March 8 2014

I feel like every time I start to write a blog I have the sentence it's been a while since my last post.  I have been writing a monthly letter to all the Market House Theatre donors for several months now and some of my blogging thoughts have been shared in those letters.  If you would like to read any of them they are posted on the Market House Theatre website (mhtplay.com or mhtplay.org) at the bottom of the home page.

I worked this past week with Fowler Black to develop a promotional video for How I Became a Pirate and he ended the video with a link to our website as mhtplay.org.  It is a joke in the show that you can always find the pirates at pirate.argh  which is a takeoff on .org.  When I went to make sure our website was indeed working for the mhtplay.org I found that it wasn't and had that problem fixed within a few hours.  Long ago when we came into the digital age the websites using .com were the dominant form that people used.  Although MHT is a not for profit 501 c 3 organization we have always stayed with the .com because people could find us easier.  We also bought the .org domain as well.  (On a side note there was a business guy who thought he would make some money off MHT and bought lots of domain names with Market House Theatre in it to try to sell it back to us at an inflated price.  We chose the mhtplay name because it seemed like a good choice and it was free to us to buy that domain. That's how we picked our website name years ago.)

As I pondered the issues with the .org and .com world I couldn't help but think about the many different ways that MHT is a business and yet is a Non Profit Organization with a mission.

On the one hand our primary mission is to develop and share the talent present in our community through classes and producing plays and musicals.  On the other hand we strive to make the ticket prices for the shows that are produced affordable to everyone in our community.  (Two years ago we were runner up for the Best Entertainment value in the community.  We were beat out by Noble Park!)

From a business point of view we try to select shows that will not only attract performers, but  audience members who will buy tickets to the shows to see the actors.  We announced our new season at an event on Feb. 11 to donors along with a short sneak peak at How I Became a Pirate and the Teen improv troupe HA!

Our Season for next year will include a murder mystery dinner theatre in August;  The farce comedy PERFECT WEDDING will open the main season in September; October will have Walking Ghost Tours and Oak Grove Cemetery Tours; at the end of October and into November will be the classic play THE GRAPES OF WRATH which was developed by the Steppenwolf Theatre company in Chicago; December will bring the Family  Series show A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS; January 2014 will bring a hot new comic drama BECKY'S NEW CAR; February 14th will be the 4th Annual MASQUERADE BALL with the things that people love and some exciting new elements as well; continuing at the end of February the Family Series will produce HENRY AND RAMONA based on the Beverly Cleary books; April will bring KITCHEN WITCHES about 2 cooking shows which combine Martha Stewart and Jerry Springer style shows; and we wrap up the year in June with the big musical MARY POPPINS.  As we get ready to send out season ticket renewal notices each year we try to balance the stresses of rising costs for royalties, lumber, and production materials and yet keep ticket prices as affordable as possible.  Many of our board and staff members line up in different camps.  Some vocally protest any rise in ticket prices with the economy and others looking at the bottom line and what we offer to the community tell us we are under priced for what we are offering.

We have online sales and in house box office sales and we are striving to have the theatre cover the online fees in the cost of the tickets while making ticket prices the same whether you buy online or at the box office.  This is not an easy challenge.  We know that people hate added on fees for online purchases and yet if we just eat those costs we will lose thousands of dollars that we have to pay online companies for selling our tickets online without adding on additional fees above the ticket price.

So as I sit here on a beautiful Saturday morning I'm struggling with trying to balance being a Not for Profit organization mission and being a business that needs to earn as much revenue as possible to be fiscally responsible.  I feel a little better knowing that I'm not alone in this struggle. Theatre's across the country are trying lots of different ways to bring people in.  Some theaters have opted to eliminate all ticket sales and rely on donors and sponsors to cover the costs.   Other theaters are using a pay what you can model.  Still other theaters have gone to only doing musicals and well known shows to attract audience members and are doing dynamic pricing of increased ticket prices the closer to the show you get with a premium price for very popular shows.

Market House Theatre's lifeblood is the mix of people who donate to help us achieve our mission and audience members who buy tickets to see that talent present in our community and to be entertained in the process.  As we work on our budgets for our next season, which begins July 1, that old question comes back to haunt me.  We are a .org who is also a .com and we have to weigh the fiscal stability of the theatre between those two scales. I already know that the solution will be once again be a blend between .org and .com sensibilities.

P.S.  Spring can't get here soon enough because this weather has been a killer for shows and rehearsals hurting both the bottom line and trying to coordinate performers into giving up additional time to reschedule school matinees and regular performances.