Leigh's Thoughts (And Mine) On Going Into Moonbeam

Although I haven't been blogging in a while (I've been Tweeting, but that's different), I wanted to direct your attention to Captain Moonbeam & Lynchpin director Leigh Hile's blog entry on our impending first rehearsal and her thoughts on directing the show before the inherent chaos and madness ensues.

I for one can't wait to get started on the show proper (we've already laid all the administrative groundwork; now it's time to get this thing up on its feet).

Reading Leigh's entry makes me feeling increasingly confident and excited about our upcoming production. As I think I've mentioned before, this is a very odd (but I think very good) short play that seemed doomed to be orphaned and abandoned.

Ben VandenBoom and I had staged a truncated version of Captain Moonbeam for Vampire Cowboys' Revamped series back in 2006, and were very happy with the result and response. But aside from being part of that one-night-only event, it didn't look as though Nosedive would ever give it a full production.

Since we had already mapped out our next couple of seasons, since it's a pretty short one-act (that is to say, under 45 minutes and too short to present on its own), and since at the time, Nosedive Central co-pilot Pete didn't quite know what to make of it (though I think he liked our 2006 staging; at least he said he did), it looked as though our Revamped performance was going to be its one and only live presentation.

Still, it was (is) a script I really wanted to produce. It's a weirdly personal script (the reasons for why are hard to explain). It's a very odd play that's tough to describe yet somewhat to pitch (as it deals with comic books and superheroes, and is both funny, sad and violent, but it's not really a "superhero play" - or maybe it is). It engaged people at the Revamped show better than I could have imagined.

So, I found it incredibly fortuitous that the Brick decided to make its summer festival comic book-themed, and fortuitous still that they accepted our submission into said festival.

Like I said, I'm incredibly happy that this show has a chance to be presented in its entirety for a few performances. I'm also incredibly happy that Leigh is on board directing this show, giving it the fresh perspective it needs. (And judging from her blog entry, her perspective is quite fresh and insightful, exactly what this script needs.)

At any rate, I'll let you guys know how our first rehearsal goes when it happens. I'll also most likely offer more scattershot thoughts on the play itself (although I think Leigh seems may offer much more articulate and insightful observations).

Over at the other show we here at Nosedive entral are staging, rehearsals for The Blood Brothers present...FREAKS FROM THE MORGUE are already underway, and I plan to sit in on rehearsals for my two contributions, "Otty" and "Daddy's Bad Medicine," this weekend. I'll let y'all know what I think next week.

Anyway, have a good weekend, folks. I'll catch y'all on the flippety, provided the impending Rapture doesn't completely wipe out my weekend.

Having no time for no Goddamned Rapture,

James "Get Bent, Rapture" Comtois

Cranking 'Em Out

I've always admired those creative types that consistently turn out new work at a rapid rate. Folks like Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh, Stephen King, Louis CK, Dave Sim. People like these—and several others—who produce new works in their respective field at least once or twice a year (or in Sim's case, once a month). Prolificacy is something I've always looked up to. Hell, even with creative types whose work I hate, I've still been impressed with their productivity.

Some of it's motivated by compulsion. No matter how many times he's announced his "retirement," King clearly just can't stop—or slow down—writing. Woody Allen has said in interviews he makes a movie every year because it takes his mind off his life and feels restless when on vacation for too long (he also comes from a background in television, where you don't have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to strike before creating—you have to produce content week in, week out, no matter what). Some of it's dictated by the rules of the field. Monthly comics, like television, have to produce on a fixed schedule. And some of it's motivated by good old-fashioned work ethic. Louis CK announced that he's going to start from scratch with material every year, and come up with an hour's worth of new material annually. (Even amongst other professional stand-ups, this is unheard of.)

Whatever the reasons—and look, I don't know these people personally, so I'm not interested in engaging in too much mind-reading armchair psychology—there are creative types that are known for being unusually prolific in their medium, and it's something I've found incredibly inspiring and compelling.

This is not to say that the output of these people is always gold (there are many films by Woody Allen that I've found seriously rushed and underdeveloped), or that I don't appreciate, admire or enjoy the work of those artists who meticulously take their time with seemingly forever to complete their projects (the Kubricks, the Malicks, the Flauberts, the Brian Wilsons and Lauryn Hills). It's just that when contemplating my own work, I've always wanted to be in the former camp in terms of creative output.

I'd rather write and stage 20 plays or more in 10 years that are hit-or-miss than two in the same timeframe that are considered (by either myself, the audience, critics, or some combination of all three) masterworks.

Although I'd like to consider myself prolific in the playwriting field, it really seems I'm just on par with the scene (my buds and colleagues Qui Nguyen, Derek Ahonen, Joshua Conkel, and Jeff Lewonczyk among many, many others, are all staging one new play a year or more). I guess for folks like us, it's inconceivable to do less. I mean, we love doing this, we can do this, and we're fortunately in a position where we can get our work staged the way we want it staged. So what's the alternative? Just not write?

Lately, however, I've wondered about the advantages of taking considerably more time to work on a new script or project. Now that Nosedive is over 11 years old, we no longer have Something To Prove (we've done over 20 shows in 10 years and have two new shows lined up for the summer; I think we can be seen as an actual theatre company at this point). We can afford to take time between productions.

Also, at this stage of the game, I don't want to just be producing solely for the sake of producing: writing a play simply because we've got an open slot in the upcoming season that needs filling.

In other words, I don't want to just be marking time.

And again, hey: I'm still a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick. Maybe there's something to taking a substantial amount of time in creating something. So maybe, after 11 years of writing and producing theatre at a steady clip, it'd be worth looking into being more meticulous with the next project.

Besides, wouldn't it be fun to spend over a decade producing two to three new works a year, then go into hiding for a year or two (or three), then unveil some new long-in-the-works secret project?

(This isn't to say that I'm against revising or rewriting, but just that the revision process is still part of the fast turnaround—a month writing the rough, a month putting it away and working on something else, then a month revising.)

Well, it doesn't seem to be sticking. I've quickly found that "taking my time" rapidly devolves into "procrastinating writing," which in turn rapidly devolves into "not writing at all."

It's not that I've run out of or am having a tough time coming up with ideas. Quite the contrary. I've currently got a number of ideas I'm contemplating. But I'm really only doing just that: contemplating. I've been procrastinating, dragging my feet, waiting for one of these ideas to grow on its own before making a decision to cultivate (translate: write) one.

Yeah, clearly this method of creating just isn't for me. In some ways, at this stage in the game, I wish it were. But I don't think I have it in me.

So, although this season—Blood Brothers, Captain Moonbeam & Lynchpin, and possibly Infectious Opportunity—has already been written (not counting if we're invited back to the Vampire Cowboys' Saturday Night Saloon), there's currently nothing yet written for 2012. Which means that needs to change. And soon.

This also means I need to make sure this isn't just a case of me marking time: it means I need to follow Louis CK's philosophy of keep working, keep producing new material, but make sure every new work is better than the last.

We'll see how this goes.

Back to work.

Breaking for nobody,

James "Spaceball One" Comtois

Advertise, Advertise, Advertise...

I'm going to take a brief break from marketing my show to talk a little bit about marketing a show.

Don and Gus have recently written pretty spot-on entries about this here, here and here, which leads me to assume they've either been a.) sneaking into my brain when I'm not looking or b.) this shit is pretty much universal to indie theatre-makers. The jury is open on that one.

But while I continue to ask for more grant money to continue research on the latent psychic abilities of my fellow bloggers and theatre-makers, I'll point out that Don comes up with a pretty astute conclusion based on an informal survey, which is, Your Marketing Doesn't Matter. Over at Gus' entry wondering whether or not Facebook does any damn good, Don augments his conclusion in the comments section by pointing out that the goal is to let your audience base know about your upcoming show.

In other Don's words, "don't sell, inform. Don't peddle, make available."

My take on Facebook invites is pretty much this: it may not actually rope in any new folks to see your show, but hey, it's free and takes very little time to set up an invite page. And when you're trying to get the word out on your show, every little bit helps. So if it costs you nothing, and takes virtually no time, why not?

Okay, I just wrote "every little bit helps." I actually don't know if that's true. I should probably write, "as far as we know, it doesn't hurt."

(On Gus' blog, I commented on the old adage I've heard that I've often used when promoting a Nosedive show: "Look, we know that 75% of what we're doing is a waste of time. But we don't know which 75%, so we have to do it all.")

The entry on to print postcards or not to print is one that we here at Nosedive Central are currently debating right now, since, well, with a new show coming up, we need to figure out where we stand on the subject in a manner of weeks.

I mean, sure, I like the physical memento, and it's nice to be able to physically hand someone a card with all the relevant info if I'm chatting up a show to them in person, but I'm definitely with Don about acknowledging that no one has gone to see a Nosedive play based solely on finding a postcard left at a bar, and with Gus about how depressing it is to have a stack of unused postcards sitting in your apartment after your show closes.

(We're also in a debate about whether or not to print postcards or business cards, since business cards look neater, and are easier for someone to stash in their wallet. But the same question applies: is that business card going to sway anyone into seeing it?)

Personally, neither postcards nor Facebook invites inform my playgoing. Honest. It's through email invites (to get the dates and venue), from knowing the folks making the show (i.e., I've already locked Flux's upcoming Jacob's House on my internal radar, so a Facebook invite and postcard is redundant. I'll use the mailing list email to remind myself of which train I'll be taking before heading off to see it), and from word of mouth (i.e., someone who's opinion I trust tells me to go see a particular show).

But then again, that's just me. Some folks I know solely rely on Facebook to be informed about upcoming shows. As I told Gus, I once asked a friend if he got the email I sent him about one of my shows, and he stared at me blankly. He then asked if I sent out a Facebook invite about it. I had not, and he said: "That's why this show is news to me."

I think we'll ultimately print up a limited run of either business cards or postcards, since it goes back to Don's assertion of getting the word out there: some folks (who are planning to see your show regardless) prefer using Facebook invites to organize their social calendar. Some prefer emails. Others prefer something physical that they can stick on their fridge.

Hey, we just don't know which 75% is wasted.

Wasting his time and yours,

James "Hateful Huckster" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide to Self-Producing, Part 10: Getting The Band Together

Of course it figures that, after trying to make a habit of posting these self-producing how-to guide entries during the week, but leaving Friday clear for other such nonsense, I do the reverse this week. Ah, well. I am, after all, a blogger, and not to be trusted.

Blogs. Ya get what ya paid for.

Any ole fuckeroo, on with the show...

* * *

RVCBard had asked me earlier about how to go about getting the right collaborators and my original answer was a little fumbling. I think this is because this falls more in the "alchemy" category than the hard science one. Still, I thought I should expand a bit, since this tends to be one of the biggest hurdles when a would-be self-producer is starting out.

As I have said before, and will say again, I was - am - very lucky to have met up with Pete at the time that I did. We had very similar goals and were on the same page when it was required. In other words, we're actually very different people (then as now), but see eye to eye on a number of crucial junctures. I was also very lucky to have a friend in Chris Bujold who decided to move down to the city once he heard Pete and I were thinking of putting on a play. We were all very lucky to know Dave Townsend and Adam Heffernan, who were willing to lead us horses to the water. We were lucky with picking our cast for Monkeys. We got lucky when we discovered Katie Clark (who acted in our first play and a couple after that) was dating this Christopher Yustin guy, who was super fun to hang out with and an amazing actor. We were lucky that he lived with Steph, who really liked the plays she had seen of ours and wanted to be a part of it. I was lucky that Pete and Patrick Shearer were good college friends, and we were both lucky that he decided to move from California to New York in 2001. And I consider myself very lucky to have such a talented younger sister, who wanted to join Nosedive after she graduated from Vassar in 2005, even though she is a punk.

And so on, and so forth.

So, yes. We ended up lucking out - and continuing to luck out - with joining up with excellent collaborators, some of the best in the city, in my humble estimation. But fortunately, it doesn't require luck alone. And eventually, as you progress, it requires less luck.

In case you hadn't extrapolated this, not only did I only refer to a small group of people, but only a small number of were there from the very start.

(Hell, a couple years ago Pete unearthed a copy of the script for Monkeys and we realized that he and I were the only two people involved in the production that were still involved with Nosedive.)

Like-minded people gravitate towards one another. This may take some time, but that's fine. If you're working on creating and cultivating a company, you shouldn't expect - nor are you expected - to have your company fully formed and frozen in time from square one. People will come and people will go, but more often than not, the good ones, if they're not there from the start, will eventually come along and stick around.

Bear in mind it was years before we did any sort of collaboration with such folks as Qui Nguyen or Mac Rogers, two of the best playwrights working today (in my humble estimation).

(For those of you seeking simple nuts and bolts information on how to get a cast and crew together for Play #1, I think the best bet is to rope in as many like-minded creative friends you've got. I mean, you have to have at least one or two, right? Unless you're a friendless creep who stinks of cheese. Okay. So if you're a friendless cheese-reeking sociopath, but still want to self-produce, you may first want to shower. Then, after you've cleaned yourself up a little, you can either take out an ad in a trade publication like Backstage or post a listing on craigslist. If you're a writer and you absolutely can't find a director, direct it yourself. And again, you may also want to join the Community Dish, if you're in the New York area. If you're interested in joining the Dish, shoot me an email and I can tell you how to get involved. But please, shower first. I don't want you showing up to the meetings with that cheese funk.)

You also need to heed Mac's advice of going out and seeing as many shows as possible. You should do this for multiple (and obvious) reasons, but one of them is, of course, to seek out potential collaborators.

Since self-producing is about carving out your own path and cultivating your own garden (to mix two really horrible metaphors), a lot of your experience will be that of the trial-and-error variety. Don't worry about the errors, because trust me: you're a-gonna make some. Just try not to repeat them with the next show.

If you continue to put out good work, you'll draw the attention of other good theatre artists who will want to work with you and vice versa.

Offending his collaborators with his writerly musk,

James "Stinky Cheese Man" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide to Self-Producing, Part 9: Festivals, Residencies and Co-Productions

UPDATE: Joshua Conkel graciously explains the nuts and bolts of his company's working relationship with Horse Trade in the comments section, and Sean Williams has posted this entry, which offers his insights to producing shows in the Fringe Festival (his company, Gideon, has done a total of four shows now at the Fringe; according to Mac Rogers, their experiences have been ultimately positive).

I'll say right off the bat that this entry in this ongoing quixotic and rambling guide to self-producing is going to cover something that my company, Nosedive Productions, has had only very recent - and limited - experience with. Last year, we did two shows at the Brick Theater, one of which (Infectious Opportunity) was part of a festival (The Brick's Antidepressant Festival) and the other (The Blood Brothers Present...The New Guignol) was a co-production with the Brick. We're not experts on the subject. (Not that we're experts at anything, really, but...you know what I mean.)

Many other companies have more extensive experience with festivals and residency programs, so for you reps from said companies who are reading this, feel free to post your festival and/or residency experiences in the comments section.

* * *

The major advantage with making your show part of a festival - and not only are there a good number of them in theatre towns all year round, but the number of festivals seems to grow year-over-year - is that you can get a (small) leg-up in publicity and a (huge) drop in production costs.

In other words, being part of a festival gets you a free performance space.

And since I had written in one of the first self-producing posts that the performance space is often the biggest expense, having this expense taken off the table can be a huge boon to the would-be self-producer.

Yes, festivals can be a colossal pain in a number of ways. You can end up having a very limited and odd run (a Monday afternoon or 11 p.m. Wednesday night performance isn't uncommon). You have to share the performance space with many other companies (usually right on top of one another; one company may be loading in right when you're doing curtain call). Storage space may be limited to nonexistent. The same goes for tech time (limited to nonexistent).

Being part of a festival will most likely save you money, but it won't necessarily save you work. In fact, some most fests end up requiring you to do more work than a regular standalone self-produced show.

Here's just a miniscule list of some of the festivals going on in New York this year. I believe the Dramatist's Sourcebook also lists other festival opportunities in and outside of New York.

(Earlier I had written that being part of a festival can get you a small leg-up in publicity. I can't stress how little that leg-up is. Most festivals have pretty respectable to impressive publicity campaigns. The good news is your show will be part of that campaign. The bad news is that it will only be a small fraction of that campaign. Whomever's doing the PR for the festival doesn't have time to cater to your show; he or she will be busy promoting the entire festival. So, you'll still need to be responsible for publicizing your play. But every little bit helps, and being part of a fest that is getting decent mainstream press coverage can't hurt).

Several theatres also offer either residency programs or co-production options where, for either a reduced or waived rental fee, the theatre takes a cut (usually 50%) of the box office. (Again, up until last year, Nosedive never partook in such a deal: we'd just pay the full rental fee and retain 100% of the box office profits.) You should check out to see if the theatres you're interested in renting do such a thing.

(I think this goes without saying, but I should also point out the excruciatingly obvious: that although the plus side of being part of a fest or co-production can mean limited or reduced costs, it also means limited or reduced revenues. You won't be getting 100% of the profits gained from ticket sales. I realize telling you this may sound like a big, "Well, duh, James, but I just figure it's worth pointing out and bearing your ridicule. Yes, I often feel like some overprotective grandmother warning you to put on your mittens and galoshes before going outside as I write these things.)

Residency programs are a little bit of a different beast and require more of a commitment on the part of your company and the theatre. (It's a longer-term investment.) Nosedive's never really done this, but I do know Joshua Conkel's company, Management Co., does with Horse Trade. Mr. Conkel, if you're so inclined, feel free to drop a line and give us a little bit of insight to your residency experiences. But do so at your leisure. I don't want to put you on the spot or anything.

Doing our ninth season with and at the Brick Theater definitely helped Nosedive cut our typical budget down to a third of our typical budgets...

(Sadly, those days of doing shows for $2,500 have been things of the past for our company for a while, since our budgets have typically been from $5,000 to $9,000 for month-long runs. Our budgets for Infectious Opportunity and The Blood Brothers Present were each around $2,500 for limited runs [six performances for Infectious, four for Blood Brothers]. Felt like old times.)

...and brought in really good houses (due to both the limited runs and performing as part of a small festival that had its own regular audience).

So for those of you that may not have a great deal of startup money, or want to produce but keep your budget as low as possible, festivals and co-productions may be worth looking into.

Always trying to pass the buck,

James "Dodgy Executive" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide to Self-Producing, Part 8: Filling the Gaps & Plugging the Holes

Kent Barrett, who just began chronicling his efforts to produce his script, asked me some questions in the comments section of the previous entry, which made me realize I may have missed some points or only dealt with them in a cursory way. Here is our exchange, which I hope will help fill in some gaps and plug in some holes from my previous self-producing entries. (In the same comments section, RVCBard also asks some questions, which I do my best to answer. In addition, RLewis has also been helpful in answering some questions in the same comments section as well.)

1. Obviously trying to stay within my budget - which I wanted to ask you about: In one of your entries you talk about joining an umbrella arts organization such as Fractured Atlas or The Field. If one were to join such an organization, then would it be possible to call yourself a non-profit institution without going through all the 501c3 craziness? The reason I ask right now is because there are many spaces that will give discounts to non-prof groups, but I didn't know if that could truly apply to this situation. Do you, by any chance, know?

If you go through Fractured Atlas or the Field, you're sort of a not-for-profit company. That is to say, think of Fractured Atlas or the Field as the Parent Company and you're under their umbrella. But if you solicit donations and get the donations through them (I don't know how the Field does it exactly, but with Fractured Atlas your donors are sending donations to Fractured Atlas c/o you, and you keep 90% of the donation, and the donation is 100% tax-deductible to your donor), it's going through a not-for-profit institution. You're not 501c3, but you're accepting donations through a 501c3 institution. If you join one of these orgs, you can honestly tell your potential donors that their contributions are tax-deductible. I don't know if this applies to discounts for spaces (it may not). But you can ask them.

(I should also probably point out that the odds of your budget going up are about as likely as those of the sun rising in the morning. These are just the rules of the game. Our intended budget for Monkeys, which was admittedly laughably naïve, ballooned to $2,400. You'll most likely go over-budget. Just don't let that discourage or worry you too much. But at the same time, don't let it get too out of hand, the way we did with our second play.)

2. Many spaces seem to want you to have liability insurance, some want some sort of fire coverage, and still others require their own personnel on sight acting as either technicians, management staff or both.

I only covered one of these aspects very briefly, so no worries. Yeah, you'll probably need insurance. That's something that's changed since we started: most theatres had their own liability insurance (and some still do, but they're shrinking in numbers). There are a bunch of places that offer this. We used to use CIMA, but now we get our insurance via Acord, based on a recommendation by Fractured Atlas. (These are the same places we get our actors insurance if we cast Equity actors.)

3. When requesting a space rental, do I need to let the venue know that there will be things like graphic language, simulated sex, violence, nudity, etc?

Most don't care. We've never had a problem. It doesn't hurt to let them know in advance (we do, and have always been met with, "Yeah, we don't care."). But thanks for letting me know! Now I'm sure to check it out.

4. Have you guys in the past ever offered free drinks after the performance? I know we can't sell alcohol without a liquor license, but do you know if it's possible to give it away for free?

Oh we've done that, sure. Most theatres allow it unless it's a conflict of interest (i.e., they have a bar on site and that hurts their profits). Again, just double-check with the space beforehand. 99 out of 100 will have no problem with it. (RLewis also offers some handy advice on getting a pretty cheap one-time-only liquor license. We here at Nosedive have never done that, but then again, we here at Nosedive are a pretty irresponsible lot.)

5. Do you need to register the theatre company name somewhere some how? I was just going to make something up and go with it.

I suspect many folks may disagree with me on this one, but so be it: Naaaaah.

We just made something up and went with it. A quick Google search should help you determine if the name's already being used.

I'm actually of the belief that it's perseverance and maintaining your brand through consistent (and hopefully, quality) work, NOT legal paperwork, that will protect your company identity.

Several years ago, I discovered that there was a British film production company called Nosedive Productions. I didn't contact them and they didn't contact me. (I actually had no idea which company came first.) There were no legal kerfuffles. There didn't need to be.

We did our own thing, which was very separate from what this Nosedive in England did, and have kept doing our own thing. Since then, it looks as though the other Nosedive disbanded.

If and when you decide to incorporate, then yes, part of the paperwork will involve getting an official and unique company name (we're officially Nosedive Productions Inc.). Also, if you join Fractured Atlas or The Field, your name will be protected.

But for now? Naaaaah. Just make something up and go with it.

A bit odd,

James "Endgame" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide to Self-Producing, Part 7: Publicity

SK made my job a little easier for this entry by reposting Mac Rogers' ranked list of things a company needs to do to build an audience from our online dialogue a few years back. Here it is below (in bold), with Mac's recent addition:

1. Good branding (consisting of a logo, a website, email and snail mail updates, and individual show promotional materials that are tied together by some sort of visual strategy).

2. A consistent record of good shows. (I'm being idealistic by putting this at #2.)

3. Widening the group of artists you work with. When you see good work from other companies on other shows, poach their people. No one's making any money, so people are drawn to good work. If you've got the goods, people will be interested in working with you. For best results, extend this beyond actors to directors, writers, and designers. Extend into other kinds of theater. In the next year and a half, I'd like to write a play in collaboration with puppeteers, for example.

4. Tirelessly reaching out to media. If you last long enough and bug them diligently enough, eventually they will pay attention.

5. Carefully crafting non-pushy, non-obnoxious email and snail-mail updates about your shows and your company's progress. (This is really hard.)

6. Fair and polite treatment of everyone you work with. I've stayed away from shows on occasion for no reason other than that the people who made the shows, while talented, were jerks. People won't forgive you for being a jerk unless you're super-successful.

7. Go see other people's shows! You can't see all of them, of course, but see as many as you can. Watch them, talk about them, think about them. Help your colleagues learn from watching your reactions. Learning to be an audience member is vital to being a theater artist, and makes people want to see your next show.

For the would-be self-producer, I cannot stress this enough: print up Mac's list, make copies, give the copies out to your producing partners and all of you tape them to your fridge.

* * *

I think this would be the time where I'd tell you to hire a good publicist to successfully market your company. Well, I'm not going to do that. Not that there aren't great press reps out there (there are), and not that they can't get you good publicity (many can). But, in a way, it's kind of cheating. A press representative - at least a good one - can be quite costly (the good ones range from $1,000-$8,000, maybe more), and in my humble opinion, I think starting out the gate just outsourcing the role of reaching out to the media (#4 on Mac's list) and washing challenges away with the money hose may not be the best option. (I also think if you're starting out with a ton of money and are already set on the business model of "solve all problems with money," these self-producing entries are of no use to you.)

Plus, I think it's a better idea to interact and reach out to the media outlets on your own. If you're in this for the long- (or at least medium-) haul, you should have at least some personal interaction with the press, since this is all about getting the press to know you and about you and vice versa, right?

(Also, if you'd like, the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan sells mailing labels for agents and press outlets at reasonable prices. Just be forewarned that they're neither comprehensive or fully up-to-date. We bought them for our second and third pays, Allston and The Awaited Visit, but found cultivating our own contact list was easier, more efficient and cheaper.)

With a couple of singular exceptions, Nosedive hasn't used a publicist. Press agent duties were delegated to Yours Truly from the start (just as filling out the Equity and insurance paperwork was delegated to Pete from the start). Our publicity efforts for Monkeys was relegated to being listed on the theatre's Web site, emails blasts, and promotional postcards (which were placed at every and any bar in the neighborhood and surrounding areas as well as mailed to friends, family members and vague acquaintances).

Since then, we've found sites, blogs and publications that list theatre events and review plays and send them press releases (we used to snail mail them, but we've since joined the Internet age and email them) and photos, if we have them early enough.

(I'll admit, Nosedive's always been a little late in the game with photos: you really should have some sort of photo to go along with the press release. Even if you haven't designed the show yet, you'll have it cast and you know the story, so you should send something that vaguely kinda, sorta resembles what the show may look like. And if you're not wild about those preliminary pictures, when you're in tech - which [ulp] is usually when Nosedive takes and sends them - you'll have another option to send the press outlets photos.)

Ideally, it's good to send sites the press release about five to six weeks before opening, and send another personal invitation/reminder about press nights about a week and a half before.

(In terms of what your press release should look like, there are many acceptable formats, but keeping it clear and concise is, I think, the best way to go. It should convey all the necessary information about the show: who's in it, who's producing it, what it's about, and all the whens, wheres and ticket information. For those really curious, here's what Nosedive's typical release looks like.)

In terms of where to send your photos and releases (without giving you Nosedive's list, which, no, you cannot have), there are a ton of sites and publications out there. You know which ones to send to. Hell, Google search the term "[your city] + theatre listings" and you'll find a ton of sites. Not only that, but check out the publicity from other companys' shows. They often have blurbs or foam cutouts of reprinted reviews in the lobby or on their postcards or Web sites. Which outlets reviewed them? Look into them and invite them to the show.

Also, you can personalize. Some magazines may not regularly list or review plays, but their target audience may have some interest in your show (there were a bunch of Stephen King fan sites out there that we let know about our Blood Brothers Present...The Master of Horror show, since it was an anthology of original plays based on King's short stories. Also, many other companies like to personalize and individualize their press packets to tie in with their show).

The real perk about doing this yourself (at least, at first) is that it enables you to not only expand and refine your contact list on your own, but to also show these publications - both online and print - that you're here to stay. Remember: they may not come see your first show, but if you keep sending them releases about your third, fourth and fifth shows, they'll start to recognize your company's name and realize that you're not going anywhere.

As Mac said, if you last long enough and bug them diligently enough, eventually they will pay attention.

In terms of getting a publicist (and again, if you can already afford one for your first production out of the gate, why the hell are you reading this site?), I think it's a good idea to work with your press rep, not just hand them the money and wait for the flood of press requests. If you've been doing your own PR work at first, you should have created your own press contact list. Make sure your press person is inviting everyone on your list as well (if and when you do your own publicity, you may stumble upon some smaller outlets, such as new blogs or student newspapers, which your PR person may not have).

Also, if and when you do have critics coming to see your show, it's a good idea - though not mandatory - to have press packets for them. What should be in them? It's really up to you: whatever you think the critic should have to make writing their review easy for them. For us, we often put in the headshots & resumes of the cast, the program, the press release, occasionally a printout of past positive press quotes, Pete and/or my business card and a copy of the script (some folks don't like giving critics a copy of the script: we do. Having reviewed shows, I always appreciate having them, just in case I need to make a quick reference to a specific line or scene). You can also include a CD-ROM of photos and other information.

It's really up to you.

Wanting people to notice me,

James "Attention-Starved Ham Sandwich" Comtois

While I Work on the Next Self-Producing Entry

I was hoping my entry on publicity would be finished by today, but alas, it was not to be. But have faith! It will be posted soon. I'm dancing as fast as I can.

Over at 99seats, J. Holtham offers some very good pushback to my previous entry and articulates his fatigue with the ride he's been on as well as argues the importance of the discussion of the economic situation in the world of professional theatre-making. It's well worth a read.

I'm hoping that writing about self-producing will help people starting out in the theatre world as well as show others with some (perhaps unhappy) experience that there is an alternative to what seems to be a very emotionally and creatively draining ladder-climbing process for many people.

For me, I feel despairing and depressed when I consider the world of institutional theatre, but feel energized and optimistic when I see or take part in good work in the indie theatre world. In many ways, it's as simple as that.

Years ago, my directing partner Pete Boisvert relayed to me a particularly depressing epiphany he received after going to see the remounted Rocky Horror Show. As he was watching a once kinky cult work created by personal inspiration turn into an antiseptic family-friendly tourist trap, he realized this was the "cream of the crop" he could expect in terms of top notch well-paying directing work. Directing a Broadway show was the apex of the mountain, so to speak (in the way that directing a big-budget, feature film financed by a Hollywood studio would be the apex of the mountain for an aspiring filmmaker). It turned him off to the idea of becoming a Professional Director (in Title Case). (I also recall Patrick and I having to talk him pretty strongly out of his "why bother?" funk about directing. Fortunately, he did indeed snap out of it pretty quickly.)

Yes, much can be learned and gained from institutional theatre as both an audience member and as a participant...

(I'll be getting into Mac's great advice from our online dialogue a couple years back that sk posted recently, but for now I'll just concur that it's imperative for theatre-makers to see as many plays as possible, not just to see the value of polished work with high production values, but also to ground any thoughts of one's own originality in reality. Although I won't name names, I do recall a number of indie theatre-makers that pride themselves both on their originality and on their refusal to see other plays, which is, needless to say, silly. How do you know if you're being original if you're not seeing what's out there?)

...however, it may not be the best place to go in terms of a final destination. Once again, I'm reminded of another parallel in Dave Sim's Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing when he clarifies his thoughts on self-publishing comics versus working for a major corporation (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, etc.):

"There can be nothing more beneficial on many occasions than going for a cool and relaxing dip in a swimming pool. Likewise with the companies. A dip into their pool can be very relaxing, lucrative and prestigious. But you should get in and get out within a certain time frame. You don't want to live in a swimming pool no matter how cool and refreshing it is, do you?"

Likewise, I don't think there's anything wrong with garnering work in the institutional theatre world. But I think investing all ones hopes on finding creative and financial satisfaction within a very flawed system that neither fosters creativity nor pays great sums of money may lead to a great deal of bitterness and frustration.

(Over at Nosedive, we've had a number of professional designers - meaning, whose primary or sole source of income was from designing jobs - work for us for either free or well below scale because of the creative freedom and, dare I say, fun, it afforded them. To them, it was a tradeoff: getting well-paid to be a glorified technician [one designer's words, not mine] in one arena and working for little-to-no money to be an actual designer with actual creative input in another.)

Anyway, the next entry focusing on publicity will be coming as soon as possible; hopefully by Thursday.

UPDATE: J. Holtham just linked to this by Adam Thurman, which is also worth a read. It's quick and to the point: good independent theatre can and will help institutional theatre.

Dancing, always dancing,

James "Astaire" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide to Self-Producing: A Brief Tangential Pause

Thanks for everyone who's commented on this site and emailed me about these entries on self-producing. I'm very glad to see readers are finding value in them. I'll continue to post more. I have no idea how many, but I still need to natter on about such nuts and bolts things as publicity and dealing with cash flow management, as well as offer a few more digressional and semi-philosophical entries on this weird niche.

I suppose this entry falls in the latter category. This isn't really a helpful "how to" entry, but it may help put some things in perspective about the realities of self-producing as it relates to the massive discussion going on in the theatre blogosphere of late.

So if you wouldn't mind indulging me a little? Don't worry; it's slightly shorter than the other entries. But only slightly.

Now. Outrageous Fortune. I haven't read it. I probably won't anytime soon. I've got a backlog of reading material in my queue and am currently in the middle of Stephen King's massive, amazing 1,100-page tome, Under the Dome (so far, it's the best thing he's written since It, not counting the Dark Tower books, which are in a category all of their own), which I suspect is a more interesting read - and pertains more to my life - than Outrageous Fortune.

Sean Williams just posted this, which I think says it better than I could (and no, I'm not just pointing his entry out to you because he quotes me and links to my blog - okay, so maybe there's a little bit of that going on).

The thing with self-producing, especially when your goals for self-producing are primarily for getting your work staged and getting it staged in a manner you approve of, it makes many of the problems and complaints being blogged about and discussed in relation to Outrageous Fortune fundamentally alien.

I really mean no disrespect to the discussion going on in the blogosphere about the book, since this is a subject worth discussing; but there's a pervasive feeling that it's akin to self-loathing navel-gazing (but even more perverse: it's akin to gazing into someone else's navel).

I imagine this lack of interest in, say, how an institutional theatre chooses the plays in its season is similar to, say, Caveh Zahedi's or Jim Jarmusch's lack of interest in what pictures the major Hollywood studios are greenlighting in any given year.

I'm thrilled with the audience response we get, and we don't get anywhere near the turnout that institutional theatres get. Or the income. In the past 10 years doing this schtick, I think I've made a total of $600 from my playwriting. That's not a joke. (A few years ago we stopped splitting whatever profits we made off the productions - and yes, we do get profits, albeit meager ones, every now and then - and just roll it over into the budget for the next show.)

So when I read the lamentations that playwrights only make $30,000 a year off their playwriting, or that theatres with an audience base of 15,000 subscribers are unable to expand it to 20,000, I can't even comprehend how that's being revealed, or seen, as some sort of problem.

Sorry.

Maybe this is because I never had any idea that I'd make money off my playwriting. As in, ever. The goal was to be produced, get seen, possibly get published. But making money? Um...no. Considering Arthur Miller was (at the time I was graduating college and wanting to get my plays staged in the real world) one of the few playwrights making a living from his work, and even that was due in part to selling the movie rights for the scripts, I never saw playwriting as an avenue for earning a livable income. Not once.

I dunno...if you wanted to make a killing on compromised creativity, why not go into screenwriting?

(I also find it odd that the bulk of the talk centering around the economic slump in the theatre world is also alien to me and many of my self-producing brothers and sisters. 2009 turned out to be a very good year for Nosedive creatively and financially: we didn't have to put in a nickel of our own money for our two shows - Infectious Opportunity and The Blood Brothers Present...The New Guignol - and ended the year with a small but respectable surplus to serve as the startup budget for The Little One. Does that mean that our 2010 season will be a success? I have no idea. But the fact that Nosedive, like Gideon, Flux Theatre Ensemble and Vampire Cowboys, is unencumbered by any debt and has the financial means to produce this year shows that the economic situation of institutional theatre has little-to-no bearing on the world of self-produced indie theatre.)

To paraphrase Dave Sim's Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing and equate it to theatre, theatre is one of the few fields where rank amateurs with no experience or track record can play in the same field as seasoned professionals. Combining that with the conclusion that many bloggers writing about Outrageous Fortune (and am I the only person who's noticed a sense of fatigue from the bloggers writing on this subject?) seem to be getting at being that the institutional theatre game is shitty and rigged, self-producing to me doesn't seem like some weird alternative option so much as common sense.

Okay, enough quasi-philosophical quasi-ranting. I'll bring this series back to more practical information and (too-many-to-count) stories of how Nosedive dropped the ball in years past. Until then, I need to finish Under the Dome.

Next: More practical information and (too-many-to-count) stories of how Nosedive dropped the ball in years past.

Wondering how Barbie and the gang
are going to stop Big Jim Rennie,

James "This Shit Got Real" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide to Self-Producing, Part 5: Fundraising

While briefly relaying the hubris we displayed putting on our second show through reckless overspending, I was reminded of the line in Frank Miller's Daredevil: The Man Without Fear origin story miniseries, where Stick is teaching a young, blind Matt Murdock archery. After many failed attempts to hit the target (hey, the kid's blind, what do you expect?), young Matt finally hits the target with his arrow.

"Hey! I did it!" Matt exclaims with excitement.

Unimpressed, Stick and hits Matt over the head with his walking stick. "Anybody can do it once," Stick growls.

The wonderful and sometimes problematic thing about our experiences with Nosedive Productions is that we never had (and still don't have) any world-weary, Stick-like mentor figure to point us in the right direction, or remind us not to get too cocky over moderate accomplishments. If we did, we'd probably be reminded that staging Monkeys was an accomplishment that thousands (perhaps tens of thousands?) of other people had achieved in the city around the same time period. We were - and are - nothing special.

Anybody can do it once.

* * *

I figure this may be as good a place to start getting into the subject of fundraising in more detail. Over in the comments section to the previous entry, RLewis offers some excellent advice about fundraising. I'm reposting his comment in full (in bold italics), followed by an expanded version of my response:

This is really great, JC. I think folks will learn a lot more from your true stories like this than from the usual hypotheticals.

This story brings to my mind the difference between putting on a play and putting up a production. I would encourage others to think of the whole production as more than just the show.

I wonder if your experience could have been better if you had started the production with a kick-off event either before or after rehearsals started. Ya know, throw a big party at a friend's house, and charge everyone $10 or $20 for all the beer they can drink. Intro' the cast and spoil any supporters with some public butt-kissing.

You invite everyone you know, so does the team, and the cast, too. In addition to these friends now being donors, they'll also be your opening night audience.

Then, after you've cried about a financial emergency, use it. Write letters to relatives and others - "the show must go on, but we need you to save it!" Maybe even an open rehearsal/emergency party where you show some of the work in progress. This can also get folks excited about your product.

Gifts over X amount get 2 tkts to opening night and the after-party, some cheap champagne, cheese and crackers. And don't just put their names in the program, introduce them to your audience. Everyone likes to feel special and needed and recognized for it.

Or let them fund one actor for the run of the show, or a specific set piece, or a week of rehearsal where they alone are invited to sit in. And list what they did in your program.

Maybe consider asking a friend to do some companion outreach. You might be able to match the topic of your work to a non-theater org' who would love to have something to tell their members about. Give them a "first week" block of tkts at a discount. When we did Don Quixote, we got the Instituto Cervantes to do a kick-off reception at their space, and they had great food and beverages. I don't know if we'd ever thrown a party where so many people turned out that we didn't know.

Other groups like the closing night party, and they put buckets at the door for drunk folks to empty their wallets on the way out of the theater. Or do some teaser (live music from your show, a related film screening, etc.) months before you get going.

These are a few things off the top of my head to build a production beyond the play, but the options are only limited by your imagination and your ability to ask for help. People love to help, but even more, they like to be asked. A little money here, a little stuff there, and in the end, maybe there will be a little less debts.

Hey, Ralph! Yes, this is all excellent advice. Nosedive Productions started doing fundraising shows/parties after our third play (The Awaited Visit in August 2001, when Patrick Shearer climbed aboard), which have been great ways to hang with our audience members, get tanked with them, plug the show, and get some startup cash.

Basically, our first fundraising show/party, which we held at the Surf Reality in January 2002, was done to raise funds for our fourth play (Ruins) and at the time when we really started to see ourselves as an actual theatre company. We rented out the space, bought a keg, some wine and some snacks, rehearsed some comedy sketches, invited a couple other performers (musicians, comics, improv performers), charged $20 at the door (which allowed access to all our alcohol: "$20 = All You Can Drink" ain't a bad deal, as it turns out), and offered a 90-minute sketch comedy/variety show, followed by a late-night party.

(A number of these have varied in their successes. Some in particular were massively successful in every conceivable way: huge turnouts, healthy profits, and fun times. We're of course realizing, as we - and our audience base - get older, all-night booze-ups don't have quite the same luster. We're amidst tinkering with our formula and adapting as we continue, with hit-or-miss success. Our Nosedive's Disturbing Burlesque last year was an absolute blast, while our Nosedive's Boxcar Social the year before was a total disaster that ended up costing us money, had the lovely and amazing folks at Vampire Cowboys not feel massive amounts of pity for our pathetic asses and donate a large portion of the studio rental cost. [Seriously, Robert, Qui and Abby, thank you guys forever for that.] We're amidst planning a blow-out party this March to kick off our 10th season and commemorate the 10th anniversary of staging Monkeys. We'll see how that all turns out).

We've also been more aggressive/assertive with our fundraising campaigns over the years, which includes fundraising shows/parties, email campaigns, and the periodic, "Oh, shit hey gang we need $2,000 right now can anyone help us out?" messages to those in our inner circle of friends and family members.

(Fortunately, we've been able to keep it together of late and have not had to resort to such desperate measures like the one we mentioned above. But there have been times. I remember we were having a serious and unexpected cash-flow problem and dealing with a theatre that required payment in full within a couple weeks of signing the contract, rather than the typical 50% down at signing, the remaining 50% at opening that most spaces require, so we needed to send out an, "Oh shit!" email to many sympathizers. But we really try to avoid getting into those situations and fortunately have been successful avoiding said situations for years. I just hope I haven't tempted fate by typing that.)

Once we started doing this, in addition to having more people on board as producers as time went on, this lightened the financial burden off our shoulders a bit.

So the bottom line is, there are a number of ways to fundraise, from hosting fundraising shows and/or parties (and how you want to run and organize these is totally up to you; it is, after all, your company, and your party), email campaigns, letter campaigns, or begging for loans from close friends and family members (the would-be and working self-producer has no time for such luxuries and shame or humility). Also, the goal of fundraising isn't just to raise money: it's to raise your profile and awareness within the theatre-going public.

It's also about getting to know your audience and, at the risk of sounding insufferably corny, getting a chance to have the people who come see your work be a part of your company. They're not just forking over cash that you need for paying 4over4.com the printing bill, they're joining you in the long haul of creating and cultivating a company.

Next: Some quasi-philosophical ranting, the self-producer versus the world conveyed in Outrageous Fortune, and why I haven't been a part of that conversation in the blogosphere (yes, again, it ties into self-producing).

Getting his audience drunk for over 10 years,

James "One More!" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide To Self-Producing, Part 4: Moving Forward, Some Words of Caution

So, where were we?

Oh, yes. Moving ahead with big boners.

Right. Here goes.

Okay, so we got through how Pete and I staged our first play, Monkeys, and how we gave ourselves a production company name (Nosedive Productions) solely for the sake of putting something official-seeming on the postcard and how we ended up just being $300 (or $150 each) in the red, which was perfectly fine by us.

Now it's time to jump ahead a bit, and get into how we slowly and inevitably went from being a couple of dorks putting on a play a few months after moving to New York to actually running an honest-to-gorsh theatre company whose tenacity and longevity is respectable, organizational skills and business acumen are appalling, and professional integrity and reputation is dubious at best.

And of course, get into how we fucked something up with our second play, Allston, and made sure to never do anything like that again.

Since the plan was to stage Allston if Monkeys worked out, and in our minds, it did (the financial loss was negligible to the point of nonexistent), we got to work on staging the second play almost immediately. We were hoping to kick things up a bit with this production, namely, have a set, pay the actors and get reviewed.

The good news is, we achieved all of those things with our second play, which was staged at the Gene Frankel Theatre nine months after we closed Monkeys. The bad news is our budget for Allston ended up being more than triple (nearly quadruple) that of Monkeys, and for silly reasons.

Here's what we did wrong: we put in way too much money than we were comfortable losing. Money, I might add, that we all knew early on that we didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting back.

Pete, Chris Bujold (who moved down to New York to be in Monkeys and later agreed to not only act in Allston, but serve as lighting designer and producer) and I had a production meeting a few weeks before opening, where we did some basic arithmetic and realized that in order for us to come a little shy of breaking even (not breaking even, just coming close), we would have to sell out every seat for every performance, offering no cops whatsoever (an impossibility, since this time we had invited press folk, agent folk and would have to comp any AEA members in attendance, let alone the comps each actor would receive for their people).

We had to decide right then and there what we wanted to do: cut our losses and cancel the production, or continue on, take large personal financial hits and agree to never let anything like this happen again.

Obviously, we decided upon the latter and yes, sure enough, we each took large personal financial hits and have never done anything like that again to-date. (Our financial losses since have been well within our means.)

But I think it goes more than just basic finances (though our finances were a major and noticeable casualty). I think our biggest blunder in the abstract sense was that we mistook a minor success for a large success. And here's where I offer that rare bit of actual, paternal, "Don't Leave The House Without Putting On Your Mittens" advice:

As much as I've written - and will continue to write - that there's nothing wrong with paying for a production with your own money (it's pretty much an inevitability in the world of self-producing), and as much as I've written - and will continue to write - that financing a production out-of-pocket is not as scary or as daunting as you might think (and it isn't), I need to stress the following: Only put into a show what you are comfortable never getting back.

Spend well within your means. If you continue to overspend on productions and have no hope of getting a fraction of that back, you'll quickly find yourself in debt and with an inability to either pull yourself out of it or put on another play.

Be reasonable and realistic about how much your show can and should cost. Do the math: you know how many seats your theatre has, you know how many nights you're running and you know how much you're charging for tickets. It your budget is anywhere near - or worse, over - the maximum amount of revenue you can hope to gain, you have made a huge error. A huge, costly - and easily preventable - error.

(I've always been dumbfounded at companies that, due to hubris and a lack of any decent connection to reality, overspent on every aspect of their production. I'm never, of course, surprised that these companies almost always fold shortly thereafter. One of the biggest perks of self-producing is that, since you, the self-producing theatre-maker, is partly or entirely in charge of financing the damn thing, you're the one in charge of keeping your artistic needs in check, not some outside bean-counter. If you know you yourself can't afford something you want, you can come up with creative - and inexpensive - ways to get around such obstacles while remaining true to your artistic vision.)

If you're interested in not just putting on one show, but rather in developing and creating a company that will allow you to stage multiple shows over the course of years, you need to pace yourself financially and not spend recklessly. This is, after all, theatre: there are ways to convey things theatrically and imaginatively, rather than with costly designs and effects (not that I'm against impressive designs and effects, but shit: have some common sense).

For good or for bad, Pete and I had (and continue to have) a "money spent is money gone" attitude towards financing productions. The money we got (and get) back from ticket sales is, to us, "new money," not replenishing previously spent funds. If, after one performance, my take from the box office is $20, I often just see that as $20 I didn't have an hour prior.

But this mindset only works when we're spending well within our means. When we're not, we're finding ourselves constantly broke and desperately hoping to make at least a fraction of that money back at the end of the run, and fucked financially for months afterwards if when we don't.

(Here's a good place as any to also recommend being part of an arts umbrella organization like The Field or Fractured Atlas. They offer a lot of invaluable resources to self-producers, such as seminars, guides and insurance [both health and liability], but mainly, for a very reasonable annual fee, you can solicit and receive tax-deductible donations from your supporters, audience base and well-wishers through the umbrella organization's not-for-profit status. You get money for your project that you don't have to pay back, your donor gets a tax break, and the umbrella organization takes a very reasonable percentage. Everyone pretty much wins. Nosedive joined Fractured Atlas about four years after our first show, and we should have joined them much, much sooner.

Bear in mind becoming an officially incorporated company, then a 501c3 company, takes a great deal of time, money and paperwork. You can bypass some of the time by spending more money [by using either a lawyer or an outsourcing company like The Company Corporation], or you can save money by doing all the paperwork yourself, thereby taking more time [in some cases up to a year or more], but you can't bypass both. Joining The Field or Fractured Atlas takes under $200 and three minutes filling out an online form. I highly recommend becoming a member of one of these organizations until you're ready to deal with the pricey, time-consuming, hair-pullingly frustrating endeavor that is making your case to the State and Federal government that you shouldn't have to pay taxes.)

In hindsight, we could have easily staged Allston for half than what we originally staged it for. We rented a theatre that was a little bit out of our price range, paid the cast & crew a small stipend that we really couldn't afford (don't get me wrong: I'm glad we were able to pay our actors and crew, regardless of how piddling the amount was, but at the same time, we couldn't realistically afford to be doing so), overpaid for rehearsal and tech, overpaid for advertising (we put an ad in The Village Voice that cost more than the ad brought in paying customers), bought a Backstage casting ad for three weeks when we should have just bought one.

The set, of course, didn't cost us a cent. Sigh...

And that was another thing: most of our expenses weren't towards elements that were seen on the stage. They mostly went towards behind-the-scenes elements that weren't necessary to the staging of the play.

Still, I had a blast staging Allston, and was not deterred from continuing to put on plays under the Nosedive Productions moniker. Neither was Pete. Since Pete was interested in staging another play of mine (The Awaited Visit, which ended up being our first award-winner and actively profitable show) and since I had finished the rough draft of a new three-act (Ruins) a month after we staged Allston, we started to see ourselves as an actual company with a potential future, simply because we now had a queue of potential projects forming.

Next: Fundraising

Trying not to duplicate his mistakes,

James "Practicing Imperfectionist" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide To Self-Producing, Part 3: Landing the First Show

I realize, somewhat sheepishly, that my last "Next" tagline for this part of my "Guide to Self-Producing" is a total, or at least incomplete, lie. I still need to wrap up some aspects of staging that first play before getting into nattering about Incorporation and 501c3 paperwork, company-building and flashing forward. As always, I've gotten ahead of myself. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me (albeit slowly over time).

For this entry I still need to write a bit about how Pete and I did some (meager) promotional work with our first play, Monkeys, then skip right to the end with how the show went down, then go into what we learned from the whole experience. The following entries from here on in will be more "overviewish" and "how to-ey" (those are real words, right?).

* * *

I don't think I'll get too much into the rehearsal process, since how you organize your rehearsals is really up to you. Plus, how long or how short you want to rehearse is your call. Pete and I have our methods, you have yours. I see no point in offering any coaching tips, however direct or indirect, on the subject. I'm not teaching you how to direct (I couldn't even if I wanted to) and not explaining to you how to organize your cast's schedule. Those are tailor-made real world headaches that you're just going to have to figure out on your own, unfortunately. (If you're super-curious, we usually do 3-4 weeks of rehearsal with one week of tech, but that's just how we roll.)

Although we ended up getting decent attendance for our first play due to emailing everyone and anyone we've ever heard of to come see the show (and the sheer novelty of us dipshits putting on a play six months after moving to New York compelled many of our out-of-town friends from Boston, D.C. and Manchester, New Hampshire to come to New York to see what all the commotion was about), we didn't do a whole lot in the way of publicity aside from designing a promotional postcard (which can be found here), printing 5,000 of them (we used 212 Postcards at the time but now make business card-sized promotional cards through 4over4.com), and mailing them to friends & family members, handing them out at every party or get-together we were invited to (or crashed) and dropping them off at virtually every bar, coffee house and tattoo parlor below 14th Street.

Our publicity campaign for Monkeys was simultaneously as low-grade and pathetic as you can get but also our most tenacious and energized. We weren't listed in any sites or magazines as far as we know (aside from being advertised on the Surf Reality's Web site), but we were more aggressive in badgering everyone we knew, everyone we kinda knew, and everyone we had just met - in person, over email and over the phone - to come see our goddamned play. Fortunately, there were many people in the cast for whom this was their first play in the city as well, so several of the cast members were equally tenacious in getting their friends, acquaintances and borderline enemies to come see it.

Nowadays, it's just a matter of writing a press release and emailing it to our press contacts list, emailing our mailing list and posting the plugs on this here blog. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'm just kind of marveling at how much literal footwork we were all willing to do when we were in our early twenties.

(It wasn't until putting on our second play, Allston, that we knew about theatre listing sites, such as nytheatre.com, or ticketing agencies, such as Smarttix.com or TheaterMania.com. But of course, you know about those places - and many others - because you're much savvier than Pete or I ever was, or ever hope to be.)

Both Adam Heffernan and Dave Townsend gave us some examples of promotional postcards from other shows, and it was Adam that told us to come up with a production company name to make us seem more "legit." I already knew the name we'd use: Nosedive Productions, the name of a fictitious production company I made up in high school (and would doodles on my notebooks, complete with a logo of a face with a shit-eating grin offering a very enthusiastic down-turned thumb). There wasn't any discussion there: we had bigger fish to fry and more important things to worry about. Since we didn't consider ourselves a company at the time, the last thing we cared about was what our name would be. Yes, I'm still vaguely amused that a company that's been producing theatre in the city for over 10 years has such a ridiculous name. No, I don't regret it one bit.

Although we didn't seek (or receive) any reviews, or go through any online ticketing agency, it's just as well. It was our first show and we weren't quite ready to get bitch-slapped by any negative press, and it wasn't like we really needed to do any "crowd control" or advanced sales. No; we charged $10 (I would keep $5, Pete would keep $5), which I collected from the audience members and put in an empty coffee can.

(I don't recall anyone flashing their Equity card at me, but perhaps that's because they saw that the "box office" consisted of a dorky 22-year old holding a coffee can and simply didn't have the heart to use it. Who knows?)

The show went up, and our houses ranged from respectable (12-20 people) to a couple full (45-50). For our closing night, we had 60 people in the house, and the owner of the space brought in more chairs. It was definitely a nice way to go out on our first show.

How'd we do financially? We garnered a total income from ticket sales of about $2100, a $300 loss from our final budget of $2,400. Which means Pete and I each took a $150 hit. That was fine by us.

Spending $150 to put on a play? That was more than fine by us.

At the end of the day, staging Monkeys was an extremely fun learning process, and a good stating point to figure out how we wanted to proceed next. In a way, getting the show up of its feet showed us how easy it was to stage a show, provided we weren't getting into self-producing for fame, fortune or glory (and believe me, we weren't).

In a lot of ways, you're on your own, so it depends on if that concept thrills or terrifies you (obviously for me and Pete, it's the former). There are some community-building organizations in New York to help you feel less alone, such as ART/NY, the Community Dish and the League of Independent Theatres. In terms of providing resources, they're great. In terms of them holding your hand every step of the way or footing the bill for your next show...well, no. Think of those groups as the equivalent of our Adam and Dave.

It also wasn't until much, much later that we became a member of Fractured Atlas (something that we should have done sooner than we did) and even later still (i.e., are doing now) became an Incorporated Company and started the paperwork to becoming a 501c3 not-for-profit company.

However, it was only until we put up our next show, Allston, nine months later that we made one of our biggest blunders.

Next: Our Big Blunder, and now flashing forward, joining Fractured Atlas, becoming an actual "company."

Wondering if he should have written, "our biggest boner,"

James "Nah, Let's Keep It Classy" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide To Self-Producing, Part 2: Getting Started

In my introduction to this quixotic and rambling Guide to Self-Producing, I started talking about how Pete Boisvert and I reunited from high school in the city, got immediately frustrated by our mutual attempts at getting our feet in the door of the theatre world, started talking about putting on two plays of mine, and realized we didn't have the first clue as to how to do that.

Here, I plan to continue telling the story of how we put on our first play, Monkeys, while finding ways to awkwardly shoehorn seamlessly tie-in practical advice for the aspiring self-producing theatre artist (taking periodic breaks to provide updates on the process when needed, as the New York theatre scene has changed a bit from 1999/2000 to 2010; but only a bit).

The intention here is, rather than bog you down with tons of dry technical shit or a myriad of "you could do this" or "you should do that" pieces of (useless) advice that may overwhelm and exhaust you, to simply tell you, step-by-step, what Pete and I did to get that first show off the ground. Remember: this is more or less a "Complete Idiots...er, Beginner's Guide." I'll get a little more technical later in the series, just you wait.

* * *

Though Pete and I didn't know exactly how to go about putting this pent-up, reckless energy to practical use, we fortunately had two other friends - Adam Heffernan and Dave Townsend - that had already been living in the city for a couple years and involved in the Off-off scene. Also fortunately, Pete and I were shameless about wanting to know what to do, so we had no problem grilling them for information.

Fortunately for us, Adam and Dave knew some of the ins-and-outs of self-producing (at the time, Dave had just finished producing a double-bill of one-act plays up at the 78th Street Theatre Lab), liked us well enough, and liked the script for Monkeys well enough to hold our hands and show us the basic steps for staging it, as long as Pete and I were willing to finance it ourselves (which we were; we were both fresh out of college and had a bunch of new credit cards and had no problem using them).

(I'll probably get into money and financing a little later, since it kind of merits an entry unto itself, but for now I'll say that how much you want to spend of your own money is up to you. Monkeys ultimately cost $2,400 to stage. This means that Pete and I each put in $1,200 of our own money to stage it. Now, $1,200 may seem daunting to some, but remember that neither Pete nor I had to come up with that figure all in one lump sum: it was doled out over the course of four months, which amounted to about $300 a month, or $75 a week. I don't know about you, but I used to spend more than that on a night of drinking. And if you're in dire straits financially, you can also ask for donations/loans from well-wishing friends and family members. I'm sure you can find some would-be benefactors in your life that would be more than happy to help you stage your first show. Think of the bragging rights they'd gain!)

The first step was picking the venue. Actually, picking the venue is the first, second and third steps, since many things fall in place after that. Landing the venue gives you the schedule, and landing the schedule gives you the cast (since you can't cast it until, well, you know when & where it's playing). Also, renting the theatre is going to be the biggest - or at least one of the biggest - expenses, so it's really nice to have the biggest payment happen up-front. (Hey, the first step is always the hardest, the subsequent steps are much easier.)

We started our venue search in October, and although Pete said he only needed three weeks of rehearsal (plus one week of tech) and therefore was fine with finding space available as soon as December, realistically we were looking for spaces that were open in February. (January was no good since that meant we'd be rehearsing in December, then parting our separate ways for Christmas and New Year's, then having to reorganize for tech and opening. It's looking like more and more companies in New York are opening shows in January, which is a relatively new trend. Pete and I had no intention of doing any such thing for our first play, and most likely, we never will for as long as we're running Nosedive.)

Through a Web site that Dave pointed out to us (that no longer exists), we were able to find a small yet workable theatre (that also no longer exists) for the right price of roughly $90 per night (The Surf Reality House of Urban Savages down in the Lower East Side). We opted for a two-week, eight-performance run (Wednesdays through Saturdays), paid the owner of the theatre 50% of the tab, and now had to work on casting.

(Though Web sites some and go, and at this point, we select our venues based on long-standing relationships with various theatres, their availability and appropriateness of the venue in relation to the play, and haven't used a search engine to find a theatre for years at this point, these may be good places to start your search if you're based in New York. Bear in mind information about availability and pricing may not be up-to-date on whatever search site you're using. Plus, lead-times for theatres are growing. We needed a four-month lead-time [October to February] back in 1999/2000. Some places book their space six-to-eight months in advance. So, in some instances be prepared to have to call a theatre in January to see if they have any open nights in September. Not always, but more often than you'd think.)

With casting, thanks once again to Dave pointing us in the right direction, we rented a studio room at Buzz Shetler Studios on Eighth Avenue (it's since moved), where we also ended up going to for our rehearsals (we don't anymore because their rates kept rising), and held auditions. Since it was our first show and we had zero track record (and didn't feel comfortable bringing in complete strangers), we invited people we knew. We pre-cast our friend, Chris Bujold, who was so excited about the prospect of Pete and I putting on a play in New York he moved down to the city from New Hampshire to get involved (and later became one of the chief architects of Nosedive, albeit unfortunately too briefly), Pete brought in a number of his fellow Ithaca College alumni, and Adam Heffernan (who was also ultimately cast) brought in a number of his friends (many of whom I later discovered were Mac Rogers' college buds, including Gideon Productions co-founder/VIRAL director Jordana Williams).

(With our second play, Allston, we once again held auditions but widened our selection pool of actors by putting an ad in Backstage seeking 20something actors. Though we didn't offer any pay for Monkeys, we offered a small stipend of $100 per actor for Allston and foolishly ran the ad for three weeks. I received a total of 2,000 headshots & resumes over the course of about three and a half weeks. I'm not exaggerating. Morals of the story: 1.) Actors aren't scarce in the city, and 2.) If you're going to run an ad in Backstage or craigslist, just run it the one week.)

With the round of auditions held at the studio we rented done, and later doing another round of auditions in Pete's apartment for a couple extra actors after a couple people passed because the script had too much swearing (Grrrrrrrrrr...), we had our play cast.

Since one of our actors (Tally Sessions) was in Equity, we had to get liability insurance and fill out the Equity paperwork to make this an Equity Showcase.

(Where you want to get your insurance is your call; Pete, who has always been in charge of calling the Equity rep and dealing with the insurance, so I can't remember where we got our insurance from back then; we've often gone with CIMA but recently decided to go with Fractured Atlas. So it's up to you to shop around and figure out which works best for you and your needs. If you're going to use Equity actors, you're going to need to get insurance. If you're not going to use Equity actors, it's not mandatory that you get insurance. Some would say you should, and I guess you should. But we sure as hell don't. Because we're cheap, and if we don't have to pay for it, guess what? We won't.)

So, to recap: we had our space (a dingy yet delightfully colorful theatre in the Lower East Side), our schedule (Wednesday through Saturday for two weeks in February 2000), our cast, our insurance and the OK from Equity. Pete then roped in the services of a friend of a friend, a lovely and talented 19-year-old college girl named Sal Robinson, as our (his) stage manager. (There was no real design for the show and therefore we had no designers; the lights in the space were merely functional, so it was a "lights up, lights down" kinda show and we only used the stage blocks the space provided and a handful of props.) It was now time to rehearse and promote this thing.

Next: Flashing forward, joining Fractured Atlas while working on Incorporation paperwork and 501c3, some publicity stuff, becoming an actual "company" (instead of a couple of dorks putting on a couple of plays). UPDATE: Okay, not really. It's some publicity stuff but more on landing the first play and figuring out what we learned from it.

Long-winded,

James "Sailor" Comtois

Little Jimmy's Guide To Self-Producing: An Introduction

Well, the theatre blogosphere has brought up the subject (as it apparently does every few years or so) of self-producing, and with Mr. Freeman's post here and Travis Bedard's suggestion that I offer the "hows" (rather than the "whys") of self-producing, so I think it may be time to quit stalling and offer a very one-sided, Jimmy-centric Guide to Self-Producing (in a similar vein to Dave Sim's Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing, which Nosedive Productions cohort Pete Boisvert and I used as our bible for Nosedive for those first few formative years when we decided we were in fact a theatre company and not just two dudes putting on plays). After all, Nosedive is now kicking off its 10th Anniversary season, so what better time than the present is there for me to natter about the trials and tribulations of self-producing my own work for the past 10 years?

One major perk about writing such a quixotic "how-to" guide like this is, whenever the conversation in the theatrical blogosphere invariably comes back to the subject of self-producing, I can just post a, "check these out" links every few years and call it a day.

Bear in mind that this "how to" dealie, like with all "how to" dealies, contains a great deal of bullshit. I'm basing this all on my personal experiences with self-producing through Nosedive, which is quite different from the experiences many, many other playwrights and directors have had with self-producing. Like I said, this is extremely Jimmy-centric here.

I call this upcoming series of entries quixotic because I don't think this will do very much in the way of getting people afraid to self-produce to jump in and self-produce. Much of the world of self-producing is that of "trial by error," which these entries won't offer. But at the very least, I can point the folks interested in self-producing in the right direction (the way Adam Heffernan and Dave Townsend pointed Pete and I in the right direction when we first moved to the city and ultimately formed Nosedive Productions).

* * *

I guess before I get into the "hows" of self-producing, I should take some time in this introduction to get a little bit briefly into the "whys" for Nosedive (which are part-and-parcel with the "hows"). It wasn't for high-minded or idealistic reasons: we weren't trying to stick it to the institutional theatre model or to get a foot in the door of an off-Broadway or LORT theatre. It wasn't for any financial reasons: we knew that self-producing was going to cost us, not gain us, money. It also wasn't for tangential career reasons: we weren't self-producing as a means to get noticed and whisked away into fame and fortune by a Big-Timey producer (I'm sure we wouldn't have minded, but Pete and I are stubborn, cynical New Hampshire men and are pretty realistic-to-pessimistic about garnering real world success).

Simply put, Pete and I wanted to put on plays, were impatient about doing so, and realized that staging them our damn selves was the best option available to us.

I moved to New York from Boston in the summer of 1999 and wanted to have my plays staged in the city. I had asked a few friends of friends how the hell that would be possible. Most of the options were the same: either form some relationship with a theatre so that they may (may) do a staged reading of my work in a year's time (though most likely longer), or spend a year filling out the paperwork to become a 501c3 (not-for-profit) entity.

My reactions to both options were the same: Fuck that.

Meanwhile, Pete Boisvert, someone I had gone to high school with but fell out of touch with during college, had also moved to New York at the same time and was having a similar experience trying to find directing work. The short story: no one hires a director just out of college with no real world experience.

So, we met up in the city (reunited by our mutual friend, Ben VandenBoom) and commiserated to one another about our respective "going nowhere fast" experiences.

Sometime in September (or October, I can't quite remember) of '99, Pete had asked to read a couple of my scripts. I obliged by sending them to him. Fortunately for me (and for him, since he didn't want to engage in an awkward conversation about how unimpressed he was), he liked what he had read, particularly one play, Allston. He called me one night to talk about him directing Allston. Although I wanted Allston to be staged, I actually wanted another one, Monkeys, to be staged first (for some reason, I wanted this to be my first play in New York and Allston to be my second; don't ask me why).

So, we started talking about the idea of renting out a theatre and putting on Monkeys. Since I didn't - and still don't - have much of a desire or aptitude for directing, and knew someone who wanted to and could direct (and, more importantly, wanted to and could direct my stuff), I absolutely dug the idea of us working together, finding out how to stage this show (and, if it went well, Allston sometime further down the road) and splitting the costs, grunt-work and eventually box-office earnings (if they existed) of the production 50-50.

The bottom line is the two of us were eager impatient to get started. We didn't move to New York to wait around for years for some theatre company to deign to give us the time of day at their convenience or spend a year or more working on paperwork to become 501c3. If I tried that route, I'm sure I would have gotten frustrated and left the city within a year (Pete tells me he'd have probably done the same).

(I should point out here that we here at Nosedive Central are not the most business-savvy individuals. However, one of the huge perks about self-producing is that you can control how much or how little the business aspects take up your time. The more business-savvy of you reading this will probably have the drive, organizational skills and common sense to create your Web site, fill the not-for-profit paperwork, write your mission statement and print your business cards all while staging your first play. We here at Nosedive did - and are doing - many of those above-mentioned things years later. For good or for bad [often, it's been a bit of both], it's always been about putting on the show first and foremost for us. But I've gotten way ahead of myself.)

So, about two months after moving to the city, Pete and I had the project we wanted to do: my play, Monkeys, which Pete would direct. If the process of getting this show up on its feet wasn't a disastrous experience or financial fiasco, we would then stage Allston. Awesome. Super. Fantastic.

There was just one problem: we knew exactly fuck all about how to go about doing this.

Next: Getting a little help from our friends, staging our first play, and revealing the most basic, paired down, nuts-and-bolts way this came about (with helpful tips for you, Dear Reader!).

Bending your ear,

James "Senile Grampa" Comtois