Advice I'll Give

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Mark Armstrong.

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the advice I got when starting The Production Company. Six years later, I have some suggestions of my own to pass along. Take them with a grain of salt if you'd like, since everyone knows what opinions are like. Here are some of mine:

(1) If you're just starting your New York City theater company, don't feel like you have to do a full 16-performance run right away. I did, and our first year we played to some sparse houses for many of the performances. Over the next few years, I watched how my friend Isaac Butler build some buzz for short-run shows like In Public (with theatre minima), The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist and MilkMilkLemonade -- they had fewer performances, but the seats were always full.

(2) If you're working in New York, you have to show people something new. Do NOT do another low-budget revival of plays like The House of Yes, The Shape of Things or Two Rooms. Audiences in New York have seen those plays in expensive productions with great actors -- or, they've seen the films that two of those plays were made into. Seriously, get out and find something else to do. (If you're still reading this and thinking "yeah, but Mark doesn't know my super-special CONCEPT for The House of Yes, then I can't do any more for you.)

(3) If you're waiting for plays to be published before finding out what's new, you're way behind the curve. All the new playwrights you like have new material that's circulating and looking for a home. Here's how you get it. Find out who their agent is -- doollee.com is very helpful, though not always perfect, in assisting with this -- and call their office. You don't need the agent; you need the assistant. That person has new scripts on their hard drive and they sit at their desk all day emailing them to people. Make friends with the assistants for literary agents and you can get your hands on the latest scripts by your favorites. Invariably, some of these plays will be looking for a home and, if you make the right pitch, you'd be surprised.

(4) Invite people you'd like to work with to see your work. In between trying desperately to get Ben Brantley there, spend some time inviting your favorite actors and playwrights to see work you're proud of. Facebook makes this really easy. Down the road, that may prove just as helpful.

(5) When you see work that you really respond to, send a note to the artists whose work you liked. Again, the age of Facebook is your friend here.

(6) New York is different now. There's one large theater artistic director who I love, but every time I hear him talk, he tells us all how lucky we are that we have the Fringe Festival, which wasn't here when he was starting out. I always want to respond "Yeah, but when you were building your company, renting a halfway-decent theater in Manhattan didn't cost at least $4000 per week!" The real estate thing is harder than it used to be, which is why finding ways to collaborate creatively with other companies and venues is important.

(7) On the venue thing: I always try to use venues that I feel like people have positive associations with -- i.e. when they go there, they associate the space with good work. There are some spaces that just hearing the name of puts me off going there. (You all know the ones I mean.)

(8) Be "at the party." (This is another of Beth Blickers' tips.) If you like new plays, there are lots of free readings and other events to attend all over the city. Hang out at New Dramatists, read the plays in their library and show up when they have parties.

(9) Sounds like schmoozing? Think that's gross? I once interviewed Carey Perloff from ACT and she set me straight on that point. Yes, she offered, there will come a point in your career where you feel that everything is about who you know and it's so nepotistic and blah-blah. Another way of looking at it, she said, is that theater is about relationships. Since what we do in the creative process is build relationships, it's perhaps only natural that theater people would build their careers in a social, relational way. Ignore the schmooze at your own peril.

(10) The Off-Off-Broadway community is awesome, but don't avoid creative relationships with artists from the off-Broadway and Broadway scene. What I love about New York theater is that Broadway folks can come downtown to see their veteran pals experiment with new stuff, while we can all go to the big houses and cheer one of our friends who lands a big gig. Off-Off-Broadway is a great creative engine for the American theater, but it shouldn't be a ghetto.

NEXT: More on #10

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Advice I Got

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 Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Mark Armstrong.

It's hard to believe that it's been six years since we started The Production Company -- and even harder still to think that we've made it this long. One of the things I did when we started out was to do a "coffee tour" of New York and ask advice from everyone who would talk with me. In the spirit of community and shared knowledge, I'll pass some of it along here.

Beth Blickers from Abrams Artists was wonderful to me, sitting and talking for a few hours. Her suggestion that I reach out to playwrights I admired and ask them to write a short play. This suggestion became the basis for The Australia Project, in which an unbelievable group of US playwrights created short plays inspired by Australia. Looking back, it was incredibly generous of these off-Broadway and Broadway writers to fire off a new play for us. Invariably, people asked me how I was able to get all these acclaimed writers to write for my new company. My response was simple: I asked them.

Carl Forsman from Keen Company sat with me until I had literally run out of questions. (I should have had more, by the way. Anyone who's looking to build and grow a small company in New York City needs to look at what Keen has done.) Two pieces of advice he gave me were invaluable. The first was to forget about grants in the early years and focus on corporate matching donations. The kind of grants available to New York companies in their early years, he noted, were so small that the investment of time might be better used elsewhere -- put simply, he advised us not to kill ourselves working on a $500 grant application that would maybe pay for 1/6 of one week's theater rental! But if an employee working for a corporation with a matching program donates $2000, that's $4000 right away!

Carl's second piece of good advice for us was to move to the AEA Seasonal Showcase as soon as possible. The additional pay for actors, although it might sound like a lot, wasn't that large a commitment in the scheme of things and the additional flexibility (higher ticket prices, more performances) paid off immediately. (For anyone who's not aware, the AEA Seasonal Showcase is for companies that have their own 501(c)3 status, produce two shows per year and pay actors a set percentage of their income.)

On that subject: often, I hear generalized complaints about AEA from the Off-Off-Broadway community, which sometimes come from people that aren't familiar with the whole complement of agreements on offer. In addition to the Basic Showcase, both the Seasonal Showcase and the Transition Contract are designed to help small companies grow. Certainly, it's possible to raise concerns about these agreements, but it's best to do some from a position of understanding and experience, rather than repeating urban legends. (No, AEA will not stand in the way of you paying a press agent.) Carl's additional advice was to speak with representatives at AEA about our desire to grow and find ways that they would work with us, which we did and they were happy to do.

Another piece of advice I got, but regretted following: a well-meaning advisor suggested that we forego having a press agent for our first show. His rationale was that since we didn't have a body of work for a press rep to be excited about, they might not represent us well. Fair enough, but we also didn't get in any press and wound up having to commandeer someone at the last minute to try to rescue us. It's a terrible feeling to throw everything you have into your first show and realize that the press doesn't just show up. (In other cities, they actually do!) Hire a press agent and get them what they need to do their job well.

NEXT: Advice I'll Give

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Guest Blogger of the Week: Mark Armstrong

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We want to thank David Johnson for his awesome blog last week. Thanks David!

We are happy to announce next week's blogger, Mark Armstrong.

Mark Armstrong is the Artistic Director of The Production Company, which exchanges challenging new plays between the United States and Australia. He directed the company's premiere productions of Blair Singer’s The Most Damaging Wound and Meg's New Friend, Dan O'Brien's The Angel in the Trees, Patricia Cornelius' Love (US Premiere), Stephen Belber's Melbourne, Elizabeth Meriwether's The Sound in the Throat, Beau Willimon's I Am Ned Kelly, Alan Berks' Goats (NY Premiere), Ben Ellis' Falling Petals (US Premiere) and Beneath Us, Brendan Cowell's 967 Tuna and Ross Mueller's Pinter's Explanation. Other New York credits include new plays by Christopher Shinn, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Elizabeth Meriwether, Jason Grote, anton dudley, Trista Baldwin, Edith Freni, Delaney Britt Brewer, Suzanne Bradbeer and many others. Academic theater (as guest professional): Columbia, NYU, New School for Drama, USF (Holloway Guest Artist). Before coming to New York, he was resident director with Dark Horse Theatre Company in his native Minnesota, where he directed Fat Men in Skirts, The Food Chain, Private Eyes, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress and Orphans. Member, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. MFA, Arizona State University (Dobkin Directing Fellow), where he studied with Marshall W. Mason.

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