4618

4618. That’s how many people saw PAINTING CHURCHES in our 8-week run. It’s a wonderful number, because for us, it’s pretty big. But is it big enough? How many people should see it? Does that number mean it was a success?

And, is the attendance a good metric to use? Far fewer people saw IN THE MATTER OF J ROBERT OPPENHEIMER. But many of them had deep, profound experiences. One of our most important board members is with us, I believe, alost exclusively based on his experience at OPPENHEIMER. The Thornton Wilder shorts SUCH THINGS ONLY HAPPEN IN BOOKS had NEA support; maybe the advance funding is a better measure of a play’s value.

Or maybe we should talk about the cost per attendee? THE GOOD THIEF cost less than $25,000 originally and sold almost 1200 tickets, let alone the thousands who saw it after it moved commercially off-Broadway. Per person it was extremely efficient.

Or maybe we should measure it by how much fundraising we do the next year. 2007-2008 was our biggest year for individual giving; by that measure, THEOPHILUS NORTH and TEA & SYMPATHY generated the best result.

Or maybe we should think of the plays as children. No one would ever think to ask someone to measure the relative worth of various young people. No funder would ask you to figure out how to quantify the value of Billy versus Bobbie, to decide Sandra’s “impact” or Johnny’s “cultural significance”. I know there is something fanciful about thinking about the plays that way. Except, that’s how I think about them. When people ask me which one I like best, I shrug. They are all beautiful to me. I am very pleased 4,618 people saw PAINTNG CHURCHES.But if it had been 416 I would still have loved it. I would be running a theater that was bankrupt, but the show would still have been beautiful.

It seems a fair way to describe how I judge success and failure. I think about it like I’d like to think about people: each has their advantages and difficulties, but each has a real value endowed by the nobility of their creation. Which is not to say that we theater makers are noble, but I think the desire to create meaning and value is pretty close.