What I learned

It's been two weeks since load out, and I've had quite a bit of time to reflect on the show.  As I was walking out the door, the space manager at Atlantic congratulated me and said that producing a play is like "a trial by fire."  Sometimes making it out alive is a victory in and of itself.  To an extent that's true.  There was a lot of good that came out of this, but there were also flaws.  And you gotta take the good with the bad.  I figure I'd share them both.

First I'll start with the bad.  No matter how good you are or what your intentions may be, you'll always fall short of perfection.  I'm certainly not immune to that.  And anytime you get more than ten people in an audience, there will inevitably be someone who doesn't like your show.  That's life, and you have to learn to deal with it.  We had a few critics stop by, and while they had some very kind things said about our show, they also had some criticism as well.

But I'm grateful for the criticism.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn, and I'm grateful for the honestly.  So to all the critics out there - thank you very much for your feedback.  I'll apply it to my future work, and hopefully you'll come review that as well.

Now for the good.  I'd like to share a few numbers with you.  We opened with about 80 tickets sold in advance.  That's not a very high number, and at first I was a little disappointed.  However, over the course of our 1 week run, that number climbed to nearly 240.  That's triple what we started with.  In one week's time-span.  I did very little marketing once the play opened, which means that despite any flaws the show might have had, people enjoyed it and we had a good word of mouth.  For a group of unknown actors, working for an unknown theater company (working on a first play by an unknown writer), that is a very impressive statistic, and everyone involved should be extremely proud.

I'd also like to comment on the acting, which I thought was quite good.  One thing most critics did praise were the performances.   Makes sense.  I've been acting for seven years and I've been writing for three.  I have a lot of room for growth in both, but it makes sense that I'm a better actor.

And I couldn't have picked a better cast.  They should all be extremely proud.  I can't begin to tell you how many compliments I got on their work.  Every night was different, and while some nights were better than others, I thought that every show was good, and I thought that we "showed up" as a cast every single night.

We also had a fair amount of attention from the industry.  About 10 or so production companies came to see the show, and a few of them contacted me asking to see more work.  Several members of the press stopped by (including Vanity Fair), and many of them wrote me back after the show.

I had nothing but the best time working on this.  I'd even go as far as to say that January was the best month of my life.  I want to thank everyone who came to see it.  You really don't have a show without an audience, and I'm grateful for everyone - even the critics.  It couldn't have happened without you, and hopefully you'll come see me in the future.  I can't wait to do it again.


Until next time,


Jon Kakaley



P.S.  I'll be maintaining this blog, but less frequent.  Probably around once a week (until my next show gets going).

The Aftermath

For anyone who's been following the blog - I'm still alive and well.  I've just been on a little vacation.  It was a long hard journey and I decided to take the following week off after load out was concluded.  But I haven't forgotten the blog, and over the next few days I'm going to post some of the results and how we did.

But I will say this:  while you can always grow and improve in all areas of production, for our first time, we did very very well.

Stay tuned!