You're new to directing and you completed an important first step. You have chosen the musical and have successfully and legally obtained the rights through the appropriate licensing company.
You are reading through the script, creating a vision for the production and you begin planning for casting and auditions. You also receive confirmation from your boss or producer of what your budget for your musical will be for the show. My educated guess is that it’s at least $5,000 dollars less than you were hoping for and $3000 less than you need.
Being the proactive director you are, you keep planning and you figure out a slew of imaginative ideas to bring your vision to life that will appeal to your actors and stay within your budget. But how do you get all these ideas to everyone on your production team in an efficient way? The answer is simple. Schedule a Production Meeting.
If You Schedule It, They Will Come
Professional theater companies run smoothly by hosting weekly production meetings for the staff of each show. In community or educational theatre, we often have a full teaching load or a full time job on top of our duties as the director so these meetings often get skipped in the planning process. You also deal with a lot of volunteers, and although we appreciate people who will support our show for free, getting all these volunteers to agree on a meeting time can be like herding cats.
All that being said, I urge you to grab your leash and get them all in a room together no matter how many feline scratches you receive. Although it can feel like, “Something else I have to find the time for?!” It will actually save you time in the long run.
The only alternative to these meetings is you sacrificing hours a day answering the same questions and having the same conversation with every designer and artistic team member separately. Even the best ideas lose their luster after the sixth or seventh time you have to explain it. The solution is to schedule these meetings in advance.
But I’ve never planned a production meeting…
How do they work?
How often should I have them?
Who is supposed to attend these meetings?
When should you schedule your first meeting?
Should I bribe people to show up with mini-muffins?
These are all great questions to ask if you are new to planning or attending production meetings. Fear not. I will break it all down for you in a few easy steps so you can enter your first meeting prepared and confident that everyone working on your show will leave the meeting feeling it was time well spent. Aside from that, you can never go wrong with mini-muffins... unless everyone on your team has a gluten allergy. In that case, stick with the age-old philosophy of BYOC. Bring your own carbs.
HOW AND HOW OFTEN?
Let’s look at the first questions of, “How do they work?”and “How often?” The good news is that we are all used to online meetings now so it’s easier than ever to get everyone to commit to having an hour-long meeting. More often than not I have half a team in a conference room with me and the other half on Zoom or Google Meet.
Professional theater companies live and die by their weekly meetings that often occur the same time and same day of the week. This eliminates confusion and the task of you having to find times that work for everyone over and over again. My suggestion is to start with bi-weekly meetings, but scheduling them the same day and time is still strongly advised. Some important rules of your meeting:
AGENDA, AGENDA, AGENDA!
Always have an agenda with allotted times and stick to it. We are all artists and some artists like to hear themselves talk whether we want to admit it or not. Give each production area a maximum time to present and ask questions.
*If you don’t have time to create an agenda or don’t feel like you need the meeting that week, CANCEL IT. Don’t waste people’s precious time.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO RUN THE MEETING
If you have a stage manager with experience, put them in charge of starting the meeting and watching the time. It is their job to keep the meeting on task and on schedule. If you only have a student who is new… let them try, but as the director you should be ready to jump in when your prop person has derailed and is showing baby pictures to the group for five minutes.
ORGANIZE YOUR ORDER
Think about an order for the meeting that makes sense. You will have a combination of artistic team members and designers and everyone may not have to be there the entire time. Think about information that applies to everyone and information only relevant to a few.
WHO NEEDS TO BE THERE?
Think about your production team as two important groups. In community or educational theatre we often wear many hats and many of the production roles you see below may be fulfilled by the same person or yourself. I have been the director, choreographer and technical director for many a show whose budget was the proceeds of a single bake sale. It can be done, but if you are fortunate to have a good budget or a lot of volunteers to divide and conquer, you will have the following people to contact about the meeting.
If I have student assistants I like them to attend so they can learn how the process works.
It is up to you if you want to have assistant directors or assistant stage managers attend the meetings.
Sometimes the set designer will want their Master Carpenter to be there. Leave that up to the designer.
I have also been in meetings where the organization wants a financial manager there, but I would try and avoid this if you are good at keeping a budget. You may also have a production manager for large shows, but this is rarely the case in educational and community theatre.
Does everyone have to attend every meeting?
The short answer is, “no”. But, if you are not sure and your meetings are always on task and efficient, it is better to have everyone there to answer questions that may arise.
Production meetings are an opportunity for everyone to get on the same page and ON THE SAME VISION. Your vision. You don’t want costumes to be the 1950s, but the set to resemble a futuristic colony on the moon. You may think that this kind of thing doesn’t happen…but there is a reason shows fail, even on Broadway.
The cohesion of vision for a show can get lost in translation leaving the audience feeling confused and looking for an Uber at intermission. That is your number one job in these meetings as the director. Answer and ask questions in each production area to ensure everyone, including you, has the ability to stay on vision and budget.
Setting the order of your agenda?
If you are like me you show the people on your team appreciation by valuing their time and creativity. Often members of your creative team, (choreographer, musical director) do not need to sit in long discussions about what the video projections need to look like. They will want to know what size the platforms are, that the girls are wearing skirts they can’t kick in, or that the orchestra is going to be 6 feet in the air behind the set.
On the same subject, your technical team doesn’t need to listen to long drawn out conversations about casting and vocal parts you are cutting. You will get better at figuring this out over time, but information that appeals to everyone should be addressed first. If you can keep these meetings to an hour then people are not as eager to leave early.
Let’s not forget that theatre is the most collaborative art form there is and just because someone is designing costumes doesn’t mean they don’t have a brilliant idea of how to save money on the construction of fifty wooden swords for the cast.
When and what does that first meeting look like?
If you think having your first production meeting two months before the first rehearsal is too soon, you would be wrong. Think about the things you and your designers are trying to plan for before the cast shows up on the first day.
Blocking the show in your script - But what does the set look like?
Choreographing ahead of time - But what are they wearing? What does the set look like?
Knowing who is wearing a microphone - But how much are they and how many can we afford?
How many cast members have to fit on stage?
On and on and on…
The list is long and your designers don’t want to have to design things over and over again to get it right. Have a meeting as early as you can and as the director, always start the first production meeting by sharing what your vision is for the show. Then work your way through your agenda letting everyone ask a lot of questions. They will want to know how much money they have to spend, what you have in stock and any theatre connections you have that “let you borrow”.
After that first meeting...
You may want to wait a few weeks in order to give everyone time to design around the information they just received. Then have a second meeting where everyone shares their design ideas. After the second meeting is when I would lock into the bi-weekly, one hour meetings.
I like to hold an initial first meeting just with my artistic team where we can talk about specific visions for each number, casting and all ideas in detail. I highly recommend this. Your busy set designer doesn’t need to hear you going on and on about the vision for each musical number no matter how excited you are about the use of puppets or jazz hands.
It may seem like you are asking a lot of your team to commit to these meetings, but it saves time in the long run. Everyone wants to do the best job they can for the show and do it right the first time. Keeping everyone consistently on the same page is the easiest way to accomplish this and will ensure you keep your job by not accidentally spending that extra $5000 you don’t have. Save that money for the mini-muffins.
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If you haven't already, be sure to check out our Character Breakdown Spreadsheet. This resource will help to get your production team on the same page in terms of the flow of the show as it affects each actor. (As well as help you plan for auditions, create a time-efficient rehearsal schedule, and more... it's super cool!)
Really good work