Community Arts

Our artistic goals included providing a creative/challenging/fun experience for our artists and an entertaining performance for our audiences. We hoped to attract 400 audience members to our spring show, and provide at least three free summer performances. These goals were largely met, with the exception of selling 400 tickets (approximately 340 were sold). Our artists (singers/instrumentalists) indicated that they found presenting this show to be artistically creative and challenging, as well as great fun! Audience members, both at our theater show and our free summer shows, have consistently told us how well they liked the performance. While we did not sell as many tickets to our spring show as we would have liked, we did provide 5 free summer performances which were enthusiastically received and well attended, including the Como Pavilion in St. Paul, the Edina 4th of July parade, Bryant Square Park in Minneapolis, Roseville Central Park in Roseville, and the Birchwood Village Music Series in in Birchwood. One strength of our process is our team repertoire planning to select a wide range of musical styles and levels, which helps ensure all singers have some challenge and audience members are exposed to both old favorites as well as songs that may be new to them. Another strength is our show chair/co-chair approach, which ensures someone is marshaling all the details of the operations and helping all details to be met. Our vocal coach ensures the music achieves the highest degree of excellence possible, which our choreographer works with the show chair to come up with a cohesive look, feel and flow to the show. Our challenge is to put more emphasis on our marketing efforts to attract more audience members to our spring show, which features all the bells and whistles (emcee, horns, drums, bass, lighting and projections, etc.) that make the show a real event. The free summer concerts do not include all of these features, and they really make the experience special for those in attendance, so in future better use of local media and other forms of marketing need to be engaged to get the word out and grow our audience. While we added selling space in our programs for ads and offered concessions, which recouped most of the lost ticket revenue, our goal is really to present to a bigger audience - so that is our challenge for the future. One community we serve is that group of adults (primarily, but not exclusively, in the east metro) who want to participate in the art form of show choir. Another community is that of people who enjoy live choral shows and may enjoy a show choir format, primarily focused on the east metro area. Our target audience includes adults, families with children, and seniors. Our spring show audience comprised above our target of 31% (closer to 40%) of seniors attending and slightly below the target of 5% of children attending. The Maplewood theater is fully ADA-compliant and is intimate enough to ensure good sight lines and good acoustics. In order to reach audiences that may not be able to attend or afford our show at the Maplewood Community Center, we presented portions of "Magic to Do" at several free summer music series, including Como Pavilion, Edina 4th of July parade, Bryant Square Park music series, Roseville Central Park music series, and Birchwood Village Music Series. These events are completely free and open to the public and generally in venues that are accessible, with diverse audiences (economically, ethnically and age). The audiences at these events include toddlers up to great-grandparents and reflect the economic and ethnic diversity of area residents. While we only get verbal feedback from the audiences, overwhelmingly they tell us how much they enjoyed the show. Although the show choir genre necessarily includes physical movement, we continue to strive for ways to performers to be engaged as their physical limitations will allow. This is the second year in which a member had a physical challenge that we were able to work with, so that they were fully engaged in the production without any discernible distraction to the audience. We are happy to be able to offer this flexibility for those that want to participate. Our singers unanimously indicated that the music and choreography included in this project was creatively challenging and fun. Over 70% of our audience members surveyed express that the show's musical diversity is fun and interesting, and that the presentation including choreography, staging, props and emcee makes the show more enjoyable.