Guerrilla Marketing for Playwrights

by Linda Eisenstein

Part I: Off-road Opportunities

My friends call me the CyberQueen. In the past 18 months, I've had dozens of productions and readings -- from California to Canada, Florida to Australia -- all by cruising cyberspace from my computer in Cleveland, Ohio.

I'm happy to share my secrets. But before I can give advice on how to use web sites, email, mailing lists, and chat rooms to your advantage, I need to share the why: the rules of "guerrilla marketing." These three basic rules aren't just applicable to the Internet; they're based on over15 award-winning years in the theatre business, as a producer of new plays as well as a working playwright.

1. Theaters don't produce your work. People get your work produced.
Let's talk turkey. Theater is an insider's game. You can't just sit home licking SASEs, hoping for a miracle through a blind query. Getting a script done anywhere is mostly a matter of getting your work to the right person, someone on the inside who is able to leapfrog over the regular channels. I've had over 70 productions and readings all over the world -- but guess what: Only a few of them happened via an unsolicited mailing, and most of those were play contests. No matter what a theater says is its "best way to submit a script" -- agent, synopsis, unsolicited script -- the very best way is to have an inside advocate push for it. An advocate who remembers your name and falls in love with your play will spread it around, push it on people and line up supporters, sidestep reading committees and deadlines and fight for it to be approved. This is the way the business works.

I worked for a decade as literary manager and a chief in-house producer at Cleveland Public Theatre, an alternative organization that specializes in risky new plays. There were plays the Artistic Director and I loved -- but which never got produced, because we never found a production team that got excited about them. Then again, there were plenty that did get produced that we were only lukewarm about, because someone brought in a project with a passionate pitch -- usually a director, but sometimes even an actor. Read the memoirs of artistic directors even as famously autocratic as Peter Hall or Robert Brustein, and you'll find the same story: lots of projects executed because of an advocate deep within the company.

2. Think small.
For every big-name theater listed in the annual market sourcebooks, there are 10-20 other potential opportunities. College students who need pieces to work on. Idealistic young production companies that hang together for a few outings before they dissolve and reform. Freelance directors who regularly propose and direct work at several theaters in their area. Small theaters that don't want to be deluged with scripts because they have no paid staff, so they don't advertise. Community theaters that might occasionally take a flier on an unpublished script. Because virtually no one approaches them, if you know about them, your chances are better than average. If you have an inside advocate. (See #1, above.)

If you are a beginner -- or simply not yet a household name -- you need to seek out every off-road, unheralded "low status" opportunity. The more alternative the venue, the more risks people are willing to take. Forget about marketing your first play to a big regional theatre: it's usually a waste of stamps. You need to be a grassroots guerrilla, willing to work in 50- and 60-seat spaces, where it's no big deal if you fail while you learn. (Note: Some publications like The Dramatists Sourcebook or Market InSight...for Playwrights list the number of scripts a theatre gets annually: pay close attention to the smaller fish.)

3. Timing is everything.
Picking plays is not a Darwinian contest where the best plays prevail; it's often a race through a timely window of opportunity.

Forget the image of a roomful of readers slogging through a 60-foot pile of scripts, winnowing finalists down from 500 to 50 to five to the happy winner. Only well-funded play contests operate this way.

Instead, things like this happen: A sudden hole appears in a theater's schedule -- a director drops out, or a new play isn't ready, or a scheduled play's rights get yanked, or actors who were counted on move out of town. For whatever reason, there's a void, and someone must quickly make a decision, usually within a couple of weeks. An anguished howl goes up: "Anybody heard of any good plays lately?"

Bang! The race is on. There's suddenly no time -- or even if there is, no one acts like it. Instead, it's headless chicken time. Will everyone in the theater suddenly be assigned to divide up the slush pile of unread scripts so that cobwebby box of 500 is read and commented on, in the hopes of finding something decent? No way! As soon as the right somebody gets her hands on the first script she really likes, that script will get plugged and pushed and circulated like wildfire until a decision is made and everyone can breathe easy.

If you can get your script into this, the Sudden Desperation Sweepstakes, it's not competing with every script in the universe. Instead, it only has to come to the attention of one of the key people who is looking. If she likes it, she might read two or three more, max, then decide to spend her time lobbying other people about your script instead. In this model of play selection, it's serendipity and word of mouth that prevail. A play that might never even be considered in the regular process suddenly rises to the top because of a combination of advocacy and timing.

Now: how in blue blazes does a no-name playwright find those advocates, those unpublished possibilities, those small unknown theaters in far-away cities? Much less slide through a window of opportunity that no one besides a few people in that theater even knows exists? You go on-line, listen to conversations of people who want scripts right now, and slide in comments, queries, or replies at exactly the appropriate time. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Part 2: Using the Internet

I've found the Internet to be an ideal way to circulate scripts, get interest in productions, and make theatre connections -- so effective compared to other methods, it's near-miraculous. Why?

1. It's diverse. You meet people on every level -- university teachers and students, top professionals, struggling semi-pros, dedicated amateurs -- in all areas of theatre, not just writers.

2. t's specialized. You meet and deal with a select group that shares your unusual interest: working on live theatre.

3. It's responsive and timely. Instead of scattershot mailings that can sit for months in cobwebby piles, you can reach someone within hours of their plea for new material.

4. It's geographically distributed. You can reach Australia as easily as Cleveland. I have; one of my one-acts was produced in Melbourne before my Cleveland friends had even read it.

The 'Net is now a virtual universe, comprised of the tens of millions of computers out there who can dial up to a link and be instantly connected to every place else. Internet opportunities include a host of services -- global electronic mail (email), discussion groups about theatre and performance, theater sites on the World Wide Web, scheduled interactive on-line chats, and much more.

There are plenty of places in cyberspace to hang out for a playwright interested in getting plays around or hearing theatre-related chat. It's like a continuous 24-hour global cocktail party/message center -- where anyone can dial up and read what the last 500 people scrawled on the wall, add a comment at their leisure, get in an argument or public discussion for everyone to see, or reply personally by email. It's a "lurker's" paradise, because for every person who posts messages, there are probably 20-100 more who just read them, chiming in only now and then.

Here's a real message copied from a recent on-line session:

We lost the rights for our opening show. We've been through every play in the catalogue looking for a replacement. Please Help! A comedy would be a plus and it should have six or less characters. There is a larger female acting pool in town so the more women's roles the better. A simple set is also advantageous. Please e-mail me with ideas. Thanks.

Recognize this? Yes, it's a version of The Sudden Desperation Sweepstakes. The key to an item like this is: don't dawdle! I sent back my reply immediately -- a few paragraphs describing my script, pointing out how it was a near-exact match to their stated needs. Did it pay off in a production? Not this time. But less than 48 hours later, my script was in the hands of the theater's anxious president -- my correspondent (an active board member) had obligingly printed it out and hand- carried it to him, and she sent me frequent friendly updates. (It made the final three-- maybe next year.) Those few friendly exchanges with her also gave me a lot more information about other small theatres in her area that might be interested in my plays.

My Houston production made it from first contact to signed contract in -- gasp -- five weeks, a record. But when the director (my advocate) wrote me recently, he reminded me that we had exchanged some email pleasantry nearly a year earlier, on another topic. I didn't remember it, but it bears noticing: on the 'Net as in life, what goes around comes around. So a little "netiquette":

Cyberspace is oddly intimate and cozy. Strangers are conversational and familiar, and after you've exchanged a few friendly paragraphs with them you're often treated as a bosom buddy. But though most email is private, the mailing lists and bulletin boards are very public. After you've spouted off, you suddenly realize that it's much like publishing your banal, top-of-the-head conversation in an international daily paper that can be duplicated and instantly sent to anyone, anywhere! If you participate often enough, you are noticed, believe me, for good or ill. I've had nearly all positive experiences on the 'Net so far, but I'm careful about what I say and how I say it, and I keep copies of everything.

As for sending scripts into the void, use common sense. There have been on-line complaints about people sending scripts out and never hearing back again. That happens so depressingly often in the "snail-mail" theater world, too, that I'm hardly surprised. I keep track of what I circulate, and nowadays I always ask for a real-world name and address where I can follow up before I zap a play across the ether at someone. I still don't feel comfortable keeping my full scripts "on file" in an on-line script library; and I'd never upload a script to someone I didn't query first. But, conversely, I will send a script to nearly anyone who makes a serious request, no matter what their real-world "status" is. I've gotten plays produced by sending them to actors, directors, literary managers, board members, even management interns and techies. You never know what's going to come from a contact.

Because like those dolls sing in Disneyland, it's a small world, after all. It's amazing how connected you are to people through mutual acquaintances, and one thing leads to another, pronto. The karma you create multiplies and echoes out here really fast -- so, as in all things, generosity furthers.

I won't give up on other ways of connecting -- no matter how much time I spend on-line, there's still nothing like F2F (that means face-to-face, landlubbers). But you can believe that with the successes I've had already, you'll continue to catch me Web-surfing, emailing, guerrilla marketing, and otherwise making a virtual spectacle of myself. Maybe I'll see you out there in this brave new world!

-- LE
© 1998 Linda Eisenstein

Linda Eisenstein's award-winning plays, musicals, and monologues have been produced in theatres from New York to Australia. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Cleveland Play House Playwrights' Unit, and the International Centre for Women Playwrights. For a decade she was Director of Cleveland Public Theatre's New Play Festival, where she oversaw the development of over 200 new plays.