Theater leaders, Board members, and arts marketing experts have been the featured characters in the recent flurry of articles and opinion pieces about the crisis in the American nonprofit theater*. This makes sense, since these articles focus on how the theater institutions are responding to reduced audience demand and the resulting financial pressures. How can we find out what the audience thinks? There’s one source right at our fingertips: the comments section. These three pieces**: 1) … [Read more...] about Nonprofit theater is in crisis. Want to know what the “dropped out” audience thinks? Read the comments
COVID
Are the arts “building back better” with new audiences?
Row X blog by Hannah Grannemann When arts organizations went into shutdown in 2020 and 2021, they asked audiences, donors, staffs, and their communities to continue supporting them even when they weren’t producing and open to the public because they were working hard during the shutdowns to improve themselves in myriad ways, including building new audiences. They weren’t going to let a good crisis go to waste, they said. In other words, they were going to “build back better”. I’m … [Read more...] about Are the arts “building back better” with new audiences?
A special time of year…really.
Row X blog by Hannah Grannemann Your audience circled December on their calendar last spring. They didn’t want to miss the holiday show this year. Seeing something earlier than December was possible…they’d have to feel it out…but they would really try to get back to their holiday show. The holidays just weren’t the same last year without a trip to the theater to see their favorite production. Anticipating the show this year would be a little light shining for them through all the uncertainty … [Read more...] about A special time of year…really.