Web 2 Meet Up Entertainment

A Royal Shakespeare Company Christmas show needs a big name or two doesn’t it?

That was certainly the thinking behind the RSC’s 2006 production of Merry Wives: The Musical, which had quite a few stars on board – not least Judi Dench and Simon Callow – with stunning direction by Gregory Doran, who’s also a big theatrical name that gets bums on seats.

It had been the case a year before that with the company’s excellent production of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations – starring Sian Philips as Miss Haversham – as it had been in the late 19th century when actor/manager Frank Benson tried desperately to get Sir Henry Irving to head a star cast, only to be thwarted by Irving’s death.

Pantomime is the same: get a biggish name (and quite a few Hollywood B list actors are coming over to give panto a try) and build a show around them; and most Christmas shows need to have an element of pantomime about them.

So, when the cast details of this season’s RSC Christmas show, Arabian Nights, was published there wasn’t a big name to be seen – several familiar names, but no big names; no queuing all along Waterside names, as there had been when David Tennent was booked to play Hamlet a couple of years ago, or even Richard Wilson’s recent Shakespeare debut as Malvolio.

There was no real excitement either – anticipation yes, but no buzz. And the previews didn’t pull in the punters, which could have been due to the dreadful weather and the financial down turn. This became obvious, with only a handful of people in the Dirty Duck having a pre-show drink or meal, and the Duck is always a good barometer.

Like me, you might dream about spending your time creating great art, gaining recognition and a steady income. Through more trial and error than I’d like to admit, and several business models that had nothing to do with art, I’ve come up with some great starting points to help initialize a freelance career in art.

- Schedule your time -
My schedule sheets are weekly grids, with days of the week going horizontal and half-hour increments of time vertical; adjust this to your preferred format / timing, block out the times that are already taken up (sleeping, classes, etc), and then decide which part of your art business will be done when.

Art business stuff to consider: Personal projects. Commission projects. Website updates. Correspondence. Various organization. Self-promotion. Block out some parts for flexibility (In case you get an extra commission, a great idea, or a flu). Then take each other aspect and schedule it in. Also schedule wind-down / reward / off-work times. These are as necessary to the job itself as they are to your own well-being.

- Target audiences -
Don’t combine genres unless you’re willing to go all out in creating a world – for which the prep-time, difficulty, and risk are much greater. It might be a good idea to piggy-back on current industry standards, anyway, until you have a well known identity. Unless you have a backing story, people of traditional groups will shun untraditional work as simply “unusual.” However, these expectations soften after you gain recognition; Jim Hensen did anthropomorphized fairy creatures throughout his career (the long-faced Gelflings, for example) which were often explained in through their story contexts.

Tea Stain’ by Gavin Turk – Fantastic Artwork, Bad Investment

I recently came across a limited edition print by Gavin Turk which was being sold by White Cube gallery entitled Tea Stain’ which basically consists of a round tea coloured stain from the base of a tea cup on a white piece of paper. There are those that would immediately dismiss this artwork as another piece of rubbish modern art but I have to admit that I personally find the concept rather intriguing.

According to the White Cube website, “This work by Gavin Turk further explores the complex ideas surrounding authorship and the concept of the artist as creative genius’. With each tea stain a unique mono print Turk asks the viewer to examine not only the way that an artist is seen to be a creator of objects venerated within an art historical context, but also the ways in which the simple motions of the everyday can become amusing or important.” Apart from the obvious comment on the issues of authorship and artist as creative genius’, tea has many different cultural, social and historical associations which are universally relevant and should evoke some sort of response in almost everyone. Although the artwork consists mainly of blank white paper, it is the simplicity of the work that forces the viewer to generate their own understanding and make their own interpretation of the work thus increasing the relevance and level of interest for each individual viewer.

As much as I like Tea Stain’, there are unfortunately several factors that make this work a bad investment, such as:

1. The work is an edition of 1000 which is way too big to have any value as an investment. With 1000 of the works on the market there is never going to be enough of a demand on the secondary market to produce an increase in their value significant enough to categorise the work as a good investment.