You may remember some posts from many moons ago under the Produce Yourself! label.  They were designed to be a step by step process in the art of self producing your own independent theatre…from idea generation to the theatrical process to marketing and beyond.  Well Produce Yourself is back, albeit in an even more intensive, real-world form.  The IAE is holding our first Produce Yourself workshop on Saturday, August 7th from 12-3 pm at the Gorilla Tango Theatre in Wicker Park, focused specifically around the idea of figuring out how to get an audience into the door and keep them invested in your work long after they leave.

I think that’s a question we don’t really consider often enough as we’re assembling our marketing plans.  As a creator, I’m a proponent of momentum…if I’m going to the trouble of building up a hubub about my current project, it seems foolish not to try and stay connected to my audience after they leave the theatre and parlay the buzz and their obvious initiative to buy tickets into my next show.  But how do you do that?  Is that a social networking thing, is it building an e-mail list, is it block booking shows?  Honestly, it could be any number of things depending on your project, and we’re going to be asking all those questions and more in the workshop.

The other thing I’ve noticed a lot in the Chicago independent theatre community is a certain expectation that you don’t need to find an audience because they’ll find you.  If anything, we have an even more uphill battle in this community because of the glut of comedy and small theatrical productions all vying for a few regular theatre-going audience members.  In this workshop, we’re going to look into targeting your show to a particular audience…maybe one that doesn’t even know they WANT to go out and see theatre.  Performing for your friends and family is great, but the real satisfaction of creating is in sharing your brilliance with people who don’t already know you’re brilliant.  I’m assuming everyone reading this is brilliant.  That’s correct, isn’t it?

We’re going to have a packed 3 hours on August 7th, and I hope to see many of you there.  Because of our relationship with the Gorilla Tango Theatre and their amazing relationship with independent producers in the community, the workshop is free for select Gorilla Tango producers who are currently working on shows or have shows coming up.  If you are a producer putting on a show at the theatre, inquire with Gorilla Tango if you’re eligible to come to this workshop for free.  General registration is $50 and you can enroll online at produceyourself.eventbrite.com or by calling the IAE at 773-756-2163.

If you have any questions about the workshop or aren’t sure if it’s right for you, feel free to e-mail me directly at Shawn@TheIAE.com and we can chat.  Asking questions is a good thing!

It’s time for artists and entrepreneurs to unite once again!  At our last Create.Innovate.Repeat. event, we met a lot of brand new faces from the Chicago community who all shared one important quality: no matter their craft, business or big idea, they knew they couldn’t do it alone.

It’s easy to get sucked into the social vacuum of the Internet and be fooled into thinking you’re making actual connections.  I spend as much time on Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and the blogosphere as anyone (let’s be honest, probably moreso…it’s an obsession), but the bulk of those connections aren’t technically real.  The thread connecting me to many of the people who I communicate with is an invisible, digital one…and at the end of the day, that can’t hold a candle to looking someone in the eye and shaking their hand.

That’s why we created Create.Innovate.Repeat. to begin with…to facilitate more of those handshakes.  This time, we’ve teamed up with the ING DIRECT Cafe Chicago in downtown Chicago to host a free night of networking and presenting designed to bolster your real world contacts and make connections that could prove invaluable as you continue building your business or brand.  We’ve been inspired by the PechaKucha networking nights (if you’re unfamiliar, look it up…they have a great following) to do our own form of show and tell for adults.  We have ten presenters lined up, representing an assortment of artists and entrepreneurs from all over Chicago, who each have 10 slides and 5 minutes to share the art or business concept that drives them.  From them, you might find inspiration…you might find a way to get involved with a new project…or you might find a partner that you never knew existed who could provide a mutually beneficial team-up opportunity.  Check out the list below to get a taste of who’s presenting…and we still have a slot or two open, so if you’re interested in being one of these folks, e-mail me at Shawn@TheIAE.com and I’ll get you set up.

Again, the event is totally free, but registration is recommended.  Go to createinnovaterepeat.eventbrite.com to RSVP for yourself and up to 3 friends…and pass the link along to anyone else you know who might be interested.  We’ll have free cafe drinks, courtesy of the ING DIRECT cafe, and snacks to make sure you’ve got energy for some intense networking.  The event takes place Thursday, June 10th from 7-9 pm.  The ING DIRECT Cafe Chicago is located at 21 East Chestnut Street.

We’ll have social networking stations onhand so you can connect with people online as you talk to them in person, but don’t forget to bring a few business cards just in case!  And come say hi to me, I’ll be the bald guy wearing lots of No More Starving Artist buttons…because we could all use a few more passionate entrepreneurial cohorts, right?

I wrote a piece on my website recently called Take a Picture of Your Building: How To Get People to Notice You Indirectly which is all about getting other people to notice you by noticing other people noticing you.  Does that make sense?  Hopefully so, because it’s basically the core of getting traffic and readers when it comes to running your own website or blog.  The more other people are noticing you (or, in the case of the Internet, linking to you), the more your profile will rise, both figuratively and literally in things like your Google Page Rank.

One easy thing you can do is create a simple badge for your blog or site that you can ask current readers, guest bloggers or other partners to include on their own as a link back to you.  How you go about getting them to put it on their site is a tutorial for another day, but I at least wanted to show you how to go about making a simple blog badge without much technical know-how.

1. Design Your Badge

The size of your badge can vary, but be aware of the “standard” sizes for advertisements on many WordPress templates.  If you notice in the right-hand column of our blog, we have four modules for placing small badges or ads…we use them to highlight four of our programs and other sites.  These are 150 pixels by 150 pixels.  A standard badge tends to run about 100 pixels by 100 pixels.  That’s probably a safe bet for your first one.

If you don’t have Photoshop or another photo editor on your computer that you can use to design your badge, I recommend you check out Aviary.com and their suite of web-based Photoshop and image editing alternatives.  You can create, save and export your badge from within your browser, and their Phoenix application has everything that you should need to create a clean, simple badge.

Whichever program you use, make sure you Save For Web as either a .jpg or a .png when you’re finished and name the file something blatant and obvious, preferably “nameofyoursite.jpg.”  No need to make it hard for people to identify.

Here’s a very basic one that I’ve created using our No More Starving Artists button.  We use the button on its own to make people ask “what does it mean?”  If you want less mystique, you might consider including your URL and site name on the badge.  Even though the image will link to your site, it never hurts for people to know where they’re going when they click.

As an even easier alternative, you can also try the Fresh Badge Generator, which lets you create clean, Web 2.0-looking badges without touching a design program.  You can customize the colors, text and shape of your badge while adding things like gloss or sticker effects to give it some flare.  When you’re done customizing your badge, it will let you download it in a .png format so that you’re all ready for step two.

2. Upload Your Badge

Once you have your file, you’ll need to upload it somewhere so that people can grab it and, hopefully, start sharing it.  If you know your way around the backend of your website and the hosting service, you can always upload it to your webspace and host it from there.

An easier solution would be to simply upload the file and host it on a service such as Photobucket, which has the benefit of being reliable and user friendly.  If you don’t have a Photobucket account already, create a username and password and upload “yoursitename.jpg.”

After you upload your file, you’ll see something like this:

Highlight and copy the HTML field.  You’ll have a piece of code that looks like this:

<a href=”http://s925.photobucket.com/albums/ad98/theiae/?action=view&current=nomorestarvingartistbadge.png” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/ad98/theiae/nomorestarvingartistbadge.png” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket”></a>

You’re going to want to modify this code so that it links back to your site rather than back to Photobucket.  Change the <a href> bracket and the “alt” text so that it looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.YOURWEBADDRESS.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/ad98/theiae/nomorestarvingartistbadge.png” border=”0″ alt=”THE NAME OF YOUR SITE”></a>

Obviously, you should replace the stuff in caps with your own information.  Unless you are the owner of YourWebAddress.com, at which point I’ve just done the work for you.

3. Spread Your Badge

See how easy that was?  You now have a functional, fashionable blog badge to share with fellow bloggers and post on your site.  I would recommend finding room on your sidebar to include the image of your badge with the code directly underneath for easy copying and pasting, but don’t be afraid to get in touch directly with fellow interest or local bloggers and ask them to exchange badges and share readership.

Leave a comment and share your newly created badge!  If you post ours, we’ll post yours.  It’s basically the new “have your people call my people.”

<a href=”http://www.TheIAE.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/ad98/theiae/nomorestarvingartistbadge.png” border=”0″ alt=”No More Starving Artists at the IAE!”></a>

-or-

<a href=”http://www.theIAE.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/ad98/theiae/nomorestarvingartists.png” border=”0″ alt=”I Support No More Starving Artists”></a>

Shawn Bowers is a writer, actor, producer and general creative person from Chicago, IL.  You can check out his writing and video work at www.ShawnBowers.com, and he invites you to friend him on Facebook if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurshipâ„¢ Logo Contest officially ended on Saturday and the last few entries came pouring in.  Thank you to everyone who submitted a design!  Our board of advisors is going to be conferring to pick the winner, but we also wanted to give YOU a say.  You’ll find a sampling of some of our best logo entries below, each with a number next to them.  We invite you to pick your favorite and vote in our IAE Logo Contest Poll.  You can either vote in the poll below the images or leave your vote in a comment.  The reader favorite will get a vote equal to that of the rest of our selection committee, so choose carefully and tell us in the comments why you picked the one you did.  We want details!

And be sure to keep an eye on www.TheIAE.com for the premiere of the winner on June 5th!

Now, without further ado…check these out:

As we’ve been getting applications for our Bite-Size Arts Ensemble summer program and talking to potential students, we’ve heard from many people that a 12 week program seemed like a really long time.  And while you could certainly argue that it is, these comments and questions made us consider something that is often overlooked in the way that schools roll out their curriculum: people learn at different speeds.

In the spirit of the flexibility that we encourage all of our students to have, we’ve added two additional sections of Bite-Size Arts Ensemble summer programming to meet different needs.  You can find out all about our full curriculum over on the Bite-Size page at theIAE.com, but I wanted to give you a little breakdown about the differences between these new programs.  Now, in addition to a 12 week program that meets once a week, we have a 6 week program that meets twice a week and a 1 week intensive that meets for five days in a row.

There are advantages to all of them, depending on how you learn.  Take a look:

If you’re ready to jump right in, learn the tools and get to creating your own business, we recommend the One Week Intensive.  You’ll spend a full week in all-day classes breaking down the tools and making rapidfire choices as you develop your full length show to premiere at the end of the course.  The speed of the course forces you to push past any hesitancy and dive head first into your ideas and is a great jumpstart to get ideas flowing for a new project or business concept in a short period of time.

If you prefer to let your ideas simmer a little longer, we recommend the Six Week Experience.  With twice-a-week meetings, you’ll have more time to synthesize the concepts and revise your creative ideas as you go.  The extended time will also give you more access to our instructors and will put more emphasis on the development of the 45-minute solo workshop.

If you’re just stepping into the world of arts entrepreneurship but know that you want to develop a business idea, we recommend the Twelve Week Experience.  You’ll meet once a week for three hours, which is perfect for full-time employees or students looking to develop a new business on a more paced schedule.  The Twelve Week Experience will also culminate in two community performances of your final show and workshop.

So what kind of learner are you?  Are you ready to rumble and want to learn the tools so you can move into your business?  Or do you like to have a little time to let your ideas settle in as you conceptualize?  Sound off in the comments below!

And if you think you’re ready to join us for one of our summer sessions, you can apply for the Bite-Size Arts Ensemble right now by filling out our Online Application.  We’re even offering a 20% discount for readers of the blog.  Just use the discount code “icanflourish” and they’ll get you set up.

Trust me, it’s going to be fun.

Have you been to Artist Gumbo?  If the answer is no, you really should, because you’re missing some amazing talent…such as Kay Kron, a Chicago slam poet who is a neverending well of word-spinning enjoyment.  Kay, I welcome you to use that as a quote on the back of a future album or book.  At the March Artist Gumbo, Kay premiered a brand new piece that was inspired by our No More Starving Artists cause, and we wanted to share it with our readers in the hopes that you can be as inspired as we were.  While we really think you should see it live (find out more about Artist Gumbo at the bottom of the post so that you don’t miss stuff like this again), this will have to do for now.

———————-

Lady Gaga and the Starving Artist
by Kay Kron

There is thousands of dollars worth of lighting equipment

tinting the stage purple and amber

fiery rain drop spark showers are timed to go off

when the beat drops

the backup dancers smell like sweat and melting lip stick

when the audience leaves they’ll be covered in glitter

and other peoples fluids

And in some dressing room

looking into a mirror streaked with hair spray

you are going through whatever mysterious magic

shit you do before hitting the stage

Lady Gaga.

At this moment you are in Vegas – the city that stopped

the Colorado River from reaching the Atlantic with all its

bright desert oasis splendor

While I- I am in Skokie preparing for today’s third performance

of The Emperors New Clothes

the venue- Carter’s Elementary School, cafeteria

the audience- K-5

the set- pbc pipe and paint on canvas

we are not lucky- there is no circulation to speak of

and the ultra violet behind yellowing plastic

makes us look like we have malaria

During our last show a kid puked on stage

8 times, tried to run out and did the splits in his own

vomit with a little squeak. We kept going.

The crazy thing about good art is how fully so many people

identify with it and I know you get this a lot Lady Gaga

but I love comparing the two of us

both 23 year old artist blond girls in America coming from

privilege writing perverted poetry and seeking shelter in the gay community

and I know you’re smart in ways I can’t even comprehend

with life experiences rung from a city that wanted you naked

playing piano

But every time I hear ‘just dance’ walking through boys town

or ‘bad romance’ on the radio again I can’t help being insanely

jealous you made it all pay

While every morning I walk into my kitchen barefoot

pull my heart out of the freezer stone brittle – zip lock bagged

and ready for the sledge hammer of practicality

Wonder when I’ll stop trying to cash in my art for a decent life style

and just get work answering telephones.

I knew already I was never gonna make money

but I didn’t know I’d make nothing

I didn’t know how evil day jobs are

How much life they eat away

How horrifying- what they want me to do

to do is sell coffee –  with my voice and heart and brain and blood

they want me to sell coffee and

stop pressing my fore head into TVs trying to become pixels

Suburbia lied to me and so did the poets

You were right calling Fame a Monster

It blazes in me a cold fire

Fed on two years of

writers block trying to find escape route sentences jammed in

fingertips stuffed back in and traded for conversation to keep the silence away

Is the art in me dead? Three more weeks of children’s theater

and I’ll be unemployed. The financial umbilical cord

connecting me to my parents will turn back into steel- perfect

My guilt makes me feel masochistic

I watch your videos when I’m in the mood for self-loathing

poker face and the sound of keys frantically typing up cover letters

Hello my name is she’s got me like nobody and I am a recent graduate of the one that’s on his heart

I enjoy love glue gunning and am not the same without a gun

Personality test? OK

Do you enjoy working hard?- agree or disagree?

I think I’ll go with agree

how do I keep failing these? Another 45 minutes sacrificed to scantron

I follow them until they want me

You keep my pen moving

When you sing I can tell it costs you something

It costs me something to listen

Three nights ago I watched a boy dressed up as you

sing his heart out in a red sparkle bikini

She sucked but I can’t afford concert tickets

And as I watched her be you

I wondered how you’d look being me

That made total sense when I was drunk

You as me- sitting in the

apartment my parents bought me full of quilts my mother made

petting the cat I adopted missing half her teeth

wearing my glasses and pajama pants

feeling control over nothing in the world but your own pony tail

We can’t be that different

After the show the boy dressed up as you told me she liked my poem

I would like to think she was channeling something

Back in skokie

The children applaud

I am bow at the waste

A five year old wants my autograph guess I have to start somewhere

You’re the prey of the paparazzi

tucking bare legs into limousine

It is hilarious to me how much I love you

Its is hilarious to me how much I think you know I exist

Tonight I drink vodka-

Lady Gaga, cheers to you

———————-

Amazing stuff, and even better live.  You can check out original work from local Chicago creatives on the last Tuesday of every month at Artist Gumbo, which is presented by Dramatis Personae and the IAE.  The event takes place at  8 pm at the Black Rock Pub (at Damen and Addison in Chicago) and is a great way to mix and mingle with artists from all sorts of disciplines…and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the amazing sandwich specials that they happen to have on Tuesday nights as well.  Trust me.  There’s no better combo than creative passion, delicious sandwiches, the IAE and a fireplace.

Daniel Pink, author of the ETA essential read A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, spoke recently in Orange County to a packed house of educators, business types and arts supporters about why, exactly the arts matter.  The Orange County Register did a great piece on the event, and it sounds like it was an exciting time for some exciting thinking:

Pink was in O.C. to talk about the importance of arts education in forming a well-rounded, competitive job-force warrior — apparently a subject of intense interest in Orange County, not only among teachers (of which there were many in the audience) but within the business community as well (they were the ones in the dark suits thumbing away on their Blackberries).

Teachers and school administrators are looking for new ways to justify the conservation of arts curriculum in an era of draconian cutbacks. H.R. types, trying to keep abreast of the rapidly changing needs and conditions of the workplace, are rethinking the definition of the well-trained and adaptive employee.

I think it’s hilarious that big companies are now realizing that an MBA isn’t the only route to well-formed business savvy.  It’s a recent change…I remember my freshman year of college as a film major, one of our professors spent an entire day of class discussing why a theatre and film degree would soon be the new MBA.  Despite still being in full-on “art for art’s sake” mode at the time, the idea stuck with me…and it’s great to hear it validated more and more in legit circles.

Check this out:

Pink’s approach…makes a much bolder claim: in a world where entire industries can disappear seemingly overnight and highly trained workers are made redundant by new technology and outsourcing, arts education isn’t merely a marginally helpful addition to the well-rounded curriculum; it’s an essential rung on the ladder that will lead American workers to full and meaningful employment in fields of the future — a level of preparation that American education does not currently provide.

Do they know about the Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship?  Should we tell them?  He also discusses the concept of turning the curriculum core of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) into STEAM (science, technology, engineering, ARTS and math).  I love it.  Because unlike a lot of technology systems, the arts are a constantly learnable field that continues to evolve without ever becoming outdated.  You can learn to think creatively and not have to worry about your creativity becoming redundant in six months time…because you CREATE how you CREATE.

Check out the whole article at the Orange County Register. For more info on Daniel Pink, check out his website. Dan!  We should talk!

The weather is changing!  Have you noticed it?  Here in Chicago, it’s happening very slowly…we’re fluctuating between beautiful, warm days and frigid, throwback-to-January-cold days.  But the very fact that the sun is out is causing a noticeable shift in peoples’ willingness to leave their homes and get back out into the world.

When we hibernate for the winter, it’s not uncommon for our creativity and willingness to pursue new projects goes dormant as well.  That just means that you have all the more reason to jumpstart your imagination and let your ideas out to get some much-needed sunshine.

At the ETA Blog, we’ve put together 4 simple steps to give your creativity a boost.  Try one, try them all, and let us know if they work for you!

This kitten loves spring. Why don't YOU?

1. Work Outside

I know, I telegraphed this one with all that talk of sunshine, but it’s true…working outside, surrounded by fresh air and natural light, can go a long way to letting your ideas flow more freely.  Take a notepad and a few hours and plant yourself on a bench in your favorite park.  Use your surroundings to help influence your brainstorm…the natural sounds that surround you are essentially just a better, less expensive version of one of those Sharper Image ambient noise machines. You’ll have all sorts of time to sit inside in front of your computer screen later as you’re doing the butt-in-seat work of executing whatever type of creative project you’re working on, but for now…disconnect.

2. Set Your New Season Resolutions

Remember New Years?  Remember when you said you were going to do all those marvelous things that you never really ended up doing?  New Years You was going to lose the weight and change the world, but most resolutions tend to mysteriously disappear within a month or so.

So what?  I’m a believer that the frozen wasteland of winter isn’t actually the most ideal time to create a new battleplan for changing your life.  Ignore tradition and use the coming of a New Season to set yourself some more attainable short=term goals.  Especially if you’re launching a new venture, this gives you a perfect opportunity to build some waypoints and break down your overarching endgame into more bite-sized pieces.  (In case you haven’t heard, bite-size is the way of the future)

3. Hit The Streets

One of the most charming things about Chicago is the sheer volume of people meandering down the sidewalk (when its nice enough to do so).  Many of them have no explicit reason for being out…they just like being out, looking in windows, sitting in outdoor cafes, people watching, whatever.  But those people, who have no particular reason for being out, represent hundreds of possible connections who might be interested in your or your work!

I’m not telling you to accost people.  I’m saying find a creative reason for being outside and a creative way to promote yourself or your product.  Even if its just handing out fliers with a friendly note and a link to your website, you’re drawing attention and shaking hands and actually TALKING to people, which will always be a thousand times more valuable than any retweeting or Facebook status update you might do.

When I moved to Chicago, one of the first people I talked to was someone who was participating in a Free Hugs Day event in Millennium Park.  All they were doing was standing with a sign that said free hugs and, you guessed it, hugging anybody who would take one.  And by doing so, they got people like me to stop, hug, and talk to them about anything and everything (including their group, Positive Focus, a name which has stuck with me all this time because of the simple, unique touchpoint they created).

What can you do to stand out on a busy street corner?  How do you draw attention to yourself in the real world in a way that makes people want to come talk to you?  Chances are, if you can answer that question on the streets, you can answer that question in your creative industry as well.  I’m just saying…

4. Take a Boost Camp!

Our compatriots at the Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship are offering the Creative Enterprise Boost Camp this summer, and the whole thing is designed to galvanize you into testing and structuring your idea so that it’s ready to become a real business plan.  I don’t think I’m the only one who tends to do my best work when I have a deadline looming, and this 2-week intensive can act as your personal deadline to finally take a leap and COMMIT yourself to that creative business idea you’ve had sitting in the back of your head for too long.  For more info on the Creative Enterprise Boost Camp, go here.  And for info on all the Summer Workshops and Intensives from the IAE, go here.

—————

So do any of these work for you?  Or do you have other Springtime rituals that you want to share?  Sound off in the comments below!

—————-

Shawn Bowers is a writer, actor and producer in Chicago, IL.  He performs regularly around the city and encourages you to click over to his website at www.ShawnBowers.com to check out all sorts of stories, videos and a full performance calendar.  Internets are fun!

I wanted to pass this along for Chicago locals, as it’s a great way to get your child active, outgoing and involved for absolutely zero dollars.

The Second City is offering free workshops in Clowning & Physical Comedy, Stand-Up and Singprov for students ages 9-18 on Saturday, April 10th.  As a (soon-to-be) graduate of the Second City Conservatory, I cannot recommend the Second City Training Center enough, especially for their youth programs.  Improvisation and performing skills are applicable no matter what your child wants to be when they grow up…at Second City, they put a special focus on positivity, communication skills, working collaboratively in group settings and the always wonderful concept of agreement and “yes, and.”

More information on age ranges, workshop times and how to reserve a spot (yes, you need a reservation) can be found at the Second City’s website.

For our Chicago readers and, maybe more specifically, our Chicago writers…there’s an event coming up this weekend that we don’t want you to miss.  The Chicago Zinefest is a brand new event that’s trying to shine the spotlight on the Chicago zine community and bring a little connectivity to the local culture.  The DIY spirit of zine creation is exactly the kind of thing that we support here at the ETA blog, and even if you have no interest in zine culture or don’t even know what a zine is (it’s a short, self-published and often handmade magazine), there are still lots of lessons on creation in general that would be worth picking up from the events.  There are a bunch of free workshops this Saturday and some cool related events happening on Friday as well.  From chicagozinefest.org:

Friday, March 12:

7-9pm Zine Reading

Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W North Ave

7-10pm Zine Art Show

Johalla Projects, 1561 N Milwaukee Ave

10-11pm Gadabout Film Festival & Animations by Lilli Carre

Johalla Projects, 1561 N Milwaukee Ave

Saturday, March 13:

10am-5pm Exhibiting and Workshops

Columbia College’s Conaway Center, 1104 S Wabash

7:30pm-? After Show, featuring music & zine readings

Ball Hall, 1621 N Kedzie #3

Check out these other events related to the fest:

Comics Symposium of Chicago

March 11 & 12 4:30-7pm

School of the Art Institute of Chicago Ballroom

112 S Michigan Ave

March 12 5:45pm-6:45pm

Student and Volunteer Reading

826 Chicago 1331 N Milwaukee

I know I’ll be at a few of the workshops on Saturday.  If you see a young bald man with stubble who is perpetually carrying a laptop bag, say hello.

For more information on the Chicago Zinefest, visit their official site at www.chicagozinefest.org.

As we get closer and closer to the premiere semester of the Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship’s two-year arts entrepreneurship program, we’re trying to take a closer look at the needs of our students so that we can build a truly unique structure and curriculum that is responsive to the artists and entrepreneurs who will come through our doors.

To facilitate this, we’ve put together a short, 10-question survey that asks some of the important questions that will help continue to shape our program.  It should only take 5 minutes or so to complete and the survey is completely anonymous.  We’d really appreciate hearing from you if you’ve got a moment!

Click here to take survey

There’s a fascinating article up over at the Atlantic today on how the Grateful Dead were utilizing many more contemporary business tactics before they even existed.  Things like allowing their fans to tape and share live shows, social networking and more.  For independent producers, freelancers and our ilk, the idea of giving something away to encourage greater profit in the long run is a very hot topic these days, but the Dead were proving long ago that it’s actually viable.

Check out this quote:

According to Barnes, the decision [to let fans tape shows] was not entirely selfless: it reflected a shrewd assessment that tape sharing would widen their audience, a ban would be unenforceable, and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on merchandise or tickets. The Dead became one of the most profitable bands of all time.

It’s inspiring stuff, and shows that a little bit of innovation (and goodwill toward your audience) can go a long way.  I’m not even a Grateful Dead fan, but I think I might be now.  Full article is in the link below.

Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead [The Atlantic]

There’s a book by Christopher Booker (appropriately titled The Seven Basic Plots) that says there are only seven basic plots in all forms of literature that are used over and over, ad nauseum.  Sure, they look and feel different, they’re told from different perspectives, etc…but it all boils down to seven basic plot umbrellas under which everything else falls.  Makes creating a significant piece of original work seem rather futile, right?

But maybe futility is exactly the motivation we need.  As writers, we spend too much time striving to find the “brilliant idea” and use that constant mental quest to put off actually committing anything to the page.  “Brilliant” isn’t a starting point.  It’s an ending, a post script if anything.  Call me a Darwinist, but I believe in the idea of Narrative Evolution: start off with the worst possible idea you have and you have the potential to evolve it into something truly unique.

It’s important to clarify my use of the word “worst” here.  It’s a subjective term, defined by individual styles and tastes.  For me, “worst” is synonymous with “stupid.”  I like a big, stupid idea, the kind of thing that makes somebody roll their eyes when you try and describe it.  Because oftentimes, “stupid” isn’t stupid at all…it’s unique.  It’s bold.

In improvisation, there’s a teaching exercise called the Saboteur that really exemplifies this point.  One improviser is secretly assigned as (you guessed it) the Saboteur.  Their mission, over the course of the improvisation, is to do anything they can to try and ruin the piece.  Whether that means making divergent character choices, entering a dramatic scene clucking like a chicken, breaking the fourth wall and storming out of the theatre…it’s all fair game.

Since improv is all about unwavering support, what you see happen is that if one person enters a dramatic scene clucking like a chicken, all of a sudden four or five others are clucking on in right behind them.  If it’s going well, there’s no telling who the Saboteur actually is, because it forces everyone to make big, bold moves to back up their devious teammate.  And then a fairly standard dramatic scene in a restaurant becomes a tale of a town overrun by intelligent chickens.  The “stupid” choices steer the scenes and characters in directions that they never would have achieved otherwise.

With your writing, try playing Saboteur to yourself, your choices and your characters and see where it takes you.  In part one of Produce Yourself (which you can conveniently find right here), I asked you to write down 30 ideas in 30 minutes and I encouraged you to think as little as possible while doing so.  If you haven’t done it yet, take a half an hour and try it.

Got it?  Everything down on paper?  Nothing preplanned?  Good.  Now scan the list quickly and find your worst idea, however you define it.  Maybe your “worst” is something boring and generic (ie. “a husband and wife talk about their marriage”).  Maybe your “worst” is something that seems impossible to stage (i.e. 2012: The Stage Show).  Maybe your worst is like mine, and it’s something that would be outwardly deemed as “stupid.”

With your idea in hand, I want you to do a Sabotage Brainstorm.  On a sheet of paper, write your core concept in the middle (we’ll use the “husband and wife talk about their marriage” example again) and go crazy stemming out from it with lay-ons and details that could, in theory, derail the entire thing.  Here are some of mine:

“Husband and wife talk about their marriage”

• They’re on a space station hurtling towards the sun
• The husband is a dog
• The conversation is one minute long and repeats itself with slight variations 60 times
• There’s a wall between them and they don’t know who they’re talking to
• They’re both cannibals and they’re slowly devouring each other over the course of the talk

And so on and so forth.  Go nuts.  You’ll hopefully have more than that, but don’t be afraid to stem out further from those base ideas too.  Follow your inspiration and keep the pen on the page as long as you can before you run out of steam on a particular track.  All you’re doing is developing a ton of different possible approaches to the material that you can pull from and use as inspiration when you finally settle on The One.

We’ll play with these approaches more next time and start evolving them to find some substance amongst all the stupidity.  For now, happy sabotaging.

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Produce Yourself! is an ongoing series by Chicago playwright, producer and actor Shawn Bowers that goes step-by-step through the trials and tribulations of writing and producing your own theatrical work.

Producing a show is a pain in the ass.  Let’s get that out of the way right now.  You’re going to be putting yourself on the line creatively, financially, socially and professionally.  You’re going to devote hours and days and months of your life to something that could turn out to be crap, or might only be seen by 20 people.  If you’re doing it right, it will be stressful as all hell…and wildly satisfying because of it.

If you’re still reading and haven’t yet clicked away, then maybe you’ll be just fine.  While everything I just said is very much true (and anyone who tells you it’s not, I’d love to see the quality of the work they’re doing), producing an original piece of theatre can also be an invaluable learning experience in all of the aforementioned fields: creatively, financially, socially and professionally.

So while I’ve done my due diligence and warned you of all the necessary stress to come, I also want to help take a little bit of unnecessary stress out of the process so you can focus on the stuff that matters.  Over the course of this series, I’m going to walk you step-by-step through the process of writing, rewriting, finding a space, finding a cast, rewriting, finding money, promoting, rewriting, finding an audience and everything in between.  This is not meant to be a perfect system; it’s meant to be a practical one.  I’m going to give you as many tangible places I can within the Chicago theatre community that can help you along your journey.  And if you’re not in Chicago, I’ll show you easy ways to find the resources you need in your own community.  We’re going to develop a show together.  It’s going to be fun.  I promise.  Having said that, are you ready to get to work?

Your Assignment

Obviously, the first step to producing any show is to actually have some material that you can produce.  If you already have a script or a concept in mind…congratulations.  It will change dramatically, so don’t hold too tight to what you have right now.  In fact, even if you have a script you’ve been writing for 20 years, I’d still try this exercise.  Give it a chance, see what happens.

For those who have absolutely nothing in mind (we’ll call you “the majority”), I’m giving out a piece of homework before we really dig into the full-on writing process.  I want you to sit down with a pad and paper for half an hour and jot down the first thirty ideas that pop into your brain.  The mathematically inclined will notice that averages out to one idea a minute.  These don’t have to be good ideas.  In fact, I’d prefer that they aren’t.  But you should start writing a new idea every minute.  Thinking, pondering, questioning…all that will come later.

We’ll explore why we’re wasting so many potential ideas in Part Two.  Stay tuned.

Shawn Bowers is an independent writer, producer and performer in Chicago, IL.  His latest play, Time Traveling Mom-Dad, has its final performance on Tuesday, December 15th at the Gorilla Tango Theatre.  Visit www.gorillatango.com for more information.