Storefront Rebellion

99 Problems, Tracy Letts ain't one.

This video, by local comedy duo the Southern Mothers (aka actors John Dixon and Russ Armstrong), has made my entire day. Lyrics NSFW, so put on your headphones and bask in the awesomeness.

To Market We Go

One of the unexpected results of coming back to blogging and writing specifically about theater has been the discovery of the number of theater bloggers already in existence. I'm still getting a handle on the various personalities and viewpoints. Most of those I've been following so far are pretty New York-centric, but some of the discussions that have gone 'round deal in universals.

A New York theater artist named George Hunka maintains a blog called Superfluities, where his thoughts on theater are so prescriptive and alienatingly impenetrable that I wonder if he takes any joy in his work. On Friday Don pointed to a recent entry in which Hunka states:

The attempt to market and sell theatre is as useful a concept as an attempt to market and sell air.

What a ridiculous statement, I thought.

Experiments in Marketing?

The news of the day from elsewhere seems to be all about alternative marketing. In London, the National Theatre has started a YouTube channel, with trailers for plays and artist interviews. (The Guardian blogger notes that she found the YouTube link on the National's Facebook page. Hmmm.)

In New York, Signature Theatre announced its next four seasons, but more importantly announced the continuation of its "Signature Ticket Initiative;" with corporate underwriting from Time Warner and others, Signature has sold every ticket for the last two seasons at $15, and will continue at $20 a ticket for the next four years. From the Backstage story:

According to statistics provided by the theatre, Signature sold 50,000 tickets: 50 percent of them to new buyers, 30 percent to new households, and 20 percent to people under 35. Ticket prices at a major Off-Broadway house such as Signature typically cost $55-$85.

And from the Times:

James Houghton, the Signature’s artistic director, said the ticket initiative was an unambiguous success, with all productions selling out, some within 48 hours. According to surveys conducted at the theater, half of the ticket buyers were new to the Signature, a quarter earned less than $50,000 a year, and a fifth were under 35.

“We worked very hard to reach audiences and communities that just don’t think about going to the theater because they’ve been priced out,” Mr. Houghton said at a news conference.

What can Chicago take from this, I wonder? Our city is already full of affordable theater. Of the five shows TOC lists under "Don't Miss" this week, three are priced at $20 or under; all five are $30 or less. (It helps that, aside from Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God tour returning to the Lakeshore, the other four are all non-Equity.) Of all the Chicago shows recommended in the comments of the latest "What Would You Recommend?" thread at Parabasis, the only two that cost more than twenty bucks are the ones at the Goodman and Steppenwolf.

So why aren't we selling out every performance of every good show? Because Steep Theatre and the Strange Tree Group don't have press conferences to announce their low ticket prices? If $15 tickets created such a bump for Signature in younger, lower-income audience members, do we simply need to get the word out to Chicago audiences that they already have cheap theater available to them? Is this applicable at all?

Collaboraction goes 2.0

Collaboraction has revamped their website and added a blog—though since they're using TypePad as the base, the whole site is kind of a blog.

They're offering two free tickets for Jenny Chow this weekend to the first five folks to comment on the blog. Collaboraction is also one of the growing number of small companies with an active MySpace, where they've announced MySpace-exclusive ticket discounts. It's good to see more theater companies embracing the community-building (or, if you're cynical, marketing) opportunities available on the web.