Toronto the Good A summer musical about Toronto in the 1890’s
	Artword Theatre 75 Portland Street, Toronto ON M5V 2M9		Tel: (416) 408-1146 Fax: (416) 408-0532 website: www.artword.net email: artword@artword.net

Market Potential

We believe that there is a huge market for Toronto the Good and other similar productions. We like to tell visitors that Toronto is one of the world’s largest theatre cities, and there is a movement to have Toronto adopt the slogan "Toronto is Theatre". Very little of this activity is accessible to summer visitors. Many of the theatres and theatre companies take the summer off. The Fringe and Summerworks festivals are not geared towards tourists. For most visitors, Toronto theatre means the big shows in the Mirvish theatres, the Canon and the Wintergarden. The high ticket prices mean that the visitor will see one show, or none at all.
We are convinced that large numbers of tourists would welcome an opportunity to see an entertaining, well-produced play in an attractive, comfortable setting, particularly if the play is about the city they are visiting. Since these visitors want to dine as well, but don’t know which restaurant to choose, an affordable dinner/show package is particularly attractive. The cost for dinner and a show is still a fraction of the cost of a ticket alone for the big theatres.
Toronto is Canada's number one tourist destination, with 21 million visitors in 1999. We want 1050 per week. There is a second market group that we are targeting: people who live in the Greater Toronto Area who want to head downtown for some summer fun. Many of the "905ers" never come downtown, and are uncertain about how things are done. A great many have never seen live theatre, and don’t know where to start. They want something unpretentious and funny, with music and subject matter that they can relate to. A dinner/show package about their city a hundred years ago will be just the thing.
One of the reasons that tourists and 905ers don’t find the smaller theatres is that they don’t get their information in the same way. Regular theatre-goers read NOW and Eye Weekly, but strangers generally do not. There is another information network for visitors than for theatre regulars. We want to understand how to tap into this network. Toronto the Good is our vehicle for finding out how to do so.
This summer, we want to find a new audience and set up information pathways that we can use over and over again.