Astoria is Not That Far

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Tom Wojtunik.

I took over as Artistic Director of APAC in 2008. Next week we open the first mainstage in our 10^thanniversary season, a remount of Joshua Conkel’s MilkMilkLemonade, featuring the original cast. It’s a terrific piece that had a critically acclaimed, though criminally short, run in the 45-seat UNDER St. Mark’s in September of 2009. Like all indie theatre companies, in addition to readying the physical production for opening night, we are also focusing on ticket sales, especially for the all-important opening weekend, when press attends and fates are decided. 

APAC audiences tend to split in thirds: our core Astoria supporters, friends/family of people involved in that particular production, and Manhattan theatergoers. We can always count on the first two categories—it’s the third that can sometimes remain elusive. The argument we always hear, of course, is that Astoria is too far, that the commute is too much for people. So I’m going to shamelessly use this public forum to attempt to debunk that myth…

Astoria is not that far! I promise. I’ve lived in NYC for thirteen years, and Astoria for eight. I love it. It’s quiet and the commute is super easy. During the week, I can get to midtown in twenty minutes. Sure, weekends can be tougher, especially with MTA construction going on, but that’s a city-wide problem. Honestly, it took me longer to get places when I lived on First Avenue on the Upper East Side than it does now.

Hands down, the best thing about Astoria is the food. Arguably, Queens has the best in all of New York. A.O. Scott of the New York Times called Queens “demographically the most cosmopolitan of the five boroughs and something of a foodie mecca.” Artists who have worked at APAC in the past (and who don’t live in Astoria) often come back to the neighborhood to revisit their favorite restaurants from rehearsals.

Come see MilkMilkLemonade. You’ll have a terrific time at the show, and since it’s only 75-minutes, why not enjoy some Astoria-cuisine before or after the show? Here are some suggestions:

Sac’s Place

The best pizza in Queens, and a favorite of Al Pacino’s and David Chase (Johnny Sack on “The Sopranos” was named after this restaurant, a favorite of the creators during shooting). The ravioli are handmade every morning, but you also can’t go wrong with the pizza:

Sweet Afton Bar

Probably the coolest new bar in Astoria, with fun drinks (Dirty Pickle Martini!), great draft beers, and a limited but delicious menu. APAC is currently raffling off a $50 gift certificate to Sweet Afton—buy your tickets for MilkMilkLemonade by 12:00pm tomorrow (Wed 10/20), and you’ll automatically be entered to win! The cheeseburger alone is worth it:

Vesta Trattoria & Wine Bar

An APAC favorite (we often have opening night parties here). Amazing staff and ambiance and terrific pizza, pastas and entrees. They have wine on tap, and if you tell them you’re going to(or just saw) MilkMilkLemonade you’ll get a free Baby Jesus Cake for dessert (it lives up to the name, I promise):

Hungry yet?

There is a lot of terrific theatre happening in the boroughs. Grow up. Get on the subway. Have an adventure.

MilkMilkLemonade runs October 28-November 13^th. Buy your tickets here.

P.S. The joke about needing to get your passport stamped to leave Manhattan is tired. I’ll give two free tickets to MilkMilkLemonade to whoever comes up with a better one (submissions accepted on comments to this blog posting only!).

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Tom Steps Out

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Tom Wojtunik.

My first blog post. Ever.

I’m the guy who still does not have a Facebook account. I think that “checking in,” so people know where I am at all times, is like something out of Brave New World. And I definitely do not Tweet. I am, admittedly, something of a social networking dinosaur. 

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a technophobe. I communicate more through email than the phone. I read blogs and visit various websites, daily. Once upon a time I had a MySpace account, and before that I was even on Friendster. I have an iPhone!

So why am I so reluctant to join the social media craze? 

For one, I don’t really have the time. It’s hard enough to stay on top of email, and I suspect I would be easily sucked into the world of Facebook if I allowed myself. While I’m intrigued by the voyeuristic opportunities, there’s something to be said for learning about a person in a natural way, over time. I guess I actually enjoy the mystery in life.

From a professional standpoint, I’m uncomfortable with how much Facebook mixes the personal with the professional. Of course, theater is a business that thrives on that interconnectedness, and it’s actually one of my favorite things about it. Still, I think it’s possible to go too far.

An actor I once worked with used their Facebook status to comment on the progress of rehearsals, which I found appalling. The rehearsal room should be a sanctuary—a place where actors feel like they can safely experiment and fail. It’s completely unnerving to have a friend not involved with the production say, “Heard you had a bad run-thru last night.” Another time, while casting a large musical, I was told about the blog of an actor who was auditioning for me. He desperately wanted one of the lead roles, and had started a blog chain following his audition process, all the way through final callback. He ended up not getting the role, and he wrote about that, too. It was especially disturbing that he used names—my name, the theatre, even the name of the actor who ended up getting it. The tone of the posts was decidedly one of someone who had been “wronged.” To this day, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I honestly couldn’t imagine ever hiring this actor.

I currently serve as the Artistic Director for the Astoria Performing Arts Center and last season, we brought on a Marketing Director, Dave Charest. I’ve known Dave for years—we went to college together and he’s one of my oldest friends. And he couldn’t disagree with me more. He sees the potential in social media, and is excellent at using it.

He’s constantly scheming new ways to get me to join Facebook, and we often butt heads about these issues. He has an incredible knowledge of the social networking arena, and he’s so connected to the theatre blogosphere and beyond, it’s intimidating. I’m positive he’ll find this blog post without me telling him about it, and chances are he’ll comment—so “Hi, David!”

Dave has been an invaluable addition to the APAC staff. Our audience base has grown, but more importantly, we’re communicating with them more effectively than we ever did. And even better than that, they’re communicating back with us. So I’ve seen firsthand the value in these newfangled marketing techniques.

So here’s to me Blogging, at least for the next week, and stepping out of my comfort zone! (Just don’t try to find me on Facebook.)

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Guest Blogger of the week: Tom Wojtunik

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We would like to thank Mark Armstrong for his great blogs this week and all the advice he shared.      

We are excited that next week's guest blogger is Tom Wojtunik.

Tom Wojtunik (Director) is the artistic director of the Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC), where he directed Children of Eden, The Pillowman, Ragtime and Proof. Other NY credits: The Play About the Naked Guy, Edenville (Emerging Artists Theatre); The Miss Education of Jenna Bush (FringeNYC, Best Solo Show & Audience Favorite); Bright Lights, Big City (Marymount Manhattan College); The Who’s Tommy, Man of La Mancha, Six Degrees of Separation, Urinetown, Take Me Out (The Gallery Players); I'm In Love With Your Wife (Midtown International Theatre Festival); The Good Thief and Rum and Vodka (Prospect St). Tom was a Resident Director for the Ensemble Studio Theatre, where directed workshops of Bella Via and David’s Play. He directed the 2010 IT Awards Ceremony, and his productions have been nominated for fifteen IT Awards, including two wins for Outstanding Production of a Musical for Children of Eden and Urinetown. Tom is a member of EAT and the LCT Directors’ Lab. BFA: Marymount Manhattan College. SDC Member. 

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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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