Community Theater: So, You’ve Decided to Put On a Show. Now What?
The Clarity Call — Issue No. 1
Practical guidance for the work behind the curtain.
There is a wonderful moment in community theater when somebody says:
“We should do this show.”
Maybe the theater has talked about it for years. Maybe a director has a vision. Maybe audiences have been asking for it. Maybe someone hears the score again and thinks, We have exactly the people who could pull this off.
And suddenly, there it is.
A production.
At least in theory.
Because between “We should do this show” and opening night lies an extraordinary amount of work that the audience will never see.
Before an actor speaks the first line, someone has to secure the rights.
Someone has to choose performance dates.
Someone has to determine where rehearsals will happen.
There is a budget to create, a production team to assemble, auditions to schedule, volunteers to recruit, scenery to build, costumes to find, publicity to organize, tickets to sell — and eventually hundreds of individual decisions to make.
And almost none of those decisions exists by itself.
Change the performance dates and the venue may become unavailable.
Change the rehearsal schedule and cast conflicts appear.
Change the cast and costume requirements change.
Lose a volunteer and someone else inherits another job.
Move a rehearsal and now someone has to make certain everybody actually knows it moved.
Welcome to community theater.
Start at Opening Night
Opening night has one particularly inconvenient characteristic:
It does not care whether you are ready.
If the curtain is scheduled to rise at 7:30 Friday evening, the calendar continues marching toward 7:30 whether the set is finished, costumes fit, the cast knows the choreography, or someone remembered to print the programs.
That makes the earliest planning decisions disproportionately important.
One of the best things a production team can do is begin at opening night and work backward.
When must technical rehearsals begin?
When must the set be usable?
When must costumes be fitted?
When are publicity materials needed?
When must casting be finished?
When must auditions occur?
When does the production team need to be assembled?
When must the rights be secured?
Suddenly, “opening in four months” doesn't sound quite so far away.
The Real Enemy Isn’t Chaos
Community theater is often described as chaotic.
Sometimes it certainly feels that way.
But chaos isn't really the underlying problem.
Dependency is.
The costume designer needs the cast list.
The cast list depends on auditions.
Auditions depend on dates.
Dates depend on venue availability.
The rehearsal schedule depends on cast conflicts.
The lighting designer needs to know what the set designer is building.
Publicity needs photographs.
Photographs need actors.
Actors need schedules.
And everyone needs information.
The more dependent activities a production contains, the easier it becomes for one seemingly small change to ripple through everything else.
That doesn't mean the theater is poorly managed.
It means producing theater is complicated.
Five Things to Do Before the First Rehearsal
1. Decide who owns each responsibility.
Every major production area needs a person attached to it. “Somebody will handle costumes” is not a plan. If a responsibility belongs to everyone, there is a surprising chance it actually belongs to no one.
2. Establish one master timeline.
Put the major dates in one place: auditions, callbacks, casting, meetings, rehearsals, fittings, publicity deadlines, build deadlines, technical rehearsals, opening and closing.
3. Collect conflicts early.
Don’t finish a rehearsal schedule and then discover that six people can’t attend Tuesdays. Availability is planning information.
4. Decide how changes will be communicated.
Email? Text? Group messaging? Shared calendar? Whatever you use, everyone should know where the authoritative information lives.
5. Expect the plan to change.
A good plan isn’t one that never changes. A good plan lets everyone understand what changed, who is affected, and what happens next.
Outside Perspective
AACT: Production Management Is Coordination
The American Association of Community Theatre describes production management as far more than simply keeping a calendar.
Its Production Manager guidance includes securing performance rights, budgeting, choosing dates and venues, forming the production team, coordinating meetings, scheduling rehearsals and performances, arranging rehearsal space, and overseeing the production process through opening.
AACT also emphasizes the importance of developing a motivated, collaborative production team.
The Clarity Call Takeaway
Don’t begin with the calendar. Begin with the people who will make the calendar possible.
A production works better when everyone understands what they own, what they need from other people, and when they need it.
One Practical Tool for Your Next Production
Create a Production Responsibility Sheet
Before the first rehearsal, make one page with five columns:
Area | Person Responsible | First Deadline | Information Needed | Reports/Coordinates With
Include, as appropriate:
Production Management
Direction
Stage Management
Music
Choreography
Scenery
Costumes
Props
Lighting
Sound
Publicity
Box Office
Front of House
Volunteers
The Clarity Call
The Goal Isn’t to Eliminate Problems
Sets will take longer than expected.
Actors will get sick.
Volunteers will have conflicts.
Schedules will change.
Something will be forgotten.
Something else will happen that nobody could reasonably have predicted.
Good production management doesn’t prevent every problem.
It gives us a better chance to see the problem early enough to do something about it.
Community theaters routinely accomplish remarkable things with limited budgets, limited time, and people who are contributing their talents because they love theater.
The challenge isn’t that community theaters don’t know what they’re doing.
The challenge is that dozens of people may be coordinating hundreds of details while nearly everyone involved also has an entire life outside the theater.
A little clarity goes a long way.
Backstage Bookshelf
Recommended Reading:
Stage Management by Lawrence Stern and Jill Gold is a practical reference for organizing, communicating, and coordinating a production from planning through performance.
Next Issue
The Schedule Is Already Trying to Kill You
Creating a rehearsal calendar is easy.
Creating one that works for the director, cast, musicians, production team, rehearsal space — and everybody’s real life — is something else entirely.
In Issue #2, we’ll look at what should be known before the rehearsal schedule is created, how conflicts become scheduling information, and why changing a date is often the easiest part of changing a schedule.
The Clarity Call
Practical guidance for the work behind the curtain.
Less administrative chaos. More time for theater.
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