EPISODE NINE - “WHY IS THEATER MORE IMPORTANT NOW THAN EVER?”
Victoria Bailey, Executive Director of the Theatre Development Fund (TDF), speaks with Hal about making the arts welcoming for all audiences. She and Hal discuss the beauty of a child’s first visit to Broadway, how producers can support contemporary American playwrights, and the healing power of storytelling.
Victoria Bailey has been the executive director of TDF since 2001. The not-for-profit organization is dedicated to bringing the performing arts to everyone. TDF sustains live theatre and dance by engaging and cultivating a broad and diverse audience and eliminating barriers to attendance and envisions a world where the transformative experience of attending live theatre and dance is essential, relevant, accessible, and inspirational. TDF fulfills its mission by expanding access through ticketing, accessibility, and information initiatives; by cultivating communities through school and community engagement programs and by supporting theatre makers through training, professional development programs, and national audience research.
Highlights of Ms. Bailey’s tenure included playing a key role in the construction of the award winning new TKTS booth at Duffy Square, expansion of TDF’s award winning education programs, and the introduction of sensory friendly Broadway performances. Ms. Bailey recently completed a national research project in co-partnership with Brad Erickson from Theatre Bay Area titled Triple Play, examining ways to strengthen the relationship between playwrights, theatres, and audiences as a means to increase audience appetite for new and risky work. Previously, she was instrumental in the execution of a comprehensive study of the lives of American playwrights and the production of new American Plays. The study culminated in Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play.
Prior to her appointment at TDF, she had a nearly 20-year association with Manhattan Theatre Club. Ms. Bailey is Theatre Management and Producing Advisor and Adjunct Professor at the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and a member of the board at the Times Square Alliance. She recently completed a three-year term on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee. Ms. Bailey received a B.A. in history from Yale College.
TDF is the only not-for profit organization dedicated to serving the entire spectrum of the performing arts with programs that touch the lives of millions of New Yorkers and visitors each year. Learn more about TDF’s programs and outreach at tdf.org or on Instagram @tdfnyc.
transcript below!
Hal Luftig:
Hi everyone. This is Hal Luftig with my Broadway Podcast Network show, Broadway Biz, where every episode, I will chat with my friends, some of the top theater professionals in the business, about the business of Broadway.
Speaker 2:
(singing)
Hal Luftig:
Today's guest is Tory Bailey. Tory is the executive director of Theatre Development Fund, also known at TDF. TDF is an organization dedicated to bringing the performing arts to everyone. The work Tory does is so important and inspirational. I'm so glad she stopped by to tell us all about it on today's episode of Broadway Biz. Good morning, Tory. How are you today?
Tory Bailey:
I'm good.
Hal Luftig:
How's it all going?
Tory Bailey:
It's nice to be talking with you this morning. I'm good. It's a sunny day, sun's shining. It looks like it's going to be warm. I think I can garden a little bit this weekend, so all things considered, I'm pretty good. How are you?
Hal Luftig:
I'm good too, thank you. I am so thankful and honored that you are here with me today on this podcast. TDF, your organization, is one of my favorite organizations, I think, in the world.
Tory Bailey:
Well, thank you for saying that. And you're one of my favorite people too, and one of my favorite producers. You do great work.
Hal Luftig:
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Flattery will get you everywhere, I just [inaudible 00:02:02]. So Tory, as we get started, why don't we start with, what is Theatre Development Fund, and what does it do?
Tory Bailey:
Sure. TDF, technically we are a performing arts service organization. We're a not-for-profit. We started in 1968, so we're in our 52nd year of operation. And we are an organization that believes fundamentally that everyone should have access to the arts, the performing arts particularly, theater and dance. And we think that all New Yorkers, and really folks from all over the world should be able to enjoy theater and dance.
Tory Bailey:
And we have a whole host of programs that make it possible for folks to attend the theater who for any variety of reasons might not otherwise attend the theater. We provide access to tickets, we build communities, and we also work to support the people who make theater. And we do it in a host of ways, which I'm excited that I'm going to be able to talk about.
Hal Luftig:
Yeah. So let's just jump right into that. One of the things that I'm always asked is, why are theater tickets so expensive? And one of the reasons I'm most excited to have you on today, and one of the reasons I love TDF so much, is through its various programs, it allows everyone access. Can you talk about some of those programs?
Tory Bailey:
The thing that people know the most about TDF, if they know this, is that we are the organization that runs the TKTS booth, which is the discount ticket center in Times Square. The booth is located under the red steps at 47th and Broadway, and we've operated the booth since the early 70s when it was first conceived. And the booth, as I think everybody knows, provides discount tickets on the day of performance, generally at a 50% discount.
Tory Bailey:
We also have a membership program, which was actually our very first program from our beginnings. Basically there's a whole host of ways that you can qualify to be a TDF member. It's for teachers. It's for retired folks, union members, performing arts professionals, students, folks who work in the not-for-profit sector. It's geared for people who can't afford full-priced tickets. And as you said, Broadway tickets are very expensive. Off Broadway tickets are expensive, and there's a reason for that.
Tory Bailey:
Costs are high. Commercial producers have a responsibility to try and repay their investors so that their investors will be game for turning around and doing it again. But with costs being where they are, I think you really have to look at the macro world of pricing. And there has to be an entry point for everybody. There are a lot of people who can't afford full price, and they still should have access to Broadway. And there is a way, in any given house, I think to mix up the prices enough so that you've got a real mix of full price, and then you've got some less expensive tickets.
Tory Bailey:
The other reason that I think it's important to have tickets that people feel they can afford is that they can afford them on a repeat basis. [inaudible 00:05:23] wants theater to be something people do more than once in a year or two years. In other words, when tickers are really expensive, I think for some folks, it just becomes a special event. And you go to the theater when you're celebrating a birthday that ends in a five or a zero, or [inaudible 00:05:42].
Tory Bailey:
And other than those fives and zeroes, you don't go. And we actually need people to go more often. And the other big suite of programs are education and community engagement programs. And we worked a lot with you on that, Hal, with Kinky Boots. Kinky Boots was a favorite of our introduction to theater program. We work with 10,000 New York City high school students every year. Probably over the course of a fall, the students will see probably five to six shows. We often buy out a Broadway house, which when we started doing that a few years ago, I think the shows were apprehensive about it.
Tory Bailey:
I think the companies were. I think the company managers were. Because the idea of putting 1,000 New York City high school students in a theater together seemed daunting. But as we have done it, and as I'm sure you know having seen it, Hal, our young people are so prepared for the performance. They're enthusiastic, they're responsive, but they are respectful, they are engaged, they are there, and it's a life-changing experience for them. Kinky Boots was particularly valuable because obviously it touched on so many things that young people think about.
Tory Bailey:
It touched on inclusion. It touched on prejudice. I mean, just the whole nine yards. We really were very sad when the show closed, because we actually... I think you know this. When we knew it was closing, we decided we had to do one... We weren't going to do it. We added a performance and did one last performance, which was great. We know from research that we've done at TDF that one of the primary reasons people go to the theater is they want to go with a friend or a family member, and they want to, A, share the experience, and B, be able to talk about it afterwards.
Tory Bailey:
And I think one of the reasons theater is important is it teaches people that I can like a show, you can not like the same show, and we can both be right, that differences are okay, that differences are actually interesting, and that we can talk about differences. And I think in a society that has become much more strident and much louder, one of the reasons theater is important is because it encourages us to listen to other points of view and to learn about people who are different than we are, in a way that is perhaps accessible.
Hal Luftig:
Wow. Tory, I have to just say, if we weren't on the radio, I would reach out and hug you so hard, because you have hit on so many things that I personally think is important. I so agree with you that when a child sees a Broadway show, a live show for the first time, which many of them are experiencing through TDF, it is incredible to watch. I always show up at a TDF school performance, because to watch their faces is just something incredible to see.
Hal Luftig:
One performance of Jelly's Last Jam, which starred Gregory Hines in the time, and was about Jelly Roll Morton, who was the self-pronounced creator of jazz. And we had an audience of mostly inner school kids, and they did not realize. They weren't being rude. They didn't realize that you can't talk back to the people on stage. And they were so thrilled to see Gregory Hines that they were like, "Ooh, you go, Gregory. You tell her." That kind of stuff.
Hal Luftig:
And he was so great about it. He stopped the show, and he just waved his hands, and he stopped the show, and he said to the kids, "Okay, listen. This is how this is going to work. I'm going to do the show, right? And we can't have a dialogue while I'm doing the show, because there are very specific lines and things that I have to say. But after the show, I'm going to come out, and we can all talk about anything you want. Deal?" And all the kids screamed back, "Yeah, deal."
Hal Luftig:
And when I saw that, my heart just was going to explode, because these kids learned something. They were getting to experience something that they probably never would have before. And I can't agree with you more, that a child should see a Broadway show more than once, so it gets into their DNA, and they want to.
Hal Luftig:
Not just once, like you say, for a special birthday or something, but that it becomes an art form that they want to see, and they realize how it can stimulate their imagination and talk about different topics, whether they agree with it or not. I love that. And I just have to also give a big shout out to the autism program, because when you did do that at Kinky Boots, it was such a beautiful day.
Tory Bailey:
When we're doing a sensory-friendly performance. It's a show that's been running a while, and when you've been in a long-running show and you're doing it eight times a week, and you're really grateful that you have that opportunity and you have that employment, but you're doing the same thing eight times a week. The sensory-friendly performances really are a jolt, because the kids on the spectrum don't have the same filters that the rest of us have.
Tory Bailey:
And so their excitement and enthusiasm and their energy is palpable in a way that is not the case most of the time. And every time we do it, some number of performers will talk about, they come off stage and they burst into tears because they're so overwhelmed by the emotion that they're getting from the kids in the theater. It's one of those things that we didn't understand until we started doing it, was what that energy was.
Tory Bailey:
And you're right. It's a very different kind of performance, and we do work with the company ahead of time to make sure that they understand. We give the kids fidgets, we call them. They're just little squishy things that they can hold to help release excess energy. We give them to the children, and all of us at the office have them too, because everybody needs a fidget occasionally.
Hal Luftig:
I was going to say, at the Kinky Boots performance, you gave it to the producer, too.
Tory Bailey:
Exactly. But sometimes the kids will... I remember we did Christmas Story, maybe. I don't know. A fidget ended up on stage, and the actor just picked it up and tossed it right back. But they're very special performances. And when we started doing them, we are an organization that, as I said, believes everyone should have access. We're about building audiences for the theater. And we didn't really have an expectation that children on the spectrum were necessarily going to become ongoing theater goers, right?
Hal Luftig:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tory Bailey:
The motivation, because when you're a not-for-profit, you always have to come back to mission, because your mission is kind of your North Star. And if our mission is to build audiences, the question we had to look at was, how do the sensory-friendly performances build audiences? And of course what we realized is that for families with children on the spectrum, not only are the kids on the spectrum not going, no one is going in the family. They weren't going to the theater as a family experience, because if it's not a sensory-friendly performance, families are anxious.
Tory Bailey:
Are the kids going to act out? Is there going to be a moment where there's an outburst? And so we talked to families. Even with kids on the high end of the spectrum, there was a real anxiety about going to the theater. And the gift of these performance is it's not just for the child on the spectrum, it's for the whole family, because they get to go to the theater as a family. And of course, it means that for the other kids in the family, often they're going for the first time. And so it's building audiences in a different way, because we're creating a memory, right?
Hal Luftig:
Yep.
Tory Bailey:
Because when you do a family outing, not only do you do the outing, but you talk about it afterwards, and then six months later you say, "Remember when we went on that trip?" Or, "Remember when we went to the theater?" And it kind of gets into the fabric of the family's life. And so it's a different way of building audiences. And then the other thing we've learned is that for some kids, we hear from their families, for some kids on the spectrum, after going to TDF sensory-friendly performances for four or five performances, they then can go to performances with a neuro typical audience because they understand the routine, they know what to expect, they know the drill, as it were.
Tory Bailey:
And it's funny. We talk a lot about building audiences and about newcomers to the theater, and some of what we do for those families is what you need to do for everyone the first time they come to the theater. I think it's hard for people like you and me, Hal, to think of going to the theater as an intimidating experience, but it is for people who've never been.
Hal Luftig:
Yeah.
Tory Bailey:
Right?
Hal Luftig:
Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit, Tory, about, since this is called Broadway Biz, how the relationship, the artistic relationship between what TDF is trying to achieve in the artistic and financial relationship or what the producer's trying to achieve, how we work together and make that happen. Can you tell me a little bit, talk a little bit about how TDF starts a relationship with a Broadway show?
Tory Bailey:
Sure. People in the business know about us to some extent. So I think the general manager's office, the company manager's office, they know that the booth is there. They know about the membership program. And they know that we're there to sell tickets. So it's kind of general management 101, one of the resources that's out there is TDF. What people don't think about as much as they might, and it's our job to help them do this, is to think about TDF not only as a way to sell tickets that are going to go unsold otherwise, which is not to be sneezed at, but a way to get folks in who aren't going to come otherwise.
Tory Bailey:
In other words, what's the audience development? Part of what we do is we try and reach out to company managers and general managers and say, "When you're talking to your producers and you're talking to your marketing firms, let's remember that TDF members are there not just to fill empty seats, but also to get people in who wouldn't otherwise come." And you know this, Hal. I mean, I was at Manhattan Theatre Club for close to 20 years, and when we used to do shows in open-ended runs after the subscription run, I always put TDF members in the mix during the week because it was kind of a baseline, right?
Hal Luftig:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tory Bailey:
It meant that I knew some number of seats were, A, going to people who weren't going to come otherwise, and B, those seats were sold. The booth, it's a combination of, they know about TKTS. The producers know about it. I think that there's a lot of mythology about, should you go to the booth, shouldn't you go to the booth? If you go to the booth, what will people think? I mean, I like to say that most shows, at some point they're going to come to TDF.
Tory Bailey:
And unless they're one of those shows that sold out from day one, is a limited engagement and comes and goes in 12 weeks, it's bad producing to not make sure that you make tickets available at all price points when you have the tickets to make available. So in a healthy world, we're part of the equation. We're part of the mix.
Hal Luftig:
There is this mindset that if you have 100 tickets left at the beginning of the day when the box office opens, that tourists or people who just... There are many New Yorkers, tri-state people who decide day of, "Hey, let's go to the theater tonight." And the theory is that if you're not at the TKTS booth, that you will force those people who say, "Let's go to the theater tonight. And hey, you know what? I want to see Evita." And that's a great theory, but sometimes you end up with 50 seats not sold, or 80 of those seats not sold.
Hal Luftig:
And so I think what you said is a very important factor, that by having them at the TKTS booth, you are in fact capturing some of those sales. You're not just leaving, as they call it, money on the table. And you are allowing people who may not buy a full price ticket, tourist or not, because they just can't afford it, or just, for whatever reason, won't.
Tory Bailey:
One of the mistakes I think we, and I say we because as I said, I produced for all those years, and I still think about the producing community a lot. We have this idea that if we let people know that we have tickets available tonight, people will think there's something wrong with the show, as opposed to, I have a thousand seat theater, and guess what? 950 tickets have been sold, but I have 50 left. Which isn't such a bad thing, because it means 950 people have bought tickets to see you, right?
Hal Luftig:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tory Bailey:
I think people don't even necessarily know that they could go to the box office, because nobody runs an ad that says or shoots out an email that says, "Tickets available tonight." People say, "New block of tickets on sale next week." And so we hide the fact, if you will, some of the time, that there are tickets available. And it's a more and more day of, on demand kind of culture.
Tory Bailey:
And the theater has so many barriers that make it different than online entertainment, right? You have to go at a certain time. It's in a certain place. You have to plan ahead. There are so many things that already make it different than I can sit at home and download something and watch it whenever I want, with whomever I want, that we shouldn't make it harder. Right? We shouldn't make it feel even harder to buy a ticket. Can you tell I care about this? We need to do a better job of inviting people in and saying, "This is what this is going to be. This is funny. This is serious." Three sentences about the plot, and we'd do such a better job of getting more people in.
Hal Luftig:
One of the things I wanted us to talk about is that TDF is doing so much amazing work to make sure that the performing arts are accessible to everyone. An example of just one thing I personally learned, was during Children of a Lesser God, I saw the importance of representation of all types of stories told in the arts.
Hal Luftig:
It was enormous, the reaction we got from that play from the hard of hearing and then in the deaf community, because they kept saying again and again, "This is the first time I saw a play that told my story." And that was an amazing thing. So I'm wondering what you think about work that still needs to be done in diversifying audiences inside the theater, and how can we work better with marketing?
Tory Bailey:
Well, I think there's a variety of things. And I think some of it is, as you learned with Children of a Lesser God, some of it has to do with the stories that are being told on stage. And I think something that's so important is to remember that on the one hand, stories are universal, but on the other hand, people do want to see themselves represented in stories that they're watching on stage.
Tory Bailey:
And so part of the marketing effort I think is to get both messages across, which is of course always difficult. But people want to know, what's the story about? What is the play about? What's the musical about? And that's the part that's universal. And who's telling the story, and that can be a little bit more specific. And so I think you can have, the description can be it's a love story, and one of the further descriptors could be it's a love story, and the couple, among their many challenges, are navigating a relationship where one of them has profound hearing loss.
Tory Bailey:
You could do something like that. I think some of it is making sure that we're going to different outlets. I think diversifying audiences is one of the challenges that we have. And it's a financial challenge in part, right? This is why there's marketing, there's audience development. Marketing is more or less, people are selling tickets. You're reaching out to people who you know want what you have, you want to make sure they know about it, and they want to make sure that they're picking your play to go see rather than something else that night.
Tory Bailey:
Audience development is a little different, and it's where the diversification comes in. Because to some extent, you're curating an audience, and you have to go to people who don't always come to the theater. Right? One of the financial challenges, as you know, is the easiest person to sell a ticket to is someone who's already bought a ticket.
Hal Luftig:
I'm sorry. We call them low-hanging fruit.
Tory Bailey:
It's the low-hanging fruit, or it's low-hanging fruit. Marketers talk about modeling, making sure you model your outreach to look like the people who you've sold tickets to before. But what that means you end up with is, you end up with people who are the same people who are always in the theater. Right?
Hal Luftig:
Right.
Tory Bailey:
And so if you go to multi-buyers, obviously you're going to get a higher return rate. You owe it to your investors to be careful about how you spend your marketing dollars. But you're not going to reach people who don't always go to the theater. And so I think one of the things that TDF tries to do, and we started to do I think a little bit more successful, is to work with shows to say, "If you're looking for a specific kind of audience, we can help you find that audience." Right?
Tory Bailey:
So obviously, because we do a lot of accessibility work, if you're looking for an audience specifically with hearing loss because the show maybe speaks to that topic, we can help you find that. But it's also important to remember that once people feel welcome, any variety of folks will come see all sorts of shows. So it's both. It's reaching out to a specific audience when you want that audience for a specific play, but then don't ignore that audience when you're doing another play where you might not think to go to them instantly, right? It's an ongoing cultivation process. You want people to feel welcome all the time.
Hal Luftig:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Can you talk to me a little bit about how TDF does work, what things they do to find those diversified audiences?
Tory Bailey:
Yeah. One of the things we've done is we've spent a lot of time working on building relationships with community partners. And we've spent, over the last couple of years, we've really drilled down on our focus in reaching out to New York City all through the city. I think if you look at the demographics of ticket buyers from New York City on Broadway, it's predominantly Manhattan, and a few other neighborhoods in the five boroughs, but it's not widespread. Right?
Tory Bailey:
The Broadway ticket buyer doesn't hail equally from all boroughs. And there's a lot of people in the other boroughs. And so what we've done is, we have reached out to... We probably have 50 or 60 community partners at this point, and those are a whole host of organizations, whether it's Police Athletic Leagues, whether it's public libraries, whether it's not-for-profits. Often we work with not-for-profits and their staff. And we say, "This is here for you. Broadway's here for you. Off Broadway is here for you."
Tory Bailey:
We encourage them to buy TDF memberships, so that then we encourage them to buy them, and then we actively say to folks, "Here's what's available this week." We do email blasts that say, "You might check this out," so that we're trying to help people understand what's out there and tell them a little bit more about what the story's about. And producers are beginning to understand that that's a resource.
Hal Luftig:
Does TDF ever work with, for lack of a better word, a celebrity, or somebody within that community? Almost by accident, I'm a little ashamed to say, was... The idea came up during Children of a Lesser God to enlist the help of Nyle DiMarco, who listeners may remember. He is a deaf model. One of the ideas that came up at that point was, why don't we enlist his help to speak to the deaf community? He's almost like an icon.
Tory Bailey:
We haven't done that, and we should. And we've talked about it a little. There's a story that's kind of... It's legend, but it's true. Many years ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers had an incredible receiver, Lynn Swann, and he could stretch the extra two inches. And he always said, he was a ballet dancer. He took ballet, and that was how he... He wasn't a ballet dancer, but he took ballet. He was an athlete. But that taught him how to stretch just that much further.
Tory Bailey:
And I think it was for the Pittsburgh Ballet, he did a marketing campaign for them that was unbelievably successful. And so we've talked about it. We haven't done it, and I think we should. I think it's a really good idea, because you're getting people who already have trust and credibility in a community. When we work with community partners, this isn't celebrity at all, but we do find it's important. People who don't go to the theater, you need to invite them, you need to kind of encourage them, and then they become advocates, if you will, or ambassadors back in their neighborhoods to encourage people to go.
Tory Bailey:
You know. We hear about how nobody dresses up anymore, and people are chewing ice and whatever, and so I know a lot of producers who feel like it's gotten too casual. But I think if you ask someone who doesn't go to the theater, a lot of people would tell you they feel very insecure about that, and they feel like they're not welcome, and that it's an elitist activity. And I think one of the things that we need to do is make people understand that it's not elitist. The rules that we have versus the messaging that we give is really tricky for someone who hasn't been to the theater very much.
Hal Luftig:
I agree. I remember once during the run of Thoroughly Modern Millie, in the very first row, a family of six was eating a Kentucky Fried Chicken full dinner, with the coleslaw and the potatoes and the fried chicken. And the cast-
Tory Bailey:
Which they were passing back and forth, right?
Hal Luftig:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And the cast was visibly upset, not just for the flak of eating, but the smell of it.
Tory Bailey:
Right.
Hal Luftig:
I had to explain to them, besides actually wanting to go down there and saying, "May I have some?" The cast had to understand that these people weren't doing it necessarily to be rude. They just didn't know that theater was different than possibly staying at home and watching something on television.
Tory Bailey:
And we make it more and more complicated, because we always try and give people some of the rules. And it used to be that it was easy because you could say, "There's no food in the theater. There are drinks, but there's no food." But then of course the theater started selling food, right?
Hal Luftig:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tory Bailey:
You can buy candy and stuff at intermission. And we had an attendee through one of our programs who got really upset because it was the second or third time she'd been to the theater, and she brought a sandwich with her to eat at intermission. And the usher said, "You can't eat that sandwich." And she said, "Well, but other people are eating. You're selling them candy. Can't I eat my sandwich?" Right?
Hal Luftig:
Right. Right.
Tory Bailey:
And that makes someone feel like they're not... None of us like to be told we broke the rules, right?
Hal Luftig:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tory Bailey:
If I do something wrong because I'm going somewhere for the first time and I don't know the rules, I feel really stupid and embarrassed. And it's the same thing.
Hal Luftig:
Yeah. Yeah. And especially, you're also sending a message like, "You can't eat your own sandwich, but you could spend $30 and buy whatever it is they sell, and you can eat that." And that kind of makes them feel [inaudible 00:32:28] a little bit, like, oh.
Tory Bailey:
We have to understand that for the person who's coming to the theater, and certainly when they're coming for the first or second time, they're bringing with them experiences that have to do with attending other public events, because that's the vocabulary they have, right?
Hal Luftig:
Yeah.
Tory Bailey:
And so we have to help them understand what's different, but we want them to come back. And the way you make them come back is not make them feel stupid.
Hal Luftig:
Yeah. Excellent point. Excellent point. Tory, I wanted to talk a little bit about development, because it's one of the favorite things that TDF does. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about TDF's Triple Play, how it got started, and what you've learned from the conversations between the playwrights, audiences, and theaters?
Tory Bailey:
Triple Play is a project that I'm very passionate about. And interestingly enough, it continues to resonate in the field, which is great, because it actually started almost 10 years ago. And you may have been there, Hal, but there was a convening in Washington, in D.C., in January of 2011. And there was a lot of talk about audiences, and there was a lot of talk about how theaters try and reach new audiences.
Tory Bailey:
And somebody in the room said, "Why don't we ever actually talk to the playwrights? Why don't we ever talk to the artists about what they think about audiences?" And out of that weekend came this idea that it would be really interesting to actually have the playwrights and audiences in close conversation with each other, that institutional theaters around the country as they've grown have really put themselves between the artist and the audience.
Tory Bailey:
And so Triple Play was born out of this conviction that if we put the audience, playwrights, and the theaters in conversation together, we might be able to understand a little bit better how to build audiences for plays. This was about plays, it wasn't about musicals, and it was about single-ticket buyers, because subscription is on the wane around the country. And so it was, how do you develop a single-ticket buyer, and what do you need to do to get them to go to the theater more?
Tory Bailey:
So we went and raised money, and we ended up doing a study which took place in eight cities. We partnered with other service organizations, with the National New Play Network. We did over 7,000. We had surveys online. Over 7,000 surveys were completed. We did about 300 interviews, playwrights talking to audience members in eight cities around the country. And we learned some really interesting things. The single most important thing that people want is they want to know what the play's about. Right?
Hal Luftig:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tory Bailey:
They really want to know what the play is about.
Hal Luftig:
Yes.
Tory Bailey:
And I think that's really interesting to think about when you go back to thinking about how you market, which we were talking about a little bit ago, because often, if you go look at marketing materials for plays, the marketing material for a play will stress the credentials, if you will, of the director or the playwright or the star, and it'll be from the team that brought you from the director of... And you know what? People who don't go to the theater, they don't know who those people are.
Tory Bailey:
Interestingly enough, and this is probably more relevant in the non-profit sector, they're not particularly interested in whether or not the play is a premier. It's not a selling point. And in some instances, it's a real deterrent, because people are worried that it means it won't be finished. People go to the theater because they want to go out with friends. Right? They want to go to the theater. It's a social event, and they want to be able to talk with their friends about it afterwards.
Tory Bailey:
So the fact that they want to be entertained doesn't mean that they're not interested in being challenged. Entertainment has a kind of broad meaning. There's also a lot of stuff in this that we looked at and talked about in terms of people's interest in post-performance activities, whether they want talk backs, who they're interested in talking to. It was clear that exposure to playwrights would be really helpful, that they're really interested in, why does someone become a playwright? And what was the motivation for writing this play that the person wrote?
Tory Bailey:
They don't really care about the nuts and bolts. They're not interested in giving notes. They're not really interested in new play development unless they go all the time. The study took place over three or four years, and what's been really impressive, or rewarding I guess, not impressive, but rewarding is the better word, is that theaters have adopted some of the practices, right?
Tory Bailey:
The regional theaters that know about the work, they're doing more about telling people what the play is about. They're talking to the playwright a little bit more about... I think the assumption was the playwright wouldn't want to give away the plot. And as one of the playwrights that was involved said, "I can tell you what this play's about without giving away key plot points."
Hal Luftig:
That [inaudible 00:37:52]. Before I move on, I just wanted to finish this part of our conversation with what I think is a funny story. Years ago, I was one of the co-producers of a play called Death and the Maiden.
Tory Bailey:
Yeah.
Hal Luftig:
And it starred Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, and Richard Dreyfuss [crosstalk 00:38:08]-
Tory Bailey:
It was quite a cast.
Hal Luftig:
Yeah, and all directed by Mike Nichols. So we put our obligatory ad in The New York Times, and there was nothing we decided to say. Mike wanted not to say anything about what it was about. And lo and behold, because of the cast, I'm dating myself here, but these were the days before really Telecharge and that kind of thing. So you had to actually go to the box office if you [inaudible 00:38:37]. And there was a line in the middle of February from the Atkinson in the middle of 47th, around 8th Avenue-
Tory Bailey:
Wow.
Hal Luftig:
... all the way to 46th. Right?
Tory Bailey:
Right.
Hal Luftig:
And then people bought tickets, but then we started hearing, "Well, what's the play about? We don't know what the play's about." Which we thought, okay, good question, but it's a little after the fact. So we decided, we started to say internally, "The play is about two hours with a 15 minute intermission." Yeah, didn't quite work, but that's what we used. Tory, I wanted to ask you something because we're talking about development of new plays, and I do think development of new plays is uber important to the lifespan of theater.
Hal Luftig:
It is basically the plasma, if you will, or blood of what's going to keep theater going. And I do think that there are a group of an audience, a sector of our audience, that do want to be challenged. They're not going to the theater to see the next revival of whatever it might be. They really want to see theater that challenges them, is thought-provoking, makes them discuss things.
Hal Luftig:
But from the point of a producer as myself, developing those kinds of new plays can be very expensive, very risky, and time-consuming in a way that very quickly could turn into [inaudible 00:40:09]. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what TDF is doing to encourage producers like myself and others, and theater owners to help develop these new works.
Tory Bailey:
Well, I think the thing we do right now and have always done is to help producers know that if they do a play, there'll be an audience from TDF. We try really hard when we can to take... With our education programs, obviously we're looking for economies of scale, and so we often do, as you know, and we talked about it earlier, we'll take 1,200 kids to a musical. But we also take kids to plays, and we take kids in particular off Broadway to plays.
Tory Bailey:
We have to be careful about content, because when you're dealing with a classroom full of kids, you're dealing with 30 kids, you're dealing with 30 families and 30 sets of different opinions about what their kids should and shouldn't be exposed to. We do TDF Stages, which is our online magazine, if you will. We spend a lot of time interviewing playwrights and talking about plays. I would like us to figure out how to do more in partnership with producers on audience development for given plays.
Tory Bailey:
I think again, it comes back to the resources. I think one of my fantasies is that we raise some money so that then we could create some pilot programs and work with producers more, certainly on this issue of show descriptions. One of the things that we're going to do coming out of Triple Play is start seeing if how we talk about a play to the membership changes the purchase rate.
Tory Bailey:
So those are the kinds of things that I think we do. And I think the other thing is to just keep advocating overall for the value of going to the theater. And we live in a society where people tend not to listen to each other, and they tend to yell at each other, and I think one of the things that theater does is it gives people an opportunity to understand a little more deeply who other people are, why they think the way they think, where they're coming from, and what motivates them. And if we can humanize the other, it gets so much harder to denigrate the other. And that's I think part of what happens when people go to the theater.
Hal Luftig:
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And as a matter of fact, because I am developing a couple of new plays, expect me to knock on your door very soon.
Tory Bailey:
That would be great. That would be great. I would love that.
Hal Luftig:
What you just said was so important when we did Children of a Lesser God, because our whole MO was start listening. People speak different language. They have different colors, they have different customs and virtues and things like that, and we have to start listening. And that's what was I thought so beautiful about that play.
Tory Bailey:
This is what circles back to the thing about people like to go with a friend, and they like to talk about it afterwards. Because it's in the after that I think people end up exploring ideas that they have just seen in the story. I mean, I do it, you do it, we all do it. That's when we say, "You know, I never thought about it quite like that. Or I never understood that before, but it's so interesting that that character did such and such." I remember John Shanley, the playwright for... He's written many plays, but I remember when he wrote a play called Doubt, right?
Hal Luftig:
Yes.
Tory Bailey:
Remember Doubt? Which Manhattan Theatre Club did.
Hal Luftig:
Yes. Yes.
Tory Bailey:
And Shanley and Doubt is, for your listeners who didn't see it, Doubt is a play about a priest who's accused of abuse, and you don't know at the end. Right?
Hal Luftig:
She's accused by what would be the mother superior of the-
Tory Bailey:
The mother superior at a school. And you don't know. And the play did really well for a play, and Shanley said, "That's in part because act two happens on the way home." Because people who see it, they would leave, and you would hear these conversations between people about what they thought. And I saw it two or three times, and each time I saw it, I came to a different conclusion. Right? I couldn't even make up my mind.
Hal Luftig:
I know that we're in a very precarious time right now. We're recording this during the COVID pandemic, and everyone has a different sort of sense of this, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on why do you think, coming out of this, that theater will always endure, that there will be a Broadway, there will be [inaudible 00:45:28], and there will be theater for a very long time.
Tory Bailey:
I think coming out of this, theater is going to be more important than it's been in a long time. I think two or three things, but the real reason theater will endure is rooted in what theater's going to do for people as we come out of this event, which is that theater is healing. When something significant has happened in the world, a play is different night to night depending on what's happened in the world that people are bringing in with them. Right?
Tory Bailey:
The world does come in when the person comes in and sits down in the theater. They bring who they are in their experience of it, and then a group of people are sitting together and listening to a story. And storytelling has been around since they invented fire, right? Since they invented fire and people sat down and told stories.
Tory Bailey:
And theater is essentially storytelling. There is trauma that people have experienced, and I think going to the theater and going out and being engaged, I think people are, the part about, I want to go and I want to be with other people, and I want to go with my friend, and then I want to talk about this, the need for that's never going to go away.
Hal Luftig:
Amen, Tory.
Tory Bailey:
Never.
Hal Luftig:
I couldn't agree with you more. Amen. Well, as all good things do, this must come to an end, but-
Tory Bailey:
Well, and you promised you'll be knocking on the door with those plays.
Hal Luftig:
I will. I will. But before you go, I have three questions that I ask every guest right before we're done. And you just don't think about these, so I'm going to ask, and you just answer the first thing that comes in your mind. Okay? What is your favorite musical?
Tory Bailey:
I knew you were going to ask that. I don't have favorites. It's like asking me to pick a movie.
Hal Luftig:
No, no, no, no, no. I get that too.
Tory Bailey:
Here's what I'll tell you. The first one I ever saw was Hello, Dolly! with Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway, and in some ways that will always be my favorite musical moment in the theater.
Hal Luftig:
I can understand why. That was a great production. Okay. What was the wackiest moment that you've ever experienced in the theater?
Tory Bailey:
As an audience member?
Hal Luftig:
Either or. As an audience member, as a professional.
Tory Bailey:
When I first started working in the theater, I was actually still in high school. I went to school at the Children's Theatre Company performing school in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I was working crew. And back in those days, the way you made smoke on stage was with something called a fog machine. And it had... I don't know. I don't know remember how it worked. I clearly didn't understand how it worked, but during [inaudible 00:48:20] I managed to fill the entire theater with fog smoke. I think that was maybe one of my... That was pretty wacky. That was pretty bad. I thought my very young career in the theater was over, but I managed to survive.
Hal Luftig:
Well, if it's any consolation, I was at the very first, the final dress rehearsal of Cats when it was opening on Broadway. Talk about dating ourselves.
Tory Bailey:
Wow.
Hal Luftig:
At that point too, the fog machine somehow was miscalibrated, and the entire theater, the entire theater was so fog-filled you couldn't even see the front of your hand. Okay, and the last one is, the lesson you learned from that experience with the fog machine was...?
Tory Bailey:
Ask questions. Don't pretend you know what you're doing if you don't know what you're doing. Ask questions. And that people in the theater may yell a lot, and they may seem angry in the moment, but five minutes later all will be forgiven, and you'll go back to what really matters, which is making a play.
Hal Luftig:
Beautifully said. Tory Bailey, I can't thank you enough.
Tory Bailey:
Well, thank you. This has been great fun.
Hal Luftig:
One of my favorite people. TDF, one of my favorite organizations. And like I said, you'll be hearing me knocking at your door very soon.
Tory Bailey:
Okay, I look forward to it. And thank you so much for the... I mean, I just have produced such an extraordinary group of plays and musicals, and I know there's more to come, and I'm excited to see it. And I think producers are the bravest people in the world, so just keep doing it.
Hal Luftig:
Okay. I'm about to burst into tears and blush all at once. All right. I love you dearly. Bye.
Tory Bailey:
Love you too. Bye-bye.
Hal Luftig:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Broadway Biz. If you have any questions about today's episode or the business of Broadway in general, let me know on Instagram at Broadway Biz Podcast, or via email at BroadwayBiz@HalLuftig.com. Be sure to follow me at Broadway Biz Podcast for updates on everything Broadway Biz, the business of Broadway.
Hal Luftig:
Broadway Biz is part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Huge thanks to Dori Berinstein, Alan Seales, and Brittany Bigelow. This has been produced by [Dylan Murray Parent 00:50:55] and Kevin Connor, and edited by Derek Gunther. Our fabulous theme music is by [Neil 00:51:01] Benjamin and [Lawrence O'Keith 00:51:03]. To learn more about Broadway Biz, visit BPN.FM/BroadwayBiz.