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[0:03] Hal Luftig: Hi everyone. This is Hal Luftig with my Broadway Podcast Network show, Broadway Biz, where every episode I will chat with my friends, some of the top theater professionals in the business about the business of Broadway.

[0:28] Hal Luftig: You'll learn to raise cash to open your smash. You'll be all the rage from the patron stage. In no time you'll know the business of show, the greatest job there is. So join our squad as we unplug our big Broadway busy. Let's get busy with the Broadway Biz.

[0:56] Hal Luftig: Today's guest is Tori Bailey. Tori is the executive director of Theatre Development Fund, also known as TDF. TDF is an organization dedicated to bringing the performing arts to everyone. The work Tori does is so important and inspirational. I'm so glad she stopped by to tell us all about it on today's episode of Broadway Biz.

[1:21] Hal Luftig: Good morning, Tori. How are you today?

[1:23] Victoria Bailey: I'm good. How's it all going?

[1:25] Hal Luftig: It's nice to be talking with you this morning.

[1:27] Victoria Bailey: I'm good. I'm, uh, again, it's a sunny day, sun's shining. It looks like it's gonna be warm. I think I can garden a little bit this weekend. So all things considered, I'm pretty good. How are you?

[1:37] Hal Luftig: I'm good too, thank you. I am so thankful and honored that you are here with me today on this podcast. TDF, your organization, is one of my favorite organizations, I think, in the world.

[1:50] Victoria Bailey: Well, thank you for saying that. And you're one of my favorite people too. And one of my favorite producers. You do great work.

[1:56] Hal Luftig: Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, flattery will get you everywhere. I just want to know that. So, Tori, as we get started, why don't we start with, you know, what is Theatre Development Fund and what does it do?

[2:12] Victoria Bailey: Sure. TDF is technically we are a performing arts service organization. Uh, we're a not-for-profit. We started in 1968, so we're in our 52nd year of operation. And we are basically we are an organization that believes fundamentally that everyone should have access to the arts, the performing arts, particularly theater and dance. And we have, we think that all New Yorkers and really folks from all over the world should be able to enjoy theater and dance. And we have a whole host of programs that make it possible for folks to attend the theater who, for any variety of reasons, might not otherwise attend the theater. So we provide access to tickets, we build communities, and we also work to support the people who make theater, and we do it in a host of ways, which I'm excited that I'm going to be able to talk about.

[3:06] Hal Luftig: Yeah, so let's just jump right into that. One of the things that I'm always asked is, you know, why is our theater ticket so expensive? And one of the reasons I'm most excited uh to have you on today, and one of the reasons I love TDF so much is through its various programs, it allows everyone access. Can you talk about some of those programs?

[3:31] Victoria Bailey: The thing that people know the most about TDF, if they know this, um, is that we are the organization that runs the TKTS booth, which is the discount ticket center in Times Square. Um, the booth is located under the red steps at 47th and Broadway. And we've operated the booth since the early 70s when it was first conceived. And the booth, as I think everybody knows, provides discount tickets on the day of performance, generally at a 50% discount. We also have a membership program, which was actually our very first program from our beginnings. Basically, there's a whole host of ways that you can qualify to be a TDF member. You can, it's for teachers, it's for retired folks, union members, performing arts professionals, students, um, folks who work in the not-for-profit sector.

It's geared for people who can't afford full price tickets. And as you said, Broadway tickets are very expensive. Off-Broadway tickets are expensive. And you know, there's a reason for that. Costs are high. Commercial producers have a responsibility to try and repay their investors so that their investors will be um game for turning around and doing it again. But with costs being where they are, I think you really have to look at the kind of macro, the macro world of pricing. And there has to be an entry point for everybody. There are a lot of people who can't afford full price, and they still um should have access to Broadway. And there is a way in any given house, I think, to mix up the prices enough so that you've got a real mix of full price and then you've got some less expensive tickets.

Um, the other reason that I think it's important to have tickets that people feel they can afford, is that they can afford them on a repeat basis. One wants theater to be something people do more than once in a year or two years. In other words, if tickets are really expensive, I think for some folks, it just becomes a special event. And you go to the theater when you're celebrating a birthday that ends in a five or a zero or you know, an anniversary. And other than those fives and zeros, you don't go. And we actually need people to go more often. And the other big suite of programs are our education and community engagement programs. We work and we've worked, we worked a lot with you on that, Hal with Kinky Boots.

Kinky Boots was a favorite of our um Introduction to Theater program. We work with 10,000 New York City high school students every year. Probably over the course of a fall, the students will see probably five to six shows. We often buy out a Broadway house, which when we started doing that a few years ago, I think the shows were apprehensive about it. I think the companies were, I think the company managers were, uh, because the idea of putting a thousand New York City high school students in a theater together seemed daunting. But as we have done it, and as I'm sure you know, having seen it, Hal, our young people are so prepared for the performance. Um, they're enthusiastic, they're responsive, but they are respectful, they are engaged, they are there.

Um, and they really, they really, it's a life-changing experience for them. Um, Kinky Boots was particularly valuable because obviously it touched on so many things that young people think about. It touched on inclusion, it touched on prejudice, I mean just the whole nine yards. Um, we really we were very sad when when the show closed because it had been we actually, I think you know this. We when we knew it was closing, we decided we had to do one, we weren't gonna do it. We we added a performance and did one last one last performance, which was great. We know from research that we've done at TDF that you know the prime one of the primary reasons people go to the theater is they go, they want to go with a friend or a family member and they want to a share the experience and be able to talk about it afterwards.

And I think you know, one of the reasons theater is important is it teaches people that we can I can like a show, you cannot like the same show, and we can both be right that differences are okay, that differences are actually interesting, and that we can talk about differences, and I think you know, in a society that has become much more strident and much louder. Um, one of the reasons theater is important is because it encourages us to listen to other points of view and to learn about people who are different than we are in a way that is perhaps accessible.

[8:22] Hal Luftig: Wow. You know, Tori, I have to just say, if we weren't on the radio, I would reach out and hug you so hard because you have hit on so many things that I uh I personally think is important. I so agree with you that when uh a child sees a Broadway show, a live show for the first time, which many of them are experiencing uh through TDF, it is incredible to watch. I always show up at a TDF um school performance because it to watch their faces is just something incredible to see. One performance of Jelly's Last Jam, which starred Gregory Hines in the time and was about, you know, Jelly Roll Morton, who was the self pronounced creator of jazz. And we had an audience of mostly inner school kids, and they did not realize they weren't being rude.

They didn't realize that you can't talk back to the people on stage. And they were, they were so thrilled to see Gregory Hines that they were like, oh, you go, Gregory, you tell her, you know, that, you know, kind of stuff. And he he was so great about it. He stopped the show and he, you know, just waved his hands. He stopped the show and he said to the kids, okay, listen, this is how this is going to work. I'm going to do the show, right? And, you know, we can't have a dialogue while I'm doing the show, because there are very specific lines and things that I have to say. But after the show, I'm going to come out and we can all talk about anything you want. Any like deal and the all the kids scream back, yeah, deal.

You know, and when I saw that, it just, it was so my heart just was going to explode because these kids learned something. They were, they were getting to experience something that they probably never would have before. And uh I can't agree with you more that a child should see a show, a Broadway show, more than once. You know, so it begets it gets into their DNA and they they they want to. Not just once, like you say, for a special birthday or something, but that they it becomes an art form that they want to see and they realize how it can stimulate their imagination and talk about different topics, whether they agree with it or not. I love that. And I just have to, you know, also give a big shout out to the autism uh program because when uh you did do that at Kinky Boots, it was such a beautiful day.

When we're doing a sensory-friendly performance, it's a show that's been running a while. And you know, when you've been in a long-running show and you're doing it eight times a week, and you're really grateful that you have that opportunity and you have that employment, but you're doing the same thing eight times a week. Um, the sensory-friendly performances really are a jolt because the sh the the kids on the spectrum don't have the same filters that the rest of us have. And so, you know, their excitement and enthusiasm and their energy is palpable in a way that is not the case most of the time. And the performers, you know, every time we do it, they're you know, some number of performers will talk about, you know, they come off stage and they burst into tears because they're so overwhelmed by the emotion that they're getting from the kids in the theater.

And it's one of those things that we didn't understand until we started doing it was what that energy was. And you're right, it's a very different kind of performance. And we we do work with the company ahead of time to make sure that they understand. We give the kids um fidges, we call them. They're just little squishy things that they can hold to help release excess energy. Um, we give them to the children, and we give them to all of us at the office, have them too, because everybody needs a fidget occasionally.

[12:41] Hal Luftig: I was gonna say at the Kinky Boots performance, you gave it to the producer too. Yes, exactly.

[12:55] Victoria Bailey: One of the, you know, a fidget ended up on stage and the actor just picked it up and tossed it right back. Um, but they're very special performances. And when we started doing them, you know, we're an organization that, as I said, believes everyone should have access. We're about building audiences for the theater. And we didn't really have an expectation that children on the spectrum were necessarily gonna become ongoing theater goers, right? The motivation, because when you're a not-for-profit, you always have to come back to mission because your mission is kind of your North Star. And if our mission is to build audiences, you know, the question we had to look at was how do the sensory-friendly performances build audiences?

And of course, what we realized is that not only for families with children on the spectrum, not only are the kids on the spectrum not going, no one is going in the family. They're not going to the theater as a family experience because if it's not a sensory-friendly performance, you know, your two families are anxious. Are the kids gonna act out? Is there gonna be a moment where there's an outburst? And so even we talk to families, even with kids on the high end of the spectrum, there was a real anxiety about going to the theater. And the gift of these performances is it's not just for the child on the spectrum, it's for the whole family, because they get to go to the theater as a family. And of course, it means that for the other kids in the family, often they're going for the first time.

And so it's building audiences in a different way because we're creating a memory, right? Because when you do a family outing, not only do you do the outing, but you talk about it afterwards, and then six months later you say, "Remember when we went on that trip?" or "Remember when we went to the theater?" And it kind of gets into the fabric of the family's life. And so it's a different way of building audiences. And then the other thing we've learned is that for some kids, we hear from their families, for some kids on the spectrum, after going to TDF sensory-friendly performances for, you know, four or five performances, they then can go to performances with a neurotypical audience because they understand the routine, they know what to expect, they know the drill, as it were.

Um, you know, and it's funny, we talk a lot about building audiences and about newcomers to the theater, and some of what we do for those families, you know, is what you need to do for everyone the first time they come to the theater. I think it's hard for people like you and me, Hal, to think of going to the theater as an intimidating experience, but it is for people who've never been, yeah.

[15:47] Hal Luftig: Right? Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about TDF, about since this is called Broadway Biz, um, how the relationship, uh, the artistic relationship between what TDF is trying to achieve and the artistic and financial relationship or what the producer is trying to achieve, how we work together and make that happen. So can you tell me a little bit, talk a little bit about how TDF starts a relationship with a Broadway show?

[16:17] Victoria Bailey: Sure. People know people in the business know about us to some extent. So, you know, I think when if you a general manager's office, a company manager's office, they know that the booth is there, they know about the membership program, and they know that we're there to sell tickets. And they so you know, you kind of it's kind of general management 101, one of the resources that's out there is TDF. What people don't think about as much as they might, and it's our job to help them do this is to think about TDF not only as a way to sell tickets that are gonna go unsold otherwise, which is not to be sneezed at, but a way to get folks in who aren't going to come otherwise. In other words, what's the audience development?

Part of what we do is we try and reach out to company managers and general managers and say, when you're talking to your producers and you're talking to your marketing firms, you know, let's remember that TDF members are there not just to fill empty seats, but also to get people in who wouldn't otherwise come. And you know this, Hal, I mean, I was at Manhattan Theater Club for close to 20 years, and when we used to do shows and open-ended runs after the subscription run, you know, I always put TDF members in the mix during the week because it was kind of a baseline, right? It meant that I knew some number of seats were A, going to people who weren't going to come otherwise, and B, those seats were sold.

The booth, you know, it's a combination of they know about TKTS, the producers know about it. I think that, you know, there's a lot of mythology about should you go to the booth, shouldn't you go to the booth? If you go to the booth, what will people think? I mean, I like to say that most shows at some point they're gonna come to TDF, and unless they're, you know, one of those shows that's sold out from day one is a limited engagement and comes and goes in 12 weeks, you know, it's bad producing to not make sure that you make tickets available at all price points when you have the tickets to make available. So in a healthy world, we're part of the equation, we're part of the mix.

[18:39] Victoria Bailey: There is this mindset that if you have a hundred tickets left at the beginning of the day when the box office opens, that you know, tourists or people who just, you know, there are many New Yorkers, tri-state people who decide day of, you know, hey, let's go to the theater tonight. And the theory is that if you're not at the TKTS booth, you will force those people who say, let's go to the theater tonight, and hey, you know what? I want to see Evita. Um, and that's a great theory, but sometimes, uh, you know, you end up with, you know, 50 seats not sold or 80 of those seats not sold. And so I think what you said is a very important factor that by having them at the TKTS booth, you are in fact capturing, you know, some of those sales.

You know, you're not just leaving, as they call it, money on the table, and you are allowing people who, you know, may not, you know, buy a full price ticket, uh, just for tourists or not, uh, because they just can't afford it, or just, you know, for whatever reason won't. One of the mistakes I think we, and I say it we because as I said, I produced for all those years and I still think about the producing community a lot. We have this idea that if we let people know that we have tickets available tonight, people will think there's something wrong with the show, as opposed to I have a thousand seat theater, and guess what? 950 tickets have been sold, but I have 50 left, which isn't such a bad thing because it means 950 people have bought tickets to see you, right?

I think people don't even necessarily know that they could go to the box office because nobody runs an ad that says or shoots out an email that says tickets available tonight. People say new block of tickets on sale, you know, next week. And so we hide the fact, if you will, some of the time that there are tickets available. And you know, it's a more and more day of on-demand kind of culture. And the theater has so many barriers that make it different than online entertainment, right? You have to go at a certain time, it's in a certain place, you have to plan ahead. There are so many things that already make it different than I can sit at home and download something and watch it whenever I want with whomever I want.

That we shouldn't make it harder, right? We shouldn't make it feel even harder to buy a ticket. And can you tell I care about this? We need to do a better job of inviting people in and saying this is what this is gonna be, this is funny, this is serious, this is, you know, three sentences about the plot, and we do such a better job of getting more people in.

[21:40] Victoria Bailey: You know, one of the things I wanted us to talk about is that TDF is doing so much amazing work to make sure that the performing arts are accessible to everyone. Um, an example of this one thing I personally learned was during Children of a Lesser God, um, I saw the importance of representation of all types of stories told in the arts. Uh, it was enormous the reaction we got from that play from the um hard of hearing in the deaf community. Um, because they kept saying again and again, this is the first time I saw a play that told my story, and it was that was an amazing thing. So I'm wondering, you know, what you think about work that needs still needs to be done in diversifying audiences uh inside the theater. And how does marketing, how can we work better with marketing?

[22:42] Victoria Bailey: Well, I think there's a variety of things, and I think some of it is as you learn with Children of a Lesser God, some of it has to do with the stories that are being told on stage. And I think something that's so important um is to remember that stories are, on the one hand, stories are universal, but on the other hand, people do want to see themselves represented in stories that they're watching on stage. And so part of the marketing effort is to I think is to get both messages across, which is of course always difficult, but people want to know what's a story about, what is the play about, what's the musical about, and that's the part that's universal, and who's telling the story, and that can be a little bit more specific.

And so I think, you know, you can say, uh, you can have the description can be it's a love story, and you know, one of the further descriptors could be it's a love story, and you know, the couple is navigating a relationship where one of them has um profound hearing loss. You could do something like that. I think some of it is, uh, making sure that we're going to different outlets. I think diversifying audiences is one of the challenges that we have, and it's a financial challenge in part, right? This is why there's marketing, there's audience development. Marketing is more or less people are selling tickets. You're reaching out to people who you know want what you have, you want to make sure they know about it, and they want to make sure that they're picking your play to go see rather than something else that night.

Audience development is a little different, and it's where the diversification comes in because to some extent you're curating an audience and you have to go to people who don't always come to the theater, right? One of the financial challenges, as you know, is you know, the easiest person to sell a ticket to is someone who's already bought a ticket. I'm sorry, we call them low-hanging fruit. It's the low-hanging fruit, or it's um, it's low-hanging fruit, it's, you know, marketers talk about modeling, making sure you know you model your outreach to look like the people who you've sold tickets to before. But what that means you end up with is you end up with people who are the same people who are always in the theater, right?

And so if you go to multi buyers, it obviously you're gonna get a higher return rate. You owe it to your investors to be careful about how you spend your marketing dollars, but you're not gonna reach people who don't always go to the theater. And so I think, you know, one of the things that TDF tries to do, and we've started to do, I think a little bit more successfully is um, is to work with shows to say if you're looking for a specific kind of audience, we can help you find that audience, right? So we're obviously because we do a lot of accessibility work. Um, you know, if you're looking for an audience specifically with hearing loss because the show maybe speaks to that topic, we can help you find that.

[25:41] Victoria Bailey: But it's also important to remember that once people feel welcome, they'll come see, you know, someone will come, any variety of folks will come see all sorts of shows.

[25:52] Victoria Bailey: So it's both. It's reaching out to a specific audience when you want that audience for a specific play, but then don't ignore that audience when you're doing another play where you're not necessarily sure. You know, you might not think to go to them instantly, right? It's an ongoing cultivation process. You want people to feel welcome all the time.

[26:15] Hal Luftig: Absolutely, absolutely. Can you talk to me a little bit about how TDF does work? What things they do to find those diversified audiences?

[26:26] Victoria Bailey: Yeah, we spend a lot of time working on building relationships with community partners. And we've spent over the last couple of years, we've really drilled down on our focus in reaching out to New York City all through the city. I think if you look at the demographics of ticket buyers from New York City on Broadway, it's predominantly Manhattan and a few other neighborhoods in the five boroughs, but it's not widespread, right? The Broadway ticket buyer doesn't hail equally from all boroughs, and there's a lot of people in the other boroughs. And so what we've done is we have reached out to, we probably have 50 or 60 community partners at this point, and those are a whole host of organizations, whether it's police athletic leagues, whether it's public libraries, whether it's not-for-profits.

Often we work with not-for-profits and their staffs, and we say, you know, this is here for you. Broadway's here for you, off Broadway is here for you. We encourage them to buy TDF memberships so that then we encourage them to buy them, and then we actively say to folks, here's what's available this week. We do a lot of kind of, we do email blasts that say you might check this out so that we're trying to help people understand what's out there and tell them a little bit more about what the story's about. And people, producers are beginning to understand that that's a resource.

[28:04] Hal Luftig: Does TDF ever work with, for lack of a better word, like a celebrity or somebody within that community?

[28:11] Victoria Bailey: Almost by accident, I'm a little ashamed to say, was the idea that came up during Children of Alessandard to enlist the help of Niall DeMarco, who, listeners may remember, he is a deaf model. One of the ideas that came up at that point was why don't we enlist his help to speak to the deaf community? He's almost like an icon. We haven't done that and we should, and we've talked about it a little. There's a story, you know, this kind of it's legend, but it's true. Many years ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers had an incredible receiver, Lynn Swan, and he always kind of could get he could stretch the extra two inches. And he always said he was a ballet dancer. He took ballet, and that was how he wasn't a ballet dancer, but he took ballet, he was an athlete.

But that taught him how to stretch just that much further. And he did, I think it was for the Pittsburgh Ballet, he did a marketing campaign for them that was unbelievably successful. And so we've talked about it. We haven't done it, and I think we should. I think it's a really good idea because you're getting people who already have trust and credibility in a community. When we work with community partners, this isn't celebrity at all, but we do find it's important. People who don't go to the theater, you need to invite them, you need to kind of encourage them, and then they become advocates, if you will, or ambassadors back in their neighborhoods to encourage people to go. You know, we all hear about how nobody dresses up anymore and people are chewing ice and whatever.

And so I think, you know, I know a lot of producers who feel like it's gotten too casual, but I think if you ask someone who doesn't go to the theater, they would tell you that a lot of people would tell you they feel very insecure about that, and they feel like they're not welcome. And that it's an elitist activity. And I think one of the things that we need to do is make people understand that it's not elitist. The rules that we have versus the messaging that we give is really tricky for someone who hasn't been to the theater very much.

[30:23] Hal Luftig: I agree. I remember once during the run of Thoroughly Modern Millie in the very first row, a family of six was eating a Kentucky fried chicken, you know, full dinner, you know, with the coleslaw and the potatoes and the fried chicken and, you know, the passing back and forth, right?

[30:42] Victoria Bailey: Absolutely, and the cast was, you know, visibly upset, not for just for the flack of eating, but the smell of it. And, you know, I had to explain to them, besides actually wanting to go down there and saying, may I have some, the cast had to, you know, understand that these people weren't doing it necessarily to be rude, they just didn't know, you know, that theater was different than possibly staying at home and watching something on television. And we make it more and more complicated because, you know, we always try and give people some of the rules, and you know, it used to be that there was no food. It was easy because you could say there's no food in the theater, there are drinks, but there's no food.

But then, of course, the theaters started selling food, right? You can buy candy and stuff at intermission. And we had a person, we had an attendee through one of our programs who got really upset because, you know, she had, it was like the second or third time she'd been to the theater, and she bought a sandwich with her to eat at intermission. And, you know, the usher said you can't eat that sandwich. And she said, well, but other people are eating, you're selling them candy. Can't I eat my sandwich, right?

[32:00] Hal Luftig: Right, right.

[32:00] Victoria Bailey: And that makes someone feel like they're not, it just made, you know, none of us like to be told we broke the rules, right? If I do something wrong because I'm going somewhere for the first time and I don't know the rules, I feel really stupid and embarrassed. And it's the same thing.

[32:15] Hal Luftig: Yeah, yeah. And especially you're also sending a message like you can't eat your own sandwich, but you could spend, you know, $30 and buy, you know, whatever it is they sell, and you can eat that. And that kind of makes them feel all too a little bit like, oh. We have to understand that for the person who's coming to the theater, and you, you know, and certainly when they're coming for the first or second time, they're bringing with them experiences that have to do with attending other public events because that's the vocabulary they have, right? And so we have to help them understand what's different, but we want them to come back, and the way you make them come back is not make them feel stupid.

[32:55] Victoria Bailey: Yeah, excellent point. Excellent point. Tori, I wanted to talk a little bit about development because it's one of the favorite things that TDF does. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, TDF's Triple Play, how it got started, and what you've learned from the conversations between the playwrights, audiences, and theaters.

[33:19] Victoria Bailey: Triple Play is a project that I'm very passionate about, and interestingly enough, it continues to resonate in the field, which is great because it actually started almost 10 years ago and you may have been there, Hal. There was a convening in Washington, D.C. in January of 2011. And there was a lot of talk about audiences and there was a lot of talk about how theaters try and reach new audiences, and somebody said in the room, said why don't we ever actually talk to the playwrights? Why don't we ever talk to the artists about what they think about audiences? And out of that weekend came this idea that it would be really interesting to actually have the playwrights and audiences in close conversation with each other.

That these institutional theaters around the country, as they've grown, have really put themselves between the artist and the audience, and so Triple Play was born out of this conviction that if we put the audience, playwrights, and the theaters in conversation together, we might be able to understand a little bit better how to build audiences for plays. This was about plays, it wasn't about musicals, and it was about single ticket buyers because, you know, subscription is on the wane around the country, and so it was how do you develop a single ticket buyer and what do you need to do to get them to go to the theater more. So we went and raised money and we ended up doing a study which took place in eight cities.

We partnered with other service organizations with the National New Play Network. We did over 7,000 surveys online, over 7,000 surveys were completed. We did about 300 interviews, playwrights talking to audience members in eight cities around the country. And we learned some really interesting things. The single most important thing that people want is they want to know what the play's about, right? They really want to know what the play is about. And I think that's really interesting to think about when you go back to thinking about how you market, which we were talking about a little bit ago, because often if you go look at marketing materials for plays, the marketing material for a play will stress the credentials, if you will, of the director or the playwright or the star, and it'll be, you know, from the team that brought you from the director of, and you know what people who don't go to the theater, they don't know who those people are.

Interestingly enough, and this is probably more relevant in the nonprofit sector, they're not particularly interested in whether or not the play is a premiere. It's not a selling point, and in some instances, it's a real deterrent because people are worried that it means it won't be finished. People go to the theater because they want to go out with friends, right? They want to go to the theater, it's a social event, and they want to be able to talk with their friends about it afterwards. So the fact that they want to be entertained doesn't mean that they're not interested in being challenged. Entertainment has a kind of broad meaning. There's also a lot of stuff in this that we looked at and talked about in terms of people's interest in post-performance activities, whether they want talkbacks, who they're interested in talking to.

It was clear that exposure to playwrights would be really helpful, that they want to, they're really interested in like why does someone become a playwright? And what was the motivation for writing this play that the person wrote? They don't really care about the nuts and bolts. They're not interested in giving notes. They're, you know, they're not really interested in new play development unless they go all the time. So the study took place over three or four years. And what's been really impressive or rewarding, I guess, not impressive, but rewarding is the better word, is that it's theaters have adopted some of the practices, right? They've, they're doing more, the regional theaters that know about the work, they're doing more about telling people what the play is about.

They're looking at, they're talking to the playwright a little bit more about, you know, playwrights. I think the assumption was the playwright wouldn't want to give away the plot. And as a player, as someone, one of the playwrights that was involved, said, I can tell you what this play's about without giving away, you know, key plot points.

[37:50] Hal Luftig: That is true. I before I move on, I just wanted to just finish this part of our conversation with a, but what I think is a funny story. Years ago, I was one of the co-producers of a play called Death and the Maiden.

[38:01] Victoria Bailey: Yeah.

[38:02] Hal Luftig: And it starred Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, and Richard Dreyfus.

[38:07] Victoria Bailey: It was the right cast.

[38:09] Hal Luftig: Yeah. And all directed by Mike Nichols.

[38:11] Victoria Bailey: Yeah.

[38:12] Hal Luftig: So we put the, you know, we put our obligatory ad in the New York Times, and there was nothing. We decided to say Mike wanted not to say anything about what it was about. And lo and behold, because of the cast, I'm dating myself here, but these were the days, you know, before really Telecharge and that kind of thing.

[38:32] Hal Luftig: So you had to, you know, actually go to the box office if you want that opinion. And there was a line in the middle of February from the Atkinson in the middle of uh 47th, around Eighth Avenue, all the way to 46th, right? And then people bought tickets, but then we started hearing, well, what's the play about? You know, we don't know what the play's about, which we, you know, thought, okay, good question, but it's a little after the fact. So we decided we started to say internally, the play is about two hours with a 15-minute intermission. But uh we uh yeah, didn't quite work, but that's what we used. Um Tori, I wanted to ask you uh uh something from because we're talking about development of new plays, and I do think development and new plays is uber important to the the lifespan of theater.

It is it is basically the you know the plasma, if you will, of blood of what's going to keep you know theater going. And and I do think that uh there are uh a group of an audience, a sector of our audience that do want to be challenged. They're not going to the theater to see the next revival of you know whatever it might be. They they really want to see theater that challenges them, is thought-provoking, makes them you know discuss things. So uh, but from the point of view of a producer as myself, developing those kinds of new plays can be very expensive, very risky, and time consuming in a way that you know very quickly could turn into, you know, not. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what TDF is doing to encourage producers like myself and others and theater owners to to help develop these new works.

[39:27] Victoria Bailey: Well, I think I think the you know, the most the thing we do right now and have always done is to help producers know that if they do a play with there'll be an audience from TDF. Um we try really hard when we can to um take with our with our education programs. Obviously, you know we're looking for economies of scale. And so we often do, as you know, and we talked about earlier, we'll take you know 1200 kids to a musical, but we we also take kids to plays. Um and we take kids in particular off Broadway to plays. We have to be careful about content because you know, when you're dealing with a classroom full of kids, you're dealing with 30 kids, you're dealing with 30 families and 30 sets of um different opinions about what their kids shouldn't shouldn't be exposed to.

We do TDF Stages, which is our online um magazine, if you will. We spend a lot of time um interviewing playwrights and talking about plays. I would like us to figure out how to do more in partnership with producers on audience development for given plays. Um I think, you know, it again it comes back to the resources. I think if we, you know, one of my fantasies is that we raise some money so that then we could create some pilot programs and work with producers more, certainly on this issue of show descriptions. Um, one of the things that we're gonna do coming out of triple play is start changing, seeing if how we talk about a play to the membership changes the purchase rate. Um, so those are the kinds of things that I think we do.

And I think the the other thing is to is to just keep advocating overall for the value of going to the theater. And we live in a society where people tend not to listen to each other and they tend to yell at each other. And I think one of the things that theater does is it gives people an opportunity to understand a little more deeply who other people are, why they think the way they think, where they're coming from, and what motivates them. And that, you know, if we if we can humanize the other, the other, it it gets so much harder to to um denigrate the other. And and that's I think part of what happens when people go to the theater.

[42:56] Hal Luftig: Yeah, that that is uh I couldn't agree more. And as a matter of fact, because I am developing a couple of new plays, uh, expect me to knock on your door very soon.

[43:08] Victoria Bailey: That would be great. That would be great. I would love that. What you just said was so important when we did Children of a Less of God, because um, you know, our our whole MO was start listening. You know, people speak different languages, they have different, you know, they are different colors, they have different different, you know, uh customs and and rituals and things like that. And you we have to start listening. Um, and that's what was I thought so beautiful about that play. This is what circles back to the thing about people like to go with a friend and they like to talk about it afterwards because it's the it's in the after um that I think people end up exploring ideas that they have just seen in the story.

And I mean, I do it, you do it, we all do it. That's when we say, you know, I never thought about it quite like that, or I never understood that before, but it's so interesting that that character did such and such. I remember um John Shanley, the playwright for um, he's written many plays, but I remember when he he wrote a play that um called Doubt, right? Remember Doubt, which was Manhattan Theater Club. And Shanley and Doubt is for your listeners who didn't see it, you know, doubt is a play about a priest who's accused of abuse, and you don't know at the end, right? By by she's accused by uh what would be the mother superior of the mother superior at a at a school and and you don't know. And the play did really well for a play.

And Shanley said that's in part because Act Two happens on the way home, because people who see it, they would leave and you would hear these conversations about whether what between people about what they thought. And I saw it two or three times, and each time I saw it, I came to a different conclusion, right? I couldn't even make up my mind. You know, I know that we're in a very uh um precarious time right now. We're recording this during the COVID pandemic. Um and everyone has a different uh sort of sense of this. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on why do you think coming out of this that theater will always endure, that there will be a Broadway, there will be an off-road way, there will be, you know, theater, you know, for a very long time.

[45:32] Victoria Bailey: I I think coming out of this theater is going to be more important than it's been in a long time. I think two or three things. But the the real reason theater will endure is rooted in what theater is gonna going to do for people as we come out of this event, which is that theater is healing. When something significant is happened in the world, um, you know, a play is a a play is different night to night, depending on what's happened in the world that people are bringing in with them, right? You you it the the world does come in when the person comes in and sits down in the theater. They they don't they they bring who they are and their experience of it, and then a group of people are sitting together and and listening to a story.

And storytelling, storytelling has been around since you know they invented fire, right? Since you know, they invented fire and people sat down and told stories. And theater is essentially storytelling. There is trauma that people have experienced. And I think going to the theater and going out and being engaged. Um I think people are really, you know, I think people are, you know, the the part about I want to go and I want to be with other people and I want to go with my friend, and then I want to talk about this, the need for that's never gonna go away.

[46:51] Hal Luftig: Amen, Tori. I couldn't agree with you more. Amen. Well, uh, as all good things uh do, um, this must come to an end. But well, you promised you'll be knocking on the door with those plays.

[47:03] Victoria Bailey: So I will, yes, I will. But before you go, I have uh three questions uh that I ask every guest um right before we're we're done. And uh I you just don't think about these. So I'm gonna ask and you just answer the first thing that comes in your mind, okay? What is your favorite musical?

[47:23] Victoria Bailey: I knew you were gonna ask that. I don't have favorites. People ask it's like asking me to pick them up. No, no, no, no, no, no. I get that too. So here's what I'll tell you. I'll the first one I ever saw was Hello Dolly with Pearl Bailey and Cap Callaway. And in some ways that will always be my favorite musical moment in the theater.

[47:40] Hal Luftig: I could understand why. That was a great production. Okay. Uh what was the wackiest moment that you've ever experienced in the theater?

[47:48] Victoria Bailey: As an audience member.

[47:50] Hal Luftig: Either any either or as an audience member, as a as a uh you know professional.

[47:56] Victoria Bailey: When I first started working in the theater, I was actually still in high school. I was at a I worked at the I went to school at the children's theater company, um, performing school in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I was working crew. And back in those days, the way you made smoke on stage was with something called a fog machine. And it had, I don't know, I don't remember how it worked. I clearly didn't understand how it worked, but during a tech rehearsal, I managed to fill the entire theater with fog smoke. And I think that was maybe one of my that's that was pretty that was pretty wacky. That was pretty bad. I thought my very young career in the theater was over, but I managed to survive.

[48:38] Hal Luftig: Yeah. Well, um, you know, if it's any consolation, I was at the very first, like I the final dress rehearsal of cats when it was opening on Broadway talking about dating ourselves. And at that point, too, the fog machine somehow was miscalibrated, and the entire theater, the entire theater was was so fog-filled you couldn't even see the front of your hand. Okay, and the last one is so the lesson you learned from that experience with the fog machine was Ask questions. Don't pretend you know what you're doing if you don't know what you're doing. Ask questions. And the people in the theater um may yell a lot and they may seem angry in the moment, but five minutes later, all will be forgiven and you'll go back to what really matters, which is making the play.

[49:28] Victoria Bailey: Beautifully said. Tori Bailey, I can't thank you enough.

[49:32] Victoria Bailey: Well, thank you. This has been great fun. One of my favorite people, TDF, one of my favorite organizations. And uh, like I said, you'll be hearing me knocking at your door very soon.

[49:43] Hal Luftig: Okay, I look forward to it. And and thank you so much for the. I mean, you just have produced such an extraordinary group of plays and musicals, and I know there's more to come, and I'm excited to see it. And I think producers are the bravest people in the world, so just keep doing it.

[50:01] Victoria Bailey: Okay, I'm about to burst into tears and blush all at once.

[50:05] Hal Luftig: So all right, I love you dearly.

[50:08] Victoria Bailey: Bye.

[50:09] Hal Luftig: Love you too.

[50:10] Victoria Bailey: Bye bye.

[50:15] Hal Luftig: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Broadway Biz. If you have any questions about today's episode or the business of Broadway in general, let me know on Instagram at Broadway Biz Podcast or via email at Broadwaybiz at HalLuftig.com. Be sure to follow me at Broadway Biz Podcast for updates on everything Broadway Biz, the business of Broadway. Broadway Biz is part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Huge thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seals, and Brittany Bigelow. This has been produced by Dylan Marie Parent and Kevin Connor, and edited by Derek Gunther. Our fabulous theme music is by Nell Benjamin and Lawrence O'Keefe. To learn more about Broadway Biz, visit bpn.fm/broadwaybiz.