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Theater Arts in a New Light
The New York Theater Network
Holly Hughes who will appear at Dixon Place (a member theater) in Let Them Eat Cake this December
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For unknown reasons, some people think that tickets to great theater shows are costly, an assumption that is downright false. People who haven’t been theater-oriented simply are just unaware of how accessible Broadway tickets can be.
With that in mind, A.R.T./New York and Theatermania.com came up with a social networking site that also acts like an encyclopedia of every possible theater shows known in existence. The spawn of this geniality is the New York Theater Network. The inspiration to launch this project came from keynote speaker Diane Ragsdale who presented her paper at a fiscal forum for theater arts personalities, in conjunction with the Department of Cultural Affairs. Ragsdale’s presentation made Virginia Louloudes, A.R.T./New York’s executive director, design a PowerPoint “to my board saying I would love to do this.”
Originally they were thinking of trying to do the things that Theatermania does but Director Francis Black wanted to put the project in a more modern setting. She wanted to take the project up to date with technology. Rather than reinventing the wheel, A.R.T./New York decided to make Theatermania, one of its longtime supporters, a partner. “The partnership with them is perfect,” said Louloudes. “They have the technological capacity, we had the membership that we brought to the table and we hired Devin Smith as our consultant who graduated with an MBA from the Yale School of Management with specialty in social networking.”
It has been a multifaceted project because “not only are we building a website but we are also changing the way theaters think about networking.” With one click on a button on the theater’s Facebook page, it simultaneously updates the theater’s profile on NYTN’s page as well. “This is the first time that a theater with only a $50,000 annual budget can have the same information and quality of information and can have video footage and can have blogs and chat rooms as well as the biggest theaters that produce on Broadway. It’s an even playing field in the advertising world.”
Ultimately, the goal of NYTN is to, according to Louloudes, “demystify the theater world and demonstrate that price and location are affordable and accessible and to deepen the connection between the artist and audience.”