Taking a focus on entertainment and education, Ohio University’s Campus Involvement Center brought in big names, cultural acts and new musicians during the 2013-14 Performing Arts Series.
The series is allocated $94,000 from the General Fee for booking acts and bringing performances to Athens. Andrew Holzaepfel, associate director of the Campus Involvement Center, said the biggest crowds were made from bigger performers.
Country singer Lee Brice, comedian Loni Love and Broadway show West Side Story were some of the bigger hits of the year, with Brice selling out.
“I think bigger, larger name comedians always seem to do well with OU students and community members, so I think if we can do a few of those (next year) we will be pleased,” Holzaepfel said.
Some of the more unsuccessful performances of the year included comedian Craig Robinson and singer Sara Bareilles. The Capital Cities and Fitz And The Tantrums concert in the fall of this year also turned out a surprisingly small crowd for what Holzaepfel said he expected.
The concert, featuring the two “Top 40” acts, only sold around 500 seats, about 12 rows in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, he said.
One of the successes for Holzaepfel, however, was not in relation to the number of tickets sold, but students affected. Several of the performances from this year included artists that stayed on campus and helped in education outreaches to schools in the surrounding area.
“We started the ‘On the Edge’ concert series this year, where each of them had a public performance, but more importantly did a lot of educational components with both OU students in the College of Fine Arts as well as K-12 kids in the elementary schools,” Holzaepfel said. “We would like to keep developing that program because it was a huge success from our standpoint.”
Another area of difference in programming is the lack of a Convo Concert this year, which caused a drop in ticket sales compared to that of last year.
Megan Marzec, incoming Student Senate president, said in an email that senate is looking to set up a Convo Concert next year, but planning has not started, and she wants the choice of a performer to be a discussed within senate first.
“The Performing Arts Series is certainly something we are excited about as well as planning a concert at The Convo,” Marzec said. “The exact details need to be worked out democratically within the body; this work will begin this summer.”
As far as programming goes, Holzaepfel said he hopes to see bringing bigger names during special family weekends. He also wants to see educational programming increase with musicians and performers.
Emma Perrin, a freshman studying journalism and a MemAud student employee, said she was able to go to a lot of the performances throughout the year with her job.
For her, she said she appreciated the bigger Broadway titles like West Side Story and also enjoyed The Graduate. She said she thinks diversity throughout the acts and performers is key to appeal to a large audience across campus.
“The performing arts is something that everyone should be able to connect with on some sort of level,” Perrin said. “They should bring something for everybody at one point or another during the year.”
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