What's your story?

So let' say you have a show that goes up in a number of weeks and you really want it to get out there. You hire a great PR person, you buy thousands of postcards, you send messages to everyone you know and you still get almost no press. What do you do?

Fire your PR person?

Cry?

Spend even more money?

Climb the NY Times building?

Nope.

You identify what your story is.

Nobody in the press or media world cares that you're putting on a show you love. There are plenty of people putting on a show they love. Nobody really cares if your playwright's a new guy or girl and this is his/her first play. Michael Riedel isn't going to come knocking to comment on your artistic progress on a show that you wrote with your weed smoking roommate who's sleeping with your best friend's girlfriend (unless of course any of the aforementioned have a Broadway credit that fits snugly above the title somewhere) Start with this:

Nobody cares. I need to make them care.

What does that mean?

Have a story. That's right. Think of what it is that is actually worthy of print in your work. We all love a story. It's what producing is built on and I would argue that a good story is ultimately what sells a show once your done spending all that money on your marketing. Now your story may not be for everybody. That's good. You want to have a target audience, a small group of passionate people who will fuel the word of mouth to move your show to the next level. Take a minute today to think about your current project. What's the story? What would the press be interested in talking about? We got a bunch of blog hits as well as some interview requests when we broke this story.

Why?

It's something to talk about.

So what's your story? Everyone's waiting...

Now go out and get some ink!

Excelsior!

Comments

[Erin C.]

This idea is critically important for actors as well, only I ask them to ponder, "What stories do you want to tell?" There will always be another actor who is smarter, better looking, more connected, with better skills, credits and talent, but what makes an actor special is communicating their UNIQUE point of view. So... what stories are they inspired to tell? How can you tell your story in a way that no one else can? This is part of a 2 hour marketing/brand exercise I do called the "ACE Strategy" which helps actors figure out their "60 second pitch" and create elements of their marketing plan.

I'll be posted a blog article with this comment and a link to your blog. Thanks for the inspiration!