MEASURING AND MARKETING
GETTING "BUM-IN-SEATS"

By Patrick McDonagh

In spring 2006, as the Edmonton Oilers were taking that city on an improbable, emotion-charged drive to the Stanley Cup finals, the Citadel Theatre was presenting Peter Pan, one of the costliest productions in its history. “The hockey playoffs were immense here – everyone was caught up in it” says Joshua Semchuk, the Citadel’s publicist. “But even so, you still couldn’t get a Peter Pan ticket – it was completely sold out.”

That level of support isn’t easy to achieve, and building audiences can be a challenge even without the distraction of hockey playoffs. People learn about shows through theatre public relations and reviews, but while publicists and reviewers alike are motivated by an interest, even a love for theatre, their connections to these audiences are vastly different.
 
The Citadel’s success in the face of the Oiler’s Cup drive was no doubt partly because of the marketability of a renowned crowd pleaser and the fact that Edmonton boasts a lively theatre scene and a sophisticated, engaged audience. “But there is no way to predict what will be a success,” says Semchuk, who joined the Citadel in 2003, a year after graduating from the University of Alberta’s theatre production program. This February the Citadel mounted Somerset Maugham’s 1926 play The Constant Wife, a co-production with Manitoba Theatre Centre. “We thought it would attract people who knew theatre, but it exploded to become one of our biggest shows of the year, even drawing an audience of new play-goers.” The play is a witty and relevant commentary on relationships, but the exact reasons for its success are a mystery. No doubt it helped that lead actor Fiona Reid was appointed the Order of Canada during the rehearsal process. “We made sure everyone knew about that,” says Semchuk.
 

“Of ten press kits, maybe six will end up in the recycling bin,
and four on the ‘may read’ pile.” – Kamal Al-Solaylee

The Citadel’s success filling seats in its five spaces is partially due to its comprehensive approach to publicity, from marketing of subscription packages when the season is announced in March to selling individual shows at the end of summer. Each media outlet receives a unique press kit so that no two newspapers will run the same photo, nor will any two TV stations focus on the same story. But the publicist is not alone in bringing a show to the public’s attention. “Directors and actors have perspectives that a publicist cannot reproduce in a press release,” he says. “In February Allegra Fulton was here performing Frida K. She was able to speak from the heart about the show in a way no publicist ever could have, and media people were calling to talk to her.”
 
When a theatre mounts a venerable crowd-pleaser like Peter Pan, audience members know the story and arrive with expectations. For less known plays, the PR strategies are different but still rely on familiarity. “Hollywood is famous for marketing movies with lines like ‘From the people who brought you...’ and we’ve started to do the same thing,” says Semchuk. This March the Citadel presented a world premiere of Morris Panych’s What Lies Before Us. Panych is well-known as a director and playwright, and is also from Edmonton – a point not lost in the press releases. And there was some clever scheduling support: at the same time as the new play was running in the intimate Rice Theatre (home to some of the Citadel’s more challenging fare, with its web site sporting an audience advisory), Panych’s established hit The Overcoat brought audiences to the larger Shoctor Theatre. And those who enjoyed the main-stage play could be lured to another, unknown Panych the following weekend.
 
The Citadel is the biggest name in Edmonton theatre, and has the advantage of visibility. In Toronto, theatre companies elbow each other to catch the attention of reviewers – and the number covering that beat is only marginally larger than those in Edmonton. “Toronto has a lot of smaller companies with a history, but I don’t necessarily know them, and there seems to be a new company every week,” says Kamal Al-Solaylee, who has been the theatre reviewer for The Globe and Mail for four years; previously, he completed a doctorate in Victorian literature and wrote reviews for Toronto’s alternative Eye Weekly. “Of ten press kits, maybe six will end up in the recycling bin, and four on the ‘may read’ pile.” And while a comprehensive, engaging press kit can stimulate a reviewer to write a preview or cover a show, that’s where the influence ends. “What a publicist says or does has absolutely no effect on a review,” says Al-Solaylee. “Our jobs are completely different, even though we work in tandem. Their job is to publicize the show, but that’s not mine.”
 
Al-Solaylee’s job comes with its own criteria. “My very first priority is to write an intelligent, informed response to the work, which contextualizes it among a company’s other works, or within the theatre scene,” he explains. The star rating is one of the reviewer’s tools for measuring this response. “Whether I give a two-and-a-half or a three star review can depend on whether I want to encourage the work,” he says. “I just gave a three-and-a-half star review to a play that I found slightly flawed, but also fascinating. I trust the work that has gone into it and I trust that the playwright is approaching issues intelligently.” The actual writing inevitably demands a personal reaction to the work. “I bring my particular knowledge, interests, and history. Personally, I like strong writing, psychologically deep performances, and solid direction,” Al-Solaylee says. But, he stresses, those inclinations are no restriction to appreciating and enjoying theatre that doesn’t fit that description. “The Four Horsemen Project at the Factory Theatre this February had no characters and no dialogue as such, but was a great piece.”
 
Because Al-Solaylee writes primarily about Toronto theatre for a national newspaper, many of his readers do not live in the same city as the play being reviewed and are not part of the play’s audience: instead, they are his audience. “These readers are curious, intelligent people who want to know what’s happening in theatre,” he says. “And every time you write a review you are also being reviewed by thousands of others. You are putting a work of theatre under microscopic attention, but your own writing is also being vetted for prejudice, for factual errors, for strength of argument, for style.”
 
So the reviews must be good – but not necessarily positive. “How much power critics have on productions doesn’t really get discussed enough, along with how much pressure companies can try to put on them to use that power wisely,” Al-Solaylee says. “All theatres are hurting financially and there is less funding, so really negative reviews can be the touch of death. But it’s important to tell people not to go to the theatre when it’s something bad. Nobody gains by perpetuating mediocrity.” And sometimes a negative review does not mean that a show will suffer at the box office. “We’ve learned that some people will come if the review is good,” says the Citadel’s Semchuk, “and others will come if the review is bad because they want to see it for themselves. People are funny that way.” 

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