Guest Blogger next week: ML Kinney

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We would like to thank Gyda Arber for being our guest blogger last week and sharing some of her insights into producing Indie Theatre.

We are happy to announce next week's guest blogger is ML Kinney.

ML is a founding member of the Milk Can Theatre Company. She has been working in New York Theatre for over twenty years. ML has worked as a playwright, lyricist, director, producer, stage manager, and actor and has a strong background in technical theatre. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild. She is currently in pre-production with The Milk Can for the spring premier of her full length play Life Among the Natives and ten-minute play What if… as part of the Disorder Plays. This is her second full length produced by the Milk Can, with her script Ashes produced in the Fall 2004, and her seventh endeavor in the Milk Can’s Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival.

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Community Outreach

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Gyda Arber.


One of my responsibilities in the theater world is as Outreach Director of The Brick (my fav theater space in NYC, though obviously I'm totally biased). I've been working on raising The Brick's profile in the last few years, and getting new folks in the door. I figured I'd share some of the things we've done that have worked for us!

Theater Discounts:
We've found offering online discounts can be effective at driving audience, especially to those hard to fill opening/middle weeks of a run. I've been particularly fond of TDF's Off-Off @ $9 lately, which is super easy (a lot easier than accepting vouchers) and gets us people who wouldn't normally come to The Brick.

Papering:
Papering services have been mostly ineffective for us, actually; we'll offer a block of tickets for sale and can't get anyone to come. I think people that belong to those services are looking for Broadway shows for free, and don't care about Indie theater. But we have found that NYU kids will jump at free tickets, and have a pretty good rate of showing up. All you have to do is email ticket.central@nyu.edu with the details.

Group Discounts:
--When we can get these organized, this has been a great way to drive new audience to our shows. Researching meetup or community groups that are interested in the show's topic can be a good place to start, offering a special discount code for their members. You can also offer a talk-back or other post-show event to sweeten the deal.

What have you found to be effective in driving audience to your shows?

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Pondering the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Gyda Arber.


Just wanted to say thanks to Shay and everyone at the IT Awards for letting me blog this week! I've toyed with the idea of starting a theater blog, but I don't think I can keep up with the prolific-ness of the theater bloggers--so this is a fun way to get my feet wet.

I just got back from researching taking my show, Suspicious Package, to the Edinburgh Fringe festival. It was a great trip (and everyone was so nice!!) but wow, is it expensive! For everyone out there who complains about the cost of FringeNYC, let me just say, NY is a bargain compared to Edinburgh! My show has only one actor (me), and doesn't need a theater space, so I thought it would be a relatively cheap and easy show to take. Not exactly. I'm sure it's cheaper than most, but still....

It's £400 just to register. Add to that, everyone strongly recommends you take out an ad, which is upwards of 1000 pounds! I know we're getting killed on the exchange rates, but that's a ton of money. Then you need to find a venue, which usually charges you a 40% guarantee as a rental fee, plus housing, food, press agent, posters, flyers, flights.... I'm not sure how anyone does it, honestly.

I'm still pretty excited about taking my show, though the fundraising will begin in earnest soon! Anyone out there ever gone to Edinburgh? Was it super expensive? Did you make any $ back?

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Guest Blogger of the Week: Gyda Arber

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We would like to thank Jeff Riebe for his inspirational blog posts last week. We miss you!

We are excited to announce that next week our guest blogger will be, Gyda Arber.


Gyda Arber is a writer-director best known for creating the multimedia iPod noir, Suspicious Package, which drew acclaim from a host of publications, including The New York Times ("A distinctly 21st-century form of participatory theater. A singular experience.") and The Village Voice ("Impressive!...Makes for thrills.") and was nominated for an IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Play. Named "Person of the Year 2008" by nytheatre.com, Gyda is also the director-creator of the interactive play Q&A: The Perception of Dawn ("quite ingenious"--nytheatre.com), the writer-director of the short film "Watching" (commissioned by the horror festival Sinister Six), and the assistant director of The Brick's hit shows Notes from Underground and The Ninja Cherry Orchard. Also an accomplished actress, she has appeared at The Public Theater, Joe's Pub, and most frequently at The Brick, in shows including Fassbinder's Blood on the Cat's Neck ("Phoebe Zeitgeist, an excellent Gyda Arber"--The New York Times), Greed: A Musical Love $tory (Anna Nicole Smith), the English-language premiere of Vaclav Havel's Mountain Hotel (Liza), Ian W. Hill's noir pastiche World Gone Wrong (Dolores), and the musical Ich Liebe Jesus! (Virgin Mary). She also serves as the Outreach Director of The Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A San Francisco native, she has a degree in musical theater from NYU, and is a graduate of the Maggie Flanigan Studio.

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