Arts Activities Support

The most significant outcome for Gadfly is the growth of our community. 56% of artists, both on stage and technical, had never participated in a Gadfly production. Most of those were not aware of the organization before joining this production. That sort of growth is vital to the quality of future productions. Over 30% of the audience was new to Gadfly. Those new patrons are how we can expand. Goal 1: engage at least 4 artists new to the Gadfly community. This goal was met. 7 of the 15 artists were new to the Gadfly community. This happened through specific outreach to local arts organizations serving youth artists, and through paid marketing of audition and technician calls. This targeted approach, investing both time and money in reaching out to communities we often don't engage with, was very effective. We would repeat this process to find new artists. Goal 2: bring in at least 30 patrons from the local geek community. This goal was met. Show postcards were placed at local geek centric businesses, including a yoga studio, dance classes, coffee shop, and gaming stores. We also connected with Twin Cities Geek, an online forum. Through that organization, we were able to get a review of the show from the perspective of their gaming and pop culture blogger. This review brought a surge of ticket sales in the second weekend, presumably from the local geek and gaming communities. Goal 3: collaborate with local gaming community for post-show discussions. This goal was not met. When we set this goal, we did not know how much work would be taken on by the board in taking running a rehearsal and performance venue. The additional workload did not leave enough time to organize facilitated talkbacks. However, board members reported hearing conversations happening after the show between audience members and artists that were similar to our talkback goals. Many audience members spoke about using role playing games as a way to work through real-life situations. The actors spoke on the things they had learned about being a queer teen in the 90's, when this play was set. Not having facilitated talkbacks is our biggest disappointment of this project. We have discovered that the talkbacks are a vital part of our artistic and community engagement process. Most of the time, our work is outside the traditional theatre box in some way. Giving the audience and artists a chance to come together and discuss what happened on stage helps both process the themes of our shows. Future projects will have at least one talkback scheduled during the run of the production. We were able to successfully reach our intended community of artists through carefully targeted marketing of audition calls. This resulted in a diverse group of artists- 64% were under age 18, 55% identify as a race or ethnicity other than white/non-Hispanic, and 55% identify as members of the queer community. The population of our audience was more than 25% white/non-Hispanic, which was higher than our original goals. However, it does fall in line with the demographic breakdown of Minneapolis, so we feel we are still on the right track with our demographics. Our outreach efforts did bring in a community that does not typically attend our productions, through specific work within the geek and gaming communities. We are pleased with this result. Our initial goal was to have 120 people attend this show. Over the two weekend run, 153 people attended the production. One of our biggest goals for accessibility is to keep productions financially accessible to members of the community. To that end, we had two pay-what-you-can shows, inviting the community at large to attend, regardless of what they could offer for a ticket price. Overall, 23% of our audience used a discounted ticket to attend the show. We continue to see these as very successful opportunities to open the door to the world of live theatre for individuals who do not have the financial means to attend other productions. Holding our shows at a location on the bus line, with bike rack outside, and with free parking nearby, all helped our patrons attend the show without additional transportation barriers.