Advertising an Event (for no money)

Now that rehearsals are going well it's time to think about selling those huge piles of tickets that I recently ordered.


The venue holds 100 people, in fact it holds 120, but we've been told to take out 20 seats to make room for a bar so we can sell some beer and wine. I've had a look at the seating plan and worked out the optimal seating arrangement, that doesn't give restrictive views of the stage, would be 88 seats.

Still, 88 tickets is a lot to get rid of, especially when the play is by an unknown playwright, and the cast only consists of 5 people. As a rule of thumb, each member of the cast can be expected to raise a certain amount of loyal supporter, so the larger the cast the better. If your play has children in it, you can expect even more loyal supporters in the way of family members being press-ganged into attending.

Given then that I only have a cast of 5 and none of them are children (the youngest is 40), then I have to get the message out to the surrounding community as clearly as possible. And because we are on a tight budget, it needs to be done as cheaply as possible.

On-line advertising is probably one of the cheapest ways to get the play to the attention of a mass audience. With this in mind I added a Sub-Domain to my already up and running writers web page, and created a simple web page for the event. This web page also contained hot links to WeGotTickets. In turn WeGotTickets also listed the event on their search engine resulting in a number of tourists buying tickets to the show. In addition to this I also promoted the play via blog posts that were echoed over various social web sites, and created a Facebook "Fan Page" which allowed me to punt the play to my friends and also to cast, and in turn, to their friends. This alone generated a number of on-line sales.

In addition to this I've also placed adverts on may free entertainment sites including Daily Info, The Oxford Times, Bicester Life and Banbury Guardian. The Banbury Guardian were also kind enough to print a press release I sent them, albeit in a much shorter form and without the photo I had hoped they might use.

Of course the biggest recourse to be exploited is the local residents of Steeple Aston (where the play will be shown) and the surrounding villages. To get at this market I printed off at home 500 leaflets (two per A4 sheet) and delivered them by hand to all the houses in the village and two villages in the near. The local villagers were also given the chance to read about it in a full page advert placed in the local magazine, The Steeple Aston Life, and on the Steeple Aston web page. I also posted on the Steeple Aston forum and promoted the play at my local church.

In addition to that I was contacted by the local hotel, The Holt Hotel, who suggested they could offer a discount to anyone wanting to stay at their hotel after watching the play. All I had to do was promote the offer on my website, no charge was made.

And if that's not enough, Liz Bishop (playing Juliet), secured two visits to Radio Oxford where she was able to promote the play live on-air.

The cost of all this publicity was as near to zero as makes no odds.

Now all I need is people to buy the tickets.

Being a Producer (The Ulitmate Background Job)

In putting on my first full length play, Dating by the Book, I decided to direct and produce it in order to get the full flavour of what it's like to actually 'put on a play'. And boy am I getting that flavour. In fact it's all I get these days. I go to sleep with it's heady taste on my mind and wake up with it still tickling my brain. As a full time job goes, this one is all consuming.

Of all the tasks, production seems to be the most time absorbent. Writing was all about free flowing creativity, directing is about bringing that work (sometimes kicking and screaming) to life, but production is somewhere in between. It's like the guy in a ship that keeps the engine Fueled-Up and ticking over, and it's someone who's not often noticed unless the engine starts to stall...

I've lost track of how many hours I've logged trying to research this or that small detail of the play, and by small I mean earth shatteringly important if I can't figure it out. For example, as the idealistic writer it seemed quite fun to describe one prop 'The Wooden Spatula of Shame' (a sort of Raspberries award for a badly written cook book) as a Wooden Spatula mounted on a Large Golden Potato. However, as a realistic producer I need to deal with emails from the prop creator saying "seriously? Does it really need to be a potato? Can't it just be a normal plinth?" To which of course the answer to questions like this should generally be "Yes".

Okay, okay. If I had a budget of thousands and a time span of months rather than weeks, then yes I might hold out for the Large Gold Potato. Not sure though it would add anything to the play, but it would at least be a nod of appreciation towards the writer, even though in this case that's me. But in the grand scheme of things, getting something done can often be better than see it fail for want of idealistic perfection.

Production is like that. It's about finding ways to make things actually happen, or rather finding people who might be able to make them happen, then finding ways to enable them towards completion. There's a lot of nodding involved, and quite a bit of "that's a great idea, but what if we did this..." going on, but ultimately it's about the end result.

If compromise is a dirty word in your world, being a producer is probably not a job you'd want to consider.

There's also a fair bit of donkey work to be done. I've just received 500 A5 flyers to publicise the play. They're going to need to be put through letterboxes in and around the venue. Guess who gets to do that? You got it, the producer. Glamours this job ain't. Once I've run the gauntlet of small dogs and cat shit covered paths, I'm back in the office to create the sound effects needed in the play. Once that's done, I'm off to a furniture shop to see what I can scrounge for the play. Then of course there is the endless search for a plastic wine bottle (please let me know if you have any idea where I can buy these) and the worries over costumes...



That's the life of a Producer. It's hard graft, but satisfying in a way only truly a eclectic job can be.

27 days to the opening night!!!!!



Paul

Becoming Mr Benn (& how to avoid insanity at the same time)

Anyone remember Mr Benn? He used to pop into a costume shop at the start of every episode and the costume he put on would become who he was. I kinda feel a little like that at the moment, but in a positive way as I swap various hats to assume all the various roles needed to put my play, Dating by the Book, on the stage.

And boy are there a number of different roles to fulfill. Directing is the primary one, although of course I'm also trying to think like an actor. This means the director hat sits on a spindle and whirls round and round, being director then writer, as I try to figure out how to stage a play written while wearing just my writers hat. Note to writers out there, if you think writing the play is tough, you ain't seen nothing, at least not until you actually try to twin motion and dialog with people and scenery.

Ideas in isolation are fine. Putting them into practice, now that can be hard!

Outside of rehearsals I have plenty of other hats to wear; carpenter, to assemble props needed in the play; photographer to take photos of the cast; graphic designer, to take those photo's and use them to create a poster for the play, web-designer to do the same again only on the web, producer, to find all the bits and pieces each cast member requires, not to mention the set dressings (next play I write will be set on beach in a nudist camp), and publicist, to actually take the show to the people and hopefully grab an audience. There are others, but I'm saving there description for my therapist.
It really is a full time job and I didn't realise how much of my time it took up until recently when I found myself working through lunch and dinner, and into the night to get a time dependent job done! Fortunately I am not alone and the might of the Steeple Aston Players is fully behind me, allowing me to focus on the details without letting them swamp me.

Gradually, bit by bit, it's coming together. I now have tickets to sell and the actors have scenery and props to bounce off. All we need now is an audience to come and enjoy it.

I'm working on that bit....

Paul

Art Vs Logistics (Art wins on penalties)

One of the important pieces of theatrical knowledge I am gleaning from putting on Dating by the Book is how to deal with movement. Or, to put it another way, how movement is so often not needed.

It's tempting, if there is a part of the script that is "talky", by which I mean the characters are nattering to each other for some minutes, to worry that the scene has become static and... And... And ventured into the land of the B word (boring). At which point, in steps the worried and inexperienced director (that would be me) and starts pushing actors around the stage like pieces on a chessboard!

Yeah, you're right, this approach works as well as you might expect; badly!

So, bit by bit I've learnt to step away from the temptation to macro-manage every breath my actors take, and instead allow them to move naturally to the motion of the dialog. So for example if a character is relaxed and sitting, he will probably remain sitting unless something outrageous upsets him, and even then, he may just become slightly more animated in his sitting position.

The moral here is trust the actors to do their job!

Ron (Phil) & Juliet (Liz) Rehearsing Act 1 Scene 1

That can't be underlined enough. If you are thinking of putting on a play, and you have lots of ideas about exactly which facial expression your actor will have on line 4 of page 18, then forget it. Throw away those misguided ideas and listen instead to the advice from Sir John Gieldgud; "Relax. Only move if you really need to, and then, only if you really, really need to." Admittedly this advice is aimed at young actors, but it could be equally well heard by directors fluttering from the nest of short plays into the wide scary world of full length theatre!

Of course Art cannot get its own way all the time and occasionally the real world of Practical Logistics has to enter the frey. You can't have, for example, all five actors gathered in one corner of the stage, facing each other in a little huddle. That might happen in the real world, but it's off-putting for an audience who suddenly feel excluded from the conversation. So occasionally I need to macro-manage an actor into facing the audience in a slightly unnatural fashion. This is called "cheating-out" and is the main staple diet of theatre since probably theatre was invented.

There's also the art-resistant problem of tall actors vs short ones. One actor in my play is 6 foot 4 and can cover the stage in a blink of an eye, while another is somewhat shorter and the same action takes significantly longer, unless I put her on skates (don't think I haven't thought about it). These problems are logistical and can often only be solved using logistical solutions, such as placing one actor in a slightly odd place on the stage in order to give them a head start.

However, by and large, it's art that wins over logistics. If there is a point in the script that requires too much logistics to solve, this can be taken as a warning sign of a deeper problem in the script, one that needs to be solved with art (a re-write)!

Five weeks into rehearsals and already I feel I have learnt so much.

Paul


Advance ticket sales for Dating by the Book are available via the phone number on the web site: www.datingbythebook.co.uk and actual physical tickets will be on sale in the next week or so.

Production tools FTW (or how to use the other 50% of Celtx)

One of the interesting things about putting on a play is watching vague concepts like the passing of time shrink visibly before my eyes!

I'm currently at week 4 of a 10 week rehearsal schedule for Dating by the Book, a comedy that I have written and am now attempting to bring to the stage at Steeple Aston's rather charming Village hall. I'm vaguely aware of the passing time in the same way a drowning man is vaguely aware of the absence of air. I try not to think of the schedule as being almost half-expired, but still being half-full.

Yeah I know, I'm not fooling anyone am I? I'm three quarters of the way to a nervous breakdown and considering taking up smoking again (have you SEEN the price). The only thing, well some of the many things, that keep me sane are the support of my family and friends, the enthusiastic talent of the cast and the rigid steel production machine that is the Steeple Aston Players. If ever the Russians invade, they will have their work cut out occupying Steeple Aston...

My main stay of sanity boosting comes from Alan, my mentor for all things production in the theatre, and who seems to have a phone number for any situation. Need some scenery, talk to William. Looking for props, here's Wacky Wardrobes in Banbury. Need to have a posing pouch sewn onto a dinner shirt (don't ask), here's a number for that. The man is a walking phone directory of useful theatrical contact points. Effectively, he is Steeple Aston's answer to Google!

Not that it's all plain sailing. Alan is unavoidably away from the production for the next week and a bit and I'm left feeling like a tightrope walker (which is roughly how I see a directors job) whose net has been whisked away (which is roughly how I see the opening night). In the mean time I'm staring down the business end of a production dead-line. Stage manager, lighting crew and the prop master all want lists of "stuff" to look after or do. They need it broken down by character and act and scene. And they needed it yesterday.

I'm solving the problem in my own way.

I'm using technology.

The script for Dating by the Book was written using software called Celtx, a bespoke writing tool for film and theatre scripts. If you write film and theatre and you don't use this tool, you are seriously missing out.

I'll freely admit that at first glance Cletx appears to be little more than a glorified word processor, but it does have some very handy features, which while available for Word via macros, achieves the same end in a more eloquent and design friendly fashion. At the moment I am focusing on it's production tools, which by and large are pretty awesome.

Imagine I wrote this play in Word. One simple production job is to list all the props required in the play, by scene and act number. In Word I would go through the script, line by line, write down each prop in a separate document, then repeat the process for wardrobe items, stage dressing and so on.

Now here we are at Celtx. I am going through the script line by line, but this time, instead of writing each prop down, I simply highlight the prop, Earphones, for example, then in the production tools area I tell Celtx this is a Prop. Elsewhere in the script the play refers to a table, so i highlight the word Table and tell Celtx it is Stage Dressing (click on these images to see larger versions).



I can carry on doing this, marking items of wardrobe as well as props and stage dressing, then at the end end of the exercise simply ask Celtx to provide me with a report, which it does, listing all items per scene and act. Job done.

That's what I love about technology. It makes my life so much easier and stress free...

... Unless it crashes... Or I lose all my work to a hard drive failure... Or the program is impossible to understand.

But other than that, for me, it's technology FTW every time!

Paul

PS - for those who don't know, FTW = For the Win.

Creating a Brand Image

In order to promote the play, Dating by the Book, as cheaply as possible I am attempting to create a Brand Image for the play. A "logo", if you will, that is instantly recognisable to anyone interested in the play or who has been exposed to the pre-publicity I have been seeding through various social networking sites and through various on-line forums.

I've been through various options of using stock photos from sites such as shutterstock and various combinations of my own photos, but in the end I went for a montage of a 3D image of a bookshelf created in iClone (a 3D Image tool) and Photoshop (the well known photo-manipulation software) to create the rest of the text.

This is the result:

The top part of the Logo uses images from the play, which has at its centre a literary agent. So the D and G of DATING are made to look like wooden book-ends. The A, T & N are books in various poses, while the "I" is the image of a Wooden Spatula, a central prop that appears in act 2 and is the fatal downfall of one character.

Beneath this 3D image the words "By The" appear in comic sans with a small amount of blurred drop shadow and the word "Book" has been transformed using Photoshop to appear as a Smile-y (Internet variation of a "laugh"). This "smile" transformation is an attempt to indicate, on a subliminal level, that this play is a comedy and doesn't take itself too seriously.

The construction of this Brand Image took me around two days to complete, with various versions being rejected by myself as "too fussy" or "too busy". This simple image I believe will be the ideal art work to create instant product recognition.

I plan to use this logo on all advertising, on the tickets, and also on the show program.

As I already owned the software, and I was aware of how each software package functioned, the costs in both time and money to me were minimal. However, neither iClone nor Photoshop could be considered beginner applications and if you don't know how to use them, the time needed to learn how they work should be factored in.

It's also worth mentioning that cheaper alternatives to both programs do exist.