How To Produce A Stage Play
Up to date on September 19, 2015
12 writers, 60 actors, 10 administrators, 3 producers, quite a few hangers-on and 1 venue. Produce 12 new plays in four months? We must have been mad!
Bob Morrison, Martin Bearne and Scott Ironside during rehearsals of The Physique within the Bag by Colin Garrow (Picture by Ben Wambergue) Supply
Placing on a play is a kind of things that many people get involved in occasionally, but most folk stick to at least one or two points of the production - equivalent to performing, writing, directing, helping with set-constructing, buying props etc. At the tail end of 2007, I obtained along with two pals (Liz Lees and Suzy Enoch) with a imprecise plan to attempt to put on a play.
However discussions with a funding expert threw up a distinct problem: if we wanted financial assistance to assist our endeavour, it made extra sense to ask for masses of cash fairly than slightly bit of cash, that way if we only acquired half the money, we would still be able to placed on a scaled-down production of some description. So, instead of putting on one play, why not put on an entire season of performs? 12, in actual fact?
And that's exactly what we did: the Writers and Actors Collaboration Theatre Firm (WACtheatre) put on 12 new plays between November 2008 and February 2009. This is how we did it...
But We Haven't Got Any Money
There are millions of beginner theatre companies out there who placed on productions every year without any correct funding. They usually work on the basis of everybody chipping in to assist with costumes, sound gear, props, photocopies and most of all - their time. Nevertheless, WACtheatre was totally different - the three of us were educated professionals and we needed to placed on skilled productions. Granted, we expected to have to make use of a number of gifted amateurs, however a part of our plan was to get local professional actors on board and produce reveals that may go down in history.
All of which requires money. And we didn't have a two-penny piece between us. So...
Early in 2008, with the help of our funding professional, Suzy, Liz and I put in an utility to Aberdeen City Council for £30,000. We launched a competition for new writers, then we'd take the best scripts, work with the writers to knock the performs into form, audition actors and stage crew and put the primary play on the following November.
It was a pretty crazy plan and none of us would have been surprised if our application was turned down (in truth, we sort of hoped that it might be). But no, they gave us the money, all of it, each last penny. So now we had to do one thing.
Playwriting Competition Leaflet Source
Advertise for Writers
The very first thing was to find writers - lots of them, tons of (if potential) who had all written (or have been in the technique of writing) a stage play that would potentially be a part of our Season of New Performs. Producing a leaflet was easy, and the response was generally good. The issue, after all, was that among the scripts we have been despatched weren't superb. Some of them were dangerous. A couple of had been frightful, and a handful were unbelievably dire.
However, we did handle to find 12 writers who had scripts we thought we may work with, including my own play The Body in the Bag. (And sure, we did think perhaps it was somewhat bit jobs-for-the-boys that I was included within the group, but my script was judged by Suzy and Liz along with all the others and so they have been very comfortable to incorporate it in our selection).
Considered one of WACtheatre's early writers conferences Supply
Enhancing the Scripts
There are two varieties of playwrights - those who are open to working with editors/producers/directors to enhance their scripts as a lot as attainable, and people who aren't. If you happen to worth your sanity, this latter group must be avoided at all prices.
Our group of writers have been an fascinating and eclectic bunch. Many have been concerned in novice theatre teams so had some knowledge of the process of putting on plays, however others have been new to theatre and weren't positive what would work and what wouldn't work on stage. The most important factor (from our point of view) was that the scripts themselves had to be as good as we might make them. And that wasn't as simple as we'd have appreciated.
As theatre professionals, all three of us have been aware of these scripts where elements of the dialogue had been considerably missing. Reading scripts aloud is the best way of identifying the bits that want work, but some writers suppose that every word they've written is sacred and any suggestion of creating modifications doesn't go down properly. Nonetheless, clichés, gratuitously sexist language and repetitive dialogue has to be reduce or it can wreck the entire play. Our methodology of 'enhancing' these scripts where the author was unwilling to change issues, was simply to speak to the director of the play and to the actors who could be taking part in the roles on stage. Encouragement from these two quarters would usually assist the writer to recognise that modifications needed to be made. In one instance however, the actors ended up improvising some scenes throughout the performances in order to reduce the worst dialogue and make the play just about bearable.
Clearly, this is not a really perfect state of affairs, however this was our first lesson and was a mistake we would not make once more. On the risk of repeating myself, if writers should not open to enhancing/revising and so forth, Do Not Work With Them. They are going to drag you all the way down to their level and will probably be You, not They, who end up sitting within the stalls on the primary night time gnashing your tooth and wondering why you ever obtained concerned with these senseless morons.
(I should point out that most of our writers were beautiful and were a delight to work with).
The WAC Needs You poster Source
Auditions
When all the plays were agreed and we had carried out as a lot as doable to get them to production normal, we started to audition for actors. This was a long process, involving the usage of several venues (largely donated to us freed from charge, or in trade for publicity in our programmes) and we finally used greater than 60 actors within the 12 performs. Some of these were, as we had hoped, professional actors, but many were drama college students and am-dram regulars.
Roles
Figuring out people for particular roles may be very troublesome, as it calls for that the producer allows a specific amount of lee-means between what they see when an actor auditions and what they could end up with on stage. The important points to recollect when selecting actors are:
Do they have the ability to take route? (Can they painting a role in several methods?)
Are they a 'crew player'? (Will they work nicely with the other actors within the play?)
Are they reliable? (This is an important of all, since any actor, good or dangerous, can solely perform if they're actually current at the performance)
Administrators
Every thing relating to appointing actors additionally applies to administrators. Ideally, any director should have a very good grasp of the play - what it's about, what the author is attempting to say, what every character contributes to the plot, and so on, as well as ideas about units, costumes and so forth.
One word of warning - administrators have to be in a position above all to work with their actors. The actors, in flip should be capable of belief what the director does, says etc. In one in all our productions, the director proved to have a poor grasp of the task she'd taken on and three days earlier than the first performance, we learned that she had not even begun to rehearse a few of the main scenes in the play. The only factor we may do was to sack that director and take over the route of the play ourselves. The play was performed on time, however sadly, the shortage of rehearsal was obvious.
Another lesson discovered.
Poster for The Body in the Bag by Colin Garrow Supply
Publicity - Posters and Programmes
We have been fortunate sufficient to have the help and assist of His Majesty's Theatre - the largest theatrical organisation in Aberdeen at the time of our New Play Season. This helped enormously with publicising our productions, as they included efficiency dates, occasions and so on on their own web site and of their brochures. Nevertheless, for every play we nonetheless needed a poster, a programme and press information.
I took on the duty of creating the posters as I would lately discovered methods to use Photoshop. However, there was a steep learning curve in getting my humble artwork from my laptop to the printer. Important stuff like crop marks, registration marks, colour bars and bleed marks became a little bit of a minefield and often meant working late into the night to make the changes that the printer had asked for.
Script for 'The Body within the Bag'
Posters - Points to Ponder
It's a nice touch to have photographs of rehearsals within the venue so the audience can see them when they are available for the efficiency. Most of our rehearsal images and a number of the poster photos had been taken by French Photographer Ben Wambergue and the prime quality of his work made a giant difference to our publicity. It additionally meant we had a lot of pics to use on Twitter, Fb, Flickr and numerous blogs as well as our web site. One of the things audiences commented on was the quality of the publicity and therefore the standard of the pictures, so when you have the option of a professional photographer, go for it.
One of the issues with producing a programme for a present is that usually a number of the info you want is not going to be accessible on the time you wish to produce the programme. One of the issues we did was to incorporate a little bit of spiel about every actor, director, writer and many others in the programmes, since that is what audiences count on, but it additionally means it's important to get the data you need from the individuals involved.
Programmes - Points to Ponder
As early in the course of as potential, decide what you'll include within the programme. If you need info from actors etc, be sure that everybody who has to contribute data gets it to you ASAP. Do not give them the option to do it later, as whoever is compiling the programme will find yourself chasing people on the final minute and inevitably, somebody will probably be missed. On one occasion, I spent so much time chasing actors for their bio particulars, that I forgot to include the name of the author. Cringe, cringe.
Cowl of WacChat newsletter No 2, by Colin Garrow Source
Entrance cover of the New Play Season brochure, by Colin Garrow Supply
In addition to posters and programmes, I also produced the brochure detailing all the reveals in the New Play Season, and a monthly e-newsletter - WACchat - that we sent out to audience members, actors and anybody else who was interested. These promoted the performs we would already carried out in addition to those still to return and highlighted other activities our company was involved in, reminiscent of workshops and writing groups.
The Venue
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We had negotiated with our intended venue for the dates we needed and were able to get three performances for each play. Every week for 12 weeks a brand new play was performed. The actual performance area did change within the venue itself, since we wanted to strive a few alternative ways of seating the viewers and the way the play is likely to be presented.
Some performs due to this fact, were staged in the downstairs music venue, the place a smaller stage and an accessible bar had been obtainable. This worked well a couple of of the exhibits, but not so nicely for others. After a couple of weeks, we dispensed with the downstairs venue as it was just too noisy (electric fans from the bar area) and eye-traces from some parts of the venue was marred by several roof columns.
One other tactic we tried was to offer food at among the performances. This was impressed by the well-known A Play, A Pie and A Pint (Òran Mór's profitable lunchtime theatre programme in Glasgow). Unfortunately, we couldn't afford quite the same normal of food and our 'snack' model wasn't very talked-about with audiences.
Venue - Points to Ponder
Be certain that your chosen venue is offered on the dates you want (properly in advance) and that it'll accommodate the audience numbers you are expecting. Additionally take into consideration food, drinks and accessibility - is the venue simple to get to, does it have a drinks licence? And so on.
Louise Ballantyne and Rebecca Wilkie in Burning Ring of Fire, written by Euan MacPherson. Supply
And After All That...
Following the 12 new performs, we found we had money left over. This was primarily because of a deal we had negotiated with the venue (Aberdeen's Lemon Tree) that gave us a minimize of every box office. Since every present was given three performances (Monday and Tuesday evenings, and a matinee on Tuesdays), we had sufficient money to supply more plays. By the time WACtheatre eventually folded in 2011, we had produced 20 new performs, hosted numerous writing and acting workshops and given a lot fo folks the opportunity to become involved in theatre.
Do all of it once more? Not a chance!
While the process of putting on even a single play may be very thrilling, satisfying and completely enjoyable, it's also extremely anxious, demanding and totally unpredictable. I might recommend it to anybody searching for a problem, because the afterglow is unbelievable, however except you could have an abundance of energy, limitless resources (mainly physical) and the endless assist of family and buddies, I would give it a miss.
Then again...
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2 comments
chef-de-jour 18 months ago from Wakefield, West Yorkshire,UK
I'm inspired! As a drama instructor of kinds I realise simply how a lot stress builds up whenever you decide to a play, beginner or otherwise, so if you mention in passing that you'll be doing 12....madness or what!
But you have given some good recommendation and your story is full of insight and humour (important to the cause) so I think you've completed an excellent job with this text.
FatBoyThin 18 months in the past from Kinneff, Scotland
Author
Cheers Andrew, a lot appreciated. It certainly was a marathon event and not one I would tackle again - the stress levels were pretty excessive, significantly after we had eight performs in rehearsal on the similar time.
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