Theatre Management

Arts Leadership for the 21st Century

Anthony Rhine

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781352001747
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350316492
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

An essential introductory textbook that provides a comprehensive and student-friendly overview of the key processes involved in developing and managing a theatre in the 21st century. It covers a complete range of topics fundamental to successful commercial and not-for-profit theatre management, from developing a mission statement to communicating with stakeholders, from marketing and promotion to fund development platforms, and from governance structures to community engagement. With over two decades of experience in the industry, Anthony Rhine encourages a critical understanding of theatre management; rather than simply giving students the facts and theories to memorise, he shows readers how to think like theatre managers, giving them the skills needed to be able to carve out their own career paths. Far-reaching and globally applicable, the text serves as an invaluable guide for aspiring theatre managers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students on theatre management, arts management, creative industries and theatre and performance studies degree courses.

CHAPTER 1

What is theatre management?

Each chapter of this book includes a case study about Patrick. Patrick is a young man who recently graduated from college with a degree in theatre management. And while Patrick is a real man, and much of this story is his, it has been augmented by the stories of other real theatre managers as well, to ensure that there are plenty of challenges to analyze, discuss, debate, and attempt to solve. Poor Patrick would be at his wits’ end if every challenge presented in this text had actually befallen him, though many have. It is not unusual to see any or all of the situations Patrick found himself in at any theatre in the world. The issues Patrick has faced have proved to be challenging. And he has handled them beautifully, because he learned to think like a theatre manager. The challenges sometimes required answers that are rooted in the known, but sometimes they required philosophical analysis and assumptions based on unknown circumstances. Those are the questions that will be posed to you.

While working on his degree, Patrick spent time not only studying in depth the theories, philosophies, and lessons found in this book and books like it, but also interning as a line employee for a theatre. By the time he graduated, he was doing middle management work at his internship. And though the internship provided wonderful opportunities, Patrick often had a hard time convincing the company’s executive director about an appropriate approach to issues. On several occasions, Patrick’s team was developing promotional materials, based on well-understood and tested theories. His marketing materials were not only theoretically sound, but he would field test them, surveying segments of the audience as well as nonattenders to ensure that his message was being received appropriately and with the right themes, feelings, and nuance. Patrick did not like to make mistakes, and he worked diligently to ensure that every aspect of his work was perfect the first time it was submitted. He researched, analyzed, interpreted, and made solid business recommendations. But the executive director, who had no training in marketing or management, would often dismiss the work of Patrick’s team, asking that it be done differently because the executive director thought his ideas were better. Patrick became quite adept at drafting business proposals that not only explained his approach and the theories behind it in detail, but they were bulletproof. Nevertheless, his work continued to be dismissed. In the three years he worked at this internship, he never figured out how to effectively communicate with the executive.

Chapter objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to explain what financial supports exist for theatres, describe the functions of theatre management, distinguish between different types of managers, and demonstrate how you execute the functions of management.

Some history of theatre management

In the early 1960s, universities worldwide began to recognize the importance of management in the arts, and academic theatre management programs began springing up with their visionary creators recognizing the need for such training well ahead of demand reaching a level of necessity.¹ Today, theatre management programs continue to improve and professionalize.

But what is theatre management? It is the coordination of resources for a theatre company or production, both human and financial, in an effective and efficient manager. So what do theatre managers do? Most people assume that management in the theatre consists of making posters for the lobby windows, selling tickets in the ticket office, and writing the checks to pay the bills. While these functions certainly fall under the auspices of “administration,” they barely scratch the surface of a theatre manager’s work.²

In the late twentieth century, law professors were often known for believing that their function was not to “teach law,” but to train their students to “think like a lawyer.” The axiom suggests that having students memorize tens of thousands of laws and court rulings was not the function of law school. Instead the notion was that by interacting, discussing, debating, and evaluating what had occurred in the law, students would develop a cognitive ability to affect future change.³ Contrary to popular belief, law school is not a few years of learning how to debate before a jury. Instead, students examine laws and court rulings, arguing about why government and judicial representatives have made the decisions they have. Law school is, indeed, about learning to critically analyze what has happened in the past, so that graduates can critically analyze what is happening in the present and how it will affect the future. It is about learning to think like a lawyer. Business schools operate, more or less, in a similar fashion. Students spend countless hours discussing, debating, and analyzing case studies, looking to understand obstacles and challenges presented in the cases, as well as thinking critically about why decisions were or should have been made. Certainly, there are operational issues that students study – how things are most effectively accomplished – but even then it is often done through the use of analysis. Business schools are about learning to think like a business person.

While theatre managers, on a daily basis, have to deal with finance, ticket office sales, human resource issues, laws, fundraising and the like, they are all connected to the art. Financial decisions, such as whether to cut a budget and by how much, will have a direct bearing on what is presented on the stage. Likewise, artistic decisions such as how many costumes, or how “realistic” a set should be, can have a direct impact on finances. Unlike in the corporate world, where the product is tailored to fit the desires of the market, in theatre management the market has yet to know the worth of our core product until they have experienced it. We cannot determine if they will want a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in 1920s India until after they have experienced it. So working blind challenges a theatre manager. The decisions that a theatre manager has to make often come with far less data than corporate managers have at their disposal about how the marketplace likely will react to a product offering. The well-trained theatre manager can quickly analyze inputs, including opinions from artistic experts, marketers, fundraisers, accountants and the like, analyze that input against understood business principles, and make informed decisions for moving the company forward. Theatre managers spend a great deal of time working with, supporting, understanding, and trusting other human beings. The goal of study in theatre management is to help the student learn to think like a theatre manager.

Questions to research for class discussion:

Search the Internet and find answers for these questions before reading further. Be prepared to discuss them in class.

1.1What national financial support exists for theatre, and why was it created?

1.2How has that national support helped theatre?

1.3What other resources are currently available for theatres, financial or otherwise?

In the United Kingdom, support for the arts is well over £48 per person every year. Germany spends about €19 per person on arts funding. In France, there is such an appreciation for arts and culture that reductions in arts funding have caused social unrest. The French Ministry of Culture has a budget of around €2.9 billion (about €43 per person) and the French population is about the same as the United Kingdom, about 80% the size of Germany, and less than one-fifth the size of the United States, which currently spends only about $0.33 per person annually on arts funding. In comparison, Australia spends almost $400 in Australian dollars per person annually on the arts.

But globalization is causing a regular shift away from governmental spending on the arts, and while the US government has made minimal and shrinking investments in strengthening the arts in society, it is possible that with globalization, all developed nations could follow a similar path. With shrinking governmental support, it becomes increasingly important that managers understand how to make sure that the arts are strong and influential in society. They need to be able to think like a theatre manager.

The best-known theatre managers are not those who currently run the world’s largest theatre companies. Few are known by name. Even fewer are recognized in the streets. The salaries are well below those of their corporate counterparts. But even if a steady income with benefits while still working in theatre is why you have an interest in theatre management, it is important to understand that becoming vastly wealthy as a theatre manager is very unlikely to happen.⁴ Few people, however, feel compelled to work in the theatre solely for money or power or celebrity. Most find that the collaborative spirit, the creative nature, and the opportunity to affect other human beings are the main draws to the theatre as a profession. For those choosing management, there is often a more significant trade-off, as managers are typically at least one step removed from the day-to-day collaborative and creative process of making the play.

That was not always the case, and even today there are many theatre managers who straddle both the commerce side of the business and the creative side. It was not that long ago when Shakespeare was writing and acting in his plays, but also directing and administering them as a form of commerce at the same time. Molière did the same in France. Centuries before them, religious leaders functioned as theatre managers, coordinating efforts to tell religious and moral stories to their flocks. But it wasn’t until the twentieth century when we started to consider theatre management as a unique field of inquiry and its own, discrete profession.

Business management versus theatre management

For those who choose to pursue a career in the corporate world, the gold standard for higher education is the attainment of the Masters of Business Administration (MBA), a degree program in which students study the operations and behavior of corporate entities competing in a national and global marketplace. As higher education faces its own challenges due to shrinking revenue sources, colleges and universities have had to develop academic programs that satisfy the largest and most lucrative academic needs. Within schools of business, specialties have begun to appear to train the next generation of professionals who have unique challenges in hotel and hospitality management, educational leadership, sports management, health care administration, government leadership, law enforcement, and the like. In the arts, demand for well-trained and educated managers and leaders has not yet reached such heights that business schools have begun to offer specializations in the arts. This has left the educating of students of theatre management largely to theatre practitioners who have had managerial experience. Because the field of theatre management has yet to be embraced as part of the larger field of business administration, it is continuously challenged to make its voice heard. But this is not to suggest that the challenges faced by theatre managers are somehow less important, less difficult, or less unique. In fact, given our rapidly changing world, the traditions of theatre that have existed and operated with little change for centuries, and the data that suggests society as a whole is changing the way it consumes art, it is easy to see that we need well-trained, well-educated theatre managers to take the art form into the future.

Think critically

There are two ways to approach this class discussion. First, you can choose sides. Divide the class into two, by whatever means you choose, and debate the argument outlined below. Second, you can have an open discussion, each adding upon others’ thoughts, and let the discussion uncover all the important details of both sides of the debate. Keep in mind that regardless of which approach you take, we want to be sure we dig deep into both sides of this important issue, in order to more effectively defend our own position. Sometimes, standing in your rival’s shoes and arguing strenuously for their cause helps you understand your own position even better.

CLASS DISCUSSION: Theatre practitioners face increasing challenges to fund their work. Audiences are fractured, inundated by a vast amount of options for spending their discretionary income, and that income is being spent less frequently on theatre. Without government support, new and innovative approaches to presenting theatre will never be able to gain traction and expand our knowledge of artistic expression, emotive storytelling, and social interactions through shared artistic experiences. But only onethird of the public has any engagement with the arts. Should the entire population be required to foot the bill for supporting art that may or may not have a valuable and sustainable impact on society? We hold our government representatives accountable, and cannot expect them to give away our tax revenue without ensuring that this money is spent carefully, appropriately, and not wasted on funding frivolous or self-indulgent art. Can there be a standard by which we decide which works of theatre are funded and which are not? Should there be? Many argue that great art cannot be planned, and outlined, but that it must be nurtured and allowed to come to fruition. Without financial support, they say great art will wither and die. Others argue that art is not for the masses but for the elite, who appreciate it, and who should therefore be responsible for funding it. They argue that just as our tax revenue is not used to provide support to burgeoning sports teams, the marketplace should determine what is good and effective and allowed to rise to the top. If art is worthwhile, they say, it will also be self-sustaining. Should tax revenue be used to sustain, strengthen and support the arts? If so, how should tax revenue be allocated to the arts?

It has been said that “management is management is management,” but even business schools have seemed to accept that generic principles in management, though they may be applied effectively regardless of the field in which they are exercised, are not enough to compete in today’s environment. This is true for theatre managers as well. In order to be effective in theatre management, one needs to understand not only what the picture is like for theatre in the world today, but also where changes are occurring in order to adapt to those changes in the future.⁵ A manager trained in corporate thinking would be hard pressed to be effective running a local theatr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• List of figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What is theatre management?
• Chapter 2: The strategic framework of theatre
• Chapter 3: Theatre management today
• Chapter 4: Business environments
• Chapter 5: Theatre organization
• Chapter 6: Jobs in theatre
• Chapter 7: Financial management
• Chapter 8: Management and the audience
• Chapter 9: Marketing a theatre
• Chapter 10: Creating promotional materials
• Chapter 11: Fundraising
• Chapter 12: Leadership
• Chapter 13: Boards, governance, executive staff, and volunteers
• Chapter 14: Theatre advocacy and community engagement
• Chapter 15: Theatre education
• Suggested additional reading
• Index