Hope Granson in Marketing at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Phone Number

On a chilly October evening in Denver last year, some 200 people filed into Stanley Market for a performance of The Wild Party, a musical that depicts a debaucherous night in New York City in the 1920s and that has been staged many times since it debuted on Broadway in 2000. Only the production in October took identify not in a traditional theater but in a 10,000-square-foot former airplane hangar that has been converted into a shopping and recreation centre. There were no familiar rows of theater seats facing a stage; the audience sat instead on sofas, benches and bar stools scattered throughout the space. Players meandered around the room, bantering with the audience, showing off card tricks and inviting people to dance. Audience members didn't just lookout; they assumed the office of guests at the political party in the play, with many donning Jazz Age regalia such every bit dropped-waist dresses, beaded headbands, curt-brimmed fedoras and boutonnieres.

Off-Center curator Charlie Miller and Charles Varin, managing director for
the Theatre Company at the Denver Centre for the Performing Arts

The performance, produced past the Denver Center Theatre Company, a division of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA), was function of a multi-year experiment to assist address an urgent business organization: Denver Center audiences are aging, even though younger people accept been moving to Denver in droves. The average single-ticket buyer at the Denver Eye Theatre Company is 50 years sometime and the average subscriber is 63, despite the fact that millennials, a grouping often defined as people born betwixt 1981 and 1997, compose the largest age group in Denver.

Since 2010, the Denver Eye has been engaged in an iterative process of experimentation, evaluation and refinement to assist reverse this trend. The process began when two young Denver Eye Theatre Company staffers, Charlie Miller and Emily Tarquin, proposed some additions to the company's repertoire. Miller, then a multimedia specialist, suggested melding live performances with interactive technologies, while Tarquin, an administrator who has since left the Denver Eye, argued for a revival of the company's idle 200-seat Jones Theatre. Kent Thompson, then the company'south artistic director, saw in these proposals an opportunity to describe younger audiences. He therefore helped create Off-Center, an experimental offshoot of the Denver Center Theatre Company, which produced The Wild Political party, and set Miller and Tarquin on a journey of trial, mistake, analysis and improvement to attract the millennials the visitor was missing.

Humble Beginnings

Off-Center'due south beginnings were humble. Denver Center leaders gave the company a modest $100,000 from DCPA's it'south $65-1000000 annual budget, as well as access to the Jones Theatre and the freedom to experiment equally Miller and Tarquin saw fit.

"At start we said, 'Let'southward just run across what comes of this,'" recalls Charles Varin, managing director of the Denver Eye Theatre Company. "We said, 'Hither's a space and a fiddling bit of money. Y'all guys do what'll fulfill y'all creatively, and we'll see what happens.'"

A series of modest interactive performances followed, all based on millennial preferences identified by an advisory council of immature Off-Center supporters and their friends. Some drew enthusiastic young crowds; others were somewhat disordered and left audiences baffled. Each one, even so, contributed to Off-Center's understanding of immersive theater's power to depict younger audiences. The Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts, a grant plan that helped fund early Off-Middle performances, encouraged the company to report audience reactions and draw lessons it could apply to future performances.

"It took usa through a process of continuous learning," Miller, now associate artistic manager and Off-Middle curator, says of the Innovation Lab. "It taught the states how to do research, to question assumptions, to collect data and analyze it, to experiment or epitome, to evaluate it and use our learning to the next thing." ¹

A small set of lessons emerged. Off-Center learned that it had to interact more than closely with artists and performers, set clear audience expectations and find the right rest between interactivity and a clear predetermined storyline. Off-Center used these lessons to expand its horizons, move beyond the confines of the traditional Jones Theatre and test its first big-budget, fully immersive functioning, 2016's Sugariness & Lucky.

Sweet & Lucky: A Model Emerges

Sweet & Lucky, an $800,000 production, was Off-Middle'due south most ambitious projection nevertheless. It took identify in a 20-room performance infinite that Off-Center built in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse in a northern Denver industrial commune. The audition followed a couple'south life by walking through short dream-like sequences in each room. They looked on equally the couple baked cookies, attended a funeral, set a tabular array for a dinner political party and watched a short movie in the back of a selection-up truck. Past the end of the functioning, each fellow member of the audience had held a one-on-one conversation with one of the actors, and no two attendees had had the same feel. Once the conversations were over, people could mingle over cocktails in a bar the production squad had built in the warehouse loading dock.

The endeavor required a year and a half of preparation and pushed Off-Eye'southward artistic and logistical limits farther than any show had before. But the artistic team had past experiences that helped pave the road into unchartered territory.

Prior experience had, for example, taught Off-Center to be cognizant of its limitations. In 2015, Perception, an original immersive performance that combined magic, music, poetry and trapeze, had demonstrated the difficulty of creating a prove that allowed for audience interaction even so still hewed to a coherent narrative. Some viewers were confused past Perception; the show entertained, but it lacked the structure some audition members needed to make sense of its many elements. "It was really absurd," says Miller, "simply it didn't take a clear story to connect all the pieces."

Sweetness & Lucky explores love and memory—and the mysterious connections between the two.

Off-Center needed help establishing a narrative coherent enough to create meaningful experiences for an audience. It therefore commissioned Third Rails Projects, a theater company based in Brooklyn that specializes in immersive performances, to develop Sweet & Lucky and build the narrative foundation in information technology that Perception lacked.

Third Track Projects worked closely with Off-Heart to build the narrative, hone the tone, create floor plans and determine how the 72-person audience would motion through the space.

"It was really a great partnership," says Miller. "We enabled them to do something on a scale that they've never done and they taught us nigh creating and producing immersive theater—lessons we are able to conduct forward in our work."

Experience had illuminated the need for outside aid, just there were other elements of the production that required Off-Middle to take a more intuitive leap of faith. Sweet & Lucky was a production at a much grander scale than anything Off-Eye had attempted before, and the small-scale artistic team knew it needed help to pull it off. It therefore involved Denver Center's marketing team from the outset of the artistic process, a significant departure from the usual practise.

"Historically, information technology has been more territorial between the marketing and artistic teams," Miller says. "Artistic doesn't want marketing telling it what to practise, and marketing also doesn't want artistic telling it, 'This is my choice, good luck selling it.'"

Such concerns were shelved for Sweet & Lucky. The artistic team needed the marketing department's help to inform the production and manage audition expectations. Third Rail Projects, for example, sometimes pitched ideas that had worked in Brooklyn simply seemed too dark for Denver audiences. The marketing department, which led the audience-research efforts before the production, helped refine those ideas.

"We were relying on 3rd Rail every bit the experts on immersive theater," says Briana Firestone, Denver Eye's director of customer experience and loyalty who was and so director of marketing. "Only we were coming to the tabular array equally the experts in Denver and how things work in our marketplace."

Firestone, in plow, needed the artistic squad's help to prepare expectations and calm concerns that could keep a timid theater-goer away. Early collaboration with the creative team, for example, allowed the marketing department to develop a listing of frequently asked questions for the evidence'southward website, list everything from an explanation of immersive theater to the option of appropriate shoes.

The marketing department also had to help with the logistics of creating the new performance infinite. Research indicated that younger audiences desire to socialize before and after a show, but there were no confined or restaurants close to the venue. "It was in the middle of nowhere," says marketing  manager Emily Kent. "Then we had to build a bar to make sure [audiences] were having that consummate night out that they desire."

The Denver Heart Theatre Company had no experience creating such a full-service performance, and so Firestone and Kent shouldered new responsibilities. "I had to become get signage permits, I had to work with bartenders, I had to manage a bar," Firestone says. "That'due south not usually my job."

Briana Firestone, DCPA's director of client experience and loyalty and
Denver Center for the Performing Arts marketing managing director Emily Kent

The results of the effort were stellar. All 89 performances of Sugariness & Lucky between May xx and August 7, 2016, sold out. In post-performance surveys, 94 percent of audiences said the play was "very rewarding" or "extremely rewarding." Critics called information technology "brillia​nt " and "a brave, original and lovely adventure," with ane raving, "There is magic happening hither and you feel it." The boilerplate Sweet & Lucky company was 41 and a half years old, 12 years younger than the boilerplate visitor at Denver Center shows. Thirty-five percent of the audience was less than 34 years old, curt of Off-Center's original target of 50 percent but a far greater share than the 16 per centum Theatre Company shows drew in 2016.

The reviews of Sweet & Lucky led the team to reevaluate its 50-pct target. "At commencement we were a little disappointed that Sweet & Lucky didn't come in at that large number," Firestone says. "Nosotros had to take a step back and say, 'They're not all 23, but that's okay.' These are more than adventurous shows, and an audacious spirit doesn't have an age to it."

Sweet & Lucky didn't cover its costs—it grossed less than half the amount it took to produce—but it met its principal goal of drawing younger audiences. "We're seeing the average historic period of our patrons coming down, which is what we were intending," says managing director Charles Varin.

Sweet & Lucky was successful, but it price more than than Off-Center could afford every year. Its success therefore raised two questions:

1. Would audiences be every bit interested in a less expensive, less elaborately produced show?
2. Could Off-Middle offering an intimate immersive experience to a larger audience and hence reduce per-viewer costs?

Travel, merely Don't Forget the Map

Off-Middle took on the first question by producing the lighthearted and improvisational Travelers of the Lost Dimension in jump 2017.

In Travelers, three actors herded up to 45 patrons through a series of skits in the expansive halls of Stanley Marketplace. Performers and participants walked by confined, salons, shops and galleries, stopping every few minutes for a performance in a "new dimension." Audiences watched a brusk flick in a darkened stairwell, participated in a massage train, posed for group photos and created crayon illustrations in an "art therapy session." There was no clear narrative, just a series of loosely connected skits that often drew chuckles or quizzical glances from passers-by.

Audience members become central players in the improvisational Travelers of the Lost Dimension.

It was a far humbler production than Sweet & Lucky. That bear witness required an elaborate, multi-room operation space; Travelers took place in the public halls of Stanley Market place. Instead of an immersive-theater expert from Brooklyn, Off-Center worked with a local comedy troupe. There were no elaborate props or decorations, but tote bags with trinkets like crayons and diffraction spectacles that visitors used during the performance.

"Sweet & Lucky was the ultimate large-scale immersive show. We tin't practice that every season," Firestone says. "Travelers is pretty low-fi. It's definitely scalable to practice every year if we wanted to."

Early results were heartening. The presale sold 750 tickets, nearly half of all tickets bachelor at the fourth dimension. More than half sold to people who had seen Sweetness & Lucky, pointing to a continued hunger for immersive theater. Demand was so strong that Off-Eye extended the show by four weeks before rehearsals even started.

Reactions, however, were less exciting. Just 47 percent-signal drop of audiences considered Travelers a rewarding experience, a 47 per centum drop from Sweet & Lucky. Immature children enjoyed it more than than the millennials Off-Eye targeted. The prove's "internet promoter score"—a scale from minus 100 to 100 that measures audiences' eagerness to recommend the evidence to others—was minus 23, a precipitous drop from Sugariness & Lucky's 85.

Surveys pointed to two reasons for the tepid reaction. First was the success of Sweet & Lucky. Publicity materials for Travelers used a playful comic-book-style motif to distinguish the show from Sweet & Lucky. But surveys suggested that audiences were still searching for a deep experience that Travelers was not designed to evangelize. "I think information technology's just considering Sweet & Lucky was and so popular," says Firestone. "It was such a visceral experience for so many people, they wanted [Travelers] to exist like that."

The evidence's popularity with children, however, offered an opportunity to improve the experience. The marketing team started pushing the functioning towards families instead of millennials and played upward the silliness of the show. Information technology even added a line to the online FAQs stating that Travelers was nil similar Sweetness & Lucky. The event: Though the net promoter score was however low, it increased past 16 points, and audiences later in the run appeared happier than those in the beginning.

"Early audience feedback was the straight input that caused us to make that shift," says Kent. "The inquiry helps us exist nimble and helps us keep learning."

The more than lighthearted Travelers of the Lost Dimension became popular with families.

The second problem was trickier and likely contributed to the stubborn net promoter score. "The biggest audience complaint virtually Travelers was that in that location wasn't enough stories," Miller says. Surveys suggested that audiences struggled to brand sense of the play'southward disjointed experiences. "The best pieces," comp​lained i reviewer, "have nada to do with the tissue-thin storyline."

The experience offered two lessons for Off Centre. Outset was the importance of a clear narrative. "Before Sugariness & Lucky, we had this assumption that millennials don't care [about the story], they but want it to be weird and fun," says Kent. "Just they actually actually care most the story."

Second was the value of the Off-Center staff's own judgment. Miller had concerns almost the lack of a narrative when the creators of Travelers outset presented their ideas. But he hesitated to be also believing virtually them. The Off-Eye team tended to defer to the vision of its creative partners, a tendency Miller felt he could have constrained.

"I regret not speaking up every bit loudly as I could have when I had early on concerns," Miller says. "Past the time we saw the prove on its feet and recognized that it needed a clearer through line, at that place wasn't enough time to make meaningful changes to the show."

In The Wild Party audience members dressed in their 1920s best.

Expanding the Political party

Off-Centre applied some of these lessons to The Wild Party, the Jazz Age musical in the erstwhile hangar in October. Miller and company selected an existing play with a clear storyline. They produced the prove in the Hangar at Stanley Market place, a defended private space rather than the public hallways that Travelers audiences had constitute distracting. And Stanley Marketplace provided the drinks so the team could avert the hassle of a liquor license and the logistics of building a bar.

The question for this functioning was about the residue between the size of the audience, the interactivity of the performance and the intimacy of the experience. Sweet & Lucky had created a meaningful experience for an audience of 72 that moved through an elaborate multi-room prepare. With The Wild Party, the team ready out to see whether it could deliver as memorable an experience in a single room for a stationary, much larger audience of 208.

"Can we brand information technology feel immersive?" Varin asked. "Can nosotros make it experience personal? Tin we make it feel like it'due south engaging and interactive? Those are the questions nosotros're exploring."

Miller selected The Wild Party in role because of the opportunities it offered for audition interaction. "The top priority was that the audition needs to have a articulate office in the story," he says. "What I loved well-nigh The Wild Party is that the audience can be guests at the political party. That informs why you belong in the space, how yous collaborate with the characters, and it'south essential to the story."

The team also capitalized on the show's proximity to Halloween. It encouraged visitors to dress in their 1920s best, further immersing them in the universe of the show.

The marketing team continued to use text and design in publicity materials to establish bones expectations and offer hints about the emotional experience. Gear up blueprint for a stationary audience was largely problem-gratuitous for the Denver Center'due south experienced production teams, although the move from a traditional theater to a custom-built space did complicate sightlines for some viewers.

Results were more encouraging. Nearly all performances sold out. The net promoter score went upwards to 59, still brusque of Sweetness & Lucky'due south 85 merely far better than the minus 7 of Travelers. Thirty-9 percent of the audition had visited some other Off-Center performance in the last twelvemonth, pointing to continued demand for the new type of theater.

"Over 85 percent of our overall database comes once every two years, or not even," says Emily Kent. "So for people who came to Sweet & Lucky 18 months ago, some of them went to Travelers and now they're back for this. That'due south huge."

A moment of reflection at the Sugariness & Lucky antique store, where nothing is for sale.

The feel confirmed two of Off-Heart'due south hypotheses about its audience. First is the importance of the story, regardless of the results of focus groups. "In focus groups the audience was telling us that they want something entertaining and low-cal and a practiced fourth dimension and a party atmosphere," says Varin. "What we saw, at least from Sweet & Lucky  to Travelers to The Wild Party, is that they want those things, but they also desire a strong narrative."

The second hypothesis: cyberspace promoter scores suggest that a traditional play adapted for a nontraditional performance can engage audiences, only it may not be a substitute for a performance specifically designed for an interactive feel. "Staging [an existing] script immersively may be a little easier," says Miller, "simply it can't be every bit fully immersive every bit it would exist if you create something original."

Looking ahead

Off-Middle will continue to experiment with new types of performances—some elaborate, others sparse; some playful, others dark—to determine how information technology tin can create meaningful experiences as efficiently equally possible. An essential element Off-Center intends to explore more deeply in the futurity is financial sustainability. Ticket sales cannot cover all of Off-Centre's expenses, so information technology currently relies on donations from supporters and philanthropies such as The Wallace Foundation. The Off-Center team hopes, however, that if it tin perfect its craft, draw younger audiences and help meet the Denver Middle'southward larger audience-development goals, it volition describe more support from DCPA, reduce reliance on external donors and hence ensure its longevity.

"The goal is not to take Off-Center completely supported by ticket sales alone," says Varin. "Information technology's more virtually the level at which [DCPA] should be subsidizing this work. The main question is, 'How does this fit into the organizational priorities around audition demographics, and is the budget reflecting that?'"

In the meantime, Off-Center is continuing to experiment while building on experience. Information technology plans to produce its next original, fully immersive Sweet & Lucky-style production in Spring 2019. It has deputed a writer to create a grittier hip hop-themed evidence and will see if it can increase the racial multifariousness of its audience. This time, nevertheless, it is more confident in its power to create the interactive experience itself. "We are now the experts in immersive theater," Miller says of plans for the next testify, "and we are guiding [the writer] in doing that."

1 Some of the lessons the Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts drew from Off-Center's early experiences are documented in a detailed instance study the system published in 2014.

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Source: https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/denver-center-for-the-performing-arts-is-cracking-the-millennial-code.aspx

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