Punching Theatre in the Face

February 29, 2012 / Jon Keevy / 2 Comments

People are trying to save theatre all the time. I recently sat in a circle of shell-shocked arts administrators at the PANSA Western Cape offices in Salt River and saw the zeal glinting from underneath the exhaustion. They try to grow theatre in townships and preserve particular art forms like dance, puppetry or spoken word. They battle bureaucracy and antipathy. Many of them started in the ‘industry’ as artists, gradually realising that art depends on someone filling out forms and sending out fifty emails a day. They wrestle and they keep going – some of those present represented companies that have been operating for over 20 years, each year entirely uncertain. Looking around that circle it’s hard to lay the blame on the arts administrators for the dearth of funding allocated every year.

Not represented except by myself were the ‘independent’ theatre makers (I can’t the label ‘independent’ seriously. I depend on so many people willing to do favours and take risks that I am more dependent than any company able to raise funding). It’s not that they couldn’t benefit from a workshop on fund-raising; it’s that they don’t believe in the funding system. I know I don’t.

Independents rely on a forward momentum to build in their careers. They start off shoving hard against a Sisyphean boulder; sweating and losing money they earn working for the establishment. Eventually people start calling them, start arriving at their openings and experiments and offering them better jobs, roles, collaborations, etc.

But neither of these strategies counts on the audience arriving.

The wild card ‘independent’ theatre makers try to get people with money to love theatre, and try enticing the intelligentsia and that massive stratum of Cape Town’s young middle class, the designers and advertisers.

However they will fail. And it’s not entirely their fault.

Newspapers and some radio stations maintain an interest in the theatre world and it’s possible to draw an audience through these narrow canals alone. However, they are reaching the people who already like theatre, who read the paper looking for a show to watch. My crisis of marketing is not how to reach those people (although on my list of things to work out is: ‘how to reach them sooner’) but how to reach the intelligentsia, the hipsters, the wired generation. I’m looking specifically for vectors that (in the words of the PR Institute of SA) objectify the information. Word of mouth is more valuable than a flyer not because you pay nothing for it, but because you can’t pay for it.

But what do we do when reviews become homogeneous? Surely positive feedback is good for marketing? Yes and no – if no one disagrees with your opinion then no one is listening. A hard statement, but if theatre is to be relevant then a spectrum of critical opinions must exist and they must be accessible. So I am left with this conclusion: I want people to criticise my work and to do so vocally. However, some reviewers will hold back a negative engagement because they feel it’s impolite or under the mistaken idea that their silence is a favour. I know some theatre makers and companies who believe that is true. I am not one of them, and I am just arrogant enough to believe I’m right about this.

There are people who are trying to save theatre and so they treat it with kid gloves. I think theatre needs to get smacked in the face a couple of times.

So, with thanks, I link to Scarlet’s review of Owl.

Getting Schooled in Public

February 20, 2012February 17, 2012 / Jon Keevy / 1 Comment

Do I need to point out that I talk about marketing a lot? I’d talk more about writing or directing but I don’t think I have any great insights into those (my only advice, if you’re looking for some, would be: read more). I write about marketing because I write about what I’m learning; I write about wrestling with my ignorance. I’d love for someone to give me the answers – wouldn’t we all? But that’s not going to happen for a simple reason:

No one wants to look dumb.

No one has all the answers, but we can’t admit it. We are success-obsessed and only reveal our mistakes and flaws to our friends after a beer. We’re the classroom of silent kids not asking the teacher to go back and explain it again for fear of looking like the slowest. Except there is no teacher, just another kid reading off the blackboard.

Fortunately I am a slow kid. I’ve got a certificate to prove it. So I’ll ask the questions that everyone else seems to find obvious and I’ll show my worksheet to the class so we can make corrections.

My play Owl opens soon and at the end of the run I will post a full report here. The budgeting, the marketing, what proportions of my emails got replies, how I got people to come and most importantly: how many people I got to come. I will post concrete numbers and I will give my best crack at guessing why. I’m hoping that Owl is a success, but even if it is a terrible failure I’ll post the results and people can either learn from my mistakes or take this as the excuse they’re looking for to ignore what I have to say. I’m hoping I’ll start a trend – that other groups will post too. I’m hoping to start a conversation where people can talk about what works and what doesn’t.

The first step to wisdom is figuring out just how ignorant we really are.

Nibbling my hat

January 19, 2012 / Jon Keevy / 1 Comment

I have ideas. Some of these are pretty solid, I think. Others I wrote down on my arm after the last tequila of the night. I put the ideas up here. One that pops up a lot is that theatre needs better marketing and it’s usually followed by a couple of idealings about how. FTH:K proposes the same solutions I do, that what’s needed are more and more diverse arts administrators. Of course that solution is just another problem. How do you find them?

And I have no answer.

I’m starting up the marketing for my play Owl and I really wanted to find that organised, edgy dynamo that would take it on. Unfortunately the organised, edgy folk I know aren’t biting – they’re busy, which is a constant state of being for organised, edgy dynamos.

Fortunately they took the time to help me, giving me contacts, ideas and strategies. For which I’m amazingly grateful. All this put another idea in my head: I’ve been proposing a silver bullet to the marketing woes of theatre. But there isn’t one. I need to learn more, hustle more, work more. But most of all, I need to be more honest about what I can do better. I think it all starts with that.

A Simple Guide to Marketing

December 29, 2011 / Jon Keevy / 1 Comment

Actually just some ideas that anyone could come up with if they take a minute to think about it.

Theatre marketers assume there’s a market. There isn’t, there’s only a target market. That one erroneous assumption is why theatre makers believe they’re in an art that is becoming irrelevant. From this flow the dull mailing list based strategies that people ignore. Once you realise that you don’t have a market you can start asking yourself how you’re going to get one.

Step 1: Who are they? What do they do for fun?

Let’s say you’re doing a play about… oh, I don’t know… a haunted house and it’s ghoulish inhabitants. It’s a black comedy, it’s not for kids. It’s not the kind of play that draws the regular theatre crowd – the silver foxes who love a bit of Fugard, read the newspapers, listen to Fine Music Radio and get their Sunday best on for Dame Janet and Sir Anthony. No – this is the kind of play made for people who download movies, argue about the difference between nerds and geeks and dress a little… oddly. Look at who likes your subject matter, not as individuals but as subcultures. In Adam Thurman’s words: “what flag are you flying?”

Step 2: Find someone who speaks their language

If I asked you to name as many theatre publicists in Cape Town as you could I doubt I could get more than three names out of you, maybe five at a push. Independent hired guns – Not employees of a single entity. And they are all white women of a particular kind right? No disrespect intended – The three I can think of are top of their game, working magic for big shows and companies. They are well connected and talented and they understand the regular theatre crowd. And that is why they can only help you so much. If you want geeks to come to your show, you need a geek. You want hipsters, you need a hipster. You want kids, you need a mum.

Marketing is the creation and management of a relationship, for it to thrive you need to speak the language. Authentically. When I worked in book store, customers would constantly be recommending books to me because people love to share their passion. And of course I recommended book as well; I shared my opinions. I loved working there because I was passionate about books too. What stuck out for me was that I wasn’t a salesman in these situations, I was sharing not selling. We had a clerk who didn’t work out, let’s call him Shelby. Shelby didn’t really read. He could read, he just didn’t. He got hired because we suddenly found ourselves short staffed over the holidays. He could direct people around the shop; he could tell people about best sellers, he could point out our staff picks. But he didn’t understand what it was that a crime reader wanted out of a story if they preferred Mankell to Grisham. Or what someone wanted when they had exhausted all Gaiman’s books and wanted something similar. Shelby was an outsider, he didn’t speak the language.

The image we have of a publicist is out of date. We cannot stick with what we know, what we think of as ‘safe’ – safe is staying at home on Friday night. Safe is dull. Safe doesn’t change the world, not in the smallest way.

Step 3: Do it

So you found a geek to help sell your theatrical horror comedy. Hopefully you didn’t just grab the first one you thought of, hopefully you picked someone with drive, organisational skills and a bit of charm. Now sit down and make a list of everything that has to be done:

The Basics
- Press mailing list and widely read release carriers like Artslink
- A press release with expanded content – So that’s your basic grab and 100 words with a pack of print quality photos and biographies to back it up.
- Everyone involve posting on their social media about how they feel about/what they are doing for the show. Everyone ignores advertising.
Now, time to get creative. Your insider knows things you don’t know about your target market, you need to use this insight to figure out new strategies. (If he doesn’t actually know any more than you and you hired them because you’re too busy, fair enough. But be careful: hand-holding isn’t fun and doesn’t save time.)
- What do they read? Draft an alternative press list, contact newsletters, online forums and clubs that share similar interests.
- Who do they follow? Find the connectors, the ones open to interesting experiences and sharing them. The bloggers, the party organisers. Doing a Horror in Cape Town? Find the guy who started Zombie Walk here, email the Legion Ink moderators, go meet the DMs of the various Ds.
- What do they want? Find what appeals to them and add the incentive. Is it going to be free wine or block booking discounts? Dull and done. Give people discounts for coming dressed for Halloween, get a popcorn machine, make it something they’re going to talk about. The whole experience. I’m sure your play is great. But will the whole night be? People talk about they didn’t expect, they talk about little touches like wine served in teacups or that Lurch sold them their tickets.

I’m sure someone is going to accuse me of making it sound easy. It’s not. But coming up with different ideas is. It’s hard to implement a different approach, but let’s admit that it’s not the reason we hold back. We play it safe because we are tired. The theatre makers I know and admire work damn hard, they work long hours and routinely turn their living rooms into workshops. But pouring all your creativity and time into the work and not finding a partner capable of doing the same with the marketing is a waste. Let the people who’ll love the work as much as you see it.

Oh and by the way – if you were intrigued by the idea of a haunted house filled with ghoulish characters then go watch Beren Belknap’s Madame Touxflouwe at the Artscape Arena – 5^th January 2012. It’s really very funny. In a macabre way.