Controversy Continued

Getting back to the huge comment string connected to this post, one of the comments that got a lot of attention came from someone who was identified as "Scott" - his comments were from someone outside the world of theatre, and he has some great advice for any theatre group. Here's what he had to say:

As a longtime resident of this area I feel like I should add to the discussion. I have no fine arts background whatsoever and am not a thespian by any means - but I think that actually gives some weight to what I have to say.

First, a little more background about me: I'm a late-twenties college educated business professional. I.e., someone with a fair amount of disposable income to spend on things such as theater. I.e., someone that should be a target audience member of anyone wanting to produce a successful community based theater experience. Which leads me to my next point:

Where is the promotion for these shows? I am not talking about the youth theater groups - those are advertised plenty but are marketed more towards the family atmosphere (something I pretty much have no interest in). The only way I found this discussion is after meandering my way over here from a somewhat unrelated article on the HD online website... at least 4 or 5 clicks away.

I am someone that is not well versed in theater and don't have a lot of theater friends - so I am never going to hear of these shows by word of mouth. I would definitely be interested in seeing some more adult oriented shows - and by that I mean thought-provoking or a little more difficult to digest than squeaky clean family friendly versions of marginally controversial material to begin with - but I never hear about them.

Only by reading this discussion did I learn that Marshall does that sort of thing (and successfully, at that). I suspect there is fair degree of incestuous promotion going on - MU theater promotes to friends of MU theater - sustaining a large, somewhat closed group of MU theater fans. I may be way off base, but hey, that is my opinion of the situation as an outsider.

So I say to you theater folks - I suspect there is a growing crowd of folks not unlike myself who are interested but are simply unaware of what is available to us. Post flyers! Schmooze some newspaper/TV contacts for some media coverage (reading a Dave Lavender article is how I arrived here, by the way). Get your word out, make it appealing, and branch out beyond the folks you know are going to be coming to your show anyways. Good luck and I look forward to checking out what you have to offer!