A number of weeks ago, before a major piece of uni work was originally due and the bereavement which postponed it, I was sent an email asking an interesting but pretty simple question: is it possible to generate theatre ticket sales from Twitter?

Having got the email, I set about straight away and tried to craft a succinct answer. I’m pretty pleased to say that the words I managed to get down into my iPhone at the time still form the basis of this post, but it was the decision to turn my answer into a blog post and do a bit more research, fleshing out my quick response, which has really delayed my answer to a seemingly simple question. So here we go… I think the number of commercial theatre productions and building based companies at least paying lip service to social media proves that as part of your marketing mix, social media should help you shift some tickets. But can a social media campaign alone help you fill your auditorium? Can you actually generate ticket sales through Twitter?

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Based on numbers from those following me and those I follow, I know as I hit my 2,000th tweet that I am by no way the world’s most prolific Twitter user. According to one of the many services set up to help you remember such things, I first joined Twitter on 19 January 2008. My first tweet, at this point being fed by my Facebook status updates, espousing my anticipation of Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd, also included a link back to my Facebook profile. On reflection Sweeny Todd isn’t that great but I have since realised that I actually have bigger issues with Tim Burton and his insistence on casting Helena Bonham Carter in absolutely everything. This, I realise, is a matter for another time.

The matter at hand is that I have been an active Twitter user for some 2 and a bit years. In that time I have learnt a number of things about the micro-blogging platform which I think are worth passing on. I shall seek to do that below, hopefully keeping to the 10 points I have allowed myself. At the top of the post is a word cloud created from the 2000 tweets. I think the words which pop up most often, mainly “reading”, “theatre” and the selection of URL shorteners I have used, reflect that I have been using the tips I present below for the duration of my Twitter participation. I was both relieved and pleased that “theatre” was one of the most prominent words in the cloud. It would have been a bit embarrassing if it hadn’t been there.

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If you follow me on Twitter then you might have noticed that since Christmas I have been hash-tagging certain tweets as #ciam. The hashtag belongs to the penultimate module of my undergraduate LIPA life, Contemporary Issues in Arts Management, a series of guest lectures from members of the performing arts, music and entertainment industries which culminates in a student led conference the week of 12 April 2010 at Liverpool’s Contemporary Urban Centre.

As someone studying Music, Theatre and Entertainment Management being asked to deliver a 20 minute conference paper on a current issue in the industry opens up almost endless possibilities. This is probably a good thing as all 30 of my classmates will be delivering presentations. The fantastic thing about the conference, and indeed the course, is the huge range of perspectives people approach things from. To get a bit of an insight into the range of topics being covered have a look at the collated abstracts on the conference’s website.

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I was very pleased find myself amongst the large audience assembled for Dynamic Theatre’s production of Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick… BOOM! in the Unity Theatre on Wednesday evening. Better known for his musical Rent, Larson’s earlier work is an autobiographical one, telling the story of his existence as a struggling composer in New York, working in a diner and living in a squalid apartment as he waits for his big break.

Adapted after Larson’s death from a self performed, rock monologue (how very 90s), into a three hander by David Auburn, the musical covers similar themes to Larson’s other and perhaps better known work, with references made to both homosexuality and AIDs. Joe Taylor, who took the lead role of Jon in this production, brings Larson’s character to life with a strong portrayal of the frustrated composer. With most of the narrative driven forwards by his narration, delivered straight to audience the other two actors, Katie Bernstein and Chris Britton, find themselves playing multiple roles filling the New York existence of the diner waiter / musical composer.

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As March settles in, making no signs of forgetting February’s weather, it seems crazy to think that it might be almost time to embark on another year of Edinburgh Fringe adventure. The next couple of weeks will prove busy ones in the offices of Fringe venues and producers across the UK and around the world as the reduced price Fringe registration deadline rolls around on Friday 19 March.

If you are bringing a show to the Fringe this year and don’t have all of your ducks in a row just yet don’t worry too much, Fringe registration only opened on 1 March and the final deadline for inclusion in the Fringe programme isn’t until 21 April 2010. So what is the cost of missing the early deadline a week on Friday?

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There comes a time where we are all asked to make presentations. For many, and I know I have been guilty of this in the past, it mainly tends to involve working out at incredibly short notice what you are going to say, scrawling it all down into something like a Word document and then copy and pasting the resultant spiel onto an obligatory Powerpoint as bullet points. Depending on how good you are at improvising, you then find yourself reading almost verbatim from the Powerpoint screen behind you, all but ignoring your audience and quickly skipping from slide to slide.

I’ve had to make a couple of important presentations recently: one in front of other management students telling them about the three month academic placement I was on working for Perfect Pitch in London, the other pitching ideas for a dissertation – my Management Research Paper – in front of classmates and academic supervisors. For both of the presentations I chose not to use Powerpoint and instead experimented with a web based alternative called Prezi.com

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Liverpool improv group Impropriety took to the stage of the Kazimier last night for the inaugural presentation of their newly formed group. Familiar faces were certainly present on stage and in the audience with the event’s programme highlighting the inclusion of many members of the 2008 minute improv marathon and student improv group Purple Circle into a cast which numbered some 20 performers.

For Liverpool residents who have not been to the Kazimier, it is certainly well worth a visit. Nestled in Wolstenholme Square next to the Nation night club, Jorge Pardo’s colourful sculpture ‘Penelope’ and opposite the Pleasure Rooms strip bar, it is a venue run by The Arts Organisation, a group dedicated to artistic squatting of sorts, “enabling the legal occupation of disused spaces” as they express it on the Property Solutions section of their website. You will know them, probably, as the folk who run the TAO Gallery on Slater Street and the very well known Mello Mello.

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Having seen Nine, Rob Marshall’s retelling of the 1982 Broadway musical, last night I can really only say one thing: What a disappointment. There is no doubt that the film is spectacular, this is a tale of 1950s movie making against a beautiful Italian backdrop, but as far as its big budget Hollywood blockbuster title status goes I am still asking myself, “why?” Why this musical? Why now? Just why?

Nine sucks us into the tumultuous world of Guido Contini, Italian film director just 10 days away from creating his next masterpiece. It is widely acknowledged, by everyone from Contini himself to a Cardinal that he meets on retreat, that his last two films have been flops. His next piece, however will be a masterpiece called “Italia” and will be the epic tale of the country of Italy. Contini however, it is quickly established, is about as flawed a character as has ever been written. The women appearing in his imagination and his reality appear to do a terrific job of ruling both his life and his sub-conscience.

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