I'm Not on The Telly... so how do I get people to come and see my show?

Elaine Pantling, 21 June 2012

People who joined the session: Elaine Pantling (Thats me)
Verity, Vanessa, Gary, Steven, Chris and Louise, I think that's everyone.

The session really starts with me on my own for about 10 minutes having a lonely rant... my first thoughts were - There is a reason why I posed this question... I think, or am I just having a bit of a moan that the medium of TV seems to have in my experience of having an influence of what audience go to see/choose. How they make choices on seeing a piece of theatre that is performed by a nobody or an actor from TV land... am I saying that audiences are just fickle? to my surprise I was then joined by a lovely man who said that said that if he'd have met me before he would have come to see my show... this we decided that having the sense of the familiar or trusting what you will see helps to determine whether you go to see a particular show or artist. Seeing faces on the box does give a sense that you know the person. What is clear is that all performers need to build relationships with the audience and with the theatre or venue and to find new ways of engaging. One suggestion was to perform 20 minutes slots in theatres to raise profile and invent new ways of engaging with an audience... I was then joined by lots of people and the conversation took off... We discussed how often theatres and the audience opt for a safe option and not many step out of their comfort zone... it takes courage to do this. Theatre doesn't have to be performed in the Pros Arch space and can be performed anywhere and site specific performances are an important way of engaging and building an audience. Some were quite radical and suggested that as artist we should refuse to perform in theatres and perform in car parks instead and challenge the status quo... Someone said that we should always look to the reason for creating a piece of theatre and should be able to perform the same piece either in a pub or at the National. As a group we agreed that we should take ownership of our work... and make every effort to make the work and to always find ways to reach the audience and most of all to take control.

It is dangerous if using actors that are on the telly becomes a guiding principle and the possibility of MR Blobby playing Hamlet and the Telly Tubies playing the three witches in Macbeth all becomes to real!

To conclude we all agreed that you don't need the telly to get people to see your work... you just need to apply yourself and find new ways of engagement.


MR Blobby, Audience engagement, Telly