Cash in on this

Box office (gross) sales ... $32,400.00 per week .. Too bad it was a slow week.

Audience size 120 (happy people).
Cost per ticket (average) $45.00.
Number of shows per week - 6.
Type of venue - dinner theatre.
Show - Comedy and/or musical.

Nothing there is out of the ordinary.. and your houses (number of people in the audience) could be higher.
There are a lot of variances here that we can go into later.

BUT...

But for your theatre company, this whole scenario, well this is not happening is it?

You're a group of people just starting out.
You've always had this idea to start your own theatre company.
The dream of it anyway.

OR

Maybe your are a community theatre company already and you want to strive for bigger and better shows.

One thing here I never use the phrase Amatuer Theatre.
Amatuer, the word I mean... suggest that you are not serious.

PROBLEMS

There are problems of course.
Some of these you feel hinder you and yes they actually do.

• You have too many people who think they are in charge.
• Your stage is not the best area.
• Your lighting sucks.
• You can't get anyone to come out to rehearsals.
• Some people have connections and avoid being involved in the dreaded audition.
• You can't find a way to make your audiences want more.
• Your audiences are small, and most are friends or relatives.

Okay stick with this kind of attitude, this formula and well. I can tell you plain and simple you are going to go anywhere.

BUT

All of this is fixable.

HOW?

You need help... 

You need help from someone (possible me) and others like me that will not charge you anything to do this.

We will though require that you have our complete attention. You must follow the way we do things or this will not work. You must allow us to take charge, so to speak. Then we can work with you to create a wonderful and special theatrical experience.

Interested?

more to come later..

Making Money, lots of it

Theatre is hard work, but I love it.... I have been involved in theatre many times over my lifetime and I am not done yet... 

 It was always fun.

 Then I learned how to make money doing it...

Make Money doing theatre???? 

Yes... thats right and guess what? A lot of money.

Why not?

To do that, make money doing theatre you have to take off your creative hat and put on your business hat.

When I first started out with my theatre company I had no idea (on a business level how to do that... )

I had to learn.

Well for one thing when you first start out no one knows you, so why would they ever want to pay to see you entertain them in the first place?

So you put on your sales hat and your marketing hat.. They sort of look the same.

You need to convince everybody (well a lot of people) and make a name for yourself, yes you do if you want to do shows and a lot of them.

Promotion is the key here. You have a show and it's the best show ever. Now you need to sell it. 

One trick is to do free shows. Actually what you do is part of a show, or a short piece to showcase your talents.
You can also volunteer your efforts for free..

In the beginning when I had a venue lined up, I tried to do a percentage of the ticket at first, but that only works if you have a show everyone wants to see.  If no one knows about you, then very few people will come to your show and that ticket percentage will be small.

Forget that, period.

You have to decide what your worth, what the show is worth. You have to take into account all your costs that need to be covered. You need a break even point and a profit point.

Then you need to advertise and cheaply to keep your overheads down. You have to do a lot of knocking on doors, talk to as many people as you can and get someone to listen.

But there is another way to get people to see your shows.

I remember once with my theatre company someone told me that they had heard of my theatre company two years before I ever created it. Was I going to correct that person. NO way. I just let them believe their version of the truth, in hope that this person would continue that story to other people she knew. 

Look at your audience and give them want they want. Look at the demographics of your audience, their age group even, their moral beliefs, what part of the country are they situated in.

Big city folk are usually more tolerant than smaller more isolated centres. Ask yourself what are you doing this theatre business for. Yes the love of it of course. But are you willing to sacrifice what you want to do against, some abstract black comedy or, what your (paying) audience wants. Once you are established, well then you can be more choosy in what you want to do.  Not in the beginning that is if you want to make money doing this.

Lets look at demographics for a moment.

My theatre company worked out of Calgary, Alberta and we travelled out in a roughly 100 mile radius of that city. 
This was prairie country, with lots of large ranches and farms of all sizes. Part of our territory would take us into what is loosely called the Bible belt. In other words some (not all) of these people had certain moral feelings that would not accept certain types of theatre storytelling or language.

Scripts sometimes had to be toned down, language altered as we did not want to offend anyone in our audiences. We mostly used comedy as our performing platform as everyone likes a good laugh. We kept the shows squeaky clean.

The first step to make money in theatre is to insure that a lot of people come to see your shows.

If the theatre house holds 200 people, well you want to have 200 people in the house. In other words each house has to be a full house.

 That is very possible if you follow my way of doing business.

Oh yes since it was the prairies the theatre company I started and operated was called "Prairie Dog Players" and I was the chief gopher...  you know go for this, or go for that.. wearing many hats..

more to come.....

SHOW BIZZzzzzzzzz

Theatre Anyone????

Do you ever get a driving urge to be totally creative and a need to experience and to live your dream beyond anything you have ever experienced before?

I do and it's happening again and right here and now.
So if you're with me lets do this...
Join me... and let's start up another theatre company here and right now!!

This is something that is in my blood. I cannot get it out of me, so why not do it again. Here in this Blog I shall keep all of you up to date as to how it is unfolding and of course you will get that feedback on how to start your own theatre company up.

It is never easy.

It involves a lot of work.

For me at this moment I am planning to produce and direct a musical theatre extravaganza that involves lots of hot dancing, great music and colourful lighting schemes. It is based loosely on a story I wrote fifteen years ago. It has the sexy movements of salsa dancing filtered all throughout it.

It is a love story. It has humour. It has serious moments... 


The Venue.

The venue drives the show. The venue is all important and a necessary first stage in the production of a theatre show.
The venue can be a professional stage or not.

In fact for this production we will need a bar setting or a restaurant, or just a space that we can be transformed into what we feel we will need.

Timeline

The timeline is important as it drives the energy to make everything work on schedule.

Performers

I always look for raw talent in performers. From my experience there is always talent everywhere. Yes and great talent as well.

It just needs to be released. So I know you're there... and you're really ready?

Let's do this... as this can happen anywhere...