Turn That Frown Upside-down

Making lemonade marketing out of the occasional sour review

By Eliza Bent

The Geffen Playhouse's cheeky newspaper ad for Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas.

Challenge
How do you market a show with mixed reviews, or worse, bad ones?

Plan
Exploit all received press—let it hang loose and let your audiences know.

What Worked
Transparent press quotes earn audience respect.

What Didn't
Depends on the show; artists must be comfortable with the tactic.

Ever been involved with a show that just couldn't get a break?

I recall the first rehearsal of a play I once worked on, where the director impishly warned cast and crew, "This show is going to flop." Despite this caution masked as irony, we slaved away. We rehearsed weeks on end during the dog days of August in a musty, mouse-infested theatre. Of course there was no air conditioning. Actors quit but new ones were hired. People fell ill, but the show endured. We never quite escaped that first rehearsal forewarning. The show did indeed do a massive belly-flop into a pool of scant audiences. There was not a single review.

But what do you do when you get reviews and they aren't the kind you want? It's torture to agonize over a production that ultimately doesn't get the kudos and press praise you know deep down it deserves. Do you disregard the criticism and soldier on? Or what about another familiar situation—when drama offstage proves to be more salacious than the drama on? Do you ignore the gossip or revel in it? Some clever souls—perhaps a tad perversely—turn these frowns, be they mixed reviews or offstage hearsay, into a bold marketing scheme.

Take, for example, California's Geffen Playhouse. In 2009 the theatre presented the premiere of Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas—a silly romp of a show, where the eponymous celebrity helms a movement to save his furry friends. Alpacas had its tongue firmly in cheek, claiming to have been brought to viewers by BARF (Bicoastal Alpaca Research Foundation). When the reviews came out, a flurry of satirical quips dominated the critical response (see above).

Says Geffen marketing director Joseph Yoshitomi, "There's an element of risk to any new show. We wanted to get the feel of this show in the review ad. The pull quotes were ironic themselves, with words you wouldn't expect to see in an ad." Yoshimoto admits that he probably wouldn't use such a tactic for a more dramatic, serious play (though he notes how marketing for a recent production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Los Angeles's Mark Taper Forum highlighted that show's almost farcical blood-and-guts elements).

For Yoshitomi, whose very first show as marketing director at the Geffen was Alpacas, it was difficult to discern an up-tick in sales as a result of the ad. He guesstimates a 10-20 percent upsurge, most notably because the ad was written about on Culture Monster, the L.A. Times's arts blog. "The biggest thing I want to do with an ad is to accurately demonstrate what the show is about, so that people know what to expect when they come to the theatre," declares Yoshimoto, before adding, "I don't like to back away from the reviews."

Neither does artistic director Sarah Benson of New York City's Soho Rep. For recent shows, she and her team have rounded up all reviews—warts and all—in a press release that's then sent to ticket buyers. In the case of Young Jean Lee's Lear, which premiered in January 2010, the reviews were polarizing—some sang the show's praises while others did just the opposite. "The reviews were in conversation with each other," notes Benson, who hails from London and remains surprised by New York City's one-paper-town mentality. "I'm used to a landscape that's in disagreement," she explains. "Multiplicity really interests me—a range of opinions is better than one." The review round-up Soho Rep sent out for Lear ultimately engaged audience members to join in on the debate. "People seemed more willing to voice their own opinions. They found the transparency refreshing."

Even when critics seem to concur, Benson and her staff don't shy away from the lone negative review. For Gregory Moss's Orange Hat and Grace last September, much of the press was positive. One prominent review, from the New York Times, differed. Still, it was a pullquote from the Grey Lady that topped the press round-up list. Was Benson poking fun of the Times by calling them out for being the one paper to dislike the show? "It was not a joke," she insists. "I don't want to do an out-of-context-ectomy on a negative review. That feels very ethically weird to me."

This moral standpoint is also reflected by the fact that Benson includes the artists in the decision to round up and highlight particular press quotes. Ultimately her aim is to create a direct relationship between artists and theatregoers. Audiences seem to respond well. Lear not only had a sold-out run, it extended twice. "I'm interested in information being more democratic," says Benson. "When we get mixed reviews, or polarizing ones, as in the case of Lear, it makes sense to embrace that instead of pretending that it didn't happen."

What to do when offstage tittle-tattle eclipses the content of the show itself? In the case of playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, you embrace it full throttle. Just weeks before his Octoroon: An Adaptation of The Octoroon Based on The Octoroon was set to go up at New York City's Performance Space 122 in June, the director, Gavin Quinn of Ireland's Pan Pan theatre, pulled out. Rumors about rehearsal-room disputes ran rampant and culminated in one actor's defiant e-mail blast to friends in which he discussed, divulged and disparaged the show and its many troubles. (The actor ultimately left the production.) The Village Voice published the e-mail anonymously, and a spate of comments—128 of them—ensued. Instead of sweeping this hubbub under the rug, Jacobs-Jenkins used it as fodder for the show's first 20 minutes—even performing a head-banging, trance-like dance to Mary J. Blige's epic "No More Drama." (If you're not familiar with the song, I highly recommend YouTube-ing it.) Program notes included a history of the production, newspaper clippings about Quinn's departure and the brazen, unedited actor e-mail that the Voice posted online.

Despite the venue's punk, almost devil-may-care eminence, P.S. 122 demurred from the offstage drama. Carleigh Welsh, who at the time was marketing and public relations director of the theatre, says, "Along with selling tickets, one of our priorities is to make sure artists feel safe. P.S. is a laboratory—sometimes there are explosions in laboratories. It was important to the integrity of the creative process to not pour any gasoline onto the fire." Welsh also recalls consulting with a board member who warned about the Streisand Effect—the phenomenon where trying to hide a piece of information ultimately makes that information all the more widely known. (In the case of Barbra Streisand, the information was photos of her home.) Welsh lightly sums up the effect: "The only sure outcome of a pissing contest is that everyone gets wet!" Turning more somber, she recalls, "The Voice blog needed to run its course—reputations were being dragged around and it became its own meme. Capitalizing on the drama by putting that into our own press materials would not have served the show, the audience or the artists involved."

Nevertheless, Welsh admits that the soap-opera-like buzz surrounding Octoroon created feverish audience interest: "There was a surge in advanced ticket sales. I think people wanted to see the show but also wanted to see how a company would cope. I don't think it was an evil kind of rubbernecking." The night I saw Octoroon, which was ultimately billed as a workshop and did not receive reviews, the house was jam-packed, and many audience members stayed for a post-show drink. Welsh is right: A perhaps unexpected sense of cheering, not jeering, for the show prevailed.

Jacobs-Jenkins, perhaps wisely and not so unexpectedly, declined an interview request for this article.

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