Theatre Puget Sound (TPS) is a leadership and service organization founded in 1997 to advocate for the region’s growing theatre community’s causes and administer much-needed services. TPS is now one of the Northwest’s leading arts advocacy and leadership organizations, providing programming and services that benefit both the theatre community and the larger regional arts community.

Throughout our history we have built and maintained programs and services that serve to promote, strengthen and unify the regional performing arts community.

• TPS Promotes the regional performing arts community through audience development tools and initiatives such as the Seattle Performs website, cooperative advertising, Arts Crush and the TPS Stage at Bumbershoot.
• TPS Strengthens the regional performing arts community by providing educational programming, diverse and cost-effective resources for both individuals and organizations, advocacy on both local and national platforms, and services that strive to improve the quality of life for our region’s theatre artists.
• TPS Unifies the regional performing arts community by acting as a physical and virtual gathering place.  TPS manages both rehearsal and performance spaces and produces the annual Gregory Awards and the TPS Unified General Auditions.  TPS also has one of the most active virtual communities in the nation that hosts an interactive website, talent database, message boards and listserv.

Providing broad access to arts and culture by broadening community participation and engagement is an essential component of our mission and a central focus of our work over the last several years.  As a regional service organization, we are privy to the challenges and needs of a diverse group of arts organizations on both a regional & national level. TPS recognizes that as cultural patterns shift and traditional arts audiences become more fractured, it is vital for our arts organizations to be proactive & innovative in their approach to audience development. We must look for holistic solutions that seek to align the needs of our arts organizations with the needs of our communities.

Five years ago TPS made a conscious decision to more fully address these issues by shifting our main focus for new programming to the “promote” mandate of our mission.  We view promotion as a large wheel with a diverse array of spokes that each serve to strengthen the main goal of increasing community participation and engagement in the arts.  These spokes focus on the following issues:

• Increasing Awareness & Visibility: Our collaborative marketing programs all serve to provide clear, consistent information in order to increase consumer participation, broaden exposure for our member organizations and leverage media buys to develop and maintain a consistent advertising presence for our performing arts community.
• Cultivating Community: Programs like Arts Crush build bridges between our region’s arts community and the public at large – extending a collective invitation that transcends cultural, social, racial and economic barriers and encourages participation and personal investment in our arts organizations.  In addition, these programs are structured to move patrons and organizations beyond the traditional “transactional” interactions to provide unique experiences that encourage a sense of community and ownership.
• Increasing Access: Our Space for the Arts program is dedicated to promoting a healthy artistic community and fostering the creativity of small arts organizations and independent artists through access to subsidized rehearsal and performance space.  Through Arts Crush & TPS Stage at Bumbershoot, we are able to create new points of entry for patron participation through accessible programming that seeks to expose audiences to new theatres and arts organizations.
• Education: The majority of our educational programming focuses on creating stronger, more sustainable organizations through training in organizational alignment and community engagement.  Our Cultivating New Audiences Seminar Series was structured specifically to promote holistic solutions within arts organizations that encouraged the creation of a shared vision and value system.  The series empowered each team member to begin cultivating change and innovation within their individual organizations, better positioning them to engage the next generation of arts audiences.

 
Who We Serve
While much of our programming is focused on the theatre community, the impact of our services extends to the larger arts community in the Puget Sound region.  Our membership includes more than 1,600 individual artists and 140 performing arts organizations.  In addition, our Space for the Arts program, Arts Crush and educational programming serves more than 200 non-theatre arts organizations and innumerable individual artists annually.  Our membership and program participants span the region, from Olympia to Everett and the Eastside to the Peninsula.  

Through our collaborative marketing and audience development initiatives we also serve the general public in the Puget Sound region by providing consistent and comprehensive information through our online performance calendar and cooperative advertising program.  Furthermore, programs like Arts Crush create accessible programming and open unique points of entry for participation in the arts.

We strive to create a public that feels more invited, informed and educated, while simultaneously fostering healthier, more vibrant arts organizations that are deeply engaged with their neighbors and community.  We hope to see a fusion of shared interests between our arts organizations and their communities – creating a sense of ownership that propels our arts venues to become true communal hubs where both residents and artists collectively gather to share stories and experiences.

Our education efforts and collaborative audience initiatives are making this possible.  We are creating more visible, thoughtful, articulate and engaged arts organizations with clearly communicated values and a dedication to community investment.  These organizations are better positioned to both attract and retain new audiences and be sustainable resources for their communities.