So I got all scientifical and found out some stuff

In the vein of there being no problem that the right tool or right mindset can solve, and shamelessly ripping off the Just Ask Them Method of Orlando Jones, I whipped up a survey to see what was going on. I make no promises about this being statistically sound or even the most rigorous method ever. This only reflects the people in my own audience (and maybe the people in their audience).

The findings were pretty interesting, especially when it came to what kept people from seeing more theatre. Here is my extremely unscientific analysis of the findings:

1. Most people (two-thirds of respondents) see plays once or twice a year, or once every few years.
2. There's a strong preference for musical theatre (67% of respondents) followed by classics and modern stuff (57% and 50% of respondents, respectively), but there's also a good audience for quirky, off-the-wall stuff (48% of respondents) that doesn't happen all the time.
3. The biggest hurdle to attendance are price (almost 75%)and transportation (almost 35%). Surprisingly, a good third of people said that having no one to go with (almost 30%) and not knowing what's playing (about one-third of respondents). In addition, lack of access for people with disabilities (wheelchair access, closed captioning for the hearing-impaired, etc.) was also something that impacts some people.
4. After making it cheaper and bringing it closer, most people (38%) want more help to find out what's on stage.
5. A huge majority of people (almost two-thirds) are willing to pay around $20 for a ticket. For people with a bigger entertainment budget, that jumps to around $50 (20%). So that means 80% of people are going to shell out for tickets that cost, at most, $50.
6. A huge chunk of people (60%) are willing to travel up to one hour to see a play.
7. If money, time, and location were not an issue, most people (70%) would see one or two plays per month or 3 to 5 plays a year. A good fifth of them would even go weekly.
8. Representation of people of color and LGBTQ people is something that gets brought up when people ask what it would take to get them to see more plays.
9. People want to see more theatre, but pricing and scheduling often makes that difficult.

When asked about what would get them to see more theatre, a couple of people made a very interesting suggestion: make recordings and/or livestreams of shows available like the MET and MTV Unplugged (remember them?).

This is gravy for a starving artist like me who's practically reattached my umbilical cord to a wifi connection because that's something I said I wanted to do, and more than once at that.

The only barrier, of course, is finding an affordable option (read: has starving artist prices) that also makes it easy for people to attend.

Can someone help me out here?

I write for fandom

This post about Geek Theater made it to Flux Theatre Ensemble's Facebook Wall, so naturally I gave it a read because any excuse to read about magic and dragons and elves and shit like that is something I'll take up without a second thought.

Then it got me thinking about the kind of audience I want. Who are the people I would love to jam-pack a performance of Encanta or Tulpa, or Anne&Me?

In a word: fandom.

No, I don't mean people who do nothing but sing my praises to the high heavens and petition me with prayers for my next theatrical "baby." That would be nice, though.

The people I want to support my work are not passive consumers, nor are they patrons of THE MOST NOBLE ART OF THEATRE. They are people who actively and passionately engage with what they see, no matter how silly it may seem to some. They are more likely to show their love by writing fanfic about my stuff than a glowing review. They would rather dress up like one of my characters for a cosplay event than get dolled up for an awards ceremony. They would talk at length about the parallels between a character I create and another one in a fandom I may or may not be part of. The lit crit-minded among them would ask meaty questions of the work and start discussions with one another on Tumblr and/or Twitter. The socially conscious among them will open up discussions about things like race, gender, and sexuality.

The people who would be connected to my work won't do so because of theatre per se, but because it connects to other geeky interests like anime, comic books, sci-fi and fantasy literature, and so on. My most recent work, Encanta, is actually a sort of love letter to The Evil Queen/Regina Mills, Lana Parrilla, Evil Regals, and Swan Queen shippers who love ABC's Once Upon A Time but still have things they wish the show would do. I make no bones about the fact that Encanta is Swan Queen AU fanfic. The people I want most in my audience would love this about that piece.

It's not about how much they would love me. Though, again, that would be nice. It's more about how my work would give them a space to express things about themselves that they can't in ordinary life because it looks weird or silly. I want my work to give people a way to reveal experiences and perspectives that don't often have a place to get talked about. A lot of times those experiences and perspectives come from, marginalized people and communities.

For instance, quite a few people have come to understand the things I've been saying for years about race, gender, and sexuality through my meta posts about Once Upon A Time. It's not like I'm saying anything different. As a matter of fact, I pull my punches even less frequently in those posts than I do in other places. But so many more people came forward with their own stories and their own experiences as a result of that effort. Come to think of it, the same happened with Tulpa, or Anne&Me. So many people talked about how the ways they connected to a character and/or the story. I like to think that's done a lot of good.

The thing about fandom is that the people in various fandoms are already primed to participate. All they need is a hook, a connection to something they already know and love. They don't have to be convinced to creatively and critically engage with a particular work. They already do that. All I have to do is let them.

Tulpa is ALMOST there thanks to YOU!

Everything you've done so far - big favors or small acts of kindness - is the reason why Tulpa, or Anne&Me has come this far. No matter what your role is in this project - artist, audience member, moral support or just a little help in the background - everything you do means a lot. I really appreciate everyone who's had a hand (or finger or toe) in making Tulpa possible.

Because of you, we have less than $150 to go! That's only 6 people donating just $25 each!

If Tulpa, or Anne&Me has touched your life in any way, please let people know by:

• forwarding this e-mail to friends you think would be interested
• connecting to RVCBard on Twitter
• sending your ideas for the next phase of Tulpa, or Anne&Me
• leaving comments on this blog or at Ars Marginal
• telling a friend (or 10) about this crazy play you heard about/acted in/directed/contributed to
• pitching a story or project related to Tulpa, or Anne&Me so we can get the word out
• coming to the FUNraiser on April 9 so you can meet everyone and have a good time
  

Working on Tulpa, or Anne&Me has taught me something very important: to challenge my expectations. Most of the people contributing to Tulpa, or Anne&Me have not been artists or activists or academics, but regular people who've read the script or checked out Tulpa's IndieGoGo campaign and said, "Yes, this is what I need to see," or "Finally! Someone who's talking about this like a real person and not a pundit," or "Thank God! Someone understands!"

It cuts across age, income, and race. It gives me a lot of hope to see that the greatest hope for real change comes from everyday people like you.

I appreciate that, and I mean it.

ETA: WE DID IT!!!

synchronicity and doubt

I read a post linked to from the Community Dish Yahoo group where fledgling playwright Natalie Wilson talks about the period shortly following a successful reading. She describes it as a kind of post-partum depression.

I’m ashamed -- I feel like if I haven’t landed anything then it must not be that good. Or at least that is what people must think, because the only way to know in the arts that something you have done has merit is if other people give it a stamp of approval. Without the mark of commercial success on something, what you have created (or what talent you may possess) is all so much drivel. At least that is how I feel. I can say my play is good until I’m blue in the face, but without an external stamp of approval no one else has any reason to believe that.

You know what? I know exactly how she feels because that's where I am right now. Brian M. Rosen gives a fantastic response about the difference between success and merit:

I think the trick for the emerging creative is to keep a rock solid wall between the concepts of merit and success. You need to be able to look at your output and see its merit without the coloration of success (or lack thereof). It’s the internal voice that defines your creative output, not the external. That’s the voice that will make decisions, this note or that note? Transition to a new section or keep repeating this idea? Who speaks next? What do they say?

That’s the voice that needs to look at your work and say, “Yeah. This is good. I need to make more of this.”

That's a sentiment I can definitely get behind. Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that it's not quite getting to the core of the playwright's dilemma. Natalie presses the idea when she says (bold mine):

We've all known those artists/performers/writers who think they have this amazing talent, but they just... don't.  I can think my play is great, but if no one wants to hear it, or if when they do hear it, no one responds to it, then I don't think I can really call it great.  I do rely on what other people think - not to the exclusion of own instincts, but along with - because my goal is to create art that speaks to people, that touches people, that causes them to look at something in life a bit differently than they did before.  To me, my instinctual feeling that my work has merit can only be validated by achieving that goal.  Which I can't know unless I put it up in front of an audience and observe their response.

To which I say: exactly.

Am I the only one in the theatre blogosphere who has anything to say about my play? This is not hyperbole. I mean this is all seriousness. Is my time better spent talking via e-mail with the handful of people who will respond to me as opposed to putting everything out here and making myself look like the homeless person talking to herself?

Thinking about talkbacks

I don't usually enjoy talkbacks. There, I said it. It's not about hating my audience or anything like that, but I generally don't get much out of them. I don't get much out of it artistically because I don't rewrite according to what people like or don't like, particularly with regards to content or subject matter. I don't get much out of it personally because being the center of attention for that long, and for a work that is still in progress, it's unrealistic for anyone (including me) to expect me to be "sufficiently detached" from my work to expect me to be receptive to criticism without being discouraged by it. So I'm in this weird position of having to decide between accepting everything or ignoring everything - and if I ignore everything, what's the point of wasting anybody's time with a talkback?

Frankly, most talkbacks feel like something that artists do because they want to say that they care what the audience thinks. A connection between people or a deeper engagement with the work is pretty rare. For the most part, they just come, leave their $0.02, and leave. It's the rare audience member who uses talkbacks as an opportunity to get better acquainted with a particular piece or a company (like I did for The Cell Theatre through Blackboard Plays).

I do believe that most artists genuinely want to hear from the audience about what their work does for them. It's just that they see talkback as part of the play development process when it seems much better suited as a tool for audience development.

Think about it. In what other part of a play's process is the audience so intimately involved? In what other part of a play's process can the audience make so direct a connection not only with us artists, but with each other? Even during opening night, the most you'll get from an audience is that they come in, watch the show, then leave without talking to anyone for longer than about 5 minutes. And after that they might write an article or a blog post reviewing the performance.

What a waste!

There's so much more you can do than the typical talkback format. How about instead of taking 20 minutes or half an hour to tell the artists how to make their art, transform the generic talkback into a roundtable - complete with snacks and refreshments? How would that change the dynamic of audience members giving their reactions to a work?

That's sort of what I'm planning for the birthday party after the staged reading of Tulpa, or Anne&Me. I'd much rather watch a discussion amongst audience members about the things the play brings up and what that means for the audience as opposed to them asking me a bunch of questions. As much as I love writer crack, talking about myself does get boring. I'm far more interested in watching the audience wrestle with the work and bring that struggle out to each other - not in a combative or aggressive way, but with a frankness that the work hopes to encourage. What good is it for a piece to say, "We need to have these conversations" and follow up by not having them?

Butts in Seats: New Models?

I came across a great discussion (via Scott's Theatre Tribe ning) about why more people aren't seeing theater. You know what surprised me most? How many "lay people" enjoy theater because it's a community thing, where the communal aspect is where they get the value.

With that in mind, here are some random ideas that popped into my head. Most of them center on package deals for groups, not individuals.

• Offer dirt cheap tickets ($5 tops, and that's in expensive places like NYLADCHI) to a dress or technical rehearsal for schools and colleges. Let them see how things work behind the scenes in the Real World (ie, the world outside the classroom).
• Turn your show into part of a complete night out by offering coupons and discounts to local restaurants. Better yet, feed people before, during, and/or after the show. Offer your show as a place for caterers to market their businesses. Include free concessions as one kind of entertainment package.
• Do the Regal Cinemas Crown Club thing. You know why I usually patronize Regal Cinemas when I see movies with my family? Because I get free stuff based on how much I spend: free soda, free popcorn, even free tickets. I know that printing cards or a lot of paper costs too much, but how about we encourage people to save their tickets to get their free stuff? Say, for every 5 tickets, the 6th one is free. Or bring a ticket stub and a playbill to get a discount on the next show.
• Stage public commercials. Make them funny; make them quirky; make them sexy; make them whatever. But do something different. In my town, there's a poetry reading called Word Stage (I know because they kept saying that in the microphone while I was trying to read). A little too preachy for my tastes, but I admire that they're not afraid to go where the people are.
• Use business cards. Perhaps if they bring in the card when they get a ticket, they get a discount.
• Utilize the captive audience on public transportation.
• Get attractive actors on the auction block. Do date auctions for actors. Better yet, do one for famous characters in theater (Win a date with Hamlet/Romeo/Stanley/Cyrano/etc.) Paying money to interact with people in costume isn't just for Trekkies, comic book fans, role-players and otaku. There's nothing like the hint of sex to get people to spend money.
• Put a Rocky Horror element in every performance. Genetically speaking, we're less than half a step from going "Oook-oook" and flinging poop. Are there places where the audience may get to make noise or throw things? Let them know. Ask them to bring in props or sell them on site.

My brain is pretty fried now. See what I'm doing when I should be writing?