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The show doesn’t open for another three months, but the Chicago Reader has already blogged about The New Colony’s upcoming production of FRAT. Check it out here. And let the fun begin!!

Any arts organization that hopes for a better future for the arts knows that they have one thing to do to keep people interested: make great art!

But arts audiences are dwindling. Does that mean that we’ve all stopped creating great art?

Of course not. It means that people have started losing interest. And no matter how great your product is, it’s hard to sell in a market that doesn’t interest people that much anymore.

In ten years, how easy is it going to be to sell a CD? And the people who do continue to buy CD’s - how much will they really be willing to pay?

Sure, you can get some of the uninterested people to come see your show, but that doesn’t mean they’ll come to the next one. And the ones who do keep coming aren’t necessarily going to learn to appreciate theater. You haven’t made them like theater. You’ve made them like your theater.

“What’s so bad about that?” Well, arts funding is connected to public support. If the public doesn’t seem that interested, why should foundations, corporate sponsors and individual contributors throw money at a dying industry? And when they start slashing their arts budgets, yours will be included. Besides, if you think it’s hard to get audiences now - how about when they’ve dwindled even further?

So how do you save your future? By supporting the arts (just like we want the public to do!) And how do we support the arts? By creating competition!

It seems backwards. I know. But imagine this: couples arguing over which play to see. Arguing over whether they want to see a play or go to the ballet.

Sounds impossible. Right?

If we foster our competition and can get our audiences to see four plays a month rather than just seeing one show every few months (i.e. yours), that helps them develop their taste and interest in theater. If seeing theater is part of their routine, it will be more difficult for them to choose what to do. And then those beautiful arguments will begin.

Let’s say you have 12 performances of your show during a month run. Are you really expecting everyone to see your show 12 times? Are you really that insecure that you don’t want them to go see someone else’s shows during that time? What about when you don’t have a show running? Should they do something else and wait for you?

Now that sounds backwards. So help your competition succeed. Help drive your audience to your direct competitors - those are probably the other shows in town that they would enjoy.

But don’t just throw your support around willy-nilly. Hold any organization you support to a high standard. They are acting as a representative of your taste and standard, and as a representative for all of the arts.

If we start holding each other to a higher standard, the overall arts product will improve, audiences will grow, and we’ll see the first increase in arts support in many, many years.

But that’s a whole other topic.

Ten years ago, Kevin Kelly, wrote the book New Rules for the New Economy. Now, he is releasing his book in the form of free, weekly blog posts. And if you’re a business geek - I highly recommend subscribing to it!

In his recent post, he discusses how GM, the old model of Industry (with a capital I!) was waning. Microsoft was now the economic hero and the new model for Industry. In 1998, he was warning companies that if they looked like GM, they were in “deep trouble.”

And now here we are, ten years later and we are discussing what happens should GM fall. Do we bail them out? Sure, the econony was the last straw - but other companies are weathering it. Lots of big companies are not asking for bail outs. GM simply didn’t take the hint 10 years ago. They continued to operate like they were still the golden boy of 40 years prior. Like they were still the model. And if I was running one of those big companies modeled after GM, I would be in a hurry to start making changes. Though, history says they won’t.

Humans, and particularly big businesses, don’t like change. But the world keeps on changing around us. And either you change with it, or you get stuck behind, and eventually your system is outdated and broken down. In software terms - your system is no longer supported. Arts organizations are no different! Though we do often pretend like the same rules don’t apply to us.

So. Is your arts organization designed for the future? Or is it based on the old model? Kevin makes a great point:

The obvious lesson is that we tend to project the future from what’s fashionable at present.

How true. But instead of looking backwards to what has worked, we need to be looking forwards to what will work. And when we reach that point, we need to look forward again and take that next evolutionary step.

So think about how your arts organization does things now. Is that how they were done ten years ago? Twenty years ago? FORTY years ago? If the answer is yes, it really doesn’t matter how innovative your product is if your company is still in the past. It’s not like GM is producing the exact same car they did in the 70’s. Their cars have all kinds of 21st Century gizmos and upgrades. That didn’t save them. Innovation of product didn’t save them. And in truth, by not innovating their business model, they probably held back their potential innovations.

So get out of the past. Do something new! Do something unique! Evolve!

And be the Google (at least currently) of the arts world and not its GM.

Advertising. Now that’s a frightening word. It sounds expensive. It sounds like men in suits from the 60’s swilling scotch, inhaling cigars and fondling their secretaries.

Here’s the definition according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: ad·ver·tis·ing
Function: noun
Date: 1751

1. the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements

Let’s really focus on the first part of that definition: “the action of calling something to the attention of the public.”

Well that doesn’t sound so scary. It certainly doesn’t have the ring of big corporations, large board rooms with ad execs sweating away on their pitches or expensive ads purchased in the looming publications of William Randolph Hearst.

Business, marketing and advertising seem so intimidating to artists because they’re foreign. It’s really just a form of xenophobia. So now that we’ve broken down the big scary wall of advertising, we need to tackle the next obvious question: how do you create good advertising?

Well, let me ask this question: how do you create good art? Because it’s the same process. Great artists create for an audience of one. Right? Typically that audience is you. (Uh oh…there’s that little word creeping into this again…) Now if your art is a representation of what you like, and your advertising needs to be a representation of your art, then your advertising should be something you like. Create advertising for an audience of one. Create an advertisement that would make you want to buy your art. Well, if your strengths are in your art and creativity, then leverage those strength in your advertising!

Make art out of your advertising! Make art out of your postcards and posters and flyers and whatever you dream up. Stop people on the streets with your art. It will make them want to see more of your art. And that’s the goal, right?

In the last 5 years, I can probably count on one hand the number of shows I have attended because of a poster I saw. In passing, most posters are barely a blip on my radar. And the majority of the posters I do notice follow the conventional rules of theater posters: Company Logo + Visual Representation of Show + More Details Than a Passerby Can Remember = Show Poster. How useful is that really? How much time do you really spend reading a poster? Probably less than a minute. Maybe even less than 30 seconds. In that amount of time, what information are you really going to digest? Show title? Producing Company (if you’ve heard of it or they have a clever name)?

In an era of increasingly multi-tasked living (listening to MP3’s on your iPhone while texting and crossing the street), how can you stop somebody in their tracks, and make them absorb your advertising?

Give them a reason to stop. Give them something captivating. Create a poster or postcard or whatever that gives them a taste of your art. Give them a taste of you. That’s what they’re really buying, right? You are trying to convince them that your art is going to be worth the money that they are going to shell out. So why not give your advertising the same artistic attention that your art has received. Make art out of your advertising!

Give your advertising more life and meaning than just a vehicle for dates, times and places. If you turn a poster into a piece of art, people who will like your art are more likely to stop to look at it. The more interesting it is to look at, the longer they will look. In that time, they will form an opinion about the poster, and that will turn into an idea of whether or not they want to buy your art. Granted, a poster is only one piece of your overall marketing campaign - but if you make a poster worth talking about, it is going to help fuel the conversations that will make people want to buy your art.

Here’s a good benchmark to give yourself: would you pay $5 to buy a copy of your poster? Would you pay $5 for most of the posters you see around town? Probably not. What would you need to see in a poster to make it worth $5? Now make that poster.

The handful of shows I have seen based on a poster? Every one of them - I would have paid $5 for the poster. Now, whether your art is worth the asking price is an entirely different matter. But the advertisement’s job is not to keep them coming back, that’s your job. The advertisement’s job is just to get them to come once.

And those posters did their job.

It seems like all of the arts and theater bloggers love to blog about marketing. Which I think is wonderful. It is a critical topic in any industry, but especially in an industry, like ours, that is generally weak in that department. But a couple of recurring things seem to be happening:

1. The more we talk about marketing, the more we still talk about marketing
2. We are very self-deprecating about our poor business skills in comparison to our art skills

Ah, the self-loathing artist! We know that we are great at our art (though we’ll never be satisfied with it…curses!) and we hope and dream for that brilliant business mind to come along and save us and put our work out there for the world to see. Or we do it ourselves and fail. Or we hide our work and hope that it never reaches the light of day. Or some other stereotypical depiction of the artist’s struggle with business and, therefore, success.

Yes - we all know: artists are not business people. Or at least they need to work harder at the business side. Except for those golden exceptions that come along once in a blue moon. Those people we refer to as “sell outs.” Right? Success in business = must have sacrificed something artistic to get there.

What is this weird, black and white obsession with separating art and business? Yes, some things are just business (financials) and some things are just art (the new ballet you just choreographed). But why lump everything into two camps and pretend like there isn’t a beautiful, opportunity-filled grey area?

I encourage every artist out there to EMBRACE THE GREY! (As unartistic as that may sound.)

Okay - so you’re good at making art. Right? So instead of beating yourself up for what you’re not good at, let’s focus on your strengths: making art.

Regardless of how impressive your business skills are - people are not buying your art because of your business skills. Your business skills only help facilitate the buying part. But without your art, no amount of business skill would bring them in. They are buying YOUR art. The most important part of that being YOU.

Now think about that for a moment. People are attracted to what you make and how you make it. That is your product: you and your art.

Marketing and advertising are merely compelling means of getting you and your art noticed. What better way to do that than to do what you do best: make art.

MAKE ART out of your marketing and advertising! Hell, make art out of your entire business operation!

All forms of marketing should be a representation of you and your art. Period. And who is the best at representing your art? YOU.

You can try all sorts of showy, “proven methods” - but if they aren’t you, they’re dishonest. Nobody wants to buy dishonesty. And if you’re merely doing the same thing everyone else is doing, why should anyone buy your art rather than someone else’s? By doing what everyone else is doing - you are shouting to the world, “I’m just another one of them!” Remember: the goal is to get out into that Blue Ocean!

What’s unique about you is your art. So don’t stop making art when you’re done making your art. Sell your art by making more art! You’re creative, more creative than most marketing and advertising jockeys out there. Just listen to or watch any commercial. They’re not written by writers. They’re written by people using “proven methods” to market.

And then they wonder why everyone fast forwards through the commercials on their TiVo.

Let’s stop there and digest for the evening. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to put you into your advertising.

Adam Thurman recently blogged about the NEA’s new publication All America’s a Stage: Growth and Challenges in Nonprofit Theater. His posting urges all arts organizations to take responsibility for attracting audiences to the arts. The New Colony firmly believes in this principle. So much so, that we built it into our mission statement.

In the NEA’s publication, they find that the number of nonprofit theaters in the US has doubled over a 15-year period: 991 theaters in 1990 to 1,982 in 2005. At the same time, non-musical theater audiences have dropped from 25 million people to 21 million people. You don’t have to be an economics scholar or have written a thesis on supply and demand to know that that is a very foreboding picture for future arts organizations. More shows to attend and less people to attend them equals the arts equivalent of a stock market crash: revenue is spread so thin that many companies cannot pay their bills and are forced to close their doors.

So what do we do?

Is this the time to finally listen to dad and go get a degree in something practical? Are we commiting ourselves to a 401k-less life of bagging groceries at age 85 to pay the bills? Or can we actually push back against the walls closing in around us?

For the practical, self-preservationists amongst us - the answer is “yes” to the first two questions. For the foolhardy dreamers that remain - the answer is a resounding “HELL YEAH!” to the third question. But how to do we do it? How do we push back those walls? How do we build up the necessary momentum? Because it won’t happen instantly. There is no biblical precedent of God striking the human race with a spontaneous case of arts-support. So the goal is first to slow the moment of the opposing force and then to reverse it to our benefit.

But what is that opposing force? We have to recognize it and name it if we want to thwart it. So what is it? APATHY.

Apathy doesn’t mean a distaste for or hatred of the arts. It means that people don’t care either way. The arts are so unimportant that they don’t even register as a blip on the radar. The US and World Population Clock estimates (as of December 22nd at 8:26am Central Time) that the US population is 305,937,406 people. That means that only (a declining) 6.86% of the population is attending non-musical theater.  So how do we keep that 6.86% caring while simultaneously making the other 93.14% care? The answer is actually rather simple:

Keep that 6.86% caring!

Artists are not going to fight the momentum alone. First we have to make our supporters part of the fight, part of our army. Let’s steal a page from politics: to win an election you need to energize your base. Once you have your base heated and excited - their excitement is going to attract some of those semi-apathetic stragglers who get dragged to shows by friends every once in a while. If we can make those semi-apathetic audience members care - they are going to attract their completely-apathetic friends. But it all starts by keeping that 6.86% happy! We don’t have the resources, time, or support to go after the apathetic. In doing so, we would continue to lose supporters and the momentum to reverse the trend will only be more difficult to build up. So let’s focus on who we already have.

How do we keep them happy? How do we keep them caring?

Adam is entirely correct in his post: make art that makes people want to see and experience more art! Notice - that doesn’t just mean “make art.” Children make art with mud on their driveways. That doesn’t inspire their parents to go check out the other mud collages on neighboring driveways. You need to make art that makes people want to see more of your work and to check out the work of others. To use the airplane analogy: put your own oxygen mask on first and then assist those around you.

FOCUS ON YOUR WORK FIRST: Be judicious in your work. Make sure it is of the highest caliber. Be exciting and original. Take risks. Create art that speaks to your audience. Engage your audience to participate in what you are doing. Make them feel like they are an integral part of your work (because they are!!) Be a representative for your artform. How can you tell people, “Support the arts!” when you’re not producing anything of interest? Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. Focus on your small piece of the puzzle and make it the best you can.

The individuals and organizations that place a high value on their work, the reason for their work, and their audience will find that their audience will value them equally. At that point - human nature will begin to take its course. Humans like to do the cool thing - and if your audience feels that the cool thing to do is to see your art - then others are going to want to do that cool thing too. And when they begin to stick their toes into that foreign water…show them that they are right in doing so! Make them see the value in your work. And make them see the value in their participation. Once you have accomplished that, make them see the value in the work of others.

ASSIST THOSE AROUND YOU: Now that your audience and their friends find value in your work and trust you, help guide them towards other art that may appeal to them. The arts should not be a lonely universe. We need to help each other. But you can only help others if you have developed the respect of your audience and peers. Once that trust is built, we can begin leveraging our networks and relationships to stabilize and build everyone’s bases and push towards audience growth.

That is the way to reverse the current momentum and to push back.

For all the New Colony fans looking for something new and exciting to see for the holidays, we highly recommend checking out the following two shows: A Red Orchid Theatre’s A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant and Victory Gardens Theater’s The Snow Queen.

Scientology Pageant is a fast and hilarious 60 minutes where ten children teach the audience about the history of Scientology, beginning with the birth of L. Ron Hubbard. The young actors are brilliantly earnest in thir performances and never play up the fact that they are in on the joke. The show has been extended through January 4th - but don’t wait until the day of to buy tickets. This show is selling fast and shows no signs of slowing as the holiday season comes to an end. Catch this show before it closes! And let’s all hope they bring it back again next year. And for an extra laugh - check out The Decider’s interview with the show’s young actors.

The Snow Queen, featuring Nicole Pellegrino (Amelia in Amelia Earhart Jungle Princess), is a rock and blues spectacle involving puppetry, dance, and a live band on stage. Victory Gardens has been refining the show each year, and this is certainly the best Snow Queen yet. If you’re looking for a fast and furious alternative to the traditional holiday fare, The Snow Queen is your show. At Friday night’s performance - the audience could barely sit still through many of the songs. But be sure to listen carefully or you’re likely to miss all of the fun wrapped up in Michael Smith’s wickedly funny and lightning-quick lyrics.

New Colony Composer Julie Nichols (Love is Dead, Tupperware) is one of the brains behind the internet’s first fully-improvised public radio parady podcast: The Fraudkast. NPR parodies are nothing new to the comedy scene - but there has never been a parody as cleanly produced and hilarious as this one.

And Julie isn’t the only New Colony member involved in the project. Executive Director Gary Tiedemann is featured in a segment in Episode 4. For those of you who weren’t aware of Gary’s voiceover skills - you’re in for a treat.

Tonight and Sunday night are the last two opportunities to see New Colony members Michael Peters (Amelia Earhart Jungle Princess) and Nate Santana (FRAT) featured in The Side Project’s Cut to the Quick: Static / Cling.  These two are featured together in the piece What Happened When… by Daniel Talbott, directed by Anna C. Bahow:

Behind a closed door in an old rundown house, two brothers wait for the snow to start falling outside. Their conversation, at first filled with stories of their family and townsfolk, turns to an unraveling of memory and secrets that lead to a new beginning for one and a release for the other. From the playwright of last year’s acclaimed Slipping.

Wednesday at 7:30 PM
Sunday at 5:00 PM

Tickets: $15.00 single evening ticket
$10.00 industry tickets when purchased online
$29.00 three-show flex pass
$49.00 five show flex pass
$69.00 entire year-long festival flex pass (all eight programs)
Group discounts available

The Side Project
1439 W Jarvis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60626
(773) 973-2150