Follow Friday: 03 September 2010
What are we looking at this week at 2amt? The Chicago Fringe Festival is on, kidz. Philanthropy may be for the old, but surprisingly, so is social media. Rocco Landesman visited the Twin Cities. Anne Bogart connects science and performance. And somebody sprang the Mousetrap…
We might be a little light on descriptions this week as we’re in Chicago for the Fringe, with both a production and a 2amt panel, about which more in a minute…
Howard Shapiro on what’s brewing
At 2amt, we’ve been developing a plan (which we introduced in public at the Chicago Theatre (anti-) Conference) for a model theatre space, an affordable and simple plan for communities and theatre companies everywhere. The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Fringe has come up with something along these lines, the Live Arts Brewery, which will remain in place after the festival.
Megan Berry on your twitter strategy
Are you tweeting about your lunch? Do you reply to people? Are you just talking about sales and deals? Do you advertise your theatre production in conversations where it won’t have any impact? Maybe you should rethink your Twitter strategy. Here are 10 simple signs that you might be doing it wrong.
Emily Molitor on getting aggressive with passives
It’s hard to know who’s actually paying attention to your marketing. You can stick posters around town, put postcards in every cafe and bookstore, you can plant your online flags in the social media, but how do you know that anyone’s watching? Yes, we takl a lot about interacting with your online patrons, but what if they don’t interact? Check out this report, which points out that the majority of people checking you online are simply watching. Can you build a community from these users? What do you think we’re going to say…
Paul Botts on firm foundations
We’re into lists today. Here are ten common mistakes arts groups make when seeking grants. You might think they’re common sense, you might think they’re obvious, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to fall into some of these traps.
Rocco Landesman on the spot
In an interview with Mary Abbe, Rocco Landesman talks about his work at the NEA, how theatre initiatives are working (or not) and his whirlwind tour of the Minneapolis-St. Paul arts scene.
Anne Bogart is firing my neurons
“In the theater when fully engaged, the audience is not passively watching what is happening, rather is active, neurons firing.” This should be obvious–this should be the kind of engagement we strive for in every performance–but Anne Bogart takes us deeper, showing us how the neurons fire and how mirror neurons react to what we observe.
Katya Andresen on the same old same old
Older donors give more. So should we stick to the tried and true, the same old fundraising tricks and events? Not necessarily…
Peter Panepento on the new old new old
Speaking of which, social media usage is growing, and the largest growth has been in people ages 50 and up. The curve is even more dramatic in those 65 and up. What does this mean to us? It means that we can still keep the focus on donors that tend to give more AND continue to use social media in new ways to reach them. That’s called having your cake and eating it, too, even if you have to run a Kickstarter campaign to get the cake in the first place.
Paul Bignell and Matthew Bell on the oldest spoiler alert
Wikipedia has let out the secret ending of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” the longest running play in history. Sure, the play’s been running forever, but there are people who still haven’t seen it. (There are people who think the mousetrap was really his childhood sled.) Should Wikipedia delete that part of the entry, or should it stand?
2amt on the stage in Chicago
And just in case you missed the link on the front page, we’ll be streaming our “2amt in the 3rd Dimension” talk live from the Chicago Fringe Festival tomorrow morning, 11:30 am et, 10:30 ct, thanks to the #newplay channel at Arena Stage. Be there, aloha.
