Rebranding the City @ Big Bend

Rebranding the City: A Humanizing Tour of Akron is a series of theatrical vignettes inspired by and primarily comprised of verbatim quotes from interviews with people from each of Akron’s 24 neighborhoods. Art x Love engaged Chameleon Village and Gum-Dip Theatre to lead the production for our @PLAY Akron project. Fifteen free performances were scheduled from September through December of 2018.

The Rebranding the City performance at Big Bend was a good learning for the team. The event was scheduled for Friday, October 5th, at 1337 Merriman Road, but rain forced us to cancel and redirect people to the North Hawkins Area performance on Sunday, October 7th.

As a site-specific theatrical production, we intentionally wanted to bring theatre to unconventional spaces and unsuspecting audiences. However, we learned that despite sending out press releases, printing out posters, and announcing these events online – we needed to give people more than 2 weeks notice to attend. We also learned that collaborating with nearby stakeholders was the best way to guarantee a captive audience. The performances at Big Bend and North Hawkins Park taught us to be more robust and intentional in our outreach to drive attendance at future events.