A few weeks ago, I was asked to contribute to the Boston Theatre Conference Blog 2011. I sent this post in late and it was never put up so I thought I would post it.

In presenting my graduate school thesis, a website redesign and strategy for The Peterborough Players in New Hampshire, I opened with the prologue from Henry V:

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

It goes on. I’m sure you know it. If you didn’t see it done at Actors’ Shakespeare Project last fall, for a refresher, you can see Derek Jacobi do it.

Riffing off the prologue, which discusses the magic of theatre, the illusions we create on a daily basis as we transport audiences to different times and places, I went on to discuss the challenge of creating a website that truly lets someone experience a theatre production.

Marketers, too, have to create an illusion, inspiring people to believe that they will be transported to different places in their imagination while in the theatre. Not only do they have to be inspired to go on the journey, but they have to also be willing to pay for it. In our society, one of the primary ways we show that we value something is to pay for it. As a marketer, my duty is to make people value the art on stage sufficiently so that they will part with their money to see the show and, hopefully, return some other time to be transported to another, vastly different world.

Marketers do it in short time periods and limited budgets. How do we do it?

Tom Stoppard would say: “It’s a mystery”. Well, not so much a mystery as a shared enterprise with all the “players” in the company from management to creative staff.

One of the greatest lessons I learned in college sticks with me to this day: The key to great theatre is understanding how to listen. It’s a difficult thing to learn but it’s essential to everything we do, every day, from ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks to having a conversation with a colleague. Listening is how we get stuff done. Listening is how we collaborate and build community. We find out what other people need, we share our own goals and aspirations, and find out if we can work together to achieve them. But after listening comes the problem solving; sometimes the listening results in a consensus, sometimes not, but that is where some dynamic leadership steps in.

I arrived in Boston in 2003, a year out of graduate school in Internet Strategy. While that may seem like a common degree or idea now, back then I was constantly giving an elevator pitch of what I knew. In 2003, the Arsenal Center for the Arts hadn’t been built (I was sharing part of a New Rep office with Adam Zahler in Newton Highlands, back when performances were at the church). Zero Arrow Theatre (now Oberon) hadn’t yet been built. The Calderwood Pavilion didn’t exist.

Back then, print media had a whole different meaning, too.

I remember Adam taking me to a TAMA (Theatre Arts Marketing Alliance) meeting in the South End. It was there I met all the others who were in charge of selling the shows. It was there I met all the others who are preoccupied with whether shows have momentum and buzz. I was in a room full of people who understand the pressure-filled no-win situation of the adage:

“When the show does well, the show was good.
When the show tanks, the marketing sucked.”

From January 2009 through November 2010, I wasn’t part of this community. I wasn’t employed at a theatre company. I was unaffiliated. It was a strange feeling. Looking in from the “outside” made me realize how much I valued the work of the committed people in the Boston theatre community. I am back in the conversation on the frontlines with my current position at Central Square Theater.

What did I do in the interim? I never stopped thinking of you, the Boston Theatre Community. I did what I always seem to do, not wax nostalgic about what happened in the past, but reflect on it so I was pushed to be innovative and creative with where the opportunities were now, fill a need, and lend a hand, something like a community organizer. In this case, the community I was organizing wasn’t the other marketers in the Boston Theatre Community but the audience.

In May 2008, ExploreBostonTheatre.com began with a Twitter account (@exploretheatre). I set up an email account and a bunch of Google Alerts on every Theatre Company and artistic director in Boston and New England. I started sharing links to stories, listings, and reviews that came down the pipeline. I tracked click-throughs and within a couple of months was seeing the links were being shared and clicked on, sometimes, 200 times.

One important contradiction to remember about me: I am a marketer who detests hype and hyperbole. Whenever I see it happening, I think of the late, great George Carlin’s “Advertising Lullaby”.

What do I like? I like content. I like things I can read, watch, listen to. Things which cause me to pause and think; things that draw me closer, connect, and encourage me to be part of the movement. I want to be moved and inspired.

In August 2009 when I launched ExploreBostonTheatre.com it was as much a laboratory for me to find out what was possible and successful as much as it was a way to contribute to the building and strengthening of audiences for Boston theatres. What did I learn? Here are some takeaways:

1. Find the words to express your passion. It’s important. To inaugurate the site, I gave a softball-freebie to any artistic director who wanted to answer the call. All they had to do was answer the question: Why is theatre important? Of the few hundred theatres to whom I sent emails, I received two. I even received a response from one artistic director who said, “The answer to that question is self evident.” If The Boston Globe came calling and gave the artistic director the same opportunity to expound, words would be found—they would leap off the page. Take advantage of every opportunity to reinforce that you are passionate and people should become part of your tribe and invest in your success.
2. We live in a Google world. 65% of my traffic came from search engines, primarily (95%) Google. If you can’t be found easily online, you don’t exist. What search terms were driving traffic to my site? Theater company names, actor names, playwright names, director names, phrases (people looking for information about the cast or running time). More importantly you should ask yourself: Why were people going to my site before they were going to yours?
3. Press Releases are not just for the press. They are Google bait. People know press releases are a good source of the basic facts they need. Make it readable and accessible. Remember: People like me, BroadwayWorld.com, Playbill.com and many others who use press releases to create content to inform their audience. Write well. Be passionate.
4. The more hype and hyperbole in your press release, the less credibility it has. In the year-plus of ExploreBostonTheatre.com, I read several hundred press releases from Boston theaters. It’s like sitting in a room observing auditions. You get bored. Tell me a story about the piece and convince me it’s important that audience (or, just me) see the show right now.
5. Create beautiful content. 80% of the press releases I received never had any photos. Most of the company’s websites didn’t even have publicity photos. I would make a gallery and so would others. Plan ahead. Celebrate your productions with beautiful content.

I want to be part of a community of generous individuals who care about the bigger picture of defining what theatre is and means to audiences right now in the world, even if the views in this world of theatre diverge. Convergence is not what the individuals in theatre strive for. I understand that. The creative path is one of being different from your neighbor; offering something unique to the audience. But we all share the wish and the need to entice the audience to participate in our world. If we don’t keep that goal in mind, we go dark. Marketing wants what the art wants--important work that speaks to Boston and beyond, forcing us to see the world through different eyes or to know that we are not alone. I always go back to music and recall this quote from the movie Walk the Line, when Johnny Cash is auditioning for Sam Phillips:

“Bring… bring it home? All right, let’s bring it home. If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing *one* song. Huh? One song that people would remember before you’re dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up. You tellin’ me that’s the song you’d sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it’s real, and how you’re gonna shout it? Or… would you sing somethin’ different. Somethin’ real. Somethin’ you felt. Cause I’m telling you right now, that’s the kind of song people want to hear. That’s the kind of song that truly saves people.”

I don’t go to church. I go to the theatre. I experience art to be inspired, enlightened and yes, maybe even saved. I believe in it. And, I have this suspicion that if you’re part of the Boston Theatre Community, you believe in it, too.

I go to the theatre to be reminded of the possibility and that things can be better. Joe Henry sums it up, talking about going to the movies in “Our Song”

“We push in line at the picture show
For cool air and a chance to see
A vision of ourselves portrayed as
Younger and braver and humble and free.”

Remember everyone in your organization, from marketers to fundraisers, to production managers, to box office representatives are there for a reason. They are there by choice. Don’t take them for granted. They help make everything happen for the audience.

Now, go create and inspire—and listen.

With video you can do so much more to promote your theatre production. While you can show scenes from the play (after it is onstage and running). While you’re still in production, you can create a trailer which gives the audience a taste of the language, introduce them to the actors, and give a feeling of the atmosphere and tone of the production.

Here is a trailer I created with Elemental Theatre Collective of Providence, Rhode Island for their production of John Mighton’s Possible Worlds which runs this week only at Perishable Theatre in Providence.

If you’re interested in creating a trailer for your theatre production contact me.

Recently, I’ve been working with the Boston band, The Resurrectionists, create some new content for the launch of their new website and also their new album, My Chainsaw Heart, early next year. They are doing a month long residency Tuesday nights in November (except for the 16th) at The Lizard Lounge in Cambridge. Here are videos from November 2.

If you’re a solo performing artist or a band, hiring a videographer to shoot your gigs and create some YouTube videos of your live performances is a great way to engage fans. I shoot in HD and use a recording studio quality microphone to capture high-quality audio which can also be distributed to fans as a free download.

If you’re interested in having some video shot of your shots, contact me.

My mother, a public defender, sent me this a few days ago. I find this to be inspirational not only in my belief in the constitutional right to counsel but also in the bigger picture: people acting on the their convictions.

In all of this work, you’ve helped people in crisis and in need. And, as you have stood by your clients, you have also stood up for, and honored, a basic principle that defines who we are as a nation of laws. As you all know, advancing the cause of justice sometimes means working for the sake of the fairness and integrity of our system of justice. This is why lawyers who accept our professional responsibility to protect the rule of law, the right to counsel, and access to our courts – even when this requires defending unpopular positions or clients – deserve the praise and gratitude of all Americans. They also deserve respect. Those who reaffirm our nation’s most essential and enduring values do not deserve to have their own values questioned. Let me be clear about this: Lawyers who provide counsel for the unpopular are, and should be treated as what they are: patriots.

-Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States of America speaking at the Pro Bono Institute Gala on March 19, 2010

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About ten years ago, I was on a plane to study in Morelia, Mexico, to satisfy my cross-cultural experience degree requirement at Antioch College.

There was another problem.

I needed to write the second draft of my senior thesis play by the end of my time in Mexico. I had to do this without a computer since we’d been advised not to bring them along. Internet cafes were going to be too expensive.

What did I do?

A manual cut and paste.

I have just as much technology lust and yearning as the next, I am reminded, now more than ever, of my revision process in Mexico. I’ve realized that, yes, a computer would have made things easier, but it would not have written the play for me.

There are screenwriting and playwriting computer programs that are supposed to format everything correctly and stimulate the creative juices. These tools are marketed as the solutions—it’s as if you don’t have to do any work, just buy the program and you’re nearly done. Not so.

In May 1999, I knew I needed a script for this play. I spent the next thirty days writing a play. Much like my experience ten years later, this was done late at night while listening to music (Greg Brown’s Further In and Bob Dylan’s Street Legal) or having the television on in the background. For some reason the Lethal Weapon series of movies seemed to be on quite often that month. Violence didn’t enter my mindset, but friendship and relationships did.

What the play is or was about doesn’t matter. What stands out is the process. Instead of typing out my first draft, I knew myself too well. I knew that if I started typing and then saw something I wanted to change, I would go back and change it never really moving forward. Carlyle Brown, my playwriting professor at Antioch College, had given me the advice to write, not to look back, and to finish. In retrospect he had figured me out, and it is good I trusted his advice. Instead of typing out the draft, I wrote it out longhand in a spiral notebook. After I got to “The End” I would go back and type it up. That was successful. I ended up with an 80 page first draft.

I was quite proud to have written something and also petrified that it would completely suck. I printed out copies and gave them to my parents, my advisor Louise Smith, and my good friend Miguel Santiago.

By the end of the summer, I had gotten feedback from everybody. To my great appreciation, Miguel had carefully gone through the entire script with a non-threatening blue pen and meticulously written comments and questions to me in the margins.

Now, I had to take all of that feedback and write a second draft.

I also knew I would have to do that from September through November in colonial city of Morelia, Mexico, without access to a computer. Remember, we had been told not to bring our laptops. All of our classroom assignments would be written in longhand.

In order to solve my revision problem, I brought the following to Mexico so I could work:

• A clean copy of the script.
• A blank spiral notebook.
• Louise Smith’s comments.
• Miguel Santiago’s comments.
• My parents’ comments.
• Scissors.
• Scotch tape.
• A box of my favorite pens.

This was what I would need for a manual cut and paste.

Over the next ninety days, I went through the entire script. When I had something I wanted to keep, I used the scissors and cut it out of the fresh copy and taped it into the notebook. I added dialogue, stage directions, and scenes. I left parts of the script on the floor. I worked an hour or two a night in the sunroom of my host family’s house. I’m quite sure the script changed because of the environment in which I was revising it—a character drank tequila and had a bit more machismo in him than before.

At the end of the ninety days, I had a spiral notebook bursting with scotch tape pages covered with handwritten dialogue and parts of the former script–a huge storytelling scrapbook. I had run completely out of scotch tape. No way was I sending this via international mail. No way was I going to put this in my checked luggage. It went in my backpack on the plane. When I arrived back in New Hampshire, I spent the better part of December typing up the second draft.

The script had increased from eighty to 120 pages.

It may sound quite primitive to have done a manual cut and paste. Still, I’m reminded that Tony Dallas, a director and playwright I worked with at Antioch, once explained that the reason “playwright” is spelled “wright” rather than “write” is because it is a craft. I remember clearly his gesticulations comparing it to blacksmithing or woodworking.

I learned the craft of playwriting during those three months in Mexico. Instead of a forge, I had my favorite pens, scotch tape, and a pair of scissors. A primitive Microsoft Word

And, it was all I needed.

And, unlike Microsoft Word, it never crashed.

It’s essential to remember that tools aren’t the solution.

We are.

My first live review on Sooz’s Exploit Boston is Brian Webb’s show at Club Passim from July 17, 2009.

Donning a “Don’t Mess With Rhode Island” t-shirt (you’d think it was texas but the teensy RI was smack dab in the middle of the longhorn state) and his personable and appreciative attitude Brian Webb opened with “Walk Alone.” People who had never heard the song before laughed after the opening line “You drive me crazy, maybe cause’ you are” causing Webb to briefly stop and laugh, saying that it would be, by far the most humorous line in the song.

Read the whole review on Exploit Boston.

After finishing graduate school I was looking for a job and in the meantime freelanced. I was an internet strategy consultant. I was designing websites primarily for nonprofit organizations.

Well into a relationship with a client, I was called to come to a meeting with the chair of their board where an outside vendor was going to make a sales pitch for some new web technology.

The pitch: Their technology would read the minds of website visitors.

No, really, I’m not joking.

They said they could read the minds of people visiting the website and, based on realtime information, would deliver the exact content and experience the website visitor desired.

They would know when the visitor was bored and new information needed to appear on the page.

And, they would be able to tell what kind of information, too. They could tell when a sports fan would want to hear a sound file of the cheering of the crowd roar from their speakers.

Throughout this whole presentation, it was difficult not to burst out laughing.

With Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing fresh in my educated mind, I thought of the privacy concerns: “Does the customer opt-in to the company reading your mind and thoughts?”

In an innocent Columbo-esque way, I asked such a thing. The answer was that of course the customer would be okay with it because it brings them pleasure and satisfies them in their experience.

Would it be okay? Really?

“And if my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.” -Bob Dylan.

I don’t think so.

The last people (maybe) who consumers will want to have reading their minds are companies trying to sell them something.

When the vendors had left, I expressed my outrageous skepticism. I sent the company’s ink to some people I went to graduate school with and we had a good laugh. That evening at home, I browsed the company’s website. The product demonstration was full of lovely stock photos of nature scenes, rainbows, and animals. Eventually music loaded.

I walked away from my computer and had forgotten to close the browser window. Upon my return the message on the screen had changed:

“Since you’ve enjoyed this page so much and have been studying it so carefully, here are some links we think you’ll like.”

I was just thinking about how great the sandwich I had eaten was.

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