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"Chesapeake" actor Greg Matthew Anderson photo by Johnny Knight
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company closes its 2012/13 season during the midterm elections with the political and playful one-man show Chesapeake by Lee Blessing. The production stars Remy Bumppo Artistic Associate Greg Matthew Anderson as performance artist, politician and pooch. Check out reviews from this critically-acclaimed and Jeff Award nominated play:
Timothy Douglas photo by Kimberly Aileen Scott
Timothy Douglas officially took the reigns July 1, 2011 as Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s new artistic director. Mr. Douglas, age 49, has built a career as a stage director, actor and educator, proving his versatility as both an acclaimed interpreter of the classics and contemporary drama. Mr. Douglas counts among his credits the world premiere of August Wilson’s Radio Golf for Yale Rep, his critically acclaimed Caribbean-inspired Much Ado About Nothing for the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, and the premiere of a new translation/adaptation of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm off-Broadway. He worked in the Chicago area from 1989 – 1991, before going on to serve as a resident director at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles from 1994 – 1997, and associate artistic director at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville from 2001 – 2004. He has been a company member with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. since 1986. With this appointment Douglas becomes first African American Artistic Director in Chicago to helm an Equity theater dedicated to modern classics.
His first creative project with the company was a July 3rd concert reading of the Declaration of Independence in collaboration with the Grant Park Music Festival. See event photos on the Remy Bumppo website. Over 100 Chicago theater and cultural leaders participated in the reading including Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell me,” Golden Globe-winning Actress Regina Taylor, Goodman Theatre Associate Artistic Director Henry Godinez, Court Theatre Associate Artistic Director Ron OJ Parsons, Lookingglass Theatre Artistic Director Andrew White, Chicago Public Radio’s “848” Dueling Critic Kelly Kleiman, Victory Gardens Theater Executive Director Jan Kallish, and Christopher Piatt host of “The Paper Machete Show.”
Read Timothy’s appointment announcement in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and in PerformInk. Hear a podcast interview with Timothy Theater in Chicago.
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company's Night and Day illustration by Robert Petrick
For the past several weeks, Kick Start Marketing has had the pleasure of coordinating a free public event for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. Inspired by the company’s current, critically-acclaimed production of Tom Stoppard’s satire of British news media Night and Day, Kick Start secured sponsors and panelists for a journalist panel entitled “Is the Truth Front Page News?”
Lending their expertise to the discussion are journalists Ramsin Canon, political editor and co-founder of Gaper’s Block, Alden K. Loury, publisher of The Chicago Reporter, Mary Mitchell, columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times and Timothy J. McNulty co-director of Medill School of Journalism‘s National Security Initiative. The panel discussion will be moderated by Richard Steele, host of WBEZ‘s “Eight Forty-Eight.”
Launching the panel discussion will be short excerpts from Night and Day about the risks and responsibilities of foreign correspondents. The evening’s topics might include: sound bites v.s. investigative reporting, bloggers v.s. media giants, and what consumers should consider when choosing a news source. Expect some frank, possibly heated, potentially funny, and ultimately enthralling conversation about the real world journalists inhabit. For anyone who works or aspires to work in the media, collaborates with the media — or is a regular news consumer — this is a don’t miss event.
“Is the Truth Front Page News?” takes place Monday, Oct. 11 at 7:00 p.m. (doors open for general seating at 6:30 pm) at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Seating is limited to 200 – and reservations are recommended. Reserve your spot on Remy Bumppo’s online events calendar, or call 773.244.8119.
If you can’t secure a spot or just can’t make the date – don’t fret, you can find it on WBEZ’s Chicago Amplified archives soon.
Fugard Chicago 2010 sample ad
I’ve been meaning to post on this project for a while. It’s one of my highlights of 2010. Exercising the creativity that brought us into the field of arts marketing, and demonstrating the collaborative work style required of all practitioners of theater, three Chicago theater marketing directors (Adam Thurman of Court Theatre, Lara Goetsch of TimeLine Theatre Company and myself – then at Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, came together in summer of 2009 to discuss a remarkable coincidence. All three companies had just announced they would be presenting plays by not-so-often produced playwright Athol Fugard in the spring of 2010. Spurred on by shrinking budgets due to the economic downturn – we brainstormed ideas for combining our resources and strengths to raise awareness of the playwright and ensure strong ticket sales for the plays.
Out of that first conversation over coffee, came the idea of a collaborative website: FugardChicago2010. The purposes of the site: to elevate the playwright by highlighting his contribution to the world stage, and to provide a portal to each company’s website for single ticket sales. The site would reward visitors who joined the FugardChicago2010 e-mail list with a discount code that could be redeemed at the box offices. The site would also sell 3-play subscriptions.
We quickly realized that through coordinated efforts, we could greatly expand our exposure and encourage audience crossover without increasing our marketing budgets. So we did a few key things:
1) we established the level of current audience crossover between our mail lists
2) we agreed to share a dramaturg (the fabulous Kelli Marino), who would write the website copy and a series of articles on Fugard and the plays to be shared with all three patron bases.
3) we collaborated on PR efforts
4) we allocated a portion of our ad budgets to promote the website
5) we created a free public event to further promote the collaboration
Results:
One of the biggest immediate payoffs was the press coverage. By banding together we made the “top 10 shows to see” lists of several local news outlets. We scored a front page Sunday arts section feature in the Chicago Sun-Times. And benefited from having each theater’s productions tagged in most of the preview stories and reviews secured by the project partners.
The partnership gave us a heft and credibility we didn’t have individually, demonstrated by our being invited by MCA Stage to present a public panel discussion called “Writing for Change” as an homage to Fugard, which featured an exhilarating lineup of hot young playwrights including Tarell Alvin McCraney (The Brother/Sister Plays; Wig Out!), Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity; Welcome to Arroyos), Young Jean Lee (The Shipment; CHURCH; Pullman, WA) and Tanya Saracho (Generic Latina; S-E-X-Oh!; and adaptor of The House on Mango Street for Steppenwolf Theatre). Big thanks to Susan Padveen of Columbia College Chicago for conceiving of and assembling the panel.
Another huge benefit, was that by coordinating our eCommunications efforts, and providing each other with photos, video clips, notice of special events and the shared dramaturgical articles – we were able to essentially triple our audience exposure with every e-mail we dispatched.
An unforseen perk of the collaboration was that our meetings provided a chance to exchange info with each other on best practices, benchmark our sales, and talk about strategies and tactics we were experimenting with.
When we met recently to recap the project – we agreed one of the great successes was the way we split up responsibilities for the planning and implementation of the project. At the start we volunteered to handle different aspects of the project, based on our strengths – which was key to it being such a positive experience. No one felt overworked, and everyone felt ownership. It was a great model for collaboration.
We are currently pulling together final data to determine post-project audience crossover results. But I think I can speak for my cohorts when I say, this collaboration was an unqualified success.
Stay tuned for future Chicago theater cooperative marketing efforts. We were delighted to have been sponsored in this endeavor by the League of Chicago Theaters, who now owns the collaborative website template. Contact the League if you are interested in setting up a partnership like FugardChicago2010.
credit: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Wikipedia
Last week I attended the Community Media Workshop’s 2010 conference: Story and Strategy in the Digital Age. In a panel discussion that included Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times, he talked about a story he was working on about a new restaurant, and how key a human element, or good anecdote is, for an entree into a news story. I don’t want to describe the story here, its a good one, because I don’t think its been published yet! Check Dave’s column yourself, it has to do with a father’s day brunch menu.
This got me thinking about past story pitches of mine that were successful. As an arts publicist or presenter, it’s so tempting to fall into the trap of thinking the story is: “Chicago premiere” or “Award-winning.” That’s the easy angle, but certainly not a human one.
A recent pitch that was successful for me was uncovering an anecdote about a cast member in Remy Bumppo’s production of Heroes last October. Yes, this production was “a Chicago premiere” and “an Award-winning comedy” about retired WWI soldiers in France. But what I found out shortly after opening night, through talking with one of the actors, was that cast member Mike Nussbaum had shared an anecdote about his WWII military service in the green room. Turns out he’d been the one that sent the telegram from General Eisenhower that ended the war–and had a copy of the telegram with his initials to boot! Talk about a human anecdote as an entree into a play about veteran soldiers. And Veteran’s Day was just around the corner in November. So needless to say, we had our story, and got feature segments on the local ABC TV station, and public radio, and lots of column items including Bill Zwecker’s in the Sun-Times. So the lesson I learned was, enlist everyone from the ground up to keep their eyes and ears open for the ever elusive story. I’m also thinking about how I can update my standard PR questionnaire to uncover this kinds of hooks in advance. Over and out!
It’s June 2010, and my birthday’s at the end of this month, and so is my last day at my current job, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. I started there as director of marketing & communications shortly after they incorporated as a non-profit 8 years ago. It’s been a great opportunity to expand my expertise beyond PR (which still lights me up!), to the ongoing process of marketing.
One of the greatest professional experiences I had at Remy Bumppo, was the opportunity to go through the National Arts Marketing Project’s Advanced Audience Development Training. It was through this 2 week intensive training I learned the discipline of creating a comprehensive, targeted marketing plan. And the best part was, I had a real live, supportive 501(c)3 organization to implement new strategies and tactics on. Then I got to watch, measure, adjust and repeat.
It’s been an incredible journey. I’m proud of what has been accomplished during my tenure, from developing the “think theatre” branding and positioning statement and growing a loyal subscription base estimated to reach 1440 this season, to launching Remy Bumppo’s website, which Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal calls “a best theater website.” Another distinct pleasure was establishing lasting partnerships with the media, especially WBEZ 91.5FM and its Chicago Amplified program which helped Remy Bumppo expand its reach by 8% each year, (that’s over 1,000 more people listening to Remy Bumppo content each season).
A big hat tip to the trio of market researchers on my Remy Bumppo marketing committee: Nancy McDaniel, Karen Randolph and Dona Vitale. These women were invaluable in the process of gathering data from our audiences over the years. And I’m really proud to recount that Remy Bumppo’s survey response rate averaged an astounding 70% for hand-distributed paper surveys. Which needless to say, gave us great data to work with. This season we concluded a 2 phase research project, led by Dona Vitale of Strategic Focus, thanks to a grant from Arts Works Fund. In phase one, Dona analyzed the patron database for the purposes of profiling attendance habits among various segments, and in phase 2 collected arts attendance data through a 4-month long arts diary survey. Final report and recommendations are forthcoming this summer. I really look forward to seeing what Remy Bumppo will accomplish in the near future with this data.
I’m pleased to say that I will maintain a connection to Remy Bumppo as I start my new business Kick Start Marketing Chicago. I will be focused on PR for their 10/11 season productions, as well as the Artistic Director transition. Can’t wait!