New things for 2016

26 Dec 2015

It is with a lot of pride, but a humble and grateful heart, that Stage and Screen will be celebrating 10 years on-line in 2016. Stage and Screen is, for all of us involved, something we do with a lot of passion as a part-time hobby, which makes the administration and dedicated hard work that is needed, even more of a challenge. But we love it.

I was reading the “About us” page that was published in 2013. This is an extraction from that post:

“It is now 2013, and we just conquer our first server and hosting upgrade, to prepare for our next endeavor. Not just would we like to be the one stop site for theatre and small screen productions, we would also like to do the same for movies and feature films, produced locally in South Africa. We are therefore currently working on obtaining what is necessary to start promoting upcoming movies on our site, just like we are currently doing with Theatre.

Also in our short term goal, is to get more involved as media with local and international Live Shows and Music Events. It just makes sense… People like going to a good theatre show, or like to go see their favorite South African Artist performing live. Bigger than this, is to go see an International icon performing live on Stage, which would be appropriate to have its rightful place on Stage and Screen.”

Looking back on the last two years since that post, our growth was for me, really impressive, I just have to tell you about it. Since Stage and Screen started as a little-league player in promoting Theatre productions and some of Mnet’s reality shows, we kept up the hard work, to make our site a little more impressive.

We are now featuring the majority of South African produced movies, supporting an industry which is growing stronger and faster than ever. As time goes by, we at Stage and Screen connects with more publicists and movie producers, to expand our contact base in this regard.

With no reason to ignore the interest in South African Music, we introduced another section on Stage and Screen, promoting new releases in SA Music. This section, compared to the real size of the South African Music industry, is still very small, but included in our strategy for the next few years, is the growth of this section.

We are extremely grateful for our partnership with Big Concerts that are starting to become stronger. Most of their productions are currently featured on Stage and Screen, and with their reputation of staging phenomenal Live Concerts, we are proud to share that content with you. Big Concerts also brought Theatre productions to our stages like the Super Skouspel with Suzan Boyle, the London production of Mamma Mia, as well as the very popular Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, which gave us the opportunity to publish our first interview with an international cast member. This, is still just the beginning.

In this year to come, we are aiming to expand the variety of content, by reviewing as much productions as possible, which will hopefully include interviews with artists, actors and musicians, making our content original and unique. We want to grow in our approach, which will make our opinionated posts, a mechanism in supporting the Arts.

So how will we do this? The only way is to create and maintain a healthy network base. Without the support of publicists, promoters, and producers, Stage and Screen would have nothing to post. If by any chance, you are one of those publicists, promotors or producers reading this post, and your productions or artists are not featured on Stage and Screen, drop us an email, and we can start a healthy relationship.

By Celebrating our first decade, Stage and Screen launched its own Newsletter system, with news that will absolutely want to make you click on the link. The need and demand for something like this, was too big to shift aside, and now, its live. We always value all the feedback we can get, so let us know what you would like to see, change or include, in these newsletters.

Lastly, but by no means the least, are the thousands of people surfing our website on a monthly basis. With the increasing number of traffic on our website, we must be doing something right, and without your visits, our hard work will have no meaning. Thank you very much, and if you enjoy reading the articles on Stage and Screen please share our URL, like our Facebook page and Follow us on Twitter, so that my editorial in a few years’ time, will be even more amazing.