Theatre Offices

For the past two weeks I’ve been interning at a commercial theatre producer’s office. As might be imagined, what I’ve actually been doing is the boring stuff: filing, making tea, proofing contracts, making more tea, and errands for film stars. Sadly, only one film star. And, no surprises for guessing what the errand was (it involved tea).

However, despite that, I do feel that I’ve learnt a lot about how commercial producing works, in particular, how erratic it can be. And by that I mean you can never know exactly how busy you’ll be. For example, there was one show I was working on (involving the star!) that had been in development in the office for two years. With the prospect of casting coming together and a theatre being available, it is now being put into rapid production. Things change fast. A show closes early, or a show extends, and suddenly what you had planned won’t work anymore.

Which is exciting. But also manageable for a big producer with several shows on, and lots more in development. But for a new producer who doesn’t have productions he can drop into theatres as and when they become available (or the money/contacts/knowledge) it’s rather more difficult.

I’m currently developing one show for production in 2011. But realistically, if I’m to make it through the bizarre circumstances that inevitably come up when producing theatre, I’m going to have to start developing a few more. Even if several of them don’t ever make it to life, I’m going to have to start casting the net out for new productions. Which means reading more plays. The other main thing I did in the office was write script reports. Seems I’ll be doing that inside or outside of an office. 

The plan is to read three plays by next week. We’ll see...

Up[to]date

So for the last few months I’ve actually been working on a production. It was Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, and I was working as Assistant Producer. I’m still not sure exactly what a producer does, but I have at least tried to do lots of it. More or less successfully. I had a variety of jobs while I was working on the project, from liaising with Tony Benn, to washing up wine glasses after the Gala Night, negotiating with agents, to carting four tonnes of earth up a fire escape during the get-in. I’m sure these are exactly the sorts of things producers always do. Anyway, it got some fantastic reviews, and was an incredible experience.

I also had great fun as co-producer on the 24 Hour Plays: Old Vic New Voices, (reviews here and here), which in effect involved running around for 24 hours pretending to help out while everyone else (the writers, directors and actors) got on an achieved something. But we did get to sing happy birthday to Kevin Spacey at the after-show party. Although not perhaps as useful in terms of learning about how producing works, it was great to meet so many amazingly talented young people all as foolishly determined to work in theatre as i am. Thanks to the Old Vic for that opportunity.

So, I’ve done some things. I feel like I’ve worked quite hard, although I’m sure it’ll only get busier as I embark upon my own projects, more of which soon.

Perhaps one of the most important things I’ve learnt that a producer has to do is be able to juggle lots of different projects at once. Maybe trying to be more regular in managing to post to this blog will help. Probably not.