A chance to win two tickets to Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking was the incentive for an Arena Stage Internet Marketing survey

Back in the stone-age of 1996 a long-haired Information Technology-type friend of mine was trying to convince a major LORT theatre to create a Web site. The theatre marketing department was highly skeptical of his proposal. The marketing director questioned the possibilities of the seemingly faddish (or, at best, niche) technology and, with cutting and knowing-tones, compared the Internet to the ‘70s fad of the CB radio.

More than 10 years later the Internet, e-mail and mobile technologies are now taken for granted in our lives and the value of the Internet is definitely more obvious.  However, while we are distracted by the latest hot Internet tool, we may be tempted to lose site of the genuinely relevant question from 1996:  “How can the Internet help my [insert timeless traditional marketing goal]?” Here’s how three theatres are doing just that.

When preparing for your unlimited engagement on YouTube, there are a few things to consider.

If you log onto YouTube and type Theatre Askew (my company’s name) into the search engine, you will be offered four online videos to choose from for your viewing pleasure. One is of a rock band called Slightly Askew in live performance. In another video, the lovely Lillian Askew rehearses the tricky song “Christmas in the City” from Insignificant Others (a gay-themed musical comedy that played in San Francisco). And the other two are of me. They are exceptionally unflattering images. In real life, I actually look like a debonair and sassy blend of Cary Grant, Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon. 

Plays that explore the ties that bind

“Happy families are all alike,” goes the opening to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Indeed, conflict among family members has been a dramatic staple since Euripides (and most likely, before). If Eugene O’Neill, author of A Long Day’s Journey into Night and Ah, Wilderness! were alive today, he would appreciate the success of Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County. Recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, the play concerns the missing patriarch of the dysfunctional Weston clan who are gathered for a family reunion at his rural Oklahoma home. Forced to confront unspoken truths and unsettling secrets, the family must also contend with matriarch Violet, whose pill-popping has given her tongue an extra-sharp razor’s edge. As you might expect of a play with 13 characters, there also are plenty of secondary dramas, mostly involving the relationships formed by Violet’s daughters in their relentlessly unsuccessful efforts at an idealized family they’ve never known. August: Osage County sometimes threatens to become a sudsy potboiler, but Letts displays such a gift for combining black comedy with realism that even the plot’s occasional contrivances wear well. Eight females, five males. [Theatre Communication’s Group]