 Right from this point of view, it's all your superstition because when you do the new thing, which your name is, you know, two years old, some people will do it. Well, I respect Alan Brown. No, no, no. He's old. No, no. He uses stuff and that's part of why I'm so... Well, I think... ...stay here because I thought this doesn't seem to be the same person that I know. I think part of what we... When we heard it this morning, and we were talking about it at lunch, and I'm sketching in pencil, so it will sound a little messy. But one of the things that keeps coming up in the conversations about engagement and engaging audiences, and there was a lot of conversation across the board. It seems the theaters in Chicago are doing a really good job of identifying audiences for a particular place. So we need to look at each play and go, who's the person... Who are the people that this might resonate with? You know, Regina was talking a lot about the length and complexity of the conversations as she's matured as a writer about who's coming and who should be coming and what that should... And as we look at changes in the ticketing model, which is... Let's not get into that conversation in the regular way. But are we looking at creating a different mix of subscription and single ticket, and what is the pressure that that puts on you, and where does the artist... Where it came in and the three ways. Where can you involve and engage the artists more in making it easier or more effective to find those individuals single ticket by? Because, you know, how does that work? And what is there some sweet spot that we can begin to find that mitigates some of... And help me a little bit when we talk... You were there this morning when we were talking a little bit about the ways that playwrights in your experiences and going in and saying, this is who I'm thinking about. This is what we're doing here. And the time issue that we came up against. Can you help me a little bit? Yeah, well, Tanya was speaking, a great deal about this as well, that sort of the difference between timeline for artists who are going to work at the theater versus the time that marketing is creating materials for that show. So we talked a little bit about how, especially larger theaters, especially theaters like the Goodman, are marketing a brand, that they're sort of marketing an NFS, as opposed to each piece of individual work. So one of the things that we were saying this morning is... Tanya came up with looking less too about what happened and how it changed when you had a home as opposed to we're on the road all the time. What's the good and bad in that kind of situation. Sometimes Karen, Janet, I have a business card. No, I have Rachel. Not only about Rachel. Rachel Kraft was saying that looking less has sort of phrased their marketing more and more as each show is an individual work. Each show is sort of this little thing. So as opposed to sort of a year ahead saying, well, here it plays. And then sort of trying to build engagement really close to the show like how do you do that? How do you make that work? Have you changed the model of engagement so that each method of engagement feels more tailored to that specific piece? Yeah, we do both. And that was my fear of the time you would be here and I'd be here and we'd say different things. So there you go. You know, because you'd have to, you know, if you've been around for a while at all whether it's looking at something different, you'd have to have some kind of identity because you're not just selling tickets, you're raising money. And more times than not, raising money, you're raising money based on your brand, your identity. You know, by looking glass, it's good for the community. But there's a much greater influence on and access to single ticket buyers than there were before. So the kind of strategic marketing that we do to try to find a particular audience is enormous. I mean, you know, we have the Mary Zimmerman Data Bank and when it's a Mary Zimmerman production, we tailor a whole campaign to those people because they have shown that it prevents them from being considered for work or for the government or whatever. So it may be happening more than Tanya thinks, but that's okay. It's not her job to do that. No, no, she was saying it wasn't so much that it's not happening, but that when you've got new, if you're doing a brand new play, if you can get the artist in the room and you're at home to talk up with your marketing team about what, and that we are, it's, you know, it's stuck on her machine and how does that conversation happen when you don't, when there isn't a history with the writer before? Well, the challenge is sometimes that when you're in advance the play changes the play of life, the play develops. I think that's what she was trying to say. Yeah, not about the edifice. What Luna Gale was, you know, a year before it started with rehearsals was different than when it went into rehearsals. So we try not to get out of whack with, you know, the necessities of brochures and stuff like that and suddenly we have a brochure that doesn't look anything like what the playwright now thinks the play is about and that's when tears are shed. Well, I think one of the things that we were saying is that it goes, you know, we were sort of talking about the distance between the institution and the artist. So of course theaters are doing lots of plays. Some of you, it's one, it's two, it's three and three minutes larger. And the seven shows and the events and the fact that there are a few different subscription models for two different theaters in the states. The idea that is it possible to sort of what can communication between the artists because it's so interesting, a lot of the stuff that you're saying nobody's ever told me before, even if I had a show at Longmore last year, I did get sort of a proof of the poster. But when it came to sort of any ideas that I might have or any ideas that somebody might have to market that, but specifically and draw on a larger audience or more specific audience for that show, what are better ways that we might be able to do that? And I think some of the good models in these small companies were someone who said, I have the privilege of being one of those things at once, right? I have the privilege of being the first who's programming and the marketing person and it allows for a kind of immediacy which you were going to say something. No, no, that's right. It seems to me, you know, we're talking about risk and it seems to me that there is an audience that will go seek out new work and it's not a risk for them. And what we're talking about are the fringes around that where an edifice does help to say, yes, it's a new work, but it's the good men and you can trust us so come on in. You know, if we're only asking the Zimmerman audience to come see Zimmerman, then we're not doing it right. So that balance of, and that's what you're talking about as well in terms of engaging the artist and drilling down to what the play is about and the particular person that might appeal to beyond the new work on it. And also after the marketing has been done and those people have bought tickets to come and see Laura's play, what are the ways in which Laura or other dramatists can help educate and help to bring that audience along to get them into the experience. Because part of what makes, you know, part of what moves a person from being, you know, the risk averse to wanting to try something again is that they have a good experience, right? I mean, and by nature, risky means that you might not, otherwise it wouldn't be risky. So, and that's part of what I think we've found in the work that we did with Alan on the intrinsic impact work was how important what we called contextualization was. So if the audience came prepared in some way to see the play and that the most important way that they could be prepared to see the play was to know the plot. So we shouldn't be so afraid to give the lady the play. That was the most important thing they could do to actually increase the impact of the play. And the second most important thing was to be involved in some sort of way, basically discussing the play afterwards, either in a structured environment and talk back, so we talked a lot about this morning, or with the person in the L or in the cab on the way home, or perhaps, you know, engaged in an online dialogue. But that discussing it afterwards made the impact deeper and last longer. So those are things where the artist can definitely, the institution can definitely help involve the artist in helping prepare the audience for what they're going to see on stage and before they walk into the room and then afterwards as well. And then, you know, thinking about that. So that it doesn't make the work less risky. And I don't think you would want to. You're wanting to do the work that's expanding boundaries. But does increase the probability that the audience will be impacted positively by the work and be able to process it? Is that true? I mean, the only reason I question that is because there's something that happened in England called Secret Cinema, where people would buy tickets to go and see a show and they had no idea what they wanted. And this had a massive meaning, I think it still has much importance. So is it really about us saying, oh, it's okay. This is what you're coming into the theatre to expect when actually someone will read something and think they know what they're going to expect and still don't necessarily see what they're going to expect. And is it actually about us saying to them, you're going to come and share an experience with us. Come and share an experience with us. Should we actually be less apologetic about the fact that we are asking them to take risks with us? It feels like we're all saying, oh, we're taking the risk. Well, I don't think it's that. No, no, I'm sorry, if I seem to imply that I didn't mean to. It's more about preparing the audience for what they're going to see. So that, I mean, yes, we have actually lots of, you know, we had 60,000 surveys that we sent and 19,000 were returned. That was in one study and we did another. So we've got tens of thousands of surveys. We've got lots of data. And the data does show that if the audience is, if their expectations are better aligned with what's actually on stage, it's not apologizing for what's on stage. It's just telling you what they're going to see, you know, preparing them for it. If their expectation is aligned well with what's on stage, then the impact of the work lands more deeply. And if there is a way to be in dialogue about that afterwards, its impact is deeper and less longer. But that's not about apologizing. It's like, oh, this is risky. I know you're going to hate it, but come anyway. Is this as opposed to having zero information about what you're going to see? Or long. I mean, I've gone to a place thinking, from G, that sure made me think I was going to see that's not what this, that they don't want. And then what's that happy camper? It's essentially removing the barrier of it being a new title. That if I'm going to go see the importance of being earnest, I have some knowledge and expectation of what that's going to be. Because I've either heard about it from people, I've seen it before, I have some sort of cultural knowledge, whereas the new play I don't. And so the institution is going to, or some communication is going to provide that similar context of expectation that I have with a new title. We mentioned two good things. Some of you were stupid where they told you the same thing. And one of them was push or walk. Absolutely. And so maybe the information is accessible for those who want it. But if you opt out and just want to walk in the door clean slate, I think it's part of the challenge that I see in this whole kind of as you move away from the group of people who will support you and come see it no matter what it is, to people who aren't making choices. And then you layer into that another subset. And some of them want to be told what it is. And other people don't want to be told what it is. You need X number of ways for it to be effective. There aren't enough hours in the day and there aren't enough people. Which is part of why the goal here is to try and, you know, what are, what are the, I mean, I certainly, I mean, we do a fair amount of this just trying to build an appetite. Because that's our whole mission is, you know, how can we use technology in a way to help deliver this in a somewhat not-so-labor-intensive way so that people can, in fact, pick and choose what they want. And I think that's, I'm interested in what you've discovered. Your folks come into your, your play or your, what do people want to know? I mean, do you think most people do want to know ahead of time? They don't want to know ahead of time? They want a little information? They want to know? And the reason it matters, of course, is because impact suggests you'll come back again. I mean, you know, impact says maybe I'll come back next year, as opposed to there's no impact. What do you, what do people want to know? I think they want to have availability and then they can choose what they want. They want availability and access and they can go as deep as they want. For me, the bigger macroeconomic climate question that's really interesting for me is that, you know, I've run, I've run for 18 years and when we first started there was like 100 theater companies in town. Maybe that can help me with the numbers, rock. You know, there's like 100 companies. And then like, in like 95, I don't know, and then like five years later, there was 200. And then there was 300. And now how many are there if you include all the companies that just do one show and then go ahead? 400? I believe there are. Millions and millions of cats. So we become a cluster for, for making theater. It's super incredible. And just an honor to be part of it. And, but we haven't quadrupled our audience size. We've quadrupled the number of theaters and we've become a cluster for making and cultivating theater makers. But our audience is maybe flat-rider doing a little by three or five or seven percent. I don't know, so many know, right? And so, but we're an exciting time though because we have all these makers, you know, and the best way to get new audiences, I believe, is with new work that really responds to life now and what's happening and that can push the form and use technology in interesting ways. So, although we've overgrown ourselves a little bit as a, a vineyard, then it's just got grapes all over the place. You know, there's a really exciting time the next five or 10 years to really make progress and win new audience members. And I think that's the big challenge for, for our community. And in regards to risk, I will say that in 2009, I was really fortunate enough to pilot a program with the Treehouse Foundation. They wanted to do an active goodman with a show called The Reset. The Treehouse Foundation is a wonderful, really open-minded, smart foundation that gives to small dance and theater companies and they're really leaders and just like Treehouse was with, you know, stocks and market trading and analysis. They're really great with art and they support a lot of our risky companies and small companies. So they were looking for a company that was doing a risky piece. I was like, we have a really risky piece. So we did a thing called the Money Back Guarantee. And somebody came to this risky show and didn't like the show, the Treehouse money guaranteed the money back and they gave us cash and we had somebody in the lobby ready to pay you cash back. We should have called it Big Risk, Big Reward and that's my big regret because people jumped onto the commodity aspect of the Money Back Guarantee and they saw it as a commodity and they beat us up for like selling out, you know. Say what? Well, people saw it as like we were treating the theaters as if it was a commodity. You know, you can't give your money back. Art is a pure thing that you shouldn't be able to return. We didn't give, we were just trying to get people out of it. We did get a nice feature in the reader and in the New York Times, you know, and a lot of people came to the show just because they were talking about the concept of art as a commodity over dinner, you know. But we found the show was very difficult. It had very touching subject matter. We had like four people of 3,000 that's really money back. So people took the risk. I know where the four came because of it, you know. I think people, once they took the risk, they found that, wow, all you have to do is get me in the door, you know. And so for me, back to my other point about the climate, we just need to, as we're trying to open a new audience, is what does it take to get them in the door? We're live streaming our show right now. And we're doing it for $5 a pop. It's not an equity. And I got cancer patients watching the show from around the country. I'm gigidy.tv and they're also live streaming in Second City. But, you know, there's issues with equity there. We talked this morning about partnerships. Rachel suggested that we build on that kind of community partnerships in ways that I think you guys are working a lot in the community. One of the things that's come up, and this is now our fourth city, is the extent to which, and again, it's how do you find a way to do it? We have completely labored in terms of how we tease out, but as you build relationships with particular communities with particular plays, how can you then cross-fertilize those relationships so that it doesn't just become, you know, this is of interest to a teacher's association because it's issues that deal with education. And this is, and cross-fertilizing that. I wondered about some of your experiences. You know, it's almost a grassroots, you know, community outreach, grassroots organization model. I keep thinking, does the advocacy model probably the... Go up for a subscription campaign. I mean, what goes around, goes around. That was the whole premise of subscription. Wait, but if people don't want to do that necessarily anymore... Then you go after the particular markets in depth. I mean, that's what's changed in the world, is people want what they want. They don't want what you want to give them, because who are you? And, okay, I mean, I'm cool. I'll do whatever. I just want to get people to see plays in the theater. And if they're not going to, even when we say, buy these five plays, you know, you will have a good... I'm guaranteeing subscription months, years ago. So, saying... But they didn't criticize for being a model for some reason. They didn't. Because we get the lower key. They didn't criticize for holding it two months. I read this. But, you know, there are people who are less willing to make that... Well, are less... And certainly, when you just said what they're saying, like listening, it's like when you listen to my 17-year-old, right? It's like they don't want... People are used to self-cure it. I mean, people self-cure it. But so, partnerships, I mean, community stuff that you guys are doing. Yeah, totally have to talk about that. Before we lose it all together, I want to actually pick up on Charlie's comment, because we're happy to continue drinking the Chicago Kool-Aid. You haven't been to the city as long. So, I'd actually love to hear what you were referring to, and like, you know, talk a little bit more about that, because we may be... Oh, sorry. So, but it'd be great to hear a more recent newcomer's perspective on are we in fact actually measuring the way we think. And it's this related. It's really this kind of mid-emerging level of coming up to the next stage left and thinking about why are these guys... I'd love to program for the city and take in applications from sort by companies and you do presentations here at and you get free space and you can see other support. And I've had to tailor the application this year to only accepting world premieres or at the very least Chicago premieres. But really what I want is new work for world premier because what I'm getting is an overwhelming amount of Chicago premier of a really good play, by a young, new-ish playwright in New York, Annie Baker, Sam Hunter, these guys, you know, that are really wonderful plays and work of doing, but they're not new work, and a lot of times the reasoning behind it from what I can tell is we need press quotes that already exist. We need knowledge. We need the play that already had a time to review so our audiences know what to trust. Are you getting applications from a certain tier of organization like the organization has to be I'm making those up, $250,000 small to small or audience at the end? No, I don't think I even have a stipulation on that. It might be if it's matching our grant programs it would be under $5 million. So, you know. But I'll say like having been someone who had to replay as part of the you know, ad-hoc literary department at a theater once, when there's only four of you, it's very hard to find a brand as well, and that a second or third production of a new work is actually really important to that play's life in the new work field. You know, the idea of a role in role premiere in a single season or the second or third production after a new recording, that's hard sometimes for a risky play to get and I think a small company taking it on, I would be thrilled to see that they are going to do that work and invest in that play as a new play for Chicago audiences. I think because I am removing some financial risk for the companies I am, I want them to take the opportunity to go greater risk. It's way greater risk to do a new play. A lot of times the plays aren't ready, they're not totally out. How do you even find them if you don't pay a staff? That is a really important impression and I think that I'm interested to hear that perspective of Chicago not being a city that does a huge amount of new work as a playwright who is not affiliated with a company and not found a number of companies and have found, having worked in New York and having worked here in Chicago that Chicago has way fewer entry points. So in other words, I'm not interested in starting out in 5-1-2-3 to produce new work. It's a huge amount of I'm 10 years beyond the point where I fell right in the energy to do that. You know, you do sort of get tired of making $15,000 a year on your art. I think that one of the things that is wonderful about Chicago is that there are some hands-on companies that do so much work, that generate so much work. I do think that there are not often ways for playwrights to sort of attach themselves to those ensembles once those ensembles have been around for a few years and I think that that problem here I would love to submit an application I have never been able to because you cannot apply as a playwright you have to apply as a playwright and I think it's another tricky thing is finding a young ensemble company in Chicago where if they want to use eight of their actors in production but my production recalls four ages or ethnicities or any number of things that that company doesn't have it sort of becomes harder to make ever as a playwright. Where your play is unpublished and how would they find it in sure place if it hasn't been produced and viewed and sort of reduced to them as 25-year-old artists. Right. It's said that we want to kind of create that of college. One thing here does have going for it. This is a national conversation not an opportunity. We're in Chicago now. We're in Chicago. There are a lot of young companies who are you know, New York people I'm on to the playwright. The playwright is going to be the upward mobility, you know for whatever reason. That's a company's time to be playwright or director for them. What I've noticed. And just an application. The New York Theater is the New York Theater. It has its own kind of rules and context and the way in which it's operating. The rest of the country kind of operates in a different way. That's all insane. Equally different from one region to the other. Yes. The thing that this really something that never we dealt with this last week having worked in New York or in a theater for 20 years. I don't think I I've hardly ever heard conversation about from me or from any of our peers about our relationship to this specific community as a civic entity. When you travel around the country you hear way more conversation about every people's mission statements. When I teach and I show different mission statements. Goodman has Chicago or at least used to because I haven't been last right. The place that you are is part of who you are and it leads to a conversation and I think a relationship and one of the differences is in New York there isn't a relationship to the city because I don't know it's an artist arrogance there are some little theaters in our boroughs so this is this piece that again comes back to community is how we relationship as we think about the people who aren't in the theaters or we think about the people who long come in some of the time when we think about how do we relate to the other people in our city it's like you're saying the audience hasn't the tide has not that far the tide hasn't risen within other theaters it's the same thing that made me mad when Locke said there were too many theaters no we're not there what is our what do you guys think about as your relationship the civic entity that's in Chicago known for in fact as we all talk about you know the TCG conference where everybody left and said I wish we had that mayor because he talked about the theater and the rest of our mayors do so I'm interested about that our mayor the priest the priest watch it I know the again I think myself has been really old no one cares it's okay really okay no yeah I know in terms of community I mean to get rich here from doing theater is really not possible New York your orientation is national media because in terms of theater New York Times is a national theater center in New York Times according to the New York Times Broadway is the American theater basically and now the health of Broadway is the health of the American theater now that has nothing to do with reality but that's the perception because normally the fact of the New York Times is the sort of national awarding of the theater so people want their plays done in New York because they will get the cashier in other parts of the country and my point is that since we don't deal with that we're dealing with being in a community and we don't with all the respect to the critics here they're not going to make people famous overnight by getting a good review in some media outlet here whereas the perception of use is that that can and does happen in New York and they're very wealthy producing musicals in New York is it the feeling here that the critics here will listen to them in terms of what to come see as opposed to visibility we learn to understand about three stars means you get listed but in terms of do people listen do you think what's the impact in terms of building a community when you talk about that community of theater doors and whether it's bigger is that is the media not acting enough and helping where is the kind of I think the power has been quite limited in the last 10 years just the read back in the day when you were in the reader recommended little thing that was like 18 tickets a night back then it was like yes we're not going to have to cancel the show we're going to have at least five people losing out there we're here we're going to pull the reader advertising money out we're not doing anything but so and that's not the case it's been diluted so we have to find new ways to hook our audience we have to go after them we can't just rely so two years ago as I had this kind of artistic crisis thinking about that our company needs to really do a theater that does bass bring people together and not just tell other people's stories but tell our community's stories so we jumped from producing Chicago premieres to making our own vis-a-vis the original shows and we changed our mission statement to explore critical social issues our first show was called crime scene it was about violence in the city and we partnered with 20 different community organizations we featured them at co-show time-out discussions now we're doing the same thing with cancer with American Cancer Society there was club and 7 others and we're working on a show about the education system for the fall and that's what we did to survive to make our work more sacred in the room and our co-show discussions are 80-90% retention and the show now is just a catalyst for the real show which is when the person who got brain cancer 34 years ago was supposed to live stands up and tells everybody to hit it one more day and so you know it's changed things for us quite a bit and because you're a company and the generative artists are in the company they're obviously directly involved in reaching out to those groups in the community and that's just integral to the class in some way it sounds like but you sort of opted for this triangle of artists audience institution and maybe there's more from here but there are so many artists driven institutions or the institution is less the mediator between artist and audience it's more like part and parcel of the artist and so what you're describing is really it's direct contact there's an effort on behalf of the institution to get those people in the door to get those community members in the door and that requires institutional structure that's rarely just nothing for the artists you need to have some institution getting that done but the institution of the artists are so close to the wine and it's almost more dialogue than trying to make a good relationship and yesterday one of our interns accidentally CC'd a bunch of possible patrons and I really the artist in the institution where we overlap it was like say a paper with breath that's interesting it wasn't that intention though it was it was a mistake I'd like to ask a question just to make sense of the things I was talking about the people in the break as well this morning you mentioned the word catalyst and that for you at least maybe you meant it it was a joke I don't know but you said that sometimes the show feels like a catalyst to word what happens in the back of the show and I'm wondering if does that idea resonate with anyone else in the room about the show's position in the art of the experience I mean is the show always the end of the experience or do you feel like that the show yeah well we were talking about this a little bit I bring it up you guys might not be familiar with I release campaigns just because I think it's there might be something that we could draw from it I think that obviously if you're a very large institution and it's looking for you and I think you're not having the audience issue of bringing in more people having a fresh influx of audience members I think that hey maybe not a whole lot needs to change but I think that especially if somebody does a few shows a year I think two really instructive Kickstarter campaigns over the last few years have been the Veronica Mars Music which has been basically a year I think I was a supporter of both Veronica Mars Music and the Double Flying which is a Bay Area based video game studio which I think three years ago did a Kickstarter for an old fashioned 19.9 point in a big metric game so they said we want a crowd fund it the Veronica Mars Music wanted to raise $3 million they did it in 10 hours and then there was I think 3 million more the Double Flying I think there was 3.7 million which raised $1 million so the end point right so the final movie and the final game as opposed to sort of being like well we're going to sort of wait for a couple of years and then we'll sort of we've already bought the final product and then the final product to the show the end goal will be delivered to us it became about how to engage an audience of people who we already bought in over the course of a year or two years or three years and so for both of those groups it sort of became about how do we sort of not continually create content but how are we asking our fans who have already literally bought in subscriber audiences when you play one over one something like that can we create documentaries of what we're doing can we create email blasts that have pictures of our actors can we sort of figure out a way to make the thing that we're having to buy into not be the ultimate thing but it's more about that engagement with the referee department and engaging with a specific group of artists and towards a specific artistic goal and have that equally important part of the artistic process I don't think it's a sort of a relevant model for a fair number of larger companies but I do think it's going to do a sort of one more career and three months out, six months out eight months out, a year out so that the final show of course it's a given that we're going to go but all the additional stuff is sort of creating that bond with the institution and you might not know what's happening something that I did get from the reading and people are interested in new work but they're not interested in going to the workshop or the meeting or whatever right and I just wonder what those experiences are along the way, let's say you get people who do want to go to the reading or the workshop you walk in, you watch the reading or you do a quick talk back with the artist and you know like how deep can it go, how much further how many, is it I go to a reading and then we have a reception and then we have a party and then you email me when I get home and then we have feedback on the walk you know like how far does it have to go to to keep people that you're a long thing if we're even already getting people to the reading how do you get them to the reading and further engage them and get them to the next reading Well Clarence Horizons is doing something pretty similar to what you've been in terms of that sort of online engagement and then also the specific number of people with disbanded tickets and parties you know instead of like an opening night party it's an opening night party and it's like rehearsals are starting there's a party or something like that and here's a party I think that's certainly one model but I think it also has started to become about as opposed to just sort of perfunctorily tweeting or having a Facebook campaign or keeping in touch with people how are we specifically generating content that is sort of towards the art but it's not the art because yeah I don't want somebody to come to a development like it's no fun reading so how can we create engagement that is towards a group of people who have already bought in that doesn't require a huge investment of time and effort for them but sort of keeps them invested keeps them involved over a period of time So what do we do to make that feel special like they're really game on something I think it was Rachel that said this morning that people that come to the reading feel like they've seen the play them and don't come to the play even though they enjoyed the reading because now they've seen it but that having a window into the process is a teaser that works really well that you're going to come and see a design presentation or you're going to hear a little sip or you're going to come and meet the play right you see a lot of this is about it's kind of the subject what is the extent to all these things are actually used to build audiences as opposed to deepening how can we use it A to deepen the experience of people coming but B how do we use these things to get them to the people who aren't even coming out of the door and that's the rather than just feeding the faithful you got to feed the faithful but I don't know the faithful you kind of have to really mess up you know and then to see like it's not like they'll stop coming to the theater they'll stop coming to your theater but how also what are the ways in which because we open it up we're opening it up in a way that brings people in who aren't there in the first place right that's also interesting to me so the stuff that we've tried is hardly enough there's nothing revolutionary about it but when we do topical shows that have a specific when we get still out Alzheimer's we partner with those institutions we do hospitals they've never been looked at before but they came in droves to see that how many of them come back to the next show or any show that season or less the following seasons we keep a pretty decent list of them you know on nights that we have low houses and we can send them an e-blast that says as a world of best partners you get a discount code you know $20 a ticket and how many acts do you show up I think it's probably very very low potential I think unless there is a real dedication and that means staff time dedicated to maintaining those relationships beyond that one show I think the return rate is probably small at least out of our experiences it's still worthwhile and we feel like every time we reach out to organizations we have thick magnets we need to trust we've kept the very sense of good communication with them but how many make it back in to see a show that doesn't have that particular thing that's almost on their agenda not at least I don't think you've got a huge success rate with that the partnerships I think might have been referring to before we've got the World's Good Foundation but it's this Civic Practice Lab which is supposed to be working which is working specifically with non-arts organizations with MicroRoad that is fantastic and hopefully raises the profile of how theater artists can be assets in the community at large whether we'll build audiences which is what we also want that feed the institution generally we hope it will we hope it will have the people who do those workshops be crazy why didn't I know that before and I'm going to go buy a ticket or maybe because they're offering a discount because I participate in this workshop with them then I'll go see a show that I might not have gone to for a long time percentage of those people will become regular theater covers that's our fantasy but I don't know that the birdies certainly have as well and what is he specifically doing when he goes out what are they doing so we're working on with former cultural affairs and special events we're working with the Chicago Parks District University and he will have lots of organizations to use but to work with those partners identify what their challenges are within an organization or within outreach to their communities and use theater as a tool to help problem-solve and troubleshoot around those challenges so literally it means last week at the Park District Managers three different parks because it's an institution cultural centers and 15 different parks working with those park managers and saying what are the challenges you guys face what are the challenges that three different parks have in common let's do some scenarios that will help you figure out how to solve this problem or it may take lots of different forms to be a bit of a genius to figure out what's going to best solve that that question is but so I no doubt that it's going to you know it is genius it's going to get full display it's going to convince those participating partners that theater can be a really awesome tool in their communities which is fantastic and it's linked by the name out there and I think it builds support community-wide for the notion of the arts as not just segmented and as actual useful in community but whether it will get people in the door or whether people who aren't participating with workshops greater in Chicago generally will go you know I read an article about how different arts is doing that even though I'm not participating in that I'm going to go see one of my shows or I'm going to go to Chicago Theater because I now see how theater at large is a much larger asset than I knew before I'm talking about actually like a deeper level impact that's kind of interesting because that's an artist who's got a grant kind of free pretty guys very much through you guys working with a civic institution that is extremely widespread right we have like 500 parks throughout the city and getting those park supervisors who are a wider range of people maybe their background is in athletics whatever you know so you get really engaged ones you know you get really busy ones whatever going to that level of leadership and then someone like Collaboration did a project last summer throughout the park district so now those park leaders understand theater so maybe it doesn't bounce right back to looking for the state of risk taking on that park district leadership level which is great and they're going to be more like you know open their doors to Anthony you know or to stage left or anyone you know and then it can keep loving out which is exciting I'm just going to say that I mean this gets to more big picture stuff I think in long term but I think it's a part of your package and it started out here in this room as outreach when I was working in the Victory Gardens and I know for example my boys have both been a part of the playmaking experience the Looking Glass brought to them at Bell Elementary School and now they're students at Lane Tech where they've gone where Chicago Dramatists they're out leaching but what we did here for five summers and then one summer over at the Biograph was to bring nine or ten high school students who were selected by drama teachers or English teachers or were simply theatrical around the table and I tried to teach them how to write a ten minute play and it was it program took place over six weeks we met two times a week and they had to make a commitment to it and then at the end of it we put up those short plays with professional actors in a readers theater fashion they were involved in the rehearsal process they got to speak directly to the actors because I was the director and I urged the playwright to talk directly to the actors and then we had an event in this room where those students could invite all of their family and friends and we filled out all of the plays and the first time we did this I just thought this is cool and then there was a little party afterwards you got to have the party not have the whole story but what was great was that a lot of people I don't think had ever been to victory gardens before some of them had never been to the theater before but now they've had that experience they know where to park they know where the front door is they got to have this interaction or hopefully it was happening over six weeks with their teenagers about this whole theatrical experience so we did it five summers here and then we did it one summer at the biograph and I think it was a really cool thing but again it was all about thinking long term in terms of trying to get those people who might not ordinarily come to the theater or a theater in the door sorry you know building audiences is one way that it can be measured is there a retention rate will actually come back to that institution that's one way of measuring it but maybe there is some other I'm sure less measurable, less tangible metric or not a metric less tangible thing experience because what you're describing is a lowering of barriers an experience of theater they wouldn't have happened so it's not there's a certain way to measure this but it's not this alien thing anymore it's not this thing they haven't done before and have no experience of it it's now something they have some experience of and maybe there is some intangible audience building thing that attaches to that just by virtue of it not being as foreign to them as it was I don't have a measure to say for my day job at work for comedy sports and sell workshops using improv to build teams it doesn't translate to a performance it's using but I think it's a very maybe an entirely separate conversation about the value of art and of what we do and how it can assist in corporations and organizations beyond a performance but I know for a certain fact that it does not translate to get sales it's a powerful tool when you're doing that work you're not sensing anyone's to come to comedy sports no however it might actually may work the other way where if I have an audience member that's at comedy sports that experience and I can tell them hey I can come to your company and tell you how to function as comedy human beings that they might do that and they like that idea they do like that idea but I don't see it people taking a comedy sports team building activity and then buying a ticket to see comedy sports it's interesting in that example and over here you're actually putting in the triad that we're describing you're putting idols into the artist's chair there for a moment and letting them have that experience of generating or participating even if it's co-creating with a professional artist I think of that as maybe the deepest level of engagement as being a practitioner that you might never love something more you might never understand it better and I wonder if without creating an entire outreach program can we do that with the work that we already make really well on stage like our best our very best work and our most committed artists are there ways to create that moment of making for audiences you're talking about that in a way that are you guys inviting people into generally we've been doing online surveys and interviews together and actually quotes that are ending up in the show and we found that the person when we interview them in person or online with the survey they're much more likely to come to the show but I think the front line here is we have 100 people let's just think of 100 people that see their first piece of theater a certain percentage of those people let's call it 3.2 see a second show and maybe one of those or two of those are going to see 20 shows before they die and that 3.2 percent and how many shows they're seeing before they die that's the front line of audience growth for me back to the catalyst point is that yes they've come in this they've seen the show they got the post-show a little buzz they feel a little tingle they're receiving and it's some real true honest art and they've never done that before this is only 3 percent the rest are already gone and we do have this moment there that's the catalyst is getting them to come back and I think for me it's about letting them know somehow without saying it how much we adore them and we value them and love them and without them we'd be in our showers doing this show then in the rehearsal room and we because we're artists and we go to EX or at least we are we don't want to admit that we want to think they're there to see us but really we're there for them through hospitality post-show communication how do we let them know that there's a lot of conversation this morning about how we currently seem to be successful post-reformist discussions which are not really that necessary but the post-reformist discussion that seemed to be because I mean I wonder part of that how you keep that despite giving people it seemed to be a power people felt it was powerful when they gave their audiences a chance to talk about the feelings and responses they had to the spirit not about none of that stuff but the whole to the point where some viewers are reading every night now and show us that Katie was the word catalyst too and he used that conversation afterwards becoming as catalytic as the thing that was happening as a viewer should make that happen that person shared those things that's something we did tonight that would have happened had that person not been able to share there's something we do well with but that's hard to do and that means someone is going to sit there and do that I think it's a worthy goal and it will help us increase the the motivation of viewers a new theater audience talk a little bit because we want to do some more of these things things that people what are the things that there's someone objectively using and an individual can ask why is this one of the things that comes up a lot is in terms of talking about entry points and barriers which is a common thing which is part of the diversity conversations stories a lot of people want to see on stage how do they want to engage afterwards are there other things well I would say one of the biggest issues is that I don't know what to do there some people come for a long way they're like hey man I went to see Wicked and I did my theater for the year I don't know what to do I think there's a lot of that it's not my neighborhood there's a lot of that I don't know how to make that better I'd rather than bring it to your doorstep or bring it to you I mean well because I know a lot of people say I want a theater space but I want it to be to me too so in the different city projects and park things like would you come to a park area out here so we should have proximity and how you feel about your neighborhood your neighborhood theaters and it sounds like you're wanting to know it's almost like logistical obstacles so they want to know camera park these are issues and there are issues for groups that are itinerant or groups that have small spaces or group partnerships like we move around a little bit so not only can I get there I'm going to eat there and also when I get there what is going to be expected of special people so I'm not going to be in a pristine space I'm not going to be in a black box maybe you just don't even think about that but a new person is sitting and they want to have a certain kind of focus on what that is because they don't even know they have those questions but they do and what is their exchange with your artists and you know that's putting up blood and you know going around with your production or you know really that whole physical aspect well it's interesting to think about when you're doing things that move from place to place there's an anxiety about the place the desire to go see someone in that place because I go to a new place but you're doing your place somewhere new am I less likely to do that because of the newness of the space interesting I'd like to ask audiences I'm not a question writer I want to know from audiences the relationship of these engagement activities that we're talking about to their propensity for word of mouth these activities lead to more I talk about with my parents and family and which while they might increase the individual impact and service provided so that audiences don't actually impact their talking points it seems to me like we get a lot of people at my theater who really love the thing and might stick around and really engage with people but they consistently come just the two of them and I'm like well you seem really into it so how come we aren't able to move you to that next place of being that more a leader in your little family group and then some people do tip into that place and it might just be them but I have a feeling that it has to do partly with what we offer them when they get to meet an artist and have a personal relationship that they're likely to go or I actually have no idea and I'd be interested to know not just what engagement tools at impact is interesting but how does that impact affect their like repossess about it in the world another thing that's hard to ask about that comes up a lot is the issue of barriers and price I'm curious if you guys have any advice on language for price and how you can ask people as price and issue because they say yes I might ask them like where else do you go because I know how much they spend to go if I can do that work myself if I see that the house theater audience is spending a third if a third of them go to the most expensive theaters in town I know that third of the audience could value my work higher they might not I might push them there and they might say actually that's not worth $50 even though I have the $50 but that's how I ask it's just I ask them like where else do you go the other thing that's come up that you mentioned as well is that as you look at as you look at segmentation and more kind of single ticket buyers seeing it in more places there's an anxiety of fear that we've heard a bunch of facts on someone's annual contribution back to the local institutions so if you have a subscriber as a donor to your a relatively constant donor to your place to the extent that you're encouraging them to go out of places what are the ways does that have an impact on the back home or does it in fact not and if that strikes I don't know if you know that yet and I think that's a fear that I've heard and it's just one of those things that I wonder is if that's you know can we can we widen the appetite for visiting other places without hurting the affinity truly the wife when you and it would be interesting to figure out how to we go after we change the way that segmentation applies as well right and you know it's a lower density but they still do they still do but it has to be I would think it would be an exciting that if your core audience goes other places more that that will then diminish right there and it comes back to someone talked about metrics also the metrics about do they come back to your theater we've got these places where some of the changes in phenomenon that we're talking about have ramifications out or we think they do outside the marketing universe is it what and I think we I want to you mentioned price the other thing about the reports the two things we were missing from conversation were quality and price and arguably those are the only things that are important you know if I'm really being honest about the resilience of plays that I've been often producing the most consistent relationship between my honest brutal being about whether the work that is on our stage succeeded and the audience attendance right what do you mean aesthetically whether I think it was as good as it should have been or am I blaming the audience they don't have a risk tolerance you know they have plenty of risk tolerance they don't have tolerance for bad theater yeah that's the audience we need we're going to build a bad theater on that you know it's sort of the elephant in the room that is never discussed with discussions like this always assuming that all plays all productions are pretty equal to all of the school quality and should be therefore sampled by people with some kind of systematic regularity and you know that's great except that there's absolutely nothing to do with reality there are good productions and bad productions and you know there are good components of bad productions but you know we can't you know we can't it's really easy because we're going to be able to fool ourselves and say well this is great because I love it and I'm passionate about it all the crates are rotten I mean and it's a survival you know I could without radius fortune it was like any playwright who plays and shows him to be produced by a theater who will think the theater is crazy any actor who is hired to be in a production by a director will think the director is crazy and any producer who gets a bad review from a critic will think the critic is crazy and that's what we have to do to survive in this business where rejection is a way of life I mean you have to make that assumption but the harder thing is to try to say okay this is play but it really didn't turn out all that well so the reason that people aren't coming to see it isn't that we have in-net marketing or being in the right audience it's just not very good so let's pick up and move on and then the price thing you know I mean it's been shown so many times in recent years the signature did and other people have done by significantly lowering the price across the board and it has a tremendous impact on risk tolerance there was a hard and unequivocal time of course where it's like the whole thing of coil down to the length the accessibility and the price so if it's a half hour play that's across the street and cost five dollars my risk tolerance is probably pretty damn high if it costs 120 dollars and it's across town it's better and it's two and a half hours long then it better be some story that I know really well with somebody from HBO and in a way that's you see what's scary to me or what's challenging to me is accepting that is when someone stumbles into review for the first time or we get from there and it isn't the one that succeeds a hundred percent are there ways that what we're talking about is that they get more likely that they'll come back any day as opposed to it becomes a career ending I tried it that didn't work and that's the part that is to me is what's especially because it seems to be so much more now about random people coming in for a single experience and since it isn't always successful I think that the way most everybody here is younger than I and social media than I am but I know enough from the people that I work with that's the great new opportunity and I've been talking about it before I mean this is a way to communicate with people about what we're trying to do even when we fall short of our aspirations so that there's some tolerance that's what they were trying to do and that's what we do with our subscribers all the time and all of them with the newsletters saying here's this new play this is the idea this is what we're trying to account for hoping that if it doesn't work out well on a new day that's the free one but that assumes you're a subscriber because if you're not the subscriber it wasn't free but if you can then to which you can make yourself available on social media you can take it by another chance to generate that conversation something that came up is you have to be willing to let people trash you up there too that's the other side of social media which is a whole new thing especially for the writers because it's out there we were talking about it with word of mouth it's like an artist who does not ask random audience members or ask the housemaid well they like the show that's the word of mouth they're kind of like but now with social media and the blogs I mean when we do a show I'll get like a 10 page responses from the actual word of mouth and really hearing both good and bad what people are saying about it and you know that's just such a I never thought I'd live that long to see that kind of ability to connect with what people are thinking and it helps you think about how you communicate, how you talk to people and again in most cases giving people an audience with a benefit of the doubt that maybe there's harder than we think they are and yes being more risk tolerant than they even say they are and maybe being able to tease out if there's someone to do it reach out to the people the way it was the first time and I said I'm not going to go back again is that the people you know what I'm saying yeah I was going to say that the good side of that is also you need to have some institutional fortitude on some level too to say not that the show was a dog hopefully it wasn't a dog but also that this wasn't a crowd pleaser but you know what the artists did they execute their vision the way they should and I'm going to commission them again to do another play next year even though we totally tanked the bars off as we took a bath it was terrible and we're going to rely on these other three shows to make up for the ground we lost on that one but it is too important to the artists and to our role and our function as an organization to forward we feel like the other metrics the other boxes that we checked were hit like this was yeah maybe fell short in other areas but we feel like it advanced the conversation about stuff whatever those other ways and so like you need to be responsive to the audience you can take that in and also need to be able to know we did other things the most important thing is for an artist after they had an unsuccessful event I was only talking about being honest with ourselves you were talking about the true realization you have when you go all of a sudden I know why this is going the way it is we didn't do this there's the one you fail and you do it really well and then there's the why would you fail and you didn't do it as well and the artist is the way you never see them again I think playwrights are more and more into and especially the more especially the larger institution I think that being able to sort of evolve constantly and understand sort of a role in definition of successful part of a successful production and I think one of the things that I really respect about the movement and I've noticed other larger theaters as well is you guys have no public institutional hindsight in that if a show does not meet role, if a show does not hit well with the critics you never hear anyone from the theater say well look like a problem and I can't tell you New York theaters and DC theaters and Seattle theaters you hear it quite a lot and I think that the very complicated definition of success and I know this is like a producer almost the only metric that matters is how many tickets are sold right if you're looking at a night after night if you're looking at do you have full responsive houses that is a pretty well that's what the marketing directors who weren't coming when we've had marketing directors in the room who said one of the really hard things now is the only metric that's applied to them as to whether or not they're doing their job well is how many tickets are sold not where the right people in the house and what's really interesting is I think that you know I think back to that production when we were in previews it was my first time having a real full preview process where none of our sound cues were the same in the first preview as they were in my opening I've never experienced that before I was really freaked out about it I had to sort of learn to roll with it and to work in that in that system which is a system that actually makes sense you know we knew that it was going to be a device we had to remind me about that quite a lot and I think that one of the reasons that I knew that we were doing well was that you know I was told we had 70% of goal in the first week and I was like great good thank god for that and then my metric as an artist was you know when I left I was there for a couple days after opening and I was back the following week and for another event that I was doing the end of the first act which was sort of taking tropes from horror movies and seeing how they were working in more fear so there were a lot of frightening elements that were some scares to it at the end of the first act people would turn to each other and go that was weird and at the end of the second act they would turn to each other and they would say that was weird and I was like yeah that's what I was going for and I was so thankful for Eric and then for Elstein I understood that the play was going to be divisive we knew what was going in who reminded everyone on staff about it who kept reminding me about it who sort of were fully behind the play and were never expecting the play to be anything that it was not that we as artists forget quite often and I think that we were more going to show or you know working on a show in any capacity you can sort of forget that that definition of success is sort of really shifting and it's hard to keep it in mind but I really do respect institutions that sort of say maybe we didn't do a job in this case maybe we overestimated the interest in this case or something like that but hopefully we're still getting closer to the never show to like giving every show to do in doing the best we can well it's also just I mean it's really hard to produce a play you couldn't do it something go wrong that you never imagined and you just got to go alright things happen but the thing I want to go back to was sort of the the artist involvement in all of this because I mean just in my class this morning talking about fundraising with the ball students who here is interested in fundraising who here is not and and you know with the business model that we have I mean we're all involved in fundraising and I think because I'm amazing how many times I've heard people don't do this but years ago we made this systematic decision that all of our executive committee and board meetings we were going to start the board meeting with a discussion about you know the play that we were doing or were about to do with the artists who were going to do it and not just kind of you know I mean informal but fallen out sort of like carry to really try to engage people on board and try to get them to understand again that this is what we are attempting to do okay and these are the people who are attempting to do it and this is why they are passionate about it and this is why they care and also when it's really going to be you know the content of the play to tell them it's really going to be ugly I mean Bob is great about that you were going to go and see this and you made it and your friends are going to go and see it and so I might advise you be careful which friends you bring to this play one of those experiences but we often make a long story we often forget how civilians are in my experience enamored of what you do they're actually in awe of it they're really much less judgmental than they are sort of amazed that you know you can go on stage and remember all of those you know sit in a room and imagine these characters and so to you know to approach them from that standpoint that these aren't my executioners these are people who actually what I do and sort of the more that artists share that both with audiences but even in small theaters some people say well in small theaters so what you know I've been on the boards of small theaters do you think about having that conversation with them online for your audiences as well I sometimes think we give more to our boards than we do to our larger well we're doing more of that now because we have you know stuff I mean we had a wonderful kid who showed up a couple of years ago and was a videographer and I said hire him and so now you know he does like sequential the story of the play from the first reversal to the actual performance so you like week by week we get a new chapter online so I mean there's still more to be done with it we send those links out to the audience and stuff like that if you have the technology it's really easy to do what are the things that intrigued me was either a south coast rapper or a boat and I think it was the subscribers that had the largest tendency to say they were able to go to a show that they didn't like but and still have a successful evening at the theater so and it was encouraging that it was in fact the subscribers who had a greater capacity but knew basically they had a skill for being able to do that which I think plays into that one of the kind of disparities of the theaters being quite clear that the audiences that were actually the most preferable from what they saw as their speaker was the subscribers and the playwrights saying that the theaters that they thought were like the supportive of that were the absolute opposite of the subscribers and I read it and I thought I wonder if this is people projecting themselves on who they think but in fact I think it is probably the more we drill down than it is that subscriber audience that is at the end of the day much more tolerant and the question is how to get younger artists to see the tolerance because they don't look like they don't look like what we want and who likes our work to look like because I think that is a source of friction but if you have more money I wonder if that is part of it I mean I know you certainly want to do this and so if I went and I spent money and I would be angry at myself and I would be angry at the people I would say I could have done much better I would come out and I would be like angry but that is why subscribers are significant because they have gone to that theater and they have had an expectation in general about what the company is going to do and sometimes the company only does in the 19th century on but sometimes the company is more so the subscriber wants down your money and they force several shows so their expectation is that most of those shows are going to be okay it would be quite as angry as you were on that one experience when they see the show that they don't buy so much and the flip side is they won't be as ecstatic when they see that's the other side is the intentionality of the single ticket buyer all the way through but I also wonder if there is an appreciation that it is built in about okay I didn't love the story or that actor bothered me but they were able to you were saying sorry saying that even in bad shows there are good elements are they able to glean out and take away things that make me feel like I did not just waste two hours of my life because some of those people who have a lot of money I mean nobody has a ton of time but a lot of them do like I don't have much time I mean money coming out of my ears is really important and did I just waste two or three hours of my time or do I feel like you know that was still really much better than sitting at home watching TV because I got blah blah blah I had a person come up to me recently a show that went to just close at 16th Street Theater and she said you're the person who wrote The Dentist's Play a few years ago and I was like oh yeah that's me she was like oh wow I hated that play oh cool she remembered like everything she hated but that's what I loved I feel like as an artist my worst case scenario is an audience coming out of the play of mine or a play that a company I'm related with does and they go it was good and then they drive home and that's the end of the conversation horrified that that made me feel like a subscriber well external when I teach I have my class go through the exercise of how do you decide to see a play if you're a subscriber basically you go to the place you have supper where you usually have supper and if you're a single ticket buyer what do you do you read about the play decide to see the play after decide to leave and of course you bring in a different level of expectation which may then lead to that part and so it's like someone this is how do we how do we help everyone understand each other because they may leave and say that was good and they actually really are feeling the things you want them to be feeling but you're not seeing it it's something else that you want yeah I think I think it's very much and this goes back to a number of things that we were talking about and what I tried to sort of start with earlier was about making the actual experience something that what is it that they can still take away that they come back for and I think it's all of these things that we're talking about all tie in and for me I think it's very much about us making it and then we're living in a society now that has changed dramatically and it is now the eye society so we're talking about the fact that people love actors we look at actors and we can't understand how they can remember all their signs and yes they're amazing and we want to have a part of that but also we wouldn't be able to do that like I know that people say that they can't do it they still won't feel that they are a part and they need to do it I think the way television has set itself up now reality TV makes people believe that they can be a television star and I feel like theatre in some respects needs to find a way of creating an event where they have that same experience where when they're saying I'm watching TV and watching reality and just watching reality TV or I voted for that how do we make that experience an event on any kind of level and the only reason I say that is because by example there's this thing in England where they did where nobody knew or they were ever going to see they had nothing to do with what they were seeing it was purely about it was purely about everyone coming together how do we make theatre an event and is it a fact the thing that I hear us all talking about so much is it's still about us when actually we need to start thinking it's actually about them and they are the stars of the theatre and that's just something that we can't say is the fact that it is the iGeneration that's what we're about it's about Twitter, it's about Facebook we are very long getting control of what we necessarily do how do we get control we have to start manipulating our audience into thinking that they are actually doing it yeah I think that I had a discussion with a friend the other day I also sort of had a long talk with a friend the other day because she thought that sort of the act of playing a game was a very passive experience and I was like actually I have had more engagement in games than I have had in some theatre productions and I think that asking the audience to do something I know that when theatre people talk about interactivity we can choose your own adventure theatre and meet I feel like we don't quite have the tools to talk about it the way that some other industries have the tools to talk about it so in games we're always talking about the game mechanic and what is the player going to do with this plan so they're not just watching a movie and I think that that is huge that the act of playing a game you are not a passive observer you are an active participant in the story that is unfolding and so the reason that it can feel epic is because you are the caretaker for this 8 year old girl and you have to get her safely through this area or you are saving the world or you are sort of interacting with the environment and I think that even if we're not fundamentally and some of us will never even if we're not fundamentally changing the form of the productions we do even if we're not if we're choosing not to be there which I think is a totally valid choice how can we then make that engagement with the audience whether that's something you can purchase whether that's something they sit down to play what can we ask the audience to do without seeing control of the story and the production that you don't think we want to do most of us don't want to audiences don't want to do and audiences probably don't really agree because watch how they free the front row they think they have to go on stage don't see what people want stranger lives here I think there's I think we're talking about form and I think I was fortunate enough to be at Howard Schell which is a panel at the TCG conference in Boston about innovation and he went and spoke to people all over the country and was able to learn a lot from him what you learned and his big thing was in Europe and South America they don't have this assembly line that we have here change form you have to be innovative and the way to do that is to get playwright and director and actors most importantly because they might have the best ideation of anybody but the market people get everybody in the room at the beginning before you decide where you're going and let the ensemble form and develop a vision together and I think it's a tricky thing because playwrights have been used to being generators and then they hand it to the theater company and then the director gets it and she makes all their decisions and then they get and the actors are brought in at the last moment and if you really want to push form and do stuff like sleep no more which does have 26 year olds that have seen the show 30 times and they're running at full speed and they know where to go they know they're blocking I mean that's like the second show is wonderful the experience is great but being there as a theater artist and watching these people running at full speed up and down the flights of stairs audience members so like in the moment that was part of the show too having paid $75 at least to be there each time and then buy the program on the way out for 60 but if I'm hearing you know if I'm understanding you it's like that yes absolutely is a very deciding and viable option but thank you okay but also it's like we're also talking about are there other strategies that don't necessarily involve reinventing the form but because I'm thinking about like stage kiss is the serial role play that's a play of tourism and one interesting thing that they're doing is they have created a kissing booth in the lobby of the theater and you can take your picture kissing whoever you're with or they actually sometimes encourage you to kiss or even drink or whatever and then they will not only put your picture on the wall of the theater but then they instantly have it set up so that you can Instagram yourself on their page and you're like no you don't have to yeah it's curious but it's exciting is that an example too of what we're talking about it like here's an entry point for those who want it and you can sort of it is kind of a way I think of manipulating the audience to be like oh my stage kiss to Instagram and I'm like playwrights are on its feet or whatever so why are we so far in why are we already at the opening when the audience gets engaged right so you're talking about getting everyone together early early on and where is the audience and you know stop at crowdsourcing curation and there are some really really bad examples of it working there's that museum in California the surf museum it was like a movie family museum and some you know young curators who have been crowdsourced and it is now a center of the community and it is beautifully curated and by community members and so there are some new orchestra I'm going to mess it up and you can inspire her clearly someone is actually you know crowdsourcing curation the concerts they will do in the series and you can bet if you vote it like you know they can limit the options but if you vote it and your vote one or your vote lost you're probably going to show up right I don't think it's something to totally stop that but you know it needs to to a selection place to get them involved a year and a half out instead of you know even though it's very cool funding at you know opening night it's something we're going to it used to be enough to take out a big page ad in the New York Times and it's just not enough anymore right you have to let's Amazon have a streaming model where they show the nine pilots and then you vote and then the pilots get the most votes in the series well it's also and I think it sort of speaks more to the to not necessarily stop marketing the institution because I mean rock even as you said that I never thought about obviously institutions are saying as an not something I've ever thought about before in my life so it's a very but I think that it's that that additional sense of how every project we're doing is different it might not be super different form once but it might be you know like looking last as a very example like like an ensemble based show is going to have a different form than like the production so it doesn't make sense even though we're all exhausted and who has time and who has the money and resources and all that stuff I feel like the longer we make theater the more it makes sense that we are thinking not just about a season but we're thinking about a show and are we starting at opening for one show and are we starting a year ahead of time for another show I've talked with Howard extensively about that subject about some things I really agree with them and other things I don't agree with them and I think it's again use different models for different shows and I think that it's sort of part of our job as artists to sort of say how is this different how is this show connecting differently to the audience what is the timeline what is the form that it takes what is the before what is the after that all of that is honestly just as important as each artwork that we're creating that it's not sort of an addition to it that it sort of needs to be thought of art and parcel is the same thing and as you're talking about time the balancing act the balancing act between we need to generate a lot of pride for a lot of reasons and the fact that time is commodity we don't have to meet the most maybe as much as anything else how do you have the time to deal with each production individually when certainly bringing this interesting season there's the one you're in, there's the one that's running and how do you figure that out and how do you get to it a year ahead that would be good and I think it might actually be interesting especially for generative artists it might be sort of interesting to say hey generative artists you're a playwright if you had $1,500 that was just your budget and you could obviously use that to pay yourself or use a thousand to pay yourself $500 to pay whoever and you have this amount of time they need to give us a plan for what a process of outside engagement that's not work that I'm capable of doing on production because I'm in position element production but in the six months leading up to it I'm probably not doing anything at all honestly so it might be able to experiment to sort of say, artist what's your plan and then sort of measure the success a few seasons into that brand writers I feel like a small company smaller, I mean a big awesome company or maybe not obviously hopefully you have community engagement in terms of marketing people maybe an education arm or whatever but I think we're reaching the point where it really is a ball or die right? I used to work at KS1.2 and New York was an artist run space when it started in the 80s and then eventually they're like well we need someone to manage the space so they bring on someone to manage the space and then they realize what you need and now we need all the new companies once you are going to hire an education person I think we hit that point where we all have to admit that social media exists and you know we're just different you know Fox, you know the network they RIP pilot season this year instead of spending you know $5 million on 20 possible pilots and picking up 10 to series and canceling 7 of those they were like screw it we're not going to do pilot season we're going to go straight to series but instead of ordering 22 we're going to order 10 and we're going to sort of see how that experiment works but I think the TV is sort of in the same phase of all the die and I think we can sort of make it fun or not it's funny that you're not ready for your energy so there's this kind of thing even though we see change and go change and this story would be so much more effective if I can remember the name any of the players involved right you can't test me on this because hey I was at the IP conference a couple months ago and one of the little sessions there was a theater producer who had brought in a European company and was like we're going to really connect with the colleges and they in the first preview they brought in a big college group and they were all want to be all alive to this social media thing and they somehow put models in the lobby and you were supposed to be able to like do something interactive or something right there and the play happened the students walked in glanced around those things didn't touch them walked out and they were like I'm not sure they responded to it and they went to bed all moralized and when they woke up in the morning they saw that a student had found one of the performers on Facebook and said where is the cast going tonight and like half of that student group went and joined the cast to party and like nothing they did but da da da da da here's our you know our agent thing did what they planned but there was they the students they were going straight to the artists because we couldn't find them so it's it's just tricky to navigate I think I would say I don't know if you still do it but I have been asking people for playwrights whenever I talk to them in the last few years we've been doing this I've been saying can you just tell me your most successful marketing experience or interaction in the marketing department and I don't remember who the writer was but they were going to play the equipment and they said there's this guy at the equipment I think he's in charge rock something he has he opens up his office on Friday and said five or whatever and anyone who wants anyone who's in the building become very good to hang out and she said I didn't know if I should go but I was a playwright and she ended up talking to a marketing associate and they said tell me about your play and that became the graphic right coming out of that and so I think you're exactly right it's some combination of artists find the person I was reminded of that because I was thinking about those kids and how to find the actors and so it's people react to what they react to so there are a bunch of different solutions I think to how we figure out what and it's using all of I just sometimes get scared that we'll do we need all the social engagement but we also need a bar to build it oh wait we need to find the actors and she obviously she wasn't scared because she didn't know enough right I mean it's just like oh let's go upstairs or wherever it was and those kids I mean I would never do that I just want to something that Laura said like 45 minutes ago I just thought that was interesting in terms of success because I just had a play done in London and time it was coming to that to ask me how that went and I said it went well it started four years ago at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton are you familiar do you know the Nuffield there we go so and we did it first there and I was paid the ultimate compliment by the managing director who said yes the play did not lose as much money as we thought it would you know and I think like 30 years ago I would have gone home and curled up in bed but now I'm like man that is great are you going to put that on the banner or not but that is the success that is the definition of success in the Nuffield product we're in so here so here's the possibility like tell me but I do think that you know so there's there's we as theatre institutions have accountability to the public right we also have accountability to the artists and not those are our tensions but sometimes they can be conflicting so we talk about risk taking for the audiences and look for the artists I mean I think what we can continue to do is a better job of advocating and educating the funding community for exactly that reason because it's a given that theaters are going to lose money and the only way that they're going to survive I mean for the most part is if and only way specifically that risk taking is going to be in this talk is if we have a funding community that says it's valuable it is essential to the city of Chicago that we have institutions small medium and large that are going to continue to take risks and to work that hasn't been done before trying new ventures and give off new ventures to our audiences but the longevity of those institutions isn't going to be terribly long if there's not the support to help make that happen so I mean at least our institution is really thinking about how to survive as our risk margin has really shrunk now I'm kind of almost ill you know like we need to figure out how to expand that risk margin again because we do and one of the ways that we're going to need to do that is to be out in the field of educating those funders and advocating for that across the border well and the do you know anything I'd add to that it gets back to the question on the whole business model where you know a lot of educating funders and trustees that we measure its success is not how many dollars you can extract from people coming through your doors one way or the other that's not what it's about so we charge lower prices we had a business model we didn't say that 60-70% then because of technology we've learned this because we do dynamic pricing but we do it in both directions so now the show demand is sluggish you lower the prices you see demand go up and so I mean again sometimes I think we get so in our heads about problems that we can over complicate the fact that there are solutions that are simple risk is risky some plays are some productions are better than others tickets cost less more people will probably go to see them and if you have drinks in the office the artist will come around no, free pizza we're starting free pizza nights next year because we've learned we're serving free pizza and people are there I'll buy a ticket to go to see that yeah I don't think that's how it's meant to be I think the theater I think the theater is a special particularity I don't know who we're talking to all the time we want to talk to our audience and that's like there's one audience member who's a random person I think there's random persons walking on the street so there's station I don't just check out you know you have to synthesize too much information but we're in here also just to get to these so I think because you can figure out who it is that person and I think that is what we're just talking about that's in the great world it's kind of an educational it's amazing what it's like we're at four and we've done our time on Power Out good night Power Out so thank you guys for your time this has been really an amazing day and for those of you who have been here since this morning thanks to you and thanks to everyone for being here this afternoon as well it's been really really great for us so we're keeping up the next steps