Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: Once On This Island - breaking even? | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 11:27 am EST 01/14/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Once On This Island - breaking even? - ryhog 08:46 pm EST 01/13/18 | |
|
|
|
| "Can you point to any marketing that would prompt someone to buy tickets because it is a show that can't be missed?" Not specifically. If a show doesn't have a major star in it, and if the title is not a brand name, I would think the best way to market it is to make it very clear what the story of show is, and to quote reviews stating that it must be seen because of the quality of the show itself and the overall production. Do you feel that the creative concept of this specific production -- the story being told in the context of the aftermath of a recent hurricane, with a pre-show that includes actors interacting with the audience -- has been made clear in the marketing, and if not, would doing so have helped make this a must-see? Has it been made clear that ONCE ON THIS ISLAND was written by the people who gave us RAGTIME, SEUSSICAL, and ANASTASIA, and would it have helped to stress this fact more? |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Once On This Island - breaking even? | |
| Posted by: ryhog 12:17 pm EST 01/14/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Once On This Island - breaking even? - Michael_Portantiere 11:27 am EST 01/14/18 | |
|
|
|
| I don't, and I agree that those ideas *might* have helped. But we have to be at least a little humble about it because it's the theatre and there is alchemy involved. (See, e.g., Come From Away.) What we can say without over-stating our case is that you have to do *something* to get people excited or at least interested, and I don't see that that happened. The dirty little secret about social media is that you can have the greatest media pitch on earth, but that does not automatically take care of the social part of it. A tree that falls in the forest etc etc. I don't think this is an easy sale (even if you can't imagine why everyone would not rush to see it :-) ) and deep down I think (as I said in some earlier post I think) this is more in the nature of a non-profit production. I think I said the same thing about Spring Awakening, and if Hello Dolly had come to Broadway with even someone like Donna Murphy, I think it would be looking a lot like OOTI. I am not a fan of revivals on commercial Broadway, but I think it is fair to say that if you are going to do one, you need someone who will sell tickets. I actually don't think the data supports brand name (i.e., a movie) as a seller. We've had plenty of flop musical revivals that had been movies at some point. You need SOMETHING to capture the imagination. (A slightly different version of all this is The Great Comet which, despite a ticket-bait star, did not sell out. That also failed to convincingly market its excitement.) So in the end of course we don't know. Sometimes things are doomed from the outset. Producers fall in love with an idea but don't think it through. So it fails for the reason that was not confronted. Here, however, I'd say they did not seem to give it their best effort; they just thought (as I've said) if they built it folks would come. Never wise. |
|
| reply to this message |
Time to render: 0.006916 seconds.