Martin Dockery - RIGHT NOW Aug 7 2020

Trapped in his home for months on end, animated solely by the glow of his devices, storyteller Martin Dockery has lost the thread of his own narrative. As have we all. A reckoning with where we’re at 5 months into a bizarre, reality-bending quasi-quarantine.

Watch Dockery's narrative snapshot of the moment on his YouTube channel... HERE

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Solo Performer Press Kits

A press kit is one of the important things that I don't see enough solo performers utilizing. A good press kit can be of great use to the performer as well as the press. It can be a great introduction for a solo performer of what he or she does. It can be a great way to sum up who you are, what you are about and what your show is about. And it does so in a tidy little press-friendly package.

In this post, I want to explore what is in a standard press kit, how press kits have changed over the last several years and how a press kit can be utilized.

First, what is a press kit? Traditionally, a press kit was a packet of photos and information given out to press and media folks that offered all kinds of stuff about your show. Up until about two decades ago, a press kit literaly had large format, clear photo prints (with accompanying rights to further print these photos), a biographical write-up about the performer, a summation about the project/show and a listing of contact information to for follow-ups. It came in a well-organized folder.

Eventually, this gave way to placing all the information on a CD, then eventually a flashdrive, and now almost all "press kits" are done online, via a website or the like. Because if this, they are sometimes referred to as Digital Press Kits (DPK) or Electronic Press Kits (EPK)

Next, what would you need in a press kit? If you are doing good and interesting work at some point you are going to be featured on someone's blog, podcast, YouTube channel or maybe in some form of traditional media (alt weekly, newspaper, radio). Interviewers, bloggers and podcasters - in fact, all press/media people - are pretty busy folks. Why not make their lives a little easier? An organized, professional press kit will make them look good by keeping them on dealine and keeping them accurate and it will help them make you look good. It will also help promote your show to their readers/listeners. Best of all, it will help you control your own personal branding.

Here are the elements that make up a good press kit...

Press kit Checklist:

1. At least four (4) hi-res photos*

• 2, at minimum, "in performance" photos. ( At least one horizontal and one vertical. These should be taken close enough to see your face, should show you in action and should be clear and engaging. It can also help to have different ones if you are looking in different direction in the photos.)
• Your show poster
• A good headshot

All these photos should have proper accreditation in the name of the photo. Customarily, you credit the photographer who took the photo. If you own the photo full out, you are welcome to put your own name/company if you want. The caption should appear like this...

The actual title of this photo in the metadata is:
Brad McEntire in CHOP - credit-Audacity Theatre Lab

Why send in hi-res digital photos? Because, you want good art to be put with the stories people write about you and because you don't want them using some pixalated photo of you they found somewhere on the internet (podcasters, bloggers and other newer media, in particular, unfortunately sometimes do this. They will sometimes raid your Facebook for a simple photo).

Ideally, you want a whole smattering of photos because press outlets love recieving and then using different images than their competitors. So, a good variety of images can only help you. It might be worth hiring a professional photographer to get some really good pics as well (hat tip to Andrew Wade for this one).

ProTip: Don't have Adobe Photshop or Illustrator? Not a web-savvy designer? You can get great posters/flyer designed for around $5 a pop on fiverr. Or you can create one using Microsoft Word. Or you can can make a press kit or show flyer in Canva. Just some ideas I have utilized myself over the years.

* Hi-Res means High Resolution. Hi-Res is a photo at least 6" x 4" (or 1260 x 960 pixel dimensions image size). This is the minimum. Don't make any pic lower than this.

2. Biography

Ideally, you should prepare three (3) different bios, of varying length, and save them in a file on your computer.

• Full one (one page max) - summarizes who you are and what you are about
• short one (one paragraph) - just the big stuff
• one sentence (you'd be surprised how much this can be used)

3. Videos (or links to them)

I'll do a separate post on promo videos someday, but you should have two (2) in your arsenal for each show.

• A short one, like a teaser. Maybe 45 second to a minute in length. The first 15-20 seconds is a great place to put a really engaging moment from your piece or quick montage of the show set to music. The goal is to hook the viewer's attention.

• A longer one of a few minutes. It should hook attention, too, but give a bit more context to your show. Maybe in the middle have a quick Q-and-A where you talk about your show. You can describe what your aim is or the origins of your ideas behind the show. Follow this with a solid snippet or two from your show and end on either audience reactions or overlayed pull quotes.

4. Links to big/ representative online interviews (web and podcast)

This shows you have been newsworthy in some way already. No need to put pull quotes from other sources in your press kit, since journalists and so on will not be able to use them for thier own pieces.

5. Contact information 

Include phone, email, your website URL as well as social media links. You want the press to be able to contact you quickly and easily.

These last two are optional...

6. List of Awards You've Won

Won a few Best of Fest Awards? Belonged to some notable residencies? Won a well-known grant? Performed at a prestigious theatre? If you have racked up too many awards or they didn't fit in your bio, you might dedicate a full page to list them.

7. List of interview topics/questions

If you want an interviewer to cover certain topics, give them a list. If you want to go further, give them the exact questions you wanna be asked. They may not do it, but they'll know it is important to your message. Or they may just incorporate a few of the questions you may suggested into their interview. Interviews don't have to be 100% surprise.

NOTE ABOUT BEING INTERVIEWED: You don't have to answer the exact same way to every similar question you are asked from interview to interview, but make sure your message is consistent. Also, be interesting. This means being personable and engaging (This is something arts journalist-turned-solo performer Elaine Liner continually emhasizes). Remember, press folks are trying to sell their own products and you are the content. Help them sell you so they can help you sell your show.

Now, put all text elements in Word DOC for easy cut and pasting. You can use PDFs for things that wouldn't normally be cut-and-pasted, such as list of awards, but you should insert working hyperlinks into any PDFs to places where basic information can be straight lifted by press people (they love cut-and-paste... saves time).

Gather all these press kit elements, make them presentable (and, yeah, spell check everything!), then put them in a single folder on your computer. Zip that folder and then put it on your website. You can also put the individual elements as separate sub-pages on your website as well. Just keep it simple.

I would recommend putting these files not just on your website, but on a CD or , better yet, a small flashdrive to hand out to reviewers that show up to critique your show.

Do you need a physical press kit? I would say it couldn't hurt, but really, most of the time these are just added expense. I used to print out full color pages and put them in a nice folder along with a digital version of the press kit on an enclosed CD. I might make one  still in case an emergency arises (my website goes down for some reason or something happens on the press side), but it is strictly as a back up. I haven't actually handed out a physical press kit, like in a folder, since 2009.

A press kit is, admittedly, usually thought of as an old-fashioned tool of promotion, but I think it can and should be thought of in a different light for contemporary performers. The true value of a press kit nowadays is that it makes you, the performer, get all of your press materials together, fluidly and dependably, in one place. You will then have them on hand when needed.

A solid press kit will brand you as a professional. Make it easy for people to share the word about you and they just might do so.

Want a few good examples? 

• Rebecca Perry has all her Press Kit embedded in her website (under the Press/Media tab). Take a look... HERE. [update 6/2018 - Perry has redesigned her website and got rid of her Press/Media tab. Shame.]
• Also, take a look at Martin Dockery's excellent Press Kit for his show Wanderlust... HERE (bonus points because the links in the PDF are all clickable). He is also a fan of having clear photos of himself as a performer.
• You can see my Press Kit page on the website I made for my solo show CHOP... HERE (the website platform Wix doesn't allow ZIP files, so the press kit elements are included on the page as separate elements)

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Submitting Your Work

A young performer approached me after a recent solo improv workshop I was leading. The young lady did not want to know about improv theory. She did not have questions about performance techniques. She did have a slew of questions about practical matters. She wanted to know about the concrete things folks in the performing arts deal with that a young performer seldom gets a chance to learn through workshops or classes. She wanted to know about websites and merchandising and securing venues. She wanted to know about the stuff I’ve learned “the hard way” which is to say, through years of trial and error. And I was happy to chat with her about that kind of stuff. One of her questions really stuck with me, and it is exactly the sort of thing this blog was built to address: What is the best or strongest way to submit your work to a festival or a venue?

Personally, I have found that there are a few things have proven to be wonderfully beneficial in getting my solo work out there. Chiefly, my first step is to make sure I have a really strong, worthwhile show. This sounds so simple, but I sometimes work on stuff that would find better expression in, say, a multi-character piece, or as spoken word at an open mic, or in a sketch comedy revue and so on. I have to feel really good about putting my name on the show as a solo work, first and foremost.

Hand in hand with the belief that my show is of high enough quality that it is actually ready to show to audiences (as well as critics and colleagues), I spend a lot of time really getting to know my show. How do I explain it to people? How do I market it as well as me performing it? This, of course, is a process. You will naturally find more and more in your own show the more you perform it.

When I was putting together CHOP and for the first several productions, at about three different festivals, I was leaning hard on a particular approach. I had understood my piece to be mostly about a protagonist that deals with finding his identity through unusual circumstances. And it is about that. But some feedback from my tech crew allowed me to see what they saw in the piece as well. They saw a romance. A love story between the protagonist and the woman who acts as a sort of catalyst for his transformation. Oh, I thought, yeah. My show also has a love story.

This changed both how I approached the show as an actor, but also in how I marketed the piece.

I think marketing tools are important. When submitting a piece you have to remember the people selecting and adjudicating for festivals have not seen your show yet. They are looking for a hint of what it is all about. Not just the content, but the vibe, too. And of course, without experiencing the show, marketing tools are the only gateway they have into the piece.

I like having a good promotional/clips video. I take the clips directly from actual show recordings. I want the selector to hear the audience response as much as my performance. I sprinkle these promos with press and word-of-mouth quotes. I put a record of all the places I’ve taken the show, all the press, all the information (photos, blurbs, etc.) - really everything - on a website. I think it is important to have a website as a one-stop shop for info on your show.

Besides having a solid show and basic marketing tools for the show, the last thing I think is helpful is simple human connections. If you know the folks at a certain venue, you’re a step ahead. If they know you through reputation or word-of-mouth, then you’re a step ahead. Even knowing people in a town you plan to go to offers the opportunity for potential audience and maybe a place to crash for free. Like all industries, most of theatre really runs on human relationships. I say, foster these relationships. Nurture your network.

I reached out to two other solo performers to see what they considered important when submitting your show.

Martin Dockery  is a whirlwind on stage. His funky, kinetic, loose-limbed diatribes about autobiographical events in his life have taken form in wonderful solo shows like THE BIKE TRIP, WANDERLUST, THE SURPRISE and THE DARK FANTASTIC. He has taken his pieces to fringe festivals all over North America. He has self-directed and collaborated with the likes of Jean-Michele Gregory. Here’s what Martin has to say…

Almost all the festivals I've submitted to have been lotteries, in which cases, they didn't ask for anything. Not even the name of the piece in some instances. The festivals that have been juried, though, didn't actually require video from me. It's probably their policy, but as it happened in my case, what mattered was a combination of being recommended by someone else, and then having all the favorable reviews to back up the recommendation. This is how I came to be a part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston and the Adelaide Fringe in Australia (world's 2nd largest fringe). I'll be doing the Melbourne Comedy Festival this year, too (world's 3rd largest, I think). This came about because I applied and had good credentials. They didn't ask for a video. I'm also planning on applying to the Edinburgh Fringe this year, and I'm hoping it doesn't involve video. I try to avoid submitting video as video tape so rarely captures the vibrancy of both the room and performance. I'm like a native American in this way, I believe the camera steals the soul (though only in performance). Of course, if a festival or theater required it, I'd submit something. There are no scripts for any of my shows. They're all created orally, and I've never written any of them down. Video, though, does exist. And so, if a festival requires a script, I could send them this. Hasn't happened yet, though.

I believe it's important to have a website, if for no other reason than that it shows you're serious enough about what you're doing to HAVE a website. I have a website solely for this reason. I don't update it with original content, so there's nothing about it that would compel repeat visits. But it's there in case someone, as I said, wants to check whether I'm serious or not. (www.martindockery.com, by the way.)

And so, to answer your question: I think it's a combo of things. In my case, that combo has been: recommendation, a long list of good reviews and performance history, backed up by a website .

Faye Lane is a transplanted Texan based now in the big apple. She, like Martin, is part of The Moth, a story-telling organization and radio show in New York. Faye has taken her folksy, sweet and hilarious show THE BEAUTY SHOP STORIES to venues and festivals far and wide. Think Jerry Clower meets Billie Holiday and you’ll get an idea of Faye’s autobiographical solo show that combines stories, songs and intimate characterizations. Here’s what Faye had to say about the process of submitting your show to the world…

I think when you're submitting to a festival the more the better, (especially with a full script, if you have it,) but a good video reel is the best!

I adjudicated FringeNYC recently, and I couldn't help but pay the most attention to shows with really grabby video reels. Another tip: Don't spend too much [money or energy] on fancy notebooks and binders. Most festival adjudicators never even see them. The NY Fringe throws all that stuff away, and the adjudicators just get the materials in a plain manilla envelope.

Oh! And a good, heartfelt cover letter is a must. Just simple language explaining what the show is about. And most importantly, why this project means so much to you. In my experience, cheeky and clever are a turn off. Simple, heartfelt language is best.

For more information on my solo work click here.

For more info on Martin Dockery, click here.

For more info on Faye Lane, click here.