Update: The Ottawa Theatre Network now has a blog of its own. If you would like to visit it, please click here. What follows is the original Statement of Purpose / Call to Action for the Ottawa Theatre Network. It is available on the OTN blog.
Ottawa Professional Theatre Needs Your Help!
The Ottawa Theatre Network is Born.
The recent Backyard Theatre Conference hosted by GCTC — professional theatre companies and participants came together to discuss issues and needs — was a great success and fostered several initiatives. One of the most exciting is the birth of a new group intended to address some of the more pressing issues raised at that meeting: The Ottawa Theatre Network.
Mission: Possible
The Ottawa Theatre Network has a simply stated (but perhaps not simply executed) mission:
- “To assist in the growth of the professional theatre community in the Ottawa region.”
To make that mission more bite-sized, we have taken on as our first priority and set of tasks the following sub-mission:
- “Foster communications and resource sharing among the professional theatre companies and practitioners in the Ottawa region.”
We have follow-up sub-missions in mind once we get a good handle on this first one. But this first one will take all of our attention for a while.
So What Are We Doing?
We are primarily collectors. We intend to aggregate content from (or identify and link to) existing resources and create a few new resources that will help folks find what and who they need to create and communicate about professional theatre in our region. That will include, but not be limited to:
- Web sites
- Blogs
- Newsletters
- People (artists, crew, volunteers, mentors)
- Companies and contacts
- Performance spaces
- Rehearsal spaces
- Costumes/Props resources
- Performance schedules
- Workshops/seminars
- Discussion forums
- Services forums
So What Can You Do?
You need to get in the loop. For us to foster effective communications, we have to be sure everybody who needs to be is in the conversation. If you work in professional theatre in Ottawa, you have a quick task. Here is your simple, three-step process:
- If you haven’t already, go to http://ottawatheatre.pbworks.com and request membership.
- Once you’re in, add yourself as an individual (whether you are associated with a company or not) at this page: http://ottawatheatre.pbworks.com/The-Ottawa-Theatre-Directory
- If you also administer a professional or semi-professional theatrical company in the Ottawa region, we’ll ask you to visit another page and check your listing. Add yourself as contact person and include your contact info. Here’s the page: http://ottawatheatre.pbworks.com/Theatre-Companies-in-Ottawa
That’s it for now.
Then What?
In the coming weeks, we will be reaching out to you to undertake an audit to determine resources that exist, and the value of those resources. We’ll ask you where you rehearse, where you perform, where you get your props, and other questions like those that will give us the information we need to share with others in the community. We’ll then start the systems and processes for information flow (auditions, performances, workshops, etc.), enabling us to keep our central resource up-to-date and relevant.
There are many pages on the PBWorks site that may apply to you. While you’re there, have a look around. It’s a “wiki” site (like WikiPedia), which means that its value is content from everybody, including you. If you see a page you can contribute to… contribute to it!
Don’t Wait
You’ll forget. Go to those pages now, fill in your info, and we’ll be in touch soon!
Thanks,
The Ottawa Theatre Network Steering Committee
p.s. If you’d like to get more involved right away — if you feel you have resources or services that might help us communicate effectively by whatever means reasonable — please get in contact with a member of the Steering Committee. We will, in the next short while, need help in the form of things. If you can help, please join the site and contact us. Your help will be greatly appreciated and it will be a great benefit to professional theatre in Ottawa.
Update: The Ottawa Theatre Network now has a blog of its very own. If you would like to visit it, please click here.
You’ve done a great job organizing PBWorks so far, Sterling! I love the convenience of a one-stop resource all the information floating around the community.
Well done!
I can really only take credit for making it navigable and giving it shape. It’s actually kind of fun. Not unlike a Sim game.
Everything else has been a team effort. As people warm to the idea of inputing data and building pages, it will really take off. So don’t be afraid to add data!
This might be weird, so bear with me. It sounds like a press release, or close to it. But I don’t think you’ve used any of the free press release tools that are out there to broaden the reach of this message.
I’m also not clear if you sent this out to the various media organizations (CBC, etc…). If you want, I have quite a few of these already organized and I can pass ‘em to you. Drop me an email.
Anyway, just saying!
Hey Von! As always, thanks for saying because what you have to say is always worth saying.
This document is not a press-release. A press release, as you know, has a very different and specific format, style and tone.
Instead, this is an open-letter and call-to-action to stakeholders in the Ottawa professional theatre community and anyone else who wants to assist in the growth of professional theatre in Ottawa. Insofar as that may include some members of the media, we hope they will read it, join the site, and help out.
However, we are not yet trying to pitch them a story. Rather, we are starting something which we will eventually ask them to write a story about. As things develop and come into focus, and when the time comes to pitch the story to the media, we will write a proper press release and it won’t look anything like this. To be honest, no editor would take this document seriously, if it were sent to them as a press release.
We are creating a media list on the wiki, so if you have a contact list it would, of course, be very much appreciated. Also, I am always happy to learn about free tools. So, yes, please let me know what’s available.
Sorry, this is what happens when I type while I eat. While I realize that this post, in and of itself, isn’t a press release, it did seem to have a number of release worthy notes (in terms of who, what, where, when, why and to a lesser extent, how). Formatting aside, a release also tells a story and this post covers that ground, too.
If the point is to try and get discussion going, especially from people who may not even be aware of the BTC (as I wasn’t, though I’m obviously not representative of the professional theatre community), then I don’t think it would hurt to get the information “out there” now, even if it’s just reformatting this to make it more release friendly. You never know who will come across it.
Free release-wise, try http://www.przoom.com/ and http://www.theopenpress.com
Sorry, BTC? is that an eating typo.
It’s a question of time and resource management, with respect to our immediate goal and our target audience. At this point, a formal press release is not essential and there are other things to work on in the meantime. Meanwhile, we are targeting channels that we know people in the community use, we are communicating with them in way they find engaging, and we are letting them spread the word. It’s working, too! About fifty people signed up to our site today! If we create enough of a buzz, we might not even need to write a formal press release because the media may come calling on their own. If that doesn’t happen, when the time comes to focus on reaching a wider audience, I will check out these links! Thanks!
Fair enough!
BTC: “Backyard Theatre Conference”
Aaahh [bulb light's up].
[...] Ottawa Theatre Network is going to be an interesting discussion to follow, as a group of actors and theatre makers set [...]
[...] The Ottawa Theatre Network [...]
[...] The Ottawa Theatre Network [...]
As the air turns cold and the winter winds begin to blow, we look to the North Lands of Europe and the mythic tales of the Norse gods. Join Jennifer Cayley, Ellis Lynn Duschenes, and Ruth Stewart-Verger as they weave the tale of an enchanted harper who wanders the snow-covered hills, recounting the outrageous and sometimes very human exploits of Odin, Loki, and the other inhabitants of Asgard. From the creation of the world to Loki’s downward spiral of trickery and betrayal, these stories of the ancient Norse gods have inspired everything from operas to modern day epics like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
To set the mood for these epic tales, musician Tim Cutts will play the nykelharpa, a 600 year old instrument whose sound evokes celebrations in the halls of kings of old.
Join us as we leave this world behind and travel to the great halls of Valhalla, where the stories flow as freely as the mead and the music echoes through the night.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for posting. Although, I suspect, this comment would be more appropriate on the Ottawa Theatre Network’s What’s On page: click here.