An unspecified amount of time ago, an unspecified Off-Broadway company reached out to me via e-mail, based on the recommendation of a dear colleague, to see if I’d be interested in serving as an audience consultant for its upcoming production of a “Latine play” (and I feel compelled to clarify the quotations don’t refer to this specific play’s ability to fit that bill, but to the bill itself, as I will explore later). On its face, the email made sense: I am someone who was born and raised in Latin America, have a good amount of marketing experience, have fostered a community of people I am in active relation with (you all)—and, perhaps most crucially, I’m also a newly non-full-time-job-haver who needs this kind of gig!
What is the gig? For those not in the know (which hopefully you are), “audience consultants” are professionals in the theater industry who can help a company’s marketing department reach a group of people that is not already (nor can be expected to organically become) part of their existing audience base. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, in a field where the average house is packed with an assorted collection of white-haired (or hairless) heads, audience consultants tend to focus on reaching people of color, young/disabled/queer people, immigrants, etcetera. But if you’re wondering why a theater would want to reach out to them through a consultant, instead of consistently programming shows for them and building them into the audience base organically, I’ll quote the artistic director of a theater who once considered programming my work: “We always like to do one play in the season for the community.” I did not know who “the community” was, and I was afraid to ask, but I got the overall message: “This play would be a break from our usual stuff so that we can say we did our charity for the year.” Kinda like when companies take their staff to do some volunteer work around Christmas!
What follows is, of course, that the one “play for the community” will not actually be for the community; it is illogical to think that an organization that spends the majority of its efforts catering to one kind of audience would suddenly know how to cater to another—and, most importantly, to do it without alienating its regulars, who have gotten used to being catered to and would in no way appreciate being told to sit this one out. The “play for the community” is one that is thought of, fostered, found, and/or presented not for “the community,” but for the regulars. The “community members” that an audience consultant brings in are not meant to stick around: they will complement the regular patrons’ experience of the play, taking away the discomfort of talking about “the community” without them being present (because social media says that’s bad) and giving a bit of local flavor to the proceedings—especially to any reviewers who might report the experience on their write-ups. Once the whole thing is over, the theater will go back to its usual fare, and the consultant will go on to sell their audience to other companies that request it.
This all might’ve been floating around my subconscious when, in response to the email, I asked: “Could I read the script first?”
And boy, am I glad I did.
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