The mission of The ACT is to facilitate social change through the medium of entertainment. The ACT achieves this by involving individual community members in the theatrical process, which also helps to eliminate the misconception of theatre being elitist. The ACT further attempts to make theatre more accessible by appealing to the young, an audience mostly ignored by today’s theatres.
In order to achieve it’s mission, The ACT will:
The ACT is not run in a hierarchical manner. Rather, decisions are made through concensus, with specialists (i.e. lighting designers, sound designers, costumers, etc.) informing the rest of the company of what is and is not viable.
All ACT performances will have redeeming social messages or otherwise educate the audience about something they would not have known had they not seen the play.
Finally, The ACT is about having fun and making “learning” exciting. No matter how well intended, no one appreciates being force fed a message. Therefore, The ACT fosters a rock ‘n’ roll, or in theatrical parlance, rock opera, mentality.
The ACT is a theatre for the young and young thinking, many of whom are socially active even if they choose not to act on it. The young are a group that seem to be ignored by most theatres, whose audiences are comprised mainly of Baby-Boom and older generations. The exception to this would be the audiences at children’s theatres, but this is not what is meant by “young” above. The young mentioned earlier refers to the age group consisting of teens to thirty-somethings, generally referred to as Generation X, and could also extend to include people in their forties, depending on how young-thinking they are. The young form an age group that generally does not attend theatre.
The biggest reason the young tend not to attend theatre is because most theatres do not produce shows that interest this age group. And since this age group does not attend theatre, the companies put on shows that their attending audience does appreciate: a viscious circle.
The young age group, then, represents an untapped market. In order to best attract this age group as an audience, this plan examines utilizing a coffeehouse to liven up the theatre, mixing arts genres, and stressing the community involvement of the DIY punk culture.
The ACT is located in Pittsburgh and thus considers the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area as the primary geographic community to serve. Being a small start-up, the secondary community is currently considered to be Allegheny County, but The ACT is striving to enlarge that to the tri-state area and make Allegheny County the primary community to serve.
One thing that is both good and bad about Pittsburgh is the proliferation of arts organizations in the area. This is good because it shows that the populace is interested in the arts but it is also bad because it means there are that many more arts organizations for a patron to choose to attend instead of The ACT.
Besides the arts, The ACT could potentially lose patrons to other forms of entertainment, especially sports. Potential conflicting forms of entertainment in the Pittsburgh area include Steelers, Pirates, Penguins, and Pitt football games, spending a day at Kennywood, and going to see one of the many concerts that come to either Star Lake or the I.C. Light Ampitheatre. Steelers games would be especially problematic because all tickets are sold out for five years in advance, so anyone who has a ticket won’t think twice about not going to the game.
Census data for Allegheny County (the Census Department breaks things down to the county, not to the city) shows the population to be about 85% white, over 12% black, and less than 1% hispanic.
The younger audiences are more likely to be open to different cultures, especially the college students who are more diverse than the general population in Pittsburgh. However, they have both budget and time constraints that The ACT needs to take into account.
Younger people, especially students, are more spontaneous than the general population, so many arts organizations lose out on the last minute ticket buyers who might otherwise come and see their show.
The other contingent of an ACT audience is predicted to be social activists/socially conscious individuals. Such individuals usually don’t have as much discretionary income as the average person and are also probably more spontaneous than the average person.
Being a theatre, The ACT and El Café Café will serve art along with food and drinks. But in order for the customer to obtain the full arts experience, more than just theatre will be offered. The popularity of karaoke and poetry readings will enhance the night’s theatrical experience. Other popular arts related pasttimes include live music, comedians, and magicians, something The ACT will incorporate into the overall experience that is The ACT and El Café Café. During sets, The ACT’s improv troupe will keep the audience entertained, thus exposing theatre to a potential, and captive, audience.
Pittsburgh being a sports town, El Café Café will also utilize football to draw people in and expose them to theatre. Acting as a sports bar, El Café Café will have televisions that show Saturday Pitt Games, Sunday afternoon football, and Monday Night Football. During half time, The ACT’s improv troupe will perform a skit that is either sports related or draws on what has happened in the game thus far.
Finally, El Café Café will also serve as an exhibit space for both local and national artists. The types of artwork exhibited are only limited by the imaginations of their creators and the works will even be for sale if the artist so desires.
The ACT will not neccesarily have to create new pieces of work in order to present a rock opera. Rock operas that already exist obviously include Rent, The Who’s Tommy, and even The Tooth of Crime by Sam Shepard. There also concept albums by bands such as Queensrÿche, Savatage, Trans Siberian Orchestra, and even Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Rainbow. Local possibilities include collaborations with Squonk Opera, Rickety Worldwide, and maybe even the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (even though Metallica are now considered sell-outs by many, before the Napster debacle they did collaborate with the San Francisco Symphony for the S & M album).
Strategy
To attract people that will become a reliable audience base.
Objectives
Utilize El Café Café and improv to introduce people to theatre; offer post-show discussions
Action Plan
El Café Café will be used to introduce people to the theatre who might not otherwise attend theatre. Alcohol and Mexican food will be served at the café. While people are eating, an improv troupe will be performing, introducing people to the theatre. El Café Café will also be home to musicians, comedians, karaoke night, poetry readings, and even magicians. The café will offer a cool place to hang out, and people will be used to coming there, so venturing forth for a play put on by The ACT hopefully won’t be something completely dismissed without thought.
In order to get the sports fans interested in theatre, El Café Café will have TVs with Pitt and Steelers games showing on game day. During half time, an improv sketch concerning the game or sports in general will be performed. Improv will also be used during DIY weekends to get non-theatre attendees interested in theatre.
In order to insure the audience understood the play, and to foster interest, a post-show discussion will be held with the actors and possibly the director. This also gets people to talk about what they’ve just seen and will raise awareness about whatever issue that evening’s performance covered.
Strategy
To maintain said audience base.
Objective
Offer them benefits for becoming an ACTor.
Action Plan
In order to keep our audience base interested in The ACT, we will offer them the chance to become ACTors, or membership subscribers. The benefits to becoming an ACTor include a free subscription to the Script, the opportunity to host a DIY weekend, a vote in our end of the season awards ceremony, the Power to the People Awards, and a chance to help pick one of the plays to be produced in the upcoming season.
Strategy
To enrich the audience’s experience while at The ACT.
Objective
Offer food and drink; offer a wide variety of entertainment options; offer the DIY weekend
Action Plan
El Café Café will help make the theatrical experience more enjoyable because food and drink can be enjoyed with the play, just like at the movies. The post-show discussions will also add to the experience. The DIY weekend allows audience members to host and decide what next month’s topic will be, while the improv troupe offers a light-hearted wrap-up.
September
Back to School Historical/Cultural Play
November
New Play Harvest
Halloween Week
Halloween Melodrama Fundraiser (runs at midnight)
December
Holiday Play
January
New Year, New Play
March
Spring Break Rock Opera
May
Cinco de Mayo Teatro Latino (always opens May 5)
July
The Audience Revolution: Audience Chosen Play (always opens July 4)
Note that the Halloween Melodrama Fundraiser is not part of the regular season (i.e. subscription packages do not include a ticket to this show). Also note the difference between the New Play Harvest and the New Year, New Play: the latter is a contemporary play while the former is a world premiere of a play never seen before publicly (excluding staged readings). The ACT hopes to make this into a national contest with submissions from both established and new playwrights. The New Play Harvest will not be a staged reading (but plays that have received staged readings are still eligible to enter the contest) but a full production of a play that has never before received one. Submission deadline for the New Play Harvest is May 31 and the winner will be chosen by mid-July.
The upcoming season, including announcing and honoring the winning New Play Harvest playwright, will be made public at the Power to the People Awards ceremony, held on closing night (actually Sunday matinee) of The Audience Revolution: Audience Chosen Play. CMU and Pitt both offer summer classes, so the fact that the ceremony is held in summer should not pose a problem for the college audience. Since this is the closing night of the Audience Chosen Play, it offers the perfect opportunity for ACTors to choose next year’s Audience Chosen Play.
In order for the Audience Chosen Play to also be eligible to recive awards, voting for the awards to be presented at the ceremony will begin one week after the opening of the Audience Chosen Play. ACTors can vote up to, and even at, the ceremony, their names having been collected at the door. And since their names are collected, we can hand them out our new season brochures and only worry about mailing the brochures to people who did not receive attend the ceremony.
College orientations are usually held around the middle of August, so we need to have our upcoming season brochures ready by the beginning of August. This means we should have as much information about the upcoming season selected by the time of the Power to the People Awards ceremony so that when the Audience Chosen Play is selected all we have to do is add that and send it off to the printer. While handing out promotional material and/or manning a booth at orientation, we can also recruit and/or replace Student Representatives.
The bad thing about our season starting with the beginning of the school year is that it gives students who have never heard of us little time to acquire a season subscription. That being the case, we will have a quota of seats set aside that can only be filled with student subscriptions. Additionally, we will accept student subscription offers up to September 30; all other subscription offers must be in by opening night of the season’s first show. Since this means the students will probably have missed the first show of the season, student subscriptions will include a ticket redeemable for an extra seat at any show in the regular season. The subscription package will not include a ticket to the first show of the season, so if they return their subscription order form to us in enough time, they can use that extra ticket to see the first show.
Since shows will be done roughly once every other month, advertising materials and media kits for the next show will generally be prepared during the current show’s run. So preparations for the New Play Harvest promotion will be made during the Back to School Play, preparations for the Back to School Play will be made during the Audience Chosen Play, etc. In other words, promotion packages will be started two months before that show is scheduled to open. Advertisements will start running two weeks before the play is scheduled to open.
The Halloween fundraiser, running the week before the New Play Harvest opens, complicates things a little. Since it is a fundraiser, we want to give it the attention it’s due. However, since it is purposefully campy, the “quaility” does not need to be as high: “stupid” ideas are much more likely to work to promote the Melodrama than any other show. Thus we just need to be sure to place the advertisements in enough time and we can focus our creative energies on promoting the New Harvest Play. We also have to make sure to get the timing correct so that we are not competing against ourselves in advertising, i.e. having ads for the Melodrama and the New Harvest Play running at the same time.
Promoting the New Year, New Play to college students might also pose a problem because they will be home for Christmas vacation. However, the break can be used to inundate the campus with posters and we can take advantage of the fact that a new semester is starting, meaning the students are not under the pressure of homework and projects. Christmas cards can be sent to the students’ permanent addresses and New Year’s cards can be sent to their local Pittsburgh addresses. The Christmas cards should be able to be folded into an ornament and should be sent at least three weeks before Christmas in order to ensure they arrive on time. The New Year’s cards, actually calendars, can be sent after the new year starts. The usefulness of the calendar will be appreciated and it is a relatively unobtrusive way of letting them know a show is coming up shortly. In fact, the rest of the season’s plays can be printed on the calendar, serving as a constant reminder whenever any show is coming up.
INCOME
Subscription
*
Subscription Total Revenue
$42,609
Single Tickets ($5 a piece)
*
Single Ticket Total Revenue
$84,655
Total Earned Revenue
$127,264
Marketing Budget is 25% of Total Earned Revenue
$127,264 X 0.25=$31,816=Marketing Budget
EXPENSES
*
RADIO
*
RADIO TOTAL
$11,156.40
PRODUCTION/MISC
*
PRODUCTION TOTAL
$4,917.46
GRAND TOTAL MARKETING
$31,488.61
We also predicted each advertisement’s target audience. By doing research and profiling audience members, we can determine whether or not each advertisement was cost effective. For instance, it is believed that the Post-Gazette will only attract Young Professionals. If they do not come we need to decide if we need more frequent ads in the paper or determine if they are just not reading it. However, if we draw in audience members who we didn’t think we would draw in with the Post-Gazette, then it has proved its effectiveness. That does mean, though, that we have to rethink our assumptions about who does and does not read the Post-Gazette.
It is assumed that the Hispanic population in Pittsburgh, although small, will attend The ACT frequently and in large numbers when plays dealing with Hispanic themes, such as a pastorela for the Holiday Play and the Cinco de Mayo Teatro Latino, are offered. If they do not attend, we will need to determine the reasons why. Such reasons could range from lack of awareness of the presentations or Anglicization, either on our part or the part of Pittsburgh’s Hispanic community, and we will need to find ways to counter each problem. It is also our belief that the Melodrama and the rock opera will appeal to the younger audience we are aiming for and bring them in by the droves. If for some reason these shows are poorly attended, we must examine if the reason is because of lack of awareness or because they aren’t as interested as we thought they would. By offering tickets to these events over the radio, we can guage if their is interest or if we need to buy more air time.