Category Archives: Self Promotion

A Trade Show for the Performing Arts. Huh? Yup.

conference post

 

A few of years ago I started to attend the various regional arts presenter conferences to sell my wares: um, that would be selling me. After touring a bit of the fringe circuit and self-producing my one-man shows I wanted to take the next step in my professional development and network with the gatekeepers of the performing arts industry. What I was about to embark on was incredibly strange, fulfilling, exhausting and necessary.

Let’s get one thing straight. Trying to make money as a performing artist can suck the life out of you. I’ve talked about the trial and error of self-producing at length. I got very quickly that donning on every administrative hat plus trying to write, rehearse and memorize my work was completely unsustainable. Shit, it still is. I’m actually doing the same amount of work after attending these conference for the past three years but I learned a deeply value lesson: Face time is everything. Continue reading →

Figuring Out Your Market is Figuring Out Potential Friends

MorphsuitThere’s this song by Youth of Today called Potential Friends that’s somewhat ridiculous in it’s hardcore frustration but it has a good point. When you don’t put yourself out there to meet new people you pass up the opportunity to make new friends. A simple concept but as anyone who has ever suffered social anxiety, not so easy to implement. I seem like a total extrovert myself, but when I’m in a mood or feeling really raw, eye contact can feel overwhelming.

When it comes to figuring out the market for your work the same kind of pattern can develop. Continue reading →

Livin’ the Dream? Uh, no…

failure

“So what do you do?” When I tell people that I work full time as a performing artist I always put it in air quotes. I spend 90% of my time doing admin work and 10% on the creative aspects. I also work other part time and freelance jobs because my admin time can sometimes add up to about $1 p/hour. I’m not kidding about that. Continue reading →

An Open Letter to Non-Theater (or Theatre if you’re all fancy) Goers

Remember when people used to write letters? All Griffin and Sabine and shit?

Remember when people used to write letters? All Griffin and Sabine and shit?

It’s not your fault really. There’s so much schlock that promotes itself as theater that it justifies your casting off any potential enjoyment of the form. Unfortunately I’m getting majorly screwed by that way of thinking in the process. Some have said that theater is a form with two feet in the grave just waiting for the rest of the body to fall in. It’s pretty accurate. With the major component of the audience being over the age of 50, white and upper middle class, it’s only a matter of time (say 30 years) before that audience is literally dead. Continue reading →

U.S. Fringes are Local Festivals, Plain and Simple.

local vs national

A Caveat: I know a lot of organizers of Fringe festivals personally through a variety of circumstances. These opinions are my own and are no reflection on the huge amount of respect I have for the dedication, perseverance and aptitude they demonstrate to bring alternative and small scale theater to their communities. 

Also, I’m up to anyone disputing this but I want the math to back it up, not just general numbers. How do out-of -towners payouts differ from local producers?

Last year  published a post called To Fringe or Not to Fringe in which I broke down what the circuit was like. I have only toured fringes in the U.S., and only if I’ve done extensive research on them so that I’m not walking away in the red (although I have anyway). In my previous post I spoke briefly about how some fringes can have a local focus where out-of-towners such as myself get lost in the shuffle. I realized something however… Continue reading →

Look Ma, A Sub-header!

My ears are not meant for your amusement.

The world of blog marketing is a strange one. These SEO giants in Buddy Holly glasses, keyword wordsmiths and blog title snubbers are on a mission: To get people to keep reading something they probably half care about in order to ultimately getting them to share the post or follow through on a call-to-action. That means getting them to buy your shit or sign up for your email list so you can convince them later to buy your shit. Continue reading →

Subjective Success in the Self-Help Web

I’ve been thinking a shit ton about success as I work on the final part of my one-man trilogy on the underbelly of the self-help movement. Kicking Ass and Taking Names (tagline: Measuring Success One Failure at a Time) has been one of the projects I’ve been mind dumping onto my laptop all of December. It’s been a lot slower than expected. Continue reading →