Marketing in the future…

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Kimberley Bowe

Arts Council England (ACE) define marketing as – “the process of communicating the value of your work to potential audiences, visitors and participants” (Arts Council England, 2016, 3). ACE provide segments which help organisations to understand the target audiences so that they can develop their communications for their audience’s needs.

“It can help any organisation working to increase arts engagement to identify target segments and develop tailored engagement strategies and marketing campaigns” (ACE, 2011, 5).

We performed Record ’97 on 24^th May 2017 and despite us having a reasonable sized audience, I have learnt that some marketing strategies are more successful than others. I have learnt that the strongest communication for potential audiences is Facebook. By studying the statistics of the post engagements on Facebook, it is clear that this was the most successful marketing tool in gaining audience interaction. Looking forward with social media, I would develop using more social media platforms such as Snapchat. We made an account but it was used to its full potential.

Record ’97 featured an elaborate set, however if Kick A Pigeon Theatre were to take this production on tour, I would use some of the same marketing strategies which I have used whilst in Lincoln. I would focus more on posting sponsored posts as these have a higher success rate. I would also look into what kind of theatre is hosted at the touring cities and decipher how to target the audience’s specific for our production. Due to the success in Lincoln I would also urge going out in to the city and advertising our production through face to face contact with the public whilst handing out flyers.

The feedback we received from our production showed that people of all ages enjoyed our show, not just the young 16 – 30 age range we targeted at. With this being said, I would look into more marketing techniques so that a wider age range can be targeted. For older members of the public, social media may not be as successful.

Works Cited

Arts Council England. (2011) Arts audiences: Insight. London.

Arts Council England (2016) Audience development and marketing, and Grants for the Arts. London.

Theatre Company Name

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Adam Cockerill

We decided to come up with a name. Several names were thrown out and we wrote them all down. Our first name which we thought of having is “Forthright Theatre”. I was very comfortable with the name because we are a theatre company who are able, to be honest, straightforward and very outspoken towards each other.

Cast Photo (Noble, 2017)

We were Forthright Theatre, until someone in the cast (who I will not name) told us about how she kicked a pigeon because she was going through a very bad day.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre Logo (Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017)

As a result, arose the name we would go on to be identified as… Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Works Cited;

Kick a Pigeon Theatre (2017) Logo. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick a Pigeon Theatre.

Noble, R. (2017) Cast. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

What is your mission?

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Adam Cockerill

We decided we want to be a theatre company which highlights comedy. That was our intention as we were all pretty much a company that makes each other laugh. We read the Arts Council England’s guidance and it tells us how to be a successful theatre company. The guidance allowed us to estimate our performance, creative and imaginative abilities in order to for our company to strive the best we can. We came up with;

Aiming to make accessible shows that can be understood by anyone whilst also challenging perceptions of what comedy is and what we find funny.
Wanting to explore comedy through the use of original writings and an ensemble cast to highlight the importance of community and the relationship between the audience and performance.
Wanting to remind people where we came from, what we fought to get here, and show that even if we have to do it all again, at least we can laugh about it.

(Kickapigeon.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk, 2017)

From these points, we knew that comedy was the genre we all wanted to do.

Works Cited:

Kickapigeon.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk. (2017). About Us |. [online] Available at: https://kickapigeon.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ [Accessed 29 May 2017].

Let’s start at the very beginning!

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Adam Cockerill

Our first Production meeting together was the company’s way of getting to know each other’s work ethic and passion. We discussed what roles people would like to do. I knew I was going to be the Lighting and Sound designer as I was the only person in the group who studied Production Skills in second year. However, the one thing I wanted to do was act as that is what I have a huge passion for.

We discussed what kind of theatre we all wanted to make. After watching Magpie and the Yorkshireman, we wanted to do something that follows on from that. Therefore, we decided to create a type of theatre that would entail a comedy farce that provides serious issues. We were thinking of making a laugh out of serious issues to signify that life is hard and unbearable, we can do nothing about it.

As well as us being actors, our production roles we had were;

Amy Blench – Stage Manager/Assistant Writer
Kimberley Bowe – Marketing Manager
Jack Briggs – Props Manager/Writer
Paige Moran – Set Designer/Marketing Assistant
Morwenna Murray – Assistant Writer/Marketing Assistant
Catherine Richardson – Costume Designer
Elif Taneri – Dramaturg
Myself – Lighting and Sound Designer

Record ’97 Performance Evaluation

Posted on May 26, 2017 by Emily Wood

Kick A Pigeon Theatre on Performance Day (Noble, 2017)

Before our debut performance of Record ’97, I was aware that the piece was very comedic, however, having never performed it in front of an audience, I was not sure how much of it would be comical for an audience witnessing it for the first time, and how the audience would react to the different elements of comedy within the piece. During the performance, the audience had amazing reactions to the physical and verbal comedy throughout the piece, and even laughed at elements of the show that we as a company did think would get as big a reaction as it received on the night. This reaction from an audience was amazing for our first show, and gave a renewed energy to the performers and the performance as a whole.

In addition to this, all of the production elements within the piece blended together very well and created a smooth and seamless performance. Nothing felt out of place or unnecessary, and all of these elements contributed to an even better performance. The set, sound and light used within the piece created the nostalgic effect of the 1990’s whilst informing the audience of the time period. The news broadcasts worked very well as a way of showing that, whilst the play is displaying the stories of the characters within the record store, the world around them is still moving, and is still imposing itself upon them, and I feel that during the performance this was displayed in a very effective manner and was translated to the audience very effectively.

During my time as director, I have learnt a lot, but I would say that one of the main comments that stuck by me during the entire process was “never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. I believe that the audience like to work for their laughter” (Cooney, 2014). Whilst this comment is about farcical comedies, I believe that this can be applied to any genre of performance, and can also be useful for both performers and directors. With a comedy, it is very easy to create generic humour through some of the physical movements overused lines and gags and I believe we managed to effectively stay away from these, using the characters that we had created and developed to create the comical elements within the show.

In addition, I feel that everyone’s character was very well developed and portrayed on stage. As director, I had individual meetings with each member of the cast to develop their characters beyond what was stated within the writing. I worked with each cast member to ensure the intentions of the character during each scene was clear for the actor, and I feel that this development meant that the piece was given more life, and the characters really became three-dimensional.

If Kick a Pigeon were to continue in the future, our first steps would be to apply for Arts Council England funding, and also to scale down the set of the show in order to both lower the cost of the production, but also to make it easier to transport between venues whilst on tour.

Works Cited: Cooney, R. (2014) Ray Cooney’s Six Rules of Farce. London: Telegraph. Available from:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10688416/Ray-Cooneys-six-rules-of-farce.html [accessed 26th May 2017]

Noble, R. (2017)