Business and House management

1. Business and House management Day One

2. Marketing Your Show • So whose job is it to market your show? • Let’s look at a typical chain of command in a school theater. You can see that the BUSINESS MANAGER reports to the DIRECTOR/ PRODUCER. In some schools, these are one and the same person, and that’s because most school policies do not allow students to write checks, requisitions or purchase orders, but, the other positions can be filled by students like you.

3. The director/producer chooses a business manager, who, in turn, will assign duties to the PUBLICITY CREW, TICKET COORDINATOR, the HOUSE MANAGER and the HOUSE CREW. The main responsibility of the publicity crew is to make your show a BOX OFFICE SUCCESS. The first step in becoming a box office success is to have a MARKETING PLAN. What is a marketing plan? It is a CREATIVE VISION of how to attract an audience for a specific PRODUCTION or SEASON. It’s putting down on paper an outline of what points you will use to PUBLICIZE your production or season for this year.

4. To begin your plan, you must first ANALYZE your audience. Who IS your audience? Who would you LIKE them to be? Most educational theater programs attract STUDENTS, TEACHERS, PARENTS and the surrounding COMMUNITY. You might want to conduct a SURVEY to see where your audience comes from. Be sure to keep your survey direct and simple. In addition, more direct inquiries are easier to evaluate.

5. A marketing survey should include: • The option to be on your MAILING LIST • the patron’s NAME, ADDRESS, city, state and zip code • how did the audience member FIND OUT ABOUT the production • SHOWS the audience would like to see produced • what CONNECTION, if any, they have to the production • how many SHOW/ARTS PERFORMANCES they see each year.

6. After you have evaluated your surveys, you can identify your TARGET AUDIENCE, or the people who you want to attend more of your productions. These people can come from any of the before mentioned groups. Your plan will vary, depending on which group you target. And finally, you can devise a plan to attract that particular group of people to your theater. The first step in attracting a specific audience is choosing SCRIPTS about TOPICS OF INTEREST to them.

7. Planning a Season • But a good season might also include a group of plays which are connected with a THEME. • Part of the MARKETING PLAN for a season might include T-shirts, programs, bulletin boards and posters with a MARQUEE THEME LOGO. Whatever idea you use to sell your season, it is important to PLAN YOUR STRATEGY WELL IN ADVANCE, incorporating a VARIETY of productions instead of a steady diet of all musicals, all dramas, or all comedies.

8. And while we are talking about your season, it is extremely important that any theater department plans next year’s season before the school year begins, preferably the SPRING BEFORE so the season can be ANNOUNCED well ahead of time. That will allow your teacher time to finalize the CONTRACTS with the licensing companies, acquire PREVIEW MATERIALS, do RESEARCH, and allow your publicity crew time to make your MARKETING PLAN.

9. Many theater departments have a PLAY READING COMMITTEE that meets all year long to read new plays, and make suggestions to the club sponsor. It can give the sponsor some insight into what kind of plays might interest the students. The important thing to realize, is that nobody has a better grasp of the big picture of a season than the SPONSOR. He or she has the best idea of the theater department’s FINANCIAL situation, the PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS of the performance space, EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES, and many other considerations that go into choosing a season. So while the sponsor will probably appreciate suggestions, he or she has the FINAL say so in any season.

10. Involving your School & Community Your school and your community can be a wealth of resources. For instance, the Social Studies and Language Arts teachers and their classes might be able to contribute to your RESEARCH for a particular play by providing information to your cast and crew about the TIME PERIOD of the setting, and comparisons to OTHER PLAYS that were being written during the same time period. Perhaps you might call upon other teachers to contribute their knowledge.

11. The visual arts teachers and their classes might be able to help with artwork for POSTERS and PROGRAMS. The business education teachers and their classes might be able to help with your MARKETING PLAN and creation of your show PROGRAMS. Family and consumer science teachers and their classes might be able to have a class project making or altering COSTUMES for a period play. Foreign language teachers might be able to help with DIALECT work.

12. Every time you INCORPORATE a new person or a new group, it BUILDS your audience. That includes students at your school, too. Ask the baseball team to usher for Damn Yankees, ask your student council, Key Club, or National Honor Society to provide babysitting on show nights as their COMMUNITY SERVICE PROJECT. Have contests to find some of those very unusual PROPS or COSTUMES you might need. • The object is to get people TALKING ABOUT the upcoming production and better yet give them a VESTED INTEREST.

13. Another good thing to do is join forces with the other FINE ARTS ORGANIZATIONS in your school district, community or other area school districts. Together, you can produce a FINE ARTS CALENDAR for the season. There is strength in numbers, and getting your show dates out to as many people as possible is GOOD MARKETING. Notice that the music events, the art exhibits and even the speech tournaments are listed. This is definitely a BROADER AUDIENCE and if you do not have a sponsor who will pay for this publication, it will at least cost each group less when everybody pitches in.

14. Don't forget your MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS. There are several ways to do them. First is the tried and true way of having them READ, although it's a good idea to have a DIFFERENT VERSION for each day. If students hear the same announcement every morning, it doesn't them take long for them to tune it out.