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| Tim Mooney in his solo show Lot O' Shakespeare |
Tim Mooney is a solo performer and playwright who makes his living traveling most of the year around the United States presenting his roster of ten different one-person shows to educational institutions and fringe festivals alike.
This is part 2 of a two-part interview with Tim. Read part 1... HERE.
Tim began his touring in 2002 and his solo performance career has parallelled the development and proliferation of the Web 2.0. In this second part of the interview we get into some of the nuts and bolts of Tim's operations. We'll cover how Tim communicates with his followers, how he set up his company, the Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre, and learn how he has used new online technologies as they have risen to his advantage (and in some ways not so much).
Here's part two...
TSP: As your career
as a touring solo performer has developed over the past seventeen years, you
have used a lot of online resources. You are good about adopting new tools as
they arise. Over the years, you have moved from one kind of software to another
as technology upgrades. Can you walk us through how you have evolved in your
technology use to market and communicate your work since the early days?
Tim Mooney: Wow. You have really stalked, I mean “researched,” me
thoroughly!
That may be a
part of its own answer to your question. First, I’ve made the conscious
decision to live life in public, and trust that, even though I can be
tracked/stalked, that erring on the side of MORE information rather than less
makes me accessible to people who want to hire or work with me.
Actually, life
was pretty easy back in the day when I was just sending to my own personal
email list of family and friends. I started out reaching back to the people
that I had left behind, and would simply send out an update to the 30 or 40
people who may have been worried about me adrift in the universe.
TSP:
“Left behind?”
TM: I have some
family in the Chicago area and a fair amount of friends. They worried about me.
At least, back then. And over the years I think they’ve gotten accustomed to me
being that guy who lives on the road.
TSP:
But then your email list evolved?
TM: More
people signed on to that email list, and I forget how many people I was sending
to when I had the sense that my email program was going to stop me from sending
to a number so high. It seemed like I was going to need to migrate everything
onto a Yahoo! list, so I was insisting that my friends sign onto that. Many did
and many didn’t.
That’s
probably an important point. When you change your point of contact or upgrade
to a new program or whatever, people don’t automatically change with you.
Perhaps they have lost interest, or maybe they just don’t see the need to sign
onto this next, new thing. So, there is always a risk when upgrading.
And so, I was
sending out a bifurcated newsletter blog: some via email, some via Yahoo
Groups.
Yahoo! Groups
didn’t offer me much in the way of layout, and photos and videos and links were
becoming a more and more important facet of my updates, so it was probably just
a year or two when I went over to “Blogger”, where I could actually play around
with the look of the thing more than just plain text. And, by this time, I was
no longer just reaching out to 50 or so friends, but perhaps 500-1000 people
who just signed on at one of my workshops, or at my booth at a conference. I
may have crept up close to 2000 people on my list.
TSP: Your newsletter, A View From Here, is one thing that has
evolved. It was sort of an "inside baseball" touring log. You went
from distributing it via email to close friends and family, to posting updates
on a Yahoo! Group. Then you moved to a Blogger site and recently you have taken
to videoing monthly updates and sending it out via your YouTube channel,
Facebook page and to your Patreon patrons. How important have you found these
points of contact in connecting with your fans and supporters?
TM: From a financial/marketing standpoint, I have
absolutely no way of knowing. I do not keep metrics on these things.
There are
people who will write back to me after EVERY new posting, and others who I
never hear from, and some who will just write back asking to be “removed” from
the list. Mostly, I find that the students who are so excited to sign on after
seeing me perform at their school simply disappear from their school email
system and never think to reach out to make sure that they’re still on my list.
TSP: The newsletter, in particular, is about your
journey and a neat little behind-the-scenes glimpse at your life as a touring
artist. What did you hope to do with this piece of content? What was the
intended effect on your readers and supporters?
TM: Mostly,
the newsletter reminds people that I’m still out there, that I have a fun
perspective, that I have an ongoing life, and maybe they feel a little bit
proud of what I’m doing. I’m sure it gives some teachers the occasional “ping”
of how much they want to book me, or the reminder that I have a LOT to say on
the topic of theatre, one-person shows and touring.
Once in a
while, I’ll hear a complaint that my blogs/updates are too long to read
through. But some are still feeling like they are with me there, out on the
road. I don’t know how to reconcile
that. I’m not making anybody read what I have to say, and I’m laying myself
open to their thoughts and their judgments. Of course, I would love to think
that people are sending me their love from afar, but like any theatrical
performance, we NEVER KNOW just how profoundly somebody out there might be
touched or moved by the experience. We are throwing pebbles into a lake, never
knowing where those ripples might carry.
TSP: Patreon is not always an easy fit for
performers. You seem to be making it work. I know it is relatively new for you,
but how’s it working so far?
TM: The decision to shift to Patreon was a major
change, and it meant saying goodbye to a bunch of people, hoping that they
might join me on the other side. At the moment, it meant leaving behind an
audience that was almost 2000 strong for an audience that is currently 35
strong. (Oops! 36! Someone just joined last night.)
TSP:
Saying goodbye? How so? Because you no longer are posting updates via the blog?
You didn’t just ditch your 2000-strong list completely, did you?
TM: The list is still
there on my computer. But it will evolve into something else. I may break it up
regionally as best as I can, and send reminders that I’m available to perform
in a given area. For the moment, I’m using the threat of no more newsletters to
remind people to jump onto Patreon.
TSP:
Okay. Back to Patreon…
TM: That Patreon
audience of 36, however, is providing me an income of what is, as of today around $200/month.
Which is a fraction of that I make from any given performance. And yet, my
Patreon page is only about 4 months old at this point, and that base of support
only continues to grow. (only one supporter has withdrawn over the course of
these four months, and I assume it was someone who didn’t quite “get” that
Patreon was an ongoing monthly subscription.)
On the other
side of that, though, Patreon has gotten me more engaged in providing content
for my “patrons.” And so, I’m putting out more updates with video and an
ongoing lottery (for a free performance in your living room!) and I don’t let
my communication lag for long periods of time, if only because I feel
responsible to the people who are supporting me.
Also, my hope
is that the offer of the “free living room performance” will open me up to a
bunch of people who might not otherwise have come across my work: teachers,
librarians, directors, enthusiasts who might see my work and have new ideas
about venues or contacts. (This is still slightly theoretical at this point, as
those “free performances” are just now beginning to find their way onto the
schedule.)
TSP: Does Patreon beat Kickstarter and
other kinds of online fund-raising?
TM: The problem with Kickstarter/Indiegogo, etc. is
that it’s a SPRINT, focusing all of your fundraising efforts into a 5-week
period of spreading the word, posting and reposting to friends and family and
professional contacts who may or may not be enthused about this next new
project. And I may, very well, raise some $5,000-$11,000 to support this next
new project… which is awesome. But then we go into a kind of a hibernation as
we work in our garden to develop bookings and/or create next new incarnation of
the next big thing. And then we develop a new generosity/kickstarter/indiegogo
event for the next new big thing and try to rally support for that new big
thing…
But the energy
is less palpable than it was the last time around. And the $11,000 fundraiser
now brings in $6,000 or $3,000, and you hate going back to that well, not
knowing just how much you may be annoying people to support this next project.
However small
Patreon may start out, though, it heads in the opposite direction, as each new
month may bring in new supporters. Each new crop of supporters may bring in an
added $50 per month. And those people who sign on for the long term, are more
than likely to STAY signed on, enabling us to continuously build a foundation
of support that is somehow count-on-able.
I look forward
to the time, perhaps in the coming year, in which the Patreon support might
actually bring in as much as a single performance might earn, on a monthly
basis. Which would mean that I’m not so dependent on the whimsy of the bookings
or the economy, or the stupid legislators in any given state that might cut off
funding to their own schools.
Which might
mean that someday I can afford to offer up a show for half price or maybe even
for free in any given month, and not live or die on the question of whether
some Republican legislator wants to starve their own constituents of a budget
for programming.
TSP: Your Patreon features, as an incentive prize to donors, a drawing for a free "Home Performance." Have you done this yet? Is this something you have done before? Tell us about it.
TM: Still working
on that one. I’ve got three currently in motion, with the first performance
coming up on April 19! The host has secured a venue with some 40 seats in it
north of Indianapolis and we just (today) decided on a performance of Lot o’
Shakespeare for the event. There will be other performances coming up in the
Cincinnati area (in late May) and in Minneapolis in July. The fourth drawing is
coming up right about the time this interview is posted!
My biggest
concern is to make sure these performances happen within 1 year of their
respective drawings. I don’t want to develop a backlog of performance
obligations that remain unfulfilled until a dozen or so folks want to claim
their free performance all at the same time.
TSP:
Your mailing list, it would seem, needs to serve many functions, one of
which is keeping track of and being able to contact potential clients at
educational institutions you are hoping will book you. And these are spread out
in, what, all of the lower 48 states? First, what web-hosted email platform do
you use (iContact? Mail Chimp? Constant Contact?) and how, specifically, do you
organize it to facilitate all these separate contacts?
TM: My mailing
list covers 48 states (plus Washington DC), and the occasional venue just over
the Canadian border. But here’s the big difference:
This is not an
automated process. I do everything “the hard way.” Probably, if I were two
years younger, I’d see the advantage of Mail Chimp and Constant Contact, but I
personally send out about 17,000 emails four times a year (more-or-less) “by
hand.”
TSP:
No, Tim, no. Are you kidding? You mean, you use your personal, say, Earthlink
account or Outlook to send out loads and loads of emails?
TM:
Yes. And no, I am not kidding. If anybody is reading this to learn about
hyper-linked, super-fast short cuts, that’s not me.
TSP:
Okay. I mean, it is YOUR system. Live your life.
TM: I DO have my shortcuts. The body of my emails are
fairly consistent. I figured
out how to paste the body of an email that I’m sending out to a given state
into the “Signature” function of my Outlook program. Thus, when I click on
somebody’s email address, the email opens with the message already in it. At
that point, I adjust the salutation to the new person, decide if I want to add
any personal message to the note. I often
add parenthetical commentary to remind them that this is a REAL email that they
are getting from a REAL person. People do double-takes when they realize that
“oh! This is coming directly from the guy!” I want them doing that double take,
and realizing that I am writing directly to them.
I then proceed to paste
in the email subject line and hit send. I think I generally average about 6
emails a minute. I change them
over for each new state, with new dates of availability to apply to that
particular state.
The one time I
gave in to try to write a fancy email to a LOT of people at the same time (with
photos and graphics and nice layout in the body of the email) I got ZERO
response.
I couldn’t let
myself risk doing that again, so I went back to doing it the hard way. I write
straightforward emails, each with a particular selling point about the new
show, the new discount, the new book that I will send them a copy of (it’s like
an elaborate business card), and the new dates that I’m available to come to
their state.
TSP: Let’s stick with the educational
client email list for a second. How do you collect emails? Is there one tactic
that works the best for you?
TM: I have a couple of tactics, but the most reliable
is probably to look them up on the school’s website.
Quite often I
will get folks to sign in at a show, or at a workshop, or in some conference
exhibit hall, and that’s great. But I’ve developed a technique to find out ways
to look up (or to guess at) the email addresses of the folks who teach acting
or directing or theatre history, or French, or European History or English, or
Shakespeare… I usually assume that the folks who have the power to advocate for
booking me are Assistant or Associate or Full Professors. Or they may be chairs
of their respective departments. I’m looking for the person who has the vision
to see the value for their individual classes, and the initiative to chase down
the discretionary funding to make it happen.
Many times I
may have written to these people 2-4 times a year with my latest proposal over
the course of TEN YEARS, to have them finally write back to me to say, “I’ve
been reading your emails for a long time but never had the budget to make
something happen until now…!”
So, while
sending out 17,000 emails may often sound like 16,900 “no’s”, my job is to hear
those as being perhaps 100 resounding “no’s” with another 16,900 “I wish we
could make this work.” And that’s hard to envision when you only actually hear
back from those people on those rare occasions when the stars align and they’ve
got the budget and the time to make something happen.
TSP: You
have potential audiences in many places as well, for fringe fests and the like.
Do you keep a mailing list for general audiences in places you travel to over
and over again, like Minneapolis or Orlando?
TM: I probably should
work that up. Right now I mostly do that through Facebook, sending event
invites around. But I think these days that people get so many of those e-vites
on Facebook, that they’re just used to either deleting the notice or hitting
“interested” and forgetting about it.
TSP: You must have an excellent way to
keep track of all your gigs (times/dates/ on-site contacts info/ ways to send
invoices/ etc.). Do you use a big spreadsheet program like Excel or some kind of
online calendar? How is that set up?
TM: I do
everything “the hard way” in Microsoft Word.
TSP: Damn it, Tim.
TM: I
emphasize that I do everything the hard way, if only to scare those people off
who think there is a magical short cut waiting for them.
TSP: Well, yeah, there is probably an easier, more
user-friendly way to do it…
TM: Anyway, I
collect all of my names, titles, email addresses, along with a growing history
of correspondence, into one single document for any given state. And so I have
my Maine (I always start with Maine and end with California) document with
College and high school faculty, from Theatre, French, English, History, as
well as various special events staff. Random contacts from theatres and venues
get squeezed in wherever. I collect notes on any given response that I may
receive over the years (including “remove me from this list”… often SHOUTED),
and bend over backwards to respond to their needs and wishes and to provide
them with the info or options that might make an event possible.
I do this for
all 48 contiguous states and the biggest effort goes into the biggest states:
New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and California. Those documents are all over 100
pages long. I move from east to west, adjusting the dates of availability to
fit the particular state. (New England is easiest, because they’re all within a
day’s drive of each other and any New England booking can be bookended with any
other New England booking.) Any response gets pasted into the document and
quite often the collected responses from certain individuals grows to pages of
interaction over the years. Quite often I will draw from our previous
interactions to make some salient reminder which will assure them that they are
dealing with an actual human being at this end.
TSP: I am impressed with your knowledge
and performance skills with the work of Moliere and Shakespeare, but the most inspiring
thing to me about your work – and what I feel would be most beneficial to the
readers of this site - is how you have managed to create an infrastructure to
allow you to 1.) create your own work, 2.) tour with it and 3.) make a living
doing so. I am amazed how your operations puzzle-piece together into a
sort of machine. You have published a bunch of your scripts, the bulk of them
being adaptations of Moliere. These scripts, besides selling passively online,
prompt gigs at colleges and universities. Bookings to do your solo shows often lead to you
also conducting workshops. You have become pretty good at marketing, branding and
administrative work, using social media and email and Patreon and Instagram and
YouTube and your website and so on. You have bridged the indie world of doing
fringe fests with the more steady and better paying world of educational gigs.
You keep all of these under the banner of the Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre. Can
you talk about how you put the pieces together to get this whole infrastructure
in place?
TM: Not sure if I need to repeat that I do this all the
hard way.
TSP:
Damn it, Tim.
TM: If you haven’t guessed already, I’m a workaholic, driven by my need to
prove my parents wrong, or to prove myself right. All of that other stuff is
the product of me seeing a new way to be seen, or to be heard, or to create
something. A book, for instance, brings in some revenue, but it also serves as
a very impressive, elaborate business card.
People need
the sense that they are talking/working with someone who is “legit.” And I do
what I can to reassure them that they are working with the real deal, and that
I am capable of coming into their circle and present them with the same honesty
and (hopefully) inspiration that I am sharing here: to say, “here is how to act
in classical theatre; here is what is great about Moliere; here is how to make
a career out of your own initiative.”
I started from
my series of Moliere plays in rhymed iambic pentameter. I felt the need for the
typical undergrad actor to have THIS PARTICULAR sense of theatrical style to
make MY plays work to the modern audience. I came up with some exercises and
metaphorical constructs to help explain the performance needs of these plays. I
teach workshops to explain this and it is also spelled out in my book, Acting at the Speed of Life; Conquering Theatrical Style.
That sense of
what they needed to perform my plays gave me a secondary offering to earn me an
extra $300 on the road when I was in town to offer a play. I earned a few extra
dollars with my workshops, but I also was developing a larger body of actors
who were able to make me look good, if and when they performed my scripts.
TSP: The Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre is
a 501(c)3 not-for-profit, but you’re pretty much the only company member. You use the words “we” and “us” a lot in describing TMRT.
Are there other members? You contract in freelance help with fund-raising,
graphics and so on as needed, it seems. Is that
right?
TM: Mostly, I guess, that’s the “Royal We.” But as a NFP
corporation, I also have a board. (We “meet” once a year.) And I have a friend
back home who’s been very helpful in checking my mail, faxing out contracts,
mailing out books. She’s also the treasurer on the board and keeps the books.
She’s begun the process of tracking down and writing out grants.
TSP: So, you have help
with the administrative stuff?
TM: I do get some help with
administration. But I think my use of the term “we” is mostly intended to
extend the illusion of a larger company, rather than just one guy racing around
the planet doing shows.
 |
| Promo photo for Tim's show Breakneck Hamlet |
TM: I would love to get a stage
manager/driver so that as performances pick up I’m expending my energy on the
stuff that has the greatest impact. I’ve looked for agents on a couple of
occasions (both performance agents and literary agents), but I’m such an odd
duck, I don’t think they know how they could make me sell. And, once I did take
them on, I’d inevitably lose some of the connection that I’ve established
between myself and the person at the other end booking the plays.
TSP: So, you have a bit of help, which
is great, but you are still the main actor and the driver of your enterprise.
You strike me as a sort of a modern-day actor-manager of a theatre company
composed of basically one person. I think this is a wonderfully novel idea for
solo performers to consider. Indie authors do this nowadays, founding a
small-scale publishing company to release their own work. How did the TMRT come
about? Do you find it more useful to have a company behind you than being an
independent artist (especially with stuff like insurance, fund-raising,
bookkeeping, etc)? Where do you see TMRT going in the future?
TM: First of all, I DO, actually,
have a separate “publishing arm” of the “TMRT Press.” That’s where I
self-publish most of my one-man plays and my acting book. I have defined that
as distinct from the “Tim Mooney Rep” if only because I hope I might actually
earn a profit off of my books some day.
Also, the Tim
Mooney Rep started out as a joke: I was one man (Timothy Mooney) performing a
repertory of one-man plays (a total of 10 plays over the years). It was the
longest possible title for the smallest possible company you can describe.
But, over the
years, people started to support what I was doing, the mission. There was a
brief period around 2015-16, during which I’d raised about $11,000 to produce
“Breakneck Hamlet” and a major foundation had “discovered” me at a late night
Indy Fringe Festival performance (a foundation that proceeded to donate a
healthy chunk of change in subsequent years) that made me realize that this was
something that people cared about, and might want to support, in such a way
that it might make a difference if I was a not-for-profit organization, making
any donations tax deductible.
That seems to
have turned a major corner for us.
I’m not by any means wildly successful. In fact, I believe we are still digging
out from the recession of 2008, when the austerity measures that the United
States imposed on its charities and states and schools made it harder and
harder for the kind of programming that I offer to survive. But the support of
those people who believe in this work has closed the gap, if only slightly. We
have survived this “down time” largely intact. And as long as I have the energy
and the stubbornness and the enthusiasm to carry on, this silly dream of a
one-man adventure may well remain afloat.
TSP:
You look much younger than your actual age (which I we will not post here, but
let’s say you have a good half century and some change, under your belt). Ever
thought about hanging it up and quitting the TMRT/solo performance thing?
TM: There was a brief moment, about 5 years back, when
I was overwhelmed with a long drive bringing me back from Oregon to Chicago.
And I decided, I’m done. The sun is glaring in my eyes, there are bugs on the
windshield and I am ready to wrap this up.
And I got
myself an apartment in Chicago, and sent out resumes and applied for teaching
gigs and was ready to be done with it.
And, maybe the
only serious “nibble” I got was from a school in a remote area of Texas. For a
one-year visiting professor gig.
And I found
myself contemplating that one year in Texas, not really pushing forward on my
career, but making a little bit of bank to support whatever else might be next
in my career, that moment when I’d be ready to take a risk, throw myself off of
the edge of a cliff… come what may.
And as I
contemplated that, I realized… Wait. That’s what I’m doing now.
I am taking
that risk. I am doing that which I dream of doing. Today. Now. Every day that I
continue with this adventure, while not signing my life away to some
theatre/school/corporation to dictate my behavior.
I am living
that dream now. Interrupting that dream to do something ELSE is only going to
set my dream back a year or more…
I threw myself
back into my tour, and sent off another 15,000 emails…
20.) Last of all, Tim, where can folks
learn more about what you do? Links galore, please…
Thanks!
# # #
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