July 2009 Field Letter

Written on June 29, 2009

Dear Friends,

Happy summer! Recently, some new reports on arts audiences have arrived including the NEA’s Arts Participation 2008: Highlights from a National Survey, which yielded a number of new findings, particularly with respect to new media. Among the conclusions: about 70 percent of U.S. adults went online for any purpose, and of those adults, nearly 40 percent used the internet to view, listen to, download or post artworks or performances. Also, more Americans view or listen to broadcasts and recordings of arts events than attend them live—live theatre being the sole exception.

Almost every TCG department concerns itself in some way with the development of theatre audiences, from Artistic Programs to the National Conference to American Theatre magazine. In fact, back in 1977, TCG published the first edition of Danny Newman’s Subscribe Now! The organization has always worked to disseminate new knowledge on the methods—both large and small—for defining, developing and relating to audiences.

For this month’s Field Letter, I’ve asked Phillip Matthews, TCG’s director of audience programs to write about the audience trends he sees nationwide, while also describing some of TCG’s programs that assist theatres in their audience development efforts. Phil has overseen TCG’s Free Night of Theater program since its first year in 2005; and we just received the most recent research on Free Night 2008, so he is also able to address some of the highlights from that report!

Happy reading, and until next month, best wishes,

Teresa Eyring
Executive Director

A Birdseye View of Audience Development
By Phillip Matthews, director of audience programs

One of the perks of my job as TCG's director of audience programs is that I have the privilege of working with, and learning from, some of our best and brightest minds in the business. I'm also plugged into all of the great audience development work currently being done across the country. Here is an overview of what's happening at TCG and around the nation in the area of audience development.

Audience development has long been identified by America's professional not-for-profit theatres as one of the most pressing and ongoing issues facing our field. Given the uncertainty of today's economic environment, increased competition from film, television and the internet and the incredible growth in new technology, attracting new audiences to our theatres has never been more vital.

TCG's Commitment to Building New Audiences

For years, TCG has played an important role in helping theatres build new audiences, and our programs reflect that commitment to the field. Since 2000, TCG’s New Generations Program: Future Audiences, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and overseen by TCG’s Emilya Cachapero, has awarded 118 grants to support member theatre creativity. The program is now entering its 9th round. Future Audiences provides a matching grant that supports theatres with a successful track record of employing unique and creative strategies to cultivate relationships with young, culturally specific and/or underserved audiences. Some examples of theatre creativity include the Alliance Theatre’s (Atlanta, GA) real time text dramaturgy, the Foundry Theatre’s (New York, NY) civic dialogue and engagement programming and the Theater Offensive’s (Boston, MA) Repeat Offenders initiative.

In an effort to broaden public awareness of national not-for-profit theatre, TCG has introduced Stage Matters, a program that features brief (one to two minute) audio and video spots that highlight developments in American theatre for broadcast on radio, online outlets and podcasts. Culled from interviews conducted with theatre professionals—including actors, directors, playwrights and composers—the spots will play in rotation on major outlets reaching millions across the country. TCG is partnering with the National Alliance of Musical Theatre this year to strengthen this effort.

TCG's National Conference has long been focused on providing cutting edge information from the field of audience development. Each year, the conference features presentations by nationally recognized experts with topics ranging from a breakout session in 2009, Loyalty, Retention and Lifetime Value of a Patron: Sustainable Growth in the 21st Century, to a 2007 Trend Workshop, So You’ve Got All This Data…Now What? Grow Revenue and Develop Your Audience Through Client Data.

Even outside the National Conference framework, TCG member theatres learn new audience development techniques through programs such as our teleconference series for marketing directors—overseen by Chris Shuff and the management programs department—and the peer-to-peer information sharing that occurs at our Fall Forum on Governance.

Free Night of Theater

And, of course, the seed of what would become TCG's national Free Night of Theater initiative was planted at the 2003 TCG National Conference in Milwaukee, where TCG’s member theatres gathered to discuss how the national not-for-profit theatre community could work together to increase the visibility and the strength of the field. That conversation led to the development of a strong audience development tool—and Free Night of Theater was born.

Launched as a three city pilot program in 2005, the mission of TCG's flagship and most visible audience development program continues to be to increase public awareness of our national theatre community, while, in turn, attracting new and non-traditional audiences to our theatres. Now presented in more than 120 cities by over 650 theatres, the program made a total of 65,000 tickets available. The program provides a unique opportunity for theatres, service organizations, arts councils and even city governments to collaborate on a nationwide initiative that increases theatre visibility, provides new sponsorship opportunities and introduces new audiences to the joy of theatre for the first time. Theatres are then provided with successful audience retention “best practices” that assist in bringing those patrons back. The Free Night of Theater 2009 program will kick off across the country on October 15.

Program Research

Through the generous support of Mark Shugoll and his company, Shugoll Research, TCG has been able to survey the Free Night program attendees over the past four years and report back on their theatregoing habits (pre- and post-Free Night), gather invaluable demographic information on patrons and ensure that the program continues to meet and exceed its goals.

Free Night has a proven track record of not only attracting new audiences to participating theatres, but consistently, more than 1 out of 3 attendees return to the theatre and purchase tickets. The program has also been very successful in reaching the non-traditional audiences that are so valuable to the field. Specifically, the recently released 2008 research reports that:

• 24% of those at Free Night attended the theatre two or fewer times in the last year;
• 33% are under age 35;
• 21% have less than a college degree;
• 26% are non-white;
• and 36% have incomes under $50,000.

This year, we were also fortunate to work with nationally recognized researcher Alan Brown and his company WolfBrown to conduct intrinsic value research of the San Francisco Free Night program. Key findings from the research report, Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program, which bear out trends seen from follow-up surveys of previous Free Night campaigns, conclude that the chance to attend at no charge not only works to attract new theatregoers but also converts a significant number into future paying customers. A full 28 percent of Free Nighters expressed strong interest in seeing the company's future shows, with another 37 percent showing milder interest. TCG's research of the overall national program, and specifically in the Bay Area, show rates of paid return attendance ranging from 34 to 41 percent over the past three years.

Voices from the Field

With the dramatic growth of new technology (Facebook, Twitter and other social networking options), the field is exploring a vital question: What is technology/social networking and how it is helping organizations during these rocky times? It has now become common practice, if not a marketing necessity, for theatre companies to promote their shows on Facebook. Every day, new companies add ‘Twitter” to the marketing mix.

Some theatres have gone far beyond that as evidenced by the work that Chad Bauman, director of communications, is doing at Arena Stage through the Stay Connected with Arena Stage section on their website and the work of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's marketing department on the Watch & Listen section of their website. Others, such as Salvage Vanguard (Austin, TX), invite audiences to join them on various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and also provide Google calendars as a convenience. New Paradise Laboratories (Philadelphia, PA) is casting a show on Facebook, about Facebook, called Fatebook. Also check out nytheatre.com, a site spearheaded by Martin Denton that is an amazing promotional tool for New York independent theatres with reviews, a “trip planner” section and podcasts.

Another exciting national audience development collaboration is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Project Audience, which is bringing together experts from across the country to participate in a planning process whose aim is to envision the next generation of technology and “best practices” for such collaborative, community-level audience development work.

Through my travels across the country and my exciting work as director of audience programs, one word seems to sum up the answer to the challenges that are ahead of us: collaboration. TCG is committed to being a leader and partner in the conversation, but it is really up to all of us—funders, national and local service organizations, arts councils, city governments and theatre companies—to work together to meet the challenges we face now and into the future. We may not have found all the answers yet (and we'll continue to get new questions), but together we will. The answers are out there, we just need to keep working together to find them.