Free Night of Theater- Philadelphia

The Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia

(www.theatrealliance.org) strengthens and leads the region's richly diverse theatre community by promoting positive awareness and serving as a resource for information, professional development and advocacy. The Alliance is a member-based service and leadership organization composed of non-profit professional theatres, individuals, and other affiliated organizations within a fifty mile radius of Center City Philadelphia, including the five county region, southwestern New Jersey, and northern Delaware. Organizational members represent an incredible diversity of size, mission, style and audience. They include large resident companies, small ensemble groups, theatre festivals, presenters, producers, and university or college theatres, and they present everything from classic musicals, comedies or dramas to new works, movement-based pieces, avant-garde forms, and family and children's programming. Annual budgets of member organizations range from less than $100,000 to more than $10 million. Current membership of The Alliance includes more than 100 organizations and 200 individual artists.

Budget

PR Coordinator $750.00
Website Design (Pro bono) $650.00
City Paper ads (in-kind support) $3,600.00
Radio ads $1,000.00
Insert printing (reimbursed by TCG) $330.00

Total $6,330.00

The hard cost to the Theatre Alliance was minimal, since our entire website services are donated and many of the other activities we were able to tie into either the Barrymore Awards or Center City Arts & Culture Week. Ideally we would have liked to have generated more sponsorship support for the event and put more money towards outdoor signage, but the timing of the name, graphics, message and so forth was too late for us to really generate anything new. The one message I've heard from my membership is that they would have liked to have seen more overall promotion of the event. We decided not to print postcards because so many events would have been sold out by the time they were ready.

Service Organization Staffing

Staff time: Primarily executive director, contracted PR coordinator, pro bono website designer and pro bono graphic designer. Additional staff members were brought in to do occasional administrative work and the week prior to 10/20/05 full staff of four was engaged.

Most of the work, until the real nitty-gritty work at the end, was done by my contracted PR coordinator and me. Since we were also deep into the Barrymore Awards, I involved my other three full-time staff members only when absolutely essential. For me, the time was significant, but manageable. Communications with the participating organizations was probably the most time consuming activity.

Community Impact

Attendance on October 20th was about 2,000. Post-10/20 activities added another 700 or so to that number. Anecdotes and survey results are indicating that we may have reached more infrequent theatergoers than originally anticipated.

The overall reaction was very positive. The attrition rate was of great concern, but otherwise it was perceived to be a positive experience. As mentioned above, some members would have liked to have seen more overall promotion. The potential impact of the event is yet to be seen, but we have had a few anecdotes of follow-up inquiries and sales. In our own community, we would need to assess the relationship with Arts & Culture Week and the benefit/confusion created by that relationship.

We did ask all participating theatres to donate the equivalent of one house and most everyone complied. Given the commitment made by the Philadelphia theatres in the pilot year, many have expressed an interest in seeing this go truly national next year. They will be more inclined to participate if it is truly a national event as opposed to an additional step in the pilot process. Some have indicated that they might not be willing to give up ALL single ticket inventory in a future iteration.

The benefit includes new potential ticket buyers and being a part of something greater. Everyone seems to buy into the idea that that which is good for the community is good for the individual theatre companies and vice versa.

The primary downside to participation is economic, but if single ticket goals were not met, it does not seem to be as a result of Free Night. We had a few instances where confusion created a little bit of anger from patrons, but not enough to be alarming. The Philadelphia community is currently very concerned about the emerging discount culture, but because of the event nature of Free Night of Theater, they didn’t feel that it carried the same “devaluing” message.

Media Coverage

Advertising and Promotion
Center City Arts & Culture Week promotions

Public Relations

Radio and Television Interviews

Pre-Free Night of Theater quote:

James Haskins, executive director of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, stated, "I anticipate the success of the project will be greatly influenced by our local collaboration with the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and Center City District to kick-off Arts & Culture Week with Free Night of Theater. We are receiving an extraordinary amount of marketing support as a result of this collaboration, which we would not have been able to achieve on our own."

Post event quote:

According to James Haskins, " The timing couldn't have been better for the greater Philadelphia theater community. The program was a resounding success for our community - companies were thrilled to invite newcomers into their theaters and we were grateful for the opportunity to help pilot the program. We look forward to witnessing future Free Night events as an outcome of our collective efforts."

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