Undressing the Aging Ballerina - Marketing and Naked Theatre
Some years ago I read a review of a one woman show, the name of which long escaped me, about a ballet dancer and the incredible physical toll a career on pointe took on her body. Act 1 featured the writer/performer in her tutu, and her tales of a life in ballet seemed genuine enough. In Act 2, however, the costume was removed, and the audience was confronted with the naked form of a woman who had given her life to her art, and was able to see, in horrific, graphic detail, the scarring, the deformities, the anorexia and many of the other quite disturbing health problems this particular form of dance can give rise to.
(I don't know whether or not this particular ballerina's experience is the exception or the rule, so please don't colour your view of the ballet based on my admittedly limited experience with it - perhaps the sort of issues that were allowed to develop twenty years ago are no longer tolerated today)
Theatre is much like that poor dancer. She is old (older than ballet, opera, the printing press - predating almost every entertainment medium) and there are plenty of scars all over her body, of conventions forced upon her over the centuries.
Did Shakespeare wish that the women in his plays could actually be played by women, not pre-pubescent boys? Or did the knowledge that a few boys with little experience was all he had to work with lead The Bard to craft works where the majority of roles were for men?
What effect did the 18th century theatre manager's desire to make a few extra bucks by selling "premium" seating on the stage have? These seats were often so numerous as to make significant encroachments on the playing area (and in those days the casts tended to be much larger as well), so one can't help but feel the quality of the performance was adversely affected.
Did the rise of cinema in the early 20th century (with radio and television following close behind) serve to make theatre better by enabling creative visions made possible by the new media, or rip the heart out of it by drastically draining the pool of actors, production people and audiences?
Like the ballet dancer's tutu and pointe shoes, these developments have been external to the theatre, imposed from above (either by religion, politics, science or the almighty dollar) and have been intended to reconcile performers and performances with socially acceptable, socially possible, socially profitable circumstances of the given time.
Well here we are now in the 21st century, in a time of unprecedented social, economic and ecological awareness and upheaval. In the 21st century the aging ballerina has been undressed - the craft of production being reduced to "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amateur Theatricals" (no kidding - look it up!) and the act of production now no more complicated than pressing record on your camera phone and uploading it to the net. Pretty much anybody who wants to can make all the theatre they want.
Okay, now here's the part you're not going to like: I don't think this development is a bad thing.
I don't think I have a problem with every Tom, Dick and Jane in this world wanting their 15 seconds of fame. I think we've got enough problems (war, poverty, disease - I could go on) that there seems no point in saying that we, the people who make theatre for a living (or try to!) are any more entitled to drink from the cup as anyone else. After all, isn't theatre, at its core, an excercise in inclusivity, a way for a community to be formed around a common vision, a vision which, while it may be led by one or more individuals, is an expression of collective will?
So thanks to YouTube, pretty much anything goes in the way of performance, and pretty much anyone who wants to badly enough can perform. Thus, theatre is socially acceptable (finally, ironically), and socially possible.
It is that third pillar, profitability, where we run into difficulty.
Sadly, you can dress up the ballerina all you want - she's still too old to dance, at least not in a way that will make people come out in droves to see her. Theatre, with all its historical trappings and misappropriations for the gains of others, cannot continue to thrive as it exists today.
So what can we do?
Enter the naked theatre.
The naked theatre gets rid of all those conventions from the past. It looks beyond what has been done before, asking instead "What can we do now?" Why promote a show if no one is going to care about the publicity? You're just wasting your time. Why not simply ask people who have a vested interest in the show to simply buy a ticket (exactly how I haven't figured out just yet - that's the topic for another posting).
Why buy a show that was a hit somewhere else? What makes you think it will be a hit here? Whatever you think, you're wrong - unless there's more behind your desire to bring a show to the stage than the fact that some critic wrote three words in a review that got reprinted on the back of the acting edition.
Why would you do a show you hate just to bring people out, if you haven't got an ironclad guarantee (and I'd get that in writing - on a piece of paper drawn up by your lawyer) that a large number of people will actually come to it? Wouldn't it be better to do a show you love and have no one come to it than a show you hate and have no one come to it?
Marketing the naked theatre means not marketing. You can't market theatre any more. I don't think you can market anything, really. It's just a matter of time, I believe, before all "traditional" advertising (print, radio, TV, even on the internet) is a thing of the past. I don't know what will replace it (maybe more product placement advertising like in movies, or advertorials, but I don't think either of those work very well either - I'll leave the next big leap up to someone else), but I don't think we need to wait around in the theatre, dropping exhorbitant amounts of money on advertising campaigns that don't put any butts in seats.
I'm going to write a new theatre Marketing manifesto, mostly for myself, but I'll share it with all of you. Like the book Punk Marketing Manifesto (highly entertaining, by the way, I recommend it to anyone), this will make possible the "unmarketing" or "antimarketing" of theatre, in such a way as to be financially successful. I think it's going to take a complete and totaly review of how we do everything around here. I think it's going to take The Naked Theatre.
(I don't know whether or not this particular ballerina's experience is the exception or the rule, so please don't colour your view of the ballet based on my admittedly limited experience with it - perhaps the sort of issues that were allowed to develop twenty years ago are no longer tolerated today)
Theatre is much like that poor dancer. She is old (older than ballet, opera, the printing press - predating almost every entertainment medium) and there are plenty of scars all over her body, of conventions forced upon her over the centuries.
Did Shakespeare wish that the women in his plays could actually be played by women, not pre-pubescent boys? Or did the knowledge that a few boys with little experience was all he had to work with lead The Bard to craft works where the majority of roles were for men?
What effect did the 18th century theatre manager's desire to make a few extra bucks by selling "premium" seating on the stage have? These seats were often so numerous as to make significant encroachments on the playing area (and in those days the casts tended to be much larger as well), so one can't help but feel the quality of the performance was adversely affected.
Did the rise of cinema in the early 20th century (with radio and television following close behind) serve to make theatre better by enabling creative visions made possible by the new media, or rip the heart out of it by drastically draining the pool of actors, production people and audiences?
Like the ballet dancer's tutu and pointe shoes, these developments have been external to the theatre, imposed from above (either by religion, politics, science or the almighty dollar) and have been intended to reconcile performers and performances with socially acceptable, socially possible, socially profitable circumstances of the given time.
Well here we are now in the 21st century, in a time of unprecedented social, economic and ecological awareness and upheaval. In the 21st century the aging ballerina has been undressed - the craft of production being reduced to "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amateur Theatricals" (no kidding - look it up!) and the act of production now no more complicated than pressing record on your camera phone and uploading it to the net. Pretty much anybody who wants to can make all the theatre they want.
Okay, now here's the part you're not going to like: I don't think this development is a bad thing.
I don't think I have a problem with every Tom, Dick and Jane in this world wanting their 15 seconds of fame. I think we've got enough problems (war, poverty, disease - I could go on) that there seems no point in saying that we, the people who make theatre for a living (or try to!) are any more entitled to drink from the cup as anyone else. After all, isn't theatre, at its core, an excercise in inclusivity, a way for a community to be formed around a common vision, a vision which, while it may be led by one or more individuals, is an expression of collective will?
So thanks to YouTube, pretty much anything goes in the way of performance, and pretty much anyone who wants to badly enough can perform. Thus, theatre is socially acceptable (finally, ironically), and socially possible.
It is that third pillar, profitability, where we run into difficulty.
Sadly, you can dress up the ballerina all you want - she's still too old to dance, at least not in a way that will make people come out in droves to see her. Theatre, with all its historical trappings and misappropriations for the gains of others, cannot continue to thrive as it exists today.
So what can we do?
Enter the naked theatre.
The naked theatre gets rid of all those conventions from the past. It looks beyond what has been done before, asking instead "What can we do now?" Why promote a show if no one is going to care about the publicity? You're just wasting your time. Why not simply ask people who have a vested interest in the show to simply buy a ticket (exactly how I haven't figured out just yet - that's the topic for another posting).
Why buy a show that was a hit somewhere else? What makes you think it will be a hit here? Whatever you think, you're wrong - unless there's more behind your desire to bring a show to the stage than the fact that some critic wrote three words in a review that got reprinted on the back of the acting edition.
Why would you do a show you hate just to bring people out, if you haven't got an ironclad guarantee (and I'd get that in writing - on a piece of paper drawn up by your lawyer) that a large number of people will actually come to it? Wouldn't it be better to do a show you love and have no one come to it than a show you hate and have no one come to it?
Marketing the naked theatre means not marketing. You can't market theatre any more. I don't think you can market anything, really. It's just a matter of time, I believe, before all "traditional" advertising (print, radio, TV, even on the internet) is a thing of the past. I don't know what will replace it (maybe more product placement advertising like in movies, or advertorials, but I don't think either of those work very well either - I'll leave the next big leap up to someone else), but I don't think we need to wait around in the theatre, dropping exhorbitant amounts of money on advertising campaigns that don't put any butts in seats.
I'm going to write a new theatre Marketing manifesto, mostly for myself, but I'll share it with all of you. Like the book Punk Marketing Manifesto (highly entertaining, by the way, I recommend it to anyone), this will make possible the "unmarketing" or "antimarketing" of theatre, in such a way as to be financially successful. I think it's going to take a complete and totaly review of how we do everything around here. I think it's going to take The Naked Theatre.
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