This Week at GRSF: Technology

“To make a virtue of necessity…”
-Two Gentlemen of Verona

This season at GRSF, we are trying to do more with less, and we need your help. While we have little money to buy ads, we still need to fill our theater. Luckily, we have what wealthier advertisers dream of: you, an audience that knows our work, loves what we do and will recommend it to their friends. At least, that is what we hope. Our budget makes it a necessity for us to ask your help in promoting our plays.

Nothing gets people to the theater like friends telling friends to see a show. There simply is no more powerful marketing tool. If you are grateful to whoever first brought you to the theater, if you are thankful that someone convinced you that Shakespeare is for you, or if you’d just rather see GRSF plays in a full theater, then tell your friends. You may awaken in them an appetite they never knew they had.

The easiest way to promote GRSF is to forward our emails. You probably have dozens of contacts who would much rather hear about a Shakespeare festival than see one more video of a water-skiing cat. Thanks to a generous donation from Vertical Response, our email marketing is even stronger and more secure. Now that we are in season, we will send our newsletter once a week. Forward it, and your friends will discover our plays and everything else we offer. If your friends are interested, they can use the link at the bottom of this email or the form on our website to subscribe themselves. If not, at least they’ll know that you are a sophisticated theater goer and treat you with the esteem you deserve.

We also have a newly redesigned website. Based on a free, open source platform, we hope it will make it even easier to find out about everything at GRSF, from new features like AfterWill parties and great deals on local hotels, motels and B&Bs to a complete schedule of Prelude Concerts and Front Porch events. You can even download the scripts of the plays on the 2009 season page or enter the 2nd Annual Sonnet Contest online at grsf.org/education. And, of course, you can still Contribute to GRSF online. While you are browsing, notice the Share toolbar in the upper left hand corner. Use it to email what you find to your friends or post it to Facebook. You’ll even find a button to print the page and hand it to your neighbor over the back fence. (Amazingly, that still works.)

You can also become our fan on Facebook, and use your Facebook status to promote GRSF. And yes, we do tweet on Twitter. (We don’t really understand what that means either, but luckily our young interns do.)

One other way you can help us save money is to use our new online ticket system. Associate Director Alec Wild developed our new open source system. Open source means that a community of programmers developed the system which costs us nothing (except many, many hours of Alec’s time to set it up). The open source movement is very much in line with the spirit of community that continues to sustain GRSF. On the new system, you can choose your exact seat, Paypal handles the payments (you do not need a Paypal account), so it is safe and secure, and you get your tickets via email. Best of all, it saves us money. Give the new system a try, but don’t worry, we are still committed to providing a high level of customer service at our box office. If you have trouble online, if you need to exchange tickets, if you have a gift certificate or if you just like talking to live humans, call our box office at (507) 474-7900 and we are happy to help.

Your help in promotion is crucial this season. Thanks to the creativity of our dedicated artists, we will maintain our artistic standards in the face of budget cuts. With your help in promotion, we can fill our theater and attract new audience members.

Thanks for all your help.

The GRSF Staff