February 2015 Picks

First post of the new year!!

Getting back into the swing of things after the holidays and letting January settle. So let's get right to it, here are just some of my picks for arts events in the DC area in February.


Feb 9 & 10 - Cherokee at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Pay What You Can nights!!

Two couples—one black, one white—flee their suburban pressures and try to connect with nature by camping in a forest near Cherokee, North Carolina. But their vacation is upended when one member of the group vanishes and the others are visited by a mysterious local…who brings the otherworldly woods to life and unearths buried desires that might change their lives forever.

And "Pay What You Can" means exactly that, which means tickets go fast when the box office opens at 6pm. Folks line up as early as 4pm!!


Feb 10 - Hail Mary: Stories about Long Shots, Last Resorts, and Desperate Acts

Our monthly storytelling series -- our first program -- has been taking place on the 2nd Tuesday of every month in Washington, DC since 1997. Over the years, we've added tons of other shows and events, but our monthly show remains SpeakeasyDC's backbone. Tonight's show, like all of our shows, will feature a mix of eight to ten first-timer storytellers and regulars, who will take the stage to share their twist on the night's theme.

Disclaimer: I am a proud board member of SpeakeasyDC.

Even so, I can honestly say that there is something unique with the work we do. And you don't have to take my word for it. Just come to the show, listen to our first-timers and observe how they and the audience engage with each other.


Feb 20 & 21 - Laser Cat at the Yards!! [Free]

Laser Cat is a gigantic feline-shaped art installation that projects creative work crowd-sourced from around the world through its laser-beam eyes.

Laser Cat Washington, D.C. from Hungry Castle on Vimeo.

More information about laser cat as well as submitting art to be considered can be found at Washington Projects for the Arts' site.

And here are a couple of additional links.

• Eventbrite page
• Facebook Event page

Feb 26 - Krafty Kutz at U Street Music Hall

Might be a little biased because I'm going to support friends of my who are DJ'ing that night (Proxxy & Lantern, Malphunktion, & Chrstian Dope) as much if not more so than I'm going to hear Krafty Kuts.

Feb 27, 8pm - Emerging Arts Leaders DC Membership Launch Party

Disclaimer #2: I sit on the steering committee of the Emerging Arts Leaders DC.

After years of operating with an informal membership structure, part of our strategic plan was to formalize it so as to consistently and sustainably serve arts professionals who regularly attend our events and participate in our programming.

And we even have plans for those who have already "emerged" as arts leaders in DC, as well!! Email me if you would like to know more about that, or join us at our launch party at Studio Theatre!!

Feb 28, 9am - Black Theatre Symposium [Free for students]

Theatre professionals, scholars, and students will convene to discuss and take action around these questions as we explore the expansion of of an inclusive presence and influence in the field of theatre.

I went to the first one last year, and am excited to be attending again!!


Feb 28, 5-7pm - What is a Citizen Artist? [Free]

Under the umbrella of the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s INTERSECTIONS Festival, “What is a Citizen Artist?” is a city-wide creative convening to explore ways DC Citizen Artists can create a city rooted in more empathy, equity, and social imagination.

Yeah...Saturday's gonna be a busy day!!

• Eventbrite page

That's it for now!! Will certainly post as other things come up, and will always do my best to highlight things that I plan on attending and occasionally am involved with.

If you have any other recommendations, please let others know what they are in the comments below,

- J Street Jr

Holiday dance picks

Just a follow up from last week's post with several holiday theatre picks. Here are some dance happenings for the holidays, in no particular order:

1) Magical Musical Holiday Step Show, Step Afrika!

Join the dynamic artists of Step Afrika!, DJ Frosty the Snowman and their friends from the Arctic Kingdom as they dance, make music and celebrate the spirit of the season! This popular H Street Holiday tradition is now in its 4th year, we are excited to share the joy of the Holidays with you!

The show runs from December 11 to 22, at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

2) The Nutcracker, The Washington Ballet

Set in 1882 Georgetown, this gorgeous production showcases the grandeur of The Washington Ballet’s international roster of dancers and majesty of Tchaikovsky’s music. Replete with swirling snowflakes, cherry blossoms and historical characters, including George Washington as the heroic nutcracker, TWB’s The Nutcracker has become a tradition for generations of family and friends to celebrate the holidays.

The show runs from December 4 to 28, at the Warner Theatre.

3) A Hip Hop Christmas Carol, Culture Shock

Not a clip from the show, but a video posted on the event page.

The show only has three performances, one on Dec 19, two on Dec 20, at Dance Place.

So there are three more holiday picks, following my theatre ones from last week. Any other holiday dance happenings you've got on your list?

Check it twice, share yours in the comments!!

- J Street Jr

Holiday theatre picks

Hey there,

Been a long while since I've blogged, but getting back to it. Thought a good way to jump start this blog again, would be by sharing some holiday theatre picks I highly recommend checking out this year!!

1) Black Nativity, Theater Alliance:

This Christmas classic returns to Theater Alliance with a fresh voice. Langston Hughes chronicles and celebrates the birth of Jesus, while also celebrating the birth of Blackness. This classic story told through gospel, blues, funk, jazz, and dance asks you to look inward and find the wonder in life.

The show runs at the Anacostia Playhouse from December 11, 2014 to January 4, 2015.

2) A Very Pointless Holiday Spectacular, Pointless Theatre:

It's Christmas eve at the North Pole, and Santa's elves are off the clock and ready to cut loose! Pointless Theatre presents a winter cabaret for adults, an irreverent celebration of the holidays featuring puppetry, improv, and a funky reindeer band.

The show runs at Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab from December 2nd - January 3rd.

3) A Christmas Carol, Ford's Theatre:

Join the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future as they lead the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge on a journey of transformation and redemption. Originally conceived by Michael Baron, this music-infused production captures the magic and joy of Dickens’s Yuletide classic. Acclaimed Washington stage actor Edward Gero returns to play Scrooge.

The show runs from November 20, 2014-January 1, 2015. Check out the trailer below:

So, those are my three. What are yours, theatre or other?

Please share other holiday arts happenings you'd recommend in the comments!!

- J Street Jr

Haruto's Fattened Calf at VeraCruz Gallery

Hey there,

So it's been a while, but here's a post about a friend of mine's exhibit, at a relatively new gallery/performance space, VeraCruz Gallery.

I had the pleasure of being introduced to this place by my friend, Haruto Imamura. What's great about the venue, is that in addition to the exhibit, they ask the artist to do an installation piece as well. Here's what was up when I first went there.

And this weekend he's got a show opening there. You can RSVP on Facebook right here: Haruto's washington DC art show-opening night!!

Managed to catch a clip of him working on one of the pieces.

This was going on right before a Social Media Week DC event, "Social Media and the Local Music Scene: Engaging local audiences and re-envisioning social networks".

And here's one of the pieces, Haruto's friend Mike managed to hang before the event started, a piece he lovingly calls, "Love Like Disaster"

And small world, one of the owners/bartenders is sisters with someone I did a show with years ago!! And VeraCruz is managed by the folks behind The Dunes, a venue I've been at not just once, but twice previously, for a Class Acts Arts fundraiser and a SpeakeasyDC performance.

Full disclosure, I work at Class Acts Arts and sit on the board of SpeakeasyDC.

But I digress. Hope you can make the opening at VeraCruz this Saturday. And whether or not you can, Haruto's show will be up until the end of April.

Make sure to like VeraCruz Gallery on Facebook, follow them on Twitter (if you're there), check-in on Facebook and/or Foursquare (or wherever you are).

AND if you tweet about it, make sure to use #dcarts!!

- J Street Jr

Emerging Arts Leaders DC's Creative Conversation: Fundraising in the Millennial Age

Hey,

So last week I had the pleasure and privilege of joining a panel put together for this year's Emerging Arts Leaders DC's (EALDC) annual Creative Conversation. This year's topic? Fundraising in the Millennial Age.

A quick disclaimer, just in case you didn't my post from August: I was asked to join the steering committee of EALDC and accepted. I started my tenure a couple of months ago. Since then I've co-hosted one of our monthly First Friday lunches, and I ended up on this panel after volunteering adding my own two cents to the conversation, as someone who has successfully implemented two Kickstarter campaigns to produce Capital Fringe shows.

But I digress. Our hosts for the evening were two of my fellow committee members, Tim Mikulski (Communications and Content Manager at Americans for the Arts) & Emily Travis (Communications & Government Affairs Associate at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. Emily was also our moderator for the evening, and a wonderful one at that.

And so let me introduce my fellow panelists. Going from left to right, after Emily, we had Shannon Siemens, the assistant director of membership at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts as well as one of the foundations' liaisons with their Club 66 (young professional) membership program. Then there was me in the middle, next to whom sat James Li, entrepreneur and co-founder of a relatively new fundraising platform Encore. And last, but certainly NOT least was Ryan Holladay, a trustee of the Awesome Foundation's DC Chapter, manager of new media of Artisphere, as well as half the electronic music due known as Bluebrain.

Emily kicked off the convo with a question to Shannon, getting a sense of the state of fundraising, and she shared her experience and insights, particularly with demographics and retention rate. This was a perfect segue to discussing Wolf Trap's club 66 program, and was a great way to set the context for the evening, Fundraising in a Millennial Age.

James added to the conversation, and how Encore is helping to fill a need and bridge a gap. He provided some great information from the recent Millennial Impact Report, which you can check out at their blog. One phrase he used, which I love and relates to similar conversations about brandraising (thank you Big Duck!), was "top of mind". My takeaway was how important it is to stay present and relevant between the arts & cultural events which are the heart of any arts organizations' programs.

Social media inevitably came up and some of the major points included making sure that one had goals and that you focused on good, quality content, and not necessarily some of the easier to grasp, quantifiable stats.

Honestly, with the diversity of panelists and experiences, it's really hard to share everything that was discussed and covered. I say this as I attempt to even think about how I can share a nugget of what Ryan contributed, and I can't. His and everyone else's experience was a healthy serving of humble pie, for me.

Even what notes I managed to take probably only covered 10% of the conversation. So I'll skip to the end of the panel section, and try to paraphrase what I thought was important to leave the evening with.

I reiterated how important it is with social media to be transparent, to integrate those tools with an overall communication plan, and to really cultivate those one-to-one relationships and interactions. Social media is ultimately just a tool, not a strategy.

So after the panel, we broke off into small groups each given a different scenario of an arts organization in crisis, and they had to develop a solution based on the evening's conversation.

And this was just as important, if not more so, than the panel, otherwise it's not much of a conversation.

Overall a great evening with over 20 attendees. Looking forward to future ones, like the one I'm working on now.

After the First Friday Lunch I co-hosted, where there were a number of development people present, they expressed interest in a workshop/training/whatever much like many that the Foundation Center in Washington offer, but specifically for those at arts organizations. I went on to contact them, and talked with Kim and, although their training calendar is full through the rest of the calendar year, we're looking into a spring offering.

I've even touched based with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and have word from their Executive Director that they are certainly on board for whatever we work out. I thought it'd be great to hear from them, not just about granting opportunities, but leveraging those grants to go after other sources of funding.

Anyway, really excited to be part of this team at the Emerging Arts Leaders DC and this community of artists and arts organizations in the DC Metropolitan Area. Glad to have had the opportunity to participate as a panelist in our Creative Conversation, and stoked to bring other similar events to local arts professionals, to help us all move forward,

- J Street JR

The Peter Fox Project

Hey there,

So after a hiatus, today I was inspired to blog because I had to share a wonderful example of the arts community in DC.

His name is Peter Fox. Today is his birthday. I got to meet and perform with him while singing with the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington. That was back in 2007. And it was right when he was pivoting to pursue his music professionally. I remember talking to him about it, as the work he was in was not as fulfilling as his art was.

While Peter was already a pillar in the local arts & LGBT community, it was wonderful and inspiring to see him take that to the next level. Check out this clip from Aids Walk 2010, just a little over a couple of years ago:

It hasn't even been a year since he left us, gone too soon. He succumbed to cancer. And while he isn't here in body, his spirit is still with us, and his energy continues to change the world.

Friends set up a fundraiser, which you can support on Crowdrise, called the Peter Fox Project:

On January 2, 2012, we lost one of the most beautiful souls to have entered our lives. Peter Fox touched everyone he encountered, and we - his family, friends, and fans - have partnered up with the Sitar Arts Center to continue his love, light, and legacy. Peter has always wished he had began his music career sooner, so this partnership with Sitar is just and appropriate. 

This annual fundraising campaign aims to raise $30,000 each year to ensure that Peter's love for music will help underprivileged, artistic and musically gifted youth in Washington, DC continue their talents.

So whether you knew him or not, I hope you consider joining Team Peter and supporting the work of the Sitar Arts Center through this fund.

Peter: You are missed and loved,

- J Street Jr,

Comparing 10 DC Theatres on twitter: Report

Hello,

So I blogged about the method I went about to measure the social media efforts of theatres on Twitter at my AWayofLife0 blog (and if you came here via that, you can scroll down to after the under construction sign), particularly regardingthis endeavor. I looked at various data to compare 10 of DC's multitude of theatre companies. The theatres were chosen by a number of subjective factors, ones I was familiar with, established companies, Helen Hayes nominees, and is by no means comprehensive, but just within the scope of my own personal capacity.

Also, if anyone's with a theatre which was not included, and would like to be considered for when I do this report again in the future, please contact me and let me know. If you have any questions about the metrics or reasoning, after reading the other blog explaining all of it, absolutely message me. This is DEFINITELY a work in progress, and my main goal is to provide information and context that will help any and everyone do social media to the best of their capacity.

This isn't a matter of who's doing social media right and who's doing it wrong. I just want to make that clear. Everyone's doing something right to some degree. As I mentioned in the other post, ultimately any individual theatre's social media success can only be based on their own goals and measurements.

That being said, the ten theatre companies I took a look at were Arena Stage, Metro Stage, Olney Theatre Center, Round House Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, Studio Theatre, Theater J, Synetic Theater, & Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

I break down rankings based on presence, relationships, and influence. I then provide the overall ranking at the end. Check it out:

Rankings based on presence, one's static and fluid appearance (i.e. selection of profile & background image and tweet frequency) were:

1. Woolly Mammoth Theatre
2. Shakespeare Theatre Company
3. Theater J
4. Studio Theatre
5. Arena Stage
5. Metro Stage
5. Round House Theatre
8. Signature Theatre
9. Olney Theatre Center
9. Synetic Theater

Rankings based on relationships (i.e. following/follower ratio and percentage of active followers) were:

1. Metro Stage
2. Theater J
3. Woolly Mammoth Theatre
4. Shakespeare Theatre Company
5. Arena Stage
6. Signature Theatre
7. Olney Theatre
8. Studio Theatre
9. Synetic Theatre
10. Round House Theatre

Rankings based on influence (i.e. Klout and Peer Index scores) were:

1. Shakespeare Theatre Company
2. Signature Theatre
3. Arena Stage
3. Olney Theatre
3. Woolly Mammoth Theatre
6. Round House
7. Metro Stage
7. Theater J
9. Studio Theatre
10. Synetic Theater

And here are the overall ranking combining the previous three categories:

1. Woolly Mammoth Theatre
2. Shakespeare Theatre Company
3. Theater J
4. Metro Stage
5. Arena Stage
6. Signature Theatre
7. Round House
8. Studio Theatre
9. Olney Theatre
9. Synetic Theater

Again, this is a ranking and not a scoring. There is no objective standard of social media proficiency which I used to measure and score these theatre companies against. And while there are some metrics which are somewhat objective, this ranking is based on how each theatres' scores compared to the others.

It is also an attempt to rank engagement, which might not be a theatre company's goal with their Social Media. If you're main goal is driving website traffic and ticket sales, then this ranking will probably be of little use to you. However, I would make the case that effective engagement in addition to broadcasting content that's on message and part of your overall marketing strategy, creating a place for dialogue and conversations, however brief, can actually compliment and even help with any other goals you might have.

An interesting tidbit is that Shakespeare Theatre Company and Signature Theatre are the social media veterans of this group, joining twitter over four years ago. But the "noob", Woolly Mammoth Theatre, which joined just a little under three years ago (it'll be three years on 9/1, actually), has risen to the top in terms of social media savvy, according to these rankings.

One consideration for future reports will be to include the quantity of followers, adjusted to not include fake or inactive ones, in the scoring system used to rank. The only issue I have with this is that so much of this can be dependent on anything from location, to whether a theatre is engaging not just local and regional tweeps, but national ones, as well, and quantity in and of itself does little to provide useful, meaningful context.

Finally, for tweeps in the DC area, if you follow any of these companies (if not all of them), does this more or less reflect what you've observed their engagement to be? Any surprises or questions with these rankings? Anything you recommend I take into further consideration? Is any of this even useful? If you haven't read my blog breaking down what went into this, please check it out.

I would personally be curious as to how much this does or doesn't reflect on a theatre's social media capacity, strategy, goals, and desired outcomes. And I'm definitely up to discussing this with any person in charge of such channels, either for these companies or others, if you have questions, input, or just want to grab coffee and chat.

Let me know, and keep an eye out for future reports,

- J Street Jr

P.S. Just in case you aren't following any of the theatres from this ranking, and would like to, here you go (in alphabetical order):

• Follow @ArenaStage
• Follow @MetroStage
• Follow @OlneyTheatre
• Follow @RHT_roundhouse
• Follow @ShakespeareinDC
• Follow @sigtheatre
• Follow @Studio_Theatre
• Follow @SyneticTheater
• Follow @TheaterJ
• Follow @woollymammothtc