Social Media
Releases, Blogs, and Campaigns
Sometimes, I have been allowed to promote amazing theatre events by exemplary theatre company Baz Productions in an act of trust that started in 2015. Since then, and this has included everything from 'Coming Soon' to 'Nearly Here', hashtags, cast announcements, accessible theatre performances, covering Q&As...all sorts.
dreamplay 2015-2016
Baz Productions' amazing project, an adaptation of Strindberg's play of the same name started life on a lookout on Aldeburgh beach at the HighTide Festival 2015. Yes, actually on the beach. If you were taking a stroll, you'd have come across a lighthouse structure, complete with a spiral staircase the stupendously talented cast would lead either up or around the small space in small groups. As you can imagine, it didn't need much upsell, it kind of sold itself, but nonetheless I took control of the Baz Productions social channels and the Insta feed was born.
​
When it transferred to the Vault Festival in 2016, we suddenly had so many levels and so much space to play with, and once again a fantastic cast knocked it out of the park. I took a great deal of delight in announcing the show on twitter and beyond - from asking for our followers strangest dreams and making eye catching graphics of them to share on social media channels, to sharing sneak peek clips of our BSL interpreted performance. This was a great learning curve and it allowed me to come into my own in terms of adhering to the social media campaign rules: pushing tickets, making cast announcements etc, but finding a voice within that, that allowed me, in a nod to my other writing credentials, to play with the form and reach prospective audiences in new and unique ways. Using this voice and strategy increased our Twitter following by over 300 followers by the time we opened 'The Process' in January 2020.
Baz Productions' 'The Process' - at the Bunker Theatre, 2020
Where to start with this one. Well, first I loved it, which was good news for the thing I was promoting. In my humble opinion, 'The Process' remains some of the most important theatre to come out of the 21st Century as it does what theatre should intend to do - reflect society. In fact, in it's rehearsal stages, this play about a dystopian near present kept, Nostradamus-like, predicting the next Draconian thing that was happening in the real world with terrifying accuracy.
​
I sat in the first R&D of this project as an assistant director in 2017, and so it was a joy to be asked to promote it for its run at the Bunker earlier this year. My duties went from announcing the show, tweeting the cast announcements, sharing the rehearsal pictures, sending out pre-written tweets to be shared by our friends, reminding people when our accessible, audio transcribed performances would take place, covering the after-show Q&As and pushing tickets - all things I could now do with the voice I had perfected for Baz. This had the added benefit of the fact that people in the know knew I was producing a fast-paced social media campaign but doing so with an outside-the-box flair, and those along for the ride would notice this new way of encouraging them to come to this amazing show. I learnt so much about presence, marketing, SEO, copywriting: some of which I had gathered in previous posts, but never before was I able to put it all in one place, and so successfully and for such a fantastic project. Ticket sales that came from the social media campaign were reflected in the fact that our show was sold out for all performances in our final two weeks. Another opportunity to grow. I remain indebted to Baz.
Baz Blog 2015-Present
I've been running said blog since day one of being involved with Baz -and it's become the centre piece to Baz's connection with their audiences. I've written on everything to soundscape workshops we've attended, to the spaces theatre 'belongs' to Neurodiversity in the arts. Read here: http://www.bazproductions.co.uk/new-blog/
