Jonathan Slaff & Associates

07/12/2020

PUBLICIZING YOUR NEW NEW VENTURE IN THE TIME OF COVID
Free one-hour consultations with veteran publicist Jonathan Slaff
Now booking through July 31, 2020

Is a pandemic a good time to start a business? Possibly. Many well-known companies were born in previous financial crises. At this time, many newly unemployed and underemployed executives are planning forays into private business.

Coronavirus and its resulting quarantines are inciting entrepreneurs to meet new needs. New customer needs inspire solutions to new problems. Products and services are being developed for education, working from home, logistics, personal care, telemedicine and dining out, to name only a few.

THESE NEW SOLUTIONS ARE NEWSWORTHY.
That's why Public Relations needs to be a keystone of your business strategy.

More than ever, a well-positioned, cost-effective PR plan can accelerate your success, but it requires astute planning and oversight.

POSSIBLE TOPICS:
How to make a PR plan
How to prioritize your PR among Paid Media, Owned Media, Earned Media and Social Media
How to find your own unique story
How to get free resources
How to survey your home media market
What to pay for Social Media
What you need to know about Search Engine Optimization
How to brainstorm article pitches
How to become an "expert" for media interviews
How long it takes for results
How to work effectively with your publicist

Jonathan Slaff heads a boutique agency, Jonathan Slaff & Associates, which specializes in media relations and audience development services for the performing arts. Clients include cultural institutions, professional theater and dance companies, fundraising and civic events, government agencies, NGO's and self-producing artists of various kinds, primarily in New York City and vicinity. The firm solicits print and broadcast media outlets for news/feature story coverage, reviews and photo placement. It is one of the few press offices in New York that takes its own press photos. He is a graduate of Yale (BA, 1972) and Columbia Business School (MBA, 1976).

TO APPLY FOR A COMPLIMENTARY CONSULTATION:
Send an email to: [email protected] indicating a time that would be good for you. To help me prepare, include some basic info on your business and a website address if possible.

NOTE: I am not selling any technology, subscription or service. I am just trying to be a useful member of the community and using my expertise to help promote economic recovery. I was inspired to offer this service by reading the selection of free coachings offered in Jenna Doolittle's Actors Quarantine Newsletter. (https://flywheelsites.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=aa1953c0d92733c624b8faa2c&id=c7595f3b5f)

12/12/2019

Congratulations to our client, New Stage Theatre Company, on its NY Times review by Jose Solis of Ildiko Nemeth's stage adaptation of "Near to the Wild Heart" (1943) by Clarice Lispector. Production was deemed "an admirable adaptation of the Brazilian writer’s fragmented novel about a woman chafing against society’s restrictions." Review appeared online yesterday in in print today. Lispector's modernist masterpiece offers a woman's inner life that is as clear and lustrous as any in world literature. Nemeth adapts it into a multimedia theatre piece that evokes a rich, expansive female interior as it dramatizes the life and passions of the book's heroine. Playscript employs verbatim excerpts of Alison Entrekin's translation to reflect--as much as possible--the novel's unique voice and literary effect.

Video projections help set the mood for an admirable adaptation of the Brazilian writer’s fragmented novel about a woman chafing against society’s restrictions.

11/29/2019

Grammy-nominated The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble will present "Home For The Holidays - from Darkness to Light," celebrating Christmas and Chanukah with holiday music, December 8 at Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street. It is the first NYC mainstage event for the sextet's "new" ensemble, which includes three new members. Program includes "And Yet The Light Returns" by Gerald Cohen, Robert Dennis' setting of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Christmas miracle poem "The Ballad of the Harpweaver," and Martha Sullivan’s "Lazarus." Also: Renaissance Hebrew psalm settings by Salamone Rossi; Yiddish, Sephardic and Hebrew Chanukah Songs and Christmas music by César Carrillo, Charles Ives and Francis Poulenc. With: Linda Lee Jones, Elizabeth Van Os Eric S. Brenner, Todd Frizzell, David Vanderwal, Elijah Blaisdell l and musicians Patricia Davis (violin) and Will Holshouser (accordion).

11/29/2019

For the delight of audiences aged 5 to 105, Theater for the New City will present CZECHOSLOVAK AMERICAN MARIONETTE THEATRE (CAMT) in "A Christmas Carol, Oy! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa" from December 19 to January 5. The show is an adaptation of Dickens' classic with Old World accents and New World inclusiveness. Adapted, directed and reinvented by Vit Horejs, it features over 30 puppets by Milos Kasal including a quartet of Rockettes in Slovak, Moravian and Ruthenian folk costumes and holiday songs in Czech, English, Hebrew, Slovak, Spanish and Swahili.

10/31/2019

New Federal Theatre, led by Woodie King, Jr., presented a dynamic reading last night of "Miles," a bioplay of the great jazz musician Miles Davis, at Castillo Theatre. It's a solo play based on Davis' thoughts and words, adapted by Glenn Young and directed by Ajene D. Washington. Kene Holliday played the legendary trumpeter. I was duly impressed with this rich immersion into the jazz life of the '50s through the '80s, as was an audience of about 125.

10/31/2019

My October newsletter reports on Halloween at Theater for the New City, "The Whites" by William Electric Black, The Capitol Steps' Nov. 17 concert at Symphony Space and an assortment of Holiday Season concerts and plays. http://www.jsnyc.com/newsletter/index.htm

10/24/2019

Brooklyn Tavern Theater, led by composer/lyricist/writer Dan Furman, is presenting "Impossible but True," a "tavern musical" inspired by Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle story, with final performance October 28, 2019 at 7:00 PM. Performances are in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at Franklin 820, located at 820 Franklin Ave. This immersive musical aims to pioneer a new genre of no-frills productions in hospitable places that are underused for performances. Cailin Heffernon directs. The musical, written and composed by Furman with additional lyrics by Mary-Liz McNamara, tells how a small town in the Catskills is changed by the American Revolution, loosely based on Washington Irving's well-known tale. Admission is free!
Photo: Rob Langeder (as Rip Van Winkle).

10/24/2019

Washington politics got you down? Try some laughter therapy. The Capitol Steps are America's premiere political-musical-satire troupe. Their newest show, "The Lyin' Kings," will find all the laughs amidst the current buffoonery in our nation's capital. This is the group that puts the "MOCK" in Democracy! Originally made up of congressional staffers, the company is now an ensemble of finely-tuned musical theater professionals from around the country. They were nominated for the Drama Desk Awards in 2007 for Outstanding Lyrics.

10/22/2019

Nonstop theater, a costume competition and ballroom dancing will bewitch the East Village October 31 in the Village Halloween Costume Ball, which is presented annually by Theater for the New City (TNC), 155 First Avenue. The one-night fiesta takes over all four of TNC's theater spaces, plus its lobby and the block of East Tenth Street between First and Second Avenues. Customarily over 1,500 wildly-clad celebrants gather for big-band dancing, dining, showing off costumes and viewing acts from the cutting-edge of Cabaret and Theater. Outdoor entertainment, free to the public, will start at 4:00 PM. Once inside, everything is free except food and drink, which are graveyard dirt-cheap. Doors open at 7:30 PM and indoor entertainment begins at 8:00 PM. There will be two continuously-running cabarets offering theater all evening. Big Band dance orchestras begin at 9:00 PM. Costume competition with celebrity judges begins at midnight. Admission is $20; costume or formal wear is required. Complete info:

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY HOLDS ITS 43rd ANNUAL VILLAGE HALLOWEEN COSTUME BALL OCTOBER 31 Underground stars perform each year in TNC's Halloween Cabarets. Guests will see and be seen and celebrate the Night of Nights. Celebrants will sink fangs into Halloween delicacies in The Witches' Cauldron

10/20/2019

The cast of the New Federal Theatre's production of "Looking for Leroy" has been nominated for six Audelco Awards this year including Outstanding Ensemble Performance, Director of a Play Petronia Paley, Playwright Larry Muhammad), Best Play, Lighting Design Antoinette Tynes and Set Design Chris Cumberbatch. The two-character play explores the legacy of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, imagining five encounters between Baraka, a literary lion now in his 60s, and an intern in his 20s who idolizes him, challenges him and aims to be like him. Tyler Fauntleroy played the intern, Kim Sullivan played Baraka.

10/07/2019

NOVEMBER 7 TO 24
Theater for the New City
"THE WHITES (A STORY ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE/PLAYED BY WHITE PEOPLE)"
The cast is all White - the characters are Black. In William Electric Black's timely story, we are hurled into a society that has turned upside down. Imagine if Blacks had enslaved White people. If prisons were filled with White people. If White communities were plagued by gun violence, overt police brutality and an abundance of health issues. What if White people had to sit in the back of the bus, face numerous lynchings and job discrimination? What if the United States were run by Black people and Whites were considered the minority? A daring, haunting, powerful play about race in America.

10/29/2017

On Sunday, October 29, immediately after the 2:30 pm matinee of "FREIGHT: the five incarnations of Abel Green," New Federal Theatre will host a discussion among Artistic Director Woodie King Jr.i, playwright Howard Craft and actor Alphonse Nicholson about incarnation, playwriting, and acting.

"FREIGHT: the five incarnations of Abel Green" by Howard Craft, directed by Joseph Megel, starring J. Alphonse Nicholson depicts an African American "Everyman" who exists in five dimensions of America's modern era. In each incarnation--as minstrel, cult leader, FBI informant, struggling actor and fallen mortgage broker--he is trapped between the American Dream and the American Nightmare. We witness the trials of a simple man trying to make decisions that will allow him to survive in what the great African-American poet Claude McKay called "this cultured hell that tests my youth."

Times Square Chronicles (T2C) wrote, "The New Federal Theatre in association with Castillo Theatrea has produced the most captivating one man show I’ve ever seen. Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green is a poetic and poignant theatrical experience." The piece is running Off-Broadway through November 19 at Castillo Theatre, 543 W. 42ND Street. For more information, visit: http://www.jsnyc.com/season/freight.htm. For tickets, visit www.www.newfederaltheatre.com.

WOODIE KING JR'S NEW FEDERAL THEATRE in association with Castillo Theatre presents the Off-Broadway debut of "FREIGHT: THE FIVE INCARNATIONS OF ABEL GREENE" by Howard L. Craft, directed by Joseph Megel, performed by J. Alphonse Nicholson