The Importance Of Marketing

Stories like this one, from LA, just kill me. I remember once playing to an audience of four people, but at least it wasn't professional theater:

Hello? Where are those Angelenos who advocate a higher profile for L.A. theater? I’m asking because only two of us were at last Sunday’s matinee of The Dog in the Manger, at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre.

That’s the landmark venue, previously known as the Doolittle and the Huntington Hartford, just south of Hollywood and Vine. It could seat audiences as large as 1,000. Yet on Sunday afternoon, 13 actors performed for two audience members. A third individual watched the first of three acts, but he worked behind the concession counter during the intermissions, so he doesn’t really count. The other spectator told me he personally knows some of the actors. I was probably the only person in the building who didn’t.

Several dozen others had attended each of the previous two performances of opening weekend, and more were expected Sunday evening, a producer told me. I also was told that only 99 seats per performance are actually available for sale. The production is, in part, a workshop for a possible full-fledged production next year. Marketing was limited to posters, postcards, and press releases.

Still, unlike a couple of previous 99-seat productions in this space recently, this one is played out to the main auditorium, not in a black-box configuration that keeps the audience on the stage. And the acting style of Tiger Reel’s cast is big enough to embrace the big hall.

...People who run L.A.’s small theaters often toy with the idea of taking successful productions to bigger, more visible venues, but few take the plunge, fearing the greater costs. But those costs can be contained if Actors’ Equity, the actors’ union, allows less expensive actors’ salaries as part of an effort to stimulate interest in the largely dormant Montalbán. With more marketing, this new Dog ought to attract Hollywood tourists, as well as those L.A. theatergoers who would like to see more prominent and (eventually) wage-paying productions.