Austin Improv

Austin Improv Collective FronteraFest Bring Your Own Venue IDEA

in chicago for one of our week in weird places shows last summer we did a VAN SAFARI, which entailed us loading up the van with audience and taking them through the treacherous urban improv landscape of the north side of chicago.
as the safari driver i talked about the history of chicago improv and every once in a while we'd find one or some of the elusive improvisers in the midst of the chicago public just walking around. i'd hop out of the van and open the back doors, coaxing the improvisers to snap out of their manufactured state and into improviser mode to do a scene.
then we'd move on to the next location once they had improvised for a bit. we enlisted the help of fellow imps in chicago cuz we didn't have enough manpower to cover the whole tour.

but, i think this idea would work beautifully for the fronterafest bring your own venue thing they do. it costs $250 to apply and we would need to know if there were groups interested in doing this. i don't think we would get turned away. if the collective can't swing the cash then maybe a bunch of groups would want to go in and split it to make it happen. we can charge as much as $12 per audience member (WAY TOO MUCH) but the van would only hold about 10 people, so making our money back is just about an impossibility unless we run it multiple times but they say they want the shows to be under 90 minutes and i think this works well around an hour.

anyway, just gauging response to this. the deadline is november 1 and i think we should get it in asap.

jeremy

I'd totally be down for doing this.

Why does this cost $250, but regular FronteraFest costs $40?

i don't know. maybe it's a typo and they meant to put $0 cuz that's roughly what it will cost them.

Question...

If this is going to cost us $250 (assuming it's not a typo), couldn't we just pool together $150 and market this ourselves? What's the advantage of doing it as part of Fronterafest?

'when i was in san francisco, i saw a show as part of the san francisco fringe festival similar in idea to this....it was a "bachelorette party" that took place on a charter bus and all the audience members were "guests". it was very interactive and successful (on the whole). but the whole time, i was thinking that improvisers could make SO much more out of this idea.

i don't know how much those busses cost, but i think they could hold 50 or so people. 50 x $12 x 4 nights = $2400.

i think the benefit of doing this under the guise of frontera fest (and what some of the $250 entry fee probably goes to) is that we get to use their marketing machine. i don't know how the bring your own venue shows do, but it seems like every time i've performed at or been to a short fringe show, its sold out.

yeah, the short fringe does really well and i've been to several byov shows that have also done well. i think doing it through fronterafest does two things. 1) we take advantage of their marketing. 2) by reaching out to the so-called legit theatre in town with an eye-catching, unique idea we get one step closer to being friends with them. actually 3 reasons. 3) we glom ourselves on to a successful festival that is outside of our normal realm.

granted $250 seems a little pricey but i think doing it on our own limits our scope and doesn't put us in fronterafest as AIC which could be really good for press reactions.

although, if we did it ourselves, we could spend a little on marketing and run the show several times in one day adding shows as it sold out, and we would probably make money off of it.

i dunno

I'm all for doing it, even through FronteraFest. I'd kind of like to get an explanation about why it costs 6 times what a regular Frontera show does, though.

Oh wait...maybe we keep all the money from the "door" ? That must be a big part of it.

Fuck 'em. We run the show twice. 45 - 55 min. Each time. Then we keep running it 'til we run out of passengers. Do the reservation thing like we did in chicago. I mean, sure only one or two of the times we run the show will it ACTUALLY be for the fest, but we can still use their publicity to drum up audience members. OR we could run it a whole bunch o' times that day BEFORE the actual festival show.

Whatever it takes man. That was a sweet show. We'll need a new intro video though, the other one says "chicago" like 5 times.

DollarBill wrote:Fuck 'em.

well, the problem is they run byov shows all day long on one day right in succession. they may not take too kindly to us doing our show for them and then continuing to do it over top their other shows, competing against it. i will ask i guess.

and yeah, i think the idea is that the byov show keeps the door, but we couldn't make our door unless we did it multiple times.

beardedlamb wrote:I think I am sooooooo smart.

I see. Well, maybe we can go last and run late.

or maybe we could do more shows after frontera-

"Held over for another day! The wildly popular Frontera byov van tour!"

for the record, i think with both the byov and the long fringe shows you keep 100% of the door.

any Springer "Final Thoughts" on this one? I'm not seeing a lot of interest, at least not interest in doing it as a part of frontera fest.

the reason this show costs more is that you get their advertising and you get to keep the box office. when you only pay $40, you get minimal advertising and you get very little to none of the box office. however, when you do the bring your own venue, the group running the show gets to keep all the money.