• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
    • About Hannah Grannemann
    • About Row X
  • ArtsJournal
  • AJBlogs
Row X

Row X

Hannah Grannemann on Audience Experience

Nonprofit Theater

When to Hold, When to Fold, When to Play a Different Game

September 7, 2025 by Hannah Grannemann 2 Comments

person playing poker

Leading an arts organization right now can feel like sitting at a blackjack table on a bad night. The stakes are high, the cards aren’t great, and the audience—the one group you can’t bluff—can see every move you make. When to Hold (on to your values) All we really have with our audiences is trust. That’s why the Smithsonian needs to hold its independence like a winning hand. No bluffing needed – smile, look the other players directly in the eye and let them know you’ve got a winning hand. … [Read more...] about When to Hold, When to Fold, When to Play a Different Game

A Christmas Carol as an Arts Marketing Parable

December 22, 2024 by Hannah Grannemann Leave a Comment

Dark blue door with a door knocker and a Christmas decoration with pine cones

The marketing plan was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. You're the marketing director of a theater. It was your plan, but you knew it was dead. It's a Wednesday afternoon and the mid-week matinee happening in the theater two floors down was half-full. You can hear over the monitors the actors trying desperately to get the audience to laugh, but it just wasn’t working. You check the sales dashboard in your CRM and the social media accounts. Your Instagram post … [Read more...] about A Christmas Carol as an Arts Marketing Parable

Imagine if the arts were funded with $27 donations

August 5, 2024 by Hannah Grannemann 6 Comments

People watching an outdoor performance. Photo by Samantha Gades.

In a recent New York Times article, Barry Edelstein, Artistic Director of The Old Globe, a large nonprofit theater in San Diego, gave a quote that caught my eye. He said, "We’re not going to solve the structural financial problems facing the sector through Bernie Sanders-style $27 contributions. It’s going to take really significant infusions at the scale that Roy is doing them.” The person that Edelstein is talking about is Roy Cockrum. The Roy Cockrum Foundation has quickly … [Read more...] about Imagine if the arts were funded with $27 donations

Nonprofit theater is in crisis. Want to know what the “dropped out” audience thinks? Read the comments

July 26, 2023 by Hannah Grannemann Leave a Comment

Theater leaders, Board members, and arts marketing experts have been the featured characters in the recent flurry of articles and opinion pieces about the crisis in the American nonprofit theater*. This makes sense, since these articles focus on how the theater institutions are responding to reduced audience demand and the resulting financial pressures. How can we find out what the audience thinks? There’s one source right at our fingertips: the comments section. These three pieces**: 1) … [Read more...] about Nonprofit theater is in crisis. Want to know what the “dropped out” audience thinks? Read the comments

Primary Sidebar

About Hannah

Associate Professor of Arts Administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). She began writing for ArtsJournal.com in 2020 as a guest editor on Lynne Conner's blog We the Audience and began writing Row X in 2021. More about Hannah can be found at hannahgrannemann.com. In … [more] about About Hannah Grannemann

About Row X

White iPhone with QR Code, ArtsJournal Logo and Row X

Row X is where audience experience meets artistic practice and business strategy of arts organizations. The goal of the blog is to explore the sweet spot where these three interests overlap. Audience experience is often seen as the purview of the marketing department until the point that the … [more] about About Row X

Recent Posts

  • When to Hold, When to Fold, When to Play a Different Game September 7, 2025
  • From Village Voice to TikTok: Rethinking How Audiences Discover Art August 12, 2025
  • Opera Philadelphia, $11 tickets, and a predictable outcome June 18, 2025
  • Kennedy Center audiences vote with their feet. What happens next? June 4, 2025
  • A Christmas Carol as an Arts Marketing Parable December 22, 2024

Recent Comments

  • Hannah Grannemann on When to Hold, When to Fold, When to Play a Different Game
  • R. Lewis on When to Hold, When to Fold, When to Play a Different Game
  • Hannah Grannemann on From Village Voice to TikTok: Rethinking How Audiences Discover Art
  • Hannah Grannemann on From Village Voice to TikTok: Rethinking How Audiences Discover Art
  • animasi on From Village Voice to TikTok: Rethinking How Audiences Discover Art

Archives

An ArtsJournal Blog