I have been scanning through the minutes of the recent San Francisco discussion of Outrageous Fortune, blogged in real time here by Karen McKevitt. There’s a lot of great stuff, but this particular nugget leapt out at me.
[Question:] “When a movie is produced, they market it to an audience, not the audience. It seems if you did the former, you’d expand audiences.”
[Answer:] “On the subject of marketing and [audience development], it describes a feeling from playwrights that theatres aren’t doing it successfully. The theatres know this, but have fallen into a bind of subscription season. But playwrights also say that marketing departments [don’t] want to hear from them about how to market their play, unless they’re a playwright of color. Playwrights haven’t been part of the larger conversation about audience development.”
Marketing and publicity managers stand at a crucial and fatally overlooked nexus of original theatrical endeavor and its potential audiences. We need eager ambitious innovative thought leaders excelling in these roles. (You would think that bigger theaters might be able to poach some young people who are just entering the job market having studied these disciplines and hitting the wall finding their dream position in the current depression.)
Publicity and marketing departments do need to be much more willing to collaborate with playwrights to brainstorm ways to reach and bring in new audiences for locally grown new plays, but perhaps more importantly, playwrights need to be equally willing to get their hands dirty doing some bona fide promotion. Heck, we might even deign to consider writing plays based on what audiences want instead of whatever brilliant obscure idea we have been obsessing over for a decade. (This admonishment comes, mind you, from the guy who wrote about Frank Sinatra, the Chinese Massacre at Rocks Springs, and IBM’s existence as a corporate person all in the same over-wrought, self-indulgent and quintessentially wonderful play.)
If you are involved in marketing , publicity or public relations for a local theater, please come on March 1 (details below, RSVP to guarantee a seat). We need your insights. And if do not work in those areas, but you just have brilliant ideas on how to promote theatre, please come as well, because I want to hear them. (And possibly steal them.)
Theatre Puget Sound hosts
Outrageous Fortune
March 1, 2010
9AM – 1PM
Detail: 9am – 10:30 Presentation by author Todd London
Break – snacks
10:40 – 12:00pm Q & A in large group
Break – lunch type snacks
12:10 – 1pm small group breakouts and report back
Center House Theatre
rsvp: TDFRSVP@tpsonline.org
Theatre Development Fund, the national service organization, is convening a meeting of playwrights, artistic directors, funders, theatre managers and others in conjunction with Theatre Puget Sound at the Center House Theater in Seattle on March 1, 2010 from 9:00am-1:00pm to stimulate conversation and action to support new American play production. Tory Bailey, executive director of Theatre Development Fund, Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, and co-author Ben Pesner will lead the gathering, which will begin with a presentation of the results of an intensive study of new play production in America and then open out to an inclusive conversation.
TDF has just released the book OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY written by Todd London and Ben Pesner, with research consultant Zannie Giraud Voss. The book, drawing on six years of research, examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish.
The March 1 meeting will share the study findings and facilitate the beginning of a conversation in which participants can identify possible ways to improve conditions for the production of new American plays, community by community. We hope that a wide group of individuals from the theatre community in the Seattle area will join this conversation.
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