Hard-up Fringe acts inspired when it comes to marketing (Excerpt)
Published:Sunday, June 10, 2007
"I do know attention-grabbing publicity when it crosses my desk."
BILL BROWNSTEIN, The Gazette
;)
One Night in Berlin Press Package (Front)Beholden Productions, the other co-winner of the Fringe Promo Contest, went relatively whole-hog with a $150 advertising budget. But talk about inspiration. To promote her neo-noir thriller One Night in Berlin, writer-director-producer Liesl Barrell opted for a clever mix of the macabre and the kinky. In an actual police-evidence bag, she enclosed real, spent bullet shells, bloodied cigarettes and lurid black-and-white-and-red photos of various human couplings.;)
Piece of Berlin Wall Teaser (Closed)
"Have we got your attention so far?" inquires Barrell, a South African native with Teutonic roots now living in Montreal.
You bet.
"The play is even more titillating than the marketing," she pledges. "I wrote it at a time when I was unemployed, despaired and disillusioned, and I think it shows that quite vividly."
While talking to Barrell, I hear gunshots in the background. "Don't be alarmed - we're rehearsing," she explains. "I want people to know that no actors were hurt in the making of this play. Okay, one of the actresses did suffer a little handcuff burn, but we are assured she'll be just fine soon."
;)
One Night in Berlin Press Package (Back)The marketing clearly continues. Barrell also followed up the initial press pack with another, this one containing a chunk of concrete in a clear display case, held together by yellow crime-scene cop-tape. Written on the concrete: "One Night in Berlin!";)
Piece of Berlin Wall Teaser (Open)
It is with both considerable anticipation as well as dread that I look forward to see what Barrell's fevered promotional ravings produce next.
***
For more of Liesl Barrell's ravings, check out Beholden's Publicity & Promotion Galleries.