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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How can we find out what the audience thinks? There\u2019s one source right at our fingertips: the comments section.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n These three pieces**: 1) “A Crisis in America\u2019s Theaters Leaves Prestigious Stages Dark” by Michael Paulson, The New York Times, July 25,<\/a> 2) “Theater is in freefall, and the pandemic isn\u2019t the only thing to blame” by Peter Marks, Washington Post, July 6<\/a>, and 3) the opinion piece “American Theater Is Imploding Before Our Eyes” by Isaac Butler, The New York Times, July 19<\/a>, generated over 1800 comments<\/strong>, many more than other arts articles usually generate in those publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are my takeaways from this voluminous feedback:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The value I see in taking the time to read the comments thoroughly is that it makes it impossible to ignore that there is distance between what theaters are doing and what a sizeable portion (but certainly not all, or even the majority) of their pre-pandemic audiences want. It\u2019s time to accept that; no more of the \u201cwait and see\u201d approach from 2021 and 2022. The critical audience members can\u2019t be dismissed as not understanding what\u2019s happening externally and what the organizations are trying to do. That’s a hard pill to swallow as a theater professional giving your blood, sweat, and tears trying to keep a theater afloat. The audience comprehends the challenge, they just don’t like how theaters are handling it. Explaining that rising production costs drive high ticket prices or shifts in society driving programming changes doesn\u2019t cut it for these audience members. \u201cYou\u2019re the professionals, figure it out,\u201d they\u2019re saying<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think this harsh feedback is being ignored by theaters. I noticed in this recent group of articles that the leaders, consultants, and Board members interviewed in the media were willing to say that their changes in programming have turned some people off where in the past they have avoided acknowledging it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter Marks said it himself about his own article<\/a>. Yes, it is a collection of comments only from people who feel very strongly and the people who are more lukewarm or who just don\u2019t like to comment publicly aren\u2019t represented. No, a collection of comments is not a formal audience study using well established methodology. If you want audience studies with strong methodology, then look to Slover Linett<\/a>, WolfBrown<\/a>, and Colleen Dilenschneider<\/a>. No, it\u2019s not a random sample of Americans. If you want that, then wait for the results of the next big study by the National Endowment for the Arts (coming soon, I\u2019m told). But given the demographics and psychographics of the New York Times<\/a>, Washington Post Arts & Culture readers<\/a>, and LA Times readers<\/a>, there\u2019s a good chance that the people commenting are pretty similar to nonprofit theater audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not advocating that theaters read the comments and then just blindly do what they think will make this group of critics happy. 1800 comments from this particular readership is a valuable \u2013 and large \u2013 chunk of data. Imperfect data, sure. But there is no perfect data. Of course, comments by trolls, racist comments, and the comments clearly made in bad faith should be ignored. But the rest should be taken seriously as an insight into the mindset of the 15-30% of the audience that has not returned. The people who made these comments are engaged with the arts enough to take the time make thoughtful and substantive criticisms, affirmations, and suggestions about the nonprofit theater. No, the comments aren’t not always stated in a constructive way. As I said above, their comments show that they know more than we give them credit for. After all, they\u2019re arriving at the same diagnoses as the theater professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The level of dissatisfaction is evident. What any one theater, and the nonprofit theater field, does with this feedback is up to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *This particular wave of coverage came in response to Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Center Theatre Group, The Public Theater, and Brooklyn Academy of Music have announced major staffing and programming cuts and other theaters have announced closings (Triad Stage in my town of Greensboro, N.C., Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle, and Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago, and more).<\/p>\n\n\n\n **Other pieces that have been put out recently include these: LA Times, by Charles McNulty, July 1<\/a>, Theatermania, by Zachary Stewart, June 30<\/a>), American Theatre, by the entire AT staff, July 24<\/a>, Broadway World\u2019s Industry Trends Weekly on July 24<\/a> and July 10<\/a> by Cara Joy David). Other than American Theatre, these publications don\u2019t have comments sections for their articles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What can be learned from the 1800 comments in recent articles about the crisis in nonprofit theater? Audiences get it more than we give them credit for. And they expect theaters to fix their own problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,56,53,122,12],"tags":[114,113,27,47,121,117,112,72,118,111,119,71,110,87,115],"class_list":{"0":"post-369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-covid","8":"category-engagement","9":"category-interpretation","10":"category-nonprofit-theater","11":"category-strategy","12":"tag-american-theatre-magazine","13":"tag-cara-joy-david","14":"tag-colleen-dilenschneider","15":"tag-covid","16":"tag-crisis","17":"tag-data","18":"tag-isaac-butler","19":"tag-michael-paulson","20":"tag-nonprofit-theater","21":"tag-peter-marks","22":"tag-slover-linett","23":"tag-the-new-york-times","24":"tag-washington-post","25":"tag-wolfbrown","26":"tag-zachary-stewart","27":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Dialogue-bubbles.png?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdmYVE-5X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
I know, I know. \u201cDon\u2019t read the comments.”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Feedback is data. That\u2019s all, but that\u2019s a lot.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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