Social Media Success

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Kimberley Bowe

As Tuten and Solomon state, “today the Internet is the backbone of our society” (Tuten and Solomon, 2012, 4). It was clear that social media would be our main source of promoting our material and with all the cast falling into our target audience age range, it was a prime opportunity to use the internet to our advantage.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017a)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017b)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017c)

These screenshots are some examples of the activities which took place on the Facebook page. Through the stats we were able to identify the successes of each post and learn from what attracts more audience interaction. Some of the most successful posts included:

The video I made which related to the Frosted Tips campaign when we hit 300 likes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZMHFAEt7fg&feature=youtu.be

Name Reveal: I created a video to reveal that Record 97 was going to be the name of our debut production:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPURUSH3i-w&feature=youtu.be

And the individual cast introduction boomerang videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k3hpOTHa_o&feature=youtu.be

After gaining a successful amount of audience interaction with our posts, I decided to go that bit further and promoted Kick a Pigeon Theatre on Facebook groups. By targeting Facebook groups specifically for members who are interested in 90s nostalgia, it provided a gateway for me to promote our show and get more interest with how we were involving the 90s in Record ’97.

Twitter and Instagram:

As previously mentioned, Twitter proved difficult to keep up with, especially with the challenge of there being a character restriction which did not able us to promote our show as well as we could. Nevertheless, we used Twitter to tweet and retweets things relevant to our show and used this platform to support fellow theatre companies. Next time, to make Twitter more successful, there could be more than one member controlling the account and we could look into sponsoring a tweet which will promote the information more. Sponsoring or ‘boosting’ a post proved very successful with our Facebook page, so this success can be used on other platforms.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017d)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017e)

With Record ’97 being a very visually pleased show with an elaborate set, it was prime opportunity to use image dependant social media like Instagram. Throughout the promoting process, this platform was very successful in reaching out to the target audience by using appropriate images and carefully selected hashtags.

Works Cited

Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R. (2012) Social Media Marketing. 2^nd Edition. London, California, New Delhi and Singapore: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017a) FB Stats Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017b) FB Stats Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017c) FB Stats Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017d) Instagram Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017e) Twitter Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Preparation and Tech Day

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Amy Louise Blench

In preparation for the tech day, it was vital that not only did the company know what they were doing and were prepared, but also that the venue and tech team were also kept up to date. As stage manager, it was my job to liaise with the venue (Lincoln Performing Arts Centre) and the tech team there, in order to make sure all the necessary set and tech requirements were ready for our tech rehearsal. This involved preparing a technical rider (with the assistance of our set designer, Paige), which is a document containing all the technical specifications we would require for the running of our show, including set, lighting and sound, props and any special requirements or operations.

Since we would be having a box set comprised of flats, it was necessary for the technical team to be contacted prior to this to organise the decorating of the flats, which was done shortly after our initial production meeting with Martin Rousseau. In this meeting, we went over our initial ideas as a company for our set and technical designs in order to establish what would be possible within the venue and our budget. This was also to prepare the tech staff in case any set pieces or changes to the staging needed to be made by the team or altered on the day of the show. For example, the box set would take time to decorate and put together, most of this being done by the company (led by our set designer) in the weeks prior to the show, with the set being put up in our get in time on the day. The stage was also altered, with a catwalk added to the standard proscenium arch stage.

Figure 1 – Set Painting (Moran, 2017)

The tech day itself ran according to schedule, however due to us having a box set along with a lot of set dressing and props, the assembling of our set took the majority of our tech rehearsal. Along with imputing the sound and lighting cues onto Qlab, this left us no time for a full run or a cue-to-cue, leaving us less prepared for show day than we originally would have liked.

Figures:

Figure 1 -Moran, P. (2017) Photo of Set Painting. Lincoln.

Distribution…

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Kimberley Bowe

It is just over 2 weeks until show day!

We have received the print for our show. In regards to where the posters and flyers are being distributed, we targeted shops which fit in with the themes of Record ’97.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017a)

With it being set in a record store, posters were handed out to record stores in the city centre. In keeping with them themes of nostalgia and retro we also targeted vintage clothing shops where some of the cast’s costumes were purchased. With the print being very vibrant and unique, it proved successful to have the posters placed in shop display windows. The posters needed to be placed in prime locations in order to boost ticket sales. The flyers had to be distributed in prime locations therefore I split the company into pairs and scaled the high street and up Steep Hill. People were keen to take the flyers and put up posters. Our posters were also placed around the university campus.

Below are the alternate options for the poster which marketing designed. They ranged from keeping everything stripped back and simple to full garish rave-esque poster (which was the chosen one). I took inspiration form 90s band poster and recreated the feel of those posters by adding a group image to it. In the end the rave poster was the winner and the colour scheme is going to be used to create rave posters for the performance.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017b)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017c)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017d)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017e)

Works Cited

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

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017b) Purple Poster. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017c) 90s band style Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017d) Final Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017e) Stripped back Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Defining ‘Alex’

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Morwenna Murray

With the script now practically completed except for little edits that are being made in rehearsals, it is becoming increasingly easier as an actor to find the character, as it were. My character, Alex, is one of the most over-the-top comical and ‘wacky’ characters in the show due to her strange outlook on life (choosing to play a ukulele because “it’s edgy” (Briggs, 2017), using the image of a llama as a metaphor for society, as well as plenty of other things) and since I’m mostly used to doing more serious roles, it has been a challenge to tap in to the sheer weirdness and oddity of this character. However, working with a now mostly finished script is allowing me to properly track the journey of the character and see where I need to go and in what scenes I need to push the comedy, since there are several scenes where the comedy is inherent in the situation, where there is only one character onstage who is remotely “normal” and the others are all strange, or vice versa; and there are other scenes where we as actors need to perhaps increase our efforts to show the comedy in the writing.

Even though Alex’s backstory that the writing team created is very different than my own, I’ve found that I am able to bring a lot of myself to the character: being slightly quirky and offbeat when compared to most other people and finding it difficult to connect with other people except through a shared interest and struggling to work out how to get people to want to talk about things that interest me are all experiences that I have faced and that I share with Alex (though certainly not to the extreme presented in the show), which definitely assisted me a lot whenever I was struggling to ‘find’ the character. It also helped me to understand, as I said before, when to ‘push’ the comedy in a scene – one of my lines “I won’t. No one talks to me” (Briggs, 2017), said to Sebastian when he’s telling Alex about his crush on David, when said on its own is far more tragic than funny but through experimentation during rehearsals, I’ve discovered that saying the line sadly while still appearing to remain oblivious as to exactly why that should be the situation allowed the humour that was present in the line to shine through.

For further assistance at working out exactly how to play a character who is so wacky as Alex is, I examined similar characters from various sitcoms that I’ve seen – Phoebe from Friends, Abed from Community, and GOB from Arrested Development in particular since these characters all share Alex’s trait of viewing the world around them in a completely idiosyncratic way that makes perfect sense to them, but cannot be understood at all by the people they spend their time with, except for maybe a select few. This trait was especially pivotal to understanding Alex as a character, since she sees the world through the metaphor of a llama, which she thinks is totally understandable and which is explained in a scene that came straight from one of the improvised sessions near the beginning of the developmental process.

During this entire process, the thing I as an actor have been most conscious of is keeping Alex from becoming too over-the-top and cartoon-like since, once that happens, there’s no particular way for the humour to grow – “comedy, as has been extensively noted, is based in misery… As vicious as it sounds, no one will laugh if no one is hurt, whether emotionally or physically… The instant a character becomes a cartoon, they are unable to feel and, more importantly, unable to hurt…and so a fundamental ingredient is lost” (Lynn, 2012). Fortunately, I think that with the script having been developed in such close consultation with the actors, and the setting kept grounded by the referencing of real events that took place in 1997 (such as the general election, and the death of Princess Diana), it also helps to keep the characters grounded too, while still allowing for a few over-the-top moments.

Works Cited

Briggs, J. (2017) Record ’97. Lincoln.

Lynn, J. (2012) Comedy Rules: From the Cambridge Footlights to Yes, Prime Minister. Faber and Faber Ltd. Bloomsbury House, London.