Audience Engagement

In this essay, Craig Fleming sheds light on the necessity and importance of theatres making it a goal of attracting younger audiences.

Artist and engagement strategist Rachel Grossman writes about her work as co-founder and Ensemble Director of dog & pony dc and the evolution of their goals.

Lana Lesley shares insight on how Rude Mechs has creatively promoted audience engagement in their past productions.

Seeking insight into what makes immersive theatre work for an audience, Jeffrey Mosser observes three productions: PearlDamour’s How to Build a Forest, Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, and Mikhael Tara Garver’s Fornicated From the Beatles.

Jeffrey Mosser continues his series on immersive theatre. This week, an examination of the patron at Fornicated from the Beatles and How to Build a Forest.

Seeking insight into what makes immersive theatre work for an audience, Jeffrey Mosser observes three productions: How to Build a Forest, Sleep No More, and Mikhael Tara Garver's Fornicated From the Beatles. This four post series includes interviews with creators as well as with patrons pre and post show.

David Dower, the Co- Artistic Director of ArtsEmerson, on the differnece between Art and Entertainment, and the nessisity to create work that includes both.

Matthew Gushick explains the necessity of having a sense of play in creating any kind of theater, and how it is the vital key in creating ultimate captivation in an auidence.

Elissa Adams offers a roadmap to those first jumping into the field of Theater for Young Audiences.

Aaron Landsman on the purpose and process on the collaborative piece City Council Meeting.

Brant Russell offers some rules and philosophy on post-show discussions, building off five years of experience at Steppenwolf Theatre.

Dog & pony emerged out of impluse resulting in shaking up DC's traditional theatre scene.

This excerpt from Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art includes quotes from various theatre-leaders finding new ways and forms of audience connectivity.

Woolly Mammoth debriefs on what did and didn't work in their forray into Twitter, and how other theatres can replicate and learn from their experiment.

Woolly Mammoth's Miriam Weisfield introduces us to The Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center, an exciting new iniative where technology and playwriting team up to engage audiences in ways never before seen.

Kira Oblenskey talks to Michelle Hensley, the founding artistic director of Ten Thousand Things in Minnesota, about the necessity of big stories, and the joys of bringing theater to audiences who have very little experience with it.

P. Carl on the decline of public discourse and the relationship between artists, institutions, and the percieved Haves and Have-Nots.

Composer and Sound Designer Robert Kaplowitz writes about the tendency in mainstream American theater to focus on servicing and clarifing one single idea.

Marshall Botvinick traces the history of theatre’s connection to community and advocates that theatre artists and companies to go local.

Following the 2011 Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Conference, Aaron Malkin formulates how theatre artists can exceed “excellence” and make a commitment to “awesomeness”

"All the hand-wringing about tweeting in the theatre is really nothing more than a distraction from the far more important, positive, and legitimate ways in which Twitter is changing our art form."

Michele Lowe interviews Kent Thompson, Producing Artistic Director of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, about his mission to cultivate lasting relationships between playwrights and audiences.

Aaron Landsman's new project in development, City Council Meeting, is an attempt to democratically include audience participation in the narrative of a play.