Tag Archives: touring

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

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

There’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 →

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?

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.

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 →

Zero Stars. I Couldn’t Ask for More.

Me Want Stars

Wow. In the midst of my run at Minnesota Fringe I get an audience review with zero stars. Zero. Stars. What shocks me most is that this made me smile. What the fuck am I smiling about? This is bringing down my overall score. This is going to kill my audience. Actually… I couldn’t have asked for anything better to happen. Continue reading →

Touring the College Circuit Through Speakers Bureaus

There are several ways to get on the radar of colleges and universities for performance opportunities. From contacting Student Activity Committees to attending Campus Activity Conferences like NACA and APCA to various funded and underfunded Student Groups on campuses it can seem daunting and overwhelming at first, but there is a way to streamline the process so that you are essentially wedding out the shit. Continue reading →

To Fringe or Not to Fringe…

Me and Mr. David Gaines working the Minnesota Fringe crowds.

…that is the question. I have done four U.S. fringe festivals which is nothing compared to some people I know. I based my decisions to tour to certain ones on a number of factors and research but actually doing them presents things you can only get through experience. One thing that happens when you tour the fringe circuit is you hear what works and what doesn’t really quickly from the other artists you end up meeting. Here’s the down-low. Continue reading →

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