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I don’t have a lot of time for the entry I had in mind for today so I in the interests of doing something shorter, I point once again over to Michael Rice at Cool As Hell Theatre. He recently made a podcast about the 10 Laws of Being A Good Actor. They are certainly his personal laws and not always something your acting teacher will tell you. That is what makes them so great. You aren’t going to learn how to be a great actor from his 15 minute podcast. He makes some observations I have never heard anyone make and does it from the point of view of a seasoned actor smacking novices upside the head for being silly and self-absorbed.

This is not to say everything he says is equally good. His suggestion about breaking the 4th wall during an audition might backfire on an actor depending on how someone interprets his advice and how the casting people envision the proper way to audition.

His advice about preparing for and executing an audition is fairly sound–especially his point about not sabotaging yourself by apologizing or sighing about your performance. He does a good job of scolding of actors who aren’t flexible enough to briefly entertain other approaches and those who can’t graciously accept criticism.

The biggest thing Michael has going for him is the way he expounds upon his rules. He is fun, engaging and entertaining. Frankly, the biggest reason I keep coming back is to listen is his cool as hell standard intro to each podcast. (Though be warned his podcasts may contain language some might find offensive.)

I had a meeting with my radio account rep today. We were just talking over how the past season went, what promotions were effective, what type of tie-ins we might do next year, that sort of thing.

One of the things I hadn’t been happy about was a web campaign I had tried out. I spent considerable sums each month to have a special page on their website listing my season events. I also had banner and skyscraper ads that popped up on the radio station’s homepage which lead to this events listings page.

However, there were a couple problems. First, every time a radio ad ran it told people to go to the radio station page. This was good because their site address is easier to remember for regular station listeners than is my theatre’s. Unfortunately, unless they got there at the right time in the rotation, they wouldn’t see the banner ads and thus couldn’t go to the special page.

They could always see the event listed on the Best Bets section of the website which was prominently positioned. Clicking on the Best Bets link would take them to my website though, not the more expensive page the station was hosting.

The other problem was that the special page and the banner/skyscraper ads were handled by the corporate office 5,000 miles away in Atlanta. When there were problems, and there were quite a few frustrating incidents, it could take days to fix. The worst part was that the problem would repeat itself the next month or next show. I suspected a different person in Atlanta was handling it each time. The Best Bets portion of the site was handled locally and I had few problems with it.

I mention this as something of a cautionary tale for others who may consider similar arrangements. On the whole, I think the special page was a poor use of my money. I had little control of when people would see the page and no guarantee they could find it when the call to action to visit the radio site for more info went out over the air.

People were guaranteed to find the Best Bets link to my webpage on a fairly consistent basis when the call went out. Because that option was more dependable and because I know I can control what people see on my website, I am going to stick with radio ads and Best Bet listing for next year.

I think the banner ad set up does have its uses. There were probably people who visited the radio station’s site for some other purpose, saw the banner ads and viewed the information about the theatre and upcoming shows. If I was leaving the same ad up with minor monthly changes or wanted a separate place designed specifically for the radio station’s demographic, it would have had some more value.

Because I needed to have it changed on a weekly basis at the height of my season and wanted people to always see my information when they visited with the intent to find it, the special page didn’t meet my needs. In the future, I might consider generic (rather than show specific) banner ads that lead back to my website as a tool to generate general awareness of my theatre as people visit the radio homepage.

In many respects, these issues solidified my belief that local control of information is much better than distant control when it comes to customer service. This isn’t even just a matter of the local vs. corporate office. There were a number of times this past season that I made changes to our website when I noticed mistakes or wanted to clarify an issue that was generating confused phone calls. I was often thankful that I could effect the changes myself rather than call a web designer to implement them as I had to in the ancient days of the web (1997).

Because you often had to pay a web designer, you might not make small changes or might delay the fixes until you had accumulated enough problems to make contacting her/him cost effective. The ability to improve ones public face numerous times a day is a small blessing with potentially big rewards in my eyes. (Though you may still want to limit your request for updates to once a day lest your web designer strangle you.)

It is only a coincidence that this entry like the one last week is about a theatre podcast. I only recently noticed that the Talk Theatre blog/podcast page had merged with Theatre in Chicago to become Talk Theatre In Chicago and wanted to explore it.

Not living in Chicago, I don’t know what other resources exist, but I have to think this site is set to become the premiere source of info on theatre in and around Chicago. There are listings of current shows, what is coming soon, a separate link for kids shows, news about theatre around town and the collected reviews for each show from the papers around town.

And there are the podcasts. What I like about the podcasts are the way they are presented to visitors. There is a brief description of each show and then when you follow the link for a particular show you have the choice of listening to the complete show or going directly to the news, reviews or interviews segment.

One thing that became apparent though was that it may take a little while for people to become accustomed to formatting their programs for the podcasting medium. The first podcast I chose to listen to was an interview with Goodman Theatre Executive Director Roche Schulfer.

Unfortunately, the start of the interview was reminscient of the conferring of an honorary doctorate by a university. The interviewer went on and on for nearly three and a half minutes reciting Schulfer’s bio. I actually haven’t listened to the interview yet because after a 1:30 or so, my only interest was seeing how much longer the dry recitation was going to continue.

I am happy to report that after sampling a handful of other interviews and reviews, the host reached the point of the program much quicker. My first impression as a theatre person though was that this l-o-n-g intro was not wise on a medium mostly utilized by people with expectations of more immediate gratification and shorter attention spans.

Podcasts in general and the Talk Theatre in Chicago website in particular, provide super opportunities for introducing and educating people with little experience all about theatre. You can visit, find a performance near you, read the reviews for it and listen to a podcast so that you can at least start to become familiar with theatre vocabulary and the way people discuss it.

But first they have to be interested enough not to skip over an interview because it starts out so damned boring!

I can understand why folks would want to give people their due and I concede that I often ramble a bit in my writing from time to time before getting to the juicy interesting stuff. I too have sinned! On the other hand, theatre people should know that exposition should be played out across the length of the play rather than clumping it all at the beginning. (Again, I too have sinned.)

The endeavor looks like a promising resource for the Chicago theatre community which has always had a great reputation to begin with. It would be super if other cities could adapt/expand on what they have done for the culture of their communities.

Just as a follow up to my Does Bono Like Ballet entry. I did indeed take the plunge and use that approach in my ads (see below) and press releases.

I actually antagonized over that approach in my print ads because someone suggested that it might alienate U2 fans. You can be the judge, of course. I figured since it essentially complimented the fans for their good taste and didn’t automatically assume liking U2 and ballet were mutually exclusive, it wouldn’t raise too many hackles.

Still, I showed the ad around to people and asked their opinion. Most people though it was cool. The most extreme reaction was “What the F@%^?” from a guy who misread the ad, followed by a chuckle and a comment that it was a cool idea.

The guy who suggested the approach might alienate fans said I should run it by the people at the alternative weekly paper since they would be most plugged in. I didn’t actually run it by them, but did send the ad and press release well in advance and waited for a reaction.

Imagine my glee when I saw that they ran with the angle I cooked up in today’s edition. The writer sort of took off with the general ideas I introduced in my press release. Hopefully it will attract the paper’s readership to the show because right now sales are pretty much contained to the ballet audience.

My ad, however, didn’t appear in the paper. The publisher apologized and said it was in the first proof but accidentally got bumped on the second for a free ad. I was somewhat happy at not having to pay for the publicity until I remembered my friend’s suggestion that the staff of the paper would be a good judge of whether the approach was a good one or not. Suddenly I began to wonder if it was an accident after all…

Hmm, my attempt to set this as an image did not work too well. You can now view the ad here