The Bottom 10 of 2008

On a whim, I decided it might also be helpful for me to figure out which shows of the year were the least successful. Nobody really likes to look at this side of life, but it’s necessary in order to improve. While earning my master’s degree, I heard about managers that fire 10% of their employees each year, no matter what - the bottom 10% performing employees. It’s a tough policy, but I can understand several reasons why, logically, it makes sense - it motivates everyone to improve, and if you’re always eliminating your bottom performers, your overall performance will go up over time. Not a very nice thing to do, necessarily, but I guess that’s business for you. Not a philosophy I personally will ever subscribe to, but it’s interesting to think about on a theoretical level.

The thing I noticed right away about these bottom performing shows is that for the most part, I have already taken steps to correct the reasons for their poor performance. Will those steps work? For some, absolutely. For some… who knows?  Please enjoy the bottom 10, from the top of the bottom to the number one, our worst showing of the year.

10.  RI’s Implympics, 8-29-08

As I look back, there was nothing inherently wrong with the show itself… it was a matter of scheduling. This was our second Friday show that we’d ever done. In July, we expanded to one Friday evening per month as a test. This second one proved that the audience as a whole hadn’t yet caught on to the fact that Friday shows were happening. Also, this show had the misfortune to be scheduled on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. This, as I have discovered, ain’t a great time to have a show.

9. RI’s Halloween & Scary Election Show,  10-31-08

Same deal here… Friday show when people aren’t yet terrifically excited about Friday shows, and it fell on a holiday - Halloween. I think if I had done a better job of promoting this show, it could have done better. Live and learn.

8. Omega Directive Premiere & Hypothetical 7, 8-9-08

Although Omega Directive has proven to be one of my absolute favorite groups to perform with and to watch on video later on, at this time, the group had done no shows. Brand new, untested groups do not usually generate any audience interest.  Attendence for OD shows has picked up since this first one, so people must be enjoying it as much as I do. Then there’s the H7 problem. This group has tremendous troubles attracting audience… their first show here at the Imp was well attended, and has never regained that level. After talks with a few of the H7, I’ve discovered this isn’t necessarily a venue problem… several other H7 shows have had similar problems. However, frequency may be an issue. Different audiences have different rates of audience fatigue. The H7 audience may not be one that can handle a monthly show. So, in 2009 we’ll be cutting back to five H7 shows at the Imp, and they’ll be exploring other venues as well. It doesn’t hurt my feelings that that’s happening - if something’s not working, you have to do what you can to fix it.

7. Game Show: Card Sharks & Makeshift Militia, 5-31-08

As much fun as the Game Show format was, it never caught on with audiences. Maybe not everyone is as big a game show fan as I am. I talked to people, and many of them said they thought it was a cool idea they’d like to be a part of, but those talks didn’t translate into butts in seats. So, we stopped producing the Game Show in May. Problem solved. As far as Makeshift goes, this show happened right after the end of the semester, and their audience had scattered, as had most of their performers.

6. Red Rubber Ball & Trivial Prov-suit, 9-6-08

This one’s easy. This show happened the exact same weekend as the KC Improv Festival. Audiences here were terribly small. It’s tough for the small theater with shows every weekend to compete with a large special event with a great big budget and celebrity power. Good thing it’s only once a year.

5. RI’s Coronation Day, 4-19-08

2008, in my mind, is split into two sections - Jan.-April and May-Dec. (like the romance). In the first few months of the year, I saw that attendance at Roving Imp shows was not at the point where it really should be, so I planned a complete RI lineup shakeup to begin in May. This is the point where we began expanding the number of performance groups and changing the weekends so that the 7pm and 9pm shows were different groups. This has proven to be the best decision of 2008. Attendance since May has been noticeably higher, and I’m 90% sure it’s because of the difference from 7pm to 9pm. This particular April RI show suffered from not only this “previous to May” designation, but also from a really stupid theme. Coronation Day? Really? That’s going to attract people? My bad.

4.  Dictionary Soup, Biblioclast Premiere & the Hypothetical 7, 10-11-08

Again, we have the premiere of a brand new show, which seems to be a pattern, and H7, with the audience problem. That’s more than Dictionary Soup could overcome, which despite a great turnout the previous month, was still a fledgling show - this was only its third appearance in an 18-month period.

3. RI’s Revenge of the Angry Groundhog, 2-2-08

Sure, this one fell on a holiday, but I can’t imagine that that’s the reason for the turnout. This one suffered from the same problem plaguing RI shows in the Jan.-April period, despite what I thought was a fantastic theme.

2.  RI’s Implympics/MovieProv, 8-16-08

I’ll first address MovieProv… which I thought was a really neat idea with a lot of promise. I personally never got into MST3K, which maybe should have told me something. If I, the rock star nerd, didn’t like it, what were the chances that people less nerdy than me would like it? This show was universally hated, and it didn’t take long for us to stop doing it. Conceptually, I still like it, and it produced some fun moments, but most audiences were the opposite of interested. So… that didn’t help. Most audience members like coming to two different shows that they’ll enjoy, which didn’t help the RI show at 7pm. Also, did anyone else notice that THREE of the shows on this list are from August? I don’t remember exactly what was happening in the world as a whole in August, but there may have been external factors at work as well.

And now… our least attended show of 2008… the show that makes me shudder to look back upon…

1. MovieProv & the Hypothetical 7, 7-12-08

The double death knell. We’ve already talked about the problems with both of these shows, and we don’t need to rehash that here. As I recall, this was the only show of the entire year where we had the casts of both shows, and maybe one or two others. I do recall that we made absolutely no money this weekend. Let’s never have another weekend like this, OK?

Lessons learned from the bottom 10:

1. My instincts are correct - when I feel like a show is tanking, I give it another month or two, and then make changes. I did this with each and every show on this list, without knowing they would eventually turn out to be the lowest performers. I knew it by feel, which makes me feel good about my innate business sense.

2. It’s important to know when something can be saved and when it needs to die. We didn’t cut the bottom 10% of shows, but we did cut maybe 5%. The Roving Imps could be saved, and I’m glad they were. Game Show needed to die. MovieProv needed to die. I understand that there’s another group in town that is having a lot of success with the MST3K style, but they’re not improvising it on the spot, having never seen the movie before. I’m not bitter… that’s just not something I’m interested in. I’m never bitter that a performance group has success. Success in one area benefits us all.

3.  Don’t expect miracles from brand new, untested formats, no matter how good you think they are. Nobody else knows what I know, and so nobody knows how good or bad this new group is. I wish there were a way around this, but I don’t think that’s possible. Every group has to have a first show.

4. Be flexible, and be ready to change things. Somebody wise probably said something at one time like, “If you are rigid and inflexible, you’ll break when a stiff wind comes along.” They probably said it in a more eloquent way. That’s one of the great things about having your own theater, and not caring about being extremely rich… you have the freedom to experiment. I’ll try almost anything once or twice to see if it works. You never know what might happen.

Happy New Year, all, and thanks for all your support for the Roving Imp Theater. I couldn’t create any of this kind of wonderful art without you, and at the start of shows when I say that I appreciate each and every one of you, I truly mean it. See you in 2009!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 10:49 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print