By opening night of a performing arts piece, the producer’s job is still not done. Instead of thinking about closing night, you’re now thinking about how to make sure that the run is productive and that you’re able to get people to come see the show. That’s where the second and third phases of marketing will come into play. You’re now thinking about how to fill these seats.

You should always aim to try to get the first two shows sold out because a sold-out show is a great marketing plan. That is the first and foremost goal you should learn as a producer in performing arts education or online performing arts education.

Producer Malini Singh McDonald has worked on a few shows like that. Once those first two shows are sold out, they were able to then shift to marketing and use some other posters that had been included in the marketing plan. On that note, it may be a good idea to have a few different posters that you can use at different times, so it’s not just one graphic. They use that in addition to seat fillers. There’s a lot of programs out there that you can use to help fill seats.

Surprisingly, what inspired a very young August Wilson as a high school student was not theater, not Black theater, but Black poetry. When August Wilson was in high school, he went to his teacher one day and said, “Here’s my latest project. Here’s my assignment.” It was the original poems he’d been writing.

They were so good that the teacher refused to believe that this biracial, self-identifying African-American teenager could have written this thing. He accused August Wilson of plagiarism. August Wilson said, “No, I wrote it myself.”

The teacher didn’t believe him, so August Wilson refused to go back. August Wilson dropped out of high school, never returned, and went to his mother and told her what happened.

His mother tried to make him go back, but August stood firm. He dropped out and never returned again. Instead, August Wilson spent his late high school age years committed to studying Black poetry and the Black arts movement of African-American theater.

He eventually packed up and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he partnered with the folks who founded the Penumbra Theatre Company. Then he sort of sat there, and watched, and saw performing arts theater occur. That’s where he cultivated his voice.

By the end of his career, he was celebrated for having bridged this decade cycle of one play per decade that captured the history of Black life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’s now the savior of American theater. He created a huge sensation in the performing arts world, and people still fawn over him and his accomplishments.

He stood before a crowd of those who praised him for saving theater, but who themselves may not have been as actively championing Black theater as they could have been, to say no more needs to be done. He told his story, which helped to pass the torch to the next generation. His story inspired and continues to inspire those wanting to pursue a performing arts education or online performing arts education.

We can look at what would be defined as Vedic theater throughout online performing arts education. This particular theater is from the region that is what we would now call India, though, of course, those geographic boundaries haven’t been exactly the same over many, many, many hundreds of years. Thus, we refer to that area as the Vedic world.

There’s this amazing narrative that comes out of a really important text that was to be formulated much later, which comes out of the Vedic world. It’s called the Natya Sastra. The Natya Sastra is actually considered to be the sacred book of theater, according to Hindu philosophy. That’s already pretty cool, and as a theater maker, if there’s a sacred book of theater, I’m on board. One of the stories (there are many stories of this) in mythology is that, in fact, humanity had come to a point where it was starting to destroy itself. This is in antiquity, also regarded as the “ancient past.” And according to the mythology, the gods were very concerned. These, of course, are the Hindu gods and they have a meeting to gather and discuss what the future of humanity could and would be.

The story tells this amazing notion, an incredibly beautiful and charged idea, that one of the deities, a god named Shiva, would actually move humanity forward. The god Shiva would prevent humanity from destroying itself and instead, would actually propel its growth. He presented this idea, which excited the gods. And the question was, “How do we give it to humanity? How do we share this incredible gift?” And so Lord Shiva has an idea, he will plant that entire notion that he’s created in the brain of one human being named Bharata.

Bharata Introduces Performing Arts

Now, the word Bharata has a lot of roots in it with different definitions depending upon the region and time. Though it’s the name of this character in the story, it is also an old word for person, man, or human. Furthermore, it’s a very old word for artist. What the story is telling us is that the gods are planning to place this on an individual that they define as an artist. They place this idea in that individual’s head and so are born what are called the children of Bharata – which I think is really cool.

The Children of Bharata and Their Role in the Arts

Each of these children actually represents a part of the art forms and the idea is that they are similar to the next child that’s born. The youngest of the children is a child called music. They are supposed to be the purest and one of the most foundational. The next child of Bharata, which I think is really remarkable, is poetry. The idea is that poetry has music in it, so you see this kind of structure within structure. The next child that is born is called sculpture. I would call it visual art. The idea is that visual art has poetry and music within it. The next child that’s born is storytelling, which I think is a remarkable thing because that idea is that storytelling has visuals, poetry, and music within it. And the eldest of the children, that’s born with all of them inside of it, is theater.

This is the great gift from Lord Shiva. It entails the idea that theater is granted as a space that actually holds all of the other art forms and really propels this notion that it is for the intent of the growth of a community. I think it’s a really cool idea whether you subscribe to that philosophy or not. For me, it really brings forth the puzzle of theater, which is that it’s inherently this remarkable interdisciplinary art form that is intended to actually take a varying shape depending on its community, on its culture, and on its moment in history. Through Bharata and their children, we see it as a place of music, poetry, visual art, and storytelling.