Over at the Theatre Ideas blog, Scott Walters has created an intriguing new project called Support Local Artists Working (SLAW). In Walters’ words, here’s what the project is about:
- The Goal: to increase the hiring of local talent by major regional theatres.
- The Pay-Off: Increased employment for local artists, increased ticket sales for the major regional theatres.
- The Justification: Audiences like to follow the development of local artists.
Sounds like a wonderful idea and a great example of turning theatre ideas into action.
Check out, for example, his idea for the “RIP protest” – whereby local audiences protest the import of a non-local, big city actor by ripping their bio out of the program and leaving it on the floor of the theatre.
If you’re in a regional theatre situation that’s suffering from big city brain drain (and its blowback), this could be just the spark to set a new theatre revolution alight in your town.
Take a look at the introductory post here, and then skip on over to the new website Walters has set up to keep track of the action, here.
I was the one that posted, then deleted my comment. I placed a comment in the wrong thread.
SO.
How do I make this a local ‘thing’? This sounds like an excellent idea for the theatre community here in Winnipeg, as most leads are cast with actors from Toronto or Vancouver.
dude. writing from toronto, and i really hope this takes off. great idea scott.
mooseguts — It doesn’t take much to get it going. A few people willing to create a flyer and stand outside of theatres distributing them. If you are interested, email me at walt828@gmail.com and we can start working up a flyer.
I think you misspelled the word “Frid” on your website. If you want to keep errors off of your site we’ve successfully used a tool like SpellPros.com in the past for our websites. A nice customer pointed out our mistakes so I’m just paying it forward :).