I don't know how it found its way to my backstage, but I came across a booklet from Apollo Design that really show the company has a sense of their customer's needs and seek to add value to their products. They have what they term Playbooks which provide a scene by scene break down with gel and pattern suggestions of some of the most popular plays high schools and community theatres perform.
They admit that the options they offer are among the safest choices a lighting designer can make. They also can't offer guidance about placement of instruments and intensity of light since they can't know the needs of every theatre. But for the high school teacher who has volunteered to direct the fall play and knows nothing about choosing gel colors, the booklets can remove quite a bit of anxiety. Even if you aren't directing any of the plays they cover, you can get a sense of how the design theory you might read in a text book has been put into practice in specific instances.
You can download pdf versions of specific Playbook sections here. As an example of the general guidance they offer, for The Glass Menagerie, the notes state:
“Smoky, red glow” - mentioned in the Amanda and Tom argument scene. The colors should not be malevolent or suggest violence. It should be a subtle indication of frustration and tension"
Another example is in scene 3 the booklet provides guidance for different colors on the fire escape, living room, bedrooms and dance hall.
Although their skills far outstrip those of the people who would use these booklets, my technical crew thought the booklets were a great idea and have been thumbing through them for the last week.
We did get a little chuckle though from their political correct renaming of Bastard Amber, one of the most often used gel colors around. It was created by mistake when a guy was trying to create a batch of regular amber. Bastard Amber ended up being generally a better color choice and more widely used than regular Amber. The two leading gel manufacturers, Rosco and Lee both have the color in their swatch books.
Apollo on the other hand calls the color Fatherless Amber. Given that they have a Dominant and Submissive Lavender, we can't imagine they are complete prudes.
If you want to have a bit of fun, ask your tech director if you can see their gel swatch books. You can find some amusing names for colors in there. Given that Rosco and Lee have created proprietary colors that the other hasn't been able to reproduce, you can have fun looking through both. Like some famous painters who have created their own paint shades, lighting designers have asked that unique colors be created for them and so you will find some colors named after notable theatrical folks. Be warned that there are also a lot of mundane boring colors in there as well though you will probably wonder at the contradiction of shades like No Color Blue.
There is a great illustration (in my mind as least) for why arts people need to value learning and be cognizant of what is happening elsewhere in a story out of Orlando. It seems the Orlando Opera Company and Orlando Ballet have decided to try to bump their subscribers out of the balcony and into the more expensive floor seats in an attempt to make that area look fuller and increase revenue.
The subscribers are none to happy and are resisting. Just like the subscribers at the Honolulu Symphony did when the balcony seating prices were both raised and that section closed until the floor section was filled. Just like the subscribers at the Boston Symphony Orchestra did when that organization increased balcony seating prices by 80% in one year. Both Honolulu and Boston backpedaled and admitted the increases were ill advised. I suspect the opera and ballet in Orlando may end up doing the same.
Fortunately, the Orlando Philharmonic hadn't received the advice the opera and ballet did about changing the pricing structure or this entry would make it seem like orchestras were the only ones making this poor decision. Or at the very least, weren't doing a good job presenting this new policy to their audiences. I am not sure there is a good way of making such a large change in one year's time palatable without investing a whole lot of time and money in the campaign.
The Orlando Sentinel article mentions that the opera and ballet had received the results of a study. I wonder who did the study and how they came to the conclusion that subscribers would tolerate this in acceptable numbers. I could believe a study that found people would tolerate a price increase of X amount over what they are paying now. Likewise, I could foresee people grumbling but generally acceding to moving their seats to the floor for the same price if they were told it was a cost saving measure. (Don't have to pay the ushers for the balconies, perhaps.) It would be a sneaky way to get people out of the seats and raise the prices the following season when you reopen the balcony due to demand. People would probably be rather angered at such a move when it emerged a couple years hence.
I would be rather incredulous at a study that found it would be productive to both displace subscribers and place them in a situation where they were paying more than the previous year. (If anyone knows of a case of the decision succeeding, I would love to know!) I would ask to see the research that back that up and if it didn't include a fair sampling of my ticket purchasing base, I would be rather skeptical. In other words, I am wondering if they even talked to anyone in those seats. (Or researched how similar decisions played out.) I don't expect any of them would have answered yes to a question that flat out asked if they would be willing to give up their seats so some extensive communication of the rationale would need to transpire. Which would be a pretty good opportunity to gauge the most effective way to communicate the rationale.
There are obviously too many factors of which I am unaware to make a real judgment about why the decision was made. I feel secure though in stating that their case doesn't appear to have been communicated well.
There is a piece on the online journal, Spiked from Frank Furedi decrying the English government's prescriptive use of music in their sponsorship of the Music Manifesto. My first thoughts were that this is what comes from positioning the arts as having all these benefits when asking for money. This is further evidence that the authors of Gifts of the Muse in saying the arts were ill served emphasizing these elements over the intrinsic value of the arts. I also thought that it should come as no surprise that governments would be employing music to advance an agenda. This has been happening for centuries from the Medicis to the current day where popular music is used to sell everything from cars to presidential candidates.
Perhaps I have been exposed too much to commercially motivated music, but I had a difficult time envisioning music as a vehicle for seeking and serving Truth. Perhaps it is the lack of this connection to Truth or my inability to see it that can be attributed to what he cites as "impersonal force of the market impinged on the development of art and culture."
My initial cynicism about his complaints aside, there were a number of observations he made that I hadn't really considered. For instance, he notes that by valuing who will be attracted by the experience over the art itself, "what really matters is the audience rather than the music that the audience listens to. The question of who sits in the audience, rather then what they hear, shapes official thinking on music today."
I have seen this myself. Every final grant report I fill out regardless of whether it is privately or publicly funded asks me how many K-12 students were served. Many ask about the racial make up of the audience and if my program was designed to serve specific races or K-12 students. Some ask how the programs reinforce family values and self-sufficiency. I am occasionally tempted to ask how a particular government policy is actually reinforcing these things. The arts shouldn't necessarily be looked to in order to patch what has been rent.
I do think that arts organizations should be paying attention to who is attending. I am happy not to have to break down my audience into all sorts of demographics for my grant reports. One should always be assessing who is attending and how they are receiving it. Though the identity and number of people attending shouldn't form the sole measure of success.
One of the toughest parts of Furedi's complaint to tackle is the idea of accessibility equating to dumbing down. He criticizes music classes.
"Instead of providing an opportunity for pupils to study and learn about music, ‘music-making opportunities’ are often about involving kids in playing around with digital media and pretending to be djs...But frequently the ‘music-making’ approach is praised because it allegedly removes the ‘barriers’ that prevent children from ‘making music’."
and suggests that the real elitists are,
"the educational and cultural establishment who have so little faith in the ability of children to appreciate and learn about classical music. Their anti-elitism is a populist gesture designed to flatter ordinary folk and reassure them that not much is expected of them."
The question that emerges in my mind is how to structure an introduction to theatre, music, dance and art to people whose experience with these disciplines has come from movies, television, MTV and Photoshop? Are the activities you intend as a bridge between these experiences and the creative/performing arts underestimating your audience or does it provide necessary context? A contributing factor to activities that do indeed dumb an experience down is the receipents may not view the relevance in the same manner you do. So the bridging activities become the whole program rather than just the initial steps of a larger plan.
For example, does all the art and literature about the transitory nature of life have the same poignancy for people who can create and destroy a visual representation with a touch of a button? How do you cultivate an appreciation for an artist's technique in mixing colors or composing music when there is software that will correct those flaws? How do you instill a desire for preservation in someone whose criteria for doing so is based on the amount of room left on a memory card rather than what ever quality of composition is apparent on the tiny digital camera or cell phone screen?
I don't doubt that you can cultivate appreciation and understanding of art in people amid all of these influences. But if they don't feel it to the same degree or manner as you and your contemporaries do, you may never move beyond a certain point and allow them to develop a more sophisticated understanding. On the other hand, if you don't take into account that people experience the world differently than when you were their age and proceed to present the discipline in the same manner it was presented to you, you risk alienating people with your insensitivity and general cluelessness.
What is the balance then between presenting an accessible context that is intellectually challenging? It is easy to say that is your goal and just as easy to be diverted from the plan by what seems to be a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism.
I came across a link last week to a study the League of American Orchestras did. The freshness of the referring page and the fact that my monitor resolution didn't require me to enlarge the pages too much initially hid the fact that the story came out in January 2004. Thinking it had been published in 2008, I was wondering why Drew McManus and the other bloggers at Inside the Arts hadn't picked up on it already. For awhile there, I was excited that I might actually be scooping them on their segment of the arts.
Even given the time that has actually transpired since the publication date, the article, Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender, is quite pertinent. One of the toughest groups to survey is the non-attender so the results of any survey of these people are highly valued. And they should be given that it is difficult to find people who don't attend who are willing to respond. It isn't as simple a matter as going out during a performance and asking why people aren't at the show. (Though that does seem like a good place to start now doesn't it?)
While the results of the survey the story covers are in relation to orchestras, the lessons learned can be applied universally. The median age of these smart, aware people tends to be lower than those actually attending which makes them valuable for that reason alone. They believe they would enjoy attending a concert, but never get around to doing so. Some of the reasons are advertising design which is intimidating to those not in the know (though theatre advertising gets higher points.) Though to be fair, some of the most accessible methods of communication suffered from perception. Said one person who didn't know orchestra's had websites, “I mean, they’re playing 18th-century music. I guess I never thought they’d need
a web site."
In addition to being uneasy about how to dress and act, the Non Attenders are also concerned about not understanding the performance. It isn't just a matter of not having the experience and vocabulary to comprehend what appears to be a dense, complex work, but also not being as enraptured by the work as everyone else seems to be.
I think this is an important distinction especially in relation to music. In most people's general experience, not understanding music is not an impediment to enjoyment. Getting lyrics wrong is practically a rite of passage. Listening to music in a foreign language is quite commonplace and the unfamiliarity of the tongue not terribly distressing. Perhaps it is the attendance format combined with lack of reference points, but it appears people tend to feel more at sea attending a symphony. I cite the format as a contributing factor because even if a contemporary foreign language music performance is in a concert hall, there is often an opportunity to groove along with the music and establish a connection that is pretty much not an option in the presence of an orchestra. Or at least the glares will be quick in coming if are feelin' it enough to roll your shoulders and wiggle a little in your seat.
The article notes that one of the most important groups to an orchestra are the people who initiate the excursion. Though the percentages may be different, this is true for all the arts disciplines. There are always a few who get the ball rolling and organize the outing for rest of their group, even if it is only one other. Making this task easy for that person can go a long way toward filling the seats.
A sidebar that appeared within the article directed me to a website the League has set up to make people more comfortable with the attendance experience. This is something I have been a proponent of so I was glad to see it. Meet the Music helps you find a League orchestra near you. It also offers advice about approaching your first attendance experience. Among the things I appreciated about the site was that while they instructed you not to clap between movements, they also tell you to ignore the people who shush you if you do and acknowledge it is only recently that the practice of not clapping at that point has emerged. I also liked their advice about how to listen to the activity while the musicians warmed up.
The biggest fault I would find with the website is that it's existence isn't widely promoted. It has been around 4 years and this is the first I have heard of it. I took a look around at the websites of the members in 15 states and few people include a link to it or anything like it in their education or ticket purchasing sections of the site. In some cases, it is the less prominent orchestras in a state which do a better job linking to the site or have a similar FAQ that is easy to find. The NY Phil and San Francisco Symphony though both have FAQs that were either modeled after or the models for the guide on the League site. (I am having a real hard time finding something on the Philly site though.)
We (meaning bloggers and various and sundry arts writers) often talk about how the arts attendance experience was a lot less like the staid and proper process of sitting in a dark room facing a stage. However, other than a few generalizations, we didn't have much to offer in the way of concrete specifics.
Or at least that has been the case here at Butts In The Seats.
Fortunately, blogger and arts critic Terry Teachout comes to the rescue with an article about the good old days in Commentary this month. Since he addresses piano concerts people who perform or attend such concerts probably have a better idea about some of the things to which he refers. It is clear to the general audience that things were a little looser by today's standards. There was more embellishment and improvisation even from the composers themselves.
"...British composer Charles Villiers Stanford heard Johannes Brahms play his Second Piano Concerto, he observed that the composer 'took it for granted that the public knew he had written the right notes, and did not worry himself over such little trifles as hitting the wrong ones. . . . [T]hey did not disturb his hearers any more than himself.'"
Liszt apparently had a urn placed in lobbies and would sit at the piano reviewing the suggestions placed within by audience members and would chat with them between pieces. Audience members, for their part "...thought nothing of applauding not merely between movements, but in order to pay tribute to a particularly well-played passage in the middle of a piece."
It is dishonest in a sense to talk about "how things used to be" because the reality was that these gentlemen were the popular musicians of their time and everything Teachout cites is no different than attending a contemporary music concert today. Musicians improvise on their own work knowing that the audience is aware of the more perfect version produced in a studio but don't care that they aren't playing it exactly like the album. The audience will applaud during the opening notes of the song, after the solo and will sing along. Unless you are the only one singing and are out of tune and drunk, no one generally cares.
Teachout says he is not encouraging a raucous free for all, but a general loosening of some aspects of the experience. I am familiar enough with classical music to be certain, but I imagine I would agree with him. I wouldn't necessarily want people walking through the aisles hawking oranges while I am watching Shakespeare. The language is so complex and delicious that you need to devote a bit more attention than you would at a Mamet play which, truth be told, has a complexity and deliciousness of language of its own.
It doesn't take much effort to imagine someone associated with an orchestra would say the same thing about the product they offer. It may have been popular entertainment at one time, but it does require more attentiveness to appreciate these days.
My picture was in the paper this Friday for an extra-curricular activity I engage in. It had been taken a few weeks ago so when someone mentioned they had seen me, I discounted it. Since then I have been congratulated and razzed by everyone from co-workers to my dentist.
As I was leaving work this evening, the assistant theatre manager said I should put the photo up on our website to humanize the organization a little. I dismissed the idea because the organization isn't about me and the goofy poses I take while not at work.
As I drove home, I started having second thoughts. People don't support organizations, they support and donate to people. That is one of the reasons why I generally make a short curtain speech enjoining people to turn off their cellphones, pointing out the fire exits and telling them what a wonderful time they are about to have. I could record this stuff but the human element is eliminated. Certainly having someone in the lobby to congratulate, complain or petition that they can recognize helps with audience relations, too.
But do they really care about what I do in my off time? My supermarket was posting banners showing how different employees were working in the community as volunteers. Presumably this was to influence people to identify more closely and positively with the supermarket as a community entity. My staff and I are pretty much wrapped up in our jobs at the theatre and hardly have enough time to generate the same credibility.
Those banners struck me as a little manipulative anyway. As with everything, humanizing yourself has to be done correctly for the community. I don't know how well it did in Milwaukee, but I thought the video the Milwaukee Symphony did for the opening of their season worked well in this regard. They filmed concert master Frank Almond talking about the upcoming season as they follow him around his house. What really worked for me was that they had his daughter dancing and twirling around the living room and zipping across the back deck on a scooter. It made me comfortable listening to him talk about his violin and the music he was going to play. The video made me feel like I would be able to understand and feel something from the music being played during their season.
It would really be great if they would let me twirl around in the aisles like Frank's daughter.
I am not quite sure if the dynamic between my organization and community is one where learning about the hobbies of the staff will positively influence our audience's perception of us. More to the point, I am not sure if I want my audience having a relationship with my private life.
In her column in this month's American Theatre, Theatre Communications group Executive Director, Teresa Eyring talks about the recognizing the growing number of Professional Amateurs in our society. Now this topic is nothing new. I have posted on the subject of Pro Ams. Andrew Taylor has done so on a number of occasions. His students did a research project on the topic. Charles Leadbetter and Paul Miller who coined the Pro Am term, wrote a book on the subject.
What makes Teresa Eyring's comments special is that she leads a major service organization and therefore is in a position to exert greater influence when she says it is worthwhile to heed a trend. (Though she was certainly influenced by all this discussion of Pro Ams.) What she has to say hasn't impacted my thoughts about Pro Ams in any direction. But it is good to see an arts leader like her encouraging people to explore the possibilities.
So if the words of all the aforementioned folks haven't gotten you to ponder the concept, maybe Eyring's will. She acknowledges that a transition that embraces Pro Ams can be difficult.
"If these shifts are irreversible and true, the question for professional arts organizations is how most effectively to embrace and respect audiences and potential audiences as they self-identify as creators, with a capacity for meaningful involvement in the artistic process that has often been closely held by professional theatre artists and organizations."...
"...For theatres and theatre artists, this trend presents questions that are both practical and semantic, such as: What do we do with the word “professional”? In the 20th-century arts world, this word has often been used to instruct the public, critics and funders to expect an experience qualitatively superior to that which is non-professional or amateur...""...However, with the growth of a pro-am culture that goes beyond art into science, technology and other realms, the power of a professionals-only province continues to fade—or at the very least, the nomenclature is less effective and meaningful. Some of the teeth-gnashing over this development has to do with how the public will know the difference between what is excellent creative expression and what is merely average..."
"...if theatres can find ways to tap into the growing interest among individuals in participating in the actual creation of art and the arts experience, perhaps we can move this trend to a tipping point of sorts, bringing theatre into a new period of cultural ferocity and ascendancy."
Scott Walters says I feel it. Since that is about all I saw of his entry on Technorati, I was wondering what it was that I feel. Turns out that I, among others feel that change in the theatre/arts is nigh.
In looking at what the other bloggers cited were saying, I came across some interesting thoughts worthy of consideration and debate in the arts world on The Mission Paradox blog both in the proposition author Adam Thurman makes in his entry and a comment that Chris Casquilho makes.
Thurman proposes that the arts position themselves as a social hub placing the audience first and artists second.
"We keep talking about finding ways for people to connect with our particular art form.But people don't want to connect to art . . . they want to connect to other people.
So instead of a theatre company seeing their performance on stage that night as the point of the evening, perhaps they should just see themselves as the hub . . . as the thing that connects all the people in the audience to each other...
...I think what people are willing to pay for is to be connected to other people.
And maybe one of the reasons that the arts is struggling is because we insist on being the focal point of the whole process....
...Think of what could happen if, for example, instead of just having ushers leading people to their seats, your dance company had people in the aisle introducing patrons to other patrons?"
What Chris Casquilho argues is something akin to the Gifts of the Muse premise that the arts are not well served by arguing their value in economic terms rather than their intrinsic value. Casquilho notes that being a social hub is hardly a function that only the arts can fulfill.
"...while "art for arts' sake" is a pretty goofy concept - syntactically and otherwise - if the mission of arts organizations is not to create art, then it begs the question: isn't there some better way to "connect people in a renewing environment?"Couldn't you easily succeed at that mission by offering classes on boat building, or starting a folf (sic) league? When push comes to shove, with no artists, there is no art. If your arts organization puts the needs of the community above the needs of the artist, you will turn your product into lukewarm porridge, lightly salted to taste."
Now it seems to me that these two concepts aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Having your ushers introduce audience members to each other before a show is hardly going to detract from the quality of a performance. (Unless your ushers and performers are one in the same, in which case you got bigger problems to worry about.) It is an intriguing idea. Providing more sophisticated and labor intensive opportunities for people to connect, on the web for example, as Thurman mentions elsewhere in his entry, could certainly mean other programs may suffer for want of resources. This could be a good thing if print advertising decreased in a community where online presence was becoming increasingly more effective.
The thing that worries me is that arts organizations have a tendency to subscribe to the newest trends without considering how to most appropriately implement them or even if it makes sense to do so. The best way to get funding is talk about economic benefits and outreach to under served communities? Find studies that prove the first and create programs that provide to the second.
Certainly, part of the blame resides with funders who decide these are the priorities they are going to primarily reward. When a staffer at my state arts foundation told me last Fall not to bother with a section of a grant application because I wasn't eligible, I have to admit a sense of relief at not having to arrange for a way to comply to the requirements. (I wasn't so relieved to find our grant award significantly reduced as a result of not being eligible.)
My concern then is that there will be this sudden rush to make one's organization into a community hub or rationalize how what the organization is already doing is making it a hub. It will become all about butts in the seats again, only for slightly different reasons. While some will do a great job at it, I suspect that the real winners will be coffee and wine shops whose wares become props for the social programs.
So since I have this soapbox from which to speak, let me just encourage everyone to think before they act this time around. Maybe the new big thing isn't Social Hubs. Whatever it is, think about your effort rather than duplicating another's even if it takes longer to create your own plan.
In the movie, The Princess Bride, the character Fezzik talks about how fighting one man is different than fighting a group. (It is right around 1:35) In fact, according to the powerful giant, it can be tougher to fight one person than a group.
It a lesson I relearned this past week when we were hosting a one person show. When we have a group of people visit to perform, even if they number as small as three, they are generally mutually reliant and supporting. They work out their schedule among each other and get themselves where they are going. With a single person, the dynamic changes and the relationship with them can become more intimate.
I had approached last week thinking that the group before had presented little difficulty and how much less a problem an individual would be. In some respects it was, but in many other aspects the performer's visit consumed much more of my time and attention than most groups do.
For example, groups generally take their meals together be it catered in house or driving to a nearby restaurant. Smaller groups might invite staff and crew to take meals with them but with an individual, the opportunity presents itself more often and feels natural. Last week I ended up eating dinner out more times than I ever have since moving here. I was late or missed events I frequent weekly as a result.
While I regularly escort performers to their hotel after meeting them at the airport, there are times I don't if they feel comfortable driving themselves. Last week I waited around 4 hours to escort him while he unpacked and set up at the theatre. Sure I would have rather gone home, but he was in a strange city, it was raining and while it is easy to get to the hotel, he didn't have anyone to help him navigate.
Working with an individual performer doesn't always present challenges. The dinner conversation was great. In fact, I was disappointed that I wasn't able to take him around to a more diverse group of restaurants. Last year I was driving a single performer to the theatre to rehearse and took a 20 minute detour to a scenic overlook because the she kept admiring how beautiful it was and I knew she would appreciate the view. These usually aren't options that even enter consideration with groups. One's relationship with individuals is more likely to feel like a guest and host or even familial interaction.
In some situations, dealing with a single person is less difficult if they relax their expectations. For most of the week we had our hospitality set up moved from our green room to the scene shop because it was less trouble to grab water, coffee, cookies and fruit from the stage. Generally performers are less keen about getting their coffee next to a table saw.
When we talk about customer service, speak of treating every individual as if they are the most important person. But if this type of experience has reminded me of anything, it is that the standard of care rendered to people has to be anything but. People in groups often get a lot of what they need from their companions. Dealing with individuals sometimes thrusts the role of a companion upon you by default.
Part of the point I am trying to make isn't so much about having a separate way of dealing with a single person at the box office versus a group that comes to buy their tickets as it is an attempt to create a metaphor about being mindful of the dynamic that group size dictates. Our audience had as different a relationship with the single performer as I did. It may seem self-evident in your mind that the experience would be different, but there are assumptions about what will happen that we automatically project on our experience based on past experience that simply are not valid. In such cases, operating as business as usual may yield disappointing results for audience, artist and staff.
While I was in the Learning to Lead session at the APAP conference, Steven Tepper was discussing his new book Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation in America's Cultural Life just next door. It was tough deciding which session to attend and I eventually stayed in Learning to Lead and bought the audio recording Tepper's session.
There were a number of interesting insights from his book that Tepper shared. One of the things people are concerned about is that arts audiences are disappearing but according to Tepper, participation is dropping all over. There are declines in church attendance, voting, involvement in formal political processes and even major league baseball games.
But says Tepper, It's not that like sports less, its that we like a little sports more….It may not be case that we like arts less we may actually like arts more.” He doesn't expound, but I think he is referring to The Long Tail economic model which essentially deals with selling a lot of niche items at higher volumes. His implication, as I understood it, was that people will value a lot of small experiences over the larger, more formal ones in the future.
Something he pointed out was that there is a shift in where people are getting their arts experiences. They aren't just getting it on the internet and TiVo, but also in places like churches which are bringing arts experiences to their constituents both within services and independently of them. He suggested that churches could be potential partners for arts organizations.
Tepper cited survey results that said high quality art wasn't a prime motivator for attendance. Rather celebrating heritage, socializing and supporting their community bigger motivation than quality. Social connections have long been a strong factor in arts attendance and apparently remains so. This is one of the reasons why churches could be strong partners. Not only do people who attend church participate more often in other areas of life, but churches provide a social connection.
This may be more true now than ever before given that many churches now offer counseling and assistance with things like job placement, parenting and child care in addition to sponsoring social gatherings for demographic groups. The church that rents my theatre has niche social groups for every permutation of age, marital status (and desire to be married), employment/student status and gender.
Though it does sound like one of those jokes about ordering coffee in Starbucks when a pastor introduces someone as a member of the Thirtysomething, professional single women social group. Yet if the Long Tail situation is indeed developing, services focussed to these type of divisions may be what people desire. (Despite the fact that you will either go insane or print up different labels for the same product trying to serve every possible group.)
There are signs that there is a growing interest with involvement in artistic creation. UCLA administers an annual survey to students about their aspirations. Over the last decade there has been a small but noticeable increase in the number of students with a "desire to create, write something original or be accomplished in a performing art." Tepper acknowledges that what they create might not be worth experiencing. He notes that students are experiencing frustration. Colleges and universities are having a hard time responding since the classes addressing the myriad creative areas are only available to majors. Students are coming to school with creative hobbies but don’t have a formal way of advancing their skill/knowledge.
So perhaps the role that arts organizations can fill in the future is responding to this need to hone one's creative skills that schools are not able to provide. In the best situation, arts organizations will be partnering with schools to provide the types of experiences students are looking for rather than competing or duplicating efforts.
I have talked about the Pro Am -- professional amateur -- trend in earlier entries. (Not surprisingly in relation to a piece Tepper wrote before.) People are investing a great deal of time in their interests these days and technology is making it easier for them to gain expertise. There was a time when this was not so and the learning curve for amateurs was so much greater.
It may not longer be the role of the arts organization to employ those who have acquired a high level of skill in their field to exhibit it to others, but rather to invite these Pro-Amateurs to become partners/participants/students in the creation of art. I have often wondered what the next phase for arts organizations is going to be. I don't think the future would be too bad if this was the role arts organizations played. The scary part for existing arts organizations is figuring out what their organization is going to look like and making the transition.
**Apologies to regular readers for falling off my regular posting schedule. Engaging my constituents (look for posts next week) and problems logging in to my blog contributed to my delay**
I haven't had a chance to read through the report WolfBrown put together for the Major University Presenters on Assessing the Intrinsic Impacts of a Live Performance but I did just finish listening to the audio recording of the presentation on the work that Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak did at the Arts Presenters conference.
What was most interesting to me about the study they did was their ambition in collecting information about audience experiences. They randomly surveyed people during the period between the time they arrived and the start of the show about their readiness to receive the performance they were about to see and then asked the same people to take home a survey and return it within 24 hours.
I hope to address the study in more detail in another entry. I wanted to address the comments one of respondents on the session panel had about the study. Artist agent and APAP Board President Lisa Booth had mixed feeling about the report. She was happy that there was a measure of success being developed that didn't evaluate an artist on the number of bodies he/she attracted to the venue but rather on impacts in other areas.
On the other hand, she worried that some presenters might use the report to justify serving only a small group rather than the larger community. Providing experiences of high intrinsic value for 10 people is anti-ethical to most arts organization's purpose.
And while she was glad that there was a new metric of success being developed that wasn't based in dollars or butts in seats, she was also concerned that in the eagerness to justify the value of the arts in some quantifiable way, the arts community was trying to measure what can not be measured.
This last bit was very interesting to me because Lisa Booth seemed to recognize the inevitable if these measures became widely used. If foundations and governments start basing their funding on the intrinsic value a performance has for a community, arts organizations will probably try to measure everything imaginable to show all the levels on which a performance meets funding agendas. Just as the arts aren't well served by showing economic impact, they probably will be equally ill-advised to create numeric values for changes in things like self-actualization, captivation, social comfort level and questions raised.
As it was at least one person in the room at this convention of presenters, agents and artists had nagging doubts about the value of art in today's society. One of the questions submitted to the moderators on an index card that was read but left unanswered was "What is the value of these impacts in a world with global warming and war?" The fact that the moderator choose to read the question as he announced time was up rather than ignoring it entirely is an acknowledgment that questions about our priorities as a society are ever present.
There is no short simple answer for the question but I offer this- After September 11, 2001 people were saying there would be no more comedy or laughter ever again. When I heard that I knew with 100% certainty that it was wrong and that even with the destruction of the Twin Towers hovering in our consciousness, recovery would come sooner than people expected. I had been through enough tragedy and grave problems in my life that I knew people couldn't exist in with the absence of artistic expression in some form. My current concern isn't that the arts will disappear. It is that I have no idea what media/channel/form it will best express itself in the future.
Knowing that my customer service skills can be lacking, I try to keep my eyes open for practices that answer customer needs well. One of the cardinal rules for relations with anyone, be it your boss, relatives, friends or patrons is to try to anticipate the needs of the other person.
Last week I came across an instance of what to do and wanted to share it with the readers. It is a small act, but it can make a big difference.
I have been emailing back and forth among two other alumni members of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Emerging Leadership Institute about some activities we want new and alumni members to participate in as part of our attempt to enhance the value of attending the institute.
One person emailed the rest of us a draft letter addressed to the new and returning ELI members alerting them to conference sessions and social events where concerns members had would be addressed. The format was pretty simple with a listing of the event and the time. It looked fine and I replied to that effect mentioning that I would have to research one session a little more because the title made it look interesting.
The next email I received had a revision of the previous letter. This time each session listed had a full description of what the session was all about. What had impressed me was that she took a cue from my comment that I intended to research a session that sounded interesting to provide me the information herself. Obviously, she didn't do it for me alone. If I was curious, others would be as well.
Actually, since I am praising her rather than criticizing, I don't mind mentioning her by name- Laura Kendall, Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Learning at the Lied Center in Lincoln, NE. There, now maybe she will get a raise.
You would naturally expect someone with a title like hers to make that connection and act on it, but it is a rarer quality than you would think. It is easy to enter a mindset that the community you are engaging and educating is only your own and that you only need to do so within the context of programs planned in conjunction with performances.
And maybe she doesn't pick up on the unspoken messages all the time either. However, I emailed her back last week praising her for recognizing that additional information would make a better letter. She said I made her day so I will bet she will be more conscious of these cues in the future regardless of how well she noticed them before.
Anticipating and answering needs people didn't really know they had is what will help set an experience at an arts organization apart from other experiences. People are able to gain the information they want more and more easily these days. Global positioning directional units were one of the hottest selling items this Christmas season. But information sources like GPS units only provide what you ask for and not only is the information sometimes incorrect, it also lacks wisdom and discernment to advise well.
But this is only one example of good practices arts organizations should be embracing. Keeping alert for everyday occurrence that can adapted and applied to become your standard procedures is the real point of this entry. Often it isn't that you come across a new practice as you encounter something that makes you question if you are doing it well enough.
I won't get in to why I came across this website. Suffice to say, some people in the office got sick over the Thanksgiving holidays. The anti-diarrhea medicine maker, Imodium A-D had a fun little feature on their website I hadn't expected to find-- a way to locate public restrooms in the U.S.
They are careful to assure you that you won't need the map while using their product, but it is always good to know where you find facilities while traveling. You don't want to depend on the map because it isn't comprehensive. Imodium grabs the information from a site called The Bathroom Diaries which allows people to rate restrooms across the world. People don't tend to share those experiences as much as say, hotel stays.
It wouldn't hurt if you were like the Portland (Oregon) Center for the Performing Arts and had people evaluate your restrooms and point out that there was a long bench that was handy as a changing room. Or perhaps you could write something yourself. In searching for a city that had an arts organization reviewed, I noticed that every Old Navy across the country was listed as "A great place to go" and every Starbucks included the observation that "The pleasant Starbucks barristas are cool. You should buy a drink but if you don't, they won't mind. Ask for a key if its locked." Apparently these corporations thought mention of their restroom situation was important enough for their business to have someone place a duplicate entry for every one of their locations. (Or at least up to a point. None of the branches of either company in my city are listed.)
There are many websites out there at aggregate obscure data into interesting data that clever arts organizations can use to their benefit. For example, this site answers the question it asks "If you dig straight down, where will you end up?" Fortunately, I never completed that hole in my backyard. I just discovered I would have ended up in the ocean about 3000 miles southwest of Perth, AUS. instead of China. It turns out, the most direct route to Beijing is through Argentina.
This handy "hole through the world" map can be employed during shows like Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing where a character begs to be sent on an errand to the Antipodes in order to avoid someone. It can be fun (and educational) to use the site to illustrate for audiences that if he had traveled to the literal antipodes of Messina (where the play is set) or London (where it was originally performed), he would have ended up in the ocean east of New Zealand.
Unfortunately, with two exceptions, there is no place in North America that corresponds with land at its antipodal point. It would be fun to point out the location opposite the theatre where the show was being performed. The antipodes of North America is the Indian Ocean. Only the State of Hawaii which corresponds to Botswana and a corner of Namibia and a point in the Alberta plains just north of Montana which corresponds to the French and Southern Antarctic Lands match up with any landmass.
Which isn't to say it isn't fun to learn that you can't reach China by digging in your backyard. It can just be interesting to have a connection with a people and land opposite you. Maybe you can research the best public restrooms in their city! (Though they don't flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.)
The real moral of this entry is that it can be useful to bookmark websites with goofy, but interesting information because you can never tell how it might be useful in creating a connection with your activities.
A dance professor at my school is trying to revive a dance festival which has, for various reasons, not been produced the last four years. It is an invitational event that has included pieces from college, high school, community dance schools and professional companies. Essentially, groups have ten minutes to show off their best stuff and wow the audience.
As the professor was following up on the invitations, one of the group leaders told the professor he didn't want to expose his students to our audiences whom he likened to football crowds. The professor was shaken so I followed up with the group leader to ascertain whether he was referring to all our audiences or just the audiences at this event and to discover if his comments were misinterpreted.
It turns out that they weren't. He felt the audience, which is generally comprised of family and friends of the dancers, needed to be educated about how to behave. He admitted he didn't know how that might be accomplished as lecturing folks before a performance on decorum would probably make people resentful.
I don't know the history of dance enough to know if formal performances (as opposed to dancing at festivals and balls where attendees participated) were once as boisterous affairs as theatre and classical music performances apparently were. If there is a trend away from passively sitting and watching, will enthusiastic reactions become the norm in the near to mid future?
Arguments for quiet can be compelling in situations where physical harm may result from distractions. I was speaking to a teacher of middle and high school students who said that it took her school five years of explaining why loud reactions might result in people getting hurt.
Others have pointed out the obvious solution. If you know the audience is going to be boisterous months in advance, you plan a program that won't imperil the dancers. Since no group has much more than 10-15 minutes to perform, it isn't as if they would run out of safe material.
The festival format is less structured than the typical dance performance so some degree of informality is to be expected. Not to mention that in an attempt to fill the house, the dancers are strongly encouraged to promote the show and sell tickets so the audience is going to be family and friends virtually by default.
More importantly, there is no guarantee that students of any performance discipline will always be plying their craft in front of refined audiences. Exposure to a "misbehaving" group can be a valuable one. The festival audience may be loud, but they are supportive. There is no guarantee that this will always be the case, either.
The comment about the festival audiences stirred up some emotions and discussion about audience expectations, both what performers should reasonably expect from them and what they may be expecting of their relationship with the performers. I have a feeling the conversations are going to continue for the next couple days as the discussion spreads among colleagues in an attempt to sort thoughts and feelings.
They have probably been advertising it for a long time now and I have been ignoring the content of the commercials but I just realized that Oral-B has been promoting one of their tooth brushes as having an on board computer.
My first thought was that the thing was going to report my brushing habits to my dentist. (Avaunt thee, traitorous dental implement!)
The truth is, no matter how high tech his practice becomes in its information collection and interpretation, my dentist won't be terribly effective if he doesn't have a good bedside, or in this case, spit sink side, manner. Sure he may have lots of patients. But dental visits are the cause for a lot of anxiety as it is. If his manner is a contributing factor to people delaying a return visit, he is failing the purpose of his profession. (Unless we are to believe Little Shop of Horrors)
I am sure you see where I am going with this. I can easily foresee that the use of RFID chips or something similar in the future will allow arts organizations to capture more data about audiences, especially those who walk up to a performance, than ever before. But performing regression analysis on the demographics attending each performance is only going to go so far in cultivating relationships with people.
It certainly isn't going to tell you a person is on crutches and should be diverted to another door before they arrive at the main entrance so they don't have to hobble all the way back. A well trained house staff will tell you these things after they have attended to the patron's needs.
Dentists have a much higher barrier of entry to overcome than arts organizations do. (Though some people have a better sense of what to expect at the dentist.) There is no reason not to aspire to providing the same level of reassurance and comfort that a dentist office needs to extend to make their customers comfortable.
I am beginning to worry that people are losing a sense of curiosity and are becoming more risk averse about things with which they are not completely familiar.
I went to see a sumo tournament yesterday and really loved it. The matches progressed surprisingly quickly for all the ritual involved (40 men in single elimination in under three hours, including intermission, and two trophy presentations.) The sense of theatre was appealing to me as well. There was none of the outrageous boasting you find in professional televised wrestling. Except for one man, there wasn't much flexing and scowling.
Most of the intimidation was accomplished by steely glares, little gestures when slapping oneself and the amount of salt thrown into the ring. None of this was too subtle for the audience which ooohed, aaahed and applauded in approval at the gestures. It is rather amusing to conclude a wrestler did not make good on his boastful salt tossing when he is quickly ejected from the ring.
My concern about the degradation of curiosity was based on the low attendance at both days of the tournament. Even though I wasn't involved in the effort at all, true to my background, I worried about how much money the businessman who spearheaded the effort might have been losing. They attributed the low attendance to the fact that there were no men from the state wrestling. I will say that despite the fact there are a lot of Japanese here, they only comprised about half the audience with Caucasians, Polynesians, Filipinos and some Mongolians (a number of the wrestlers were Mongolian) making up the rest.
Even though I often grumble that people are more interested in sports than the arts, I was rather dismayed by the attendance. Posters for the tournament went up 6 months ago. I was actually relieved to find out the contest was in June because our performance schedule was so busy back then. Three months ago a local man who had attained the pinnacle rank of Yokozuna returned to promote the event and has been talking it up all over the place.
Of course, last week there were all sorts of stories in the media about the event. I was excited to be attending and read up about the sport on the event website which included a short introductory video. The result was that I actually spent more on tickets than I had intended because I wanted to be closer to the action.
As you might imagine the real source of my dismay isn't my empathy for the event producers. It is that attendance was so low despite all the media promotion, the personal support of a man who is viewed locally as a hero and the readily available background information that has some bad implications for my programming which isn't backed with the resources to provide all that.
Part of my surprise is derived from the fact that sumo has had no place in my life. Though it isn't as big as soccer, baseball and football, there are a few clubs in the state. I would have expected a more general familiarity to pose less of a barrier to attendance.
It has been about 13 years since the last tournament was here, but with the Yokozuna making a lot of public appearances, I would have expected a buzz of people reminiscing about attending or missing out the last time. Perhaps what I saw this weekend was the best of what the local environment can generate. Perhaps even fewer would have attended had the event happened on the East Coast.
I being to see why some organizations are casting local celebrities in shows. Even though most people wouldn't have personally known a local sumo competitor, the fact that one shared common experiences and knowledge with a wrestler can be enough motivation to participate in an unfamiliar experience. All it takes is a handful of other people who have also never met the local person either sitting near you clapping and shouting his name to validate the experience as an enjoyable one. This is another example of why word of mouth is so powerful.
If this represents a growing trend it means that programming will not only need to be relevant to the interests and lives of my local audience, but also may need to have a more direct association with which they can identify. Over the next year I have three shows possessing local connections to varying degrees. I will have to observe them closely to see if interest increases as the less apparently connections are revealed.
A couple entries in the recent past on Donor Power Blog about interaction with one's constituents caught my eye.
The first, Do Your Donors Think You're Indifferent, links to Customers Are Always blog which notes a recent study found that perceived indifference by a company causes far more people to sever their relationship with a company than cost and quality issues.
Donor Power points out that indifference is in the eye of the beholder. "It's important to note here that indifference only be perceived. People cannot know other people's motives; they can only deduce them from the actions they see. So you can care passionately and still be perceived as indifferent."
It was hard for the second entry titled, How to position yourself as human, not to catch my eye. Especially since the first sentence was "What are you doing to persuade your donors that you aren't human?"
The entry links to another blog, What's Your Brand Mantra. Like Jeff Brooks at Donor Power, I too focused in on the point about writing to appeal to your audience rather than using language which only has relevance to insiders and alienates or confounds your target audiences.
This is a point I have made in the past about press releases and marketing material. But I figure now that organizations are gearing up to announce their new seasons in the next few months, the concept bears repeating.
I didn't come across anything today that would inspire me to write a lengthy entry. But thanks to Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes, I learned that the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has created a very cool and fun website to introduce their free admission policy for people under 25 made possible by underwriting by QUALCOMM.
I had a lot of fun playing with the website. Makes me wish I lived in San Diego. I also wish I was still 25, but that is for myriad other reasons besides free admission.
I have written about increasing the interactivity of performances at least twice before. While increasing interactivity is something that may be key to the continued survival of the performing arts, involving the audience more integrally in a show isn't necessarily going to always be constructive and enjoyable.
Via Artsjournal.com comes the story of an incident that occurred while Mike Daisey was performing his one person show at American Repertory Theatre. The show had hardly begun when 86 people stood and exited the theatre with one man going up on stage and dumping water on Daisey's outline for the performance. The whole thing was captured on tape. Daisey includes the video on his blog where he explains what happened.
What is so compelling about the video is that because the show is extemporaneous and has no set script, Daisey goes with the moment and gets up and asks why they are leaving. He mentions that he can regulate his language if that is what offends them and invites them to return so they can have a conversation. The only response he gets is one person saying they are Christian.
After the group has departed, Daisey engages in a conversation with the audience about what has happened and how the destruction of his outline, which he makes small alterations to everyday, means that he will have to spend the next day reconstructing his show.
According to his most recent blog entry he actually got in contact with the group and the man who destroyed his notes. His discussion of his interaction with the man shows sensitivity and empathy in a situation where anger and derision for those who offered insult might be expected. (Though on the night of the show he was quite angry and called those who were departing cowards.)
The quality of the writing and insight he offers is what I have envisioned when I suggested artists keep blogs about the creative process for audiences to access. It is just too bad an incident like this has to be the impetus of it.
Which is not to say that his other entries on the American Repertory Theatre blog don't have value, he does a great job addressing why his extemporaneous performances may appear to be memorized for example. The entries and video on the walk out are just great examples of what the performance experience can be for artist and audience and superb lessons to artists about how to deal with people who are angered by your work in a constructive, non-dismissive manner.
As I noted earlier, my involvement in Take A Friend to The Orchestra Month this year took little effort on my part since the Symphony came to me. For the first time in a long while, the Symphony came to perform a school outreach on my stage. Many of the musicians commented on that fact and hoped they would be returning for future events.
The program certainly had a greater reach than anyone anticipated as mothers showed up with infants in hand while accompanying the older siblings. We had ten strollers parked in the lobby during the first concert. Four people used our stage as a diaper changing area prior to the performance which left us concerned some of the babies would roll off.
I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but the concert started with a short sample of John Williams' "Theme from Superman" and the ended with the full work.
What really stuck out from the whole experience was the audience's reaction to the second piece they performed. Because they were trying to demonstrate varying tempo, they performed Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King."
Before the piece was over the entire audience was clapping along in time with the music. I am guessing this isn't a common response from the way the conductor commented on how the audience had really gotten into the piece. The symphony had sent CDs of the program to the schools in advance so they could prepare so the students could have been introduced to the idea of clapping along in the classroom. Though honestly, if you listen to the music, it doesn't take much impetus to get you clapping.
Some of the volunteer ushers the symphony brought along commented how great it was that the kids enjoyed the music so much that they were getting involved with it.
I couldn't help but wonder how old the kids would have to be before that sort of behavior was no longer tolerated from them. There is already a debate about aplause between movements, clapping during the performance would certainly be sacrilege. Certainly, social conventions require that you stifle such impulses to allow other people the opportunity to listen to the music.
On the other hand, symphonies often talk about how composers were the bad boy rock stars of their day so I suspect that people might have had a less restrained reaction to the music than they do these days. I came across a reference to children following Grieg around the streets of Bergen whistling tunes from his Peer Gynt Suites. If you followed the "In the Hall of the Mountain King"link earlier (or right here) you will see that the popular appeal of Grieg's music lives on today. (Though in some cases, it seems to be a mutant life form.)
As I was re-reading the Knight Foundation Magic of Music report last week as part of my entry and comments on Bill Harris' Facilitated Systems blog, I realized there were a few topics I wanted to address.
Back in November, my entry on the report essentially deferred to my assumption that Drew McManus could provide greater insight than I could on the subject. As I expected, he wrote two entries with some great analysis.
However, it is a long report with plenty to comment on. One part of the report that seemed pertinent to the arts world in general was the "Lessons Learned" section on pages 49-50. The problems facing the orchestra world seemed to be the same faced by all the arts disciplines. In some cases the problem may not be as extreme for other disciplines as it is for orchestras, but is still something that bears scrutiny and effort for improvement.
Though summarizing a summary doesn't do much justice to the material, I wanted to cite the lessons here in the hopes that arts leaders will be inspired to tackle some of the issues in upcoming seasons and set things in motion now with staff before summer vacation dilutes ambition.
As I said, replace "orchestra" with your discipline and see if it doesn't ring true even a little bit.
1) The problems of orchestras stem not from the music they play but from the delivery systems they employ.
For orchestras the problem lies in the fact many people enjoy listening to classical music but don't see any attraction at the concert hall. Part of the problem for all disciplines might be, as Andrew Taylor suggested awhile back, that audiences are less interested in being relegated to a passive role.
2 The mission of an orchestra needs to be clear, focused and achievable. An orchestra can no longer afford to promise all things to all people. A mission statement that promises a world-class touring and recording ensemble, extensive local outreach, broad public-school education,...may be promising far more that it can deliver and end up doing many things badly.3 Orchestras that are not relevant to their communities are increasingly endangered. ...The more orchestras peel off 3 to 4 percent of an economically elite, racially segregated fraction of the community, the less they contribute to the vital life of a community.
4 Transformational change in orchestras is dependent on the joint efforts of all members of the orchestra family music director, musicians, administration, and volunteer leadership and trustees.
5 No single magic bullet will address the many serious problems that orchestras face.
The next three were pretty fascinating. The implications of Nos. 6 & 7 may cause you to reconsider assumptions you hold about the effectiveness of similar programs you offer.
6 Free programming and outreach do not turn people into ticket buyers. If the Knight program dispelled one myth, it was the long-held axiom that the way to develop new ticket buyers was to give them free tickets or programming. Free and subsidized outreach can be valuable for its own sake and is part of an orchestras service to its community. But it is not a technique to market expensive tickets. Similarly, new audiences can be attracted to orchestra programs using various methods. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that significant numbers of them can be retained without more sustained followup strategies.7 Traditional audience education efforts, designed to serve the uninitiated, are often used primarily by those who are most knowledgeable and most involved with orchestras.
Over and over again, Magic of Music orchestras chose to abandon programs designed to attract new audiences because it was the subscribers who took advantage of them.8 There is a lot of evidence that participatory music programs including instrumental lessons and choral programs are correlated with later attendance and ticket buying at orchestral concerts. Traditional exposure programs, such as orchestras concert hall offerings for children, seem to have little longlasting effect on later behavior.
The meaning of the statistics cited to back this up in a earlier part of the report was the crux behind the questions I posed Bill Harris. I don't believe anyone I have spoken/written with on this point felt that experiential education was going to guarantee increased attendance down the road. My feeling is that this does support the idea that we should have music/dance/theatre in the schools because it makes people more positively disposed toward the arts later in life.
I wouldn't be surprised if this finding meshed exactly with education studies that conclude things learned through experiences are more strongly retained than things learned through more passive methods like pure lecture.
Lastly,
9 Orchestras need to do more research on those who do not attend their concerts. Despite extensive research conducted on audiences and people who have been audience members, orchestras do very little research on nonattenders...
Some logic behind this. You need to not only know why people are attending but why others are not. The report openly admits that this is a costly proposition and really only viable with resources like those possessed by large institutions and foundations.
It is always a good idea to periodically review how your front line points of contact are interacting with your patrons. Even if you think those supervising these people are on the same page as you, you may find that it is not the case. I know that some people call their own organizations and use an assumed identity to assess how patrons are being treated. Many times you can just walk in the room and keep an ear open, of course.
I bring this topic up because I came across a situation which dismayed me a little. For some reason we have been receiving many negative comments about our $2 handling fee lately. It is the only fee we assess in addition to the face value of the ticket. Some people have outright taken the ignorance is bliss approach and encouraged me to add it to the ticket price so it is invisible to them.
I have considered doing so except that next year I hope to become integrated into a centralized ticketing system which has a mandatory $2 handling fee. It would be even worse public relations to eliminate it for a season and then appear to be re-instituting it.
A number of people have accused the clerks of not informing them about the fee. The ticket office manager urged all the clerks to remember to inform people of the fee.
I was listening in recently and realized that the new approach the clerks were taking was actually encouraging people not to buy tickets. While I don't encourage a hard sell approach of doing anything you can to keep someone on the phone until they buy something, I do expect that if someone calls with the intent of committing to attending a performance, our employees aren't waving them off.
The first thing they were telling people was that if they bought tickets, they would be charged a handling fee. Most callers said they would call back or come the night of the show without buying. When I pointed out that the approach they were using was giving people the message that they shouldn't buy, I was told that they wanted to make sure people knew about the handling fee. There was some sense in their response that it was unethical to wait until later in the transaction.
I told them there was nothing unethical about the standard procedure where they told people the price, cited the handling fee and then gave the total with the handling fee. (I suspected they may have departing from it a little which may have been the source of complaints.) I told them I had no problem with them going through the procedure before they took a person's credit card number. The existence of the handling fee is a regular point of information just like the recitation of the no returns/exchanges and no recording devices policy and didn't need special attention called to it prior to even finding out how many tickets a person wanted.
I was pretty amazed to then be subjected to rolling eyes and sighs of frustration as if I were asking them to hide a charge that appears in either 10 or 12 point type and no later than third on our list of policies in our brochure and web pages. As no one said they were going to refuse, I let the sighing go.
I have been keeping my ears open since then and as best I can tell everyone is generally keeping to the general procedure. Advanced ticket sales have increased. Though that may have more to do with the appeal of the upcoming artists than a less alarming approach to the existence of our handling fee.
We will see how things go as the rest of the season runs. At some point I think I will bring up the topic again and ask people if they feel more comfortable using the standard procedure. First I will listen a little closer to see if they are using the standard procedure or have strayed a little and also check if they sound comfortable and natural using it.
My audience is starting to see the writing on the wall. From one of the surveys we received after a performance this weekend, it seemed a patron looked around at the low attendance and started worrying. On the survey she wrote that if we brought the group back again along with a number of other prominent companies in the field, word of mouth would fill the seats.
The thing is, attendance to shows in that performing field have been dropping recently. One of the colleagues with whom I block book dropped out of this company's tour because she is seeing lower attendance for these events. The irony is that the attendance that my patron thought was so low is actually what I expected. By reducing the number of these events I do each year I jacked attendance up from abysmal to low. I still lost a huge amount of money, but not as much as I would have had I presented more events from this genre.
Alas, name recognition and word of mouth doesn't seem to do it any more for this field. We had a rude awakening last year when a group headed by a charismatic and fairly famous leader which had always attracted substantial crowds drew a minuscule audience.
It had been about 4 years since last they visited and neither the quality of their work or source of the leader's fame had diminished. In fact, just last weekend a man approached me and said they had seen the group last year and was the group we were bringing in this week nearly as good. The company set a standard by which those who follow are judged. People eagerly flocked to workshops and master classes the company conducted last year.
Their wider appeal, and I fear that of their chosen genre, has apparently waned.
What was interesting about the survey form was that this is the first time in my experience an audience member has expressed concern that low attendance might mean the absence of a favored art form from future seasons. People have feared a venue will shut down due to low attendance, but never worried about the exclusion of a genre. I'm sure people are aware that it is a consequence. Television shows are canceled all the time because of lack of interest.
I am wondering if it might be beneficial to recruit her in the future to spread the word about events. By which I mean, I wonder how large her specific social circle is. I have had modest success in using word of mouth for ethnic events, but haven't identified as good networks for performances that don't have a specific ethnic appeal. I wonder if concern that an area of interest would disappear from programming provides a motivation similar to that of a person wishing to promote an event representing his/her ethnicity.
This raises an interesting question. Do you tell people that you are considering cutting back or eliminating a programming area? If you do it poorly it will come across as manipulative. Especially if you make an announcement from stage that because there are only 250 people in the audience, next year Shakespeare will cease to appear on your stage. Even if you find a way not to sound manipulative, there is a temptation to use such pronouncements to cause panic and fill the seats.
On the other hand, administrators often get up in front of their audience and get articles placed in the newspaper that tell the community without their help, the performance space will close. Surely you are asking much less of people if you tell them that you know they love Shakespeare, you love performing Shakespeare but without more interest, you can't justify doing Shakespeare. You are willing to provide posters, brochures, talking points, photos, etc to the Shakespeare supporters if they would mention it to their friends and talk about how the Bard's work isn't as intimidating as it might first appear.
Yes, this is exactly what social networking sites like Myspace.com make it easy to do already. Most of your audience probably isn't on Myspace and don't quite realize the power of a quick email referral. On the positive side, once you mobilize them they will probably make more impassioned pleas for their friends to attend than "Zomg! This show rox! See it!"
In an attempt to give students a reason to disseminate the information on and existence of the Myspace page I created over Christmas break, I added student events that we don't normally promote to our event listings. I figured asking the students to tell people about our events might meet with resistance, but providing information they would want to let their friends know about might help increase awareness about our site. So I added the student created events and then posted notes around the building letting them know about our site and the opportunity to forward event info to their friends.
A little aside here a moment. When I was attending an early morning roundtable at the APAP conference I mentioned that I had been reluctant to have a presence on Myspace due to the material I saw there. I added that recently artists and other arts organizations had been appearing on Myspace and that since the neighborhood seemed to be undergoing some gentrification, I decided to stick my toe in.
Someone at the table likened my reluctance to not wanting to get a cell phone because I was turned off by hearing people cursing on the phone and suggested I really needed to be more open minded about new technologies.
I disagree with his analogy since a cell phone like televisions, radios and computers all provide you with a mechanism to control what information you see and hear. While I take his point, I also maintain that it is not necessary to jump on every new trend and some trends are simply not appropriate for everyone.
You can imagine then that I emitted a groan when the first friend request we received after I let the students know about our site was from "Raunchy Asian Woman # 4." My worst fears about the grade of clientle frequenting our site looked to be playing out.
On further investigation I recognized the person behind the site and realized the screen name was more bluster than substance. Since she and those like her are the type of people I am hoping to attract more of, I just have to take a few deep breaths, try to relax and shift my way of thinking when it comes to our Myspace presence.
As I was perusing Artsjournal.com on Tuesday, I came across a link to an OpinionJournal.com article covering the Knight Foundation's final report on their Magic of Music Initiative.
I have read earlier installations of this initiative and did an entry on Penelope McPhee's remarks at an initiative retreat in 2002. What got me to read the final report sooner than later was a section of the news article that said that the final report concluded:
Free events drew crowds, but attendees did not later shell out money for tickets. Nor did the bountiful numbers who attended off-site concerts later patronize the box office. Outreach programs to new audiences also failed to get people to buy tickets.
What I wanted to know was is it the free events, off-site programs and outreach programs that don't work or is it that people weren't interested in buying tickets to the symphony but might do so for theatre or dance.
Long story short, the report doesn't really say because none of those surveyed were asked questions which might reveal if different attitudes toward dance and theatre might exist. I suspect, however, that it might be that people don't like the symphony. The study reports that large numbers of people regularly listened to classical music, but "did not consider the concert hall the preferred place to listen to it. The automobile was the single most frequently used venue for classical music, followed by the home."
Absent a similar study for theatre and dance, it is difficult to say that it is the concert hall environment and not the prospect of having to pay that is the barrier to attendance.
One thing I did see as encouraging was the finding that "...only 6 percent of those interested in classical music considered themselves very knowledgeable about it, while more than half described themselves as not very knowledgeable. Still, it gave them enjoyment."
I don't quite know how to constructively exploit this attitude yet, but I find it heartening that people aren't reluctant to experience something they don't completely understand. They may not feel confident or even interested in going to see a performance at a concert hall, but people are actively choosing to listen in their cars and homes despite a perceived unknowable quality.
The road to converting people to paying attendees might run through paid performances in a different setting or context preceded by marketing with a message to visit our website or come talk to our trained volunteer staff who will help make you feel competent in a low intimidation environment. And I say this in connection with all arts disciplines, not just classical music.
There is huge amount of interesting stuff in this report. I am not going to go in depth with a discussion because Drew McManus has mentioned he was going to talk about it and I daresay he will do a better job of it than I would. I am sure he will touch upon how the near impossibility of getting the musical directors involved essentially hobbled the initiative right from the start. (But if he doesn't, now you know a little about it and should read the final report.)
In the interests of getting people to take a look at the final report, I will say that the process the Knight Foundation went through to initially solicit proposals and the mistakes they realized they made in the timing and format of their RFP is fascinating. I also have only touched upon about 1/10th of their findings and mentioned nearly nothing about the successful and interesting things some orchestras did.
Yeah, the report is about 50 pages long (with lots of large pictures) but there is much to ponder. You may not feel you have time, but commit to reading 5 pages of text a day and you will be done in a week or so.
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription required) may have implications for arts organizations if some lawsuits and other efforts are successful.
Colleges across the country are being faced with students demanding that they be allowed to bring cats, dogs, snakes, rats, ferrets and tarantulas into dorm rooms and classrooms with the idea that they are service animals. Rather than claiming a physical disability, they are saying the animals provide "psychiatric service." (I wonder though if claiming an animal that causes anxeity in everyone around you can be considered a comfort aide.)
A few students who have had their requests denied have filed suits under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA "defines a service animal as 'any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability.'"
Some animals are trained to provide comfort and direction to people with agoraphobia and schizophrenia by their very nature and presence. As such, they serve a passive role so it can be argued that the ADA encompasses animals that don't do specific tasks. Some groups are doing just that asking the Department of Justice to revise regulations to include such activities.
For the most part, courts have ruled with the idea that an animal must provide active service. There is at least one court that has ruled that a person could keep a comfort animal despite the no-pets clause in a rental lease.
The idea of needing animals to help one cope with all situations is spreading. Apparently people have tried to board airplanes claiming goldfish as service animals. (At least they didn't want to bring snakes on a plane!)
The instances of people needing comfort animals is not isolated either. Rutgers University "received five requests to accommodate a psychiatric-service animal in a single year three cats, one dog, and a snake."
This is just something of which to be aware. People may start to appear at your box office wanting to attend a show with an animal that helps them cope with being out in public or even the subject matter of the performance. And it may not be accompanied by a dog in a service cape.
Two years ago I did an entry on the fact not all tickets at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park where the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival are free as was widely believed. There had always been preferential seating available for some amount, but the article I cited in that entry mentioned that the Public was going to more widely publicize the pay program in an effort to balance the books.
My initial assumption was that this would bump the first patron who wasn't paying back quite a few rows. Last week Robert Morse made a comment on that entry (scroll to the bottom) correcting my assumption. It turns out that the theatre has their crowd control pretty well organized and alternate paid and unpaid patrons in the even and odd rows.
The biggest benefit for paying for your tickets is that you don't have to wait in line. This can be quite a boon since according to the Public Theater's website, people apparently get online at 10 am to pick up tickets starting at 1 pm for an 8 pm show. They have line monitors present who enforce the no cutting, no holding spaces, no scalping rules and generally keep things organized. Recognizing an opportunity, apparently there are some local restaurants that will deliver to the line since the theater staff will provide you with that information.
My thanks to Robert Morse for correcting the information I originally had. Upon revisiting my original search, I found clarifying information that hadn't been available before.
WAAAAYYY Back in the beginning of this blog I posted about co-opting some tools used by religions to promote the arts. I am even more convinced now because many churches certainly are borrowing from the performing arts.
On Sundays we rent the theatre to a church that is far more like entertainment than what I attended in my youth. They typically have three services unless we have matinee. They have a sound system they bring in that is three times the size of the house system and tend to make us concerned for the children in the audience when they crank it up.
Once a month, they hold a special service that is so technically involved, two of my people have to act as stage manager and light board operator. Occasionally dancers join the usual group of musicians on stage.
Yesterday I had to cover front of house for the services because none of the other employees at the theatre could. The first two services of the day are mostly families, but the third service in the evening is exclusively teens and twenty-somethings. One thing I noticed that jibes with observations at performing arts events is that the younger people like to socialize a lot more than their elders.
After the first two services, everyone was gone in a half hour and that includes breaking down the coffee set up, the nursery rooms and tables allocated to literature that wouldn't be used during the evening service. After the evening service there were about 150-200 people spread throughout the theatre, lobby and courtyard an hour and a half after the service finished.
Because the stage and sound equipment has to be broken down, there was no reason for me to chase anyone out. None of these people were the ones breaking things down though. There were about 30-40 other people doing that. And when the breakdown crew finished, they corralled everyone who was hanging around about of the building of their own accord.
I have spent the day trying to figure out how to tap into that energy. All these young people hanging out chatting for that long without any source of refreshment but a water fountain. Hardly any of them were talking about religious topics. And they had 30-40 people of the same age voluntarily and efficiently stowing equipment.
While the motivating factors that got the young people there in the first place differ from those that will attract them to arts events, the desired result is one that has eluded the arts world. These young people gathered because of reason they were enthusiastic about and they stayed to chat about myriad other things with people who shared their interest.