by Catherine Weingarten. @sarahkaneissexy.
Are you tired on your indie show not getting noticed? Is your cute Facebook ad with a GIF of a monkey dancing not getting the packed houses you deserve? Well, fret not - we’ve got you covered.
Read on to find some fun, wildly aggressive marketing tips that will really let people know you’re in business and honestly may take things just, like, a little too far.
1. Work it into conversations - When your friend Jessi texts, “How’s your Mom been since your Father passed?”, text back “She’s good, but also had a pretty bad backache recently which is a real problem for women of a certain age and something I explore in my upcoming one woman show ‘My Mother’s Backache’, click here for tixxx.”
2. Clothing - Why settle for a weekly tweet when you can wear free advertisement on your body at all times? Good thing your friend Von-Claire went to FIT for a semester! Encourage Von Claire to make you a romper with photos of lots of different Mom backs on it, fedoras with show details and even more Mom backs, or just have her design a tattoo of a Mom back to put on your own back! Now that’s synergy, baby.
3. Dating Apps - People on dating apps are lonely - therefore it’s the perfect place, emotionally, for your take-no-bars gorilla theater marketing! When Dan chats you up on Tinder, tell him you’re single and you’d love to meet him at this hot new off-off-off-off Broadway show called “My Mother’s Backache”. Let him see the show at least seven more times, then when he tells you you’re the first person he’s had feelings for since his wife left, just run away as quickly as possible.
4. Fortune Telling - For this, I advise getting a small group of girlfriends together and taking them to a local fortune teller - aka an actor from “My Mother’s Backache” that you’ve hired to play one. He will start to work out all their issues and calm their fears, but secretly, he’ll just be performing brief monologues from the play. He’ll also convince each friend that if they don’t purchase 15-45 tickets, they definitely won’t get that dream job and will die young - maybe even tomorrow.
5. Threats - Ok so the show is soon and for some reason only 3 people have bought tickets. If this happens, don’t panic, just take your closest friends and family, lock them in a basement, and tell them they must buy tickets or you’ll light all their houses on fire.
You can’t just say it, though - you have to mean it. You knew what you were getting into when you wrote that play. You knew this day would come. What, you scared? You scared of me? You're weak.
Now… curtain up!