HowlRound: When I applied to be the Artistic Director of Merrimack Repertory Theatre, this is what I pitched: I would take the Audience Immersion program that I had started at Geva Theatre Center—which we only did for a few shows a year—and expand it to be the way the entire theatre operated.
We’d work to have the community be at the center of the organization, the way we think of artists. We’d offer free childcare for each production, create partnerships with local universities to workshop new plays in front of their theatre students, and most importantly, we’d implement my audience immersion program, the Cohort Club.
2 comments:
You want to get people back in to the theater? Here's how you do it. Offering child care? Great. Also, educating people on any subject gets people interested in it. Word of mouth is most powerful advertisement tool there is. Sometimes we get caught up in the process of making theater - how are we going to get this show into budget, are we going to finish teching the show, will we have enough perishables to make it through the run - that we forget that we're telling a new story to these audience members that are going to be wholly captivated by everything we put onstage. By bringing members of the community in, you're building your theater as a irreplaceable part of your town. Like, I can't even describe how important that is, especially in today's political climate. Sean Daniels is getting the people of Lowell Mass invested in theater - and sometimes all it takes is a backstage tour.
I love how he compares the place that theater has arrived at to a a local team, because that is exactly how I feel about my local theatres in the Bay Area. Already I feel spoiled with how much good theater there is to be had and appreciated in the Bay Area. There is an abundance of independent and strong theater companies doing incredible work, and now that I think of it this way, they are like the home team to me. From the incredible Shotgun Players in Oakland, to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, all the way to ACT in the city, these companies all (albeit to a varying degree) engage with their communities and enrich them not only through their successes, but through their failures, through their community outreach, through their theatre schools, through their after-school teen theatre programs.
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