Arts Activities Support

The two major outcomes that we can identify as very important are the following: Over 50% of the survey respondents learn more about the issues portrayed in our productions. We were able to works with 5 new artist and designers that we hope to collaborate in the future. We are excited to inform you that we have achieved all three goals successfully. The presentation of The Women of Cuidad Juarez showcased the realities of life in the southern border and brought to light the human rights abuse against women that has been going on and continues till this very day. It reflected the plight of young Mexican women that are being murdered and enslaved by criminal elements that see these women as a commodity to be exploited. We opted to go with the production of La Familia for our one-act series also brought about the historical challenges of “Chicanismo” as well as issues affecting our community today, like LGBTQ rights and homelessness in the Latino community. The Women of Cuidad Juarez was bilingual thus allowing Spanish speakers as well as non-Spanish speakers to experience the play. We also translated all the plays and provided open caption in English for the hearing impaired and the non-Spanish speakers. These plays also provided educational experience and the post-play discussion also provide unique and historical contexts to our audiences. The Marketing of The Women of Cuidad Juarez presented a few on foreseen challenges. Since this was a presentation, the lead artists needed to approve the marketing materials and this in turn slowed down our marketing efforts. Once we streamline the process, we were able to move much quicker. We will need to clarify the need for prompt marketing material feedback response from artists we present in the future. In addition, our timing for La Familia production coincided with a local festival that competed with us for the same audience, which affected our attendance. Even though we are at the mercy of the availability of venues, we need to do a better job on researching competing events. In the future we need to take that into account. In our non-scientific poll we calculated that more than 50% of our audiences were Latinos. We had larger than expected Latino attendance the first night for The Women of Cuidad Juarez. Several groups from Centro, a social service organization serving the Latino community, brought a very diverse group of women from a number of countries like Mexico and from Central and South America. We were surprised by the fact that a number of community members had heard of the show through community channels such as planning meetings for other events throughout the cities. During the weeks leading to each production, we were able to hone our marketing message to precise segments of the Latino community through a more tailor social media marketing approach. This allowed for a more personal approach. Our effort to become more accessible to Spanish speaking audiences for the most part was successful. We had some challenges at first with our marketing efforts with the presentation of The Women of Cuidad Juarez. Feedback from the artist took too long since they were touring at the time. We feel that once we were on track with our marketing materials, we were able to reach out to many Spanish-speaking audiences, but we were not able to achieve the attendance numbers we were expecting. We are hoping to connect with more language schools and classes in the future. The opportunity to work with a Latino pool of actors allows the theater company to continue its efforts to maintain and grow a strong pool of actors of color in the Twin Cities.