By Chad Fasca
oobr (pronounced "uber") launched in February 1995 as a bi-weekly review of Off-Off Broadway.
"It started off because I am an aspiring playwright and producer and I wanted to get people to recognize my name. It's a bit quixotic though, because its taken up way too much time and become a labor of love," says John Chatterton, the publication's founder.
Self-promotion, in a word, prompted him to start OOBR. He heard off-the-cob advice while attended a symposium on being a playwright that to get your play read you would have to paint the bathrooms of the producers or directors involved in staging them.
"I thought that I could paint everyone's bathroom by publishing OOBR. And so far it's worked: They all return my phone calls," he deadpans.
Originally, Chatterton expected to sell copies to theatregoers, performers and performers' parents. However, OOBR's initial subscribers took to xeroxing articles and sending them out to their casts, family or friends. So, despite having OOBR at several news stands including the Drama Book Shop, the publication did not manage to generate significant newsstand sales.
To compensate and keep his labor of love going, Chatterton devised a plan for covering his expenses: in order to be reviewed in OOBR, you have to become a subscriber/member. Membership, which runs in the range of $50 per year, covers the cost of printing and publishing. It also ensures that member see at least two of their productions reviewed in a given year. In addition, Chatterton also shifted the publication to a weekly format. The move has allowed oobr to review shows prior to their closing date.
"Something even the New York Times can't always do," he says.
The new format and membership approach has worked as oobr nears completion of its sixth year of existence next March.
In addition to the publication, oobr has a Web presence, www.oobr.com, where current Off-Off Broadway productions are listed alphabetically and reviews selected from the print copy are posted. Chatterton, who sees the Web as oobr's future, has plans to expand the site. And each year oobr doles out its OOBR Awards to a handful of shows deemed by its reviewers as representative of the year's best work. oobr has conferred the awards, complete with awards ceremony, every year since its inception.
