2023 Information on Other Opportunities
Usually our performers apply with full 1 hour shows, but we know if you're just getting started or have an idea that isn't fully fleshed out you may still want to participate. Because of this, and in the efforts to help artists develop their talents and new works, we are expanding our ideas for group show opportunities this year! Some of these ideas are new - so help us explore how to best make opportunities for you- our artists! We might require some patience, and feedback from you. But let's have fun and give it a go!
Opportunities
Opportunities this year for...
- Visual Art Group Show - up to 3 pieces in person or virtually.
- Yinzer Vareity Show - Any 7 minute or less performance! - Saturday April 29th - 10:00pm
- StorySlam - Get a chance to tell a story! - Friday April 28th 10:30pm
- Choreographers and Dancers (NEW!!) (Various Dates and times throughout the festival for experienced dancers.) - APPLICATIONS CLOSED
VISUAL ART GROUP SHOW
VISUAL ART - if you are interested in applying for our Visual Art category, we have a group show for those with just a few pieces - up to 3 (virtual and in person), and a Full Visual Art Show category if you want to put on a full show (virtual and in person). If anything sells in person, there is only a 15% fee. If anything sells virtually, 100% to the artist. (We just put you in contact with the interested party to make arrangements.)
You could enter both at the same time.
GROUP SHOW IN PERSON: Fees for this year have been dropped! (But First Come First Served.) In person Group Show will be hosted at Mr. Roboto Project.
DROP OFF - Monday April 24th from Noon to 5pm at Mr. Roboto Project 5106 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
However, email us to make arrangements for other times. [email protected] Ideally it should before the 24th so we can hang on the 24th.
VIRTUAL GROUP SHOW: Fees for this year have been dropped! Your pictures just get uploaded in the application - easy! You'll be sent a proof before it goes live.
IF you have a lot of pieces - consider a full in person or virtual show.
You could enter both at the same time.
GROUP SHOW IN PERSON: Fees for this year have been dropped! (But First Come First Served.) In person Group Show will be hosted at Mr. Roboto Project.
DROP OFF - Monday April 24th from Noon to 5pm at Mr. Roboto Project 5106 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
However, email us to make arrangements for other times. [email protected] Ideally it should before the 24th so we can hang on the 24th.
VIRTUAL GROUP SHOW: Fees for this year have been dropped! Your pictures just get uploaded in the application - easy! You'll be sent a proof before it goes live.
IF you have a lot of pieces - consider a full in person or virtual show.
If you are having trouble with that link - use this one: https://airtable.com/shrt2SOnKfcVtv0pS
Yinzer Variety Show
The Yinzer Variety show is a short form variety show! You have something you want an audience to see? Sign up, and you're in! The limit is 7 minutes MAX, but 1 minute is great too! Below is the application so we can prepare for your fabulous show! (This is on a first come first served basis, so if responses are overwelming we will close applications.)
Saturday April 29th after most shows are done - so between 10pm and 11pm start time.
Saturday April 29th after most shows are done - so between 10pm and 11pm start time.
Fringe StorySlam
A StorySlam is an open mic competition for anyone to share a five-minute story based on one theme to audience members who appreciate a well-told tale. Of those who sign up in advance online and attend the event, 10 storytellers will be randomly selected from a hat (so everyone gets the same chance!).
This year’s theme will be “__And It Could Be Dangerous___.”
Want to try your hand at storytelling? Sign up here! Sign up here, so we know you're interested. Show up before 10pm, show your ticket, and check before 10pm in order to be considered as a possible storyteller for the night. We'll draw names out of a hat!
New to storytelling? The Moth has a great Tips and Tricks page: TIPS AND TRICKS
(Plus, some of our past Pittsburgh Fringe Performers have done amazing at The Moth - if you're keen you'll see some of them on their website!)
The biggest difference between our StorySlam and The Moth is that we do not require stories to be nonfiction. We are fine with fiction too!
Stories must be...
This year’s theme will be “__And It Could Be Dangerous___.”
Want to try your hand at storytelling? Sign up here! Sign up here, so we know you're interested. Show up before 10pm, show your ticket, and check before 10pm in order to be considered as a possible storyteller for the night. We'll draw names out of a hat!
New to storytelling? The Moth has a great Tips and Tricks page: TIPS AND TRICKS
(Plus, some of our past Pittsburgh Fringe Performers have done amazing at The Moth - if you're keen you'll see some of them on their website!)
The biggest difference between our StorySlam and The Moth is that we do not require stories to be nonfiction. We are fine with fiction too!
Stories must be...
- On Theme
- YOUR story (do not use copyrighted stories, this is your chance to try one of YOUR stories in front of an audience)
- MAX 5 minutes
- And just like The Moth (this is a great small place to get ready for the big leagues of The Moth)
- Don't use notes or props
- Never use racial slurs or hate speech
- Celebrate unwanted sexual advances in your story
- No standup routines, no essays, no fake accents, no repeat stories
- Check out the Tips and Tricks for The Moth for how to tell a great story - TIPS
NEW: Professional and Experienced Choreographers and Dancers
Working with dancers this year, and listening to their needs we have collaboratively come up with the idea to offer experienced dancers and choreographers an opportunity to perform their shorter works. The plan is for works about 15-20 minutes long. We know dancers don't always have a full 1 hour show, but they do have amazing work. To help these artists showcase their amazing work we are building out one of the festival store fronts for dance this year. Nothing fancy, still fringe, but a 20 foot wide, by about 30 feet deep stage area. We will be laying a thin layer of wood over the old wood floor to create smoother area, and putting black marley over that thin smoothing base. It will have some very simple lighting, a black curtain backdrop, and chairs also on the floor. While the store front is very deep, we think about 30-50 chairs is the max because of visibility issues (the stage and chairs are all on the same flat surface). If you have other tech needs, we are welcome to working with you.
As you may know we are a very low budget festival, but we are trying to offer this opportunity for much lower than it would be to book a full show by yourself. But we do have to ask that shows chip in to help us cover some of the overall costs of the festival, and particularly the flooring. We also know many of you want to name and market your own shows, so we are setting this up so each 15-20 minute show has it's own name, picture, and show blurb as if you have your own whole show. We hope this will help your resume, grants, awards, and other future opportunities. But also like other shows, the shows in each showcase will split the ticket money. So if there are for example, 3 twenty minute shows in a showcase - after the ticket fees, and small % fringe collects, each show will keep 1/3 of the ticket sales. It obviously won't be a lot, but that is part of fringe is helping you make some ticket money.
We already have a few shows slotted for these showcases,. And we hope each show will be able to be in 1-3 of the showcases (ideally 2 at least).
Cost breakdown - this is NOT per performance, but only ONCE for your overall show title- either 1 performance or 3.
Usually we do applications, help people find venues - and venues fees usually go to the building owner - but for this we are coordinating it and putting it toward not only the space but the flooring and tech needed, and then confirm everything with a registration fee - so it does seem a bit odd to do it all at once. If this is your first time and it is confusing please email us, or we can set up a call.
Normal But Lowered Application and Registration Fees:
$35 show application fee
$55 show registration fee - (registration is usually $135 for more than 1 performance, we're keeping it a flat $55 for the showcase)
Instead of booking a venue on your own, the dancers are all "chipping in" on one venue space:
$100 venue booking fee for 1-3 shows (flat $100 no matter how many shows) - we are coordinating with the venue, finding chairs, insurance, and getting the marley with this fee, and sorting out some very simple tech.
Total $190, then artists will share the performances ticket sales (as per our usual structure). Let us know if you really can't afford this and we can try to work out something. We are here to make sure everyone gets a chance to perform. These prices are just to help cover our expenses so we can break even, and continue doing the festival.
The dates we are working with currently are:
April 26, Wednesday: Possible 8-9PM (need 3 shows)
April 27, Thursday: 8-9PM (need 3 shows)
April 28, Friday: 6:30-7:30ish PM (full)
April 29, Saturday: 6:30-7:30ish PM (2 booked, need 1 more)
April 29, Saturday: Possible extra 3pm performance (need 3 shows)
April 30, Sunday: 4-5:00ish PM (1 booked, need 2 more)
We need 3 shows for a time to run. Depending on individual show lengths we can do 3 or 4 each night. We will try to match applicants with slots left. We hope most of you can find at least 2-3 performances. We have two slots listed above that will fill if we have enough need, and we can add more slots if more is needed.
As you may know we are a very low budget festival, but we are trying to offer this opportunity for much lower than it would be to book a full show by yourself. But we do have to ask that shows chip in to help us cover some of the overall costs of the festival, and particularly the flooring. We also know many of you want to name and market your own shows, so we are setting this up so each 15-20 minute show has it's own name, picture, and show blurb as if you have your own whole show. We hope this will help your resume, grants, awards, and other future opportunities. But also like other shows, the shows in each showcase will split the ticket money. So if there are for example, 3 twenty minute shows in a showcase - after the ticket fees, and small % fringe collects, each show will keep 1/3 of the ticket sales. It obviously won't be a lot, but that is part of fringe is helping you make some ticket money.
We already have a few shows slotted for these showcases,. And we hope each show will be able to be in 1-3 of the showcases (ideally 2 at least).
Cost breakdown - this is NOT per performance, but only ONCE for your overall show title- either 1 performance or 3.
Usually we do applications, help people find venues - and venues fees usually go to the building owner - but for this we are coordinating it and putting it toward not only the space but the flooring and tech needed, and then confirm everything with a registration fee - so it does seem a bit odd to do it all at once. If this is your first time and it is confusing please email us, or we can set up a call.
Normal But Lowered Application and Registration Fees:
$35 show application fee
$55 show registration fee - (registration is usually $135 for more than 1 performance, we're keeping it a flat $55 for the showcase)
Instead of booking a venue on your own, the dancers are all "chipping in" on one venue space:
$100 venue booking fee for 1-3 shows (flat $100 no matter how many shows) - we are coordinating with the venue, finding chairs, insurance, and getting the marley with this fee, and sorting out some very simple tech.
Total $190, then artists will share the performances ticket sales (as per our usual structure). Let us know if you really can't afford this and we can try to work out something. We are here to make sure everyone gets a chance to perform. These prices are just to help cover our expenses so we can break even, and continue doing the festival.
The dates we are working with currently are:
April 26, Wednesday: Possible 8-9PM (need 3 shows)
April 27, Thursday: 8-9PM (need 3 shows)
April 28, Friday: 6:30-7:30ish PM (full)
April 29, Saturday: 6:30-7:30ish PM (2 booked, need 1 more)
April 29, Saturday: Possible extra 3pm performance (need 3 shows)
April 30, Sunday: 4-5:00ish PM (1 booked, need 2 more)
We need 3 shows for a time to run. Depending on individual show lengths we can do 3 or 4 each night. We will try to match applicants with slots left. We hope most of you can find at least 2-3 performances. We have two slots listed above that will fill if we have enough need, and we can add more slots if more is needed.
Applications are now closed for the Choreographers' Showcase. Think about next year!
Some stuff from the Full Show performer page that might be useful below.
WELCOME
Thanks for considering the 2023 Pittsburgh Fringe! We want to to help make your show successful. We view our primary goal as giving artists a platform. And with that comes making the festival as successful as we can. But we all work together. We look to you, our participants, to help build buzz around the community, help drive ticket sales, and hopefully garner some donations to keep the Fringe Festival going for years to come. We don't curate our shows and therefor are not eligible for most of the grants in the Pittsburgh area, so we are an entirely volunteer run organization. Our volunteers believe in the work that we are doing, you're doing, and want to help you succeed. We're proud to work with talented artists, and we're thrilled to bring such innovation and creativity to Pittsburgh.
Neighborhood
Our neighborhood Fringe Zone is the Bloomfield, Garfield, Friendship, East Liberty neighborhoods - particularly along the Penn Avenue arts corridor. Here is a map of the basic festival area.
Small and Local
As we mentioned above, we have very limited volunteer staff, and venue availability. In order to be able to focus on the local artists as much as possible, that means the festival will be smaller this yer. We also will be limiting non-local companies this year, so we can put our efforts towards local shows. We have a lot of out of towners interested every year (more than locals), and we can't help them as much as we would like this year, nor can we get them the audiences they want. So we will be limiting how many we accept this year.
Our small and local theme for this year, also means we will have only very small limited paper schedules or lists. Most of our marketing will be focused online to keep paper printing costs down. This also means we won't be selling guide ads this year.
Our small and local theme for this year, also means we will have only very small limited paper schedules or lists. Most of our marketing will be focused online to keep paper printing costs down. This also means we won't be selling guide ads this year.
Five Days, Multiple Shows
To keep things simple and small, our fringe this year will be April 26th - April 30th.
2023 Ticketing and Pricing:
TICKETING
This section will introduce you to Fringe ticketing.
PERCENTAGE TO THE FRINGE FESTIVAL:
The Fringe keeps 15% of ticket sales to help cover its costs (marketing, advertising, centralized box office, promotional events, publicity, etc.). We also have to cover some of the credit card fees as part of this %. This costs is automatically deducted. Keep this in mind when deciding your ticket prices. A chart is at the bottom of this section discussing the ticket return for each ticket type.
TICKET PRICES
This year we want to offer $5, $10, $15 or $20 tickets. The choice is yours. We highly suggest most shows select $15.
In the past our tickets were a standard $15. We recently added a lower ticket price for artists who had short shows, or were Teen or College Fringe shows. To stay consistent for audiences, we suggest most shows select the $15 ticket price. Remember if you think this is too high, that our audiences are used to paying this price, and for those price conscious audiences we offer multiple discounts to save money. While you may select any of these prices we have the following guidelines. If your show is under 50 minutes, we highly suggest you only charge $5 or $10. If you are a teen or college fringe production, regardless of length of show we suggest you charge $5 or $10 or make it free with a button. Before deciding your prices, make sure you read about the festival discounts and promotions, and make sure to take those into consideration when selecting your ticket price. Free Shows during the festivals that are not in a public location, will require audiences to present a festival button to attend or buy a festival button to attend. Buttons are $5, and offer $3 discounts to all shows, as well as entrance to free shows and workshops.
TICKET DISCOUNTS
We plan to offer the following discounts. Keep this in mind when selecting your ticket pricing. Being part of the festival means you agree to the following:
Fringe Buttons:
To help support the festival, we sell festival buttons each year. While these buttons are optional (unlike some festivals that require them in order to attend a performance), we use them to create community. We think that audiences can recognize other festival goers by noticing those wearing buttons (or festival pass lanyards), and will know who to strike a conversation up with about what shows they have seen. When buying tickets, patrons can use the buttons to receive a $3 discount on a ticket, or use it to attend any of our free shows and special events. (This would make your tickets either $2, $7, $12 or $17.)
Fringe Day and Weekend Passes:
To encourage audience members to be a true fringe audience, we have day and weekend passes. One price for as many shows as they can attend during the duration of the pass. To make this work, we have to do a few things. First we reserved 10% of ticket sales to be held so pass holders can get in at the door with their pass. (While they can order the passes in advance and online, they need to arrive at Fringe Central to pick up the appropriate lanyard prior to the show. They can then show up at least 10 minutes before the show, and hopefully get right in for the 10% of the seats we reserve for them. They cannot reserve pass seats with a lanyard, which is why we hold this small percentage so they can get in at the door. If pass holders do not show up these tickets will be released for regular sale at the door 10 minutes prior to the show.) For shows that are charging $15, artists will receive $6 per pass holder that chooses to attend their show. ($5 will receive $2, $10 tickets will receive $4, $15 tickets will receive $6, $20 tickets will receive $8.) While the amount is lower than full price, it is what mathematically works for us to offer these passes at a reasonable price. We also found that it is much easier for artists to convert a pass holder into an audience member than other people. Pass holders have already paid, and you only have to convince them to attend your show over another show. It is a great way to get last minute audience members into your show, and increases your festival audience overall. (These are also some of the most dedicated audience members!) We will also limit pass holders this year to only 30 total pass holders, which will keep your passes payments as a special patron, instead of the norm.
Volunteer Passes:
Volunteers who work a certain number of hours are able to earn passes to shows. These passes are only allowed to be used for a show on a standby basis, thus protecting artists from losing money from paying patrons.
VIP Passes:
We identify VIPs as people who either help the festival in a significant way, or help artists in significant ways. This allows us to keep our participant fees lower, and to help out of town artists find housing.
Industry Passes:
While this is still a very small area at our festival, we try to attract organizations that are likely to be looking for shows to book in the future, booking agents, artists agencies, venue managers, those running other festivals, and other fringe directors. We hope by encouraging these folks to come to our festival, your show may get an amazing opportunity post fringe.
Press and Media Passes:
We really work hard on having as much press and media attending your shows as possible. We also have organizations that are reviewing your shows, and those that are independently evaluating shows for our award ceremony that may be attending your show with these passes.
Artist Passes:
We think that building an artist community is important for a successful festival. Artist passes allow you to see other shows in the festival on a stand-by basis. This is a great way for artists to work together, to spread the word, to fill a house, and to learn by seeing what else is happening at the festival. These passes are only allowed to be used for a show on a standby basis, thus protecting artists from losing money from paying patrons.
This section will introduce you to Fringe ticketing.
PERCENTAGE TO THE FRINGE FESTIVAL:
The Fringe keeps 15% of ticket sales to help cover its costs (marketing, advertising, centralized box office, promotional events, publicity, etc.). We also have to cover some of the credit card fees as part of this %. This costs is automatically deducted. Keep this in mind when deciding your ticket prices. A chart is at the bottom of this section discussing the ticket return for each ticket type.
TICKET PRICES
This year we want to offer $5, $10, $15 or $20 tickets. The choice is yours. We highly suggest most shows select $15.
In the past our tickets were a standard $15. We recently added a lower ticket price for artists who had short shows, or were Teen or College Fringe shows. To stay consistent for audiences, we suggest most shows select the $15 ticket price. Remember if you think this is too high, that our audiences are used to paying this price, and for those price conscious audiences we offer multiple discounts to save money. While you may select any of these prices we have the following guidelines. If your show is under 50 minutes, we highly suggest you only charge $5 or $10. If you are a teen or college fringe production, regardless of length of show we suggest you charge $5 or $10 or make it free with a button. Before deciding your prices, make sure you read about the festival discounts and promotions, and make sure to take those into consideration when selecting your ticket price. Free Shows during the festivals that are not in a public location, will require audiences to present a festival button to attend or buy a festival button to attend. Buttons are $5, and offer $3 discounts to all shows, as well as entrance to free shows and workshops.
TICKET DISCOUNTS
We plan to offer the following discounts. Keep this in mind when selecting your ticket pricing. Being part of the festival means you agree to the following:
Fringe Buttons:
To help support the festival, we sell festival buttons each year. While these buttons are optional (unlike some festivals that require them in order to attend a performance), we use them to create community. We think that audiences can recognize other festival goers by noticing those wearing buttons (or festival pass lanyards), and will know who to strike a conversation up with about what shows they have seen. When buying tickets, patrons can use the buttons to receive a $3 discount on a ticket, or use it to attend any of our free shows and special events. (This would make your tickets either $2, $7, $12 or $17.)
Fringe Day and Weekend Passes:
To encourage audience members to be a true fringe audience, we have day and weekend passes. One price for as many shows as they can attend during the duration of the pass. To make this work, we have to do a few things. First we reserved 10% of ticket sales to be held so pass holders can get in at the door with their pass. (While they can order the passes in advance and online, they need to arrive at Fringe Central to pick up the appropriate lanyard prior to the show. They can then show up at least 10 minutes before the show, and hopefully get right in for the 10% of the seats we reserve for them. They cannot reserve pass seats with a lanyard, which is why we hold this small percentage so they can get in at the door. If pass holders do not show up these tickets will be released for regular sale at the door 10 minutes prior to the show.) For shows that are charging $15, artists will receive $6 per pass holder that chooses to attend their show. ($5 will receive $2, $10 tickets will receive $4, $15 tickets will receive $6, $20 tickets will receive $8.) While the amount is lower than full price, it is what mathematically works for us to offer these passes at a reasonable price. We also found that it is much easier for artists to convert a pass holder into an audience member than other people. Pass holders have already paid, and you only have to convince them to attend your show over another show. It is a great way to get last minute audience members into your show, and increases your festival audience overall. (These are also some of the most dedicated audience members!) We will also limit pass holders this year to only 30 total pass holders, which will keep your passes payments as a special patron, instead of the norm.
Volunteer Passes:
Volunteers who work a certain number of hours are able to earn passes to shows. These passes are only allowed to be used for a show on a standby basis, thus protecting artists from losing money from paying patrons.
VIP Passes:
We identify VIPs as people who either help the festival in a significant way, or help artists in significant ways. This allows us to keep our participant fees lower, and to help out of town artists find housing.
Industry Passes:
While this is still a very small area at our festival, we try to attract organizations that are likely to be looking for shows to book in the future, booking agents, artists agencies, venue managers, those running other festivals, and other fringe directors. We hope by encouraging these folks to come to our festival, your show may get an amazing opportunity post fringe.
Press and Media Passes:
We really work hard on having as much press and media attending your shows as possible. We also have organizations that are reviewing your shows, and those that are independently evaluating shows for our award ceremony that may be attending your show with these passes.
Artist Passes:
We think that building an artist community is important for a successful festival. Artist passes allow you to see other shows in the festival on a stand-by basis. This is a great way for artists to work together, to spread the word, to fill a house, and to learn by seeing what else is happening at the festival. These passes are only allowed to be used for a show on a standby basis, thus protecting artists from losing money from paying patrons.
2023 Ticket Reimbursement Amounts:
The several price bands are as follows:
Regular Price Band - RECOMMENDED PRICE
Venue
If you've made a split arrangement with your venue, the above amounts may go to your venue first, and then be forwarded to you. Check with them about how exactly the ticket split will work. Is it Gross or Net? Are there any expenses they will take out first? Don't be shy to ask in advance, and be very clear about the math in a split deal.
Regular Price Band - RECOMMENDED PRICE
- Ticket prices are $15. (85% = $12.75)
- Fringe Button discount minus $3 = $12 (90% = $10.20)
- Artists or Venues receive 85% of actual paid price (Ticket price minus any discounts), or flat fee as indicated below for paying pass entries. Talk with your venue before signing with them about how they intend to handle ticket money.
- Day and weekend passes (Full amount - no % reductions.) = $6 per paid pass entry. (Flat $6 per pass entry, no 15% will come from the pass amount. But talk with your venue about how they intend to handle this.)
- This does not include performer rush passes, VIP passes, Press passes, Industry passes, Volunteer passes or other comp tickets.
- Ticket prices $10. (85% = $8.50)
- Fringe Button discount minus $3 = $7 (85% = $5.95)
- Artists or Venues receive 85% of actual paid price (Ticket price minus any discounts), or flat fee as indicated below for paying pass entries. Talk with your venue before signing with them about how they intend to handle ticket money.
- Day and weekend passses = $4 per paid pass entry. (Flat $4 per pass entry, no 15% will come from the pass amount. But talk with your venue about how they intend to handle this.)
- This does not include performer rush passes, VIP passes, Press passes, Industry passes, Volunteer passes or other comp tickets.
- Ticket prices $5. (85% = $4.25)
- Fringe Button discount minus $3 = $2 (85% = $1.70)
- Artists or Venues receive 85% of actual paid price (Ticket price minus any discounts), or flat fee as indicated below for paying pass entries. Talk with your venue before signing with them about how they intend to handle ticket money.
- Day and weekend passses = $2 per paid pass entry. (Flat $2 per pass entry, no 15% will come from the pass amount. But talk with your venue about how they intend to handle this.)
- This does not include performer rush passes, VIP passes, Press passes, Industry passes, Volunteer passes or other comp tickets.
- Ticket prices $20. (85% = $17)
- Fringe Button discount minus $3 = $17 (85% = $14.45)
- Artists or Venues receive 85% of actual paid price (Ticket price minus any discounts), or flat fee as indicated below for paying pass entries. Talk with your venue before signing with them about how they intend to handle ticket money.
- Day and weekend passes = $8 per paid pass entry. (Flat $8 per pass entry, no 15% will come from the pass amount. But talk with your venue about how they intend to handle this.)
- This does not include performer rush passes, VIP passes, Press passes, Industry passes, Volunteer passes or other comp tickets.
Venue
If you've made a split arrangement with your venue, the above amounts may go to your venue first, and then be forwarded to you. Check with them about how exactly the ticket split will work. Is it Gross or Net? Are there any expenses they will take out first? Don't be shy to ask in advance, and be very clear about the math in a split deal.
PROMOTION AND PROGRAM INFORMATION
We want to help you market your show. While the marketing of the show is ultimately your responsibility, we do a number things festival wide to help you market your show. But we need you to help us. We need information for the website, brochure, and press releases about your show. We have detailed the information that we need below. If you have any questions, or need help creating an image - please let us know.
Image Policy:
For the Website:
For any possible print material (not guaranteed):
For Press Releases and other PR:
We will do general PR for the festival, including a press release to local press. Please go through our PR to make sure we are not bombarding the large papers. Because of this we have had great coverage in the past. They cover the large papers (Trib, Post-Gazette, and City Paper), and some radio. But there are plenty of smaller neighborhood papers and university papers that we welcome you to reach out to!
We need the following for our PR efforts:
Image Policy:
- Even though we will not jury Fringe content, all published materials must be PG rated.
- Unless your image is just your logo, please avoid putting text on your images. Some social media outlets reject images with text, as they prefer the text in the posts so robots can read the text to the blind. So it is best to avoid text on your images.
For the Website:
- 3x3 in. 300 DPI image (or better)
- Cast/crew list (you can update this later)
- 50 word description of your company (you can add this later if you want)
- 40 word description of your show
- Age restrictions and other applicable information (if changed from your original application)
For any possible print material (not guaranteed):
- 40 word description
- 3x3 in. 300 dpi image (this does not guarantee the final image will be this size)
- Age restrictions and other applicable information (if changed from your original application)
For Press Releases and other PR:
We will do general PR for the festival, including a press release to local press. Please go through our PR to make sure we are not bombarding the large papers. Because of this we have had great coverage in the past. They cover the large papers (Trib, Post-Gazette, and City Paper), and some radio. But there are plenty of smaller neighborhood papers and university papers that we welcome you to reach out to!
We need the following for our PR efforts:
- 40 word description (use brochure show description here to be consistent).
- Photo Requirements: .jpg format files that are approximately 10mb file size when open. That’s roughly 300 dpi+ at 9 inches x 12 inches for the image dimensions.
- URL and any social media tags or addresses
- NOTE: The media selects the images they want to use. If you give us amazing images, you are much more likely to see your image in a paper. (Research to see what pictures the media has selected in the past. It is usually a very interesting or odd image, or something with a face. It is never a rehearsal image or cast picture. And always has great lighting. Ideally work with a professional photographer or a friend who does photography for these images. And plan to have then sooner rather than later. If you miss the deadlines the media have (we never know their requirements until 24 hours in advance), you miss getting on that media. So be ready as soon as you can.
Other things...
Rehearsal Schedule
Work this out with your venue when you apply, or closer to the time. At least get a commitment about how long your rehearsal time will be. Most fringe venues can only give you 1 1/2 hours total for get in, get out, and rehearsal. Usually fringe shows just get used to the space, and do a cue to cue. If you need true rehearsal space, talk to us. We might have some ideas.
Tech Questions
Work out your tech questions with your venue before you accept. You may even want specifics in your venue deal. As you show may change closer to the festival, make sure to revisit this information with your venue also closer to the time.
Web Proof Link
Our new system will have a way for you to approve a proof of the website. Please keep an eye on your emails to proof these quickly.
Logos for your publicity
Feel free to use our logo in your publicity. Keep the colors and dimensions as close as you can. Below are a few different types of files of the logo. If you need something else, or have a question, please email us.
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Social Media and other Publicity
While you are ultimately responsible for marketing your show, we do as much total festival publicity as we can. The better the material you give us, the more coverage you will get. Great pictures we can use on Instagram? We will be more likely to post. A great high resolution picture can also get you print and online media in major news channels. Don't scrimp on great photographs!
Make sure to tell us any weird or awesome things about your show. You can also give us links for us to put on our website, or anything else that could be useful for us to use for publicity. It may be an interesting tidbit that we can use for a tweet, or a link to a video marketing your show. Or you just made a new Instagram account, and you now want us to link to it. Feel free to give us as much information as possible so we can do our best to publicise the whole festival (and maybe with your show's image!).
Subgroups - Are there certain groups or organizations that are likely to enjoy your show? Tell us your ideas. We can work together to try to market to corresponding groups.
Idea: Is your show about surviving cancer? Then you might want to contact a cancer survivor network. There are a lot of different social groups organized locally for all sorts of different things. Show about knitting? Let's find knitting organizations to tell about your show. Look on Meetup.com or facebook for these corresponding groups. But let us know too, in case we know of something specific!
Make sure to tell us any weird or awesome things about your show. You can also give us links for us to put on our website, or anything else that could be useful for us to use for publicity. It may be an interesting tidbit that we can use for a tweet, or a link to a video marketing your show. Or you just made a new Instagram account, and you now want us to link to it. Feel free to give us as much information as possible so we can do our best to publicise the whole festival (and maybe with your show's image!).
Subgroups - Are there certain groups or organizations that are likely to enjoy your show? Tell us your ideas. We can work together to try to market to corresponding groups.
Idea: Is your show about surviving cancer? Then you might want to contact a cancer survivor network. There are a lot of different social groups organized locally for all sorts of different things. Show about knitting? Let's find knitting organizations to tell about your show. Look on Meetup.com or facebook for these corresponding groups. But let us know too, in case we know of something specific!
