Type Live magazine | Website popupmagazine.com | |
Pop up magazine tour sneak peek
Pop-Up Magazine is a magazine performed live. The shows feature true, never-before seen or heard multimedia stories performed on stage by writers, radio producers, photographers, filmmakers, and musicians. The events are ephemeral - they are not live-streamed or recorded for viewing later.
Contents
- Pop up magazine tour sneak peek
- My experience at pop up magazine
- History
- Collaborations
- The California Sunday Magazine
- Past Contributors
- References
Pop-Up Magazine events are currently produced two to three times a year and routinely sell out. There are usually around 12 short stories. The production runs approximately 100 minutes.
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 many are accompanied by an original score performed live by Magik*Magik Orchestra. After each show, the performers and audience share drinks and conversation together in the venue or a nearby bar.
My experience at pop up magazine
History
Pop-Up Magazine was founded in San Francisco in 2009 by Douglas McGray, Lauren Smith, Derek Fagerstrom, Evan Ratliff, and Maili Holiman.
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."
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 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. In spring of 2016, the show toured again, for a live audience of nearly 10,000 people, in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.
Collaborations
Outside of its own tours, Pop-Up Magazine occasionally partners with organizations and public figures for special performances. In 2011, they collaborated with SFMOMA with a show about wine and ESPN the Magazine for a show about sports. In 2013, they produced a night of stories and live music inspired by Beck’s Song Reader, a collection of sheet music written by Beck and published by McSweeneys. And, in 2015 they curated Session 8 of TED2015 in Vancouver, producing a set of 11 stories performed on TED's main stage.
The California Sunday Magazine
Pop-Up Magazine is produced by California Sunday, Inc., which also publishes an online and print 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 300,000. In 2016, the magazine won the National Magazine Award for overall excellence in print magazine photography. 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.” With both, McGray says the focus is on “finding fascinating, surprising stories and designing them beautifully.”