Selling storytelling

It is virtually impossible to ignore the fact that 2016 is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. London’s theatres, museums, orchestras and opera houses have gathered together to create a city-wide Shakespeare 400 festival and the thatched Globe by the River Thames will play its part. The Shakespeare’s Telling Tales Festival will celebrate stories and storytelling for children, young adults and families this July.

Over the past few years we have given much attention to building our family audience. Events such as the Muse of Fire (part of the Family Arts Festival), Shakespeare Untold (currently touring internationally), our Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank productions, and a new family audio guide in our exhibition have all been enthusiastically received.

Our family events have sold out with regularity and this has been achieved on relatively small marketing budgets

The museum sector has shown how families are key to driving audience and visitor numbers. Our family events have sold out with regularity and this has been achieved on relatively small marketing budgets (the most we have spent on a single campaign is £5,000). We have learnt other marketing lessons. Interestingly, families book late. We have a core group that have been to other family events, trust our product, book well ahead, but as a rule of thumb, bookings happen in the last three weeks.

Some more traditional tools such as posters that have come to be considered as rather ineffective in arts marketing still seem to work well with family audiences. We have worked with marketing agencies to develop poster runs to cafes and other family destinations across London and the spike in sales once this has gone out is noticeable.

Parents are also constantly online on the lookout for activities. Email is an increasingly effective tool, as is Facebook, allowing us to target people currently outside our sphere of influence.

Having attracted families, the most crucial element is the welcome they receive. Families need to feel they belong, that their experience matches their expectations in order for the circle to be complete, as they share the fun they are having on their social media profiles.

We have research from 2015 that suggests we are bringing in people new to the Globe, if not to Shakespeare. Only 9% of our family audiences had booked to see a play in the most recent Globe Theatre season. Our demographic profiling also suggests the family audience is a little more urban-based than the wider Globe audience.

In Shakespeare’s day, people talked about going to “hear a play”. Shakespeare wrote for the ear and for audiences (audio is latin for I hear) as much as for the eye. Many of the groundlings who gathered around the Globe stage couldn’t read and depended on an oral tradition for news, information and storytelling. Shakespeare asks his audience to listen, to imagine and suppose.

As a child I was introduced to Shakespeare with stories of his plays retold by Charles and Mary Lamb. The Lambs’ Tales were first published in 1807 and are still widely available today. They have established the tradition and market for adapting Shakespeare’s plays as stories for children.

Shakespeare’s Telling Tales continues the tradition with authors and actors reading and performing new versions of Shakespeare’s stories. Authors will also lead workshops and be there to answer questions about their craft as storytellers.

Shakespeare stories will not only be told in a variety of ways but also in a variety of interesting spaces and settings. Younger children will be able to huddle around storytellers in the Globe’s Tent For Peace and families can enjoy Shakespeare by Candlelight in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

The festival will present Shakespeare’s “infinite variety” and the many ways that his stories can be told and retold. Authors and actors will charm, enchant and delight our sense of hearing.

Patrick Spottiswoode is Director of Globe Education.
www.shakespearesglobe.com