Our theatre company, having now being formed, is starting to take shape. One important aspect that needed to be addressed, before any progression could be made, was the roles that everyone would be taking on. The roles are important in order to establish the sections of the process that each person would partake in. Through discussion with the group it was agreed that I would take on the roles as a performer primarily but I would also deal with online marketing and social media outreach.
As online marketing it will be my job to set up all social media platforms. Social media such as, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will be used in order to promote both our company and performance, ‘promotion is the element of the marketing mix that… [is] by its very nature the most visible aspect of marketing activity. It plays an extremely important part … in reach[ing] … new audiences.’ (Hill, 2003, 190) In order to generate some form of interest it is vital that we keep sharing information about our work, whether this is through photographs, online status’ or distributing material marketing online.
Social media is a highly effective tool for marketing as it ‘offers… opportunities to reach [audiences] where they work and live.’ (Tuten, 2014, 21) Therefore through setting up pages on platforms such as Facebook, we will be able to reach potential audience members at any point in the day. It is important that I work with Tom (Marketing Manager) to ensure that all the marketing is coherent and represents the theatre company and what we are about. Each week, information and photos of rehearsals and our performance will be regularly updated in order to keep interest high and our potential audience engaged.
Within our meetings we also discussed ideas for our show and one theme that seemed to really interest us all was the ideas of photographs and the truth behind the image. Photographs present us with one frozen image of time and, unless you were present, it is difficult to know exactly the story of what was happening when the picture was taken. Exploring the potential of presenting an audience with alternative views of each photo interested us and therefore will be the basis of our piece. Our potential names were also discussed within the meeting, coming to the conclusion that our company will be called ‘Refract’. Our idea behind this being that we be ‘depicting real stories in an alternative light, refracting [the audiences] view.’ (Refract Theatre Company, 2015)
Throughout the coming weeks we will be ‘[setting] up an initial framework, or structure and experement[ing] with ideas, images, concepts, themes, or specific stimuli’ (Oddey, 2013, 1) under the direction of Laura, progressively forming our final piece.
Works Cited
Hill, E, O’Sullivan, T, & O’Sullivan, C. (2003) Creative Arts Marketing, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Oddey, A. (2013) Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook. Oxon: Routledge.
Refract Theatre Company. (2015) Manifesto [online]. Available at: https://refracttheatrecompany.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/our-manifesto. [Accessed 1 March 2015]
Tuten, T, & Solomon, M. (2014) Social Media Marketing, London: SAGE