Butts In the Seats: As I was driving into work today, I heard an NPR story about the 92nd St Y, an event/education space in NYC, and how they have gone virtual during Covid-19. According to NPR, in a typical year 92 Street Y has about 300,000 people participate in their events. In the last 6 months they have had over 3.4 million people engage with their virtual programming.
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Just from the Tagline, this article seems so inspiring when it talked about an event that normally gets about 300,000 people getting 3.4 million audience members. This is what virtual theater is about. Getting people from all over the world to interact with your material! And then I read the content of this article. It is sad to see that people will read an article about the 92nd Street’s Y and think digital theatre is not a worthwhile endeavor because though you probably won’t be making the same income and people will still have to be furthered, smaller is better than nothing. I completely disagree with what Ken Davenport is saying. I think once free content exists, people will not want to pay a large sum or maybe anything. However, companies might make more by having an easy donation option attached to free content as people might feel compelled to donate to something that is done well that they might not have donated to if they already had to pay a ticket price. I know if someone asked me to pay five dollars to a virtual show that a, I wouldn’t go and b, even if it was good, I probably wouldn’t donate. However when watching the free MCC Miscast Gala which was a free and b, really well produced, I gave 20 dollar donation. If they had charged five dollars, they would have lost out on 15 of my dollars, and also if they charged too much they wouldn’t have gotten anything from me and probably a lot of other smaller donors. I think since free content already exists in abundance, people need to be very careful about the monetization of their work (I’m not saying people shouldn’t charge, I’m saying people need to be careful). Ps. thank you David for giving me a new blog to follow. I certainly like Joe Patti's posts.
Patti introduces an issue with virtual engagement that has been talked about time and time again in these last few months as we continue to cope with the world that COVID-19 has created for us. At first, I thought article was going to be about how virtual programming was MORe successful than the in-person offerings - because of the numbers quoted for 92nd Street Y's engagement; but reading the differences in their revenue from last year to this year, it can be seen quite clearly that "virtual is the future" won't fly for everyone. I think the comparison to video gamers watching video game streams is quite interesting precisely for what Patti mentioned - this content was ALREADY virtual, it most definitely is not the same demographic that is coming to the in-person live performances on Broadway and are upset by the sheer lack of stimulation that comes from watching it streamed online. That being said, Davenport's argument about theater-goers and theater-makers supporting one another makes sense and I hope everyone is able to use those ideas and continue to spread their art to even wider audiences.
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