Theatre North Carolina

Predicting the Future

TEDxBROADWAY - Kara Larson

Did you miss TEDxBROADWAY? Check it out here!

 

Kara Larson is founder and principal of Arts Knowledge, a marketing consulting firm specializing in the performing arts. She is also the founder and director of the Portland Performing Arts Festival, a multidisciplinary summer festival in Maine.

She has previously held senior staff positions in marketing and communications with arts organizations across the U.S., including Carolina Performing Arts, San Francisco Opera, and Glimmerglass Festival. Her work for clients focuses on new audience development, demand and pricing strategies, audience loyalty and retention, and the patron experience.

Acceptance

Adam Thurman at Mission Paradox, posted a great article the other day. We thought it was worth sharing.

What else would you add to this list? 

Eternal battles

Life we go easier if you accept the following:

1. You will always be conflicted about the interaction of art and commerce.

2. You will never find a perfect balance between giving your audience "what they want" and leading them into different directions.

3. There will never be enough money.

4. Organizational politics will always be a part of your life. That's true even if you create the art alone. You'll probably need to partner with others to get that work seen, which means working with organizations, which means dealing with politics.

5. No matter how you do things someone, probably someone close to you, will think you are doing it wrong.

6. Someone will tell you, "it's ok to fail" and then go nuts when you actually do fail. That is their problem, not yours.

7. You will always need to manage your own artistic career. You can have helpers, managers, etc. but you always need to be the CEO of You, Inc.

Broadway Box Office Quiz

Broadway Space recently published an article about Broadway terminology by producer Ken Davenport.  Do you know what these terms mean? We bet you do!

 

I remember hearing Broadway-specific terms for the first time when I started working in the biz, and not having a clue what they meant, and being too shy to ask (my staff all just did a spit-take at the thought of me being too shy).  

In case any of you have the just-starting-out-shy-gene, this feature is for you. (Oh, and get over the shy stuff, by the way.  Channel your inner two-year-old and ask, ask, ask and you'll learn, learn, and earn!)

The first set of terms we will tackle are all related to the figures that Broadway producers examine on a daily, and sometimes hourly basis, depending upon when the show is opening and upon how OCD the producer is.

 

Here are the terms:

WRAP 

ADVANCE  

GROSS 

NET  

NAGBOR

Click here to read the rest and find out what these terms mean.

Tumblr and Pinterest?

Facebook just released a statement saying that they the social media site will reach 1 billion users by this summer. Yes, that's billion with a 'b'.

But what about these other sites that people are talking about? Should your organization be using Tumblr or Pinterest?

Check out these recent articles to get the inside information on these social media sites.

Tumblr Is Headed For The Creative Community, Should Arts Organizations Follow?

Business Matters: Social Newcomers Tumblr and Pinterest Each Beating MySpace in U.S.

Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network

Why and How Causes Should Use Pinterest

I AM Theatre: Ben Cameron

Check out this latest video from the Theatre Communications Group's I AM Theatre series featuring North Carolinian Ben Cameron.

Ben Cameron

Program Director for the Arts
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Since 2006, Ben Cameron has been Program Director, Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York, NY, supervising a $13 million grants program focusing on organizations and artists in the theatre, contemporary dance, jazz and presenting fields. Previously, he served as the Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group. Other roles include Senior Program Officer at the Dayton Hudson Foundation, Manager of Community Relations for Target Stores (supervising its grant-making program) and Director of the Theater Program at the National Endowment for the Arts. He has addressed arts gatherings in Ireland, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, England, Scotland and Russia, as well as US national gatherings of the theatre, chamber music, symphony, presenting, dance, and choral fields; served on the national boards of the Arts and Business Council and Grantmakers in the Arts; and received honorary degrees from Goucher College in Baltimore, DePaul University in Chicago and American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, in addition to an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. In 2007, he was one of five recipients of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has lectured on theatre aboard both the Queen Victoria and Queen Mary 2 on four separate cruises, appeared during 14 seasons as a panelist on the quiz feature on the Live from the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, twice ridden his bicycle from Minneapolis to Chicago to raise money for AIDS relief services, and served for six years as a member of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee. He is originally from High Point, North Carolina.

Adam Faw: NCTC Board Member In The News!

We were thrilled to see this profile of NCTC Board member and Pinecrest High School teacher Adam Faw in the The Pilot. Check it out!

High School Theater: Adam Faw Sets the Stage

Almost everyone has at some point uttered the phrase "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up."

While such an attitude is often stigmatized as -indicative of sloth and -dispassion, it is in fact a key characteristic of the so-called "Renaissance Man": an -intelligent, creative individual with a myriad of talents and interests. In -general, the longer it takes someone to make up his or her mind about a career, the more unique and socially valuable that career will be.

"I still have no idea what I want to do when I grow up," says Adam Faw, the 31-year-old theater teacher at Pinecrest High School. Having taught at Pinecrest for the better part of the past decade, Faw has worked long and hard to increase public appreciation of the arts.

Faw became involved in theater "late in the game," he says, "at least compared with some people. I hung out with some of the theater kids through high school, even though I was a jock; they dragged me to my first audition the summer before college, which was for 'West Side Story,' and I fell in love."

Read the rest.

"Professional" Theatre in the North Carolina

We wanted to make sure you saw this article in the Charlotte Observer. It's an interesting commentary on the meaning of professional theatre and the state of the theatre in our great state. What do you think? Where do the pros go to act?

 

Where do the pros go to act?

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/22/2944310/where-do-the-pros-go-to-act.html#storylink=cpy

The word "professional" starts us down a slippery slope. If we define it as "paying some amount of money to the entire cast and/or crew," Actor's Theatre of Charlotte certainly qualifies. Other producers pay small salaries, provide honoraria or share box office receipts, and we have one company with paid, full-time performers and technicians on its staff: Children's Theatre of Charlotte, which has a touring arm in Tarradiddle Players.

Nor does "professional" automatically designate any level of quality: Davidson Community Players offered a "Ragtime" last year that was comparable with some touring musicals I've seen at Ovens, and those people - some of whom had been paid to sing elsewhere - worked for love of the art.

Stewart means a company that performs for adult audiences and pays enough of a living wage to let actors stay here year-round, without taking nonacting work.

It need not be a member of the League of Resident Theaters, operating on a fixed pay scale. (The Rep was, but only one remains in the Carolinas: Playmakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill.) This imaginary theater would have to employ mostly local talent and develop an audience that followed it through seasons fat and lean. That we haven't had since 2005.

When the Rep collapsed, some people assumed another company would step into its big shoes. The admirable Actor's Theatre of Charlotte was the only realistic candidate, but ATC was content with its smaller budgets, cozy venue, small staff and loyal fans.

Read the rest.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/22/2944310/where-do-the-pros-go-to-act.html#storylink=cpy

Women in Theatre

Is gender inequality still an issue in the theatre? Director Polly Teale thinks so and she's working towards change.

The London Evening Standard recently published great piece by Ms. Teale. 

 

 

Director Polly Teale's theatre company focuses on putting women's stories centre stage. As they face an uncertain funding future, she explains why the gender bias is now more important than ever.

Despite a few startling exceptions, it remains the case that fewer than one in four theatre directors is female, although lists of aspiring young theatre directors are dominated by women. The welcome appointment of Josie Rourke as artistic director of the Donmar (when Michael Grandage steps down at the end of the year) is pointed to as evidence that women are thriving in theatre.

However, this appointment comes at a time when other venues and companies, such as Josie's old venue the Bush, Soho Theatre, Paines Plough (places where women came through the ranks), have lost female directors with their positions to be taken over by men.

Seventy-five per cent of applicants to drama schools are women and yet the profession continues to employ far more men both on and off stage. This is partly because it has ever been thus. The canon of plays favours men over women. Look at any Shakespeare and it has four times as many parts for men as women. His plays were, of course, originally performed entirely by men (a tradition that Propeller continues to this day). They reflected the times in which they were written; in many great plays women are wives, mothers, lovers, maids, but rarely the centre of the story.

Nancy Meckler and I, as artistic directors of Shared Experience, have produced a body of acclaimed plays that provide meaty female parts placing women centre stage. We promote the work of female writers, directors, designers, producers and most visibly, actors.

Read the rest.

What do you think? Have you experienced or witnessed gender inequality in the theatre?

Non-Profit Theaters and Profits

We wanted to make sure you saw this article in the New York Times about non-profit theaters enjoying "profits". We might call it a surplus, but semantics aside, what do you take away from this article?

Nonprofit Companies Enjoying, Well, Profits

While money is tight these days for nonprofit theaters nationwide — with Intiman Theater in Seattle becoming the latest to face closing, amid heavy debts — New York’s major nonprofits are financially stable by comparison, their leaders say. But they are becoming more aggressive about producing work that can sell tickets, as a hedge against the unpredictability of private donations and subscription renewals.

 

Read the rest.

How to Increase Donations

A newly released report by two scholars at Indiana University, Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang, suggest ways to increase charitable donations. The Chronical of Philanthropy has the details.

Find the full report here.

Some ideas from the report as reported by The Chronical of Philanthropy:

 

 

Other ideas from the report:

* Encourage charities to develop productive ways to handle complaints from donors, which would reduce negative word of mouth, build trust, and provide ideas to improve fund-raising operations. Charities could take a lesson from the business world, the authors write, where “complaining customers are the firm’s biggest asset.”

* Place more fund raisers on nonprofit boards so they can educate fellow trustees about the best ways to raise money.

* Persuade fund raisers to stop talking to donors about annual funds, capital campaigns, endowment drives, and other such insider approaches and instead urge them to focus on what their money will accomplish.

Read the rest.