Casting Connection Interviews PianoFIght's SHIT Show

Ray Hobbs, Devin McNulty and Duncan Wold, producers of PianoFight's touring sketch comedy act, "The SHIT Show," shot the bull around with Casting Connection's Molly Craft in her radio show The Production Office for about an hour today, in advance of the premiere of "SHIT Show V: A Laugh 'N A Half" which runs Fri & Sat nights at 8:00pm, July 31 - August 15 (Get SHIT tickets here).

Highlights:

- Devin gets totally shot down by Molly after an awkward story about sleeping ass-to-ass with Ray

- A fan of the SHIT Show phones in to ask about upcoming performances and SHIT Producers are baffled by the fact that an actual human actually follows their work

- Duncan announces PianoFight's plan to run "Throw Rotten Veggies at the Actors Night" in October during SHIT Show Deluxe as a response to TBA's "Free Night of Theater" (more to come on this in August)

The interview in full:

S.H.I.T. Show V - Promo Video

Kick ass promo video for "The Stop Hating Imagination Time Show V: A Laugh 'N A Half" - limited world premiere run Fri and Sat nights at 8:00pm, July 31 - August 15.



TICKETS - TICKETS - TICKETS - TICKETS

Combined Artform and PianoFight Buck Recession - Getting Stronger

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – July 21, 2009 – As the recession looms and hundreds of theater companies receive government stimulus money (the NEA’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants), Combined Artform and PianoFight, two for profit, non-government aided companies, are expanding in both Los Angeles and San Francisco while building a theatrical pipeline between both cities.

In San Francisco, Combined Artform and PianoFight will be managing all of Off-Market Theaters, including two theaters (54 and 65 seat black boxes) and a large rehearsal room as of September 1, 2009. And in Los Angeles, Combined Artform will add the 45 seat Theater Lab to its management duties in September along with the 80 seat Theater Asylum it has been running since July of 2007.

Starting in 2006, Combined Artform began bringing shows up from LA (PAPA and Eavesdropper.) Joined by PianoFight in 2007, both companies have actively worked to send shows between the two cities with wildly successful bi-city runs of FORKING!, ShortLived, The Stop Hating Imagination Time Show and Tilted Frame (currently running in both cities). Plans are being made for future development of this pipeline, including solo performance.

It is the goal of Combined Artform and PianoFight to leverage the multiple spaces in both cities to bring these two great theater communities closer together. As theaters across the country shutter their doors, and companies cut back on budgets and season lengths, Combined Artform and PianoFight are thriving while using an unusual business model in theater – the for-profit company.



About Combined Artform (Formerly-C.A.F.E.- Combined Art Form Entertainment)

Founded in 1998, is on a mission to develop and combine all art forms to pioneer the “arts of the future,” as well as be an active and supporting member of the San Francisco and now Los Angeles performance production scene. Created by Producing Artistic Director Matthew Quinn, and joined by Steve Kahn in 1999, Combined Artform has collaborated with actors, singers, filmmakers, sketch comedy groups, musicians, improvisers, and fine artists in more than 100 shows, including Santaland Diaries, Eavesdropper (SF), Improv Jam, PAPA (at the Eureka w/Open Fist), Tilted Frame – SF & LA and the SF Solo Festival, Shortlived and FORKING. www.combinedartform.com

PianoFight Productions began in July of 2007 when Dan Williams and Rob Ready formed the company with the simple goal of producing new work by new artists. In its short existence, PianoFight has created such critically acclaimed hits as ShortLived, FORKING!, and The S.H.I.T. Show (all of which have had runs in LA) as well as taken over management of a theater (Studio 250 @ Off-Market), developed a website and blog with hours and pages of original content, and produced a recurring webseries (iN PRODUCTiON) and short film. For more info, please visit www.pianofight.com

Press Contacts:

Matthew Quinn – Combined Artform – Tel: (415 )336-0513 – mquinn@cafearts.com

Rob Ready – PianoFight – Tel: (917) 363-9646 – rob@pianofight.com

PianoFight on Blog Talk Radio Today - Call In!

PianoFight's Rob Ready, Eric Reid and Dan Williams were interviewed on Casting Connection's Blog Talk Radio with Molly Craft (7/7/09) about The Theatertron. Friends and fans called in to chat (make fun of us) and have a high minded debate on theatrical theory (continue to make fun of us).

Matthew Quinn's Cost Break Down of "Free Night"

After a lively debate on the blogotubes over the last few weeks, hopping around multiple blogs, lots of individual posts, and even more comments, we offered Combined Artform's Matthew Quinn some space to give his unvarnished thoughts on Theatre Bay Area's "Free Night," in order to condense a thread from four different sites and sum up the numbers - he graciously accepted. Below is a quick summary of the conversation to date followed by Quinn's post.

SUMMARY:

May 17: Radiostar interviews PianoFight on current state of theater, discuss Theatre Bay Area's "Free Night of Theater" program

June 9: Theatre Bay Area (TBA) releases a study titled "Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program"

June 16: Arts Journal posts results from an NEA funded survey which cites double digit declines in theatrical audiences since 1982

June 18: Head theater critic for SF Weekly Chloe Veltman invites TBA's marketing director Clay Lord to post his thoughts on the study in a post titled "Great Study. But What's It For?" - Dan Wilson (of Radiostar), Sam Shaw (of Crisis Hopkins), Matthew Quinn (of Combined Artform) and Carl Benson (of PianoFight) respond with questions about specific numbers

June 23: TBA posts second study of "Free Night" with hard data on ticket requests, actual attendees, and follow up purchases prompting PF's Benson to make case against "Free Night" in post "The Real Problem with TBA's 'Free Night of Theater'"

June 26: TBA's Clay Lord responds on TBA blog Chatterbox in post titled "Theatre, Relevance and Hush Puppies" and Matthew Quinn presses for more numbers

July 2: Matthew Quinn breaks down cost of "Free Night" versus return in sum-up of conversation on the PianoFight blog (below)

COMBINED ARTFORM'S MATTHEW QUINN BREAKS DOWN NUMBERS ON "FREE NIGHT"

Clay,

Thank you so much for this information it helps to give me a better picture of the value of "Free Night of Theatre." And thanks to PianoFight for letting this go up as a post and not just a comment, and outlining the thread of conversation.

So summing up the numbers, the actual value of this project is much higher.

$182,000 - Printed value of tickets

$200,000 - Original PR Services

$50,000 - Additional PR services

$20,000 - TBA Services

$40,000 -Survey

$492,000 - Total Resources used for FNOT

-So almost a half a million dollars worth of resources are used for FNOT and for that you get 3,581 people to attend a show, at a resource cost of $137 per person.

-Of those people, 74% were first timers seeing the company putting on a show or 2,650 people, to get this market it cost $186 per person of the resources.

-And for the ever so hard to get, new people to the theater, 18% or 645 people for $765 per person.

So looking at this I think one needs to ask, is FNOT really working?

Is this an appropriate use of these resources?

Could something more effective be done instead?

I'm sure there are many positive elements of this project, but is it providing you with the right type of awareness, people, and information at a cost that makes sense?

Are theaters in the community (large, small, members of TSC) fully aware of the cost and reward of this project? Half a million seems like a lot for a one day event.

And to the second point, of course it would be great to have a survey to confirm those hunches we have on audience decisions, to get more insight into an audiences actions and how to get new people to our shows.

My question: "Are these even the right people to be surveyed?"

And are the above questions even the ones we should be asking? It's a bit disconcerting that money is being spent for data that isn't considered useful, yet, just wait and see.

And while I understand grant money takes a while to come down the pipe, and you're reacting to plans from years ago, is it prudent to go ahead with a 4-5 city expansion using additional resources for a program that isn't utilizing those resources and providing information that is not yet useful?

I'm sure some people are happy with the results of the program. Any new people are great people to have, especially if, as you point out, there are not many (if any) out of pocket expenses. My concern is that no one appears to be questioning if there is a better use of these amazing resources, on a model that can bring in more people without saying theater has to be free in order for them to see it.

Does the community really see this as a benefit and effective use of resources?

Just because you can do this, should you?

We could still get 6 million marketing impressions with the same publicity, just a different program.

And what do companies feel about $40,000 being spent on a possibly useless survey when perhaps it could be used for other more relevant purposes?

I would really like to hear other companies' thoughts on this.

In closing, I did get a chance to read the posting on the Mark-Up and perhaps I'll get some time read that book, it sounds very interesting. I also added a comment about some thoughts I had on Free and Theater and while it's not an answer, I do try to come up with some different uses of "Free." And I'm sure the community could come up with a better program then FNOT to get audiences to the theatre, your thoughts?

Thanks again for your time and commitment to this conversation, it is appreciated.


Matthew Quinn

Combined Artform

UPDATE - JULY 4 (by PianoFight): As the conversation in comments has veered slightly away from TBA's "Free Night" and into the realm of the art itself, we thought it prudent to post a few more links which deal with this specifically, and which helped spur a lot of this type of conversation.

October 7, 2008: Brendan Kiley of Seattle's The Stranger newspaper posts article titled "Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves"

April 13, 2009: Kiley posts on The Stranger's blog a lengthy email from PianoFight's Rob Ready, interspersed with Kiley's commentary, disccussing Kiley's ideas and how successful PianoFight's application of those ideas has been in a post titled "Small, Successful Theater Companies in Other Cities: PianoFight from San Francisco"

The Real Problem with TBA's "Free Night of Theater"

(this post is in response to comments from TBA's Marketing Director Clay Lord regarding "Free Night of Theater")

The big problem with TBA's "Free Night of Theater" is that it in no way addresses the actual problem - it misses the forest for the tree.

The problem is this:

- Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline.

- Fewer adults are creating and performing art. Only the share of adults doing photography has increased.

Yes, there are a myriad of reasons why this is the case - film, TV, and The Intertubes have all made entertainment cheap and easily accessible. Arts education in schools has declined as well, leaving many children without a chance to experience the arts growing up. As media continues its descent into the toilet, so does arts coverage, leaving the public less informed about what's going on.

However, the problem with all this and with the thinking behind "Free Night of Theater," is that it refuses to place any of the blame for the rapid decline in audience on the Theater Community itself.

And yes, the Theater Community holds at least some, if not a large part, of the blame.

The problem with TBA's "Free Night of Theater" is that instead of asking the Theater Community to take a look at itself with an honest and critical eye, it assumes that everything is right with Theater, it's just these other factors that are getting in the way, and that once we can show people how jaw droppingly awesome theater can be, the general public will have no choice but to succumb to their newfound lust for live performance and spend $70 on a ticket to MacBeth.

Wrong.

"#1 barrier to attendance as the price of admission, with the #2 being "I don't want to spend money on something I might not like." What this means, to me at least, is that there are a lot of people who don't know they like theatre because they don't feel like they can spend the money to try it out." - Clay Lord, TBA's Marketing Director, responding to some questions I posted in comments on one of Chloe Veltman's blogs.

If the No. 1 barrier to attendance is the price of admission, should the Theater Community not take a long, hard look at its ticket prices? And ultimately, lower them?

If the No. 2 barrier to attendance is that people are nervous they might not like a show, then shouldn't we be offering them better shows? At least shows that are more likely to appeal to new audience members?

Instead of trying to answer these tough questions and actually solve the problem, the solution TBA has come up with is to give the product away in the asinine hope that people just don't know that they want to spend $100 on two hours of entertainment written 400 years ago.

Baloney.

Recently, TBA hosted a teleconference (subsequently turned into a podcast and posted here), which was called "Innovating Through a Crisis," and invited a number of Exec Directors of theater companies big and small to discuss how the recession is affecting them and how they're getting through it.

Again, this is an example of TBA missing the point. The problem is not the recession - the recession only compounds the real problem, which is the double digit decline in audiences over the last 20 years.

However, the one thing that was interesting about the podcast was that what appeared to be working for theater companies were mainly two things: talking to their audiences (can't believe this is a novel idea to some companies) and reaching out into their communities either by staging new work from those communities or simple involving those communities in other substantial ways.

Frankly, every theater company should be doing this all the time. But too often companies are only engaged with those who give them grants or big donations. The rise of not for profits has effectively ended the Theater Community's responsibility to audiences and instead made it culpable to the arts foundations which supply the money.

This is a huge problem and it doesn't appear that anyone really wants to acknowledge it. Theater faces big challenges these days from all sorts of entertainment and new technology and dwindling media coverage, leading to one simple solution: evolve or die.

Giving away the product is no evolution, it's just life support.

Again, Mr. Lord, my sincere apologies if this comes across in an ass hole tone (I am sure it does), but just like you, I love Theater. And I get viscerally angry when I see something that I think is hurting not only my ability to participate in and enjoy theater, but also everyone else's.

A Note on Gay Marriage and the Law

The California Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, prompted another round of uproar from the LGBT community and progressives in general.

But really, it shouldn't have. I mean what did you expect? That the Court would rewrite the legal definition of marriage? That is far too large a political risk for any judge with higher aspirations who doesn't want to labeled as "legislating from the bench."

What the Supreme Court's decision should have caused is change of tactic in how the LGBT community is going about getting the rights they deserve - and who knows, maybe this has already begun.

For the record, "marriage," of any sort should, not be a legally recognized right, it's a sacrament, a religious term and tradition that for some reason is now wholly licensed by the state. And, in my opinion, this is where the pro gay marriage crowd can get some traction.

As opposed to some semantical debate about the definition of the religious term marriage, the movement should focus on ending the government sanctioning of all marriages, and call them what they should be called under the law - civil unions.

Everyone, gay couples and straight couples, would be forced to get a civil union license issued by the government, and would have their choice about whether or not to follow that up with a wedding in whichever church/synagogue/mosque they choose.

Not to mention, in getting the law changed, I'm betting a judge would be much more willing to enforce an existing law (separation of church and state) as opposed to creating new law (altering the traditional definition of marriage).

Winning the debate is all about framing it correctly, and currently, the Religious Right is winning that battle. If you frame the debate as being about whether the government should regulate religious traditions, as opposed to the religious definition of those traditions, that debate becomes much more winnable. Example:

ME: Do you beliece the government should regulate religious traditions?

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST: No!

ME: Do you believe marriage is a religious institution?

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST: Yes!

ME: Then why should the government regulate marriage?

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST: ... er ...?

Thanks for reading,

-CB