This is my one-week-out-from-opening cry for help for The March of the Kitefliers. Haven’t I had to do a few of these this year? Egad.
We need you: to buy tickets, to help get posters up and fliers out, to spread the word.
So, so many of you reacted so incredibly strongly to this show the first time around. A lot of you came more than once. It became an experience, something that many of you became a real part of. We need that level of support again. We need your bright, shining, beautiful faces out there in the audience on opening weekend. We need you to tell people about the show the way you did the first time around.
On the other hand, I also had so many people who missed the show due to laziness (don’t lie – I know who you are), schedules or inability to buy tickets to sold-out shows tell me how sorry they were they missed it and all the good stuff they had heard about it. Now’s your chance. We need your bright, shining, beautiful faces out there during opening weekend as well.
For two years people asked us and asked us about this show and made comment after comment. We brought it back, largely based on that response, and now we’re a little baffled at how slow-going it is.
2007 has so far not been as kind to us in regards to sales and attendance. I’m not proud of that, not in the least. It has me worried for our future. If this show fails to meet budget, it’s going to mean bad things for this company. That’s about as plain as I can make that.
This show deserves full houses. It deserves to be seen. Anyone who’s seen that will agree, I’m sure of that.
There’s so much potential here with the shopping of the script and the producers coming down to check it out and every other great thing this show could go on to do. The city is even recognizing us on opening night. In a lot of ways I want to believe that a strong wind will once again swoop in and carry this thing off, but I’ve never been one to sit around and just wait for the deus ex machina. If I’m not busting my ass, I can’t sleep at night.
I’m also off-line for the next four days as I get a ton of work done on my house and spend the rest of the time in the theater for tech weekned. By the time I get back to a keyboard next Tue or Wed – it may be too late for us.
Another disturbing fact: it’s been confirmed that NOT ONE area paper will review this show. The reason: they’ve done it before, and everyone is saying their space is shrinking. Even the papers who have different critics now won’t send one out. Despite the work we’ve put into it to make it better, despite the previous success, despite the recognition, despite the potential sitting here. I’ve pitched it as far north as Gainesville and as far south as Sarasota. Nada.
I do have a preview lined up for the Trib and CreLo. Not knowing when/where the Trib story will print, I’m not sure how much it will help. I do know it will seriously be a blow to this show to not get reviewed in filling the 2nd and 3rd weeks.
It’s all sometimes very maddening, but there it is. If you can lend a hand, it sure would mean a lot.
2 Responses
I didn’t know online space was shrinking.
I’m happy though that this precedent is being set. Next year the same old same old low rent Mardi Gras known as Gasparilla should also receive no coverage since it’s already been covered and space is shrinking.
I just finished a run that was not reviewed for the same reason. Though I understand that “it was already reviewed”, this production had an almost entirely new cast (maybe 2 out of the entire cast were performing the same roles as before), a new director and was nothing like the original they reviewed. If we lived in a city where multiple shows opened every weekend, I could understand. But unfortunately, that’s not usually the case. Amy