Where in the world am I today?: At Sea aboard the Coral Princess (Caribbean)

So… Working on Cruise Ships… There seem to be two popular options as a performer wanting to work on cruise ships.

1. Work through and agent.
2. Work directly with the cruise lines.

I’ve done both, but today’s post as the heading indicates is going to focus on the Agent route… I’ll get into contacting the lines directly next week.

The only down side to working with an agent is parting with a percentage of your salary for every contact you do. My first contract with Princess Cruises back in 2001 was through an agent in Vancouver who charged 15%, but when I switched to working through Don Casino Productions who are out of Miami, that figure dropped to 10%. Having spoken to various acts on ships it seems that most agencies that people want to work through also seem to be at the 10% rate, so if you contact an agent and they’re asking for a larger percentage I’d say steer clear.

For many cruise lines the option of working though an agency has several advantages the biggest of which seems to be that if something goes wrong and you have to cancel a contract last minute an agent will be able to draw on their stable of talent to find a replacement more quickly than you might as an individual. In short, there’s less risk for the cruise lines when working though an agent, especially if they’ve never seen your show live and can’t really gauge from your video how your show will go over with their passengers. In this situation having an agent working for you to give the cruise line that extra push and smooth the way for your first contracts can and does make a huge difference.

So how do you convince an agent to start representing you? Well, start with the traditional route of sending in your promotional materials is a good start. Your package should include 8 x 10 photo(s), a Bio, Press Release, and testimonials from past clients and/or news publications attesting to your greatness. The kicker though will be your video – ideally a DVD showing you performing in a venue similar to what typical performance spaces are like on a ship – this means, either a theatre, club or perhaps a cabaret venue. If you’ve got footage of you working in a variety of indoor settings great, but they should all be lounge/club/theatre settings, venues that will allow the agent to look at your show and go – ‘Yep, this act knows what they’re doing and will easily be able to transition into the sorts of venues that cruise ships offer.

In my case I sent my promotional materials to the Don Casino Agency in Miami (based on a suggestion from fellow juggler Reid Belstock) and followed up the mailing about a week later with a phone call to make sure that they had received the video. It was then that I also learned a very valuable lesson. The video that I had sent down was a compilation video that had seven different videos of my work in various settings. Though one of the chapters specifically showed me performing on cruise ships, the agent popped the video in their DVD player and didn’t want to have to navigate to find the video that I wanted them to watch. It would have been far better to simply include a DVD with just the cruise ship promo reel on it, so keep this in mind when sending your info in.

When I made the follow-up phone call I discovered that the agent hadn’t actually seen the cruise ship section of the video and they had determined that I wasn’t going to be appropriate for ship work. Though the course of the conversation I indicated that no, I actually had worked on ships before and that yes, a part of the video did actually show me in that setting. I ended up couriering another copy of the video down to them and followed that up with another call, which eventually lead to me being invited to perform as part of an annual showcase that the Casino Agency puts on in Miami.

February 2005 I hopped on a plane, flew down to Miami and was one of 20 acts each given 10 minutes to strut their stuff on stage. The audience was made up of about 500 people mostly retired from around the area where the showcase was held. Also sprinkled in the audiences were representatives from various cruise lines who were brought in specifically to scout the new talent that the Casino Agency was looking at representing.

The full story of that experience may make it into another post at some point, but for the sake of actually getting some useful information out I’ll cut to the chase. Shortly after doing the showcase the Casino Agency started sending me out for contracts and have done a very good job securing me work ever since.

So…there you go.

Below I’ve listed the four names that seem to come up the most when I talk to other guest entertainers about who they work through. I’ve also included a link to a site that lists a number of other agencies that might be worth looking into, but that I know less about. Good luck!

Barry Ball Artists / Spotlight Entertainment Productions, Inc
http://www.barryball.com/
Attention: Barry Ball
2121 N. Bayshore Drive, Suite 908
Miami, FL, 33137-5135, USA
Phone: 1-866-902-2255
Fax: 305-573-5457

Blackburn International
http://www.blackburninternational.com
Attention: Johnathan Blackburn
Suite B
26 Craven Court
Stanhope Road
Camberley
Surrey GU15 3BS. UK
Tel: 01276 686661
 
Don Casino Productions
http://www.doncasino.com/
Attention: Wendy Garvis
20880 West Dixie Highway, Suite 105
Miami FL 33180, USA
Tel: (305) 935-0137 or (305) 935-9094
 
First Class Entertainment, Inc.
http://www.gotofirstclass.com
Howard Beder
483 Ridgewood Road
Maplewood, NJ 07040-2136 USA
Tel: (973) 763-0591
Fax: (973) 763-0570

More agents can be found via this link –http://redbirdstudio.com/AWOL/CruiseShipAgencies.html

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Cruise Ships, Job Opportunities, Marketing, Thoughts, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.