Pop-Up Magazine
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| Formation | 2009 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Location | |
| Website |
popupmagazine |
Pop-Up Magazine is a magazine performed live. The shows feature never-before seen or heard nonfiction stories told in-person by writers, radio producers, photographers, filmmakers, artists, and musicians. The events are ephemeral - they are not live-streamed, photographed, or recorded for viewing later.
Pop-Up Magazine shows are held two to three times a year and routinely sell out, usually in under 30 minutes.[1] There are usually around 12 short stories, and the entire production runs approximately 90 minutes and doesn't include an intermission.[2]
Each story is designed specifically for a live format, often using media considered unconventional for journalism. Many stories are performed alongside photographs, animations and illustrations, or film, and all are accompanied by an original score performed live by Magik*Magik Orchestra.[3] After each show, the performers and audience share cocktails and conversation together in the venue or a nearby bar.
History
Pop-Up Magazine was founded in San Francisco in 2009[4] by Douglas McGray, Lauren Smith, Derek Fagerstorm,[5] Evan Ratliff, and Maili Holiman.[6]
McGray says the idea for the show came from trying to get different kinds of storytellers and artists together in the same room. "Filmmakers have their film openings, and artists will have gallery openings, and writers will have their readings. And we're never at the same things together. We thought about the idea of a live magazine as a way to bring these different communities together and bring their communities of fans together."[2]
The first Pop-Up Magazine show was at the 360-seat Brava Theater in San Francisco's Mission District in 2009. Its audience has nearly tripled[7] every year since launching, growing from that 360-seat theater to a 900-seat auditorium in 2010 to a 2,600-member audience in 2011. In the fall of 2015, Pop-Up Magazine went on its first national tour with stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York City.[8] In spring of 2016, the show toured again in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.[9]
California Sunday
Pop-Up Magazine is produced by California Sunday, which also has a bimonthly print and online magazine called The California Sunday Magazine. McGray launched the magazine with publisher Chas Edwards in October 2014. It features stories about the West, Latin America and Asia and it has a print readership of 400,000.[10] In 2016, the magazine won a National Magazines Award for overall excellence in print magazine photography.[11] Other finalists included National Geographic, New York, Vanity Fair, and Wall Street Journal.
McGray said: “We started a media company. We approached it like a story production company. Some of the things we’d make would be live experiences, live stories, and some of the things we’d make would be stories for you to read at home.”[12]With both, McGray says the focus is on “finding fascinating, surprising stories and designing them beautifully.”[13]
California Sunday raised a little over $3.5 million from investors including Emerson Collective, Bloomberg Beta, Slow Ventures, Chris Anderson, Chris Cox, Nion McEvoy and Neal Baer.[14]
Past Contributors
- Larry Sultan, photographer: 2009 story on a soldier's family's photo album.[7]
- Susan Orlean, writer for The New Yorker: 2014 story on the delight she felt while burning a book.[7]
- Jeff Bridges, actor: Performed a bedtime story at the spring 2015 show in New York.[15]
- Lee Unkrich, "Toy Story 3" director.[16]
- Michael Pollan, author: Story of how musician James Taylor’s pet pig killed author Michael Pollan’s pet pig when Pollan was a teenager.[17]
- Beck, musician: Performed with the International Space Orchestra.[18]
- Alice Walker, novelist.[19]
- John C. Reilly, actor.[18]
- Starlee Kine, radio producer for This American Life, The Mystery Show: 2014 story on America's shortest lived television show.
- Amanda Micheli, Oscar-Nominated filmmaker: Exclusively in SF in 2014, a story about an online contest to get a free round of IVF therapy.[7]
- Jon Mooallem, journalist and author: A frequent contributor. Stories on a lightbulb that has been burning continuously for more than a century, his child's class play that morphed into an epic tirade against gentrification in San Francisco, and two guys who've made a career of picking up parolees.[17]
- Jenna Wortham, reporter for the New York Times: 2015 story on a man who replaced his lost memory with his phone, animated with puppets by Manual Cinema.[17]
- Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times: 2015 story on the mysterious and contested origins of an LA landmark.
- The Kitchen Sisters, radio producers: Frequent contributors. Stories on a stock trader inside San Quentin State Prison, a deadly war for eggs on an island off the coast of San Francisco, how Salman Rushdie got his first break as an ad man for a chocolate company, and the Soviet-era practice of secretly recording Western music on x-ray records.
- Rebecca Skloot, writer.
- Jon Ronson, author and radio personality: 2014 story on the Twitter shaming of the dongle joke guys.[17]
- Samin Nosrat, chef and writer: 2016 story on taste and conflict — the flavors and ingredients we miss or lose due to the politics of war.[20]
References
- ↑ Bech, Lene (April 2015). "The power of Pop-Up Magazine's live journalism". Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
- 1 2 "No Recording Allowed At Pop-Up Magazine Shows". NPR.org. November 21, 2011. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
- ↑ "Pop-Up Magazine Presents Stories for All Five Senses". East Bay Express. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
- ↑ Carroll, Jon (October 12, 2015). "Here today, gone already: It’s ‘Pop-Up Magazine’!". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ↑ Mason, Laura (February 23, 2011). "Bay Area Power Couples: Derek Fagerstrom & Lauren Smith of Pop-Up Magazine and The Curiosity Shoppe". 7x7.
- ↑ LaCroix, Jeremy (November 9, 2010). "Three Questions With Maili Holiman, DD, Pop Up Magazine". SPD.
- 1 2 3 4 Vankin, Deborah (November 17, 2014). "Pop-Up Magazine: Live storytelling with no digital footprint". LA Times.
- ↑ Richards, Kathleen (September 1, 2015). "Tickets for Pop-Up Magazine Go on Sale Today". The Stranger. The Stranger.
- ↑ Shin, Nara (March 21, 2016). "Pop-Up Magazine Tour". Cool Hunting. Cool Hunting. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
- ↑ "Is Live Storytelling Profitable? Pop-Up Magazine Tests A New Business Model". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-05-05.
- ↑ http://www.magazine.org/asme/ellie-awards-2016-winners-announced
- ↑ "Pop-Up Magazine Is A Here-Today, Gone-Tomorrow Experiment In Storytelling". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
- ↑ "Is Live Storytelling Profitable? Pop-Up Magazine Tests A New Business Model". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-05-05.
- ↑ Carney, Abby. "Is Live Storytelling Profitable? Pop-Up Magazine Tests A New Business Model". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
- ↑ Walters, Pat. "Work: Pop-Up Magazine". patwalters.net. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
- ↑ Odio, Jesy (October 30, 2014). "Pop-Up Magazine (Actually a Live Performance) Comes to L.A.". Los Angeles Magazine. Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
- 1 2 3 4 Henriksen, Erik (October 19, 2015). "Win Tickets to Pop-Up Magazine's Portland Show!". Portland Mercury. Portland Mercury. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
- 1 2 Milvy, Erika (May 21, 2013). "Pop-Up Magazine’s "The Song Reader Issue" Celebrates Music Written, Remembered, and Reinvented". KQED Arts. KQED. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
- ↑ "Pop-Up Magazine". Town Hall Seattle. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
- ↑ Druckman, Charlotte (2016-04-08). "An Herby Persian Frittata From Michael Pollan’s Chef Teacher". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-04-13.