Marketing Your Show: the Basics

Marketing Your Show: the Basics

Marketing is NOT a Choice

If you know me then you know that I’d much rather spend all day every day helping you write your show than marketing myself. Marketing is not my favorite thing.

However, I have to remind myself that marketing shows is how we get audiences into seats (butts in seats). Likewise, marketing myself helps me meet more talented writers.

If we are going to engage in commerce at any level, then marketing is not a choice. It’s the basis of business – how you put yourself out in the world and what you do.

Here’s Where to Start

Every show should have the following:

  • LOGO for the show
  • Tagline
  • Short Synopsis: Describe the journey of your show in 3-5 sentences (sometimes you will need a longer synopsis, but not often)
  • Website
  • Quality demos of your music (for musicals)

Who is your audience? Find a person that best represents your audience. Discover everything about that person. Build an “avatar” and speak to that person in every bit of copy you write about your show.

Ask yourself:

  • What does my audience member value? What do they want?
  • What type of job does my audience hold?
  • Where does my audience live (for the most part). Search any demographic Information online that will tell you more.
  • What challenges does my audience member have?
  • What types of products does my audience member buy? Where do they shop, Whole Foods or McDonalds?

Find Your Audience Online

Hopefully you’ve been building an email list of people that have contacted you about your show or about other shows. This is an important list to cultivate, nurture and grow.

How? Get on Social Media. Begin to talk to people that are interested in your show, or who like theater. Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups are also helpful.

Planning a reading? Write a Press Release and send it to Broadway World to be published. Push the press release on social media, and put it on your website.

You Need a Website. That’s not a choice either.

More on that next week! Have any questions? Post below.

How to Succeed in Theater

How to Succeed in Theater

Success is a Choice

I need a constant daily strategy to focus on what needs to be done to achieve my top priorities. Meditation and a daily practice of reviewing my top goals for my business (and life) are the only ways I’ve found to manage constant distraction, and to move forward with what I know is my main mission: to help develop and create new plays and musicals and then get them on stage.

If success is a choice, what does success look like? If you don’t know what it looks like, how do you know when you achieve it?

For me, the simple answer of ‘I’ll be successful when I get a Tony’ is too far off. I’ve come to know that my success means helping writers first get their scripts to “work” and then to guide their projects through development to a production on a stage somewhere.

Can you answer the question “I will be successful when …..?”

I’ve found my own success by doing the following:

  1. Defining what success means to me and relentlessly moving forward
  2. Constantly be selling myself, my ideas and my shows
  3. Addressing our big issues through theater in order to be a catalyst for change
  4. Constantly investing in myself as an artist and as a human being

Maybe these will help you as well.

Name It and Claim It

If I just held myself to a far-away measurement of success like receiving a Tony then I would be a mess for years thinking I was a no-good failure. But, as I teach my students and writers alike, if you’re not failing at something you’re not trying. 

In reaching for a goal you’re first defining what your BIG GOAL looks like and then figuring out how to consistently move toward it. There’s no such thing as failure if you learn from it.

What do you desire enough to keep you moving toward it daily, weekly, yearly? What keeps you motivated over the long haul? Find it.

Name it and claim it as yours, and don’t let anything (or anyone) stop you. Not family, not money, not even time. (Well, death will certainly stop me, but as long as I’m alive and kicking I’ll keep producing theater.)

Find your motivation.

Constantly Be Selling

I hate this one. I’m a theater artist, not a salesman! But I constantly have to sell myself, my writers and my projects (your projects) to get our shows on stage.

No man is an island, and we all need people (who need people) to move ahead. Theater is the most collaborative art, and it’s not just in the creation of a script. We need other people in the creation of our production, in the creation of our artistic business and in the creation of our lives as artists.

Constantly be selling yourself and your shows. Constantly be submitting and pitching. Memorize your pitches, and learn how to pitch better. Constantly network so you can do the first three more often. Develop those relationships until you can call them a friend.

No one said it would be easy, and if it were easy there’d be more people doing it. Uncomfortable but necessary.

Speak to our Problems

In business the way to success is to address people’s problems and then solve it with your products.

In the arts, people’s problems – are ALL our problems. Society’s problems. As a theatre artist I constantly try to present stories that make us better human beings. I would like to think that I have made the world a little better by my being in it and doing theatre.

Can you solve society’s problems with theater? The Exonerated was able to overturn the death penalty in Illinois. It saved many innocent people’s lives. The Laramie Project helped overcome prejudice and intolerance by telling and retelling Matthew Shepard’s story on stageMany of the most financially successful plays and musicals highlight serious contemporary social issues – and they always have, dating back to the Ancient Greeks.

The Ancient Greeks were pretty smart; they knew an explosive platform when they saw one.

One of the quickest ways to get noticed is to address a significant contemporary problem and then to dramatize it for us. (Please do this – we are sorely in need of inspirational storytellers.)

Be a significant storyteller for our times, and you will get on a stage. It’s impossible not to.

Invest in Yourself

Remember the meaning of “priming the pump”? You have to pump the well vigorously enough to get the water flowing “effortlessly.” I constantly invest in myself by learning new technology, trying out new ways of storytelling, and opening myself up to new ideas and perspectives.

Writers also need to “invest in yourself.”

You may need to self-produce to build your “product.”  You will definitely need to invest time and money to build “assets” like the following:

  • Your website
  • Readings (for photos and video clips)
  • Demo recordings
  • Showcase productions for promos, videos, reviews, audience testimonials
  • Sizzle reels and producer pitch decks and reels

Invest in yourself  first in order to get noticed, and then to allow someone else to invest in you. 

What are your dreams? Did this help you?

Please comment below!

Life is Improv

Life is Improv

Okay, truth time.

Who was it that put *GLOBAL PANDEMIC* on their vision board for 2020???

<sound of crickets>

Lesson: Sh*t happens. Keep moving forward.

When You Can’t Change the Situation, Change Your Mindset

I can’t change my outer situation. This is a global pandemic. People are dying, especially here in New York. This is a real thing. I can either a) freak out and react to my fear or b) control my mindset and stay strong. There are no other choices for me.

Because I choose not to become a basket case hiding in a corner, I choose to control my mindset. I choose to stay strong. I choose to keep moving ahead on promises I made to myself when I did my own 2020 vision board – and I assure you a global pandemic was not on it.

“Nothing’s either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

In Act 2 scene 2, Hamlet famously says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

I guess Shakespeare knew a thing or two about keeping a strong mindset. It’s all on how you frame your perspective on something. Denmark was indeed a prison to Hamlet because he thought it was; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, also residents of Denmark, did not feel the same way. To them, it wasn’t a prison at all.

You can choose to view this quarantine as a prison sentence, or you can view it as an opportunity to write, to clean, to meditate, to exercise, to complain, to become mad. Suddenly, your time is your own again. You do what you choose.

Yes, and……

 

The first lesson of Improv 101: to everything thrown at you, say, “Yes, and…..”

The “yes” is your acceptance of what IS. The “and,” and everything you say and do after that, is your choice of action. Everything that follows depends on your acceptance of what is, and what you choose to do afterward.

YES. We are in lockdown during a global pandemic.

And … I choose to stay true to who I am. I choose to move forward with the plans I’ve made. I choose to create theater and to produce theater, because theater (and art) is good for our souls.

The “and…” is my response to how I view the situation. Although I acknowledge that bad things are happening around me, I control my environment. Externally, I stay safe and do all the things necessary to keep myself and my family healthy. Internally, I see this as a time for global healing (the planet is healing itself) and personal growth.

CreateTheater is my response. The Monday Night Reading Series is my response. Connecting with friends and family more is my response.

Acceptance – then, response. Life is Improv.

What’s your response?

 

What I Know About Theater People

 

I think Theater people are the best ones to understand that life can be unpredictable. I mean, theater is filled with ups and downs, right? Early on we learn to ride the waves by remembering the lessons used in our improv classes.

For every curveball life throws at us, there is our response to it. Our “yes, and…”

Vary your responses. Experiment just for the fun of it, to see what happens. Often in improv we’ll plan to fail just in order to see what happens.

Remember: life is a game. Life is improv.

Be creative. Be who you are.

Life is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.

___________________________

Make friends in the industry online. Join the CreateTheater village.

Cate Cammarata is an excellent coach who has helped and encouraged me every
step of the way, since I first worked with her, when she was the dramaturg for the
developmental reading of my show, CRUDE-The Musical, at the 2016 New York
Musical Festival. This past year, CRUDE-The Climate Change Musical premiered at the Cape Cod
Theatre Company, Oct. 10 – Nov. 10, 2019. The show ran for five weeks, with 17
performances, and generated great publicity. I can’t thank Cate enough for her
expert coaching, over the past 3 years, as I worked to improve the arc of the script.
She’s taught me so much about the industry, about producing and about networking.
Cate has also helped me with specific networking opportunities.
I highly recommend Cate Cammarata as a fine coach for any writer looking to
succeed in the theater industry.

— Maureen Condon, Playwright & Composer

I believe a Mastermind group is essential – for the support, ideas generated, the encouragement, the accountability, the important friendships formed and for a sense of belonging in the theater, whether or not we’ve been produced. Cate’s Mastermind, in particular, is extremely helpful.  Cate knows her stuff and gently pushes us forward, stepping in to help when needed.  She is passionate about getting work onto a stage. She makes you believe it’s not “if” but “when”.”

— Jarlath Barsanti Jacobs, Librettist

Join the Online Theater Community at CreateTheater.com.

Something Bigger

Something Bigger

“Something’s coming, I don’t know what it is, but it is gonna be great!” – Tony, West Side Story

It’s Coming!

 

It’s a new decade. 2020.

We find ourselves here, in the present moment. For me, and perhaps for many of us, it looks different from what we expected. The state of our industry, our country, and the world, are suddenly different. How’d that happen?

I know we all look toward 2020, and the new decade in general, to be something bigger. And better!

Where are you now, as a writer, as an artist, as a person? Where are we as a country, as a republic, as a democracy?

The second question may be out of our hands, beside our participation in the upcoming elections. But the answer to the first and more important question lies totally within yourself.

 

How Big Can You Be?

 

I’m challenging myself to be bigger this year, to set bigger goals and step up to the plate more often. I know that my mission in this life is to create theater – theater that expresses where we are at this point in history. When I teach theater to college students, I like to point out that although our discussions center around a play, we’re really looking at a piece of history reflected through an individual writer’s perspective. When we study a play, it’s a reflection of one individual’s viewpoint of what’s happening around them during that point in time.

Therefore, while studying dramatic literature, my students get immersed in the study of history as well. And they love it.

Many of us find it fascinating to study history through personal stories. You and I, by writing and producing plays and new musicals, are creating the theatrical canon of the 21st century.

I think that’s BIG.

My personal 2020 challenge is to help you put more of your stories on stage. Your challenge is to write the best plays possible that reflect the experience of living in this time, in this culture, at the beginning of this new millennia. And when those stories aren’t produced or published, they disappear.

So, how big can you be? Another Chekhov, Kushner, Sondheim, or Miranda? Why not?

 

Believe in Yourself

 

No one does theater because they think they’re going to get rich. And if that’s what you think, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

You write stories, musicals and screenplays because you believe you have something important to say, to contribute, to the culture. You need to express your own perspective in your own way. And it gives you joy like nothing else when it works, when people stand and applaud your work.

When you know that your play changed something or someone, that makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it? My favorite example is Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson’s Off-Broadway play The Exonerated, a play about six people who were exonerated after years on death row for a crime they did not commit. After watching a “command performance” in the Senate days before the final vote, the Supreme Court overruled the death penalty in the state of Illinois.

It doesn’t get any bigger than that. Yep, a piece of theater saved people from death and changed government policy.

Believe that your gift of storytelling can change lives and impact this world for the better.

 

It Takes a Village

 

Our plays are very much our children. Like our children, it takes a village to make them grow.

Your village are your connections, your theatrical friends and supporters who have nurtured you and encouraged your work all along. And it’s also the new people you’re meeting all the time, through your networking, pitching, and writers’ groups and classes.

I challenge you to go bigger this year – network more, submit more, learn more, write more. And don’t let the money blues, or the not enough time blues, get you down. Know that at a certain point it really is a numbers game, and if you keep at it you’re improving your odds all the time.

Just keep showing up.

Your real enemy is your own insecurity, your own sense of lack, your own depression or even despair. Sometimes it’s so damn difficult to keep submitting, to keep smiling, to keep trying. Despite yourself,  you are tempted to agree that theater is too hard right now to do.

That’s when you need to lean on people who truly know you and like your work – your Village. People who are in the same place and understand the struggle.

And by the way, a village isn’t a town or a city. They’re too big. Some online theater sites feel like cities,  so crowded and big. You want people to know you, who want to journey alongside you as you move your work forward. A village is your small group, your peers, your peeps.

 

CreateTheater is a Village

 

I’ve envisioned my CreateTheater.com community as a village where people can connect online, take classes online, and network online, to make meaningful ties with other writers and theater industry pros who are part of my theater community in NYC. It’s a village, not a city.

But if you’re a person who likes that “small town” feeling of knowing others and being known, then subscribe to our newsletter. Join in our community and take free classes that will come with the membership opening soon. Meet people along the way who are dreaming as big as you are.

I’m planning more for you coming soon.

Make friends in the industry online. Join the CreateTheater village.

Cate Cammarata is an excellent coach who has helped and encouraged me every
step of the way, since I first worked with her, when she was the dramaturg for the
developmental reading of my show, CRUDE-The Musical, at the 2016 New York
Musical Festival. This past year, CRUDE-The Climate Change Musical premiered at the Cape Cod
Theatre Company, Oct. 10 – Nov. 10, 2019. The show ran for five weeks, with 17
performances, and generated great publicity. I can’t thank Cate enough for her
expert coaching, over the past 3 years, as I worked to improve the arc of the script.
She’s taught me so much about the industry, about producing and about networking.
Cate has also helped me with specific networking opportunities.
I highly recommend Cate Cammarata as a fine coach for any writer looking to
succeed in the theater industry.

— Maureen Condon, Playwright & Composer

I believe a Mastermind group is essential – for the support, ideas generated, the encouragement, the accountability, the important friendships formed and for a sense of belonging in the theater, whether or not we’ve been produced. Cate’s Mastermind, in particular, is extremely helpful.  Cate knows her stuff and gently pushes us forward, stepping in to help when needed.  She is passionate about getting work onto a stage. She makes you believe it’s not “if” but “when”.”

— Jarlath Barsanti Jacobs, Playwright

Sign up for the CreateTheater Newsletter.

Stay part of the community!

Do I Need a Star?

Do I Need a Star?

The Need for Stars?

 

 “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin

 

Writing a play and then staying the course to see it produced is a daunting task. It requires tremendous focus and 100% dedication to each step in the developmental process.

 Once you think your play “works,” the next step is to have a staged reading to introduce it to the public, either in NYC or elsewhere. A reading is the step before a workshop or a production.

 So if a staged reading is the step before a workshop or production, what is our goal for the staged reading? Getting people to see the reading. And not just ANY people – specifically, people who could help us get to that next step, a production or a workshop. (We also want to get smart, experienced people to the reading for them to give us feedback as well, but for the purpose of this blog post let’s stay with the people who can help us move the play forward.)

 So, who are these people? How can I get them into my reading?

 

 It’s All About Relationships

 

Since everything in this business is about relationships, you should be developing relationships and networking like crazy as soon as you realize that you want to be a playwright. Specifically, you want to cultivate relationships with Artistic Directors, directors, producers, and generally, almost anyone in the industry.

 Sooner or later you realize that everyone in the theater lives or dies by their network of friends and friends-of-friends. And it’s helpful to be friends with or in close association with someone who knows or has access to a “star.”

 

Getting a “Star” Interested in Your Play

 

 I can hear the plaintive cry from many of you: “I don’t have access to a star, and don’t know anyone who does!”

 Sigh. That’s where most of us start, but if you’re in this industry for any length of time and make an effort to network, you’ll inevitably meet someone (or hire someone) who knows someone to make a connection for you. And if your work is good enough (and your price is right), you’ll probably be able to hire someone that’s worked on Broadway before to be in your reading. Often it’s not as expensive as you think.

For a quick answer, you can contact your intended celebrity by signing up for the IMDbPro, which is what most people use. You can also try contactanycelebrity.com.

 BUT the real answer is that quality work shows up very early, in the writing and in the score (if we’re talking about musicals). Sometimes I start to read a script and quickly become riveted to the story. When it’s this good, I smile and say to myself that “the magic is starting to happen.”

Losing yourself in a theatrical world established by a talented writer is a completely magical experience. The “magic” is found on the page long before it makes its way to the stage, and if you’ve read a few hundred scripts or so like many of us have, you know it doesn’t happen all that often.

“Star” actors see the “magic” when they read your script; the same with “star” directors, music directors, and yes, theaters and producers. The cream always rises to the top. Eventually.

 Unfortunately it usually takes its damn sweet time getting there.

 

I Don’t Have a Star – Yet

 

Notice the operative word here – YET.

In order to find that “star” you think you need to attract the theaters and producers that you think you need to help move your script forward – the most important thing you need to remember is that the first star of your show is …. your script. 

Let me say it again.

Your writing should be so good that your SCRIPT is your very first “star.”

 So, while you continue to network and develop each of your plays, remember it’s the constant fine-tuning to your scripts that is the real work.

No amount of networking or self-producing expensive staged readings can substitute for the nitty-gritty down-and-dirty daily work of meeting with yourself every day to sit down and write.

  •  In order to make your writing the true star it needs to be, remember to acknowledge the daily discipline to write (or re-write) every day.
  • Remember to recognize the need for real craft in your work, and
  • Understand the need to constantly keep learning.

You must be a constant student of life and of the craft of writing to master the craft of writing.

 

As Steve Martin quipped, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

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Make Submissions Easy

Make Submissions Easy

‘Tis the (Submission) Season

 

Ah, the coolness of the air, the crisp sound of the leaves rustling underfoot. It’s the time of non-profit galas galore and Christmas party networking.

For playwrights and librettists, it’s also the season of submissions.

I’m sorry to say that some of the major submission opportunities have already passed (the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Richard Rodgers Award, the Jonathan Larson Grant, and Sundance Theatre Lab, for instance). If you didn’t apply this year, there’s always next year.

However, there is still time for some other major festivals, like NYMF (which has extended their deadline to November 18).

 

Why Submit to Theaters and Festivals?

 

If you want to get your production on its feet and onstage, there’s no better way to begin the process than by participating in an established theater company or festival’s lineup, if you’re ready for it.

What do I mean by ready?

  • Your script has had at least one table reading and seems to “work”
  • You have had a few theater professionals advise you to move forward with the piece
  • You’re through with the re-writes, and it’s time for your script to live and breathe onstage in order to learn more about it.

I believe we’re living in an Age of the Playwright, something akin to the ancient Greek Fifth Century era, where the power of the theater and its storytelling was at its peak. Never before has there been so many writers and storytelling for production (which includes film, tv, and internet storytelling in addition to live theater). Our society is primed to consume storytelling via visual dramatic action, much more so than in previous eras when vital storytelling was shared primarily through words: through oral tradition or through text (novels, newspapers, poems and radio theater).

I call this the Age of the Playwright instead of the “Age of the Director,” since the ideas come from the playwright’s vision. A director interprets the theme and makes it come alive on stage, but the original vision, intention and form – the raison d’etre of a piece – remains embedded within the meaning endowed unto it by its creator, the writer.

And unfortunately more and more, the costs associated with birthing it to life come from the writer as well.

Enter the non-profit theaters and festivals. Drum roll, please.

 

Creative Playmaking in the 21st Century

 

I’m certainly not saying anything new, but the cost of putting your precious show onstage can be daunting. This is the world that I live in too, as a producer and mentor for many writers.

How do we create opportunities to put stories on stage in the 21st century? How can we produce our work, or help others to produce our work, without needing to take out a second mortgage on our home or risking money that we really shouldn’t risk?

The secret is two-fold of course:

  1. Through constant pitching for OPM (Other People’s Money) and
  2. By consistently submitting your work to as many opportunities as you can.

In a field where it seems as if “they” hold all the power, this is a wakeup call to remind you that YOU hold all the power.

  • This is your “baby,” your creation, and no one will foster it and promote it better than you
  • You hold all the cards, because at some point it is really a “numbers game” and entirely within your power to pitch or not to pitch, to submit or not to submit.

Let me say it again: “they” don’t hold all of the power; YOU hold all of the power.

You create your own opportunities.

 

Pitching and Submitting: Make It Easy

 

There are differences, and you must do both.

By “pitching” yourself and/or your work, usually in person, you are demonstrating that you are a professional artist that believes in yourself and in your work. “Submitting” is the process where you submit your work to a person, theater or festival, and then wait to see if you are selected through their process.

Every artist should have their two minute “elevator pitch” down pat, ready to go at a moment’s notice when fate puts an opportunity smack dab in your face. How many times have you felt yourself unprepared for that moment when the universe put someone in your path who could help you professionally,? Get your elevator pitch ready now.

That’s why I now insist that I constantly have a memorized elevator pitch for the shows I’m currently working on ready to “present” when an opportunity shows itself. You can follow up by email with people you meet in person with “pitching” materials prepared ahead of time, that give information about your show, reviews, a sizzle reel, etc.

Pitching should happen in person and over email if you know someone personally. A “cold” pitch is less effective, unless introduced by a common acquaintance. I try to always remember to follow up with prepared material after meeting someone and speaking about one of my shows. I keep their business card in my pocket or in plain sight as a reminder, so I don’t forget.

That may be a good goal for you in 2020.

 

People Are Interested in You!

 

People are interested in hearing about you and your work. They may also be willing to help you produce it or connect you to others who can, because either the work sounds compelling or, more often, they just really like YOU and want to help you succeed.

It’s up to you to sound articulate and represent yourself and your work really well by being prepared beforehand.

While pitching usually happens in person, submissions are done in the privacy of your own home or office. They rely on your organization of material and the productive use of your time. You MUST set aside a regular time each week to submit. Make it part of your weekly routine to submit to at least 4-5 opportunities a week on a regular basis.

 

You Hold All the Power

 

Writers who make a routine of setting aside a regular time each week to submit create more opportunities for themselves than writers who submit in a haphazard “I’ll get to it when I get to it” manner. Ditto those writers who have their pitches memorized and follow up afterward with pitching materials.

It’s all part of being a professional playwright in the 21st century.

 

It’s my job as a dramaturg and producer to inspire you and to help you in every way I can. I’m constantly trying to think of new ways to do this.

Recently I’ve been sitting down with writers to help them figure out ways to send out submissions more easily and quickly, making it “no big deal” to submit their work. If you make it part of your routine and have the needed documents at your fingertips, it actually becomes no big deal.

And that’s how you create opportunities that come to you.

 

Upcoming Submission Deadlines

 

I always advise my writers to join the Dramatists Guild and Play Submissions Helper to keep up with their submitting goals. I also am now reminding writers of upcoming deadlines in my weekly member newsletters. It helps to have the prodding come from a few different places!

Here are some of the upcoming deadlines for approaching deadlines for November that may be of interest to you:

The Eric H. Weinberger Award for Emerging Librettists at Amas Mustical Theatre

  • Deadline Nov. 29

The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival

  • Deadline Nov. 30

Lost Nation Theater (see their Artistic Vision)

  • Deadline Nov. 30

Waterman’s Playwrights Retreats (Female Identifying Playwrights only)

  • Deadline 11/30

 

If I can help you dramaturgically with your script, help you achieve your submission goals, or if you would like a production consultation with next steps for your project, email me at cate@catecam.com   I’d love to speak with you.

 

Like talking structure? Sign up for my weekly newsletter for more tips on writing, producing and dramaturgy.