A reader looking for a first local performance has a question to answer before choosing a theater: What already interests you? That is where Matt Freeman of CHANGE Arts begins when discussing how to welcome people into an audience.
“I think the most meaningful way to access your local arts scene is to begin with a question, concern, or subject that already interests you,” Freeman wrote in an email interview with Debjo’s Boutique.
His own starting point was a gap between two parts of his working life.
“I built CHANGE Arts because, within the theater industry, as an educator, I often felt like an outsider,” he wrote. “And in educational settings, as a Teaching Artist or program administrator, I often felt superfluous.”
“Both worlds claimed to value what the other could offer, yet neither seemed particularly invested in building sustainable relationships between them,” Freeman wrote. “Bridging those two spaces felt essential.”
He described the aim in terms of an ongoing relationship: “I want CHANGE Arts to establish sustainable connections between communities, classrooms, and cultural opportunities, so that curricular and societal questions are routinely investigated through artistic experiences.”
“The arts shouldn’t be an extracurricular reward or an occasional field trip,” Freeman wrote. “They should be part of how we learn, question, challenge, and understand the world around us.”
The emphasis extends to the people who fill the seats.
“CHANGE Arts is more interested in illuminating pathways toward audience development than artistic training,” he wrote. “We spend a tremendous amount of energy encouraging people to make art, but perhaps not enough helping people understand why experiencing art might matter to them in the first place.”
“That encounter might awaken a passion to pursue art professionally. Wonderful,” Freeman wrote.
“But it might just as importantly create a lifelong audience member who recognizes the value of engaging with cultural institutions. Why should we consider one outcome more successful than the other?”
Freeman is also developing the Fire Island Theater Festival. “The Fire Island Theater Festival is intended as an example of a community celebrating, honoring, and questioning its own artistic legacy,” he wrote.
“Preserving history isn’t simply about celebrating what happened,” he wrote. “It’s about asking what that history means, who gets to tell it, and what responsibility we have to carry it forward.”
For its next stage, Freeman described a touring goal rather than an announced itinerary.
“FIT Fest’s answer is to start touring examples of our queer theatrical culture to Fire Island’s sister communities,” he wrote. “Rather than expecting audiences to come to the places where this history originated, we want to bring that history into new spaces and invite new communities into the conversation.”
For readers beginning closer to home, the next step can be a search. “Search online for the theater, museum, or performance space closest to where you live,” Freeman wrote.
He also directed readers to Find Your Art. In the interview, he called it “CHANGE Arts’ developing platform designed to connect artistic experiences thematically with the audiences who have an interest in those same subjects.”
The platform and nearby cultural spaces are places to look for a subject that draws you in.
“You don’t need to know anything about art to have a meaningful relationship with it,” Freeman wrote. “You just need to bring your curiosity.”