Opinion: The Collapse of the Theatre Season Subscription Model, Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2013

Author, drama review and WSJ columnist Terry Teachout sees that because of financial pressures, regional theatre programming is collapsing toward the safe center:

Theatre's Expiring Subscription Mode

by Terry Teachout, April 26, 2013

Terry Teachout (image: Amazon.com)

[. . . .] [N]ot only are solo and small-cast plays increasingly taking the place of large-scale shows, but I've noticed in the past couple of years that many regional theaters are also opting for significantly less adventurous fare. More familiar comedies and recent Broadway hits, fewer challenging new shows and revivals of great plays of the past: That seems to be the direction in which American theater is moving.

But is it all about the recession? Not long ago I spoke to the artistic director of a well-regarded theater company somewhere in America that's feeling the pinch. No names: I'll call her Ms. X for the sake of convenience, though "she" may or may not be a woman. In addition to running the company, Ms. X is a stage director of high seriousness, one whose work I've praised in the past. Yet her company is inching away from the kind of programming that led me to start reviewing its shows in the first place. I didn't ask why—we were talking about something else—but Ms. X volunteered an explanation, and though I wasn't taking notes, this is more or less what she said to me:

"I'm in the ticket-selling business. If I don't sell tickets, we shut down. We used to do it by selling subscriptions. That gave us money up front, and it also made it easier for me to do serious work, because people were buying a five-show package, and they trusted me to give them a well-chosen, wide-ranging package each year. We'd do a comedy, a new play or two, a classical revival, maybe a couple of modern classics. August Wilson, Tennessee Williams, that kind of thing. Sometimes they didn't like all five. Maybe they never did. But they still went home feeling like they'd gotten a balanced diet, they'd done their duty to theater. And that used to matter to people. It really did. They thought that seeing good shows made you a better person.

"Then the subscription model fell apart, for a lot of reasons. Some subscribers got too busy, or too old, to commit in advance to five shows on specific dates. Some of them couldn't afford to buy all five in one pop anymore. And young people never have gotten in the habit of subscribing to anything. On demand, that's their motto. Anyway, it all added up to the same thing: We had to start selling individual shows instead of a package. When that happened, everything changed. Instead of trusting us to give them something good, people started playing it safe, and we had to play safe with them. We didn't have any choice. The last time I tried putting on a classical revival, our single-ticket sales dropped by nearly half. And we've had to start using name actors as often as we can. Doesn't matter what the show is: It's the star that sells, not the play.

"Look, I'm as serious as I ever was. And I don't waste money, either. I didn't pile up debt by building a big, fancy theater complex, which is what's gotten a whole lot of other regional companies in hot water. And I think we're still putting on good shows here—but more and more of them are middlebrow shows. Safe shows. And more than anything else, it's the collapse of the subscription model that's done it to us. It's as simple as that."

Is it? Or was the old-fashioned subscription model always a snare and a delusion, an easy-money honeypot that seduced growth-happy companies into losing sight of their artistic missions? While I'm sure that the answer varies from company to company, there seems little doubt that the model itself is going bust. According to the Theatre Communications Group, nationwide revenue from subscribers plunged 18% between 2007 and 2011.

What now? Modernize the subscription model? Or scrap it altogether and try something completely different? If I knew, I'd start a theater company. But I do know that if regional theater wants to save its soul, it'll have to find new ways to sell tickets. Otherwise, it's going to be "The Odd Couple" and "Clybourne Park" over and over again, forever.

—Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, writes "Sightings" every other Friday. He is the author of "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong." Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.

Click to link to the article at the WSJ on-line

Tech and Staff Opportunities at The Playhouse, San Antonio

Just announced by The Playhouse, San Antonio:

 

 

Employment Opportunities

Join Our Team!

Marketing and Development Coordinator: Click here for full description and submission guidelines. Submissions accepted through January 3, 2013.

Designers: Set, Lighting and Costume Designers are needed for shows in the The Playhouse Russell Hill Rogers and Cellar Theaters for shows this season and next. Designers are contracted for each show. Please submit resume and photographic samples of your work or drawings to info@theplayhousesa.org or mail to The Playhouse San Antonio, P.O. Box 12356, San Antonio, TX 78212. No phone calls please.

Music Directors: Music Directors are needed at The Playhouse for upcoming and future shows. Music directors are contracted for each individual show. Please submit a resume to info@theplayhousesa.org or mail to The Playhouse San Antonio, P.O. Box 12356, San Antonio, TX 78212. No phone calls please.

Austin Lyric Opera -- A Comprehensive Look Inside The New On-Line Marketing Machine by ALO's Marketing Director Marc van Bree

Here's text, a slide show and links to series of presentations by Marc Van Bree, hired last year by Austin Lyric Opera to overhaul its on-line marketing at a time of financial cuts (allocations for digital marketing were reduced from $40,000 annually to $15,000). [See Paul Robinson's May 2011 account of the ALO in Crisis.] Thanks to Thomas Cott's You've Cott Mail daily e-mail survey of arts news for the link to the exultantly self-congratulatory posting by Drew McManus, proprietor of the $4000-a-year Venture Platform software package used by Van Brees and the ALO.

Opening article in the series at Van Brees' blog:

A new website and digital strategy for the opera

April 27, 2012 By Marc

When I started my job as marketing director for Austin Lyric Opera, I knew I wanted to put my stamp on its digital marketing efforts. I wanted to put all that I have written about and all that I have learned over the past years to action. What follows is a brief overview of what I did and how I did it [AustinLiveTheatre note: each title is linked to the corresponding post]:

A new website
Tracking conversions
Online advertising
Social media
Mobile site
Final round up

A new website

Coming in, the opera was stuck with an all Flash-based website: it was complicated and time consuming to make even the smallest of updates; mobile devices could not load the site; and no data could be collected. The first priority was to change this. You simply cannot build a working digital strategy without the foundation of a solid institutional website that can drive ticket sales.

In redesigning the website, from architecture to graphic design, these were the four key development concepts:

Driving conversions

• All roads should lead to a conversion. The ticket buying process needs to be straightforward, simple and seamless; from campaign source to order confirmation.

Data collection

• How do patrons get to our website? What do they do when they arrive? We need to track the entirety of the sales funnel.

Highly customizable

• A responsive website that can handle breaking news, custom landing pages and continuously revolving sales and institutional messages.

Easily manageable

• Staff with little technology skills should be able to make basic website updates and embed multimedia elements.

I knew I wanted a website built on WordPress and having watched the development of Venture Industries by Drew McManus, I was surely impressed by the proprietary elements on top of the standard WordPress installation that Venture offers. Doing due diligence, I talked to and received several proposals from other web development agencies. One proposed Drupal despite my insistence on WordPress, and all proposed a budget in the $15,000-20,000 range. I knew I could do better. I went with Venture and I set a $10,000 budget.

Drew McManus’ Venture brought together the opera’s in-house strengths and Drew’s strengths in the performing arts and online user experiences. The work broke down like this:

In-House Resources (Client)

• Planning: entirely redesigned site architecture and navigation
• Content: content migration, creation and population; and integration with third party box office
• Design: custom graphic design template along with home page and interior page layouts.
• Development: basic custom CSS changes.

Custom Work (Venture)

• Adapt client’s graphic design into custom PHP templates.
• Designed custom admin interface.
• Designed custom search bar that appears in the top, right hand corner of every page.
• Removed slider overlay for unobstructed full width image while maintaining use of standard action button.

Work was completed in a 3 month time frame. That’s fast. The actual money spent came in far under budget, totaling $6,500, and broke down in two components: $1,500 for the custom work; $4,000 for the annual Venture license.

A quick note about the $4,000 annual license fee. This includes hosting, support, updates and a myriad of other benefits and services. In a way, Venture is like purchasing a Photoshop license for your organization. Having Photoshop doesn’t automatically guarantee you beautiful design; you have the best tool at your disposal, but you still need a graphic designer. Having Venture doesn’t automatically guarantee you a great website; you still need someone in-house.

However, the support and the best practice / brainstorming you get with Venture are superb. Other agencies would bill hourly. Furthermore, if your in-house resources are not as strong, you can outsource more of the work. I was impressed by the custom work we received for the money we spent. You can do as much or as little custom work as you’d like or as your budget allows.

The end result was a beautiful, highly effective new website that met all the criteria outlined in the four key development concepts: driving conversions; data collection; highly customizable; and easily manageable.

Aided by a new ticketing solution launched simultaneously, and a new digital strategy, we increased online single ticket sales from 28% to 55% of total single ticket sales while delivering a greater ability to analyze patron behaviors, track conversions and account for advertising spending.

Click to go to AustinLiveTheatre.com to view Van Bree's 45-slide presentation from the "Final Round-up" posting outlining concepts, process and results for the ALO

Arts Reporting: Robert Faires on the Lehrman Seminar on Crisis and Opportunity, July 28

An account of the Matt Lehrman seminar jointly sponsored by the Austin Creative Alliance and publicists Wyatt-Brand at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center, July 28, published in the Austin Chronicle, August 4:

Crisis and Opportunity:

Do you know your audience?

by Robert Faires

For the second session in its ongoing series Crisis & Opportunity, the Austin Creative Alliance made the shift from a wide-ranging community conversation (see "Crisis & Opportunity: An Open, Structured Dialogue," June 17) to what might have seemed to some to be just a standard workshop on marketing. But while the July 28 presentation by Matt Lehrman, executive director of Arizona's Alliance for Audience and ShowUp.com (an Arizona equivalent to the Austin Creative Alliance's NowPlayingAustin.com listings site), may indeed have had the most value for folks in the performing arts scoping out new strategies to build their audiences, it turned out to be valuable for anyone who cares about the state of creativity in our culture now and how people interact with it. Lehrman developed his seminar and soon-to-be book Audiences Everywhere! in response to Danny Newman's Subscribe Now!, the tome that sold most of the country's arts nonprofits on the idea that subscriptions were the key to their financial security and stability. That book was rightfully influential and still contains much information that's useful, Lehrman maintains, but it also came out the year that the Apple II computer and the space shuttle debuted. He asks whether our culture changed at all since then. If so, it's worth re-examining the way that audiences relate to cultural organizations.

His thesis rests on a division of audiences along x and y axes of interest in a specific organization's work (or the arts in general) and capacity to experience that work (based on time, money, physical ability, etc.). Those with the most interest and capacity – i.e., those who are already patrons and likely faithful ones, too – are the "devoted." Those with interest but less capacity are "oriented;" those with high capacity but little interest are "uninspired;" and those with low interest and low capacity are "asleep." Identifying and understanding the specifics of what engages people and what keeps them from being engaged with the arts will do more to help an artist or arts organization build an audience than catchall strategies like subscription drives or massive ad campaigns.

[photo: Austin Creative Alliance)

Read more at the Austin Chornicle on-line . . . .

Seeking the Millennials - Michael Kaiser and the Response

Thomas Cott's "You've Cott Mail" today provides a snapshot of Kennedy Center director Michael Kaiser's lament over the "millennials" (those Americansjust now reaching adulthood), a retort, and some statistics:

Commentary: We need to do 'remedial work' to bring Millennials to the arts

Michael Kaiser, The Huffington Post, 4/4/11

One of the major new initiatives I announced for the Kennedy Center's 2011-2012 season was a project aimed at bringing "20 somethings" into the theater. We in the arts face a major problem: we now have an entire generation of young people who do not go to theater, concerts, dance performances or operas. If we don't address this problem we will not have the subscribers, single ticket buyers, donors, volunteers and board members we need to sustain our organizations in twenty years as the members of this group hit their 40s and 50s. The arts have survived and grown in this nation because there is always a new group of middle aged people who replace their parents as our supporters. But the current group of twenty-year-olds (deemed the Millennials) does not have any experiences with us. Will they be there for us when we need them? The goal of our Millennials project is to do remedial work; to bring a group of Millennials into our theaters often enough that they build a habit of arts participation. We are attempting to attract this group with targeted marketing, ticket pricing incentives, and especially repertory that is attractive to them but also stretches their comfort zones. We also hope to develop enough projects that allow them to interact with artists and art forms and to participate in art making. We cannot do this alone. Our hope is that every major arts organization will join in this fight.

Click to read a response and to view relevant statistics at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Actors' Intensive Workshops, AustinOnStage at Gemini Playhouse, monthly, March 11 - May

Received directly from Rob Faubion at AustinOnStage.com:

Austin On Stage Magazine launches

Saturday, March 12th - Saturday, April 9 - plus one Saturday in May

at the Gemini Playhouse, 5214 Burleson Road, Suite 209 (click for map)

Austin On Stage Magazine will launch the new Austin Actors Intensives series - a monthly session of affordable and professional workshops for Central Texas actors – beginning on March 12th. The workshop series continue on the second Saturday of each month at the Gemini Playhouse.

The monthly, rotating series of workshops is designed to provide Central Texas actors the knowledge, tools, and skills that will take their acting careers to the next level. The one-hour sessions will be taught by the top professionals in the business, with curriculum designed to deliver resources that participants can use immediately after the workshops to enhance and further their craft.

The inaugural workshops include:

• “How to Land and Keep a Talent Agent” - Erin Franklin of Agence Talent will share all the information an actor needs to know in order to sign with talent agency. Franklin has repeatedly been named the top talent agent in Austin by the Austin Advertising Federation.

• “Secrets from the Audition Room”- Feature film director John McLean (The Perfect Man Contest, Z: The Zombie Musical) will share his experience and teach the secrets that casting directors are using when casting for film and television.

Marketing Yourself in the Electronic Age” – Marketing expert Scot Maitland will teach participants how to effectively promote their talent and skills with an online presence and reap the most benefits from the Internet, social marketing, and e-marketing.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Opinion: Damian Bazadona on How Political Advertising Affects Theatrical Marketing

Via "You've Cott Mail," the daily arts e-mail from www.thomascott.com, a somewhat mistitled reflection by Bazadona on how to engage a prospective audience member (color highlighting by ALT):

Commentary: How political advertising impacts theatrical marketing

Posted by Damian Bazadona on EntertainmentMarketing.com, November 3, 2010

This election season exemplified one very simple thing for me - the effectiveness of advertising as we know it is on a one-way path to death. Political advertising has always been a messy canvas, but this year highlighted a major turning point. People have more access to information than ever before through online and social platforms that it baffles me that political advertisers stuck to the same playbook as years past. What does that mean for theatrical marketing? Like politics, there will be a whole lot of shows advertising at the same moment...very similar to politics, no? Show me an ad that doesn't say "best" or "award winning" of some kind (outside the top 5 grossing shows). Putting yourself in the consumer's shoes... how can 20 different shows be "best" or "award-winning" or a quote saying somehow they are the most incredible show on the planet... it just doesn't add up and I think we are seeing it at the box office. At the end of the day, despite all of the advertising that's done for Broadway, the best shows according to the people prevail - just take a look at the popular review sites like Yelp among others. The mediums may have shifted - but the industry remains unchanged when you look at the messaging. If this political season showed me anything it's that consumers are demanding some level of authenticity. Take a look at an interesting example of some research that hits on this topic from a slightly different perspective, looking at messaging through images on the web. According to the survey [ALT: as summarized in the NY Times,] "big, feel-good images that are purely decorative" are mostly ignored online, [and] stock photos are also disregarded. In contrast, when users know that a picture of a person is real they will engage for extended periods of time.