The Official Salvage Vanguard Theater Blog

Great question, Jason!

About six weeks ago, we brought Seth Goldstein, our general manager for the NY production; Michael Coco from New World Stages; and Jeremy Lee, all around great guy from NYC to Austin to work with the Austin team, including the cast, Derek Rosenstrauch, Tim Doyle, and a couple of veteran marketing guys Gregory Kallenberg and Dave Shaw. We analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the show and over the course of a weekend reframed the production to eliminate the weaknesses (creating a stronger visual arc, streamlining the audience participation, setting it in a clear period) and capitalize on the strengths (the fun, the script, etc.).

Yesterday, we tested this effort by presenting the concept to seventy potential NY-based producers and investors. We presented the first three episodes of the show, I showed our ideas (including the concept, the target market, the scale of the production, and exploitation opportunities) in a Keynote presentation. Then, the cast performed a five-minute wrap-up of the rest of the story.

There wasn’t enough time after the performance for me to talk with everyone who came. But, the people I did talk with seemed to be very impressed and we set up three meetings immediately with three people who could really make the show happen!

There are a whole bunch of decisions to make, including on what scale to produce the show. (We presented two scales: the extremely minimal version that we’re already doing and $1m production for a 499-seat theater.) But I’m anticipating the we’re going to have answers to all our questions by the end of the week when I leave NYC.

Buzz took a bunch of photos so hopefully those will be posted soon!

My head is spinning, but I think we’re on the right track.