Writing in Elliptical Motion

Compelling dialogue rarely progresses in a logical, step-wise fashion. Rather, it contains a duality-- a line drive structure on the surface and an elliptical motion below.  Furthermore, there always exists a "break" in the linear movement.

You probably remember the exercise where someone asks you to adentify a serious of shapes:

The first you identified as a square; the second as a triangle; and the third you may have incorrectly called a circle. A circle doesn't have a gap in it-- your mind completed this one.  It "jumped the gap" in order to make the circular image fit with the others.  Good dialogue does the same thing.  The little gaps propel the dialogue

forward to the next idea.  These dialectic gaps, like the broken circle, are filled in by the imagination of the character who is listening.

Leave Room for the Insanity

Early in my career, playwright Joe Besecker urged me to leave more room for the insanity of my characters.  Over time I came to understand that insanity isn't a disconnect from reality; nor is it about the character's perculiarities and quirks (though garden variety insanity often expresses itself in disconnects and quirks).  It's about our inherent, irrational nature wreaking havoc on our everyday interactions.  We fall prey to it even in the most mundane conversations.  A line, statement, or question always has some earlier reference that colors it.  Because the characters arrive on stage with a history.  When two characters know each other well, that history can be shared; but even strangers carry a history into their conversations.  "Could you take out the trash?" carries the history of all the trash takings, of who got up at 2am to care for the baby, of who works longer hours or makes more money.  In real life those histories are (hopefully) dealth with and put to bed long before the simple question of trash is raised.  In the theatre, we only ask questions where the history is still raw-- where it is a driving force in the direction of the relationship.  And that history creates the elliptical motion of dialogue.  The line, statement, or question arcs backwards to collect the history of the character and then jumps forward into its expression. If you can pardon this poor drawing, the movement of dailogue looks more like this:

 The "Line" is the statement or question of the speaker. The listener connects it to their history, pushes it forward, and thus their reply is to both the speaker's words/subtext and their own history. The logic of the reply skips forward because now they are talking about two things.

Examine the language of Pinter.  It's incredibly jumpy and elliptical-- in ways that are often absolutely electric.  For those unfamiliar with his work, the size of the gaps can grow so large that Pinter tires out his audience who are left wondering what the characters are talking about.

Now look at Mamet's early work: it's highly repetitive, but at the same time the repetitions draw and build upon the characters' history and jump in their own manner.

As an example, consider the following bit of dialogue from Vigilance (yes, sooner or later I was bound to work our current production into the post).  The scene begins with Duncan proclaiming that he built the house Marla lives in.  He goes on to say that he never dreamed he would be living in one of those houses himself.  This follows:

  MARLA:  You live in Woodland Hills?

  DUNCAN:  2525 Stanford.

  MARLA:  You're... you won the house?

  DUNCAN: That's right.

  MARLA:  Well, congratulations.  I thought you owned a... uh....

  DUNCAN: Tattoo shop.  That's right.  I do some work on the side for my cousin.

  MARLA:  Building houses?

  DUNCAN:  Useta.  Back when I had to get my hands dirty.

This simple exchange is filled with dialectic jumps and ellipses. Take the first three lines: without ever discussing it, we learn that Duncan has newly arrived to Woodland Hills, and that there is some "issue around how he took possession of the house.  The issue has to do with him as a person-- Marla starts to refer to him and then switches to more objective, balanced language ("you're this" versus "you did this").  During the short exchange, the language-- and the silences-- are filled with judgement.  That's the history of their relationship, even though this is the first time they've met.  Notice when they speak in polite, complete sentences, and when they fragment and jump. A clear example is when Marla asks "Building houses?" and Duncan replies "Useta." He provides information not asked for.  The answer is both "yes" and the time frame, delivered in a slightly blunt manner.  He, in fact, chooses not to say yes directly.  At two points in the dialogue he implies yes, avoiding the opportunity to openly affirm Marla-- first when he could have said "yes I live at 2525 Stanford," and here when he might have answered "yes, back when I had to get my hands dirty."  These two aren't enemies yet, but they suspect they might become enemies.

Is this an example of compelling dialogue? I'll leave that to others to decide. But its a clear example of what I mean by jumps and elliptical structure. Are these characters "insane?" Do we see something irrational in their responses?  To compare, let's re-write the dialogue without the jumps:

  MARLA:  Do you live in Woodland Hills?

  DUNCAN: Yes, I live at 2525 Stanford.

  MARLA:  You're the one who won the house?

  DUNCAN:  That's right.

  MARLA:  Well congratulations.  I thought you owned a tattoo shop?

  DUNCAN:  That's right.  I do some work on the side for my cousin.

  MARLA:  Building houses for him?

  DUNCAN:  Yes. Back when I had to get my hands dirty.

We learn the same information, but do we have the same sense of the characters? Of how they feel about this information? Does it have the same energy?  Tension?  At this point, are we as the audience settling into our chairs for a long scene, or alert to the possibility that things may change in an instant?

So how does one make elliptical choices in their writing?  There are numerous ways to approach this, but most important is to know your characters.  The ellipses/jumps must come from them. Consider how they feel about each other and what they're saying... and then don't say it.  Reflect it.  Embrace that even strangers often know the end of each other's sentences and thoughts.  And choose moments in time with real stakes behind them.  In the above scene between Marla and Duncan, neither character has an overarching objective; there are no big goals or conflicts.  This 30 second fragment of dialogue is about testing.  Their goal is to understand each other. They're listening and responding. But their history and their instincts tell them that the other is about to become a sworn enemy.  And they do.

A Strategic Plan for Marketing a Theatre Show

My least favorite thing about producing theatre is naturally my most stressful. Something I’ve learned over the years is that the things that are the most stressful for me are things that I have the least control over. And when I’m talking theatre, my most stressful/least favorite thing is trying to get butts in seats.

Butts-In-Seats falls into my marketing toolbox. I know I’m not alone in this, but there are essentially zero examples of marketing/advertising plans out there for theatre, especially smaller theatre. What you kind find in books are too general for a company producing in a specific city, and often out of date. I know; I’ve searched. And other companies don’t share— it’s like taboo, a jealously guarded secret. We will post Youtube video of our shows, talk about our process, throw out a few marketing tips, but the bulk of our marketing plan is secret. It’s a competition. There are limited resources.

I don’t like that idea. So I’m doing it. I’m sharing our marketing plan for The Tender King. It’s complicated, but I’ll try to be both thorough and succinct. This post is just about the strategic plan for marketing an individual show. It’s not about company marketing, outreach, branding, or crafting your message. Those are other techniques. This is about where we put our dollars, why, and when. I’ll do a follow up blog with learnings from this show’s marketing strategy… what worked and what crashed.

First, it’s important to remember that effective marketing is constantly changing. The resources, tools, and what’s effective is constantly evolving. Some of my approaches are probably becoming outdated; others just coming into fashion. You have to work to stay on top of trends.

A recent TCG survey found that on average, 12% of theatre budgets were set aside for marketing. That fact isn’t entirely illuminating (were companies successful at 12% or is more better?). But it’s a starting point. Previously, our budgets were closer to 7%; so we beefed it up for TK.

In developing a strategy, you have to examine your strengths and weaknesses. For 2nd Wind, a prevailing weakness is that we only produce two full shows a year. Audiences forget who we are; critics forget us or turn over; branding efforts don’t carry over to the next production because it’s too far out. There are ways to address these weaknesses (most of which we don’t do) but I won’t get into that here.

Our strengths are in our ability to plan, create “content” (video, images, blogs, and tweats) and the amount of time we have to do marketing. Over the years I’ve concluded that the most effective marketing is not money-based. Good marketing is about footwork; it’s about word of mouth; and it’s about status. The latter two (word of mouth and status) are severely hampered our two-show schedule. So planning, content, and footwork are our weapons.

Since all of this is about getting butts in seats I’ll make a pitch here. Come see The Tender King. Tickets are available at: http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/. There, I’ve justified my post.


Where the Dollars Go:

Postcards:
> 1st Batch of cards: $50
TBA Distribution: $45
> 2nd Batch of cards: $75
Mailed: Postage: $120

Google Advertising: Visual Ads (Display Network):
This turned out to be a waste of money. After the first $50 or so, we switched to advertising on the SFGate top banner. This was mildly more successful. For VIGILANCE, we'll be experimenting with Facebook's advertising system & reducing our budget to $300.
> Paid per click $800

Enhanced Website Listings: $100
SF Gate (the SF Chronicle’s website)
Citysearch.com

Paid Newspaper Distribution $30

TBA Website Ad: $140

Email Blast: $65

TOTAL Marketing Budget: $1417

In this current strategy, the Google Ads are new for us; they’re also the most expensive element. Everything else we’ve done before.

The budget indicates what paid tools we use, but not how they’re implemented—or which non-money tools we use. In theatre everything is about the details, so I’ll discuss them:

POSTCARDS:
For this show, we printing one batch of cards early and are using Theatre Bay Area’s distribution system, which places stacks of cards at 20 locations. These will go out 6 weeks before opening. A second batch will be mailed 3 weeks before opening. The batches are different versions of the same card, in part because we’ll have the chance to put actor images in the latter card. I also plan to put a discount code for $5 off (King1945) on the early card, which can be redeemed on full-price web purchases only.

PRESS RELEASE:
Your press release and your listing release are vital documents (they are two slightly different formats). Write them early, a month before you cast your show. Then re-write them. Write several different show blurbs of various lengths. Describing the show is less effective than describing the experience for the audience; be sparing with adjectives and when you use them avoid cliques or common ones. Let “exciting” become “breathless.”

ENHANCED WEB LISTINGS:
This is where your listing release comes in. We used enhanced web lists for our last production. How directly they relate to ticket sales is unclear, but they do allow for you to place more content (images, links) on the listing, so we utilize one of our strengths.

NEWSPAPER/ WEBSITE LISTINGS:
2nd Wind uses Fullcalendar.com, a service that posts to newspapers and event websites. This was disaster number two (after the Google ad investment). It worked well last year, but this year they missed their posting deadline, then included my email in a craigslist posting that generated a huge amount of spam for 6 months. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut here. We're back to posting by hand, individually.

Early Listings: Hand Done 6 weeks before Opening
> Fullcalendar: 4 weeks before Opening
> Follow-up to important listings: 3 weeks before Opening

TBA WEB ADVERTISEMENT:
TBA (Theatre Bay Area) operates their own Half-Price ticket booth and website. For our last show, we purchased a banner ad. It was not effective in raising sales through their site, but I’m proposing a second attempt. Adjustments: I plan to pay a little more attention to the ad design, post it early, and link it to our full price tickets.
> Purchase Impression Add 10 days before opening (20K impressions)
> Evaluate whether to buy an additional 10 days
Sorry TBA, this didn't turn out to be particularly effective. It's very difficult to evaluate advertising like this, but I was dismayed by how few ticket sales we had through their website.

HALF-PRICE TICKET VENUES:
There are two half price ticket dealers for SF.
Goldstar: Goldstar is very popular Half-Price ticket website. Half-price or less, actually. They order their listings based on popularity of ticket sales, so giving away a few free ones gets you off to a good start.
> 10 Freebies on Preview
> 7 $8 Tix for Opening; 7 half price
When I post on Goldstar, I leave out one performance date. Then, after the show is up and running (and presumably we’re not as noticeable in the listing), I offer up that performance and we get a special announcement. We provide 15-20 seats to Goldstar for each performance (it’s a 60 seat house)

TIX Bay Area: The Other Half Price vendor
> Submit Full price ticket listing 3 weeks before
> Submit Half price ticket listing 1 week before

EMAIL BASED PROMOTION:
Email Lists
2nd Wind uses Vertical Response. It’s a pay service that helps you design emails and send to your list. It’s worth the price because you can track whether your emails are opened or ignored, and whether someone opened the email and did/did not click on the link to your website. This allows you to target your follow-up. Email ignored? Re-title and send again after a few days. Opened but did not click on link? Send the same title after we open.
> Full list Blast 12 Days before (on a Tues or Wed between 11-4pm, because that’s when people are bored)
> Follow up with UnOpened emails 8 Days Before Opening
> Follow-up with Opened but Unclicked emails the 4 days before Opening
> Follow up with all other Opened 3 days after
> Full Blast (or All Opened) 2 weeks after Opening; or if there’s a good review:
> Article Blast 3 days after appearance

BayAreaTheatreBums:
Bay Area Theatre Bums is a list serv: they send out blasts to several hundred theater people who have joined. It’s rather over-used, so things are often ignored. But, we list:
> 2 weeks before Opening
> 3 Days before Opening
> If there are any reviews/articles
> 2nd Week after Opening

SNAIL MAIL LIST:
Our snail mail address list is pretty small—just 400 names. We send postcards to this list 16 days before Opening.

CRITIC INVITES:
Timing your invites is difficult because preferences vary. Many don’t decide more than two weeks ahead; others are booked by that time. Send your press release in the body of the email, avoid attachments.
> Early-Invitation to all critics 6 weeks Before Opening to get on their schedule. Email works best. Follow-up with a call three days after your email blast.
> Follow-up invitation to critics 10 days Before Opening: this is a combination of emails and calls, depending on what contact info I have and the relationship
> Remember to invite Bloggers!

GOOGLE ADVERTISING:
I have used Google’s Adwords program, which places a sponsored links in the right hand column of their search pages. I don’t find it to be effective in generating ticket sales. Nonetheless, we are planning on using their visual ads program this time round, which places real advertisements on related web pages, and can be limited to your region. We’ll see how this works out. Can't tell you how frustrating and ineffective I found this experience. Others may have better success, but I found all of the best key words were priced above what we could afford for our show size.

There are some alternatives: a paid listing in the SF Chronicle. We’ve done this before, costs about a $120 a pop (for one day, I usually pick Thursday). I haven’t found it to be effective, based on who we are as a company. I think it’s a useful guide for visitors to SF, but they are less likely to choose small theatre.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:
Be sure to list on Yelp and Going.com.
Should you start a company blog? They’re time-intensive. Do they sell tickets? I don’t know—buy a ticket, come to the show, and tell me what you think.
Twitter? In my opinion, Twitter is not a good tool for marketing individual shows. There have been numerous articles on why this is the case.
Craigslist Events? Why not?


BASIC MARKETING TIMELINE: Date from the Open Night

8 Weeks before do your Early listings
6 Weeks before Postcard to TBA for distribution
6 Weeks before Set up online ticketing service; Critic Invites
3 Weeks before Do Fullcalendar listing
3 Weeks before Mail 2nd postcard; set up Goldstar; first email Blast; Critic Follow-up, TBA ticketing
2 Weeks before Set up Google Ads, Fullcalendar follow-up, BATB listing
10 Days before Critic Follow-up2, Enhanced Web listing
7 Days before TBA Ad
5 Days before Going.com, Yelp, Email follow-up
4 Days before BATB listing
1 Week AFTER Email Blast follow-up, BATB

A couple of things to remember: First, you can’t start designing your marketing materials early enough. Do as much as you can a month before you’ve cast the show. Your images, your ad copy, are crucial. Second, marketing doesn’t end after the show opens. You have to keep updating and sending out.

And finally, decide what you think the buying cycle is for your company. A “buying cycle” is the number of days from when a potential audience member hears about the show to the time they purchase a ticket. For 2nd Wind, I think it’s about 10 days for planners, and 4 days for “impulse” buyers. Very few hear about the show and decide to go that night. They may not commit to go until a day or two in advance, but it’s been stewing in their subconscious for several days. That means there’s nothing I can do to boost sales the day before—I have to plan at least 4 days ahead

This, again, is just the “product” side of marketing—the concrete things we do. It doesn’t illuminate how to talk up a show, make people feel included, or design ads or copy. So what do you think? Any ideas/strategies I haven’t mentioned? I challenge you to break the taboo and share your knowledge.

Oh and most importantly—come see The Tender King. Tickets are on sale.

Memorization and the Director

Occassionally, companies and productions require the actors show up to the first rehearsal already off-book, but it's much more likely to have that first read be almost "cold", with the process of memorization beginning from the first day. When there are only two actors-- such as in The Woman in Black-- that can be a huge task. So today we looked at the director's role (and responsibility) when it comes to the actors being memorized in a timely manner, and two approaches to make learning lines easier.

What landed on the cutting room floor (if I can be so grandiose) were some tips for the actor's process, so I'll mention a few here: First, memorize in small pieces-- don't try to accomplish too much. I often spend 15 minutes first thing in the morning going over a section before I start the daily shower/breakfast routine (so I can run them in my head) and then I spend 10 minutes in review before heading off to work. By far the most helpful tip I can offer is to review the lines of scene both before you work it in rehearsal, and then the following day. Actors sometimes review lines before a rehearsal and then move onto the next section without returning to the pages. Even 15 minutes in post-rehearsal review can be enormously helpful.

But todays video entry is on the director's role, and two ways the director can set the actors up for success.

Did I mention tickets are on sale for The Woman in Black? Now would not be too late to purchase them.