From the Executive Director

I'm Free. Are You? By Ben Cameron

Once again it's Season Preview time, when American Theatre offers its exclusive compilation of impending productions at theatres around the country.

For the first time in the history of our survey, plays by women occupy five of the top six slots in our chart of most-produced plays—a cause for genuine celebration. Which plays of the Shakespearean canon will be most popular? (Midsummer and Hamlet, in a dead heat.) How many world premieres? (331.) How many Christmas Carols? (46.) How many total productions? (2,002 from the 357 theatres answering our survey at press time.) The wealth of information is enormous, and we hope the listings provide a great kickoff for the season.

But this season also kicks off with the first-ever theatre audience initiative undertaken by TCG.

All of us in the national theatre community strive to give our audiences the best in theatrical performance. Collectively, we strive to give voice to people of every race and culture, to people with disabilities, young people, people of faith, gay and lesbian citizens—in short, the full diversity of the country as we know it to be. We believe that diversity is one of our greatest strengths, and that, regardless of who you might be, there is a theatre out there for you.

And while we are proud to serve more than 32 million audience members each year (as next month's Theatre Facts report will show), we want to reach still more people—to encourage our current theatregoers to broaden their theatre experiences as well as engage entirely new audiences.

In 2003, at the TCG National Conference in Milwaukee, a conversation began about how we might accomplish these ends—not one theatre at a time but as an entire theatre community. Could we transcend our inevitable competitions and cooperate—or "co-opetate," as Yale School of Management professor Barry Nalebuff puts it—to grow the pie for us all, even as we compete for our piece of it? Could we work together to overcome the traditional barriers of price and time that discourage or disaffect many of the citizens we long to reach?

On the heels of this conversation, we issued a call to local and regional service organizations around the country. In determining which cities would be optimal partners, we knew we wanted three sites that would represent a geographic spread, would be home to a wide variety of theatres and would exemplify high standards of quality. We knew as well that we needed the help of strong service organizations that had demonstrated their dedication to community-building and that could provide the infrastructure to execute an audience-building strategy. These criteria led us to select the Austin Circle of Theatres in Texas, Theatre Bay Area in California and the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, and their respective communities.

And so Thursday, Oct. 20, of this year will be known as Free Night of Theater. Anyone in these three communities will be able to visit a participating theatre he or she has never attended before—for free.

It's a wonderful opportunity for the Wilma Theater subscriber to make that first visit to People's Light or to Brat Productions in Philly, or for the American Conservatory Theater regular to be introduced to Brava Theater Center in California—or for the non-theatregoer in Austin to have his or her pick of any of that city's participating theatres. This strategy embraces true "first-timers" as well as encouraging our existing audiences to broaden their commitment to theatre by visiting a new theatre whose threshold they have yet to cross—and, for once, price will not be an excuse to stay away. When audiences see our campaign—"I'm Free. Are You?"—we hope they will be inspired to step out in record numbers.

Even though the concept is simple, the proverbial devil is in the details, and we are using this pilot phase as a learning opportunity, with specific details to be decided by the individual theatre communities. We've launched a website, www.TheaterIsAlive.com, making it easy for anyone to see what is happening in these three cities.

Having new audience members in our homes affords us a unique opportunity to address the perception of ticket prices—typically a more powerful barrier than the prices themselves. And we hope as well to increase appreciation for the not-for-profit sector, reminding patrons of our education programs, our community partnerships, our role as employers, our dedication to access and more. In this way, the program addresses larger awareness and will plant the seeds for a more positive public image—and will lead to deeper involvement and return attendance.

This effort, operating on spit and a prayer, is made possible only because of the generosity of our three regional partners, the theatres who have agreed to donate their seats for the evening, and the Sanders\Wingo advertising firm of Austin, a wonderful partner in devising our campaign. It is our hope that this campaign will grow over time into a full-blown national undertaking. Having seen theatres cooperate on initiatives within specific communities, we believe this represents a major step forward—coordination across community lines for the benefit of the field as a whole. And that in itself represents a leap forward—a new chapter with resonance for advocacy, public relations and more. Let's hope this is indeed a preview—not only of a coming season, but of better times and partnerships for us all.