From the Executive Director

From Dream to Action

By Gigi Bolt

October heralds the start of the new theatre season—highlighted by American Theatre’s annual compilation of productions at theatres around the country. And in cities from coast to coast, the eagerly awaited opening of the season will carry special resonance with the phase two launch on Oct. 19 of Free Night of Theater 2006, TCG’s groundbreaking audience development program.

In 2003, amidst a widely shared concern about declining subscriptions and attendance, TCG member theatres gathered at the National Conference in Milwaukee, Wis., to discuss how the not-for-profit theatre community might work together to reach new audiences. The goal was to put aside competition and find a way to raise public awareness, improve access and motivate attendance. The idea that surfaced that summer in Milwaukee was deceptively simple: On a chosen date participating theatres would offer free admission (all unsubscribed tickets) to new audience members.

One year ago, the pilot campaign called “I’m Free, Are You?” welcomed nearly 8,000 new theatregoers to more than 150 theatres in Austin, Philadelphia and San Francisco. In partnership with TCG and scores of individual theatres, the events were produced regionally by the Austin Circle of Theaters, the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia and Theatre Bay Area. Research and analysis of Free Night 2005 in the Bay Area was conducted by Shugoll Research. The recently released results show a strikingly positive response. Two-thirds of the participants attended a theatre they had not previously visited, and 29 percent of those attendees returned to purchase tickets at the same theatre within the next nine months. Twenty-six percent of attendees were under 35 and 44 percent were non-white. No fewer than 92 percent of respondents stated they were extremely pleased with the program. Perhaps most encouraging, the numbers remained consistent across all demographic groups.

Free Night of Theater 2006 is already generating significant excitement in participating communities, with Atlanta and Seattle creating city-wide celebrations of theatre or the arts around the event. By its nature collaborative and complex, the project this year will test out solutions to inherent challenges, including project coordination in localities where no service organization exists. Complete production listings will be available on the national website.

Free Night of Theater is scheduled to go fully national in the fall of 2007 with the long-term goals of increasing the number of people attending the theatre annually from 32 million to 50 million by 2016, and increasing public awareness of the role of theatre as an essential public good.

Free Night responds to a well-documented need for new thinking to break new ground. Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts is among the most recent contributions to the accumulating data. Commissioned by the Wallace Foundation and issued by the RAND Corporation in 2005, the study recommends a profound policy shift—away from a focus on increasing the number of arts organizations and productions, and toward the need to stimulate demand for the arts by “introducing more Americans to engaging arts experiences.” Gifts of the Muse also concludes that an exclusive emphasis on the “instrumental benefits” of the arts will not provide a sufficient basis for policy decisions—that for the arts to prosper, audiences must demand them. We know that competition from more affordable forms of popular entertainment is one piece of the larger problem and the dismantling of arts education programs within the schools another. And yet, in the NEA’s 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts [pdf], 27 percent of respondents said they’d like to see plays more often if they could.

And what are the potential benefits of Free Night of Theater? In theory, they are almost unlimited. By increasing awareness and breaking through barriers, we have the possibility of creating a win/win/win—for the theatre field, for the individual, for society. Theatres might truly find and welcome much larger and more diverse audiences. The theatre community, created in part through its collaborative spirit, might find new energy and strength from this great shared undertaking. As for individual people across the country, I am reminded of a story about a young woman from the Bronx in Staging America, a book about Cornerstone Theater Company’s work with underserved audiences. She is quoted as saying, “There’s a certain kind of person who goes to the theatre. There’s a certain kind of person who doesn’t go to the theatre. Then there’s a person who doesn’t even know about the theatre. I was the one who didn’t even know.” Just as she discovered a place with stories that deepened her life experience, so might so many others. We each want to connect to our community in a social place where we are valued. And in the words of Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam, the arts are a “currency of exchange” within our diverse democracy through which we are able to connect with people unlike ourselves.

The philosopher and educator Martin Buber once said, “All life is encounter”—the encountering of a teacher…an idea…a work of art. Is it possible that Free Night of Theater might gather the momentum to grow from a dream to an initiative to a movement? Might we make it possible for millions more Americans to encounter the wide world on the stages of our theatres?