Studio 180 Theatre is seeking a consultant or consultants to help develop an Identity & Marketing strategy for the company, in order to improve community engagement, participation and attendance at Studio 180 productions and events.
ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND AND SITUATION
Since 2003, Studio 180 Theatre has been introducing Toronto audiences to socially relevant theatre that provokes public discourse and promotes community engagement. We are now one of the city’s most respected independent professional theatre companies, have an annual operating budget of $500,000, and present one or two large-scale productions annually. We are responsible for the Toronto, Canadian, North American or World premieres of renowned international works that tackle challenging issues and generate powerful audience responses. Past productions include NSFW, The Normal Heart, Clybourne Park, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, Stuff Happens, The Overwhelming and Our Class.
We are a non-venued company that has frequently partnered with larger organizations like Canadian Stage, Mirvish Productions, Buddies in Bad Times and The Theatre Centre to present our work. Over the 2010/11 through 2014/15 seasons, we staged ten productions in six venues, in association or co-production with five different partners (working without a producing partner twice).
In 2016, we will partner with Tarragon Theatre to co-present the Toronto premiere of You Will Remember Me by Québécois playwright François Archambault. We are also piloting a new play development initiative and running a highly successful and innovative empathy/critical thinking workshop program that brings our artist educators into high school classrooms to work with students of any discipline.
We’ve identified the following challenges to establishing a strong identity: 1) a large number of partners and venues, 2) erratic audiences based on partnership and/or venue, and 3) lack of in-house expertise in this area.
Download RFP
Closing date: 10/15/2015