Courtney: Okay. So I presume it's going to be somewhat difficult to manage the theatre with a continuation of acts every day, day-in, day-out, of these kinds of performances. Are you a little bit concerned about this, and managing such a flow, such a continual flow?
Walter: Well, coordinating the nights won't be the easiest job, that's for sure. One thing that will make the job easier is that there are so many talented artists, and such a plentitude of them in Montréal, that we won't-we don't think we'll have trouble filling spots. I mean, the city's actually short on venues for its local talent, and this will really fill the gap. Courtney: So what about costs? How much do you think musicians or artists will have to pay to perform there, or is it not going to be a pay-on-performance basis?
Walter: Well, we're sort of thinking about just sort of doing it on a night-to-night basis. We invite the artists, we want to invite people we know are exciting to watch, and worthwhile to see, to listen to. If we're confident they'll bring in people, the idea is that you basically have-if it's going to be a cabaret night and not a special night, like a concert or a theatre performance or something that requires a good amount of time-if it's going to be a cabaret night, we basically stack the acts from 9 to 2:30, we just have that cabaret, that flow of acts going, and then you divide up any earnings from ticket sales to each artist. I mean, we give them the same rate when the night's all said and done. Courtney: Okay, that sounds like a fair deal. That's good, because there are a lot of venues here, places to play or perform, that charge the artist money. You know, for example, there's a bar down the street that's quite a large bar, and a well-known bar for people to play at as musicians, and they have to pay $250 to play there, and that covers the cost for the doorman, the sound man, and then everything thereafter they will keep. And there are quite a few places like these in Montréal, and it's not very good for the aspiring artist-aspiring and often very broke artist-that don't have much money, and they can't do much, so it's difficult to play at these places, it makes it more difficult. Walter: We want to set up this theatre as also a community place, which is not to say we aren't going to get the talent. As I said, the city is full of it. Basically, the idea is that we want to have a theatre as well as a production house. In this sense, we'll be able to turn local artists in our own community into stars within the city. And then, when they're ready to go out into the national, international stage, you know, we can help them with that transition. Courtney: Great. Now also, I'm interested to know about your dealings with publicity. You mentioned you're going to have a specific publicist who will help get press out and who will help with promotion. Now, I don't know if you've done any work with this yet in this city, or in an international-national basis, but isn't it difficult? There's a lot of competition to get information to newspapers, I understand. What do you think about this? How are you going to approach this?
Walter: Well, that's it. That's why we got the publicist, because I'm definitely not an expert in that side. Our publicist, she used to work as-well, she still does, actually-she works as a journalist at CBC. She's more freelance now, and she's doing freelance articles for other newspapers and things like that. So she knows the media gambit more than I do. I'm too much of a naïve, pure, and sincere artist, that, well, the merit of the work should just draw the people. But she's taught me that when you're dealing with the media, you need hooks and you need lines and you need sinkers. Without that, you're not really going to get too much media interest. You just have to turn the event into a character, and you lose truth when you let the media do a report on you, but you gain exposure, so that's the tradeoff. Courtney: Right. And you said "lines and sinkers." What do you mean by "lines and sinkers?" Walter: Just things to get people hooked. Just an angle, you have to put everything through an angle, you can't just represent a true editorial sentiment.
