Every January we emerge, blinking like naked mole rats in the harsh light of day from the holiday season. Every Christmas, the building is packed and this year was particularly dramatic, as not only did 3,500 of you come to see Santaland Diaries (a new record), but Spring Awakening, Silent Night of the Living Dead and The Reindeer Monologues were at near capacity for the last two weeks of December. Add the two repertory works performed by the striking Noemi Schloesser from Salomee Speelt, and I half expected to return to a smoking crater in the ground when I opened up the building on the 2nd of January. And we weren't the only ones near-living at the Wit, some of our members were here every weekend in the month of December just to see everything.
But of course, the holiday season passes and we're all supposed to take stock and consider our resolutions for a new year. My track record for personal New Year Resolutions is only about 50/50. The things I'm interested in at the beginning of each year tend to fall by the wayside as I chase new, shiny dreams. But the theater can make some resolutions as well. We've been in full operation for about 18 months, and I do think it's time to make a resolution or two. Here's our first:
Figure out where we are going. All of us.
This one is top of my list. And it comes directly our of our history, so a little examination of the past is probably useful in looking ahead to the future.
One of the key design decisions I made when organizing Theater Wit was that it was a theater with a space. I've written about why I feel that's critical for a theater. And then we, well, did it. Now, building out a space is famous for totally commandeering a theater's resources and energy. Mike Daisey talks, to great effect, about how making buildings destroys the integrity of producing organizations. In his gripping solo piece, How Theater Failed America, he has a fantastic story about how the pressures of running a large institutional theater permanently changes the type of work that can be presented there, often relegating the very art that created the institution to a small studio space ghettoized from the mainstage.
Now, I saw Daisey's piece one week after we opened our new theater. Which, in retrospect, was just as well, since it would have FREAKED ME OUT. But I think, in the spirit of our new year's resolutions, it's worth looking back at our first eighteen months and see what happened.
The biggest advantage we've realized is in gaining freedom to program. Far from changing or restricting our programming, having a home has enabled me to persue our artistic mission more truly. When we shifted from place to place, we spent all our effort telling you where we were, instead of telling you about the work. Settling down has enabled me to focus on our play selection, our deepening relationship with some of today's most important playwrights and tuning our work for a specific impact in a specific room. I feel much more freedom to offer work that isn't specifically "marketable" or has a great elevator pitch or tag line, because you, our audience, are coming to our shows much much more often.
I think some of this is directly attributable to the space and our new operations, where we did some counter-intuitive things.
- We shrank. We had been producing in a larger house. The material costs of our productions shrank by about 18% and our rental cost dropped by about 20%. We put that money directly into performer salaries and adding preview performances which has allowed us to improve the quality of our work tremendously.
- We shared. The model of our new building was always based around a shared space that other companies could rent and produce entire seasons in. More importantly, we resolved not to finance our own productions with rental income from the theater space. This was a risky strategy because we didn't know if we would get lost in our own space. And it entailed a huge investment of time and money without direct recompense. How do we best support work by other companies while still maintaining a direct relationship with you, our audience? So we decided to share the audience as well. We started programs like the FlexPass and Membership cards to actively encourage our audience to explore other companies' work. Again, we run these programs at cost so we don't profit financially from them, but we deepen our audiences' relationship with us and the visiting companies simultaneously. We redesigned our website to help audiences find the amazing variety of work produced in the building. And it seems to be working. Last season, twenty five thousand people came to Theater Wit. Three thousand of them attended shows by two different companies. A growing number of members attend our theater two to three times a month. Single ticket sales for our own shows are increasing 15% show over show for the last eighteen months. This year, 18,000 people have come to the Wit in the last three months.
- We stopped discounting For our own shows (we don't impose any pricing practices on renting companies), our new ticket model releases tickets to each show in blocks, starting at $18. Once the $18 tickets are sold, the next block goes on sale for $24 and so forth and so on. I wanted to ensure that prices were egalitarian while still making sure we kept ourselves operationally afloat. Rather than subject people to a crazy hunt for discount codes and discount ticket mailing services and sites, anyone can see any one of our shows for a low price with a reservation far enough in advance. And members get to see multiple plays even cheaper if they wish. We do still release tickets for same day sales at the HotTix booth to support that community of theatergoers and the League of Chicago Theaters. We also offer discount tickets to students under 25 at the door. Apart from that, there are no special offers, no deals. And both audience size and revenues have increased since we started this policy.
- Bring ticketing in house. The current trend for theaters is to outsource their ticketing systems to third parties. We wanted you to talk to our own staff about all the shows, and we also wanted to get rid of aftermarket ticketing fees. This has taken a huge effort of time and money, but we can now staff a box office by someone who's actually eaten at the restaurants he recommends, who's seen the plays, etc. And we can do it without charging you facility fees, service fees, credit card processing fees, renovation fees, etc.
When I look at the company's history over the last seven years, I see so many of our decisions made in response to a key operational concern: We're making a space. From the conception of our company, starting with a home base was a given. This affected a huge range of decisions, from frequency of production to type of programming. It's hard to over-estimate how critical the long-term plan of building a home was in every aspect of our operations.
Now, of course, we have a home. And, unlike most of the dire warnings about how space confines you, having the physical building completed is wildly freeing for us. We have a much broader range of options available at every turn. The loss of the build-a-space priority (and the gain of have-a-space) has multiplied our options immeasurably.
But all this means we have to refocus as an organization. We are refocusing on our mission, our values and our artistic sensibility, and we need to do it company-wide, from the board down to the interns. Here are the questions we are looking to answer this year.
What is Theater Wit?
Who are we and what do we want to become next?
How does our space and our programming enhance our community of theaters? of audience?
I can't answer those questions in a bubble. So, we are doing some formal strategic planning sessions with the staff and the board. We're also just sitting at the bar and hashing these questions out. And we are going to our audience and other theaters and finding out what they have to say. Heck, I'm going to this blog, so if you have any ideas about these questions, sound off in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.
