Starting Monday: The Live Test
You'll receive 3 emails per week for 4 weeks—a complete marketing campaign for a mock production of Othello set in the Civil War era. But here's the critical part: Try to experience this as a regular person would. Pretend you don't know the story. Pretend you don't follow theater. Just react to the content—does it pull you in or not? Consume it honestly. React like a real audience member. See if it makes you want to see the show.
4 Weeks Later You'll Discover
01
Whether backstory, character lore, and world-building content creates real investment in characters before audiences meet the actors.
02
If regular people actually engage with theater marketing (or if they just ignore it like they do now).
03
Whether this approach makes someone want to buy a ticket better than postcards, actor interviews, and hope.
And at the end of the campaign, I'll ask you one question:
Our story-relevant campaign marketing vs postcard marketing: Which one COMPELS you to buy tickets?
— Because that's the only metric that matters.
How I Figured This Out
After years of creating theater content that only reached theater people, I spent a year studying how other industries get audiences excited about unknown properties. Indie game studios stood out. They release character lore, world-building content, and backstory months before launch. By the time the game drops, players are already invested in characters they've never "met" and worlds they've never explored. Then AI emerged and I realized: Theatre could do this too. Not content ABOUT the production. Content derived FROM the world of the play.
Why Regular People Don't Care About Theater Marketing.
The brutal truth: nobody cares about artists they don't know. You can't market a play by promoting actors regular people have never heard of. You can't sell tickets by announcing, "come see our production" to people who don't know if they'll like it.
But people DO care about: Characters with compelling backstories, worlds they want to explore, backstory elements that pull them in before they commit. People will invest in stories before they experience them if you give them content worth engaging with. Theatre marketing shouldn't announce art: it should be art.
What If Theater Marketing Worked Like That?
What if, instead of announcing your show and hoping people care, you gave them weeks to fall in love with the world, the characters, story elements before they ever saw a ticket price? What if marketing became as rich, layered, and surprising as the production itself? That's what our content makes possible: not marketing ABOUT the theater, marketing that IS theater. If this works, it changes how theaters market productions that struggle to sell, especially to people outside the theater bubble.
The Logistics: What you need to know
Time Committment: 2-3 minutes per email
Frequency: 3 emails per week for 4 weeks
Cost: Free
Your Role: Experience it like a regular person, not a theater professional.
The Catch: Once we start, no new people get in.
Audience Engagement
You'll experience audience engagement that feels more like entertainment. Imagine, if you can, how this might transfer to your audience.
Give. Don't Sell.
You'll see how to give value, feely, before ever asking for the "buy". Beholden your customers to you, by showing value. Then make the ask.
Fun experience for you.
The ONLY thing you have to do is click, consume, and pretend you are not the professional you are and act as a potential customer. Total fun!
Common Concerns
01
I'm too busy to read every email
Then you'll miss parts of the story, just like a real audience member would. If you can't commit 10 minutes per week, this isn't for you.
02
This won't work for my theatre.
That's what we're testing. You'll get to decide at the end whether this approach would drive ticket sales for your productions.
03
What if it doesn't work?
Then you'll know exactly what NOT to try. Either way, you'll learn something your competition won't.
04
Why should I trust you?
You shouldn't, yet. I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to watch what happens and judge for yourself.
Still here?
There is only one way to experience the intrigue: SIGN UP for the free newsletter. The goal: To provide you with a blueprint for an infinitely more engaging email campaign to attract audience members to your production.
What's at stake for you and I?
01
If I am right?
Theatre marketing becomes as compelling as theatre itself. Or, at the least, unprecedently more engaging than current practices.
02
If I am wrong?
I become a cautionary tale about trying to move theatre audience engagement out of the stone ages. And a fantastic dinnertime story of the follies of hype.
03
And for you?
You'll witness whether there's a better way to market theater. And if it works, you'll have a blueprint for your own campaigns before anyone else figures it out.
An Invitation-Only Experience
Exclusivity
For quality control in this one-time experiment, I am only letting in a handful of marketers. For those who start believing, we build.
Limited time
Invite window closes Monday at 9:00 p.m. or I reach 25 marketer signups. This free 4 week experience will run one time. Get in now.
To know or not to know
You either want to see what happens when someone breaks the theater marketing rules, or you don't. Shift your marketing origin point, or stay stagnant.