Post-Covid Arts VI: A Rose is a Rose is a Rose – Don’t Let Data Get in the Way of Failure (because failure is the key to innovation)

For links to previous Post-Covid Arts articles, jump to the bottom of the page.

On the day before I began as the marketing and communications director for Seattle Repertory Theatre, I attended a play there. I knew that it would be the last time I could anonymously buy a ticket and experience the organization from a relatively untainted customer’s point of view. (I highly recommend it.)

I had come to Seattle from Pittsburgh, where the issue with the audience was extreme age. The average ticket-buyer, according to our research (which, and I regret this to this day, we paid for), showed that the average ticket buyer was 62 years old. Seattle, thought this “expert,” would be different. Young people would be attending the theatre in Seattle, even the “flagship” theatre.

(Side note: The use of the words “flagship,” “venerable,” and “historic” are not all that positive for anyone who wasn’t alive during World War II. In fact, these words are not only relatively unauthentic adjectives -- rather than authentic transitive verbs -- but they connote an organization for grandma and grandpa, regardless of the actual programming.)

The first person I met ripped my ticket in half and hurried me on my way, as though I already knew where I was going. The lobby bore no signs, not even for the bathrooms. It felt extremely clubby. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. There were a lot of doors and few humans to tell you where they went.

When I entered the actual theatre, it had the feel of a funeral parlor right before a service. Dark, dank, and filled with lots of folks 70 and up.

I was gobsmacked. Et tu, Seattle?

Sometimes, we all get gobsmacked by the idea that we’ve been gobsmacked. We do not know everything there is to know. Or we forget. Or we didn’t study that chapter. Or we don’t care.

In this case, the brutal reality was that the white, affluent, septuagenarian audience for the company had taken over the joint.

This time, I was smarter. I did not order a survey on the topic. I already knew the answer from observation – it was that obvious. And any data – any data at all (for example, what if they were all 60something instead of 70something?) – would not have affected the action we took to develop a large younger audience (which we did, with those under 25 ultimately comprising ? of the now-larger audience for each production only 2 years later).

Data are vital. And because everyone consumes, everyone feels as though they know what to do with marketing data – especially those who don’t really know anything about marketing a nonprofit arts organization. This industry, unlike commercial manufacturing, builds a startup campaign for each product, puts the product up for sale for a short period, then destroys that product.

Imagine if Coca-Cola took Coca-Cola off the shelves when they came out with Sprite. Or perhaps even more applicable, what if Boeing took the 747 off the assembly line when they came out with a new product – and that product turned out to be helicopters. That’s precisely what nonprofit performing arts organizations do. Regardless of the popularity of one product, for the most part it gets destroyed and replaced by different product.

For those who disagree – while a rose may be a rose (thank you, Gertrude Stein), a play is not a play is not a play, in that Strange Interlude is not Sunday in the Park with George is not Sweat, even though all 3 won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The Bolshoi is not Stomp! is not Grupo Corpo. Pearl Jam are not The Waverly Consort are not The Staples Singers. They can’t play simultaneously on the same stage (that would be a different event entirely), nor do they have the same target appeal.

Do decent nonprofit performing arts leaders need exact data to tell them why?

In 4 words, no.

Do we need exact data to tell us that Post-Covid nonprofit performing arts organizations are going to suffer – and in the case of many, close? And what would be different about our reaction to the notion that 20% will not come back for 2 years as opposed to 26%?

Why are we seeking data on why the flagship is sinking rather than building new kinds of transportation? We’re not on the open water, after all.

We do not have more than a minute to grieve the loss of arts organizations that do not return from the pandemic. There is no shame in closing any organization, no matter its size or onetime popularity or acclaim. The only shame would occur if an organization chose to keep other organizations from doing what they do because of reckless donation hoovering with “Oral Roberts” funding schemes. That would be shameful, unconscionable, and selfishly destructive to the nonprofit arts community.

Instead, this is a time for imperfect experimentation and flexibility. Make a slew of decisions, not just one. Blaze lots of new paths. Have plans that go all the way to ZZ instead of just a Plan B. This is where you get your data now.

It is likely that the leaders of your organization – including your most longstanding board members – will not know how to do this. This is not a consequence of age or experience – the most flexible leaders are those with lots of experience because they have failed and succeeded many times – but instead it is a consequence of Anthropomorphic Ego Syndrome.

Anthropomorphic Ego Syndrome (AES) in the nonprofit performing arts field can be defined as what happens when leaders become synonymous with their organizations.

AES-affected companies suffer vulnerabilities on top of simple pandemics. With few exceptions, these companies experience great difficulties changing course because of the fear of failure. That fear does not stem from potential bankruptcy or business difficulties. Rather, it emanates from a perceived stigma of personal failure borne from the fallacious assumption that the organization is an unblurred extension of the leader – rather than an entity all to itself.

This may be why John Henry had to die at the end of his ballad. He personalized the skill of hammering instead of executing the mission of his company – gathering more coal. There would not be much of a ballad if John Henry had chosen to eschew the hammer for instructions on how to run the steam drill, but it’s likelier that the company would not have lost a good employee.

Few founders (or those who have been with an organization for a great deal of time and act like founders) have the ability to separate themselves from the organization. Most are John Henrys, invested not only in what they do but how they do it.

And as any follower of Simon Sinek would say, “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” And taking it one half step more, they don’t buy how you do it either. “How” is just not all that important to most stakeholders within the nonprofit performing arts industry.

“Why” is what makes your audience come, your donors contribute, your staff come to work every day. Only an AES-infected leader (or acolytes) cares about “how” and, too often, let it interfere with “why.”

So do wild things during the pandemic interim. Perform outside your facility instead of inside. Rip out all your seats and perform in the round. Make all your performances akin to a flash mob. Combine technologies with the community-building aspect. Help other nonprofits before your own. Do something no one’s ever thought of. This is the time where failure is a really good option. Take advantage of it.

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Post-Covid Article #1: Don't Ask

Post-Covid Article #2: Is It About the Car Wash or Is It About the Car Wash, or the Car Getting Cleaned? Steps Toward a Post-Covid Performing Arts Future

Post-Covid Article #3: The Sacrifice After the Sacrifice - Go Small or Go Home

Post-Covid Article #4: In the New Normal, You're Going to Need Some Mischief

Post-Covid Article #5: Shedding Egos and Empowering the Tribe

Alan Harrison is a writer, father, performer, nonprofit executive, artist, blogger and impresario (in no particular order). He has led, produced, directed, promoted, raised money for, starred, and failed in over 300 theatrical productions on and Off-Broadway and at prestigious (and not so prestigious) nonprofit arts organizations across the country. He’s also a two-time Jeopardy! champion so, you know, there’s that. The arts invoke passion (mostly from artists), but nonprofit arts are only successful when they result in measurably positive change among those that need it most. When a nonprofit’s donors are also its recipients, then its mission is meaningless puffery, flapdoodle and codswallop.