Get with the Program:
Season Planning for a Changing Landscape
Available to TCG members
Beginning September 26 through February 2024
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The artistic experiences we create for our communities are major factors in engaging and retaining audiences, and what audiences expect from those experiences has entered a new realm of unpredictability. Theatre leaders who make season planning decisions have been struck with clashing new realities to consider, from labor and inflation, to changing audience interests and appetite for risk, to balancing new work with reliable blockbusters to meet revenue goals. Seasons of theatres large and small have been reduced in scope and size. Educational programming is sustaining some theatres while their mainstages are playing to half-capacity houses. Some theatres are undergoing major experiments and evolutions in their artistic offerings, listening closely to the responses of their audiences, unsure yet if the risks are paying off. Artistic leaders of color at predominantly white institutions are under more season-planning scrutiny than ever from their donors and boards. Meanwhile, narratives have been emerging from press coverage of our field’s crises that the growing trend toward more diverse or socially conscious programming is in part to blame for attendance and subscription declines – yet none of the journalists asserting these presumptions as facts has presented any data to back them up.
What are the actual drivers of these changes, where are they taking our field, and how are some theatre-makers responding to them in ways their colleagues can learn from? In this second round and singular track of our virtual working groups on audiences, we’ll share and examine our season planning and programming processes and decisions, from the most daring to the most risk-averse, pulling apart our current challenges, and working toward addressing them in our coming seasons. TCG will provide a clear learning journey to this 10-session arc, and supplemental resources to accompany case studies and generative discussion among peers.
Meeting Schedule:
- Tuesday, Sept 26 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Oct 10 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Oct 24 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Nov 14 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Nov 28 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Dec 12 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Jan 9 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Jan 23 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Feb 6 | 2-3pm ET
- Tuesday, Feb 20 | 2-3pm ET