Having the instant submission tool for improv troupes has been great. I’ve been coding away to make that same functionality available to instructors. And it’s finally online!
Starting today, any festival that uses the instant submission tool on our site can also elect to take submissions for instructors as well.
How it works
A more detailed walkthrough will come soon, but the quick answer is this:
How it looks
Festival producers will already be familiar with the visual layout of the submission review page. It’s modeled after the troupe submission review page. In fact, you don’t even have to go anywhere new. It’s added as a tab to your review page.
You will actually be presented with two lists. The first looks like this.
This is a list of instructors who have submitted to teach at your festival. Although instructors are not required to submit a troupe if they are submitting as an instructor, it is useful information for producers. So any troupes the instructors perform in which have submitted to the festival are listed below their names. Clicking on their names will take you directly to their teaching profile and workshop lists.
The second list is a passive list. This is a list of instructors who have not specifically submitted to your festival, but are members of troupes who have submitted to perform. Having this information can be very helpful to producers when knowing who might be coming to the festival anyway.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Producers can use this tool at their leisure and instructors can submit to any festival using the tool for free.
What doesn’t it do?
A few things. There aren’t as many options as the troupe submission tool, because it’s not really clear which of those features will be useful. Right now, it’s pretty much just a list. I’m very open to new features being added to this as time goes one.
Loading quickly. It doesn’t do that. I know. More than any other page on the site right now, it’s a bit of a memory hog. It will load slowly the first time you load it. I’m working on that.
Notify producers. Right now, producers won’t get notified every time an instructor submits. This is a relatively minor thing to be added, but I’m going to wait a few weeks to work out any potential bugs people may find. I don’t want producers to get flooded with bogus messages due to a bug somewhere. Messaging will be here before March.
Why is it only for festivals?
Don’t worry. There is another tool coming soon which will help facilitate getting instructors and theatre companies talking. In the mean time, I hope people keep reaching out to each other through their respective teacher and theatre profile pages.
What should I know to use this tool responsibly?
As a producer. If you have a general model for how instructors will be paid, it’s helpful to put that info up front. It’s not binding at this stage of course, but it helps instructors know which festivals they can submit to in a sustainable way. You can also check their booking information on their own instructor page to get a feel for their expectations. It’s best to have both parties familiar with the expectations of the other so there are no surprises down the road.
As an instructor, look for festivals which accept instructors. But if they elected not to, they probably have a reason. You probably don’t want to email them to try to get them to change their minds.
And that’s about it for now. There will be changes to this tool as with all tools. But it’s up now. Hopefully this will get some awesome workshops at festivals.
Currently Bill is an instructor at The Torch Theatre and producer for the Phoenix Improv Festival.
