I am a Producer
Every time I read a play or a musical that I like, I want to produce it. I want to be the person who brings it to the world. I want to be the person to have done the world premiere.
We say we want stories. We do. The more the better. We exist to produce stories.
But they have to be stories that we can produce.
This means two things:
- First, we have to raise the money to produce them. This means the playwright cannot just sit back and say, “I wrote it. The rest is up to you producers”. This doesn’t work. If your friends, family and fans aren’t confident enough to invest in you, why should strangers be?
- The second and more important thing is that the show has to make enough money to earn back some of the expenses it took to produce it. As we are a “not for profit” we don’t have to cover all of our costs, but the closer we get to that goal the more shows we can produce.
Producing Budget Basics
Every show has three budgets.
1. The Capital Budget. This is the amount that needs to be spent to get the show to opening night. It includes things like rehearsal expenses, deposits with theater unions, and rent for the theater. All these things must be paid before you have even sold a single ticket.
2. The Weekly Run Budget. That is the amount you have to pay everyone on a weekly basis. Actors need to be paid. The people who work the front of house and back stage have to be paid. Marketing people have to be paid so they can tell everyone what a great show it is. There are many people who help put your show on week after week, and they must all be paid.
3. The Recoupment Budget. Take your weekly ticket sales total and subtract the weekly expenses, and you know how many weeks it will take you to recoup (or to make back) the capital budget.
Some of the reasons for a negative weekly number are obvious.
- If you can sell ten thousand dollars worth of tickets, but have 20 actors that you must pay one thousand dollars a week in salary, the play can’t be produced.
- There are some reasons that are not so obvious. If your play has one child in it, the child can cost three times what an adult actor would cost.
- Some sets cost more to build and to insure than others.
- Each choice the playwright makes when writing the play can make it more or less producible.
We want your stories, but they need to be producible.
The next few blogs will talk about what can be done to make what you send us more producible, so stay tuned.
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