The yellow springs kid’s playhouse
you’re the rarest of birds
You know you’re a small, non-profit children’s theater. You know you’ve been around longer than many other companies. And you know you’re the rarest of birds: making original theater for youth. No sad rehash of all the usual fare.
So, as a a small, non-profit children’s theater doing original work, you need both kids to participate, parents to let them, and you need an audience. Night after night, you need an audience. What do you do?
01. Research
Having worked with YSKP for more than a decade, it’s hard to remember when I knew nothing about them. But like all new clients and projects, it’s immensley important to learn everything you can. Who the people are, what their context is, what they look like in the world, what the neighbors are up to, what they want to be when they grow up… Learning, listening, and doing as much research as possible sets everyone on a good path.
02. Design
It’s imperative to come up with a unique style to both match and live well within the universe of each show, but it’s also important to keep larger branding elements in place to make sure each piece has its lineage. Parents need certain information, kids need certain other information, and the audience needs quite a bit as well. Good design is often good planning.
03. Develop
Making sure all the designed pieces can print, be deployed, be broadcasted, be handed out… Making sure everything is aligned and in the hands of the right people comes with experience. Decades of design and production connected with decades of theater production works well for decades-long relationships. The company director working closely with me, the creative director, is fantastic for unlocking new insights and wildly fun brainstoriming. More brains are always better than one. And why not try to share what we’ve learned over all these years by writing, editing, and publishing a handbook?
