Today we’d like to introduce you to Cameron Darwin Bossert

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

My mom didn’t allow me to see Star Wars until she found a revival screening at an actual movie theater. She wanted to make sure I saw it, at least for the first time, as it was meant to be seen, and not on a tiny TV screen. My mom is not a sci fi nerd. Not at all. It wasn’t about passing down a love of Star Wars. She has simply always been preoccupied by the “experience” of things. The order in which things happen. The order in which stories are told. Building up surprises for friends and family.

So it’s really no surprise that my company, Thirdwing, revolves around the idea that stories can be told in many different ways, and work in harmony to create a whole experience greater than the sum of the parts.
Film and theater are different, and you have to be very intentional about which one you’re using to tell your audience one story or another.

The book I’ve read the most while building the company is called “Designing Experiences.” If you’re building a company and a brand, check it out.

I could never decide between film and theater. My final semester of high school I made a 45-minute movie AND a two-act musical with a cast of 25.

To make money out of college, I chose the film industry. It was more glamorous to write dialogue for movie stars, have accidental phone calls with Robert De Niro, talk to the Coen Bros about reframing shots in editing software, and design the title sequences for movies that played in theaters across the world.

But the world I was working in had been established at a completely different time: the late 80s and early 90s, the heyday of new wave independent cinema. I was learning from people who’d charted a path no longer available to me. I learned a lot about what into MAKING a movie if you had a good budget, and selling it once you had it, but nothing about how to really get started on my own goals.

So I quit. I went back to pouring coffee for a living, temp work, and freelance camerawork. I looked at the scripts I’d completed during nights and weekends over the years. They were mostly all stage plays. So I started submitting.

Cold submissions don’t work. The reasons are many, and they’re all cynical and boring.

When you’re young you don’t have money but you have time. So I looked ahead and thought: the same amount of time I take to keep submitting scripts is no different that building my own company from scratch.

7 years later I launched Thirdwing with 3 distinct projects on the docket, for streaming and stage. I wanted to guarantee our first offering to be brilliant, so I commandeered the best playwright I know, Rachel Carey, who wrote our first streaming series AND first live stage play. Opening night and the reviews were glowing, and we were off! No more “So sorry to bother you Mr. De Niro,” or “Thanks for your submission, unfortunately at this time…” There were 9 people in the audience, but it was ours, and folks loved it.

The rest has been about building momentum, building a reputation, and trying things.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Oh man, it’s been a completely smooth road. Nothing could be easier than simultaneously building a theater company and a streaming service with no staff and less money than it takes to make one ultra-low-budget indie film. Especially when covid destroys your business’ core value proposition 4 days after you’ve launched something it took 7 years to put together. But a lot of patience, and the fact I’ve been doing this since I was six years old, have both made it possible to weather those kinds of setbacks, and just keep forging ahead with the knowledge that it’s all a test to make sure I REALLY want to do this.

Another challenge has ben learning when to let people go. When you’re making so many different projects, you end up working with hundreds of people, and if we’re all creative, we’re all temperamental. You have to take some of that in stride, but also learn to recognize red flags quicker and quicker and quicker, until it looks like you’re making snap judgments. But those snap judgments have really come from years of experience with giving people the benefit of the doubt to varying degrees of regret. As someone who has always wanted to be liked, that’s been one of the hardest things to figure out.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?

I started Thirdwing to make live theater affordable to absolutely anybody in NYC on a regular basis. We do that by using a streaming business model. This keeps it $5 per month to be a member to stream immediately as you look forward to the next live event you get to see at no additional cost.

Essentially we’re a streaming platform that simply puts half of our content on a live New York stage. You have access to both with a membership that costs less than some tickets do for one show.

To do this we build story worlds, not unlike a “cinematic universe,” that always give you a sense of your place in history and the world.

The inner workings of the UN, 1970s free-love communes, labor relations at the early Disney studio, are all topics we cover, across streaming and live stage. For example we have a United Nations TV show and we’re coming up on our 3rd live stage play with the same characters.

If you’re an artist, we have monthly meetings where you can bring your own work to present and discuss with members of our company to give you momentum and inspiration.

I basically want to create something that can give people the experience of what live theater really is. And the feeling of why it’s different from anything else, why it’s so vital, from behind the scenes to in the audience. That’s why it’s called Thirdwing, because a stage has two wings – the third one extends out to you.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?

I learned nothing from covid. I just waited. I think I’m the only person I know who learned nothing. There was no silver lining for me. I just had to wait it out. I wish I had a better answer, but I just don’t. I would always prefer it to have never happened. But that’s part of life.

Pricing:

• $7/ month
• $59/ year

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thirdwing.info
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thirdwingltd
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thirdwingltd
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/thirdwingltd