A number of years ago, I was at the Montreal Fringe with Keystone Theatre. On our first day, we attended a seminar by solo performer Cameron Moore about how best to promote your show at Fringe. Cameron gave some great advice, but one thing that she said stood out for me. She said: There’s enough audience for everyone. And for me, that one sentence was transformative, not just in the way that i look at Fringe promotion, but in the way I look at promoting theatre in general. See, I believe that this concept, the idea that there’s enough audience for everyone applies to all theatre. Because the people who are inclined to see something that I am producing, are (in my opinion) likely to be inclined to see something that you are producing. They just have to know about it.
Sometimes, in theatre, and especially in indie theatre, we’re a little precious with our audiences. Its almost like we treat our audience like little birds, and if we open the little cage we keep them in, they’ll fly away and never come back. But I think that this is completely wrong. I think that an audience member who sees the work of one artist, will be hungry for the work of other artists. This doesn’t diminish the work of the first artist. It helps everyone grow.
I’ve approached a lot of what I do theatrically with this phrase in my mind: there’s audience enough for everyone. I’m always happy to talk about other people’s productions, even if I have my own in production. And I’m going to continue to do this. Its one of the reasons I started Stageworthy Podcast. Because I want to expose the work of many artists to as wide an audience as possible.
There’s enough audience for everyone.
So that’s my challenge to everyone this week: share the work of another artist or company this week. Talk about someone who’s work you have enjoyed.
this is the text of my Stageworthy Podcast opening thought from the episode published March 21, 2017