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List of Example Questions for Cast and Crew Interviews

Last week I announced a downloadable marketing calendar template that you can use as the foundation for your own show promotion. One of the tactics included on that calendar is interviews of your cast and production team, but what makes for a compelling interview? I know I’ve read a few “meet the cast” pages that actually made me less interested in buying a ticket.

Whether you’re doing a written, audio, or video interview the key is to ask good questions. So I’ve included some example questions here to help get you thinking.

I’ve written before about how to best market a theatre production with your cast and what you can reasonably expect from them regarding promotion. I won’t go into that again here, but you can see my thoughts on it. Assuming you buy into this tactic (which I have used in some way or other on every show I’ve promoted since I started marketing theatre in 2010) let’s get into what sort of questions are going to create the most compelling responses.

Production questions

• What sort of person is going to love this show?
• What’s challenging about bringing this script to life?
• Why did you want to be involved in this production?
• Who should not come see this show?
• What will the audience be thinking about in the car as they drive home after this show?
• How is this production bringing something new to this story?
• What’s going to surprise people about this show?
• Which is the best night to come?
• Call someone out by name: who must come see this production?
• Who has the best costume?
• Who in the show is most like their character?
• Who’s the least?

Character questions

These are great questions to ask your actors, although in some cases they may be appropriate for the production team, too.

• What sort of person is going to love this character?
• How is this character like you? Different?
• Is it easier to play this character or to be yourself on stage?
• What do you love about this character?
• What do you hate about this character?
• What’s the biggest challenge about taking on this role?
• Besides yourself, what celebrity would you like to see tackle this character?
• Without giving anything away, what’s your favorite line of dialogue?
• Besides yourself, which actor in this production is going to blow people away?
• If you could play any other character in this show, who would it be?
• What makes a good scene partner?

General questions

• What do you want to be when you grow up?
• If someone was going to make your life into a movie, who would play you?
• When did you first perform?
• Besides this one, what’s your favorite stage show?
• Who do you look up to (as an actor/director/etc.)?
• What’s your perfect Sunday afternoon look like?
• When you have a five-minute break during rehearsal, what do you spend that time doing?
• Who’s the funniest person in the cast in real life?
• What do you do when you’re not doing theatre?
• If you had a magic wand, what show would you do next?
• What’s the last thing you do before you step out on stage / the curtain goes up?

Of course you will always have opportunities for great questions that are unique to the production you are doing. I recently did a comedy musical that was about sex addicts car pooling to group therapy. Naturally we asked the cast questions about what they were addicted to and what was the strangest place they ever had sex.

Use general questions like the one above as a foundation, but be sure to add in one or two questions that are directly connected to your show.