World Theatre Day Proclamation

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

There is a lot going on this week with the Chicago Producing Intensive Conference starting tomorrow morning, but I wanted to give one exciting update on World Theatre Day. Mayor Richard M. Daley issued an official proclamation that March 27, is World Theatre Day in Chicago. We are very grateful for his support and encouragement of our community as we participate in this event for the first time.

Read the entire proclamation here.

We hope that you are planning on joining the celebration in some capacity at your own theatre. Not sure how to participate?

Click here for a list of suggestions.

Chicago Celebrates World Theatre Day

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how we were having an exploratory meeting to discuss Chicago’s participation in World Theatre Day. To follow up, we had an excellent meeting with about a dozen companies and came up with a lot of great ideas. Some of which we will be able to implement this year and many others that we’ll look to bring to the table next year and beyond. What we all agreed on was that it was important for Chicago to be a part of this international festival. Thanks to all those that attended the meeting. Your enthusiasm and commitment to Chicago theatre is greatly appreciated. We are excited to participate in this international program for the first time. Check out our World Theatre Day page on ChicagoPlays.com for all this information and more.

To summarize our plan for March 27, 2009:
The League is going to help promote all the WTD activities as well as encourage theatre participation. We are excited to report that we will be getting a Mayoral proclamation of WTD. The Chicago celebration will culminate with a party in association with the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, following performances on the 27th. All Chicago theater patrons, artists and administrators are invited to attend this free event.

Chicago theatres are invited and encouraged to participate in a number of ways.

Chicago theatre patrons are encouraged to attend a performance on March 27. Click here to see all the shows playing on World Theatre Day.

Every year a renowned theater artist is asked to write a message for World Theatre Day. The 2009 World Theatre Day message was written by Augusto Boal, Brazilian director, writer and founder of Theatre of the Oppressed. Participating theatres are encouraged to read the statement before or after their performance that evening. The full statement can be found here.

Download a WTD program insert to include in your program book on March 27.

For More Information:


International Theatre Institute

World Theatre Day on Facebook

World Theatre Day on Twitter

World Theatre Day on Tumblr

World Theatre Day Blog

Chicago Producing Intensive

Next Friday through Sunday (March 13-15) the League will be partnering with the Commercial Theater Institute to present the first Chicago Producing Intensive. This three day program has been presented by CTI in New York for almost 30 years. The Chicago producing intensive has been designed with Chicago theatre in mind. I would like to encourage you all to come to this great program if you can.

It is not ONLY about commercial producing, many of the skills and techniques that apply to commercial producing apply to non-profits as well. The topics are wide ranging and include: Legal Aspects of Producing, Production Budget Analysis, envisioning a producing plan, co-production agreements, how to develop work, etc., etc. It will be an interesting, informative and inspiring three days. There are fourteen topics covered in all. There will also be plenty of opportunity for socializing and networking.

There will be 21 speakers and panelists representing an extraordinary array of experience in the American theatre. They include some Chicago professionals, such as: Stuart Oken, Elephant Eye Productions; Roche Schulfer, Goodman Theatre, Beth Rohlmeier, Broadway in Chicago; and people from New York, such as: Tom Viertel, Scorpio Entertainment; Jack Viertel, Jujamcyn Theatres; and Roy Gabay; Roy Gabay Productions.

We have extended the early bird price of $250 for League members. This is almost half off the regular price.

Deb

Two To A Sleeping Bag

Ben Cameron spoke at the Illinois Arts Alliance Annual Meeting this past Tuesday. I can’t do justice to the metaphor he used that brings me to the title, but suffice to say that the jist of it was this – if we don’t start making changes in the way we operate, we are not all going to survive. Most of us in the room heard that message loud and clear. We need to change. It’s already hard and its going to get harder. As long as its going to get harder anyway, let’s put some of our creativity and our passion and our smarts to work and challenge ourselves to find new models for the way we create and present our art. How many of us are truly ready to let go of our old models and build anew? If we don’t, it will be done for us.

How can we change, what can we do? Well, I don’t know, nobody has the answers but we’ll never get them if we don’t start working on them. One way to think about it is to think again about sharing resources. Join us on March 23 as we tackle this difficult issue. We will have a panel discussion of some things that have worked and some things that haven’t and a brainstorming session – bring your needs, your ideas, your open minds. And, if you know someone from outside the theatre community who is open to these kinds of ideas, bring him or her as well. No limits.

Deb

World Theater Day

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

Early last week Deb and I were approached by the ever-enthusiastic Jess Hutchinson and Nick Keenan from New Leaf Theatre with an idea. Through conversations on Twitter and elsewhere they came across information for World Theater Day on March 27, 2009. World Theater Day actually began in 1962, but it doesn’t seem like the U.S. has had much of a presence with the program. The mission of World Theater Day is to: “promote international exchange of knowledge and practice in theatre arts (drama, dance, music theatre) in order to consolidate peace and solidarity between peoples, to deepen mutual understanding and increase creative co-operation between all people in the theatre arts.” That’s a great mission, right?

Since we are all about community and collaboration in Chicago, and particularly international collaboration thanks to companies like Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Goodman, we agreed with Nick and Jessica that it was important for us to have a discussion of how we can be involved with World Theater Day 2009.

We are going to have a meeting at the League offices (228 S. Wabash, Suite 200) this Friday, February 20 from 4:30 p.m.- 6 p.m. to discuss and brainstorm how Chicago can participate. If you are interested in being involved with the program we’d love if you’d join us. Please RSVP to ben@chicagoplays.com. If you can’t make the meeting but are still interested in being involved, please feel free to contact me as well.

Read more about the history of World Theater Day

Read more about what other cities are doing

Read Nick and Jessica’s blog postings.

Advocacy

Earlier this week in the Trib, Chris Jones pointed out the “stunning political ineptitude” of the arts community in this Country. Harsh. But true? We have national organizations advocating for the arts, including Americans for the Arts and TCG whose websites we direct you to regularly in the broadcast. In Illinois, the Arts Alliance advocates for us. But is it enough? What do we need to do to raise the level of support for the arts funded by tax dollars?

Both of our Illinois senators voted against the Coburn amendment to the Economic Stimulus Bill. While the amendment was included in the Senate package anyway, I am grateful to them and gratified by their support. Whatever other political reasons there might be, our senators supported the arts and I would like to think it is because so many of us wrote to them. Please write and thank them.

For now, we can all do the following: please, no matter how small you are, please make sure your elected representatives know you are there and know what kind of impact you make on your neighborhood and on the cultural fabric of Chicago. Make sure your board, your donors, your ensembles and all of your constituents all advocate for you by telling their elected representatives what you mean to them and why they support you.

Making sure your alderman and your state legislators and your federal legislators all know who you are and what you do and why you are important goes a long way towards advocating not just for yourselves but for the field as a whole.

Deb

Survey Says...

I’ve been reading A LOT of articles recently about how ticket sales are holding up well while all around us businesses continue to fail. This morning on NPR I heard a story about dairy farmers having to leave the business because of the plummeting price of milk. Really? Milk? Don’t we need as much milk as ever? Anyway…I thought I’d share with you some of the preliminary results of our fiscal survey. We will release more information early next week. The survey indicates that indeed ticket sales are strong, with 50% of theatres reporting steady or increased ticket sales and of the 50% indicating decreased sales, 60% of those are reporting that those decreases are due at least in part to programming. 65% of theatres report that they are projecting contributed income to be down from what was budgeted for FY 09 in varying degrees from 10-60%.

Give some love (or some money) to your favorite theatre in the $250,000 to $1 million budget range because they are faring the worst. 70% report decreased ticket sales and 65% are reporting decreased contributed income. My unscientific opinion is that at this level any kind of decrease in funding results in marketing budgets being cut results in lower ticket sales results in even lower marketing budgets.

I think we need to remind ourselves and our supporters that ticket sales only count for about ½ of our budgets (less in some cases, a lot less in others). Our community is strong and we have been successful in creating spaces where artists can do excellent work. With community support, this could be the time that Chicago attains the competitive advantage and becomes the top destination for theatre going in the United States and possibly the World. Theatre-making in Chicago is not tied to a bottom-line commercial mentality, and so we are able to produce theatre respected all over the world. For our theatres at the highest risk, we need our community to increase support. For us all we need our community to stay engaged and to continue to support theatre at the highest levels possible.

Deb

Arts in Crisis

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative, a program designed to provide emergency planning assistance to struggling arts organizations throughout the United States. The initiative is a response to the emergency facing arts organizations throughout the United States. The current economic climate has reduced earned and contributed income, decimated endowments, and has left some organizations struggling for survival. Companies of all sizes, localities, and performing arts disciplines have been affected. The program, open to non-profit 501(c)(3) performing arts organizations, will provide free and confidential counsel in fundraising, building more effective Boards of Trustees, budgeting, marketing, and other areas pertinent to maintaining a vital performing arts organization during a troubled economy.

Check out http://www.artsincrisis.org/ for more information.

The Shrinking Arts Media

If you missed our panel discussion a few weeks ago with the Community Media Workshop on the topic of shrinking arts media, you can now listen to it online. Check it out and share any thoughts or questions.

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=31735

The Creative Response to Tough Times

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

On Tuesday morning I attended an event at the Chicago Cultural Center that was hosted by the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Illinois Arts Alliance, and the Arts and Business Council of Chicago. The topic of the event was The Creative Response to Tough Times and covered a variety of issues all relating to being a non-profit facing this tough economy. The event included a keynote speaker, and he was followed by a panel discussion. I’ve been digesting the information for a couple days now and just wanted to share a few highlights that I took from it.

• Stay true to your Mission – I’ve heard this mantra numerous times throughout the last several months and heard it again on Tuesday. Your mission sets you a part from other organizations. It is your niche. Now is not the time to change it.
• Be Brave, but not Ignorant – Don’t be afraid to take some calculated risks with your programming provided that they are true to your mission.
• Re-think Your Model –Newspapers, non-profits, and other organizations are failing because their model is broken. What is the new model? Not just that, but what is YOUR new model? New earned revenue generators probably need to be a part of that model. What assets do you have because of your mission that are unique and can be cultivated or adapted for new revenue? Sharing resources with another organization may be part of that new model too.

Those are just a few thoughts I garnered from the discussion. Thanks to all of the hosts for their involvement. It really was an excellent event. If you were there, what did you get out of it? They are planning on leading similar events throughout 2009, so watch for announcements and I encourage you to be at the next one.

Web 2.0

What is it? If I’m asking the question is it already too late? Are you using it? Do you have an on-line community? Do they come to the theatre? To what extent? Are the big participants in your on-line community participating on the same level in your actual community? Does more content equal more ticket sales? My biggest worry is theatre doesn’t happen on line, it can’t and it won’t. It needs an actual (is that the word?) community or it doesn’t happen at all. Are people joining our on-line communities and then coming to the theatre? I think they join our community by attending a show and then they join our on-line community. And, yes these are great tools to keep us constantly connected. But, the question is are we/can we actually use it to sell tickets? How do we bring new people into our theatres using these new tools? It’s definitely cost effective but can we actually measure the results, is it time well spent? I heard one use recently that I thought was brilliant, I can’t remember how I heard it or who did it, but before the show the announcement actually said, please take out your phones and tell your friends where you are. But…did it sell any tickets? Don’t know.

Deb

Resource Sharing

I’ve been hearing a lot and thinking a lot about sharing resources during this terrible time. I love the idea. I can’t say that I know of a lot of instances in which sharing resources was tried or worked. People refer a lot to Arts Bridge, a program that had shared office space and other resources available to a number of arts organizations. I’d like to hear from anyone who participated in Arts Bridge. My understanding is that for want of a grant, the project went under. I have heard it referred to as a “flawed business model,” but it was around for 15 years. I guess any business model dependent on one grant is flawed, but how many of us are one grant away from insolvency? My guess would be more than a couple. So how can we share resources and come up with a model for sharing resources that is not dependent on funding? What kinds of resources would we share? Staff? Storage Space? Office Space? In theory we could share everything. But, I keep coming back to the same question, if it truly would increase the resources available to us, why haven’t we already done it? I don’t know the answer, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that no one has had the time to organize it. Maybe people are sharing resources and I just don’t know. Maybe it really does need funding to work, at least in the short term. Can it work? Do we want to share? What would need to happen?

Try to stay warm.

Deb