Downtown D.C. BID seeks arts director to mold a theater, entertainment district

Warner Theater.

Article in the Washington Business Journal. 

The Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District hopes to mold the city's arts, culture and entertainment community into something akin to London's West End theater district, playing into a larger effort by the Bowser administration to recast the perception of D.C. as more than just home to the nation's capital.

The BID began accepting applications last week for a new director of downtown arts, culture and entertainment, with an advertised salary range of $105,000 to $125,000 and a start date as soon as Dec. 22.

The selected candidate will be charged with helping to position downtown D.C. as the region's premier destination for arts, culture, entertainment and sports, a move it hopes will boost visitation and position downtown as an appealing backdrop for companies looking to attract and retain workers. The individual will also be responsible for coming up with funding sources to sustain the effort, which could take the form of a dedicated fund, grants, sponsorships or even the creation of a stand-alone nonprofit to lead those fundraising efforts. In short, it's a big job, and somebody's got to do it, said Gerren Price, the BID's president and CEO.

Building and sharing audiences.  Interestingly, 20 years ago or so I applied for a marketing position at the Warner Theater in Downtown DC. 

At the time I didn't realize they were/are managed by LiveNation, the international arts management group, so I had no chance.

One of the points I made in my cover letter is that even if they compete nightly against the National Theatre for audiences, the reality was they needed to work together to build the audience for theaters in Downtown DC collectively. (E.g. + Landsburgh Shakespeare Theatre, Ford's Theater, Wooly Mammoth, etc.)

I later repeated this in my talk to the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs national conference in DC in 2009, summarized in my entry, "Arts, Culture Districts, and Revitalization." 

The overall point that it was up to theater as a discipline "to make their own plan(s)" that they shouldn't rely on real estate developers and even culture planners to do it for them.

And I made the point they need to share audiences and build the overall audience of people willing to go to Downtown DC to see theater.

Playhouse Square.

Pittsburgh and Cleveland as models.  For years, I've made the point that the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Playhouse Theater Foundation in Cleveland are models for how the city could address development and operation of cultural facilities.

-- "The Howard and Lincoln Theatres: run them like the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust/Playhouse Square Cleveland model," 2012
-- "Pittsburgh Cultural Trust maintains diverse real estate portfolio to support arts," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
-- "How the Arts Drove Pittsburgh's Revitalization," The Atlantic

London's National Theatre.  The recent entry, "Theater Roundup," about theater developments around the country, mentioned the trials and tribulations of the Kennedy Center, comparing it to the great success of the National Theatre in London.  

Director Indhu Rubasingham leverages the national and international place of London in the theater discipline ("National Theatre director Indhu Rubasingham: ‘If I wasn’t scared, I wouldn’t be doing my job’" "Indhu Rubasingham: the National Theatre’s new artistic director takes centre stage," Financial Times) and focuses on innovation and providing a diverse array of programs in part to reach a variety of demographics.  Also see "How to get National Theatre tickets for £10," IanVisits.

 “You can’t be all things to all people, but you can try to offer as broad a range as possible — whether that’s a western classic, an international classic, international new writing or promoting the brilliance we have around the country. The National is a flag-bearer as well as an innovator. It’s a provoker as well as populist. It’s brilliant when it’s doing all those things at once.”

The Kennedy Center hasn't really taken on this kind of role vis a vis the national theater ecosystem in the US. 

Graphic from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Theater as presentation versus theater as production.  The roundup piece also references discussion in Pittsburgh about the difference between theater companies that actively produce plays, versus organizations that present plays from the national circuit, like Hamilton, Cats, etc. 

-- "'Cultural coffin': Pittsburgh's thespians and universities react to theater woes," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
-- "Survey Shows Chicago Small Arts Sector Thriving," American Theatre

Theater production companies contribute to the development and maintenance of the local arts ecosystem, by hiring and paying playwrights, actors, musicians, and back of the house production. 

A showing of Cats does not have the same kind of local impact.

If local colleges and universities have active theater programs, all the better.  For example, in Pittsburgh Carnegie-Mellon is particularly well known.  But DC has a great program and on campus theater at Catholic University too.

The Washington City Paper has reported on an element of this in how cutting back on house staff reduces the pool of local talent and economic benefits to the local economy ("What’s Lost When Theaters Lose Production Crews?").  

Tourists as an element of the market.  Like NYC and Chicago, at least in the past, tourists, not having access to the same array of programming back home, often took in a show as part of their trip to DC.  Of course, NYC has tourists who come to the city because it is a theater destination.  DC is not quite the same.  Except maybe regionally.  

A dissertation on DC's Arena Stage makes the point that it is the closest theater in the city to playing the kind of role National Theatre does in London ("Performing (Non)Profit, Race, and American Identity in the Nation's Capital: Arena Stage, 1950-2010").  

Another dissertation argued that the city's National Theatre played a more national role, when the city was more of a premier tourist destination, and there was less opportunity to consume theater in their own locales ("National theater or public theater: The transformation of the theatrical geography of Washington, D.C., circa 1970–1990").

In region visitors will matter a lot.  But tourists or DC residents aren't enough to fuel the creation of a larger theater ecosystem in Downtown DC.  Metropolitan area residents will have to make up a big proportion of the audience day in and day out in order to be successful.

London.

Peer cities review.  It behooves the BID to do peer case studies, on cities like London, Manhattan (Broadway Theaters: An economic engine for New York, Broadway League), Chicago ("Loop economy boosted by theatre and investment during fall and winter 2022," Chicago Loop Alliance, "Driven by arts and culture, pedestrian traffic in Downtown Chicago exceeds pre-pandemic levels, report finds," WBEZ/NPR), and Hamburg wrt musicals ("Broadway on the Elbe," New York Times), and figure out if the initiative, even though focused on Downtown, will provide assistance and marketing support to theaters and university programs outside of the core of the city.

Similarly, New York City's segmentation of theater productions as Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway is a useful rubric for recognizing that all "theater" is not the same.  Again, presentation of programs in DC that were originally on Broadway has a different economic impact than locally-produced theater and building the audience for it ("Studies Show Big Impact of Small Theatres in NY, Chicago," American Theatre)