On the Usefulness of Rotating Rep
When combined with “appetite” budgeting and 6-week cycles, rotating rep provides a theater company with the flexibility to balance its offerings in a way that provides variety and financial stability.
More “idea spinning” using Ryan Singer’s and 37 Signal’s book Shape Up. What if, instead of scheduling an entire season six months in advance, we worked on a 6-week schedule?
Appetite: A Different Way to Budget
What would happen if we decided on and budgeted productions differently? In this post, I apply the idea of “appetite,” developed by my favorite software company 37 Signals, in order to increase the likelihood of creating financially sustainable productions for a theater company.
Doing Theater and Still Having a Life
Isn’t it about time that we gave some attention to artists whose only desire is to make art as much as they can in their lives? Not careerists hustling for fame and fortune. Not people whose only dream is of one day performing on Broadway and then parlaying their success into a TV show or movie. No, I’m interested in people who would be happy having an opportunity to do theater as much as possible while living a normal, sustainable, abundant life. (more…)
A major reason theater is experiencing a crisis right now is that everything has gotten gigantic. Regional theaters build $125M theaters with a staff of hundreds, and they do so with other people’s money: grants, contributions, government funds. We see the same trend in film, where studios only know how to swing for the stands with big-budget franchise movies. This is why my recent discovery of an interview with filmmaker Jason Blum (Get Out) grabbed my attention. (more…)