YouTube – Progeny Theatre Company’s Promotional and other video views.

YouTube views 24.05.13

YouTube views 24.05.13

 

Above is the overall views of the YouTube videos uploaded by Progeny Theatre Company. Each video, apart from the video entitled ‘Gary’ which was character work for the Piano Tuner, were uploaded to Facebook and Twitter. Sharing our videos onto our social networking sites is beneficial to the company as it enables our followers to see our vidoes instantly.

Our highest viewed video is one that promotes Progeny Theatre as a company, rather than the show. If Progeny was to continue after this module, the fact that our highest viewed video is promoting the company benefits us. Our on-line followers could recognize us a company from these videos.

The promotional video for our show had to be edited towards the date of our show to include our show title, the new date and the time. We originally had our trailer to promote the company and a teaser for the show, so when the performance dates were released to us we were able to edit the video to correctly promote our show. The new promotional video is as follows;

 

Word Count – 218

 

 

Marketing Plan Reviewed

Unfortunately not all of our marketing ideas and plans were carried out. If we were a professional theatre company then I think that they would have been. However, we are not and we all have jobs, other modules, essays and other things which we have to dedicate our time to. If this was a full time job then we would have had enough time to complete each stage of our plan. Although we did manage to carry out most of our marketing plan, I feel that we simply gave ourselves too many activities to be able to put them all into action. Our social network sites were up and running by January and we communicated with our audience throughout the whole process. We did this in a number of different ways, including providing ‘teaser’ pictures, generating polls for them to complete, holding competitions and revealing general information about the company, the show and the process of creating it. We also created two promotional videos by the date that we set ourselves which were released on our social media sites. We accomplished our idea of ‘tagging’ in the University library which generated a reaction from our audience. Before doing this I made sure that I emailed the library to get permission as a precautionary measure as we did not want to receive a bad reputation as a new theatre company. We also created the posters in March; however, they were not released on time as there was a delay in the printing of them. The Company that we used made a mistake so needed to reprint them. Although this meant that we had to wait longer it also meant that we were able to change the date to the new date of the 19th of May, which occurred due to a misunderstanding. We also released different posters to our initial creations. Although the first posters that we designed displayed exactly what we wanted, they did not look very professional due to the lack of equipment that we had. Instead we decided to use a royalty free image of a woman holding a rose as this image looked more professional, due to the quality, and so had a better effect on our company image. One thing that we did not have time to do was the street performances. This was due to the fact that we were focusing on other aspects such as the posters and the tagging and then once all of these were completed we had run out of time. Due to lack of time, and people’s individual schedules, it was hard to find time where we were all available to implement street performances. If I were to do this module again I would have started with the street performances as everybody in our company seemed to have more free time at the beginning, and this was the only aspect that we needed everyone to participate in. However, overall I feel that we did carry out a sufficient amount of marketing which can be seen in the high ticket sales. We discovered that the average number of audience members to attend a student performance is fifty, yet we had over 100 audience members.

 

Word count: 531

 

Marketing plan written by Jessica Smith and Kelsey Stirling:

Progeny Theatre Company’s marketing plan

 

Creating the Program

When making a theatre program, for any performance, we believe that the design of the program should relate to the performance. Jessica Smith and I (the Marketing team) wanted to ensure that our program did this. This was through the appearance of the program – we used a simple yet interesting border which we believed seemed fitting to a fairy tale. It was essential for us that the program looked as if it would fit in with the fairy tale world rather than the corrupted fairy tale world that we were presenting on stage.

We wanted our programs to seem unique to our production – other than the information it contained. This could have been further achieved by the program containing a memento from the performance. The idea the marketing team and the Director had was to include a wax sealed latter from the count inviting the audience into his castle. However, budget restrictions we were unable to carry this idea through. If we were to repeat this process we would ensure to raise money for marketing so unique ideas, such as the aforementioned one, could be used.

The program contained, as any program would, the cast and crew, a director’s foreword, a show copy, acknowledgements and – of course- the details for the show. However the way our program differed from others was that we included a caption that was created by our competition winner. This was displayed on the front of our program underneath the picture. This was used to reward the winner, along with the free tickets; it would also encourage future participants to enter further competitions. The reason we chose to use this caption on our program also shows that Progeny Theatre Company have had an interactive relationship with the audience throughout the process and have continued to build this interaction within most areas of marketing. The program was as follows;

Program v3

Word Count – 307

Progeny Theatre Company’s Press Release

Progeny Theatre Company’s A Gothic Tale.

 

Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (LPAC)
Newly formed Progeny Theatre Company’s debut performance of A Gothic Tale will be premiered at the LPAC on Sunday 19th May 2013.

A Gothic Tale is an adaptation of Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber. This performance tells the story of what happens to the ‘happily ever after’ once corruption takes over.

Tickets are available from the box office, which is located in LPAC, for £5. They are also available online on the LPAC website. A Gothic Tale contains violence and scenes of a sexual nature and is only suitable for ages 16 and over.

About Progeny Theatre Company
As part of a module at the University of Lincoln, third years have created theatre companies. Progeny Theatre is a newly established theatre company based in Lincoln. We aim to produce children’s theatre for adults by adapting well known children’s stories and enhancing them through the use of elaborate technical elements.

Progeny Theatre Company’s mission statement emphasises that we exist to change the perceptions and perspectives of those who are familiar with children’s stories. In doing so, we hope to alter the genre of ’Children’s Theatre’, to directly encompass the adult audience. We aim to create theatre, which allows escapism for adults by adapting children’s stories. Our theatre company aspires to create that which has not been seen before through controversial and innovative means, which will be enhanced through use of elaborate set, costume and technical elements.

Contact Information
To learn more about Progeny Theatre Company and their debut performance of A Gothic Tale feel free to contact us on;

progenytheatre@gmail.com
 

 

Playbox Theatre

I have recently discovered a company named Playbox Theatre who, in 2010, produced and adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.  Matthew Finch states that Playbox were “blurring the transition from everyday life to a darker fairytale world” (2010). Although this is similar to what we were doing with A Gothic Tale, as we were showing the reality of what happened after the ‘happily ever after’ – in between the dream scenes, our performances differed drastically. Where their production was based on Bluebeard, ours incorporated Bluebeard and The Snow Child. We also added certain characters such as the Ex-Wife and the House Keeper. Finch later goes on to say, “in the opening dance, a suited man – the malevolent husband of the protagonist – moved among the girls, posing them, dancing with them, tearing out their hearts in his search for the perfect woman” (2010). Their ending was completely different too. A Gothic Tale ended with a series of twists including Elizabeth (The Countess) accidentally killing William (The Blind Piano Tuner), then with the reveal of the newly dead Ex-Wife , then Elizabeth killing the Count (on her second attempt) and finally with the House Keeper locking her in the bloody chamber. Playbox’s production ended with the Countess blinding herself with the key to the bloody chamber:

The original’s happily-ever-after conclusion is replaced by an extended sequence derived from Carter’s vampiric Lady of the House of Love. The widowed bride blinds herself with the key to her husband’s chamber and attacks the women’s magazines that litter the stage with their incessant bombardment of words and images. She feasts on stolen hearts…before turning on her new lover to quote her husband’s ominous words: ‘This is the key that leads to the kingdom of the unimaginable.’

(Finch, 2010).

Despite these differences, some elements where the same as they are based on the same story. For instance, the necklace given to the Countess, in both productions, where made of red ribbon to symbolise a slit on her neck.

 

Playbox were founded in 1986 and they work closely with young people,

It exists to provide young people and developing artists a unique environment for training, creation and exploration in theatre and related artistic forms.

Playbox believes passionately in the evolution of a strong artistic network regardless of age, experience, social, religious and cultural backgrounds.

Throughout the year Playbox Theatre offers a wide range of programmes and activities for young people to learn and develop skills across the arts.

(Playbox Theatre 2012).

Being a highly established company their marketing differs to ours. However, like Progeny Theatre Company, they do have a Twitter account and a Facebook page. Their Twitter account is used in the same way as ours. They use it to keep their followers informed about upcoming performances and to make announcements about their company in general. They also notify their followers about involvement opportunities within their company. With them being a well-known professional company, they do have more followers than we do. They have 944 where as we have 167.

playbox twitter 1

(Playbox Theatre’s Twitter account)

 

Playbox twitter 2

(Playbox Theatre’s Twitter account)

 

progeny twitter 1

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Twitter account)

progeny twitter 2

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Twitter account)

 

Playbox use Facebook to document the process of their productions and to give their audience sneak previews, as do we. We use our Facebook page in many of the same ways in which Playbox Theatre do. We have rehearsal photos, promotional videos and events, including the event of our show. We each have and ‘about’ section which include our mission statements. However, Playbox Theatre also have a small history of their company and directions to their headquarters, The Dream Factory. These are things that are impossible for us to have as we are not an established company. Although I do feel that we create more engagement with our audience due to the things such as competitions that we hold. This allows us to interact more with our audience. Again they obviously have more likes than us. They have 1,179 likes where as we currently have 233 likes.

 

playbox fb

(Playbox Theatre)

 

progeny fb

(Progeny Theatre Company)

 

playbox fb 1

(Playbox Theatre’s Facebook page)

 

playbox fb 2

(Playbox Theatre’s Facebook page)

 

Progeny fb1

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Facebook page)

 

progeny fb 1

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Facebook page)

 

Word Count: 689

Works Cited

Finch, Matthew (2010) Guest Post: Matthew Finch on Playbox Theatre’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’. Online:

http://thefairytalecupboard.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/guest-post-matthew-finch-on-playbox.html [accessed 16th May 2013].

 

Playbox Theatre (2012) Mission Statement. Online:

http://www.playboxtheatre.com/aboutus/Mission_Statement.html [accessed 16th May 2013].

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