IU Theater tradition successful thanks to relationship building

The Brown County Playhouse is a summer tradition of live theater for locals and tourists alike. For more than five decades, the Playhouse has been a vital source of education and financial stability for IU students and Nashville, Ind., residents.\nJonathan Michaelsen, the IU Department of Theatre and Drama chairman, said ensuring the success of the annual summer theater is a balance of picking a season sure to do well at the box office while challenging IU Department of Theatre and Drama students. He added the success of the playhouse affects the village of Nashville, where the economy is driven by tourist dollars. \nMichaelsen wants his students to feel challenged by their work at the playhouse. He said it's an important part of their training.\n"We need to find challenging work for them to do ... but we also need to get audiences in, too. We can't just live in a void and be training. We have graduate degrees where we're training artists, and we need to also be mindful that these people need people to go out and perform for."\nThe playhouse summer season also challenges the cast and crew because of its accelerated production schedule, said John Armstrong, who plays Dennis Sanders in the show.\n"We rehearse two months for shows during the school year, but in the summer, we only have two weeks," Armstrong said. "It's kind of hard since normally, with two months, the show becomes ingrained in your brain, more solidified. We still have plenty of time, but we have to jump right into the show."\nThe current production at the playhouse is "Smoke on the Mountain" and is challenging to students in that there is a lot of music, and the students play the instruments themselves. It also has the potential to sell. \n For every production at the playhouse, Michaelsen has to sell at least 90 percent of available seats, otherwise the production loses money. \nOne way the department of theatre and drama is hoping to attract audiences is through reduced ticket prices for anyone under the age of 25. John Kinzer is the department's director of audience development. Theater patrons under 25 receive a $7 discount on the normal $18 ticket price for Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday performances. They receive an $8 discount on the normal $20 ticket price for Fridays and Saturdays. Kinzer said the savings program didn't work as well as he would have liked last year.\n"It wasn't promoted as well as we could have," Kinzer said. "As simply as making certain all the ticket prices were posted at the box office, and training our box office staff to ask a few more questions when they're selling tickets," Kinzer said as to how he could have improved the reduced price ticket scheme he considers "vitally important" to attracting the younger professional. \n"We realize students have a lot of things they want to do, and some of them have never gone to the theater before and don't have that experience. We can't sit back and do it the same way we've attracted people before. We have to be a little more creative in the way we attract students."\nAttracting students, and other theater patrons is not just about taking out newspaper and radio ads. It's about \nrelationships.\nKinzer said merchants, like the Brown County Inn or the Seasons Lodge, offer packages combining a room, dinner and show tickets for one price.\nKinzer also said building a presence on Web sites relating to Nashville is a necessary part of attracting audiences.\n"The tourist who is trying to find out about Nashville is going to learn about us pretty quickly if they visit one of those Web sites, and that's \nvitally important," Kinzer said. \nBrown County's Convention and Visitor's Bureau said one way the playhouse (BCCVB) and other Nashville attractions fight promotions costs is by co-op advertising. Marketing maneuvers like media partnerships where goods -- like tickets or dinners -- are traded for advertising time instead of cash. Packages from hotels or inns including rooms, dinner and a show are not uncommon either. Both work to ensure steady visits to Nashville. \n"It's definitely a cultural selling point," said Debbie Dunbar, who works for the BCCVB. "People do depend and look for that, so that is something we can offer them while staying quaint."\nMichaelsen also said he hopes students, and other potential theater goers see the value of that cultural selling as well. "Art can define life in a way nothing else can. We think it builds our society in a positive way. Not every play has a sledge hammer that goes after people in terms of their ideas, some of it is just good \nentertainment"