Creative Ideas to Elevate Your Productions and Excite Audiences

The dancers are ready, the costumes are done, the sets are loaded. But have you given any thought to the people on the other side of the curtain? 

“The audience’s experience doesn’t start when the lights go down,” says Lincoln Jones, founder and director of Los Angeles’ American Contemporary Ballet (ACB). By the time the show begins, ticket holders have entered the venue, perhaps explored a merch table—maybe even a bake sale!—and found their seats. 

Taking this journey into account can make huge differences in the production value of your school’s show, Jones says. “It’s a chance to be creative and to create an experience that people otherwise would not have.” 

Below, Jones and experts from Pacific Northwest Ballet and ODC weigh in on how to make the most of performance day. 

Let the Lobby Set the Scene

Before the show, consider your venue. Is there space to add decoration? ACB often performs in nontraditional spaces, like offices or empty sound stages. Jones often dresses the areas to match the show theme. 

For the premiere of Inferno, for example, the company lit the I-beams in the building with neon tubes and added haze. “We [also] had this guy playing pop songs very slowly on the organ,” he says. “So it had this feeling of having died.” 

Are you using a traditional theater? During Nutcracker season at Pacific Northwest Ballet, the company dresses the lobby with a Christmas tree, a series of life-size character sculptures, and sets from the snow scene and Land of Sweets. “It really does set the mood immediately,” director of communications Gary Tucker says. “They’re great photo ops for families, and we’ve had more than one engagement, too.” 

Festive displays matching the energy of the show can also help raise community awareness when all those pictures end up on social media. But you don’t need to drain your budget to create the same effect. 

“Lobby displays can be as simple as photos of the cast members, or some history about the show, production photos, design sketches,” Tucker adds. “People love that kind of thing, and it really does enhance [the production].” 

Get the Audience Involved 

If you’re too busy to fuss with decorations, consider flipping the task onto the audience. “The third Friday of December is National Ugly Sweater Day,” Tucker says. “Every Nutcracker should be celebrating Ugly Sweater Day.” 

PNB finds lots of theme days: Beer & Ballet Night, Pajama Day, and even a Halloween dress-up, when the Christmas show falls on Friday the 13th. Find one that fits your show, Tucker says, and go with it. 

Sweat the Small Stuff  

For the show itself, Jones makes design choices with an eye for the cinematic. “I came to ballet as an adult,” he says. “My real education came from watching films of Balanchine’s company when he was alive, so I became used to watching ballet as a cinematic form.” 

As a director, Jones re-creates that close-up viewing experience through production design, hence the Inferno lights and haze and organ. “I didn’t think you could walk into an experience like that and just have a basic program on your seat.” 

The Inferno program, therefore, was printed as a book akin to Dante’s Divine Comedy, with details from William Blake’s famous interpretation. This launched ACB’s tradition of themed programs. For the company’s high-school–inspired Homecoming, for example, the program was inside a school folder, presented in photocopied handwriting on binder paper. For the annual Nutcracker Suite, it was a menu, with each divertissement presented as a feature of a patisserie (with a “Today’s Specials” insert for that evening’s cast).

“I want to immerse the audience in the experience, as opposed to having it be behind this [curtain] that’s far away,” Jones says. He collaborates with a designer for his programs, but keeps the budget low by paying attention to materials. For Astaire Dances, the gossip-rag programs were printed on newsprint—“one of the cheapest things to print on,” he mentions. “That one worked out really well.” 

The company’s programs have become such important set pieces that they are now baked into the value of an ACB ticket, and loyal audience members keep collections at home. 

Send the Show Home With Them 

Programs aren’t the only thing you can send audiences home with. For ODC’s annual Velveteen Rabbit, audiences can purchase a Very Important Bunny (VIB) Package, which includes a tote bag with a range of show-themed treats and a chance to meet the cast and take a photo after the performance. 

“It allows us to deliver an add-on experience and makes the audience feel really special and create memories with their family. But it also pulls the focus of all of that into the theater,” says Sophie Leininger, director of marketing and communications at ODC. 

The tote bag evolved out of the company’s pre-COVID tradition of a “Milk & Cookies” reception, an event that proved too logistically difficult after the pandemic. But, Leininger says, it taught them that they could be “nimble in a changing market and on a limited budget,” and the bonus being that audiences at all price points can now enhance their theater experience.

ODC also has an array of other merchandise to keep the show going. There are Velveteen Rabbit coloring-book pages in the marketing materials, and at an upcoming touring performance in Taiwan that includes The Velveteen Rabbit and other repertory works next year, there are plans to sell themed bag-charms based on company dancers. 

And don’t forget the bake sale: “We’ve been selling a Mouse King cookie for decades,” Tucker says. “It’s super-popular.” 

Keep the Party Going 

At Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ODC’s twice-annual performance home, the company participated in arts-and-crafts activities for the public, where costumed dancers met with community members, strengthening the company’s relationship with the city and promoting the show to new audiences for the first time this year. ODC also hosts after-parties for certain shows, held near their performance venues, at the W hotel and the Mission Bowling Club. The after-party for ODC’s LGBTQIA+ Night at Dance Downtown, for instance, has drag hosts and vogue dancers to help keep the party going.

Both are great examples of using your performance to engage audiences (and donors) even after the house lights return. Whichever strategy you choose, just remember: “It’s a chance to be creative, to create an experience that [becomes] a great night out,” Jones explains. “I’m always trying to push the experience through every medium we have available to us.”