Row X blog by Hannah Grannemann
Your audience circled December on their calendar last spring. They didn’t want to miss the holiday show this year. Seeing something earlier than December was possible…they’d have to feel it out…but they would really try to get back to their holiday show. The holidays just weren’t the same last year without a trip to the theater to see their favorite production. Anticipating the show this year would be a little light shining for them through all the uncertainty they were experiencing.
Holiday events are different than other arts experiences for audiences. Last year I wrote about the unique importance of holiday shows to audiences, with three evergreen observations:
- It might be the only professional level arts event they engage in all year…or maybe the only arts event at all. Take a look at this chart from the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts. A holiday arts event is likely the “1 or 2 times a year” that the green bar represents.
- It’s an important time with friends and family. And time with friends and family is the number one reason people attend the arts (another stat to remember from the NEA’s Survey of Public Participation in the Arts). It’s a tradition for many families and friends groups. Jackie Alexander, Artistic Director of North Carolina Black Repertory, tells me that their annual production of Nativity According to the Gospels, is the only time some of their audience members see longtime friends who live far away. The lobby is a place for reunions.
- Audiences are active participants in holiday productions in a way that’s not offered to them throughout the year. Performing in the show is often available to amateurs and pre-professionals. Choirs and dance teams are invited to perform at intermission. Concession stands sell homemade goodies. Toys and canned food are dropped off on the way across the lobby. Bills are pressed into little hands to choose “one thing” from the gift shop.
December has also been circled on the calendar of many arts and cultural organizations as the time when they’ll “really be back”, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Uncertainty has been one of the biggest issues throughout the pandemic, arguably the main stumbling block to recovery. A few months into 2021, leaders and staffers reached a level of confidence in the logistics of producing. In an April 2021 interview, Andrew Recinos, CEO of Tessitura Network, with his finger on the pulse of the decisions of arts organizations from around the world, described how some organizations framed their smaller shows in the fall as warm-ups, all to get ready to be full-on for the holiday show. They felt confident that they had made significant progress on figuring out safety protocols for performers, staff and audience. In the intervening months, they figured out their approaches to vaccine and testing requirements. Nothing would be without risk but moving forward was necessary.
The most obvious reason arts organizations prioritize holiday events is financial, since they often represent an out-sized percentage of annual earned income compared to other events. But I would argue that holiday shows are mission oriented. First of all, earning money means that the work of the organization can continue, art gets made and audiences can see it, and there’s no need to apologize for that. Further, holiday events are a chance for organizations to connect with audiences, even if it’s the only time of year that they attend. No matter how you slice it, that’s a wider audience, more people impacted by the art, and that shouldn’t be downplayed. Finally, it’s an opportunity to prove that the organization truly is a community organization through opening up for broader participation, partnerships with other nonprofits, and visibility for the work of the company.
Staffers at arts organizations are often cynical about the audience for holiday shows. It’s a prime example of the resentment of the audience that Helen Freshwater talked about in her book Theatre & Audience that I described in my previous post. Hallway talk about holiday shows often derides the audience for their taste (because they only come to the holiday show, and don’t have the sophisticated taste to see other works in the season), their lack of knowledge about the unspoken rules of how to be “good” audience members, or their high level of interest in concessions and gift shop purchases (“Didn’t they come to see the show??”). (Those souvenirs actually help the experience to be memorable, aka “sticky”, reinforce the experience as a tradition, prompts them to remember the experience throughout the year and likely helps them to become repeat attenders.)
Reconnecting with the meaning that audiences get from holiday shows can reset that cynicism and allow a Scrooge-like transformation to transport a burnt out arts worker back to one of the main reasons we’re all in this: to give people meaningful experiences through art.
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