good evening i'm goldstein and welcome to another edition of focus on tonight my guest is tom miller who's the director of public relations at mcchord a theater and we're going to talk a lot about the programming that the card offers a lot of things that you may be aware of i may not be aware of that you've devoted to come over tonight and have a nice conversation before we have store conversation i want to tell everybody a little bit about tom and as i said he's director of public relations and he's also responsible for all media outreach for all mccarter programming including its tony award winning theater series it wide array of presented events and all institutional projects he draws from previous experiences in film television and theater production providing a holistic institutionally aware sense of direction to his efforts prior to his time here in princeton time spent three years working for the arts and cultural programming office at montclair state university a place that we both have in common he worked there and many years as the communications manager for philadelphia's historic walnut street theater he's in they have a berlin a princeton university here in town gramma's broke into property in one thousand twenty eight as a home for the prince and triangle club and if you're not familiar with trying a club it's like the people in clubs did harvard and a number of other college and university comedic groups and the triangle club still use of the building to this day they'll do shows in the fall and spring and then tour throughout the year so we just actually share the building with the triangle club and the university at large it was used for the w p a to do a lot of works for theatre in the campus but separate from the university structure presenting our own works we also produce our own theatre series we do about five shows plus a christmas carol year we've won two tony awards once in one thousand nine hundred four as a special regional theater tony that you big a lot of audience numbers in those milling list but you have one central theater there or is it more than one theater we actually have two spaces in the theater there's the mathews theater which is a larger space it's the older space at all it's about a little over a thousand people in that space  the second space is our roger berlin theater that holds about three hundred seventy five seats or so and that theater dates back to about two thousand and three ok now we talked a little about your interest you know you had various interests is coming up what focused on the theater itself of personally yeah for working well i mean like a lot of folks working in the performing arts a lot of people start out working on stage so start out as my younger years as an actor and the more i learned about acting as a profession i learned man if i really want to ever you know have a life on a house have a family maybe acting isn't the best the best role to take so it behoove me early in my collegiate career to learn a lot more about behind the scenes back technical theater production other parts of how the business works and through still acting on stage or doing a lot of backstage work that grain day gained a wealth of knowledge across a number of different you know operations and background of film television theater production and after my time in college i just spent the time looking for work done a job as a production assistant down in malvern pennsylvania for theater and i was often there i tell a lot of folks you know a lot of life is just having the right attitude and being in the right place the right time you know then you know for that way so that's good that's i've found myself working on the other side of  stage rather than on it so i'm sure drawing from the background you have figured out some ways that macarthur can use attempts to reach you know different different core factions you know beyond its marketing efforts to and what are some of the ways that  that to try to engage people well the nice thing about macarthur's we have very wide array of products of shows we do during the course of the year we're actually the only performing arts institution in the state and one of the few in the country who are a full time presenting and producing organization and what i mean by that is that we produce our works in house or theater series you know for instance this year we're doing a number of different shows we can talk about a little bit later but all of our theater series is produced in house so all of our sets are built by a local artist since it's built we have a shop that's about three miles away in your princeton junction that's rebuilt all of our sets they're shipped to macarthur here in town they're built the show is rehearsed here in princeton for the most part it happens here at princeton and unless the show moves to another theatre you'll never see it again so it's very unique the work we do in princeton you only see here that's our theater series which is produced in addition to that we're also presenting organization so if you think about so pack or you know n j pack up in new york there are a number of other presenting houses which means they'll have a series of events that happened over the course of the year it will be a rock concert it will be jazz it'll be modern dance will come through that's presented work that comes in for one night you come see the show and then it moves on to its next location we do both of these things in tandem throughout the course of the season and very few other organizations have the you know institutional wherewithal to handle doing both the same time with of lot of people working over there that all we do we have a lot of great a great group of folks that work and it's you know like i mentioned it's everything from the folks in our marketing department to it right to becoming a part of the community and not just a you know a dollar transaction it's not like it's not like we strive for ok we just want to have your money come and buy a ticket to see the show and we don't have anything to do with the until next time for the show what we try to engender with the the folks that come to see this is a sense of community you know the thing that we like to work on a card is to become a community resorts so like the library like the r b o c and here in town we want to be a place where people can see it as a you know a thing that special about the place they live and what we try to do is through a number of different ways give back to the community in ways that are beyond what you see on our stage every summer we do our annual block party which is an event that happens on the macarthur site in late august we have food trucks coming and we have activities for kids the activities are free of charge it's a way for us to not only talk about the program that we've got coming up over the seasons but it's a good way to give back to the community and give them something back to make mccarter feel like a place that you could visit any time of day or night not only when  you know mom and other ways to talk about it her mission is giving voice to the voiceless so giving a type of presentation that you might not see somewhere else something that unique and something that's very just talks about it being like like a five course meal you know you get a little something for you know for your first course your second question dessert so over the course of the five or six shows you'll see it will be a wide variety of different programming to talk a little bit about this upcoming season we're opening with the sam shepherd play called simpatico sam shepherd is a an award winning playwright who actually was originally badly so we're working with a company out of chicago called a red orchid theatre company and this is michael shannon theatre company michael shannon is an oscar and tony nominee folks may recognize him from ninety nine homes  made of steel the superman film he was in what was simpler or walking empire for a number of seasons so this is a theater company that he started with a number of his friends back in the early ninety's and he is you know for its career that's gone here and there he always comes back to chicago to work with this company they did the show back in two thousand and thirteen and it was a big hit in chicago we're working with that theater company to bring that show here to macarthur because on chicago they work in a theater that's about seventy seats here we have about three hundred fifty we can do a longer run we we bring a lot of resources so that's part of what mccarty this working the smaller and more nimble theater companies to give princeton audiences new jersey and it's as large a look at different types of theater throughout the country and how those companies you know how we can work together with different companies create something new so simpatico is about two guys in the early ninety's who used to be part of a horse racing racket one is going on success the other one is not so much so they you know they've come together to sort of settle their differences and  december we have a christmas carol in january we have stones in this pockets which is a two hander it's an irish piece in the spring of two thousand and eighteen we have crowns which is the fifteenth anniversary production of a show we did back in twenty two thousand and three and the we're finishing the season with a new christopher durang piece called turning off the morning nudes so that's our that's our theater series and emily man working with all these playwrights an artist in different theater companies were plotting out about three years in advance but the shows that we're going to have coming into mccarter so there's a lot of different things at play but what we end up with is a theater series that's varied it's unique and it gives princeton audiences something different to see every time they come to a card so there's and we have the final decision making for us with what's going to show up and that's the theater series now for the present events we have a gentleman named william lockwood so bill lockwood has been a part of for quite a programming since one nine hundred fifty eight he started doing this as an undergrad here at princeton right from his dorm room booking events here on  campus and after working out in san francisco for a number of years he came back in the early sixty's and has been programming shows here ever since so he's got these guys it's been doing this for so long he's got stories to  springsteen ruining the floor in the dylan gymnasium or you know reading newman sleeping on a scout ship every three years when he comes in the down so it's bill has been an expert at this for a number of years and he still brings in programming which is really very good so unique and stuff you won't see anywhere else that's great that's great so tell us a little bit about mccartney's mission of community outreach and how has that mesh with programming so a number of a number of years ago at mccarter we had an education department exponential growth with our education average programming so what we'll do is we'll have your classes and we'll have the programming at mccarter where people can come and take the other classes in the spring summer and fall like like you normally would but we also do is take feeder artists and go into the school systems so we work with the princeton you know regional school district where as far up as middlesex county we go on down to the trenton and work at the school systems about how you integrate arts and arts learning into various aspects of the curriculum for the school systems so we work with the school systems on a full time basis we also work with a number of community programming in around the area home front here in princeton we work with them and the women that come through the program that for instance that is a program for at risk mothers and children getting out of bed to to ations into newer ones so we have a program with them for instance where we will go in and work with improv with the with the women and i will teach them and you know it teaches women how to these women in families how to deal with adverse situations think about different ways of dealing with the with problems and issues in their life and how they can you know find different ways of moving forward so we also work with a group that used to for the princeton senior research center called on sta seniors and that's a group of about you about one to two dozen local seniors who come together and gather stories from the community and present them so they do with the presentation on different themes each year i think one year was on first so first loves first  you know the first time living away from home and they go out to different senior centers hospitals they perform a carter churches around town and it's it's a way to provide the community with outreach and a you know a different voice in a community that's great now your job is public relations and sometimes people fuse that with marketing so if you talk a little about the difference we want public relations is how it is and i was how depressed marketing and i always look  at i always look at public relations as sort of it's truthful storytelling so you know in marketing is you open a newspaper and you see an ad say you know greatest show on earth or buy your tickets now if that's the what we call a direct call to action it wants to do something a public relations i'm trying to tell folks what i mean folks i mean folks we're journalists who are writers what i'm trying to do is to get them to share the story of what we're doing with a wider audience through editorial which is stories should read the paper separate from advertising and in that you have to be truthful about what you do and i can't in a press release when i write it i can't say that you know this is the best show ever you know you're going to love it everyone's going to great some nights when you know that late at night  it's about real news that keep it truthful because you know people in the dream when you're engine journalism through journalism the news that knows with doing they can they can see through things statements that are not truthful see have to leave adjectives out of the equation for the most part and so as long as you maintain a truthful attitude and you're just trying to tell the story in a story in a way that is going to appeal to the most amount of people so a lot of those interpersonal communication that's a lot of a public relations is between you and the writer you in the folks you're work community and even you in every picture that's walking through the door i mean i just like the conversations people and that's why i got into this business and that's a lot of what public relations is this just is talking people face to face and hearing what they want and exactly getting their input and building up the the credentials between you know that's it you build up the report i mean you know every once you you know it's like anything in life when you work with somebody on a regular basis you build up a report you build up a shorthand writing about you know what your needs are and what the needs of the writer is i mean what's interesting about it is it's you know it's never like a situation where a writer works for me so what i say goes or you know i needed this way and it's going to make it happen you have to come to a meeting  minds between two people about what my needs are and what the journalist needs are and how you can you know make them work the best of your abilities so for a student watching the show right now if they were interested if she or he was interested in getting into public relations or marketing what w you what would you recommend let's you know i've had my previous jobs i've had apprentices or of folks working under me a lot of folks that i've worked with came in with a certain idea about what public relations is and walked out with a completely different idea about what it's really about because there is  difference between being a public relations professional and being a publicist publicist is a little bit different that's sort of what you see on t v a lot of times as the you know somebody is want to do anything with a client who's always on the on the on the go with the phone in their hand if you seen entourage any you know any of this like minded shows public relations is a little it's different in so much as i'm working for an institution rather than a person or a client the institution is my client and so i'm thinking mccarter holistically as an institution and what works best because you know the thing about macarthur specifically the mccord is it's so much going on you know i can't do everything at once i have to try to prioritize what's what's going to be what's going to happen on a monday versus a tuesday or wednesday and that's a lot of what public relations is prioritizing which stories are going to go when what stories are worth telling and what stories can be wait for a little bit further down the line you know if the different stream marketing and public relations is that marketing is a little bit more of a quantifiable resource and what i mean by that is that you can put an ad in the newspaper and it can have you know by now and called in use offer you know tickets for ten percent off and if someone calls in with that ad they can say ok well we got x amount of response from this advertisement which means it worked or it didn't work you can put a dollar amount on that advertising if you if you do it that way with public relations it's a little bit more of what they call a soft sell you know it's not it's not a in your face advertisement it's a story that you read about a show or an artist you know about why they do what they do and if you find out more about why somebody does what they do then everything else will follow in kind of how the what the where the when if you focus on why and that gets people look a lot of places took a very big hit with the great recession back in two thousand and nine think through a lot of good leadership and mcarthur and steady hand  earlier we've really we're in a much better economic place than we were back in two thousand and nine and through that it's a lot of you know three fund raising efforts through the work we put on stage and through just a mindfulness of what we're doing in season  planning we're really in a great great financial position i mean we work we you know we happen to be in a town which is very arts minded it's a let's just it's a wonderful to be here in princeton because we pull from the folks in this area and all up and down new jersey  pennsylvania people come to see the work in macarthur and we really been lucky to be to be here to have this community around us and the leadership of macarthur to to see is through those not so good times where we are now we're in really good footing all the different program we've got coming up you'll see we have a wealth of not only our theater series work which i've spoken about a little bit but all of our presenting work if you like jazz if you like modern dance if you like classic dance if you like comedy magic we really have everything under the sun coming up in macarthur between you know early september when our theater series starts to the end of the season which happens in about mid to late may when our last presenting series comes through so believe me if you like something we're most likely presenting it at some point during the year and what's different about this year is that you know the inside track marketing what you usually do is hold your tickets you know you'll sell a certain amount at this point the year in december you open up this next block and move on a rolling basis throughout the season now we just we figured out that it's easier just to get it on sale for everything right now so you can buy your tickets for a show in may now and don't have to worry about it anymore you know wait until they go on sale in february so you know if you're if you're interested in a programming come by our web site and see we've got going on the other thing i would like to mention while we have time is your folks are interested in volunteering we love to have folks in the community help in any way shape or form they're willing  to help us out so if you go to our web site which is again a crowded org look for volunteering opportunities and that's everything from ushering if you like to see shows but maybe don't have you know you can't you know we have a lot of different ways that folks can afford she shows but you know others can see the shows generally for free they just come and you're part of our usher corps that see to help find folks their seats and hand out programs that are that you can see the show so that's and that's a wonderful community of folks we have helping to volunteer and we have a you know we're always open to other suggestions that people are willing to give their time or talent or for donating to treasure you know please please do so we'll take we really welcome our community in any way shape or form of a card that's great but i thank you very much tom for coming on and it's great to know that everybody's watching at home you know if you want to volunteer or you know just go on the web site you know go to the court of dot org and see the opportunities see what the programming is and i'm sure you have some specials for you know youth and seniors and everybody in between and sounds like a great season the seventy thousand season coming up but more importantly it's a great place to go if you've never been to macarthur just to even walk over there you know just walk around you know tom's there i'm sure he'll read and say hello and you know pull  and but enjoy it and joy what the coroner has to offer because it is unique in it is something very special and hopefully it will continue many many years to come and a way that's our show for tonight i'm a ghost in fact me for watching and next week we'll see