Update: PWC Trailers are Live!

And you can see them here.

And they look great!

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.

Theater Grottesco: New Models, New Language

Unbelievably, we have reached the midway point for some of the current Aha! projects. John Flax from Theater Grottesco was kind enough to reflect on the Aha! process so far. Here, he discusses the challenges of learning a “business language” to complete their Do It! project.

Theater Grottesco is used to working with complex multi-dimensional structures in the creation of its artistic projects. But legal terms like “qualified investors”, “securities”, “merit review”, and “wealth transfer” have never been mentioned by creative artists. At this stage, our A-ha! Project has been both a positive anomaly and a burden in much the same way that learning a new language is difficult. Once the language is learned, however, the transformation can begin.

Soon, artistic and administrative staff will join board members in presenting a creative and sophisticated business model to Santa Fe’s leaders of commerce and philanthropy. We anticipate increased awareness and respect for our organization and our art, along with the necessary funds to create a state-of-the-art intimate performance venue which will add another layer of understanding and commitment to Grottesco and to smaller performing arts organizations everywhere, as we create a national model that will hopefully we duplicated and developed by others.

Up next on the Aha! Blog from Theater Grottesco: decoding some really complicated SEC legalese!

Every Day is Earth Day on the Aha! Blog

In honor of Earth Day, the Aha! Blog presents the following list of green resources, compiled Seema Sueko, artistic director of Mo’Olelo Performing Arts Center:

Brown & Williams Environmental Consulting

http://www.bw-environmental.com/

The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts

http://www.sustainablepractice.org/

The Cranbrook Court Theatre Company

http://thecctc.wordpress.com/

EcoBags

http://blog.ecobags.com/2008/08/moolelo-performing-arts-company-their.html

EcoTheater Blog

http://ecotheater.wordpress.com/

GreenLine paper company

http://greenlinepaper.com/

Mo’Olelo’s GREEN Theater Categories & Sustainable Guidelines

http://electrictemple.net/green.php

Portland Center Stage’s Gerding Theater

http://www.buildinggreen.com/hpb/overview.cfm?projectid=833

The Recycled Products Co-Op

http://www.recycledproducts.org/

Seema will also be taking part (via Skype!) in tomorrow’s panel on Theatre and the Environment at the Martin E. Segal Center in Manhattan.

Meet The Playwrights Center

Playwrights hear it constantly: “what’s your play about?” It’s a complicated question to answer, especially if your play hasn’t ever been published or performed. Minneapolis’ Playwrights Center (PWC), which has a long history of supporting playwrights at every stage of their careers, wanted to help answer that question. With trailers. That’s right, trailers.

PWC’s Do It! Grant was awarded to help PWC “play cupid” between playwright and producer. Three years ago, PWC launched a Profiles section for 40 of PWC’s Core writers, and a New Play Gallery. These areas of PWC’s website have become the most frequently used areas, and playwrights were contacted from as far away as Sao Paolo, Brazil. But PWC felt there was a crucial aspect of the “courtship” process still missing. They proposed to use their Do It! funds to produce a professional web trailer series, available to be downloaded for free in an audio-visual gallery on PWC’s website.

These trailers are being produced right now by PWC’s team. They’re not quite ready for public consumption yet, but as a kind of teaser-to-the-teaser, please enjoy these stills from the under-construction trailer for RASKOL by Kira Oblensky:

Meet Theater Grottesco

Theater Grottesco (based in Santa Fe, NM) had a string of bad-renovation luck. One space was condemned after a flood. One lease fell through when a co-lesee ran into administrative troubles. Then when the company found the perfect space and renovated it for a site-specific performance, the company realized they just didn’t have the network and resources to raise several million dollars in a capital campaign.

Grottesco is renowned for its organizational agility and adaptability. The company was founded in Paris in 1983, then moved to Detroit, and then again in 1996 to its current home in Santa Fe. So when faced with these real-estate setbacks, Grottesco decided to look at the bigger picture. There were other groups in Santa Fe whose work didn’t exactly fit into the traditional proscenium stage at the local community theatre, and none of them had the resources to start a campaign. What to do? Form an LLC.

As far as performance space real estate goes, this is a pretty radical idea. Everyone who purchases a share of Grottesco’s Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) will own a share in the venue. Shareholders are investors rather than donors, and shares will be sold for as little as $1,000 each.  As the project develops, TCG and Grottesco will report on how this new strategy is panning out. In the mean time, if you are interested in learning more about Theater Grottesco, visit their website.

Meet Woolly Mammoth

It’s a story every theatre practitioner knows by heart: scrappy company of artists with a daring approach to art sets out to change the world, scrappy company encounters success and makes some money, scrappy company hires a few staff members, scrappy company buys a building… and suddenly scrappy company’s daring approach to the art form is in jeopardy.

Sadly, this story usually ends with a slow, steady drift away from the company’s core values. But Washington, D.C.-based Woolly Mammoth is determined not to let success get in the way of a good thing.

Woolly Mammoth’s Think It grant is intended to stimulate creative thinking among the Woolly Mammoth staff – by giving them all time off. Every staff member will be taking one- to two-week paid sabbaticals, and shadowing someone who works in another profession. Staff members hope to return to the theatre with new ideas, new energy, new approaches, and new relationships and inroads into audience and donor bases.

Not every theatre company would have zeroed in on staff members as key players in the company’s continued commitment to innovation. But Woolly Mammoth is interested in integrating new ideas at every level of the company. Woolly Mammoth wants to ensure that the cutting-edge thinking they bring to the plays they produce gets translated to staff members. Check back as these sabbaticals take shape – we’ll be talking about what worked, and what didn’t work.