One of British theatre's foremost directors is pioneering the use of Facebook to reach out to new, younger audiences with a video trailer that is a work of art in its own right.
Rupert Goold is widely tipped as a future artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company or the National Theatre and was showered with awards in 2010 for Enron, the satire on corporate greed, which played in major venues to more than 300,000 people.
In an attempt to exploit the power of social media, Goold has devised a "mini-film" – a kind of trailer for his forthcoming productions – which he premiered last week on Facebook and other social media sites.
The four-minute trailer targets followers of social media sites – "people who might naturally think that theatre isn't for them", he told the Observer.
Titled Falling Headlong, a reference to the name of Goold's theatre company, Headlong, the film hints at stories, moods or characters in a season of premieres, including a "clinical love story" by Lucy Prebble, who made her name by writing Enron.
The trailer is believed to be a first for a theatre company and early viewing figures have been encouraging. Within two days of its release, it had already been watched more than 2,260 times.
Goold hopes that such an approach will reach new audiences of all ages, although social websites are particularly used by the young. Figures produced by comScore, the digital business analyst, show that 48.5% of the UK's Facebook audience is aged under 35 and 28% is under 25.
In contrast, only 21% of the audience for the West End playhouses is under 34 and only 16% is under 24.
There is clearly a need for new audiences. Although the Society of London Theatre's figures for 2011 showed record sales of £528m, mainly generated by musicals, Arts Council England's portfolio of 204 regularly funded organisations had 13.6m available tickets, of which only 9.7m were sold.
Goold acknowledged that barriers needed to be overcome, and that the cost of a theatre ticket – as much as £90 for some productions – is a deterrent.
"On the other hand, I think people will pay and will be incredibly loyal if there's some kind of quality there," he said. "The problem is most people go to the theatre and they don't know if it's going to be terrible or not. There's nothing worse than boring theatre."
As a touring company, playing in venues of varying capacity, Headlong is at the mercy of the venue in which it is putting on performances, but he believes that a new marketing approach is needed.
"What people in a social media age want is not to be told about something but to discover it," he said. "My parents will get a brochure from the National Theatre and book for [something] … But there's been such a development of incessant marketing and advertising that people have become more sceptical towards that."
Goold, who turned 40 earlier this year, is also an associate director of the RSC. His connections mean that he has drawn leading stars to his productions, such as the late Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear, Michael Gambon in No Man's Land and Patrick Stewart in Macbeth. His TV work includes Richard II and Macbeth for the BBC.
His trailer is conveying the image of Headlong as a provocative and innovative company. Other than Medea, which is a contemporary reworking as "a domestic tragedy" by Mike Bartlett of the Euripides classic, the forthcoming plays referred to in the trailer are all contemporary tales – moving away from what he describes as a "raft of feelgood" dramas.
One of them, titled Boys, is a "startling" new play about graduating students by Ella Hickson, one of the UK's most promising new writers. Some are co-productions with companies such as the National Theatre and the Nuffield, Southampton.
Goold is particularly excited about social media's global reach, with Americans watching the trailer, but it remains to be seen how many then come to the UK and buy tickets.
• This article was amended on 23 April 2012. The original referred to the Society of West End Theatre. This has been corrected.
