The Hard Sell

My friend Fi (ASM on "Equus") was the one who said that she'd known people make lifelong friends when flyering on the Royal Mile. I treated this notion with mute derision, as that sort of promotion generally makes me feel queasy both as as giver and receiver.
I suspect the quality of your flyering experience depends at least partly on the show you're selling. I heard a guy the other day punting a show he described as "a black comedy about brutalist architecture". Yeuch. And a few minutes later I watched someone dressed in a black wifebeater, khaki shorts and bare feet bound up to a prospective audience member saying "you look like someone who'd enjoy 45 minutes of challenging physical theatre". I don't know anyone who looks like that - not on purpose, anyway.
Our approach is different. We hand out Tunnocks teacakes as an incentive and go out in full costume and, when it's not raining, with the set to give a sort of moving tableau. Goes down a treat.

"Noel Cowards "Still Life" - falling in love right here...

The only problem is sometimes we cause a traffic jam because of a glut of photographers. But as Simon our producer would say, that's a high value problem!