Operating Support

We continually ask our artists and audience, "How are we doing?" We do listen to what people are telling us. This feedback, plus the records kept by the General Manager regarding attendance, is used in planning our programming and evaluating what has been successful. Our planning process for play selection: A committee reviews scripts for about two months putting together a season. This is then presented to the board for approval. Decisions are all based on the feedback we are getting from actors, directors and audience members. The committee tries to balance the choices to create a season with good variety and quality that will please patrons and performers. The financial part of each project is planned by our General Manager with input from our Business Manager. The General Manager works on a budget with each play director. Past records of each play's expenses are evaluated by these two people. This evaluation guides them with future programming budgets. We keep excellent records of audience attendance and numbers of actors who audition for our shows. We occasionally give to our patrons to mark each advertising method they actually remember seeing and if any were responsible in convincing them to come to that show. We try to find out from the first timers where they heard about us or the production they are attending. This gives us real feedback about where our marketing is making a difference with respect to awareness. For our repeat customers, we look at attendance patterns over different genres of shows. We analyze attendance by day of the week and time of day, and we have tweaked our performance schedules to try to appeal to what our audience tells us they want. We had heard feedback about the affordability of shows for a segment of our audience. Based on that feedback, we established a Pay as you Can Saturday for many of our adult shows. We specifically promote upcoming auditions in print and online. We survey actors and crew after each show to learn what worked well and what could be improved for their experience. We have an initiative underway to expand our pool of actors, directors, and volunteers. The actions we are taking are based on our evaluations of what has worked in the past to grow these stakeholder groups. For example, one show in 2024 will be a series of short plays, giving several people a chance to direct for the first time. That hurdle was assessed to be the greatest one in growing our pool of directors.; County Seat Theater reaches a broad public audience because we offer a variety of productions. It is almost certain that there is a show or concert in our season that would interest every person. Our Children's Theater registrations fill up quickly because we can only successfully manage 40 children per week. Our directors have proven their skills in making our children's theater open and enjoyed by everyone. County Seat Theater offers scholarships to cover the registration fee for those who are in need of financial assistance. We offer a Pay as You Can Saturday for each regular adult show during the season. The Encore Art Gallery is free to artists, with no commission collected from us when artwork is sold. We partner with a local school district where students from their theater programs come to County Seat for a week and produce a show for the community. We have performed shows and excerpts of shows at no cost for local schools and at area events.