fabulous way of telling this story with our band with a sample.
This piece has been in our repertoire now for over 25 years, has traveled the world.
How do we make it different?
How do we take these that this production, the Blackout and
make it special, super special and we went to the cycle.
We thought we have a great piece.
We have a great show that is going to connect with thousands of audiences.
We went on to create new conversations with national consulting agencies and
many of them were friends, and who have always been there.
But this time around, the conversation was different.
It was about how do we take this message to a much larger stage?
How do we use our megaphone in a way to engage not only [COUGH] our usual
audience or reengage them, but expand them aggressively?
How does that is going to affect our season?
How do we enhance the the value of our message
by being very consistent in our marketing strategies?
>> The cycle invites us to make decisions that are strategic
throughout the entire work process.
Problematically, we chose to cast a spoken word artist,
Flaco Navaja to connect with this invitation for
our audiences to travel across boroughs to see the production in the new venue.
So both the story and the institutional marketing were able to join,
and made the play a success.
In order to build family, we connected with both patrons and funders.
We decided to engage ambassadors for different nights of the production.
One of them was particularly memorable to us.
We connected with a very popular Bronx blogger who happened to
have an amazing collection of photographs of his father's
last day as a train conductor here in New York City.
As I was viewing his photographs, we started to talk about having an exhibit of
that amazing day with his father as part of the production and inviting him and
his father to welcome the audience for that particular night and
having a party for their friends and their guests.
That event was a highly successful event in which our audience was
able to celebrate their value and their importance in our theater.
This blogger is a taste maker in the Bronx and
his readership expands from the Bronx to many, many different circles and
he was able to help us communicate the message of the play and
the institutional merger of the two organizations.
>> With this production, we ran at full capacity and
exceeded box office projections by 60%.
>> The cycle enabled us to graduate our efforts to a different level and
to communicate these graduate these graduation consistently to our VIPs,
our funders and our donors.
For instance, our current airline sponsor doubled
the value of their sponsorship in recognition of
our deepened commitment with our community.
>> This season delivered the sharpest spike of
productivity in a decade for both theaters.
That first season of our merger was in many ways, a rehearsal for the future and
the cycle helped us be very consistent in the application and its development.
>> And as our audiences continue to embrace our two venues,
our two stages in the Bronx and Manhattan, the cycle enables us to continue to repeat
the success of that inaugural season at Pregones, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.
>> What made me fall in love with the cycle,
as a structure was that it begins with great art.
[COUGH] We are an artist-led company, an artist-led institution and
it couldn't have spoken louder to us the fact that none of
what we do would makes sense if it's not really firmly based on great art and
that to me is what triggered an interest in
understanding what happens after we create great art.
What is the next step?
And of course, we as artists are so immersed in creativity and
creating that unless we know where this is going to land with the audience,
then we're in trouble.
And this cycle prevents those troubles by early on,
reminding us that as we are creating this work, we are creating it for
somebody and that we need to begin to plan that next step.
So that, that production, that work can go to that next level.
>> And having the cycle for a frame of reference for a lot of the things
that we do has been really very helpful and it's become like a language.
And what's really interesting in our company, because we have two venues.
One in Manhattan and one in the Bronx and we choose strategically which productions,
and which projects are going to be harvested at each of those spaces, and
we also are a Puerto Rican theater company.
That means that we have two languages, very often on stage.
So the cycle is almost like another language and a frame of reference, and
a point of view that allows us to plan way in advance, invite and
incorporate other potential collaborators that don't necessarily or
don't normally work in the daily bases with us.
But the cycle allows us to plan in advanced and
to bring a lot of those partners into contribute to building a family and
building the resources that can allow us them to continue to create, so
that awareness is something that we carry with us.
And we try to apply it as often as we can,
especially to major productions or major events in the theater.
As an advice to those who are beginning to use a cycle, I think it's a beautiful
learning process where you have to get to know your organization and
your circumstance really well and see which are the moments in which the cycle
language and methodology best applies to the work that you're doing.