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Message Icon Topic: Producing "Controversial" Material(Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply Post New Topic
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bellagio
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bullet Posted: 2/26/09 at 8:01pm
It is great to see that your company has had success off the beaten track, Alan.  Most of the companies I have been involved with are dead set against what they see as the risk of alienating their regulars.  At the same time, they fret about seeing that base eroded by age, etc.

The need to draw a new (and younger) audience is critical, yet in the past two years I've seen two groups close their doors without reaching the point of being willint to simply try something new.

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Fractal514
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bullet Posted: 4/18/09 at 10:05pm
I am currently president of the board of directors at our theater.  I have found that bringing items to the table myself has been met with more resistance than if something is brought by another board member.  I hope you don't take this as me judging your ability as president, but... At our theater we are instructed by the by-laws to follow Robert's Rules of Order.  In Rob's Rules, it states pretty explicitly that the role of any president or presiding officer is not to weigh in, but rather to mediate and organize conversations.  By appearing bias, members get the sense of too much power in one person, at least they have at my theater when I expressed a strong opinion that someone did not agree with.  Maybe this doesn't apply at your theater, but again, perhaps it's food for thought.

In any event, I don't evny your positions, and if I were you I'd stick to my guns at this point or put the issue to a membership vote.


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John Luzaich
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bullet Posted: 4/24/09 at 11:08am

Wow, many great comments on this post.  It seems like the majority of community theatres are on the more conservative side of things.  Many comments about not wanting to alienate customers, or losing the good old base of older folks.  A director in Arizona told me he does almost no programming for older folks because if that's mostly what you do, that's mostly what you get and you'll never get new people, younger kids, middle age and the rest.  We also tend to be more conservative than not.  Someone else said to me "we'll we're a theatre, we're not church.  If they want church that's a different building down the street."  I really think most people are pretty open minded and I think it's healthy to give them different experiences that they might not normally see in life.  We produced Death of a Salesman and there is some strong language and a lot of arguing or yelling.  We had a couple of people walk out and one of them told me "I just can't watch it, it's too uncomfortable, I didn't grow up with that in my household.  But they're doing a good job with the show, it's just not for me".  But the show sold several hundred tickets better than expected and I think we need to make people uncomfortable sometimes, get them to move off their mark, think and see things differently.  I think people respected us for the good piece of theatre it was.  With some other shows we've done, we might have lost a couple/few people but we've gained more than we lost.  We're still probably fairly conservative in the choice of plays and as you know, it's hard to find the right balance.  But we try not to "always pick safe" plays.  We'll never please everyone all of the time and our challenges are great.

John
cfct@cfu.net
http://www.osterregent.org
http://www.facebook.com/osterregent
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MartyW
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bullet Posted: 4/24/09 at 2:08pm
I think if examined closely... You might find that the "conservative" theaters are such as they are because of a conservative community (relatively speaking) Those who get to ride the edge, most likely, are those from larger, more cosmopolitin areas, (Or have a heck of an endowment in the bank)... IMHO
Marty W

"Till next we trod the boards.."
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