All programming is a bet. The difference lies in knowing what you are risking and why.
There is a type of risk that programmers know well and rarely discuss openly: the risk of programming work that audiences do not yet know, by artists who do not yet have a reputation that sells tickets, in forms that challenge what the venue expects. It is the most honest risk in programming, and it is also the hardest to defend internally, before boards, funders and governing bodies that measure success in occupancy rates.
The pressure to programme the known is real and understandable. A premiere by an established artist comes with guarantees that a bet on an emerging company does not. The name sells, the track record reassures, the reviews already exist. Programming the known is, from an institutional perspective, risk management. From an artistic perspective, it is often the greater risk.
The problem is not programming established artists, it is programming only them. A programme built exclusively on acquired reputations closes in on itself. It ceases to be a place of discovery and becomes a catalogue of confirmations. And audiences, even those who cannot articulate this perception, feel the difference.
The unknown holds a value the known cannot: the possibility of genuine surprise. Not the managed surprise of an established artist “trying something new”, but the surprise of work that has not yet been framed, that does not yet carry the weight of reputation telling audiences how to receive it. That encounter, when it happens, is one of the most alive moments a programme can offer.
How do you decide when the risk is worth taking? There is no formula, but there are questions that help. The first is whether the work has a clear internal necessity. Whether there is an artistic reason for what is being made that goes beyond the desire to make it. The second is whether the programmer can defend the choice with an argument that does not depend on the outcome, because the outcome, by definition, does not yet exist. The third is whether the programme as a whole creates a context in which this work can be received, because a challenging performance programmed without framing is an abandoned performance.
There is one final consideration that rarely surfaces in these conversations. Programming the unknown is also an act of responsibility toward the field. The artists who today have reputations were, at some point, someone’s bet. Someone programmed them before there were reviews, before there were awards, before there were queues at the box office. That gesture, of trusting the work before the market confirms it, is what keeps the field alive and in motion.
Risk is not a virtue in itself. Programming poorly in the name of boldness serves no one. But a programme that never takes risks is not a courageous programme that failed. It is a programme that gave up before it began.
Photo: © Brad Helmink
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