The Trailers Are in the Can. Now What?

As Aha! Blog readers know, Minnesota’s Playwrights Center has been hard at work producing trailers for unproduced plays. Now that filming is done and editing is underway, Erika Eklund reflected on the next steps for these digital synopses:

We are in the final throes of creating a DVD that includes an interview with PWC Producing Artistic Director Polly Carl about the genesis of the idea and the three trailers. The DVDs will be sent to 100 artistic directors across the country as well as our funders and major donors; our hope is to get them out the door by the end of April. At the same time we will launch the trailers and interviews on our website and we will be sending out a card announcing this launch to our mailing list of roughly 2000 people.

Because of the extensive amount of time and energy that the marketing effort has generated, we think we won’t create DVDs for the following trailers—that this will exist as an initial marketing effort for the launch of the project, but the next set of trailers created will be marketed solely through electronic means.

Effects of the project are yet to be determined. We think they’re great. The playwrights are thrilled with them. We are most eager to see—and have yet to see—the effect the trailers have on piquing the interests of artistic directors and literary managers to produce the plays. We have yet to see if this effort to “play Cupid” between script and producer really works.