February 19, 2009
The Seafarer
I sat down on the third row, house-right next to Devilvet. The set was dimly lit in the house lights. Empty bottles were everywhere — on tables, on desks, on the refrigerator and even on the floor. A picture of Jesus Christ was on the wall near the stairwell, with its light out. The room portrayed on stage had all the elements of a lived-in home of alcoholics.
Fortunately, that’s exactly what the play contained.
The lights went out and slowly rose up and the show began.
The Seafarer by Conor McPherson addresses a group of old, alcoholic friends, one of whom is the object of the devil’s obsession. Sharky’s soul is in the balance during a card game with his inebriated, oblivious friends and the devil himself.
Despite an initial acclimation period where I had to take time to adjust to their Irish accents, the show was phenomenal. The Steppenwolf lived up to its reputation for quality theatre, putting on an excellent production of McPherson’s tale.
I thought that the weakest character was Nicky, whose purpose seemed to be only to introduce the antagonist and frustrate the protagonist. However, once Sharky faced off against his nemesis halfway through Act 1, I was hooked. The tension was overwhelming.
I didn’t leave my seat at intermission, as I was pondering the implications of the first act and turning over possibilities in my mind as to how Sharky would avoid losing his soul.
The second act lived up to my expectations. While I didn’t shed a tear at the end, I sympathized strongly with Sharky’s plight and was rooting for his success the entire while.
I’ll leave the details of the second act to you, my dear reader, as an exercise of buying a damn ticket to the Steppenwolf production of The Seafarer. Do it.
Do it now.
Or I’ll eat your soul.
February 13, 2009
Ticket Selling Proposition
My day job deals in the futures market for live events. Seeing as how I had no idea what that was before I started here, I’ll give a short description and example.
Let’s say you want to see the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLIV. At our website, you buy dibs — or reservation — on face-value tickets to see the Bears at the Super Bowl. The reservation cost for Super Bowl tickets generally starts out at 20 bucks.
You buy dibs on the Bears at the Super Bowl. If the Bears make it, you’re only paying $20 + face value for the ticket. How much is street value for Super Bowl tickets? At least a thousand bucks. If the Bears don’t make it, you’re only out $20. The condition here is that the Bears make it to the Super Bowl. If they make it, you get tickets. If they don’t, you don’t get tickets.
This is genius for us, because it allows us to sell the same tickets more than once. There are 32 teams in the NFL Playoffs. That means for the Super Bowl, we can sell the same tickets 32 times. We only have to pay out for the two teams that make it to the Super Bowl. If each reservation goes for $20, and we sell 100 tickets per team, then we’ve made $60,000 per team and had to pay out $4,000 in tickets. Make sense?
We’ve decided to branch out into other markets, including music concerts and theatre.
So here are my questions to you guys:
1) Would this model be interesting to you?
I understand that most of you don’t want to take money from patrons if they’re not going to get anything in return (unless, of course, they’re donating money). Totally understandable, and I even agree with you. However, think about it this way: You don’t have to guarantee all your tickets. Just take however many tickets you usually wind up with at the end of each run and put them up. Say you have capacity for 300 seats over the course of the run, but you usually only sell about 250 tickets. You can put the other 50 up with our system — you probably weren’t going to sell them anyway). This way, you’re only putting up tickets that probably wouldn’t have sold in the first place — win/win situation! The minimum reservation fee is $5, so you’d get (5 dollars) x (number of tickets reserved) x ( possible outcomes ). This leads to my next question.
2) What conditions, if any, could be imposed on storefront theatre to determine who gets tickets?
There has to be a condition. We don’t sell tickets — just reservations. There has to be at least two possible outcomes, or else the whole model is pointless. This is the part we’re struggling with. For larger theatre organizations, like Broadway in Chicago and The Goodman, we can set up a “If Show X comes to town before 2012, we guarantee face value tickets”. In fact, as far as I’m aware, we already have a set-up like that with Broadway in Chicago. The question here is for storefront theatres. What conditions can be established on a storefront theatre, most of whom generally focus on world or regional premieres? How would anyone else know about those to request them? The “If Show X comes to town” condition wouldn’t work here.
What other conditions could there be?
As I said, I understand that some of you are opposed to this idea. It sounds like gambling. It kind of is, except instead of getting cash, you’re getting tickets. However, many theatres already do this kind of thing. Wicked, for example, would raffle tickets an hour before the show. I think that if thought out properly, this model could generate some much needed extra cash for shows, generate publicity (through our website), and give more people an opportunity to attend our shows.
What do you guys think?
February 8, 2009
Unexpected handcuffs are fun
I’ve realized that I really suck at the whole review thing, so I’m basically just gonna say that you all need to see “Maria’s Field” by TUTA. While the concept of the play isn’t exactly my thing (literally tying space and time together), the rest of the show was phenomenal: acting, scenery, costumes, etc. Great stuff. Tickets aren’t that expensive ($15, I think) and you can grab them the DCA Theater.
Last night I went to see “And They Put Handcuffs On The Flowers” by The Right Brain Project. It was pretty amazing. Again, I suck at reviews, so I’ll just leave it at “Amazing.”
Afterward, Bob and I went with the cast to a bar where we proceeded to… okay, I take that back.. where THEY proceeded to drink (and I watched). The first little bit was a little awkward for me, because I’m not great at social situations like bars. Partly because I don’t drink.
Anyway, I met a ton of my fellow bloggers and got to see a few people I hadn’t seen in awhile, so all-in-all, it was a great great evening.
This coming weekend I’m going to try and make a performance of Touch, as I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about the show, from the direction of Jessica Hutchinson to the lights and sound to Dan Granata’s Don-Hall-Bawling-Like-A-Baby inducing performance. I’m really looking forward to it and to getting back out there and into theatre again.
If any of you readers in Chicago want to meet up for dinner, drinks, shows, or just plain sit around and talk, hit me up.
More thoughts to come soon.
December 17, 2008
Splayed Verbiage (or, Big Words Of Unknown Meaning)
30 Actors. 12 Directors. 12 Plays. 2 1/2 hours of pure fun.
A 10-minute play festival by The Side Project, Splayed Verbiage blew my mind. It was everything I’d wanted out of a theatre since my first year as a drama student. Every ten minutes the stage was cleared and new scenes were built, new worlds explored, new lives examined. Each director involved used their precious few minutes to capture the imaginations of the audience and draw us into their world.
The stories ranged from a couple who cycle from birth to death, each day forgetting the last, to awkward conversations at the Belmont El stop, to a woman reminiscing about wanting to be a slave as a child. Scenes of hurt and anger, love and sadness.
I’ll freely admit that I had a wonderful time, probably one of the best times as a theatregoer that I’ve had in a long time. I’m not much of a theatre-watcher. I prefer to operate behind the scenes or on stage rather than by sitting in the audience, but Splayed Verbiage was an exquisite glimpse into what I feel theatre should be all about.
I’d tried to set up some 10-minute play festivals back in college, and I met a wall of hard resistance. Not sure what the big deal was, but nobody else wanted to do it. That’s one reason why I’m very impressed and excited about The Side Project’s festivals.
If you have a few bucks and two hours on Sunday, go check it out. You won’t regret it.
The Side Project (website)
December 3, 2008
November 26, 2008
I think…
…I might’ve made a big mistake.
Not a good feeling.
Oh, happy thanksgiving to all and to all a good night. Or something.
November 14, 2008
Technical Difficulties
To both of my regular readers, I’m sorry. Something came up and I won’t be able to concentrate on my project for a few days. Hopefully this situation will be over by Sunday and I’ll have some new posts for you on Monday.
For the rest of you who don’t read my blog regularly and have no idea what i’m talking about, go read someone who actually has interesting things to say like Don Hall or Isaac or Nick.
November 13, 2008
Marketing in Chicago
Taking a break from Project Introspection today to focus on a marketing question. I was eating lunch with a colleague yesterday and talking about what I wanted out of getting involved with a theatre company here. I basically explained that I want to learn, to share my ideas and to help out to the best of my ability. I started talking about an idea I had for a marketing plan.
You all remember that movie The Blair Witch Project, right? One of the reasons why the movie was so successful is the producers built a cult following before the movie was even produced. The put out information that made it seem as if the story were true, that students really did disappear and this really was footage that was recovered.
Of course, it was all fake and scripted, but it piqued the interest of the country and became a box office success.
So my question was, why don’t more theatres do that kind of stuff?
I’ve been in Chicago for three months and I honestly haven’t seen any advertisements for any theatre stuff except for the major companies like Broadway in Chicago and The Goodman. I don’t know what’s going on in the smaller storefront theatres. The only advertisements I’ve seen are flyers in windows and maybe in some of the less-read magazines going around the city.
And of the advertisements I have seen, they all seem to say “Pleaaaaaaaase come see our show! We put a lot of hard work into it and we don’t want to have wasted our time, so pleaaaaaase come give us your money and watch our show!” Basically, they put out the who/what/where/when/how much, but they never explain the why.
WHY should I see your show? What makes it interesting enough that I should take the time, effort and money to go see your show?
Do something to make me interested.
I wrote a play two years ago and I’ve been working on it intermittently for awhile. It’s a play based on the old Pied Piper of Hamelin story — you know the one, the rats and the piper that takes away the kids and all that.
Let’s use that as an example.
How can we get the public interested in that? Let’s take a page from Blair Witch and put up a website that pushes an agenda — rats are a problem. And they are in any major city, especially Chicago. Rats! More rats!
Write letters to the editors of various publications complaining about rats and wistfully wishing that someone like the Pied Piper could come and get rid of them, put up flyers around town: ”Got rats? Call the Piper!”. Remind the public of the story of the Pied Piper, remind them how relevant rats are to their daily lives.
Get them thinking about rats and keeping the story of the Pied Piper in the back of their minds. All of these things can be done fairly cheaply.
Then a week or two before the show, blow the rest of your marketing money on advertisements in local papers, on local TV, on the radio. With the economy in a slump right now, with the presidential election over, ad prices are dirt cheap (or so my father, an advertisement salesman, tells me).
The people will see your advertisement, say “Oh, wow, I was just thinking about that story… this could be interesting!” They’ve had exposure after exposure to the theme and story of the Pied Piper over the past several weeks (”Got rats? Call the Piper!” “Dear Editor, rats are a huge problem in Chicago. Gosh, I wish there were someone like the Pied Piper around! What is the city going to do about it?”).
We know that long-term memory is triggered by multiple exposures to the same stimulus. If you put out one ad in the paper, people are going to forget about it very quickly. But week after week of “Oh, hey, don’t forget about rats” and subtle reminders of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, they’ll have a little bit of the story stored up in their minds, so when you go “BAM! PIED PIPER PLAY!” it sticks.
This wouldn’t work for every play, but it’s a different approach than I usually see. What I usually see is:
“Come see our play! Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7pm, 10 bucks! It’s funny! Check it out!”
…yeah, right.
The Prof wrote a blog a long time ago about how we should be putting on plays that are relevant to our communities. You don’t have to pick topics that are relevant now. You could MAKE them relevant. Were rats on the forefront of people’s minds before I started this ad campaign? No, probably not. But after papering the city with flyers about rat problems, letters to the editors, calls to radio shows… it’s more relevant than it was before, and that just might be enough to draw a full house.
Thoughts? I’m sure I’m missing a lot, but this was just something I was thinking of yesterday and I’d love to hear some responses.
November 11, 2008
Project Introspection — Memorization
For those of you just tuning in, I’m in the middle of a multi-part blog series calledProject: Introspection. Previously, I discussed the importance of taking the initiative. Read on for the next part in the series.
Theatre students, whether memorizing lines or learning the technical aspects of production, must have the ability to memorize and absorb vast amounts of material quickly and accurately. When you work on a production, memorizing steps, blocking, lines, cues and timing are essential to keeping a production moving smoothly.
Incidentally, the flip side of this is that you also need the ability to listen. Not just listen, but comprehend and adapt your memorized material to the new information. How often have you had a whole page cut out of a play, stuff that you’d already memorized? How often have you had blocking changed at the last minute? Memorization and listening comprehension are critical to the success of a production.
Several years ago I worked in North Carolina for a living history museum. There were six of us actors, and we were going to play parts for the duration of the summer. This wasn’t a play, but a living history museum. That meant that we were in character for eight hours a day going about our daily business while visitors came in and observed and asked questions. We had a few staged things like a musket drill and a pike drill, but otherwise it was completely improv.
Before we could get started, however, we had to learn about the lives of these characters. What kind of food did they eat? Where were they from? What was the weather like? How did my character wind up being rich while the others were poor? What were the different types of weapons we used?
Our trainers essentially locked the six of us up into a library for twelve hours over the course of three days and then we spent the rest of each day observing the full-time workers. After our training week was over, we were on the job full-time.
Learning that information took a vast amount of concentration, but we had to be accurate, consistent and correct. Every single day and often nearly every hour we had visitors try to catch us in a lie. They asked us where we were from and when I responded “Yorkshire”, they wanted to know where I REALLY lived. Of course, we had explanations for how we’d lived so long and such and they aren’t relevant.
We had a few visitors come in that were actually from England, and they left impressed at our knowledge of our “hometowns”. Granted, our “knowledge” was based on 16th century England, but they were well aware of many of the things we mentioned in our narratives. We also had some visitors who were history professors or teachers that tried to catch us in mistakes about the history of the area that we were reenacting, but again, our memorization and understanding of the time period helped to prevent any major disasters in that area.
Every once in awhile we’d slip up and the visitor would correct us (or more likely go, “AH HAH! Sir Walter Raleigh wasn’t born in Yorkshire!” or some such). At that point we’d shrug, make an excuse, and look up the answer that night so that next time we wouldn’t make that mistake. By the end of the summer, my co-workers and I were veritable experts on the history of the location.
Bottom line: Memorization. Quickly. Accurately. Necessary for theatrical projects.
November 10, 2008
Project Introspective — Respect for Rules
For those of you just tuning in, I’m in the middle of a multi-part blog series called Project: Introspection. Previously, I discussed the importance of taking the initiative. Read on for the next part in the series.
Rules are created for a variety of reasons but ostensibly to protect people from harm. Some rules are made to be broken, some can be bent a little, and some you don’t break at all unless you’re a moron. In a theatrical setting, one learns quickly to which type each rule belongs. You don’t eat while in costume, but maybe sneak a cookie when nobody’s watching. No cell phones can ring at rehearsal, but inevitably, someone’s phone rings.
There have been several instances in the past where I’ve learned the benefits to following rules and reaped the penalities for breaking rules.
During the musical productions at college, one of the steadfast rules was “No talking backstage.” Now, this is a rule for every show (and for good reason!), but it holds especially so for musicals since we used microphones to allow the actors to project over the orchestra. Some actors’ mikes were almost superficial as they could project their voices very far, but others could barely be heard above the music. At any rate, there was no guarantee that the microphone would be turned off when you exited the stage.
The resulting rule: No talking backstage, because your mike might be on.
One particular instance comes to mind during a production of a popular musical. The lead actor was kind of a douche. He was perfectly nice to your face, but when your back was turned, he said all sorts of horrible things. He also blatantly sexually harassed castmates. Anyway, those are rules that he broke, but in this particular story, he didn’t break the rules. He did, however, sing the opening number completely off-key.
One of the other actors backstage couldn’t believe how badly the song was butchered. ”That fucktard sang the whole song off-key!” he exclaimed.
It later turned out that his microphone had been broadcasting, as he was in the upcoming number, and the entire audience heard the comment.
Oops?
Another rule that I’ve learned about theatre, especially when it comes to special effects on stage: always be honest about your physical situation when your safety is on the line. Are you allergic to latex? Paint? Have you had your tetanus shots? All kinds of things can go wrong in the scene shop.
One show several years ago required that the TD build a platform to lower an actress from a balcony down to the floor of the stage.
“How much do you weigh?” he asked her.
“Uhh… I weigh, uh… 120.”
He nodded and wrote down her weight and walked away. Fortunately for the girl, the costume designer (you might remember Fred) overheard the conversation. He went to the TD and said, “There’s no way that girl is 120, Dave. She’s probably closer to 160, 170.”
They both went back to her and she fessed up. She weighed closer to 160 than 170, but that’s still 40 lbs over the 120 figure that she gave to the TD.
Some of you may have figured out why that’s a big deal, but for those of you who didn’t, let me explain. When you lower anything using a pu lley, you have to have a counterweight to keep whatever you’re lowering or raising from crashing to the floor, or to keep you from flying up off the floor. This girl claimed she weighed 120 lbs. Had the TD taken that figure and set up the platform accordingly, she would’ve been 40 lbs over the counterweight and fallen sixteen feet to the ground, possibly seriously injured herself, and opened the theatre up to a massive lawsuit.
So the next time the costume designer asked me how much I weighed, I applied the rule I learned: be honest.
Some rules can be broken. Some can’t. The lesson you should walk away from after training in theatre is knowing how to tell the difference.