Arts Activities Support

Our three most significant outcomes were our artistic success in the face of great challenges as indicated by the positive responses by reviewers, audiences and participating artists, the impact upon our audiences as indicated by the comments on surveys and post show discussions and the diversity of all involved in the production whether artists, audiences (from audience surveys) or reviewers. We truly achieved our artistic goals by mounting our production of 46 plays from the anthology 365 Days/365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, at Penumbra Theatre. We ultimately had five directors (Rick Shiomi, Martha Johnson, Harry waters Jr., Stephanie Lein Walseth and La Trujillo) and ten cast members and seven designers (Dan Keyser, Karin Olson, Patricia Brown, Trevor Bowen, Malick Ceesay, Quinci Bachman and Michelle Barnes) work together to produce a seamless two act main stage production that received very positive responses from the media, peers and audiences. We received extensive coverage including reviews in the Star Tribune, City Pages and several major bloggers (Jill Schafer of Cherry and Spoon, John Olive in HowWasTheShow and Matthew Everett of Single White Fringe Geek). These quotes sum up the media response: "I’ll just get this out of the way up front. Go. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this production. It will renew your faith in the power and purpose of theater. It is a delight." Matthew Everett and "In fact, this show, this cast, this theater with their mission of diversity, representation, and justice, is exactly what we need in this post-Hamilton world. A world in which all of us are represented in the stories we tell." Jill Schafer. Audience responses on our post show surveys consistently reflected how challenging, thought provoking and engaging our production was. A survey via Survey Monkey of cast members showed scores of 4.9 out of 5 about diversity in the production, 4.5 out of 5 for artistic success and 4.1 out of 5 for positive experience showed how successful the production was from their perspective. In speaking with several peers, we were told that our production had a really positive "buzz" in the theater community because of controversies about other productions in the community. The whole process worked generally as designed but not without challenges. There were casting changes and various discussions among participating artists about differing interpretations of some of the 46 plays. The primary strength of the production was the experience, talent and willingness to work together of the directors, cast, designers and crew. The primary artistic challenge was the complications of presenting 46 different plays in one production. The technical challenges alone were enormous but ultimately overcome. There was no artistic challenge or obstacle that we weren't able to overcome. We would probably reduce the number of plays by about six. It would make the production a little less complicated and make each act a little shorter (to make each act about 50 min rather than 56 min). We would not have one person (Quinci Bachman) end up doing three jobs on the production (general manager for the company, stage manager and co-sound designer). She ended up as our stage manager because the person we originally hired to do that job had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts. We reached our goal of engaging our intended communities. We were able to bring in audience members from a wide range of community based organizations such as Neighborhood House (youth and English Language Learners members), The Wilder Center for Communities (youth group), Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (Hmong youth leaders), New Native Theater members, East Side Library, Equity Alliance Minnesota, Japanese American Citizens League and VSA Minnesota. For our production, 122 (of approximately 500 attendees) completed surveys, and of this subgroup, 46% were Anglo or European Americans and 54% were non-Anglo/European: 22% various ethnicities of Asian American, 9% African American, 5% Native American, and 18% Latino/Black Latino, Mixed Race, or Other. Ages ranged from 52% in their 40s or younger, to 48% in their 50s – 80s. Income levels ranged from 15% under $20K annually, to 32% $20 – $49K, to 29% $50K - $99K, to 26% over $100K. And finally, a part of the success was the response of audience through the post show surveys and discussions. Here are some examples of the type of comments on the surveys: “I like Radical Inclusion…It will keep working on me. “Absolutely fantastic. I got lost in it.” “This was a really entertaining and thought provoking play!” “Absurdist—helped me see new ways of viewing plays, different set of expectations,” and “So many powerful pieces and keeps me thinking! I can’t even finish my thoughts before the next play! Great production!” In terms of artists we were able to cast a wide range of actors: Of the ten actors, four were African American, two were Asian American, two were Euro American, one was Latino and one was Native American. There was an age range from the mid-sixties to mid-twenties and there were five women and five men. The production team had eight African Americans, two Asian Americans, two Latino, one with mixed Native American and Euro American heritage and nine Euro Americans. Our general manager/stage manager/co-sound designer is of the disability community as well. And in our production team the balance of men to women was nine men and thirteen women. We were also able to reach the media effectively with reviews or articles in both major media (Star Tribune and City Pages) and the emerging Twin Cities Theater Bloggers world (John Olive of HowWasTheShow, Jill Schafer of Cherry and Spoon, Laura Van Zandt of One Girl Two Cities, Mathew Everett of Single White Fringe Geek, Becki Iverson of Compendium and Hailey Colwell of MN Playlist). And their response was very positive across the board. In terms of numbers fell considerably short of our projected goal. We were aiming for one thousand six hundred participants and ended up with about six hundred. We believe there several factors involved in this shortfall such as our performances opened on the Memorial Day weekend, the nature of our production of 46 plays proved harder to market than expected and we are still a relatively new company just beginning to build our base following.