort of thing can happen even when we're doing much more traditional things like last season we did check out, we didn't see all the tempest and in both those situations we had some real followers that were very engaged in the process in our process. Oh, and brought friends and then engaged with us and we could talk intelligently about the process it was really fun. So for both of you did you find that the audiences that were coming to these developmental elements did they already have a language to understand what they were seeing or did you have to give them training of some sort to even comprehend what they were watching? I think in before we present work in progress and then we have a discussion afterwards and so there's a conversation but it's not like a primer or something. I just had more like like if I went to see a dance but like something that would yeah like if I went to see a dance show I could watch a dance development but I wouldn't have any problems. Right, I mean because the work is like different things and different source material we will have that kind of material some of the articles and things like that so we have an idea where we sort of started before we even got on our feet so that happened. Since from your question I'm not going to do all the initials you can do them you're interested in crossover and from one sector to the next sector of your... I was trying to avoid that because I wanted to hear what everyone else was going to say because we did have a morning session and what we discussed was the fact that how do you get like we were talking about racial parity is like well people of color can go to see a show that is primarily a white show and with a primarily white audience and we will come and see that but those same white audiences won't come to see the show as a Latino company or a black company or a gay company and try to figure out how to make that happen to make them either feel comfortable coming out of the neighborhoods or a little sketchy or a little bit scarier for people who are not of color but are just trying to figure out are these people willing to take a risk to come and see something that they may not feel that might not fall into what their general world is making them think outside of the box and strategies that people might have moved forward on that or is not what we just are so that's the black voice in the room yeah that's me speaking for all black people in all of Los Angeles it's just that because this is in my own personal experience which is all black experiences going to see a show at the I want to say the names but seeing a show at certain theaters where I walk in and I'm the only black member in the entire audience and I get the response of like what are you doing here in this experience when I'm going to see Masha Oga Masha, Vanya, Sonia, and Spice it's like the experience of people looking at me like why are you here for this experience this has nothing to do with you and then all of a sudden I feel that a lot y'all may not, some people come here will feel that but it's very it makes me, if I were a theater geek I would go you know what my people I'm sorry I would go come sing a shit but there's that too and the seating is like this big young but it's like you know I want to know it's like but when I start speaking to people sitting around me they think oh you're a theater person well what do you do whether we start talking about different theaters and it gets them engaged and like oh maybe I should go see that too but we don't, if I'm sitting here at the day holding and there's no white people there to have that experience with it's like how do we make this crossover start to happen right and we talked some you know I'm not about a crossover combination within this community you know how can we help you know make this happen with partnerships just basically conversation or friending or talking to each other you know yeah but don't you feel that it's the people that are doing diverse theater that are reaching out to each other I mean it's East West it's Shelf and Pasadena you know it's people whose mission is diversity that we're kind of reaching out to each other but you know we're all doing this we're all part of the Los Angeles theater community why aren't we, why aren't all of us reaching out to each other and supporting each other you know what I mean I'm not sure but I think that the story is you can the story of a Latino woman or man I don't have the other story in vice versa I just feel like and I know because at LAGC we're so busy trying to run that place you know trying to figure out the program not getting people to see some stuff that we become very insular and I think all of us kind of do that with each other or maybe not, maybe it's just us that we don't know anybody I feel that way sometimes we go and we're like hey we don't know anybody I just feel like there has to be more and what we talked about earlier was that many times the only time that a company reaches out to us is because they're going to do a Latino workshop and that's the only time they'll approach us and say hey can you guys do an e-class for us or can you guys reach out to your audience which is great and we don't want to do that but we also find that it's not reciprocal sometimes when we reach out to them we'll run a shift this is right for our audience and what she's talking about though is sort of larger house theaters who come to the gay theater or the latino theater and say hey we're doing this show please promote us and then we send our material back and they're like ooh some of our audiences you might like that to know and it's like so then the question becomes how do we, are there ways thinking about what we're trying to drill down on in this work are there ways to activate the audiences to do the work because what are ways because when your folks go the audiences don't want to understand the stuff about sharing and not sharing so how do we move down along the spectrum and have there been when you were talking about a partnership with a museum you do an African-American play with a Latino audience I mean how have people had successful examples of moving their audiences through this institutionally institutions are in the way of that so I'm with the LATC as well but we've just started this program with Noise Within and East West players and it's still developing with the first Sunday of each of our runs at least for us we're giving a set of tickets for free for the Noise Within to give away to their audience and East West will give away to their audience they're gonna do the same to us so that it's not sort of a cost prohibitive and we're telling our and then our audiences know that we are artistically aligned with and in the trial run we literally haven't done it yet but this was but this is what we've been trying to do and Noise Within moved to another space and I think that's what sort of started it they realized they're in a very diverse space with their programming never so they reached out I think what you two are hitting on and like as well is the key to increasing the audience which is not necessarily to go after what does the audience want and get from there because they'll say whatever but is sessions like this where we are talking among each other where we get to know each other and you say oh yeah I'll promote your show we'll give tickets to it because I think that the more the audiences realize that we're all in it together and that if your theater is promoting this show there's something of value to it you might want to go see it and that if it comes I hate to say from the top down but in other words if it comes from the theater's cooperating and the people who are putting the art together cooperating I think you can bring the audience along because then it becomes a real community which is lacking because you know let's face it we all have our own little turf that we have to protect and so oh I don't know but if we all jump in and say there's enough audience for everybody let's just get them all in by there's not are we all sharing the same 4,000 people in one month? well gotta create more than the 4,000 but again that I think what happens the more we go out and you know instead of protecting your turf but go out and give free tickets to the first weekend of a show which you might otherwise not know about at all and say yeah go to this you look at the thing sort of based on what you were saying but one of the things that I find is probably a company that actually often is the one that most of the theaters are pursuing in our body that we are in that sketch you made where you talk about the non-traditional theater audiences and lots and so in time if somebody wants to do a show that is you know I didn't know I was going to say show the best you got and my response is always of course but I also say that our audience the answer is not that they simply know you exist that coming to our theater is a risk and we're the only place that most of the company want to come to the times that we have been successful is when the theater is at a bigger risk than that rather than saying we'll give you tickets they say we want you to build something with us that will make your audience see your company at our space for example that was here in this building when you were doing show cut writer volume of the 1965 writers and in this very big document was doing this piece on Robbie King and they asked us to bring our artistic community together for a discussion about the Los Angeles authors to write about the issues around it they were coming because we were giving them tickets to CTG they were coming because the watch village theater company was coming to CTG to have a piece of discussion and to create something in which our communities could talk that were 100 or so people who watched I have something to say I think with the example of the theater coming to you when you have the Latino show on the boards and then not reciprocating the line the other thing that's problematic and that says a lot I think about that relationship is that the theater company is coming when they have the Latino play so they're reaching out to that audience for that play but then is the next time the theater company is going to email or reach out the next time there's a Latino play and will that be two seasons down the line both of those things are symptoms of a lack of investment in community not a single particular project I think that you have to have exactly as you're saying people aren't just going to go because you're like in this particular project we're interested in having you be a part of us it has to be about your long-term look at who is in your audience how are you serving your community and how can you really invest in that over a series of shows not just when the Latino play is on the stage but beyond that because I think anything that any of us are trying that's new like you know it's very rare that somebody invites you to something that you've never done before and you're like yes I'm going to do that it's a conversation that's built over time and I think we're much too piecemeal so many queers a little bit of what we're talking during the launch you know because this engagement and outreach idea I was talking to you about the Latino theater company who does Latima plays and this idea of engagement so where are we going to go to investigate what they feel in life we know that because it's our community and the problem is in the program I mean you know we can pay attention to the city in America it doesn't matter what we do we can go in and spend thousands of dollars in the program in the community but it's not reflected in the program on the stage in America that's very simple I thought we did a lot of you know island development program in 1991 1991 to 1991 we did what the Latino theater initiative was about and we did five plays in the five years that I was there and the single ticket from Latino went from nothing to seven which was a huge revolution but I left in 1995 and I think the next play happened in 1995 Chavez-Rabid that's like 10 or 15 years later so the alliance was not coming back and that's true it has to do with that I don't care from any community outreach programs you too if we're not going to produce the work we're going to recover even in life it's like I'm reading it's like in Los Angeles where there's so many small theaters I think there's a level of risk that I don't know who's already talked about but besides the gap between that there's something traditional or experimental or cultural diversity the biggest risk that I hear I heard audience members speak about is quality is it going to be good or is it going to be bad and I am not going to go because I have come so many huge theater patrons in Los Angeles I mean I think it's a it's very low-living fruit that is there for the keeping except the fear is am I going to go to the theater and the other reward or it's not going to be top quality or it's going to be amateur and there's going to be something about it that's going to turn me off and I'll waste my time so I feel like this community particularly there's a real perception of that that we have to do that we're doing something about and I don't know what the answer is I mean just who I expect this show is really good and I'm going to go to it because she told me that so what do you think talk about it a little bit more do you think that civilian audiences I'm interested in what fuels this understanding that they're worried about quality and what they mean about quality and what you think you could write because there's a what do we want to ask I know exactly what you mean but I'm bringing assumptions to that so maybe drill down a little bit more about what makes you feel and some people were not in your head since this is a big issue so I'm curious about it audiences are very sophisticated so I don't think I think we have to assume that they will be there if what we're doing is excellent enough not that there's another level we're talking about but I don't know I'd have to know what other people have to say about this John, behind you please this is a particular I talk about this all the time so many of you have heard this but I think this is a particularly a problem that wasn't this problem and it has to do with I think many theaters here exist to serve their artists as opposed to exist to serve community and I don't mean like we are playwrights theater and we're there certainly playwrights I mean they're there because but now we're going to do this place so Jane can play this part move the water and I'm not going to do this because I'm going to be seen by the market industry here in town so this has been an issue in this town I started a theater here in 1977 or 78 and I left the other and I went to television and produced it for many years and I came back with the other and this has been a problem since the 70's there was a problem then there is it wasn't because what happens is people do things for their own reasons and a lot of things are similar and then our civilians kind of go to play and it's not very good and then they say I want to go again I don't go to a small theater I don't go to a small theater I don't go to a small theater and you can create theater and you hear it over and over there's so many vanity projects that happen that are just horrid we've all been there we've all gone to see our friends play we know it sucks we should just tell them it sucks stop doing it maybe we took that up as I do as well as having friends because it ruins the quality of Los Angeles theater I'm trying to be nice here today but I can't but if people start saying it's like they guess what they need to hear it I know there's a producer's league that's being started but even that's starting to be watered down with who that's sort of being led into this producer's league and I hope someone talks about that but in these Michael you speak on that in the midst in the mid-sized producers league it's very strict so it is also there are definite eligibility requirements that are actually higher standards than even registered probation reports which I'm on that to do as well it has a constant conversation if it's any help for different reasons is here about quality and being what I call a career ending moment for any audience member has come up almost everywhere that we've been so I actually think that for different reasons it's in different communities but the fear and the question on the responsibility of all of us is to deal with the fact that people don't create a restaurant they're receiving life from under our feet so a general logic doesn't know where to look for what's good they trust word of mouth but there's not a general place to go so I understand and the strategy is that built from this community whether or not we're speaking to a Latino community or we're speaking to a gay community or et cetera whatever that community might be this is it the New York theater that I grew up in when I was 17 or 18 years old I worked in the 16th and the 70s because actually the theater that was built by other theater artists that's what made it exciting and vital and then the press followed suit and so did the corporations and now it is big business and it's all selling around the world we go see the show don't be stopped in LA to go see the show so we're it and I think the way I always defend that it was a location that was central where there was a mall with a full heart of theaters where the best of every small company from each season was going and spending six weeks or whatever so everybody had an option to send the best of their work from the previous season to this one centralized province you've not, not only an opportunity to advertise this to a larger community a national community but here, under ourselves part of this community we are, we have to see them we have to go see each other's work we do, mostly we do so have a place or two where people can all those empty factories suddenly have a a large space that we get in the same way of getting promotion and assemblies for each other that space and now there's an excitement around it okay, that's all I have to say I have heard that we're creating a problem that is going on for decades to come I love this cross-colonation that to give tickets away the message you're giving says what we do really doesn't have a financial capability and we are training an entire generation of audiences that they can get tickets over three and we have already empowered Goldstar to steal money from us I think it is really important that we take that back and that there is a dollar because what we do, possibly kind of grant money that's dried up it does not exist even if I don't think complimentary tickets should be given even if it's five dollars so you're saying this is what we do there is a value to what we do and you need to invest in what we do I think it's really important to put that sort of thing back to what you said unless we're giving quality giving us value that's why we must allow you to go to Goldstar because they're like I don't want to stand mine because I don't know what it's doing so they're shopping on Goldstar to give us the show one other element and I agree that you have to consider is the marketing of what you're promoting I think a lot of times the tendency in marketing is an over promise and then the production under delivers so therefore you set unrealistic expectations for the audience and they come in and they I think the other element is the diversity element within the work itself if the work is diverse itself then audiences will proceed in that light and start to talk about it so I think it's a holistic approach it's what you're talking about a district it's part of that, it's the marketing it's the diversity and it's the quality there's not one separate issue we have to look at it kind of in a holistic approach it's interesting the investment that you talked about it seems to be that there's a shift in and we need to get our audience and we need to invest in us so we need to find out how we can invest in them are we investing in them and where we need to take them up to I think that shift in that view we need to invest in them when I ask them to come to us and how does that seem I think that's what is exciting is that this may work for the screen this may work for the screen I really think it's that shift but now we're asking them to join us and we're going to do what we can to provide it up to me versus an open model come to us if we have this I just want to agree I think the question about quality the conversation about quality is a vital crucial one what I've really responded to in what was said was the idea of questioning vanity projects so thinking about quality one marker of quality how it connects to the needs of the community that they're in and being very rigorous about that I think what worries me about this word quality is I think it's often used what I like to call the quality dodge where leaders answer questions about accountability for their action on diversity by saying we just produce the best place and I think that we've been talking for 30 years we've been talking about inclusion is important and we've yet to really manifest that in our program I don't think that's because there's a single about misogynists when they get in the theater I think none of this is conscious but I do think that that question of quality can be decided when do we decide when do we when do we kind of get what they're going for when no play is built when do we decide that the things that we're excited about outweigh things that we don't understand it and I think that that is often very much a site of implicit bias in the sense of being very rigorous about our conversation about who we speak in tune in the place that we are I think that has a balance to that I think we're also giving the rule next up in that we're talking about quality play and quality production even certainly I'm just talking about quality productions I'm just going to take this while you need to follow up on Tony because I have been talking for a couple of years about how this community can reach out to the largest community this morning we talked about creating the larger audience and I do think that we need a concerted where all of us are involved in creating a larger audience and marketing effort and I love New York about Los Angeles and I think that it could be tremendously influential Is it about marketing? or is it about audience development? It's more about audience development about reaching out into the community and say you were talking about how do we find those people who wants to go to the theater and have that need for that stimulation and as Jamie said they aren't here and they are going to prove that we have to somehow If we go to a movie theater we'll notice that the movie theaters have the same small audiences that our theaters have our theater is a 99 seat theater sometimes we fill it out and sometimes we don't I went to see Nebraska the other night there were about 50 people there they couldn't have filled the 99 seat house either it happens that we're out of time in the development in our society where there are so many other things going on that you can go home and turn on BBC and you can watch Henry V with somebody that you know commercial free or you can go to a theater maybe I have made a real effort to create audiences for us when I produced Blood Knot last year I went to every African American church in Central Los Angeles and stuck postcards on the windshields during church service and I know that when you go to Nate Holden you get a different audience than you get in Malibu you go to Nate Holden and someone will yell at the audience she did not slap him people in other inner city theaters actually participate which is super different super cool but when I got to the same audiences to come out to our place they were quiet about ticket prices I think the other thing we need to recognize is that this conversation is different than it would have been 30 years ago and we need to recognize that we're in a time where the middle class is struggling where there's like profound death that can't be compared to where we were 30 years ago and I feel like somebody who makes a non-profit salary and has my entire life I think very carefully before I spend you know $40 or $50 if I made $40,000 a year if I made $60,000 a year much less $70,000, $100,000 sure I would take that risk all the time but the fact is that the middle class in this country has shrunk and we have to address the reality of that we either have to cater to an attenuating rate a smaller number of very wealthy people or we have to really engage with the question of who is able to take that risk to put down that amount of money so it's about the specific prices people are talking about this program so at LAT Speed one season they had a lot of pay-what-you-can-night and that particular show was the most financially successful of our whole season and we were all like oh my gosh what does this mean and you know I know the Cornerstone model works really well for Cornerstone and it's combined with all of their community outreach but they were overselling a 300-seat house that we struggled to fill each season and so that was really eye-opening for us we do talk about are we devaluing our tickets because we have a special thing right now we talk about this all the time about Gold Star but there has to be some different model where I think giving certain community access or certain different classes access by lowering the price or finding a different model that it can work because Cornerstone at least in our space was really financially successful and that was very eye-opening for us and caused us to really think about what we're going to do one time and the player said we're going to respond to it we're civilian friends we would like it and respond to it and look for each of those people the only thing she said was we have to go out now after three minutes and we will actually come buy tickets and that happens the thing that strikes me when we talk about prices when we talk about quality is that we're talking about some picture on generalized prices because it says though one tells example says it right there it's not as though Magic Price Point was founded at IITC and it was about how Cornerstone is serving their community and who their community is and how they support them and the gentleman mentioned about serving community more and so when we talk about price points and quality I mean I think another player's quality has anything to do at all when we do that it's more than quality it's the value that we are giving our communities the need that we have that makes people show up but if I start to extrapolate that which is the entire Boston Interest area and I thought my board on this a great success we will fail if we start to say this is how they make money at Boston Court this is how they make money at CTG this is what their audience is doing we will not succeed because we will be serving a different community a different community at which we are not which is not what we do where our success is always come is by identifying the need in our community and identifying the value that we do and how we do that how we do it starts with programming absolutely positively starts with programming and the other thing that we have is have built up a trust and I don't know if it's about quality but I think it's about quality in part and I think it's all about authenticity I think it's about shared values I think it is about the dialogue I mean when I talk about community it's not about the one month community so I start talking about all your communities I think this is a conversation that we have a lot in our theater because every time people want to survey they say who is your competitor and the truth is we are so specific it's not like we can't compete with anybody we don't do like anybody it's so specific to our community in a way that that was the only thing we can compare with that made more comparison so in the world that we tried to do as we responded to the community that we tried to work with so it's the same the discounts are going to find this so that they can get to your theater when we do a show at Boston Court and we run a report at the end you can see a third of the audience pay a whole price a third got half price discounts we tend to got like some kind of other discount because they need it they need that help in order to get into the theater we don't want to create a barrier for more people by saying no discounts because we have this value that our show is worth $34 and if you don't agree that it's worth $34 we don't want you to come in but just to push back on that I think it's a little dangerous because that also creates culture of discount and you're waiting for the discount and you're also not having the opportunity to engage authentically with those audiences as say this is important here is asking two things you spend a lot of time with the CDL talking about access and costs and what we're getting to do is talk about some of the discounts about entry points a whole bunch of entry points for anyone to show that's just been a useful way to move that conversation to separate the cost of the ticket relative to production or anything else that there are different entry points that different people can access to a piece of theater the form of the theater should not dictate the number of access points besides the house but secondly is that we've created we have a membership program we're going to be worthy of that kind of access I'm just excited to have you here that's your service we're working about I'm not saying theaters have it there are some people out there who will catch that because they've got it they would for the most I believe could read your things you said about valuing our product but you said earlier about giving away tickets to nice theaters false support if you have a sit-down watching show who will be in walkers by the time that theater has like new assertions as we talked about he's like he makes stuff but she will never be in a walker lane because I think it's incredibly important to teach the next generation of people that theater is thrilling and that's a weird kind of outreach but getting into the schools and communities when we think about what are our communities and thinking about the gigantic groups of people that we're somehow not reaching and it's really interesting this is just making me think more about maybe we really have to get in there even younger only in LA is this discussion about somebody portraying you know cultural appropriation if you want to say you know that discussion hasn't happened and you know but why isn't it happening in LA but I don't know how to put it into you know what I mean how you feel as an audience portraying somebody else's culture you know what I mean are you willing to go there something this has to do will they be willing to go and see another production of another culture or if not a good it has to do with this what are the things that's amazing about today is that no one is in front of critics at all what a privilege with audiences what do they pay attention to critics do they read them I think does that impact what they go to see or not go to see at all we all pay attention to a few audiences and it's interesting just a large percentage of students of mine are civilians and not in the theater community actually now read their reviews from Goldstar they read they read people who are commenting on what they see so it's civilian comments oh yeah and when something gets up there are four or five stars on Goldstar and it's interesting because I feel like our local when our lead local critic Charles W. Goulti I think is actually excellent every critic in the country that's going to have the moments where he disagrees with them but I feel like he is responsible and intelligent in a whole different level but what's interesting is that actually for our audience like W. G. Goulti matters a little less than what Charles Fisher would in the New York Times which I think it's fascinating because I don't think he's as good as a critic it's my own opinion but Charles you're also talking about shows that have been able to be reviewed by somebody in New York so in terms of the critics that we actually have access to here sure because our pool is dwindling I mean it's rather the pool is there but the outlets are dwindling I was just going to say some of the critics just love everything the logarithms and how can you tell whether it's good or not they love everything I think it's really interesting I don't know quite how to phrase this but in terms of expectations and when an audience goes to see a play written by a woman or written by a playwright of color or do they expect to relate it to it personally or do they expect to have a view onto a world that's not their own that's what you said earlier that subtle racism or sexism that happens just in the way it's the ads for certain shows it's live or it's a window it doesn't it's an audience aware of that it plays with my white man just so you all know universal and play with my anybody else or you know but it's also it's interesting that you people know are people how much is it coming from a producer how much is it coming from a producer versus what the person knows going into it one of the things that's realized is that a lot of times the producers and the artistic directors have no knowledge of anyone but the white circle of the world the little white world they live in they might not be a racist but they don't think about anyone of color because there's no one in their world that's different than the color that they see on the back of their head and that is a huge problem particularly like when you said earlier producing that black show or that Indonesian show where you know I'll try once black people you messed it up you should have had a bigger audience so now we're not going to do it because that's that I can at least make it up now I try to work and guess what exactly to be fair we all know people are on it too we all know people kind of in our economic group I feel like reaching out is not just an ethnic problem it's a cost of the world I totally agree with that but I think I can look at someone in this room and go well that person looks 18 they can be 35 but someone looks at me and they're not going to see me oh you might not be black so I think there's a little bit there but I totally agree with what they're saying that's all a big part of it if you study social psychology we have all of these short lines about the way that we perceive without thinking so there's something called that's what we're mentioning that's what we're mentioning it's a mental problem that exists with everybody when you see somebody that you define as other or as a member of a classroom and you see an example of something from that you're likely to think that it is more universal than it otherwise is now the thing with women we have so much experience with white men straight white men in this culture we don't have those two all of these different images right but I do think that there's something that happens within like artistic dirties you know who don't have as many experiences with whatever is perceived as an out group were they inappropriately sometimes universalized so I worked at a theater a while ago with the production of American Buffalo by David Mann it did very poorly and nobody was like oh I guess people gel in like David Mann that didn't happen right but I wonder like what are the conversations that happen when you have yourself these Asians like that comes up that does that and I think that out group comments today in fact is something that you really got to be aware of I want to drink with you so much what's your idea what's your idea what's your idea what's your idea so just so you know this is obviously the end of today but we really do vehemently hope that this is not the end of the conversation that we're having and so by the end of this week you will receive an email from me our client chef will put that name in your inbox but you're going to be receiving an email that will give you a link to a private webpage within the TDF magazine that will allow all of the participants in all six cities to continue to post comments and messages to each other but that will be limited to us so we continue to feel that we're having a conversation that is still exploratory together and we would invite you and encourage you and love it if you did come to this site that we're giving the link to later this week and continue to talk up to us and let us know about the ideas that were not clear to you until tonight or tomorrow that you want to make sure to get put into the thinking that's happening and that's where we need to start trying to actually track surveys that was just up there for people to respond to because I really think we need to get input on you guys as much as possible before we go thanks again to Terrence and Bailey stage alliance and to Senator Peter Grooth and everyone all of you for being in this great conversation thank you hi how are you