There are really two arts festivals that I really look forward to.  And when I say “look forward”, I mean arts festivals that I actually get excited thinking about.  Festivals that, in the weeks leading up to them, I think to myself “I wish it was here already”.

The first is the Toronto Fringe Festival, which I have loved for a long time.  During this festival, the attention of the media is focused on small theatre like at no other time of the year.  Certainly there are several news papers that do a wonderful job of covering smaller companies during the rest of the year; papers like Now and blogs like Mooney on Theatre and Amanda Campbell’s The Way I See It do a great job of covering small to mid theatre companies.  But during Fringe, there’s more attention focused than at any time of the year.  The media covers theatre more, and some large producers go looking for the next possible hit that they can transplant to one of their theatres.  Combine the attention with the lottery selection system for Fringe, and you have something almost…dangerous, because the theatre goer never really knows what they are getting until they sit down to watch the show.  The fact that productions for Fringe are chosen at random, means that anyone can get into the festival, regardless of their experience or pedigree or even the quality of the show.  This means you might see something mediocre, or you might see something that’s really bad, or you might see something really amazing.  And that’s pretty damned exciting.

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is the other arts festival that I really look forward to. Described as an “all night contemporary art event”, Nuit Blanche is not a stuffy art museum exhibit filled with paintings or sculptures, its art on a large scale.  Installations in spaces around the city, indoors and outdoors.  It shuts down some main streets in Toronto, allowing the many thousands of people who attend to move freely, unheeded by cars.  People fill the streets, wander through the art installations, and generally have a great time. You are guaranteed to see something cool.  This year, there are installations in Lower Bay subway station, a “Nuit Market” in an alley, a van that’s turned into a light box, and those are just three of installations I want to see.  Some exhibits are more performance based, making Nuit Blanche more of a celebration of the arts in general rather than a capital “A” Art event.  It goes all night, and I’ll be honest…its been ages since I could stay up all night, even for something as cool as this, but I’ll certainly be out until quite late.  I’ve you’ve never gone, I highly recommend that you check it out.  It will be like nothing you’ve seen before.

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This picture from last night’s rehearsal of Dead Man’s Party is full of win.

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Four guys survive the zombie apocalypse, not through guile or skill, but by avoiding the whole thing.  Hiding out in the basement and playing Dungeons and Dragons, xbox and reading comics, with no one trying to get them to come out of the basement and stop playing games…well, for them, the zombie apocalypse is the best thing that ever happened to them.

That’s a summary of the story behind Dead Man’s Party, a play I am directing for Monkeyman Productions.  The play is, as you might guess, a comedy.  The play is funny, thick with “geek” references (seriously), and in case you were wondering, yes, there is a zombie attack.  As a comedy, it might be easy to dismiss the play as just fluff, but digging deeper into the play, its not just a story about four funny nerds playing role playing games while Rome burns.   The four guys have created their own little community.  This community functions and provides all of them with what they need.  But when one of them starts to long for something more…what does that mean for the community?  Can it still function?

These questions are found in the script, between the comic, movie, video game and RPG references.  In the end, the questions about the community must take a back seat to the humour, as delving too deeply into this area might take away from the jokes (of which there are many).

Tonight, we have our first reading of the play (along with its counterpart of the evening of one-act comedies by D.J. Sylvis, Phoenix II: The Mongolar Maneuver), and I’m looking forward to hearing it out loud.

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Phil directs the one act comedy “Dead Man’s Party” and appears as Sir Alec Guthrie in “Phoenix II: The Mongolar Maneuver”, as a part of Monkeyman Productions’ Monkey Sci-Fi Horror Theatre II

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Recently I was involved with a theatrical production that, in order to help draw an audience, partnered with an organizer that helped to fill up the evening with various forms of entertainment.  For several of these evenings, the partnered event was a burlesque show.  Now, I’ll be honest, I had never been to a burlesque show, so I didn’t entirely know what to expect.  But I did think that the pairing was an unusual one: pairing selected scenes from a new musical with burlesque.  Weren’t the audiences for these things very different?  Sure, the musical was a “horror musical” and more than a bit campy, but would it fit with what the burlesque performers were presenting?

The first night was interesting.  On that night, we followed the burlesque, and I had to say afterwards that the lesson for that night was “never follow boobies”.  I tried to imagine W.C. Fields saying “Never work with children or animals; and never follow boobies”.  At issue, was the fact that the audience really was not there for what we were selling.  They had come to see the ladies perform, and really were not interested in a selection of scenes from musical theatre, regardless or how campy it might be.

At that point, I assumed that all our performances would be like that.  The audience not watching, but talking amongst themselves, perhaps throwing a couple of heckles our way.  I was not looking forward to the rest of the run.  Who wants to perform for people who are uninterested in what you are doing?  Not that I entirely blamed them.  I mean, how can you follow someone like Red Herring?  Not easily that’s for sure.  And certainly not with a relatively tame (by comparison) musical.

Things changed the next night.  Again we followed the boobies (how I really did wish that W.C. Fields had warned me about that), but this time, the audience was different.  They weren’t rudely talking over us, they weren’t heckling.  I wondered what the difference was.  Many of the burlesque performers that preceded us were the same, so it wasn’t them.  Were we better?  Probably, but I don’t think we were so amazing that we were able to re-focus the attention of people who’d spent the last hour or so looking at beautiful half-clothed women.  So what was different?

I couldn’t figure it out exactly at first.  I had a few days to mull it over before we were back at it, and I still hadn’t figured out the difference between the two nights.  For our final show, we again followed the burlesque performances, and the audience was somewhere in the middle of the two.  So what was different?

Here’s what I thought: On night one, the scenes from the play were not mentioned at all during the show.  It appeared that the audience was drawn by the burlesque, and not by the play. Since the play wasn’t mentioned during the burlesque, the audience was a little shocked when we got up to do scenes from a musical.  Second night, the play was mentioned throughout, so that when we got up, it was no surprise and almost anticipated.  On the last night, it was mentioned once or twice during the burlesque, but almost in passing.

So what do I learn from this?

First off, let me say that I think that the Arts need to mix more. That collaborations need to happen.  Dancers need to mix with actors need to mix with singers need to mix with painters.  Its better for the art, and its better for the audience.  When these collaborations happen, however, the promotion needs to also be collaborative, both before and during (and hell, why not?  after) the performance.  If I’m collaborating with a dance troupe, I need to talk them up and they need to do the same.  We all need to treat the entire evening like our own.  There can’t be me over here and the dancers over there. (at the risk of sounding like the cast of Rent) There can only be us.  If we separate our promotional efforts and I only talk about my part and you only talk about their part, we’re actually dividing our audience, which helps no one.  Your audience comes for you and my audience comes for me.  My audience pays attention to me and not you, and yours pays attention to you and not me.

If, however, we both promote each other; If I say to my audience “you really need to see this great dancer (or singer or painter )” and you say to your audience “you really need to see this great play” we both win.  We’ve won over our respective audiences to both performances so that they are looking forward to each.  They’re less likely to fade out when the performance they aren’t there fore gets on stage, because it was built up for them as something they should be interested in.

Lessons learned for next time.

And yes, there should be a next time.  Perhaps not with the show I just did, but with something else. There are too many artists out there (of varying disciplines) that I want to share with you.

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I’m sort of a “web evangelist”.  Whenever I talk to actors and other performing artists, I almost always ask if they have a website.  Most don’t.  When I ask them why, I tend to get varying responses, which can be boiled down to the following:

1. I don’t think it will be of any use to me.
2. Its too hard/I’m not a technical person.

Naturally, I have responses to these.

I don’t think it will be of any use to me: When someone searches for your name on Google, what comes up?  Is it a collection of sites that you have little to no real affiliation with?  Is it your facebook page?  The first thing that your website will do for you is help to ensure that you are in control of the content that comes up first in a google search for your name (unless your name is John Smith).  In addition to just helping you control your google search results, a website can do something more: it gives potential engagers a way to find out a little about your past work. I have gone into auditions, and been welcomed so warmly that I thought they must have met me in the past, only to discover that they had simply been to my website.  Having a website allowed the potential engager to see my past work, which made them predisposed to being friendly to me, which made the audition a lot smoother.  If that’s not a good reason to have a website, I don’t know what is.

Its too hard/I’m not a technical person: A few years ago, I used to work at a website hosting company, and during my time speaking to our clients, I encountered more than a few who had been taken advantage of by someone.  In most cases, they had hired someone to build/maintain a website for them and that person had taken advantage of their ignorance about websites, and was over charging them.  Once, several years ago, it was necessary to be able to write HTML to be able to create a functional website.  Now, however, with tools such as Joomla or WordPress, you don’t need to be able to write HTML.  In fact, most hosting companies offer both as one-click installs, which makes setting them up almost effortless.  Then, its just a matter of changing the template (using one of thousands of available free templates), and writing your content.  You don’t need to be technical.  You just need to spend a little time on setup.  Its also worth pointing out that I never received any training in web stuff.  I never took a course in web design or HTML or anything else.  Everything I know about web sites, I taught myself.  And believe me, if I can learn how to do this stuff, so can you.

I firmly believe that the tools have advanced to the point where anyone can create a website.  Its easy, and it doesn’t take a lot of time to do. Some of the best tools are free, and simple to use.  I firmly believe that its easy enough, that anyone can do it.  Why pay someone to do it for you, when you can do it yourself?

I’ve sometimes considered doing a seminar on creating your own website.  If this is something you might be interested in, let me know.

EDIT: Its been pointed out that this post might be interpreted as saying that you can either a)Do it yourself or b) get ripped off.  This is absolutely not what I was trying to say.  If you can afford a professional, then you should get one. There are plenty of honest designers out there who will charge a reasonable price and won’t rip anyone off.  A good WordPress template creator (or website designer or Joomla themer) can build you something truly spectacular.  However, I know a lot of performing artists who can’t afford to pay someone.  For these people, DIY is totally the way to go. They’ll get a site they can use, that looks good, and is easy to update.  All most people really need for DIY, is a little hand to point them in the right direction.

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