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I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

I really like spreadsheets for a lot of stuff. I’m not saying that I have the best way of doing this organization of a show flow, but here’s how I do it. All my crew is welcome to take notes however they like to get their work done, but I start out with a general show order so that I can plug things in and move things around. There are a lot of conversations that happen, but this gets them started.

Column A : time

not every row has a time. The times (like “8:15p”) are just there for important times. I don’t like when someone puts together a rough timeline and everything has an exact time. It will change a lot. This also prevents me from having to adjust every row when something new is added or edited.

Column B : general what

These are the simple descriptions of events that happen during the show like “intro the lion act” “opening monolog” “heartfelt speech”

Column C : duration

Rough estimates of how long things take help me understand the pacing and remind me to keep things short. “3min”

Column D : duration sums

This is the only spreadsheet formula so I can see how long the whole thing is running. Do I have too much content or too little? It adds the above some to the duration to the left. eg: the D4 cell says

“=(C4 + D3)”

Column E : notes to self

When I’m going thru, I this sheet, it’s nice to jot stuff down because I HAVE IMPORTANT THOUGHTS!

Column F thru Z : pieces needed

Each of these columns will have assets or things that I need from my people. So maybe column F is the “sound FX” column. Each moment in the show has its corresponding required sound effects next to it. This makes it easy for me to reconfigure the info later however i need to to talk to my sound effect person

This whole thing is messy.

Like I said, this is rough and it’s incomplete. It’s not a cue sheet or anything else like that. this is to get the whole production out of my head so that I start to visualize and use my brain for fleshing out, instead of doing the math and memorizing the order.

I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

Today was tech rehearsal. We’re dealing with a lot of new technology. New to the world and new to the school. As we jumped around from three different chat platforms (while also using WhatsApp and SMS in the background) it took a lot of patience, but we made excellent progress.

Maybe it’s just the people I’ve been talking to lately, but it seems the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a popular topic. DK is basically, “Less experienced people feel cockier and vice versa.”

I the Dunning-Kruger Effect every day. Then, when I get in a conversation with someone about something important in my wheelhouse, I start to notice all my hidden value.

This happened today as I’m working in rehearsal with showbiz people and school volunteers, I see how capable I am. I see the gap between normal people and stage people. I know what a rehearsal is, I know how to give directions, I know how to respond to direction. It’s a real confidence builder and a reminder that I need to standup for myself and the invisible (to me) things that I bring to the table.

I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

I need structure. Today was about finding the format of the event. I nailed down the timing of all the elements and made everything into short segments. Breaking things down into smaller chunks means the entertainment will keep moving and I won’t get lost because every chunk has a payoff. Every chunk leads to a result. I can be optimistic about the chunks because I know the audience is gonna love it.

This way of formatting is also good for me so I don’t get tied up in memorizing a script perfectly. I make a constellation of jokes, tricks, and visuals and connect those dots in the show. I can easily ditch something if it doesn’t work, or if something needs to change in the moment.

I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

Today it’s about show flow and game structure. I spent some time laying it out in a spreadsheet. I have the basic chunks figured out, but I need help. Tomorrow, I’m gonna have a call with my favorite director Stefan Haves to go over it and get some confidence in it. I’m using him because…

1. I trust him
2. He knows my “operating manual” (how I function)
3. He knows my abililties
4. He knows show tempo better than anyone
5. Things are low stakes for him because it’s not his show
6. Two heads are better than one
7. I don’t have a test audience, so I need input

I am not from the theater

I don’t start with collaboration. I am often resistant to direction and ensembles. I am tempted to make things on my own. Sometimes I do go solo, but when I want something done quickly and well, I gotta lean on someone else. Sitting with a keyboard and fighting myself gets me only so far.

I can think very well by myself. I can ponder and write well with no distractions.

In conversation, though, that thinking inflates. It becomes a real thing with volume. Nothing’s really real until it’s shared.

I’ve gotta tell myself over and over “nobody’s independent”

I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

Today and tomorrow were scheduled for me to work on the showflow and game structure of the event. I had committed to setup for my wife’s Zoom performance which I drastically underestimated. I got some work done on my stuff, but there was a lot of time spent on setting up her lights, camera, and sound. Alas, I don’t have a show flow. I don’t have game structure.

I am grateful for the time I spent on her thing. It taught me a lot that I think will help the school client, and will help future audiences. I got to talk to the school director today on zoom to figure out some things, and I got to work with my Zoom tech. The day was not wasted in any sense.

I know I’m on Zoltar’s timeline. I can sometimes get distracted, dismayed, or sidetracked by surprises that come up like this, but I don’t want to allow my black and white thinking to get in the way of progress. This happens all the time and I see it with lots of entertainers. As soon as we start into a project we love, new rabbit holes sprout up instantly.

Sitting to think of show flow and game structure is hard. It takes a lot of focus, and this is a big part of the value I bring. This event will be something completely original and something that most other entertainers would be incapable of doing. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

My hope in this writing is that I convey my confidence in my ability as well as the vulnerability I inevitably feel when I do my favorite work. The only thing I can do to continually recenter myself is to remind myself of my experience and try to bring the results of it to my audience. To hold back would be selfish.

I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school. Up until now, most of the work has been put into promoting it.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

Today I sat down to make a timeline for the next two weeks. It wasn’t easy to focus on. It was very fidgety and I had a lot of side-quests come up in my brain. This is one of those moments of responsibility for my audience and my collaborators. Although I do what I can to avoid unnecessary responsibility, I do cherish the opportunity to take over something in my wheelhouse and provide it for others.

I need a timeline for the outside world

I’ve gotta make a timeline because I’m potentially working with a director, comedy writer, performers, composer, video editor, Zoom tech, and a game consultant. They’re all on their own schedules. They all need to be told what their deadlines are – it’s the worst to say, “I need this yesterday.”

Otherwise, I can just do stuff myself – which is my old way of working. It’s fun to have all the control and not make timelines, but I can’t make as epic of entertainment.

Also, it’s good to make timeline deadlines for ordering props, equipment, and whatnot. Delivery stuff is fast, but not instant.

I need a timeline for the big picture

When I lay it all out in one document I can see everything that’s important and make sure I included it all. I can make sure I give enough time to the things that I might normally avoid – things like rehearsing.

I need a timeline for the small picture

Sometimes the small stuff is the most exciting. Making a tweak to my costumes, or refining one visual element can be a wonderful escapist rabbit hole. I really need those sometimes, but I can’t get carried away, or I won’t be serving my audience / clients!

Seeing a big list of things to do in one day and being able to weigh their importance helps me apply a firm Parkinson’s Law approach…

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Gotta make little time containers for the little stuff.

My process

The way my mind works, I want to make a system right away and I want to start with organizing. This can lead to an immediate block. Instead, I open up a word processor and start typing out a list of some things that I know need to get done. I resist the urge to format the list with bullets, to get correct spelling, to only list things that are big tasks, to make subtasks tabbed beneath bigger tasks… and so many more mental vacations!

I made a list of about 15 things to get done in the coming week until i started slowing down. When my brain dump was complete, I opened a spreadsheet and made a column for each day (yay i got to organize for a second!). Then, I started with today’s date “make a timeline.” Feels good to get one partially complete.

I went thru my list and made sure each thing had a deadline. Tried to think through what the other parts were and stuck deadlines in for those. For example, I knew when I needed the video editing to all be done. I backtracked and I figured out when I needed to send video assets to the editor, then figured out when I needed to shoot those assets. Everything has a deadline and every deadline is reasonable. I’m not going to do stuff if I can’t trust my planning self.

Lot’s of feelings

A lot of things come up for me when I’m doing this sitting deep thinking stuff. I think about all the planning I haven’t done before. I think about a bunch of failure scenarios. I think about how I never have enough to provide. I think about all the things I’m not doing well — that I’m not even supposed to be doing. My mind goes crazy to protect me from fallout. a major one one for me is thinking that I’ll make an incomplete timeline and that would be horrible.

When I step up and say “I will do this” to other people, it is publicly clear whether I fail or succeed.

What keeps me going is my track record of succeeding, the knowledge that doing something is better than nothing,and realizing that my feelings are not facts.

I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school. Up until now, most of the work has been put into promoting it.  I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.

1. created a new concept for the overall event
2. made a website to promote it
3. made three appearances at online student assemblies to promote it
4. created a trailer video
5. setup the event (auction) website graphics
6. setup the ticketing system
7. made some announcements for parents

I still have some announcements to make to get more ticket sales, but most of the rest of the process until May 1 is creating the online event.

Here are some things I know about the event so far:

• It’s on Zoom
• It’s interactive
• It’s a robot that’s trying to stop humanity from being incredible, so he travels back in time the school with the greatest people.
• It’s going to have some performers
• it’s going to have some announcement from the school
• it’s going to have a live auction
• it’s going to have a game element similar to an escape room
• it’s going to be funny
• it’s going to be around 75 minutes long
• it’s for families

At the beginning of these processes, it feels a little too important. I want it to be really amazing, and it will be (experience has proven), but every time I start creating something like this, it can feel like I’m leaping from nothing to everything. It can feel like I’m really going to mess it up. It can feel like I’ve never had any ability and I’ll never make something good.

The biggest challenge for me will be the game element. I want it to be a game that engages hundreds of people at the same time. They’ve gotta all be involved, but I can’t bring them all up on screen at the same time. We had this with the Gearbox event for 550 people, so it’s possible.

Note to self: We’re never starting with nothing.

Someone told me they know online entertainment’s going to be over soon as everyone gets vaccinated and the world opens up again. I know they weren’t talking about Netflix, or Fortnite, or Instagram. They were talking about entertainers that were shoehorned into Zoom meetings so they could keep on going and maybe brighten up some virtual gatherings.

People are doing really good things online right now. They will keep on finding success online. There are people doing bad things online and finding success too. There are people who will stop as soon as possible. On a personal level, if we like making online entertainment, or we think we could like making online entertainment in the future, we have stuff to do.

Online entertainment will grow every year. There will be fans, there will be money.

Lump in with the successes

We can see that we’re in the same industry as anyone else and that industry is thriving or dying. We could say restaurants are dying because more restaurants fail than succeed, or we could say restaurants are thriving by looking at the reports of the top restaurants. If we make an online magic show, we can say we’re in the same industry as Freddy Smoke (fictional name) who has gone bankrupt in the past year doing terrible Zoom shows, or we can say we’re in the same industry as TikTok and we can figure out how to thrive with them.

Lean in

There are independent creators dabbling in various forms of online entertainment. They hear that it could be good, so they dip a toe. If we want to do this, we can commit and we can win. Once we know what we want, we can get there thru trial and error. If we don’t don’t look toward the future, we won’t improve as much as is necessary to make this thing work.

Get Stage Time

Many people are pulling back now. This is the time to get out more. Get more time in front of audiences. Try more stuff out. Get more experience. The entertainment world is bloated with education and anemic in experience.

Improve things

We gotta figure out how to advance in interactivity, marketing, and understanding our audiences’ needs. Two things to work on…

1. Make it more mass appealing — Lower ticket prices, more tickets sold
2. Serve a small audience better — Higher ticket prices, more satisfied fans

Most people probably don’t want to duplicate this, but for Scot Nery’s Boobietrap, I was always trying to make the emails resonate and make them personal. I wanted folks to take action. Ticket sales were dragging because it was like the Superbowl or something, so I pulled out the (little) big guns. I wrote…

{first name}! do you think you’ll make it to Boobie Trap tomorrow?

In the next 24 hours, I had to reply to about 400 emails to clarify and communicate and we sold out.

• People thought I was mad at them.
• People thought they might be booked to perform.
• People apologized for not being available.
• Conversations started.
• People told me they couldn’t afford it (which is helpful info to receive).

Conversations are good. Action is good. Personalization is good. Putting in the labor is good.

Sometimes we want to make the email that is perfect for everyone, that protects us by having all the information. We want to create a message to our customers that really sells our thing. We want something that scales – it’s perfect and it does all the work. Sometimes, we gotta get in there and get our elbow pits dirty with the work of actually talking to actual people. Sometimes we need to get that started.

Entertainment is going to get more personal, more one-on-one, and more customized in the future. We can’t fake it.

At the end of the day, we can log the work we’ve done. It’s a game-changer. I’m writing this for everyone, but mostly to keep myself in it. I can see what I did. I can feel like I didn’t waste my time. I can see where I get annoyed. I can see what is not working. I can see what is working. I know during my day that I’m going to be held accountable to myself.

I’ve spent some time with reality TV and documentary producers and I’ve seen how they cast and edit. They want archetypes and sound bites. They want the story to be simple…

• “I’m skinny, but I want to be strong”
• “My culture is very important to me”
• “I’m a chauvinist”
• “I’m dumb”
• “I’m a nerd”

… and they want people to reiterate their story over and over in small chunks of monolog or dialog…

• “I’m sore and cramping from too many protein shakes”
• “I don’t dress like this to impress your parents. I am devout!”
• “I intimidate girls with my car.”
• “I ate a sandwich … backwards”
• “It’s like star wars, but with Vulcans”

Some people naturally see themselves as archetypes and talk this way, but the skill can be learned. I am often a different person to different situations, so I can’t just come up with catch phrases to always use. I try to think through what I want to say, what the producers/ editors will want, then figure out how to put it in a small chunk of words.

It’s kinda weird

It feels uncomfortable. It isn’t the normal way to talk to people. It doesn’t feel conversational. It feels maybe confrontational. It’s talking in little chunks.

A client told me that after a first performance, he felt like he just got in a fight. I knew exactly what he meant. When I’m driving away from a juicy argument and I can’t stop thinking about what I could have said. It’s a million chess games running thru my head. If I said this, they woulda said that…

When I did street shows, I would walk back to my hotel or apartment on long walks just spinning – doing imaginary show after imaginary show.

This sensation can be haunting. It can cause lots of insomnia. It can make a person crazy, but it is magic for making for exponentially more “stage time.”

Cultivate it with quiet time after a moment of creation.