Does anyone else feel like this week was a year long? I'm just exhausted, and I don't think I can point at any big thing I managed to do. Just a whole series of little things over and over. It's highly unlikely that I will come out of this particularly extraordinary, with piles of new skills. I just have to take it on faith that keeping everybody together is enough.
I was talking with a friend today about how we can make theatre economically feasible when we are finally able to have shows again. No local theatre is coming through this unscathed, and in many cases, designers and technicians were already criminally underpaid before everything shut down. Quite often, companies would select shows and then look into the technical demands, leading to nasty shocks when their "not that big" shows required hundreds of costumes or a magically moving set. This usually ends with the managing director waving his arms vaguely and proclaiming that he just knows we'll come up with something, because we're brilliant.
This has happened often enough to my friend that she no longer enjoys watching some big shows, because she starts dreading the day she'll be asked to do it for $20 a costume, if that. It's rough. The real solution is to start exploring new concepts for these shows. It was refreshing to watch the National Theatre's weekly offerings on YouTube this spring, which focused on streamlined technical elements instead of flashy production values. For example, in Jane Eyre, the entire cast was in basic costumes with pieces added and removed for various passing characters. The full changes were reserved for maximum impact, like Jane's wedding dress, and everything happened onstage. It was wildly effective, and I certainly didn't miss the "miracle" changes, where someone has a full costume/shoe/wig change in 25 seconds.
Don't get me wrong. I love big shows. I adore seeing something like Wicked or Phantom of the Opera, but very few local theatres have thirteen million dollars to put the show on the way it was conceived. It's time for us to stop trying to emulate what we saw in the movie or on the Tony Awards. The budget cuts that are coming when the theatres reopen after all of this are going to force us to get creative. I have a few proposals for changes.
1. No more assuming that designers will provide free rentals or shop space from their day jobs. It creates a false sense of superior utilization of budgets, and it endangers the designer's livelihood. Often, the bosses at the day job are unaware they are bankrolling another theatre's enterprises, and in some cases, your designers can be dismissed for it. That doesn't even consider the nightmare of liability if your designer is fitting your actors in someone else's space. What happens if your actor falls down the stairs and chooses to sue the other company? What happens if there's a burglary, or a fire? Figure out what a show actually costs to put on without theft.
2. Put someone on your script selection committee who can analyze the prospective shows for technical demands. The analysis needs to include all the design demands--sets, costumes, lights, sound, wigs, make-up, projections, and so forth. Listen to your someone when they tell you that this is too big a show for your space, or that the only good costume rental package runs about the same price as a new mid-level SUV. You need to go into the budgeting/fundraising process already aware of the demands of the show. How can you guess what a show will cost if you have no concept how many wigs will go into it, or that the set is completely different every time the curtain rises, or that the first act ends with the entire cast flying over an onstage fire? So many of us are guilty of not remembering some of these details from that one time we saw it on tour after a dinner with really good wine. The most damning words in theatre are "How hard can it be?" I assure you, the world is eager to show you how hard it can be, if that's the best question you can come up with.
3. Get creative with concepts. Do concert versions. Set them as radio plays (This worked for my undergrad for a production of She Loves Me. We built one item for the whole show--everything else, from the set to the costumes to the props, all came from stock.). Do a black turtlenecks and stools version of something unexpected. There's a brilliant version of My Fair Lady out there with base costumes and pieces. Challenge your audience to use their imaginations.
4. Utilize your resources. If you already have the set and the costumes, a remount of a popular previous production could be a great fundraiser (Give them a small budget anyway for incidentals, repairs, and rebuilds, and be damn sure you actually still have everything.) Think about what you already have--those little cafe tables from the annual gala can definitely be used in Cabaret, for example. One community theatre from my past used the same platform-heavy set for the entire season, and they just redressed it for each show.
5. Be honest with your subscribers and supporters. Offer goodies of some sort in return for the stuff you need, like the loan of a treadle sewing machine for Fiddler on the Roof. Arts supporters have all kinds of things in their homes and businesses, and it's an extra little thrill to know they're personally involved in the show. My father attended several shows directed by my mother to see his living room furniture, after all. Mention the other stuff you need, too. It's amazing what comes out of the woodwork when you just mention the need to the universe.
6. Don't kill the cow for some milk. I've seen a few companies die on the idea of doing one big splashy show. Every staff member was worked to their limit. Every dollar in the company was wrapped up in the show. The shows would sell well, but not extraordinarily enough to justify it all. Find another way to get talked about.
I don't know everything, but I do know that we cannot continue to expect more and more for less and less. Materials cost more. Fuel costs more. Rent costs more. Even dry cleaning costs more. I challenge the local theatres to find a way to make good theatre that doesn't look like the movie, but rather looks like wonderful creativity on what we have.
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