All stories by Joe Patti on BroadwayStars

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Clarifying Pricing Practices by Joe Patti

Colleen Dilenschneider made some really important points about misunderstood concepts that lead non-profit organizations to make poor decisions and policies. The “Six Concepts that Vis…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:31AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Of Thee I Sing (Baby) by Joe Patti

On this fairly tense Election Day, I wanted to offer a little levity by drawing attention to the 1931 Gershwin brother’s musical, Of Thee I Sing. The university theater department pres…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:06AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 7, 2016

Funding Requests As Panhandling by Joe Patti

I have been listening to On The Media’s series on the way poverty is covered in America and suddenly came to the realization that the language associated with the poor has many similar…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:54PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, November 2, 2016

How Much Would You Pay For A Selfie With Me? by Joe Patti

Some concepts have been banging around in my head for a little while that haven’t quite firmed up yet. I am hoping writing it down and getting some feedback from others might help to s…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:48PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, November 1, 2016

If We Build It, Please Don't Come by Joe Patti

I am interested to see that artists are gaining an increasingly sophisticated view of their role in gentrifying neighborhoods. Non Profit Quarterly reported on a gathering in Miami to discus…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:42PM[SHARE]
Monday, October 31, 2016

Gasp! Orchestra Strike Post That Doesn't Devolve To "Overpaid Bums" by Joe Patti

On the Marginal Revolution blog, economist Tyler Cowen quotes bits of a Wall Street Journal article on orchestra strikes by Terry Teachout and ends with what seems to be an implication that …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:24PM[SHARE]
Thursday, October 27, 2016

Not Everything Is For You by Joe Patti

There is a video of Nina Simon speaking at the Minnesota History as part of her Art of Relevance book tour early this month. Many things she said jumped out at me and I am going to pass the …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:12AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Too Much Art To Learn, No Time For Managing You? by Joe Patti

One last post about the arts entrepreneurship conference I attended a couple weeks ago. Tomorrow it will be on to other things. There are increasingly productive efforts being made toward te…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:31PM[SHARE]
Monday, October 24, 2016

Can't Brag About Them And Not Invite Them To The Table by Joe Patti

I attended a presentation by Mosaic Education Network about their efforts working in conjunction with the Barnett Center at Ohio State University to provide some entrepreneurship workshop…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:25PM[SHARE]

Primer On Ethically Contracting Engagements by Joe Patti

In other posts here on ArtsHacker, we covered how contracts should be viewed as part of a communication process, preferably one of the final steps. Because the contract memorializes what has…

SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Why Is This So Tiring If The Students Are Doing All The Work? by Joe Patti

Yesterday I wrote about the exciting things happening at the student-run ventures at Millikin University. Something I should mention, all these ventures are being run at the undergraduate le…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:00PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Why I Was So Excited To Spend The Weekend In Decatur, IL by Joe Patti

As I had mentioned yesterday, I had been looking forward to participating in the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education conference at Millikin University for a year due to their student…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:58PM[SHARE]
Monday, October 17, 2016

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Accounts Ledger? by Joe Patti

This weekend I got to do something I waited an entire year to do…go to Decatur, IL. Your first response may be to wonder why the heck I was looking forward to that for an entire year. …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:31PM[SHARE]
Thursday, October 13, 2016

What Arts and Cultural Concepts Should Every American Know? by Joe Patti

The Aspen Institute has a project in which the arts and culture community might want to participate. They are asking “What Every American Should Know.” They acknowledge right off…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:48AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Commission and Co-Production Agreement Points of Discussion by Joe Patti

This post is related to a couple of earlier ones about basic concepts arts organizations should understand about contracts as presented by Brian Taylor Goldstein and Robyn Guillams from GG A…

SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Only $25 For A Ticket?….We Must Be INSANE!!!! by Joe Patti

In a recent post Seth Godin proposed two ways of approaching your business, “Either you dazzle with as much hype as you can get away with, or you invest in delighting people, regardles…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 07:26PM[SHARE]

If You Can't Poach 'Em, Praise 'Em by Joe Patti

A few months back when Ceci Dadisman and Drew McManus first floated the idea of recognizing Creative Arts Administrators to the rest of us ArtHacker authors, my first thought was that the pr…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:08AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, October 5, 2016

When Serving Bad Food To Patrons Can Solidify Their Loyalty by Joe Patti

Over the years I have made many posts riffing on the idea that marketing it is the responsibility of the entire organization, not just a single department. For that reason, I was happy to se…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:30PM[SHARE]

What Are The Parts Of A Contract? by Joe Patti

What Makes A Valid Contract? Believe it or not, there are only three basic elements required to form a valid contract: Offer, Acceptance, Consideration. Obviously there are almost infinite d…

SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Wherein Resides The Identity of A Group? by Joe Patti

When I was taking a college philosophy class we got into the classic debate about where identity resides in a person or thing. If you have a boat and gradually replace every board over the c…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:15PM[SHARE]
Monday, October 3, 2016

Info You Can Use: Revise Your View Of Contracts by Joe Patti

I don’t regularly crosspost about things I have written on Arts Hacker. I sort of feel like I am cheating readers by trying to make one post do double duty on two websites. However, I …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:57PM[SHARE]

Change Your Fundamental Concept of Contracts by Joe Patti

After attending different regional conferences over the last couple decades the one subject that it seems will never grow stale is contract law. Any session in the subject is always well att…

SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Non-Profit Arts Version Of "The Talk" by Joe Patti

From what I have been reading, the new Fair Labor Standards Act regulations regarding overtime pay is going be pretty tough for non-profit arts organizations to handle. If you aren’t u…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:27PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Middle School Is Too Young To Start Suffering For Your Art by Joe Patti

There is a lot of conversation about the importance of advocating for the funding and inclusion of arts in K-12 education but according to a recent study, some attention needs to be paid to …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:12PM[SHARE]
Monday, September 26, 2016

All Your Trend Are Belong To Us by Joe Patti

Over the years I have frequently cautioned against becoming invested in the current hot thing that everyone is doing because the fad could pass quickly and you will have spent a lot of time …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:52PM[SHARE]
Thursday, September 22, 2016

Info You Can Use: Success May Result In Reduced Donations (Big MAY) by Joe Patti

I was surprised by a recent piece on Non-Profit Quarterly reporting the results of a recent study finding that the more successful an arts organization was in attracting an audience, the mor…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:31AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, September 21, 2016

What Oskar Said by Joe Patti

The keynote speaker for the recent Arts Midwest conference was Oskar Eustis who is current artistic director at the Public Theater.  Tweets in reaction to his speech have been Storified i…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:10AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Let None Of Them Be Missed by Joe Patti

I have returned from the Arts Midwest Conference in Milwaukee which apparently broke attendance records. I can believe it did because I have never had so much difficulty finding a free momen…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:58AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Mario Cavaradossi Could Have Been A Great Rugby Player by Joe Patti

One of the first blog posts I made included speculation about what the arts experience might be like if the arts were covered in the newspaper like sports. A little over eight years ago I ma…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 05:25PM[SHARE]

Light Choices Weigh Heavily by Joe Patti

When backstage technical staff have a negative interaction with performers, they will frequently mutter something along the lines of “if not for us, you would be shouting yourself hoar…

SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, September 13, 2016

You Can't Tell A Lot About The Value Of Art Based On The Audience With Which It Is Associated by Joe Patti

If you have been following my posts closely for the last couple months, you know the topic of the prescriptive value of the arts to fix various problems has been on my mind lately. Often we …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 05:04PM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off