What will it Look Like When we Re-Open?
What will your theatre look like when covid-19 is vanquished and we can all start to return to work managing our theatre companies and re engaging in our “normal” way of operating and welcoming people back to our buildings in large numbers…Many people have been having this conversation and really you have to ask yourself;
“Will it ever be the same again?”
I recently read an article in American Theatre Magazine by JIM WARREN a long time Artistic Director and producer…
https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/10/29/you-say-you-want-a-revolution/
In this article Jim describes a vision or commitment for all theatres that is complicated to execute and for sure financially challenging. He does however have some great ideas that I have been percolating on for quite some time (Read my No Tittle Blog)
1. Put actors/artists (to clarify actor/artists are people who can execute some or all of what you see on stage when you see a show….This could include acting, playing music, designing and executing sets costumes, lights, sound and so on…they are TheatreMakers) at the forefront of your full time salaried, benefited, 40 hour a week workforce and hiring priority.
2. Commit to a 40 hour a week schedule that makes work-life balance an institutional priority.
3. Bring back the Repertory company model of presenting
Here is my take on this very interesting dialogue many of us MUST be having right now with our constituencies, board of directors, staff (if you still have any) and your local or regular actor/artist family that for years has called your institution home more or less depending on your individual situations…
Although I heartily support what he suggests and Echo him completely when he says…
“I’m a 54-year-old, white cisgender heterosexual male artistic director with plenty of baggage and privilege—and I concede that all of that stuff makes me a hugely imperfect vessel for this article. I have made a million mistakes and I have another million miles to go before I sleep.”
I would reorganize Mr Warren’s thesis in the following ways….
Much of this to make the ideas work practically as well as financially…
1-Hire More TheatreMakers as full-time employees to manage and carry out the mission of your organization. The whole thing starts here but you have to hire the right people with the right mix of skills who will engage and contribute to the ENTIRE vision and its execution Using said TheatreMakers put education and community outreach at the forefront of your activities, decision making and creative programming in every single way. This will pay for your TheatreMakers salaries and benefits and will grow and supplant ticket sales alone as you primary source of earned revenue…It will also in the long game grow and secure your future audiences as well as provide the integral services and relevance we all seek to give back to our communities. This is the Silver Bullet! This is the opportunity we’ve all been waiting for!
2- Committing to work life balance (AKA the 40 hour week) when you run a theatre company is perhaps the hardest thing to do. Mostly because many of us (me included) do not consider the work we do to be work! We are all passionate about this work and asking any of us to work over time has for millenia been simply accepted as the “way it is” BUT It doesn’t have to be that way and its clear to me now after years of running theatres and losing good people to burn out and even sometimes exhaustion that WE must find a way to recognize the importance of organizing ourselves in a way that will provide our employees, volunteers and contract people with a commitment to providing a balanced work week that provides the opportunity for family, good self-care practices and rejuvenation ….Ultimately this will pay our organizations back with longer lasting employees, safer work environments and happier people in the long run…Its the right thing to do and we ALL have to apply ourselves to the concept and be good caretakers of our people.
3-Hire and identify a repertory company for your theatre. Wether you are a community or professional organization it makes sense on an annual basis to identify your resident acting/artist company and cast them or identify their role be it Actor/director/choreographer/designer…in advance of the season. This will serve a number of excellent purposes and provide economy and purpose.
· Your audience will enjoy tracking and watching each actors transition to each role. Part of the fun will be watching them tackle something that you didn’t imagine they could do or stretch their skills to transform each time out.
· The acting company will have the luxury of knowing what parts and positions they will hold well in advance so that their and subsequently your organizational level of preparedeness will increase.
· You will have gained a huge number of collaborators with which to prepare and envision each production and with your full t-time staff of TheatreMakers you will be able also to create and execute the educational programs to wrap around each production.
· Designers given multiple shows in the repertory will be able to find and identify economy in the execution of each production by using materials across more than just one show. Imagine too, the challenge and fun of using a single element in each production? Say a revolve or a window or a staircase?
In doing this you’ll also create a highly desirable opportunity that your entire community of actors and artists will vie for and that your audience will develop a relationship with.
4- For the Love of God Diversify! ??Every theatre company should actively seek a way to engage in a new diversification of its annual activities that will create a new source of revenue that the organization can maintain alongside its Primary work of selling and promoting live theatre and theatre education…This can be many things but it should relate, work well alongside the other work you do and help to reach new potential audiences. Think about…
· An annual arts festival
· An annual new play competition
· A fringe style festival
· A film festival for budding local movie makers
· A Dance presentation series
· A stand-up comedy Festival or series
· An Annual Murder Mystery
· An Annual Summer intensive
· A musical theatre cabaret series
All of these practices are hard work and require commitment and organizational restructurings that are significant…
What else are you doing right now?
