To: <puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:43:03 -0500
Subject: [Puptcrit] Puppetry needs more visibility!


Puppetry needs more visibility!

What brought this topic up?
I'm currently working on a puppet-and-actor show that opens next Sunday, and I am hoping to see it become a huge success.
I'm making the two puppets. If you plan to be in Montreal in the next few weeks and would like to see the show, give me a shout, I can give you the details.
 
As of right now, at least in Canada from what I can (or rather cannot) see, puppetry is still very "underground".
Our public is comprised of people who have seen a show and fell in love with the art form. I assume, from my "interviewing" quite a few,  that they have seen it because they have been invited by a performer or participant, or by a friend who was. Too rarely do I meet a person who came because they saw a poster or an add somewhere "general public" or on TV, and said: hey! I wanna see that for sure! 

I am wondering what people on this list are doing to get more exposure?
How can the general public know about us and the worlds we create for them?
I have included a few means at the end of this email.
What are your suggestions?

When I meet new puppet fans after a show, they are ususually joyful and appreciative, inspired and suprised and enchanted to have discovered our Artform. They wish they had known about it earlier. And they intend to see more of such live shows. So I give them our puppeteer's association cordinates, so they can either become a member, or call ahead for show info (we share when we have them). I ask them whether they saw puppetry before, and some say yes, but only on TV, when they were kids.
Live pupptery for them seems to be limited to stories of old, and some plush toys that sometimes have a slit for a kid to pretend it is a puppet.

Nowadays, we have computer animations and cartoons, but too few are the physical puppets.
Of course, TV executive are in it for the money, which comes from placed publicity. So they aim for sure-fire hits, meaning mostly popular american and japanese cartoons and soaps, which they buy in (badly) translated versions.I have met a few puppet collegues who had participated in creating pilots for puppet shows thet were never retained by TV moguls.

What we do is magical, inspirational, intellectual, wonderful, philosophical, and totally recyclable. Which means instant succes, provided the right conditions, right? What a great show needs is a well-targetted public to fill the audience and see it, so they can spread the word and start the wave! To get such a public, people need to know about the shows!

So what can we do about increasing visibility?
More publicity, of course.

Yes, our publicity budget is limited, but I wonder how creative we really get on that necessary aspect of our craft. Why do I see flyers for new music bands everywhere, and why have I not seen any concerning puppetry?
Lots of restaurants and bars here have walls full of posters for music and classical theatre, but rarely do I see some about puppetry.

It's not like I am in a small town with not puppet troup. We have at least 12 puppet companies here in Montreal, and we do get international visits (too few, I'm affraid).  I am glad to see there are a lot of shows being performed, but I only know about them when we get the heads-up on our puppetry association's weekly email. How can the general public know about us?

Local puppet companies survive partly by performing in cultural centers, when the city buys the shows in advance, so that it is free for the public. The spectators just need to reserve their tickets in advance, in person in order to get one. They learn about such shows from the posters placed in those same cultural centers. The other ways to survive are to perform nationally and internationally, and get government and private funding for show developement, and touring expenses. Wouldn't it be easier to get more shows going locally? Some of the local Quebec companies are mostly known outside of Canada, from their performances in festivals where they are praised and re-hired over and over.
 But ask anyone on the street of their hometown, and chances are they will be surprised to learn that such a company exists so near to them.


Some efforts are already made:

I salute the efforts of some of our local companies to open their doors to the public. Some have open-days, with show excerpts and visits of the facilities, some participate in Cultural Day events organised by the city. Once or twice in a year, people can therefore get behind the scenes and get acquainted with the worlds of puppetry.

Newspaper articles are sometimes written a little before a new show starts. Mostly it happens when the reporter already knows about the show, and loves the work of that company. They do tend to come back to see and report on the following shows.
Lots of Public Relations work is often the reason for these reporters to come to the shows in the first place.
We can't all afford a PR agent, but maybe we should try to.
Newspaper articles can be in the cultural or Week-end section of free newspapers (paid for by the publicity inside), neighborhood ones, or in the big regular ones. They are usually small articles with very little space left for an attractive picture. While we do see full page articles about a political issue, or a scandal with a star...

Free Cultural spots on TV are sometimes added to newscasts. Here, a candian TV station has a feature called FYI, during the Weather section, where people can advertise their events. 

Cultural shows on the Radio are another option. Some stations cater to the "intellectuals" while others are more "popular", but we should advertise on both types. Radio hosts seem more free about what they talk about. We should invite more of them to see our shows, so they can rave about them on the air, and this would only cost us the price of the curtesy tickets.

Family-oriented magazines like those about parenting so,metimes have sections called something like '"What to do?".
Even big Tabloids could be good allies. I find it somewhat terrifying to see how huge their reader base is, but that only mans more readers would see our adds or articles about us. Similar to what a certain Kermit the Frog said in his show, perhaps we could "raise the intellectual level" of those tabloid readers, by enticing them to see something more interesting than the latest scandal about a star. wink wink.

TV shows. In our area, when a new big deployment show starts, the TV bigwigs and hosts are invited to the launch party, and then they get to talk about it on their TV shows.  We probably cannot afford to invite all of them to our smaller venue, but aren't there some of those TV hosts that are more likely than others to like what we do?


I'm done with this brainstorming for now. I wish there were magical solutions. Share if you got' em.
Seems we, as independantly employed artists without a "regular job", need to work 4 times as hard to even get some work, and end up with perhaps only a quarter of the pay we should get. 
 
Semi-invisibly yours, 



Mathieu René Créaturiste
Marionnettes, Masques, Etcetera...
Puppets, Masks, Etcetera...
creaturiste-AT-magma.ca
www.creaturiste.com
(514) 274-8027
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