September 29, 2011
Every
autumn, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, now in its eighth year and
running through Oct. 16, has to compete with Broadway openings, the start of
off-Broadway seasons, the New York Food and Wine Festival, even the Jewish high
holidays.
"Certainly it gets harder every
year to break through that buzz, and more expensive, too," said the
festival's executive director and producer, Isaac Robert Hurwitz, who plans to
open next year's edition in July, a quieter month for theater—after the Tony Awards
and before the start of the New York Fringe Festival, when more real estate is
available. "If we had a massive marketing budget, we could do it. But we
don't and neither do any of our shows."
It's a fact that the creators of the
musicals featured in the NYFF are all too aware of. Whatever challenges the
festival itself faces, they have to distinguish themselves from the other 29
musicals with marketing budgets of around $7,000 or less (and in many cases,
much less). Mr. Hurwitz said the task is possible if shows can establish a
consistent identity, get the word out early and often, and find partnerships
outside their own team to help with promotion.
And casting a celebrity always
helps—even a minor one. "Greenwood," a show about old summer-camp
friends who reconnect decades later, stars Andrea McArdle, who made her
Broadway debut in 1977 as the original Annie. The writers, Tor Hyams and Adam
LeBow, are also tapping their industry connections.
"We
have these advisors that work in the business in some big capacities,"
said Mr. Hyams, who is no stranger to festival producing himself, having
created Kidzpalooza, the music festival within Lollapalooza. "They told us
that one of the most important things for NYMF is to work with as many people
as you can that have done NYMF before, because it's its own beast."
So that's what they did. Their
director, general manager and executive producer all have NYMF credits. Yet
even with an experienced team, a clear theme, Ms. McArdle, and a promotional
budget, they reported that, as of Wednesday, only two of their seven shows had
sold out.
Other shows are finding it harder to
draw crowds and resorting to more creative promotional strategies. "Just
Like Magic" a one-man magic show set to music featuring puppets. So its
one man, Christopher W. Barnes, decided to use one of theater's most
recognizable names to generate publicity. In a series of YouTube videos called
"Operation: Sutton," he asks Broadway diva Sutton Foster to be his
date to the festival's opening night. (She declined.)
"It's like, 'Congratulations,
you're in the festival,' and then it's every man for himself," said Mr.
Barnes, who estimated that he spent a third of his budget on marketing. The
YouTube videos, some shot on his iPhone, have generated as many as 1,100 hits
each, but have little to do with his show. And now that opening night has
passed, he'll need a new strategy. "It's really difficult to stand out in
any festival," he said.
Mr.
Hurwitz said there are always several shows that struggle to balance the
creative and producing aspects and require additional guidance from the NYMF
staff. He considers it an integral part of his job to teach these artists the
basics of creative promotion and to connect them with others in the industry.
"There are always writers who come
to us and say, 'I am not a marketer. I don't know anything about this,'"
he said. The NYMF provides a certain degree of mentorship, but the nonprofit
doesn't have the budget to market each show individually. "Still, for
every one thing that would be better if we took care of it ourselves, there are
probably 10 things that we wouldn't even know how to do. We wouldn't know how
to reach people's networks."
One
such show, "Cyclops," was created by Los Angeles-based Psittacus
Productions. Mr. Hurwitz explained that out-of-towners are at a disadvantage
when it comes to promotion, so he was happily surprised when the
"Cyclops" team quickly defined itself as downtown and edgy, the
"Hedwig" of this year's NYMF.
Ticket sales have been relatively
strong. How did they do it? "Most of the company is originally from the
East Coast. So we're mustering all of the hometown support we can, all of the
friends and family that we left behind that are still here," said Louis
Butelli, the executive director of Psittacus Productions. They also focused on
attracting a specific audience. "We wanted to attract a gay audience. We
wanted to attract an academic audience because we're a piece of ancient Greek
theater, and we wanted to go for music fans. We've been most successful with
the gay audience and the academics," he said, adding that
"Cyclops" has attracted students from Princeton and Columbia.
Mr. Butelli has also leaned on social
media not just for marketing, but for fund-raising and collaborating. "The
Internet has almost been sort of hard-wired into the spine of the show,"
he said. He created a trailer and sent it out to about 3,100 subscribers, and
he hopes to stream the live NYMF performances on UBroadcast.com.
New to the festival is the ability to
record rehearsal and performance footage, which comes as the result of a
negotiated three-year contract with Actor's Equity Association that raised
actors' pay for their work in the festival to $670 from $500, plus pension.
"If we're going to move in this direction and increase the costs for the
producers," Mr. Hurwitz said, "what are the most important things on
the other side of the negotiations to help these shows have successful runs and
lives beyond the festival? The b-roll media component was an important piece of
that not just for marketing this show, but for ultimately having some sort of
record to promote the product down the line."
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