HOL Ravenclaw

Whilst quite a few students have registered their interest already, the staff are concerned that they may not have enough willing volunteers to completely stage a production - without a full crew, cast and creative team, the production won’t happen at all! The professors are continuing to spread the word about the show, but there’s still a long way to go before they’ll be able to proceed - so maybe you could help them out!

Task:
Either design and create a poster advertising the production - if you’d like to include details such as a deadline or who to contact, feel free to just make these up for now. You should include both images and text, and could consider including imagery related to theatre and/or phrases encouraging people to join in!

Or write about, in at least 100 words, an alternative advertising strategy that could be used to spread the word. You could simply describe a design for a poster, or come up with a different idea for advertising and share it here.

This task is worth 10 beans/sapphires, with an additional 10 bonus beans/sapphires available for completing all Week One (Preparations) tasks by the end of activity (January 31st.)

I think posters are a good way to get the word out, but I think another idea would be to just make announcements in the Great Hall during dinner time. That way a student can get up and have the attention of the whole school and explain what is going on and all the opportunities available, instead of just what can fit on a poster. A poster is good, but if there’s too much information on it, it usually gets ignored. If someone is making an announcement they can give all the information they want and gauge the interest level of students so they might know who to specifically follow up with later.

Much like Aquaria said, posters are a great way to advertise for theatre productions, but I think another great way to advertise is simply word of mouth. You can create mini flyers to disperse while you're telling people about the play, but word of mouth is one of the best ways I've found to spread information when it comes to theatre. Posters can be eye catching, but a passionate speech can be just as memorable. I'd probably give a speech in the Great Hall at lunch so that I could talk to a large group at once; I'd make sure that small flyers with information rained from the ceiling during or after my speech. After that, I'd get permission from my professors to miss the first five to ten minutes of each class for the day so that I could go to the other classes and talk about the production as well. Hopefully, that would help drum up enough interest in the show to get the support we need!

Besides hanging up posters, another effective way of advertising for a theater production would be an attention-catching presentation or skit that teases the people and also gives all the information you need. This could be done either when everyone is at the Great Hall or from classroom to classroom. This would intrigue the students and make them curious and want to find out more, then they'd just have to see and contact one of the people in charge. For this, you would have to have at least two or three people helping you out and roleplaying with you, showing all the hows of production, what's going on behind the scenes, and the theater life in an entertaining manner which would make them want to try it out for themselves. They could also hint information about the general plotline of the production they are making. This would advertise not only the opportunity to be able to work in the team but also the production itself. Usually, they'd be so fascinated by either or both of those that they end up trying and taking advantage of the opportunity, thanks to the creative way it was presented!

Well, we do have quite a handy, fast-moving mode of information transfer that can get nearly everywhere. Ghosts and portraits! House ghosts could be persuaded to tell information in the common rooms of their houses while others can spread the word on Hogwarts ground.

Portraits are also hung up nearly everywhere and they can travel between frames. They also like to gossip a lot, so asking them kindly to include some information about production shouldn't be a big thing. Some like to constantly bother students and staff anyways. Maybe, we could appeal to their vanity and use them as props if they so wished?

If you wanted to spread the word about a theater production, you could use the house's common rooms or another common area to host a small event during lunch times. Perhaps you could set up a table featuring some merchandise related to the production, but still general enough that people wont know just yet what it'll be, such as t-shirts and invite people to come over and check it out. Additionally, you could have some other materials such as flyers or even some candies in the theme for people who stop by the event. This could help to generate interest through the senses and get people excited about the performance.