TBA Hops on the Change Bandwagon

The monthly issue of Theatre Bay Area magazine is a pretty great read. They do an extremely diligent job of covering the goings on in the local theater community -- giving career advice, recommending shows, chronicling personnel changes, and always keeping a piece or two about the actual creation of art.

In the December issue, TBA's marketing director Clayton Lord, who's been cool with having some pretty intense theater discussions on this blog and at TBA's Chatterbox blog, penned a piece titled "It's Time To Change the Sacred Cow," in his monthly Arts Marketing Trends column (I would link to it here, but TBA magazine does not have an online version).

He starts out by recounting his experience at the Project Audience marketing conference in Chicago at which he learned this:

"A full 30% share of the population ... are people who have negative associations with established arts, believe the arts aren't for them, don't see themselves being represented on stage, don't hold presentational art as a valuable part of their cultural makeup."

He goes on to say that even the best marketing on the planet is probably not going to get these people out to the theater:

"You can't simply cloak the current product in new clothing. You have to change the fundamental product ... Put another way, arts institutions exist to deliver art that matters to the people. If the people change, if the work we choose to produce is no longer reflecting their thoughts, feelings, needs accurately, if they don't have the desire to take part because they can't see why what we're doing matters to them, then in a way we are failing as organizations dedicated to the cultural growth of humanity."

Bingo.

While I'm glad that Clay and presumably TBA have signed on to this way of thinking, there are number of things that are just really frustrating about it.

1) We've been saying this for the past three years, and lots of other folks have been saying this for a lot longer (Brendan Kiley, Mike Daisy, Matthew Quinn etc)

2) This was one of the big arguments against Free Night of Theater -- giving the product away does not solve the problem of nobody wanting the product in the first place

3) It took flying to Chicago and attending this giant conference which pointed to some extremely expensive study which drew an incredibly obvious conclusion (people don't connect with shit that is not relevant to their lives) to prompt this realization

4) The final paragraph of Clay's article:

"At Theatre Bay Area, we believe that the performing arts are an essential public good, invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth. As a service organization, we have the relative luxury to think about the long-term in a way that is often difficult for individual organizations concerned with filling seats for a show this Saturday. We can show these trends, reference these studies and say something has to change. But we cannot make the change ourselves; that power sits with you."

And here, oddly enough, I agree with Clay. The power to change theater does rest on the backs of practitioners, and many of us have already been doing this. But as a service organization, how is this realization, that theater needs to change fundamentally, going to effect the policies and programs TBA provides?

Will TBA decide to stop spending huge wads of cash on these studies and conferences which essentially tell us what we all already know when the money could be better spent going to the actual creation of art?

If marketing is not the answer, will TBA continue to run the two week marketing program which costs a colossal $500,000 called Free Night of Theater?

Will TBA take an official stand on alcohol in theater, and help smaller companies get liquor licenses so they can increase revenue?

Again, I'm thrilled that one of the largest theater service organizations in the country is now on board with the fact that there are some massive, difficult to handle issues facing the industry. The question is, what are they going to do about it?

Thanks for Reading,

-CB

Matthew Quinn's Cost Break Down of "Free Night"

After a lively debate on the blogotubes over the last few weeks, hopping around multiple blogs, lots of individual posts, and even more comments, we offered Combined Artform's Matthew Quinn some space to give his unvarnished thoughts on Theatre Bay Area's "Free Night," in order to condense a thread from four different sites and sum up the numbers - he graciously accepted. Below is a quick summary of the conversation to date followed by Quinn's post.

SUMMARY:

May 17: Radiostar interviews PianoFight on current state of theater, discuss Theatre Bay Area's "Free Night of Theater" program

June 9: Theatre Bay Area (TBA) releases a study titled "Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program"

June 16: Arts Journal posts results from an NEA funded survey which cites double digit declines in theatrical audiences since 1982

June 18: Head theater critic for SF Weekly Chloe Veltman invites TBA's marketing director Clay Lord to post his thoughts on the study in a post titled "Great Study. But What's It For?" - Dan Wilson (of Radiostar), Sam Shaw (of Crisis Hopkins), Matthew Quinn (of Combined Artform) and Carl Benson (of PianoFight) respond with questions about specific numbers

June 23: TBA posts second study of "Free Night" with hard data on ticket requests, actual attendees, and follow up purchases prompting PF's Benson to make case against "Free Night" in post "The Real Problem with TBA's 'Free Night of Theater'"

June 26: TBA's Clay Lord responds on TBA blog Chatterbox in post titled "Theatre, Relevance and Hush Puppies" and Matthew Quinn presses for more numbers

July 2: Matthew Quinn breaks down cost of "Free Night" versus return in sum-up of conversation on the PianoFight blog (below)

COMBINED ARTFORM'S MATTHEW QUINN BREAKS DOWN NUMBERS ON "FREE NIGHT"

Clay,

Thank you so much for this information it helps to give me a better picture of the value of "Free Night of Theatre." And thanks to PianoFight for letting this go up as a post and not just a comment, and outlining the thread of conversation.

So summing up the numbers, the actual value of this project is much higher.

$182,000 - Printed value of tickets

$200,000 - Original PR Services

$50,000 - Additional PR services

$20,000 - TBA Services

$40,000 -Survey

$492,000 - Total Resources used for FNOT

-So almost a half a million dollars worth of resources are used for FNOT and for that you get 3,581 people to attend a show, at a resource cost of $137 per person.

-Of those people, 74% were first timers seeing the company putting on a show or 2,650 people, to get this market it cost $186 per person of the resources.

-And for the ever so hard to get, new people to the theater, 18% or 645 people for $765 per person.

So looking at this I think one needs to ask, is FNOT really working?

Is this an appropriate use of these resources?

Could something more effective be done instead?

I'm sure there are many positive elements of this project, but is it providing you with the right type of awareness, people, and information at a cost that makes sense?

Are theaters in the community (large, small, members of TSC) fully aware of the cost and reward of this project? Half a million seems like a lot for a one day event.

And to the second point, of course it would be great to have a survey to confirm those hunches we have on audience decisions, to get more insight into an audiences actions and how to get new people to our shows.

My question: "Are these even the right people to be surveyed?"

And are the above questions even the ones we should be asking? It's a bit disconcerting that money is being spent for data that isn't considered useful, yet, just wait and see.

And while I understand grant money takes a while to come down the pipe, and you're reacting to plans from years ago, is it prudent to go ahead with a 4-5 city expansion using additional resources for a program that isn't utilizing those resources and providing information that is not yet useful?

I'm sure some people are happy with the results of the program. Any new people are great people to have, especially if, as you point out, there are not many (if any) out of pocket expenses. My concern is that no one appears to be questioning if there is a better use of these amazing resources, on a model that can bring in more people without saying theater has to be free in order for them to see it.

Does the community really see this as a benefit and effective use of resources?

Just because you can do this, should you?

We could still get 6 million marketing impressions with the same publicity, just a different program.

And what do companies feel about $40,000 being spent on a possibly useless survey when perhaps it could be used for other more relevant purposes?

I would really like to hear other companies' thoughts on this.

In closing, I did get a chance to read the posting on the Mark-Up and perhaps I'll get some time read that book, it sounds very interesting. I also added a comment about some thoughts I had on Free and Theater and while it's not an answer, I do try to come up with some different uses of "Free." And I'm sure the community could come up with a better program then FNOT to get audiences to the theatre, your thoughts?

Thanks again for your time and commitment to this conversation, it is appreciated.


Matthew Quinn

Combined Artform

UPDATE - JULY 4 (by PianoFight): As the conversation in comments has veered slightly away from TBA's "Free Night" and into the realm of the art itself, we thought it prudent to post a few more links which deal with this specifically, and which helped spur a lot of this type of conversation.

October 7, 2008: Brendan Kiley of Seattle's The Stranger newspaper posts article titled "Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves"

April 13, 2009: Kiley posts on The Stranger's blog a lengthy email from PianoFight's Rob Ready, interspersed with Kiley's commentary, disccussing Kiley's ideas and how successful PianoFight's application of those ideas has been in a post titled "Small, Successful Theater Companies in Other Cities: PianoFight from San Francisco"

Radiostar Interviews PF on State of Theater

Radiostar has once again given PianoFight a forum to espouse our bullshit in an hour long interview on the radiotubes. This time, oddly serious, we talk about the current state of theater, the dominance of not-for-profit companies in the industry, the sheer awfulness of "Free Night of Theater" and, of course, co-eds. Enjoy ...

Crowded Fire Gets 'Free Night' Right

Perusing Chad Jones' Theater Dogs blog this morning and saw this:

"Crowded Fire has announced that for its next production, Wreckage by Caridad Svich, running May 9 through June 6, there will be free tickets for the unemployed."

Bingo. Well friggin done. This has been an unofficial, never-made-public (til now) policy at PianoFight since we started. Usually it plays out something like this:

CastMember: Hey, my friend really wants to see the show, but he's broke.
PianoFight: How broke?
CastMember: Dead broke.
PianoFight: Dead broke?
CastMember: AIG broke.
PianoFight: All right we'll put him on the comp list.

If somebody really can't afford to see the show, but is dying to do so, then we'll comp 'em. Crowded Fire is doing it more officially by asking for a pink slip or unemployment check to verify the ticket buyer's brokeness.

This is great, and the company should be commended for doing so. This is the type of community building idea that benefits everyone - the ticket receiver gets to see a show for free and Crowded Fire has now made a fan for life who, if he likes the show, will definitely come back and pay once he's back on his feet.

Furthermore, it's a far better and more effective idea than the much ballyhooed "Free Night of Theater," which encourages companies to give away their product in the hopes that it will attract a new audience.

How are the two different you ask? It's a psychological difference. By offering free tickets to the unemployed, Crowded Fire is helping out a specific subset of people. The tickets aren't free for everyone, just those without jobs, who should get a little help in these tough times. And because Crowded Fire is helping them, they're far more likely to return the favor by paying for a show down the road. If you give away the product to everyone, it's no longer a special favor, rather, it's a marketing gimmick, and the recipients of that marketing gimmick are less likely to return the favor as it wasn't really a favor to begin with.

All in all, Crowded Fire is doing a great thing with this promotion, and I'd be curious to know the numbers on it. Always a pleasure to see local companies getting it right.