New England Theater will:
remove barriers to technical and operational production that
prevent artists from creating their art.
delight audiences with a full theater experience, offering an
exciting, one-stop alternative to traditional entertainment options.
embrace and promote educational outreach programs and activities.
enable production companies to present their performance to a wider audience by providing
support services in such areas as sales, marketing, ticketing
and crafting an online presence.
create an information clearinghouse of theater production
goods and services available in the region, with opinions and comments about the solutions
that are offered.
Production companies strive to produce their shows to the
highest caliber of performance that their members can attain. Wonderful works
of art get created during this time. Getting these events onto the stage
causes many of them to showcase the talents at a less than optimum setting, or
worse, not presented at all. Most often it is a combination of production
costs and technical difficulty that causes this to occur.
Almost by definition, performing companies do not have the
technical or arts management capabilities required to produce a show onstage.
These companies focus their attention, and rightly so, on their artistic
endeavors.
The Center will help to solve these problems by providing a
facility with world class amenities. The technical foundation of the center will
provide more than a basic theater, but an advanced facility equipped with the
equipment needed to present shows while minimizing the costs incurred by the
artists.
Lighting, sound, film & video recording and all of the
myriad areas that are required to mount shows can be packaged for easy use,
minimizing the expense and labor of renting and setting up for each production.
Scenery and costume shops will able to fix pieces that break just before the
show as well as be equipped to build anything that can be imagined.
In removing the barriers to production, the Center
functions as a beacon to attract audiences. The Center will welcome people from
the surrounding communities to explore live entertainment as an alternative to
digital media. The facility will provide an inviting venue to enjoy drama,
music, dance and other performing arts, and will augment those experiences with
a first-class restaurant, a casual lounge and a cabaret-style nightclub that
offer a setting for dinner theater, jazz bands and other small ensembles. These
areas will be positioned to draw in not only their own audiences, but to tap
into the after-theater crowd as well.
The smaller flexible design theater, the private reception
spaces and the corporate meeting capabilities all contribute to creating a
common gathering place for a multitude of activities. Wrap all this into a
location that encourages participation and that is affordable and everyone
wins.
Developing excitement for the presentation of the arts
requires more than just putting on a show. Outreach training in arts
professions is a must. Making training available in technical, administrative
and many other fields that contribute to the arts opens doors to an
immeasurably larger constituency.
There are many people involved in the arts that have had some training. There
are even more that want training. Some may be new in the field; others may be
looking for advanced opportunities for growth. For example, a small school may
not have the resources to bring in an artist for a master class in ballet. The
Center, however, can provide a professional studio and open that class to a
number of other schools, achieving the critical mass needed to make it happen.
Developing relationships with schools and organizations all around the region
will encourage activity between industries that to often get overlooked at the
local level. This might be introducing a student lighting designer to a dance
company, a graphic artist to a symphony, or finding a business major that can
help a small company structure their business plan. Larger organizations can be
encouraged to offer internships or projects in areas that may not have been
considered as related to the arts: an engineer could get a chance to evaluate
scenery construction techniques, or an actor gets to see new methods to expand
audience outreach.
The Center can provide access to experts in arts
management and other areas of production that many smaller companies often can
not give the attention they deserve.
These companies often do not even know what they are missing, or just don’t have
the resources to get to the level where it is cost effective to work. Giving
printing discounts, for example, to a customer that does one event a year is
not a real attraction for a printer, but pooling the print requirements for many
groups could be. Add to that the expertise to deliver these print requests in a
format that produces the best results in the shortest time and suddenly there is
a working relationship.
All areas of production management and administration can
benefit from these types of relationships; the Center can help every
organization it works with take advantage of these connections.
With the Center becoming the premier theater and event
destination in the region, the enthusiasm continues to bring artists and
technicians together. The excitement generated is not intended to harm other
venues, but rather be the source of information to enhance the experience and
utilization of every venue in the community. By actively seeking out and
sharing information about services, techniques and resources, all
organizations will benefit.
No performing company or theater works in a vacuum, but
instead is part of a greater network of like-minded, dedicated professionals
eager to share their experiences and learn from each other's successes. The
Center contributes to this interaction by providing a venue to trade in a
growing knowledge base, both face-to-face as well as on-line. The result is an
inclusive, supportive and thriving arts community.