Twinning the Arts: A look into the artistic minds of the Oleszko's: February 2012

Project One: Alice Unraveled (1/30/2012)

Alice Unraveled is a new rock/electronic musical written and composed by Studio Composition major, Kelly Izzo. The story is about Alice, a young girl in school who has a normal, down to earth life. Everything changes when Alice has a traumatic experience while out at a party. Her life becomes fragmented, repetitive, a swirling chaotic nightmare. Alice begins having episodes where she cannot separate reality from memory, or memory from dreaming.

Day 1
Today was a day mostly spent emailing supporters/collaborators as well as re-vamping our Kickstarter page. This morning, I emailed Keri Klick, the founder of The Global Sound Project, about confirming the concert fundraiser with the cast and crew of the show as well as let Kelly Izzo know that she would be interested in actually working on the production (being that Ms. Klick is going to Yale for Sound Design). I also sent 20 names and numbers (of the cast of Alice Unraveled) for The Global Sound Projects mailing list.
I believe it is important to make sure that the relationships you form with other organizations, groups, or people are strong and trusting. By sending Ms. Klick these names, I believe it shows her that I am on board to collaborate with her in any way that I can and that I am pushing for this event collaboration to go well. I also let Ms. Klick know that I would be renting out the Student Center (The Stood) for February 23, 2012 for our concert. Later on that evening when I rented out the space both for the two bake sales (originally scheduled for Feb. 2^nd and Feb. 10^th) and the Main Stage in The Stood for the concert, I ran into a few problems. It turned out that The Hub lobby area for the bake sale would only be available for Feb 2^nd and not Feb 10^thand the Main stage was also booked for the original date of February 23^rd. Through speaking with Kelly Izzo, I decided that it might be best to schedule the 2^nd bake sale to the Monday after (Feb 13^th) and to move the concert to Friday, February 24^th. Luckily, both of these dates were available and the event requests were approved.
I spoke with Herman Fermin, the actor who plays the white rabbit in the production. He suggested that I speak with Dr. Joe Ferry, a music professor here at SUNY Purchase. Herman insisted that Dr. Ferry would be a good person of interest to go for in terms of considering good merchandise sites as well as what products would be most appealing. I received an email later in the day from Dr. Ferry expressing his interest in lending some of his expertise.

Writer-Kelly Izzo, Musical Arranger- Mike Hart, Producer- Kiegan Munn and I met to re-vamp the Kickstarter website. A few of the Administrators for the show expressed concern that the format, and overall writing of the kickstarter page could be done better. Together, the four of us came up with a new reward system that would be more appealing to prospective donors/sponsors (for larger donations, Kelly Izzo will write an original song for that sponsor, write a theme song or jingle, sponsor could have Skype interactions with the cast during rehearsal to see progress, merchandise, prop giveaways and digital download of the demo) and re-wrote parts of the information section of the show. We also discussed the Twitter page, and what the overall tone should be.
Later, I decided that running this whole marketing/public relations campaign may not be a one person job. Shontay Richardson volunteered to help cover more ground as well as write a press release for the production. Together, we decided that Shontay would focus on the press release as well as the Twitter and Facebook pages and I would focus on the event planning for the fundraisers, Fractured Atlas page, as well as work on collaborating with other groups on campus. Shontay is an extremely hard worker who I have had the privilege of performing with in three productions (Little Shop of Horrors, RENT- that she directed, and Hair).
To end my day, I spoke with Mike Cronin, the host of Purchase Late Night on PTV (Purchase Television). I told Mike about the production and gave him the links to our bandcamp.com page to show him the demo tracks. He ended of loving the music and suggested possibly coming on the show at least once, if not twice, to promote the show. Mr. Cronin was even night enough to make a donation on our Kickstarter page, saying, “…looks like a worthy cause.”

1/31/2012 (4 AM)
Now that it’s so early in the morning, I’m coming up with these crazy marketing ideas for Alice Unraveled. Scaramela’s Pizzeria in Dobbs Ferry is currently following us on Twitter. I had an idea to make a reservation and do a cast outing to the restaurant and give them business. If the management agreed, we could take pictures and film our outing to Scaramela’s and put the footage on our Kickstarter and Youtube page, promoting the restaurant. I even had the idea of possibly playing the footage on one of the projectors during Intermission at our production. This is something I would like to run by the rest of the marketing team as well as Kelly Izzo and the Director, Colline Laninga. Hopefully this will work out in our favor.

Pictures from First Dance Rehearsal in Orchestra Room (1/29/12)