Going Global:

Eagle Theatre in Hammonton reaching record-breaking success in funding, attendance, exposure

By VINCENT JACKSON
The Press of Atlantic City

HAMMONTON - Ed Corsi, Ted Wioncek III and Jim Donio should never want this year to end.

Corsi and Wioncek are the co-artistic directors and Donio is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Eagle Theatre here. They have staged more shows this year than ever before - 122 compared to 99 last year. They are finishing off this season with their best-selling show of year, their version of Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical "Into The Woods."

"This is our best pre-selling show in the history of the theater, the biggest opening weekend ever, and we are sold out a couple of nights a week, which is a first. It's record breaking," Donio said.

At ticket prices of $28.50 and $38.50, the 208-person capacity Eagle Theatre was nearly sold out on Nov. 7, opening night, which was a first, Donio said. The other shows of opening weekend, Nov. 8 and 9, were sold out, as well.

The theatre's annual report looking back on this year will be pretty robust because the following things happened: it turned into a year-round professional Equity theater company, it developed a digital virtual tour and received more than $100,000 in grant funding from Google for Google Adwords advertising, and it joined Facebook's inaugural small-and-medium Business Council, the New Jersey Theater Alliance and Theatre Philadelphia's Barrymore Awards Program.

All of these actions combined led to the most successful year in the 100-year history of the theater.

During the past couple of years, the responsibility for the theater's Facebook page switched from the marketing side to Corsi and Wioncek, the artistic side of the operation. They realized they had been treating the theater's Facebook page initally as a side note. Since they started putting more care into the content that makes it onto the page, they have seen their number of likes increase from the initial 400 to now 8,000.

"The only poor content is no content. Every day, we are trying to filter three to four things ... what's going on in the building," said Wioncek, 29.

The Eagle Theatre was invited to be a part of Facebook's first small-and-medium Business Council. They are in communication in some way daily with Facebook executives in California. Donio was out there earlier this year. Theater officials are using these contacts to learn more about such things as reaching lookalike audiences, which are new people who are similar to people who are already looking at, commenting and sharing the theater's Facebook content.

"We have had people travel four or five hours for 'The Civil War.' They saw us on Facebook and Google. That's how they found out about us," said Corsi, 39. "The broader audience that might not know necessarily that there is a theater here, or a professional theater in South Jersey, they find out about us because they are searching for something to do, or we have reached out to them."

The trio use Instagram for more of a behind-the-scenes look at what's going on at the theater, so everything there isn't as slickly produced as on the Facebook page.

Thousands of pictures of the inside and the outside of the Eagle Theatre were taken this year by Google photographers to create a digital virtual tour of the theater. This was paid for by grants from the Kessler Foundation in West Orange, Essex County, and the New Jersey Theater Alliance, which the Eagle Theatre was invited to join this year.

The Eagle Theatre applied and successfully received a grant valued at $120,000 from Google Inc. for a pre-determined amount of free Google Adwords advertising per day, per month, for a year, Wioncek said.

"Right now, we are promoting 'Into The Woods' all over the country. What we are promoting all over the world. When we have people who are really into a show, like 'The Civil War,' we are starting to open our minds up to is, 'Guess what, they will come. They will actually come.' People are passionate about unique theater," said Donio, who added a couple from Scotland built a trip to the U.S. around seeing "The Civil War" earlier this fall at the theater.

The Eagle Theatre joined the 35-member New Jersey Theater Alliance, which includes such members as the nationally known Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, Essex County, and the McCarter Theatre on the campus of Princeton University in Mercer County, Donio said.

"It gave us an enormous amount of credibility in the theater community and with the people who follow professional theater in New Jersey," said Donio, 38.

When Theatre Philadelphia asked the Eagle Theatre to join its organization, it put the theater in the position to have its productions eligible for Barrymore Award nominations. The Barrymore Awards are Philadelphia's professional theater awards program, recognizing artists for innovation and excellence. Both "The Civil War" and "Into The Woods" are Barrymore recommended productions.

"We have been building our network, our base of patrons from Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania suburbs, the Main Line and northern Delaware. We've been building that base for the last couple of years, but this year, 2014, it skyrocketed, and in particular, these last few months. Since we were inducted into Theatre Philadelphia, it's been just incredible," said Donio, who added the theater cast such well-known, Philadelphia-area actors as Tom McCarthy and Krissy Fraelich.

The stop for New Jersey Transit's train from Philadelphia is only two blocks from the theater, Donio said.

Eagle Theatre officials said the concepts they have for next year will make this year look boring in comparison. The plans include professional theater for young audiences, a new works development series, chairs on risers in the rear of the theater, a tiered-pricing system that will allow for less expensive shows on weeknights and a quarterly comedy night.

"We are launching our first-ever professional theater for young audiences," said Donio, who added theater officials attended the New Jersey Education Association conference for the first time to discuss the idea.

The Eagle Theatre joined the National Alliance for Musical Theatre last year, which is a group dedicated to the creation, development, production and presentation of new musicals. The theater will launch a new works development series next year to present new playwrights, who have never had their work performed on stage. Their work will be presented for the first time on a one-night only basis.

"Our plan is to then take one of these, with the audience feedback, and place it in our 2016 season," Donio said.

Jim Donio