A New Year, a new season and a luvverly bunch of coconuts!

10 January 2011

A New Year, a new season, but first, time to dismantle the remnants of the old year. Down with the pirate bunting and Jolly Roger, and out with the palm tree and foyer ‘island’. Does anyone want some sandpit sand? Email production@watermill.org.uk as they have an excess even after donating some to the local playgroup. Still nestled around the base of our flashing LED palm trees are a few coconuts. We have a wonderful customer who travels to see us regularly from Wakefield, West Yorks, in his camper van, usually bringing flowers for the box office team but this time, in honour of Treasure Island, a bunch of coconuts! We have so many loyal and supportive customers – we’re very fortunate and believe me, we never take you for granted! So whilst the production team take the inside of the theatre apart, testing all the lighting and other equipment and undertaking the maintenance required for a full year of shows in the three short weeks we’re ‘dark’, the marketing team hit the ground running as we spread the word about the productions and events during the next few weeks. Firstly there’s print to be circulated to the venues taking our Outreach schools’ production of Dr Faustus. Staying true to Marlowe’s script, but pared down, the cast of two, started rehearsing today and what they lack in cast numbers and set they more than make up for in energy and dynamism! A team of Friends are in tomorrow to stuff envelopes for the direct mail for Relatively Speaking. (What would we do without them – well, we’d sit for the best part of a day doing it between the two of us!) We use our box office and marketing system to identify people who have enjoyed similar shows and send information to them. So if you receive mail from us about a production, it isn’t random you have been chosen ‘scientifically’! And alongside reminding customers about the productions, we’re flagging up that there are just a few tickets remaining for a plethora of high profile guests visiting at the beginning of March, Alan Titchmarsh, Joanna Trollope and Robert Hardy with Jon Snow. Our freelance press rep, Tei, is lining up Book Club guests and the Friends of The Watermill committee are finalising what looks like a really interesting and entertaining season of events. So, looks like another busy year for the marketing team (Becky, me and, in the depths of Oxfordshire, Tei).

That’s the blog written, now there’s just the website to update, Tweets to Twitter, Friends to make on Facebook, the image for next year’s Christmas show to sort out, a pile of production photos to file and the small matter of a three year marketing strategy to write… Happy New Year!

Jan – Marketing Director